The task of formulating the Christian doctrine of the Trinity in its more precise and complete form was the work of the early centuries of the Christian era, that is, chiefly the patristic era. In this chapter we will investigate the principal alternatives to Trinitarian doctrine, most of which also appeared early in Christian history.

Before examining these alternative or contrary views, however, we should take note of the differing answers which have been given to a basic question: How should present-day Christians evaluate the patristic doctrine of the Trinity? Admittedly, the Fathers employed their own cultural tools, namely, the language and thoughts of Hellenistic metaphysics.

  • First, some have regarded the patristic dogma of the Trinity and the Nicene and Constantinopolitan creeds as a Hellenistic alteration, if not a perversion of that original Christianity which had been basically Jewish Christian.

  • Second, others have seen the patristic doctrine as a necessary defensive doctrine, that is, eirie Schutzkhre, to use Emil Brunner’s term, against erroneous teachings, that is, the very contrary views about to be discussed. This posture has already been evaluated as more viable as to the patristic developments and somewhat defective as to the New Testament writings.

  • Third, still others have eagerly embraced and gratefully commended the patristic doctrine of the Trinity.

I. THE UNITARIAN VIEW#

This basic view, formulated at different times during Christian history and with varying descriptive labels, interprets Jesus of Nazareth in such a way that he does not belong within the nature and being of God and thus interprets God as unipersonal, or without internal differentiations.

A. DYNAMIC, OR DYNAMISTIC, MONARCHIANISM#

This view, which originated in the second century A. D., was preceded by

  • Ebionitism, which had regarded Jesus as the Jew selected as the Messiah by God

  • Alogi, or Alogoi, who had rejected any developed Logos doctrine and any doctrine of the Holy Spirit, seemingly allowing no place for any differentiation within God.

According to Dynamic Monarchians, there was in the human Jesus an impersonal power (dynamis) derived from God. This power did not bring about any personal differentiation between God and the man Jesus, but it was the impersonal indwelling of the one God.

  • Theodotus, the leather seller of Byzantium who went to Rome and was excommunicated there about A. D. 195, stressed the human nature and life of Jesus and the Synoptic record and taught that Jesus was endowed at his baptism with a supernatural power. He even accepted his miraculous conception and his resurrection but seems to have refused to apply the title of"God" to Jesus.

  • Artemon of Rome acknowledged the supernatural conception, the superior virtue and sinlessness, and the unique dignity of Jesus but concluded that he was a man, not God.

  • Dynamic Monarchianism reached its fullest expression in Paul of Samosata, the bishop of Antioch whose teaching was condemned by a synod in Antioch in 269. He affirmed the unipersonality of God and denied any hypostasis of the logos or of the wisdom of God. Logos, son, and spirit were seen as attributes of God. Logos, an impersonal dynamis projected from God from eternity, abode in Jesus and grew in the course of his development until finally through it as a medium Jesus attained a certain divine status. The only union, however, between Jesus and God was moral.

B. ARIANISM#

This expression of the unitarian view derived from the teaching of Arius, a presbyter in Alexandria, who began in 318 to publish his views about the nature of the Logos. He was suspended from office by Alexander, his bishop, but was supported by Eusebius, the bishop of Nicomedia. His views were the key issue at the Council of Nicaea I (325) and were condemned by that council and also later by the Council of Constantinople I (381).

For Arius God was utterly transcendent, “the unoriginate source of all reality,” whose essence “cannot be shared or communicated,” and who is thus indivisible and changeless.

  • The Logos or Son is a creature of God, created prior to the creation of the universe.

  • The Logos has no communication with God or the Father and is dissimilar to the Father.

  • He “must be liable to change and even to sin,” though the Father gave to him the grace to prevent his sinning.

  • By courtesy only can the Logos be called “God” or “Son of God.” Thus he is a kind of “demigod,” more than man but less than God.

C. SOCINIANISM#

In the teaching of Faustus Socinus, or Sozzini, as expressed in the anti-Trinitarian, anabaptist, immersionist, and communal community of Rakow in Poland at the beginning of the seventeenth century, one finds another expression of the unitarian view.

  • The Racovian Catechism (1605) denied the divine nature of Jesus Christ, as that doctrine had been formulated by the Council of Chalcedon (451) in terms of two natures in one person, while allowing that the Holy Spirit indwelt Jesus.

  • The man Jesus was virginally conceived, was “sent into the world by the Father,” became by his resurrection immortal like God, and by his “dominion and supreme authority over all things” resembled or even equalled God.

Most Socinians allowed Christ to be invoked and worshiped, but Francis David (c. 1510-79) in Transylvania led the nonadorantist branch. According to David, “the one God is the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ; … the Word was not, prior to the incarnation, the Son of God; and … the Holy Spirit was only the power of God.”

Socinus seems to have taught that Jesus became at his ascension the adopted Son of God. For him Jesus Christ had been given “divinitas of function as distinct from deitas of nature.”

