When I first started this blog, I began by systematically going through the writings of all of the major ‘early Church fathers’ to show that universalism — the belief that all people will eventually be saved — was actually a majority view, and at all not considered a heresy, for the first several centuries of Christianity. This is contrary to the mainstream Christian narrative that the early church entirely believed in an eternal hell and universalism was a fringe, heretical belief.
However, there is another similar idea in mainstream Christianity that needs debunking. Most Christians seem to believe that from the earliest days of the church, all Christians believed in the deity of Jesus and a triune God. One day, in the fourth century, a heretic named Arius decided he wanted to overturn centuries of Christian doctrine by declaring that Jesus wasn’t God, and all the bishops got together at Nicaea to show that he was wrong. Since then, every true Christian has gotten along in harmony believing in the Trinity, and all unitarians are rightly condemned as heretics.
This is what many Christians today believe — but is it true? As I hope to show in this new series of posts, this narrative isn’t what really happened at all. On the contrary, there are no surviving Christian writings from the first three centuries AD that argue for the modern formulation of the Trinity (three persons in one God). On the contrary, this ‘orthodox’ formulation didn’t become dominant until the fourth century, largely after the Council of Nicaea!
In this post, we’ll examine the surviving Christian writings from the first and early second centuries AD to determine what the authors believed about God. Did they think that Jesus was God? And did they believe in a triune God? Read on to find out.
Early Christian ‘heresies’
In this series of posts, we’ll mostly look only at the writings of the proto-orthodox faction of Christianity, that is, the writings that were retrospectively labeled as ‘orthodox’ by the later church. Unfortunately, few to no writings from other early Christian sects survive, simply because they were not preserved (they were seen as heretical). Before we get into the first-century proto-orthodox writings, I’ll list two of the early unitarian [1] ‘heresies’ that we know existed in the first century.
There were two main unitarian factions associated with Jewish Christianity in the first few centuries. According to the fourth-century church historian Epiphanius, the Nazarenes were a sect in Judea that existed from the first century, prior to the siege of Jerusalem in AD 70 (Panarion 29.7.7-8). This sect believed that “God is one, and that His [the one God’s] son is Jesus Christ” (Panarion 29.7.3). Unlike the Ebionites (see below), they acknowledged that Jesus was born of a virgin (Jerome, Letters 75.13).
Another Jewish Christian sect, called the Ebionites, believed that Jesus was a normal human being born of Joseph and Mary, and that he became the Messiah when the spirit of God descended on him at his baptism (Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. 1.29.1-2). They claimed that “our Lord himself was a man like all the rest of humanity” and that he was chosen to be the Messiah only because he followed the Law perfectly (Hippolytus, Haer. 7.22). They also believed that when Jesus suffered on the cross, the spirit left him, and only returned after he was resurrected (Adv. Haer. 1.29.1-2).
Unfortunately, we can’t know for certain whether this is an accurate summary of the beliefs of the Nazarenes and Ebionites, because we don’t have their writings directly, merely the writings of the later Christian polemicists that argued against them. However, as far as we can know, the Jewish Christians in Judea were largely or wholly unitarian in the earliest days of Christianity.
Clement of Rome
Now that we have briefly covered the unitarian ‘heresies’ of the first century, let’s take a look at the surviving proto-orthodox writings from this period. The earliest surviving writings are from Clement of Rome, who was the bishop of Rome during the last decade of the first century AD. Based on his one surviving letter to the Corinthian church, now know as 1 Clement, he appears to have been wholly unitarian in his theology.
Like the authors of the New Testament, Clement repeatedly distinguishes between “God” and “the Lord Jesus the Messiah” (1 Clement 0.1; 12.7; 16.2; 32.2, 4; 42.1, 2; 46.6; 49.6; 50.6; 57.2; 58.2; 59.2-4; 64.1; 65.2). According to Clement, “the Messiah is from God and the apostles are from the Messiah” (42.2). The “God and Master of spirits and the Lord of all flesh... chose the Lord Jesus the Messiah” (64.1). The one who “alone is the Benefactor of spirits and the God of all flesh... the Creator and Overseer of every spirit” is the Father of Jesus (59.3). Most tellingly, Clement prays, “Let all the Gentiles know that you alone are God, and Jesus the Messiah is your Son” (59.4).
It’s often argued that Clement employs several proto-trinitarian formulations. For example, in 1 Clement 46.6, he writes, “Have we not one God and one Messiah and one Spirit of grace that was poured out on us?” Likewise, he says in 1 Clement 58.2, “as God lives, and the Lord Jesus the Messiah lives, and the Holy Spirit, who are the hope and faith of the elect.” However, a close reading of these verses shows that they are not in any way proto-trinitarian. On the contrary, in these formulations, Clement refers only to the Father as “God” and distinguishes both Jesus and the Spirit from the title of “God.”
Another text which was in the past attributed to Clement of Rome is the pseudepigraph 2 Clement. This forged letter to the Corinthians states, “the only God invisible, the Father of truth... sent forth unto us the Savior and prince of immortality” (2 Clement 20.5). Furthermore, this letter explicitly states that “the Spirit is the Messiah” (14.4), showing that the author did not believe the Holy Spirit to be a separate person from Jesus. Although this letter is almost universally recognized as a forgery today, it still provides useful insight into what second-century Christians thought that Clement of Rome believed.
Ignatius of Antioch
Another Christian writer from the late first to early second century AD was Ignatius of Antioch, the bishop of Antioch until his martyrdom in AD 108 or 140. Seven of the surviving epistles attributed to him are thought to be authentic: his epistles to the Ephesians, the Magnesians, the Trallians, the Romans, the Philadelphians, the Smyrnaeans, and to Polycarp (the bishop of Smyrna). Unfortunately, three different recensions of his letters survive — the Short, Middle, and Long Recensions — and there is significant debate as to which recension is closest to the original text of his epistles. [2]
There are passages in the various recensions of Ignatius’ epistles that seem to contradict one another on the issue of the deity of Jesus. In some places, he explicitly states that Jesus is God, making some strange contradictory statements such as that Jesus is both “made and not made... passible and impassible” and “the Invisible who for our sake became visible” (Ep. Eph. 7, Long and Short Recensions; Ep. Polycarp 3).
However, in other places, Ignatius expresses the view that the Father is the only God. For example, the Long Recension of Ep. Eph. 7 states, “the only true God... the Lord of all [is] the Father and Begetter of the only-begotten Son,” and Ep. Magn. 13 says that Jesus is subordinate to the Father. He also distinguishes between “God” and Jesus repeatedly in three of his epistles (Ep. Magn.; Ep. Tral.; Ignatius, Ep. Phil.). Furthermore, Ignatius’ theology is vastly different from trinitarian theology in that he explicitly identifies the Holy Spirit with Jesus the Messiah (Ep. Magn. 15).
The apocryphal account of Ignatius’ death, The Martyrdom of Ignatius, presents his views as thoroughly unitarian. According to this account, when the emperor Trajan accused him of blaspheming the gods, Ignatius said, “You are in error when you call the demons of the nations gods. For there is but one God, who made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all that are in them; and one Jesus the Messiah, the only-begotten son of God, whose kingdom I may enjoy” (Martyrdom of Ignatius 2). Although this is not directly from the pen of Ignatius of Antioch, it does show that his later contemporaries thought that he believed the “one God” was the Father alone.
Polycarp of Smyrna
Another Christian writer from the early second century AD was Polycarp of Smyrna, the bishop of Smyrna until his martyrdom in AD 155. Only his letter to the Philippian church survives. However, in this letter, he repeatedly distinguishes between “God” and Jesus (Polycarp, Ep. Phil. 0.1; 1.1-3; 2.1, 2; 3.3; 5.2, 3; 6.2; 9.2; 12.2). Polycarp refers to God as “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus the Messiah” (Ep. Phil. 12.2) which shows that he believed the Father to be the God of Jesus.
One passage from Polycarp’s Epistle to the Philippians which is sometimes considered to show that he believed in the deity of Jesus is Ep. Phil. 12.2, which says, “who shall believe on our Lord (and God) Jesus the Messiah and on his Father who raised him from the dead.” The words here, “and God” (et deum), are only found in about half of the surviving Latin manuscripts of Polycarp’s epistle. [3] Because of this, it’s difficult to say on a textual basis alone whether Polycarp referred to Jesus as God here. However, given that he consistently distinguishes the title “God” from Jesus and applies it to the Father, the most likely reading in context is simply “our Lord Jesus the Messiah” (omitting “our God”).
The apocryphal account of Polycarp’s death, The Martyrdom of Polycarp, presents his theology as unitarian. In this account, Polycarp prays to God, saying, “O Lord God Almighty, Father of your beloved and blessed Son Jesus the Messiah” (Martyrdom of Polycarp 14). As with the Martyrdom of Ignatius, although the Martyrdom of Polycarp was obviously not written by Polycarp himself, it shows that his later contemporaries understood his theology to be unitarian.
Other first- and early second-century writings
Most of our knowledge about first and early second-century Christian theology comes from the writings of the bishops Clement, Ignatius, and Polycarp, but other Christian writings from this period also survive. The Didache, a late first-century work which purports to have been written by the twelve apostles, distinguishes Jesus from God in a prayer and refers to Jesus as “Your servant” (Didache 9). This shows that the authors understood Jesus to have been subordinate to God.
The Epistle of Barnabas, another first- or early second-century writing, shows very little concern with establishing the deity or non-deity of Jesus. The author only ever refers to Jesus as “the Son of God” rather than God, but also does not distinguish between God and Jesus as other Christian writers of this period typically do. Barnabas states that Jesus existed before the foundation of the world, and is the one to whom God said, “Let us make man” (5.5; Genesis 1:26). However, Barnabas also states that Jesus was a created, or “prepared,” being (14.5), so the author did not believe him to be God.
