In the last two posts, we’ve been looking at how early Christians interpreted the prologue to John’s gospel (John 1:1-18). So far, we’ve seen the Wisdom Christology view found in the Odes of Solomon and the Logos Christology view of the 2nd-century Christian apologists. They interpreted John’s prologue in very different ways, but, contrary to the common modern reading, didn’t interpret it as a proof-text of Jesus’ co-equal deity with the Father. In this post, we’ll look at the 4th-century readings of John 1, two views that were later deemed heretical and one which ultimately won out.
Interpretation #3: Subordinationism
In the middle of the 4th century, shortly after the Council of Nicaea (AD 325), there was a debate between two bishops, Eusebius of Caesarea and Marcellus of Ancyra, over the meaning of John 1:1. [1] First we’ll consider Eusebius’ interpretation and then move on to Marcellus. Eusebius’ reading of John 1:1 is preserved in his Ecclesiastical Theology, written around AD 330.
According to Eusebius, “the Word” obviously cannot be understood as a literal word like that which is spoken by a person (ET 2.9-13). It would be nonsense to interpret the Word as an attribute of the Father, because then we would have to read John 1:1 as saying, “In the beginning was God, and God was with God, and God was God” (ET 2.14.3-9)! The fact that the Word is “in the beginning” proves that it isn’t without beginning, but is generated by the Father (ET 2.14.3, 13). The Son is co-eternal with the Father, and is the same as the Word, so it’s possible to replace “Word” with “Son” in John 1:1 (ET 2.14.11-12). The fact that the Word was “with” God, not “in” God, proves that he was a person and not a mere attribute (ET 2.14.3). Finally, because John says that “the Word was God [theos]” without the article (i.e., not “the God,” ho theos), it proves that the Word was not “the God who is over all,” but is rather a divine being made to closely resemble the Father’s divinity (ET 2.17.1-3).
Eusebius places the same emphasis on the lack of the article in John 1:1c elsewhere. For example, in his letter to Euphration, dating to ca. AD 320, he states, “he himself is Son of God, but not true, as God is. For there is but one true God... ‘and the Word was God,’ [John 1:1c] but not the one true God.” [2] In his oration to emperor Constantine, dating to AD 335, he assumes that the Word is the intermediary that connects God to creation, i.e., the Logos of Greek philosophy, not the Most High God, which would be “strangely confounding things most widely different” (Oratio 11.12, 16; 12.7).
Eusebius’ interpretation of John 1, that the Logos is a divine being co-eternal with but second to God himself, was first held by the 3rd-century theologian Origen of Alexandria. Origen was the first to hold explicitly that the Logos was eternally generated by God (Peri Archon 1.2.1-4; 4.4.1). He said that, while there may be some Christians who believe the Logos to be just as divine as the Most High God, they are a “most obscure sect of heretics” who deny that the Father is greater in all ways than the Son (Contra Celsus 8.14-15; cf. Peri Archon 4.4.8). Origen believed that the lack of the article in John 1:1 was significant, and proved that the Logos is not “true God,” but is a god by participation in the Father’s divinity, because he is “with the God” and “unceasingly contemplates the depths of the Father” (Comm. on John 2.2).
Therefore, the interpretation of John 1 held by Eusebius of Caesarea and Origen of Alexandria was subordinationist. They believed that the Logos of John 1:1 was an eternal divine being (“God”), but a separate and lesser god, distinct from “the true God” who is the Father. This Logos became flesh in the man Jesus Christ.
Interpretation #4: Modalism
Eusebius’ opponent, Marcellus of Ancyra, held a very different interpretation of John 1. Marcellus pointed out that in the Old Testament, God used singular pronouns to describe his unique divinity, so there can only be one divine person (Frag. 91, 92, 97). [3] Thus, he argued, the word of God cannot be a second god or Logos-demiurge, but is the literal reason and spoken word of God, similar to a human’s reason and spoken word (Frag. 67, 87-89, 99). It is a “power” (dynamis) of the Father, rather than a separate person (Frag. 70). Marcellus accuses Origen and the other Logos theorists of using unbiblical ideas from Platonic philosophy (Frag. 22), which was frankly not an incorrect accusation.
Because the word was not a personal demiurge, Marcellus believed that it “was only the word” before it took on flesh (Frag. 5, 7, 8). Therefore, all of the names and titles which are applied to Jesus in the New Testament, including “Jesus” and “Messiah,” must only apply to the human flesh which the word of God inhabited (Frag. 7). However, Marcellus was emphatic that Jesus was not only a man, which he actually accuses Eusebius of implicitly believing (Frag. 126-128). On the contrary, he states that the spirit of Jesus is identical to God; God’s word is what animated the human flesh of Jesus, controlling it like a puppet, which is how “the word became flesh” (Frag. 5, 7, 73, 104-105).
Marcellus was excommunicated by a council of Eastern bishops in 336, because of his modalist beliefs and his refusal to acknowledge their condemnation of Athanasius (a trinitarian). Four years later, he sent a letter to Julius I of Rome (the pope) appealing their decision. In this letter, he expressed his belief that, prior to his birth, Jesus was “the true and actual word of God” and “a power [dynamis] inseparable from God,” citing John 1:1-3 in support, and that “the Father’s power, the Son, is indistinguishable and inseparable” from him, citing John 10:30, 38 and 14:9 in support. This was considered orthodox in the West, and both he and Athanasius were reinstated the next year by a council of fifty Western bishops presided over by the pope.
In summary, Marcellus’ interpretation of John’s prologue was modalist. He argued that the word in John 1:1 was God’s literal logos, an attribute of the Father, which he used to control the body of Jesus Christ. “The Word was God” (John 1:1c) means that the word was no different from God, the Father. The “word became flesh” (1:14) when God created a human flesh and puppeteered it using his word. There is therefore no personal distinction between the Father and Jesus.
Interpretation #5: Trinitarianism
In the debate between Eusebius and Marcellus, the trinitarian interpretation of John’s prologue — that “the Word was God” (Gk: theos ēn ho logos) refers to a second person in the one God — doesn’t appear to have even crossed their minds. As far as I can tell, this interpretation first appears in the writings of Athanasius of Alexandria, in ca. AD 360. [4] In his fourth discourse against the Arians, he writes,
For the Word, being Son of the One God, is referred to Him of whom also He is; so that Father and Son are two, yet the Monad of the Godhood is indivisible and inseparable. And thus too we preserve One Beginning of Godhood and not two Beginnings, whence there is strictly a Monarchy. And of this very Beginning the Word is by nature Son, not as if another beginning, subsisting by Himself, nor having come into being externally to that Beginning, lest from that diversity a Dyarchy and Polyarchy should ensue; but of the one Beginning He is own Son, own Wisdom, own Word, existing from It.
For, according to John, “in” that “Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,” for the Beginning was God; and since He is from It, therefore also “the Word was God.” And as there is one Beginning and therefore one God, so one is that Essence and Subsistence which indeed and truly and really is, and which said “I am that I am,” and not two, that there be not two Beginnings; and from the One, a Son in nature and truth, is Its own Word, Its Wisdom, Its Power, and inseparable from It. And as there is not another essence, lest there be two Beginnings, so the Word which is from that One Essence has no dissolution, nor is a sound significative, but is an essential Word and essential Wisdom, which is the true Son. (Discourse 4.1)
According to Athanasius, when John says that the Word was “in the Beginning,” he indicates that he was in the Father (who is the Beginning of all things). Thus, although “the Word was God” — in the highest possible sense of divinity — there is nevertheless still only one God, because there is one Beginning (the Father).
Athanasius also brings up a second argument: the Son is called “Word,” and yet God is essentially reasonable, never having been without his rationality (logos), therefore the Son must essentially and always exist alongside the Father (Discourse 4.2-5). This argument was first brought up by Origen, as evidence of the eternality of the Son (Peri Archon 1.1.6; 2.1-4), and would have been a point of agreement between Athanasius and the 4th-century subordinationists. However, Athanasius believed that the Logos was divine in the highest possible sense, not just by participation in the Father’s divinity but by his very essence (Discourse 3.4, 6, 15), contrary to the subordinationists (Origen, Comm. on John 2.2; Eusebius, ET 1.2).
According to Athanasius, “the Word became flesh” when he began to control a human body. In his book On the Incarnation, he refers to the human aspect of Jesus as the “human body” or “instrument,” and says that the Word controlled it as the mind controls the body (18.1; 42.7). This is also evident in his later letter to Epictetus, where he says that the body suffered, but the Word did not. In this way, his views were similar to Marcellus, who also denied that there was any really human soul within Jesus.
For most of the 4th century, the three views of John 1 outlined above were considered to be within the realm of orthodoxy, at least in some part of the church. [5] All three factions insisted that they affirmed the Nicene Creed, and that they affirmed it in its original, intended sense. [6] This changed in AD 380, when the Roman emperor Theodosius I declared that only the trinitarian interpretation of the Nicene Creed would be considered orthodox, and all other views were outlawed (see the Edict of Thessalonica). The next year, this was confirmed at a council in Constantinople that only trinitarian bishops were able to attend. [7] From that point onward, the trinitarian interpretation of John’s prologue was unanimous in the church (basically, because it was the only legal view to hold).
Conclusion
The common trinitarian interpretation of John’s prologue, that “the Word” refers to a second divine person within the one God, was not always believed by the early church. The earliest surviving interpretation of this passage, from the Odes of Solomon, was an exaltational, Wisdom Christology reading, which held that “the word” was the literal word of the Father that was embodied in Jesus. The most common 2nd-century interpretation among Christian theologians was based on two-stage Logos theory, which held that “the Word” was a personal being that was generated by God “in the beginning.” In the 3rd and 4th centuries, both subordinationist and modalist readings of John 1 coexisted, while the trinitarian reading was the latest to appear (in the mid-4th century). Thus, from a historical perspective, the trinitarian reading isn’t the most likely interpretation of John’s prologue; on the contrary, it’s an extreme anachronism.
______________________________
[1] Maurice Wiles, “Person or Personification? A Patristic Debate about Logos,” in The Glory of Christ in the New Testament: Studies in Christology in Memory of George Bradford Caird (Oxford: OUP, 1987), 281-289; Samuel Fernández, “Marcellus and Eusebius on the Gospel of John in De ecclesiastica theologica” 35, no. 1 (2018): 107-120.
[2] https://www.fourthcentury.com/urkunde-3/.
[3] For a translation of the surviving fragments of Marcellus’ writings, see https://www.fourthcentury.com/marcellus-intro/.
[4] If anyone else knows of any earlier (pre-Athanasian) evidence of this interpretation, please share it! I’d be happy to add it to this post.
[5] Although, due to the conflicts of the period, all three of them were excommunicated at one point or another by a council. Eusebius of Caesarea was excommunicated by a council of fifty-nine bishops at Antioch in 325 and reinstated by the Council of Nicaea in the same year.
Marcellus of Ancyra was excommunicated by a council of Eastern bishops at Constantinople in 336, reinstated by a council of more than fifty Western bishops at Rome in 341, excommunicated again by Eastern bishops at the councils of Antioch (341) and Serdica (343), reinstated by Western bishops at the same Council of Serdica, condemned by the Council of Milan in 345, finally deposed by the Roman emperor Constantius II in 347, and condemned again by Eastern bishops at Sirmium in 351.
Athanasius of Alexandria was excommunicated by a council of sixty Eastern bishops at Tyre in 335, reinstated by the Council of Alexandria and the Council of Rome in 341 (the same council that reinstated Marcellus), condemned by Eastern bishops at the Council of Serdica in 343 (the same council that excommunicated Marcellus), condemned again at Sirmium in 351 (the same council that condemned Marcellus), reinstated by the Council of Alexandria in 353, condemned at Arles (353) and the Easterners at the Council of Milan (355), and reinstated at Alexandria in 363.
The doctrinal turmoil of this period is often passed over by trinitarians in favor of a simplistic narrative where trinitarianism was affirmed once and for all by the Council of Nicaea in 325. This account forgets the fact that even Arius himself was reinstated as presbyter by a council of two hundred bishops at Jerusalem in AD 335.
[6] Eusebius of Caesarea was actually the one who formulated the original creed at the council, which was only substantially modified by the addition of the word homoousios (see here). Marcellus’ theology is also thought to have played a significant part in the Council of Nicaea, because of the anathema at the end of the Creed of 325 against “those who assert that the Son of God is of a different hypostasis or ousia”; he was the one who claimed that the Son was the same hypostasis as the Father. Athanasius of Alexandria obviously accepted the Nicene Creed, as his (trinitarian) interpretation of it eventually won out. The creed was originally intended to be ecumenical, excluding no Christology except for Arius'.
[7] Socrates, Ecclesiastical History 5.8.5-10; Sozomen, Ecclesiastical History 7.7.2-5.
No comments:
Post a Comment