D. ANGLO-AMERICAN UNITARIANISM#

The man who organized the Unitarian Society in Great Britain in 1791, Thomas Belsham (1750-1829), considered the Arian worship of Jesus Christ to be idolatrous. American Unitarianism arose more directly in reaction to the Calvinistic doctrine of humankind.

  • William Ellery Channing (I 780-1842) held to an Arian view and taught the sinlessness, the miracles, and the resurrection of Jesus.

  • Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82) in his “Divinity School Address” (1838) claimed that historical Christianity “has dwelt … with noxious exaggeration about the person of Jesus” and has not “explored as the fountain of the established teaching in society” the moral law.

  • Theodore Parker (1810-60) in his sermon on “The Transient and Permanent in Christianity” (1841) defined Christianity as “absolute, pure morality; absolute, pure religion” and called upon Christians to “worship as Jesus did, with no mediator, with nothing between us and the Father of all.”

American Unitarianism bifurcated during the nineteenth century, with the major branch becoming subject to humanism and the scientific worldview and separating from historic Christianity and with the lesser branch seeking to retain or reestablish its connection with historic Christianity. According to the major branch, Jesus is not to be reckoned as more than or other than a mere human being.

CONCLUSION#

The Dynamic Monarchian, the Arian, the Socinian, and the Anglo-American Unitarian movements have shared a basic understanding of Jesus Christ that has placed him outside the being and nature of God, that has attributed to God unipersonality, and that has denied the triune nature of God.

II. THE MODALIST VIEW#

This view, formulated classically during the second and third centuries A. D. and later held by other individuals and groups, has interpreted the Son and the Holy Spirit as well as God the Father as divine by nature, has held that God is one, and has concluded that there are no “personal” or hypostatic distinctions within God.

  • Its ancient formulation is usually called Modalistic Monarchianism.

  • It shared with Dynamic Monarchianism the common belief that God is unipersonal but differed from Dynamic Monarchianism by affirming that the Son and the Spirit are God.

  • Modalism lays stress upon the offices, modes, or operations of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Such offices or modes are what differentiate the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, not personal or hypostatic distinctions.

A. NOETUS OF SMYRNA (LATE SECOND OR EARLY THIRD CENTURY)#

Noetus, “perhaps the earliest modalist of appreciable influence”, taught that the Father submitted to birth, became the Son, and then suffered and died. The term “Logos” is:

only a designation of God when He reveals Himselft to the world and to man. The Father, so far as he deigns to be born, is the Son. He is called Son for a certain time… [and] the Son, or Christ, is therefore the Father veiled in flesh…

It is not difficult to understand, therefore, why the teaching of Noetus has been called Patripassianism.

B. PRAXEAS (EARLY THIRD CENTURY)#

Having gone from Asia Minor to Rome and then later to Carthage, Praxeas was accused by Tertullian (c. A.D. 210) of doing “two jobs for the Devil at Rome”. The charge was that Praxeas opposed Motanism and embraced Patripassianism. In defense of Praxeas, J. F. Bethune-Baker has contended that the Modalistic Monarchians at Rome:

while denying the existence of any real distinction in the being of God Himself… seem to have admitted a distinction [dating at least from the creation] between the invisible God and God revealed in the universe, in the theophanies of the Old Testament, and finally in the human body in Christ.

One was the Father, the other was called the Logos or Son. If Bethune-Baker should be correct, then Praxeas may not have been a full-fledged modalist.

C. SABELLIUS (THIRD CENTURY)#

A Libyan condemned and excommunicated at Rome, Sabellius repre sented full-orbed Modalism. He referred to God by the name huiopator, “Son-Father.” His view has been called a “more sophisticated modalism.”

  • God is essentially one.

  • The Trinity is one of manifestation but not of essence.

  • These manifestations are modes: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

  • Sabellius used prosopa to mean “roles,” not “persons,” and seemingly he under stood the modes as successive.

Zephyrinus (hp. 199-217) and Callistus (hp. 217-22), bishops of Rome, protected Modalists, for which they were criticized by Hippolytus of Rome. Later Callistus excommunicated both Sabellius and Hippolytus. Callistus spoke of the Father’s “suffering jointly with the Son” but used the term “Son” only to refer to Jesus’ humanity.

D. MICHAEL SERVETUS (1511-53)#

In his On the Errors of the Trinity (1531), Severtus, a physician from Spain, referred to the “three wonderful dispositions of God”.

  • He also identified the Holy Spirit as an angel and held that the Word no longer exists.

  • He was critical of Hellenistic terms used in the doctrine of the Trinity.

Wrongly called an “Anti-Trinitarian”, for he was neither Arian nor Unitarian, Servetus was closest to Sabellius, with distinctives of his own.

E. CYRIL CHARLES RICHARDSON (1909-76)#

Episcopal churchman and patristic scholar, Richardson in a monograph on the Trinity declared:

The terms [Father, Son, