Over the past two months, we’ve been examining the history of early Christian theology during the first four centuries AD, to see how theology evolved during this period and why trinitarianism eventually came to be viewed as the only ‘orthodox’ position. I thought it would be good to have a shorter summary of the history of early Christian theology, since these last eight posts have been pretty long — altogether, more than eighty pages of text! So in this post, I’ll summarize all of the main points from the past eight posts, but without including citations or excerpts from primary writings, to keep it relatively short.
Summary
The traditional view of the history of early Christian theology goes something like this: ever since the early days of the Church, all Christians were agreed on the main points of trinitarian theology, that is, that there is one God and that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are co-equal and co-eternal Persons within the one God. But in the fourth century, a heretic named Arius came up with a new doctrine that said that the Son is created and less than the Father. Although he managed to gain a lot of followers, the bishops got together at the Council of Nicaea and unanimously condemned him, creating a creed that expressed the traditional faith of trinitarianism, only using a few new words like “essence” to counter the Arian heresy. After Nicaea, all the orthodox Christians got along in agreement on the doctrine of the Trinity.
However, the actual history of early Christian theology is much more complex than this simplified caricature. The earliest Christians, rather than believing in trinitarianism, believed that God was the Father of Jesus alone, and that Jesus was subordinate to the Father. This is exemplified in the writings of Clement and Polycarp, who were bishops in the late first century and early second century; they never referred to Jesus as “God,” only the Father. Christians were divided on the issue of Jesus’ pre-existence; some writers, such as the author of the Odes of Solomon, believed that he pre-existed his birth only as an impersonal plan in God’s mind, whereas others, such as the author of the Apocalypse of Isaiah, believed that he was a high-ranking heavenly being who was born.
At this time, in the late first and early second centuries, there was little discussion on the Holy Spirit. It’s unclear whether most Christian writers considered it/him to be a person, and those who did — like the authors of Shepherd of Hermas and Apocalypse of Isaiah — considered him to be an angel, not equal to God in any way. There was no clear doctrine of the Son or the Holy Spirit that was accepted by orthodox Christians at this point, merely a general agreement that they were subordinate to God, who is the Father.
In the second century, there was a new development in Christology. As a result of Hellenistic influence, Christians began to see Jesus as a being who was created at the beginning of time, through whom God created the world. In the Platonic worldview, God is too transcendent to deal directly with creation, so He creates a Demiurge, the Logos, through whom He creates and interacts with the material universe. Because many Christian apologists in the later second century came from Hellenistic philosophical backgrounds, they began to see Jesus as the Logos-demiurge, a ‘second god’ subordinate to the God and Father.
The first Christian writer who is known to have supported Logos theory was Justin Martyr, an apologist of the mid-second century. Justin argued in his book Dialogue with Trypho that God is so transcendent that He cannot interact with His creation, and so all of the appearances of “God” in the Old Testament must be the Logos-demiurge. This, in Justin’s view, was evidence for Christianity over against Judaism because it showed that there was a second god (Jesus) subordinate to the one God. However, he admitted that most average Christians in his day did not agree with him, and instead considered Jesus to be a human who did not pre-exist his birth.
In the late second century, immediately after Justin, all of the ‘proto-orthodox’ catholic theologians were Logos theorists: Theophilus of Antioch, Athenagoras of Athens, Tatian, Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian of Carthage. These theologians began to use the terms “trinity” and “essence” to describe the relationships between God, His Son, and His Spirit, but they used them in a very different way. Whereas, for trinitarians, the Trinity is God, for these theologians, God is a member of the ‘trinity;’ and the Father alone possesses all of the divine essence, but He derives the Son and Spirit out of His own essence. For them, the Son/Logos is a created being subordinate to the one God, the Father.
After this period, a new Christology began to emerge, known as one-stage Logos theory or subordinationism. In this view, the Son/Logos exists eternally alongside God, who is the Father, but the Son is still a second god or demiurge subordinate to Him. The first theologian who may have held this view was Irenaeus of Lyons, at the turn of the third century; but he was not very clear on his view of the Logos, though he definitely believed that the one God was the Father.
The first person to clearly hold to subordinationism was Origen of Alexandria, the first systematic theologian who lived in the mid-third century. Origen believed that the Son is eternally begotten by the Father, and is a second god subordinate to God, the Father, who is only divine by participation within the Father. Origen was likely the most influential Christian theologian during his own lifetime and the decades after his death, so his doctrine of subordinationism was subsequently accepted by many Christians. His contemporaries in the West, Hippolytus of Rome and Novatian of Rome, also held to subordinationism and believed that the one God was the Father alone, although it’s not clear whether they thought the Son was created or eternally begotten.
After the mid-third century, several new sects began to develop. Although subordinationism continued to be the majority position, modalism (the view that the Father and the Son are the same person, God) and bi/trinitarianism (the view that the Father and the Son are separate persons but co-equal) began to rise in influence. The first bi/trinitarian was Gregory Thaumaturgus, a disciple of Origen who lived in the late third century, who still referred to the Father as the one God, but argued that God gave an equal power to the Logos.
By the early fourth century, these three sects were in tension with one another. The subordinationist unitarians were the oldest, largest, and most influential sect, including politically influential theologians like Eusebius of Caesarea, Eusebius of Nicomedia, and Lactantius. The modalists were a smaller but still influential sect, including Marcellus of Ancyra and Eustathius of Antioch. The bi/trinitarians were newer and smaller still; in fact, the only certainly bi/trinitarian theologians of the early fourth century were the bishops of Alexandria, Alexander and Athanasius.
In the year 318, Alexander of Alexandria began to make public statements about the Son having no beginning and denouncing all the subordinationist theologians of the East. One of his presbyters, Arius, took umbrage at this, believing that if the Son had no beginning, then he could not have been begotten. (It doesn’t seem that Arius thought that the Son was created in time, but was referring to the Father as the metaphysical “beginning” or cause of the Son.) In response, Alexander examined Arius’ theology and found it to be ‘heretical,’ excommunicating him from the church of Alexandria and sending word to the surrounding churches to refuse communion with Arius.
In desperation, Arius sent a letter to his influential subordinationist friend Eusebius of Nicomedia asking him for help. Eusebius began to write to other churches, telling them Arius’ side of the story and asking them to admit him. However, Alexander also sent an encyclical letter to all the churches of the East, accusing Arius of saying that there was a time when the Son did not exist. Arius and his fellow radical subordinationists tried to make peace with Alexander, but he ignored their attempts at reconciliation and continued to spread accusations against Arius.
Meanwhile, in the year 324, the Roman emperor Constantine defeated all other claimants to the throne and united the Empire. After politically unifying the Empire, he wished to religiously unify the Empire, and sent letters to Alexander and Arius ordering them to make peace with one another over their “small and insignificant questions.” But when they refused, Constantine summoned a council of sixty bishops to Antioch in 325, which condemned Arius and also excommunicated three of his subordinationist supporters, including the widely influential Eusebius of Caesarea.
Constantine also summoned a more general council of several hundred bishops to the city of Nicaea in Asia Minor. This council virtually unanimously condemned Arius, for several theological and political reasons, including the anti-‘Arian’ propaganda of Alexander of Alexandria and the fact that Eusebius of Caesarea (the leader of the classical subordinationists) was in a precarious position after the council at Antioch. However, the creed produced by the council did not advocate trinitarianism specifically. On the contrary, it included language that would be acceptable to all three sects — subordinationists, modalists, and bi/trinitarians — to avoid further division and conflict, and make the decision more unanimous against Arius.
However, the fragile peace established by Nicaea would not last long. The classical subordinationists, who were the majority party in the East, saw the Nicene Creed as too accommodating to the modalists and trinitarians. Even Constantine reversed his policies soon after the council, and allowed Arius to return in 327, and to be reinstated as presbyter in 335 (although Arius suddenly died the night before he was to be reinstated). That same year, in 335/6, two councils of Eastern bishops condemned and excommunicated Athanasius of Alexandria (the leader of the trinitarians) and Marcellus of Ancyra (the leader of the modalists). This broke the peace that had been established by the Council of Nicaea.
The first order of business for the subordinationist bishops of the East was to draft an alternative to the Nicene Creed that was more conducive to their beliefs. They did this in 341 at a council in Antioch, where they created a new creed called the Dedication Creed; this creed avoided the term homoousios (“one in essence”) and refused to call the Son “true God,” though it also condemned Arius’ views. In response, the Western bishops — who were also mostly subordinationists, but more friendly to trinitarians and modalists — drew up their own document at the Council of Serdica in 343, which condemned the Dedication Creed and re-affirmed the Nicene Creed, though it was likewise explicitly subordinationist, saying that “no one denies that the Father is greater than the Son... the very name of the Father is greater than that of the Son.”
This conflict between the Western and Eastern church continued for four decades, never quite reaching a consensus between the two. Although there were a few times when peace seemed to have been reached, like at the Council of Constantinople in 360, this was quickly shattered. As a result of the evangelism of pro-Nicene trinitarians like Athanasius of Alexandria, Hilary of Poitiers, Ambrose of Milan, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus, trinitarianism began to grow in popularity in both the East and the West during the 360s and 70s. Nevertheless, this consensus was growing only slowly, and there was still a lot of tension between East and West during this period.
The conflict was quickly and forcefully brought to an end by the pro-Nicene emperor Theodosius I, who ascended to the throne of the Eastern Roman Empire in the year 379. On February 27, 380, he passed an imperial edict declaring that only those who believe in “the singular Deity of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, in equal Majesty and in a Holy Trinity” were true “Catholic Christians,” and all others were “Heretics” who were considered criminals by the state.
To formalize this decree, Theodosius summoned a council of about 150 pro-Nicene bishops to the city of Constantinople (no anti-Nicenes or non-trinitarians were allowed to attend). They settled on a specific trinitarian interpretation of the Nicene Creed, and came up with a slightly modified creed now known as the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, which was more conducive to trinitarianism. Now having the authority of both imperial law and ecumenical council behind him, Theodosius declared that all churches must be presided over by trinitarian bishops, and forbade the “heretics” from meeting publicly in any town. Trinitarian Christianity was now the official religion of the Roman Empire.
Conclusion
The history of early Christian theology is much more complicated than most Christians today believe. Trinitarianism was not always believed by Christians; on the contrary, most of the earliest Christians saw God as the Father alone, until the fourth century. The earliest Christians viewed Jesus as the foremost (mere) human, the Messiah of God, who is subordinate to God. As time went on, more Christians began to see Jesus as the Logos-demiurge of Hellenistic Platonism, who was created in the beginning as subordinate to the one God, the Father. However, trinitarianism did not become a major theological sect until the fourth century, and only became the official ‘orthodox’ view by the decree of the Roman emperor Theodosius I.
Seeing as trinitarianism was not the view of the earliest Christians, and it only became official ‘orthodoxy’ after Theodosius I forced the Church to adopt it as such, it’s inadvisable to unquestioningly take it as the truth. Instead, we should turn back to the New Testament to see what the earliest, inspired Christians actually believed about God and Jesus.
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