Another text from the late first or early second century AD, the Ascension of Isaiah, is the first to explicitly describe the pre-existence of Jesus as a heavenly being. This work purports to be written by the prophet Isaiah, and describes his vision of a heavenly being called “the Beloved” who “will descend into the world into the last days as the Lord, who will be called the Messiah” (Ascension of Isaiah 9.17). However, the Beloved is distinguished from “the Most High” who sits on the throne in “the seventh heaven” (7.17, 23, 37). This work also distinguishes the Holy Spirit as a personal being from God and the Beloved, but calls him merely “the second angel” — the “first angel” being the Beloved (9.33-40). Therefore, the Ascension of Isaiah does describe a ‘trinity’ of sorts, but it is a hierarchy with God at the top, followed by Jesus, followed by the Holy Spirit (who is equal to the angels).
The Odes of Solomon, a first- or early second-century Syriac Christian hymnal, presents a characteristically unitarian Christology, referring to the Messiah as “the man who humbled himself, but was exalted because of his own righteousness” (Odes 41.11-15). Unlike later writers who would identify the Logos as a pre-existent person, the author of the Odes identifies the Logos as God’s plan and wisdom which became manifest in Jesus, the “holy thought which he thought concerning the Messiah” (Odes 7.7-8; 9.3; 16.19).
However, there are also some statements in the Odes that lean toward modalism, such as “the Father of knowledge is the Logos of knowledge” and “I believed in the Lord’s Messiah and considered that he is the Lord” (Odes 7.7; 29.6 cf. Odes 17). Although this appears at first glance to show that the author of the Odes believed in the deity of Jesus, one must also consider Ode 36, which states that the Holy Spirit brought the Son of Man up to heaven and “made” him “according to the greatness of the Most High.” In other words, the author of the Odes believed that Jesus was exalted by the Spirit to become equal to God, but not that he was eternally God.
Finally, the last text we will look at in this post is the Shepherd of Hermas, which was written in the first half of the second century, and purports to be a series of visions received by Hermas. This work was considered Scripture by some in the early church, including Irenaeus of Lyons (Adv. Haer. 4.20.2). According to this work, Jesus was originally a slave of God who was indwelt by the pre-existent Holy Spirit who is the Son of God, and because of his righteousness was exalted to become Lord and co-heir with the Holy Spirit (Sim. 5.2; 5.5.2-3; 5.6.3-7 cf. Sim. 9.1.1). This Christology is clearly adoptionist, similar to the Christology of the Ebionite ‘heresy’ described previously.
Although the Shepherd of Hermas presents the Holy Spirit as the original Son of God, through whom God created the universe, it does not place him on the same level as God. Instead, the Holy Spirit is said to be an angel (Mand. 5; 6.2; Sim. 9.1.1-3); specifically, an archangel who is superior to the six other archangels that were “created first” (Vis. 3.4.1-2; Sim. 5.5.2-3; 9.12.8). The Son of God, that is, the Holy Spirit, acted as “counselor for the Father in his creation” and so God created the universe through him (Sim. 5.6.5; 9.12.2). Thus, the Shepherd of Hermas had a unitarian theology, with the Holy Spirit as the greatest archangel who existed before creation, and Jesus as the slave of God who was exalted to become co-Son with the Holy Spirit.
Conclusion
In the first and early second centuries AD, there is not a single surviving Christian writing that advocates trinitarian theology (three persons in one God). Instead, all of the writings we have surveyed appear to have a unitarian theology. The only first-century Christian author who possibly believed in the deity of Jesus is Ignatius of Antioch, who is the only one to call Jesus “God” at this early date, but the difficulty in ascertaining the original text of Ignatius’ epistles makes it very difficult to determine what he actually believed. Even if Ignatius believed in the full deity of Christ, he was not trinitarian, because he believed that the Holy Spirit was identical with Jesus.
The only first-century texts which mentions the pre-existence of Christ are the Ascension of Isaiah, which states that Jesus existed before his birth as “the Beloved,” and the Epistle of Barnabas, which states that Jesus was created before the foundation of the world. Other texts do not allow for pre-existence, like the Odes of Solomon which states that the Logos was merely a plan or thought in the mind of God before it became the man Messiah, and the Shepherd of Hermas which states that Jesus was a man who was joined with the pre-existent Holy Spirit. Other texts simply do not show any knowledge of pre-existence or non-pre-existence.
The most variability in Christian belief at this date was with regard to the Holy Spirit. Most texts do not make any strong statement as to the personality of the Holy Spirit, while others (like the Ascension of Isaiah) describe him as an archangel who is subordinate to God and Christ. The Shepherd of Hermas uniquely interprets the Holy Spirit as an angel and the original Son of God who is subordinate to God, but superior to Christ. However, no writing from this period describes the Holy Spirit as a person who is co-equal with the Father.
In the next post, we will take a look at what Christians thought about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the late second century.
Part 2: https://universalistheretic.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-evolution-of-early-christian.html
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[1] In this series of posts, I am defining “unitarianism” as the belief that there is one true God who is numerically identical with the Father of Jesus and no other, and “trinitarianism” as the belief that there is one true God who in some sense consists of three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
[2] Jonathan Lookadoo, “The Date and Authenticity of the Ignatian Letters: An Outline of Recent Discussions,” Currents in Biblical Research 19, no. 1 (2020), 88-114.
[3] Michael W. Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Publishing, 2007), 294-295.
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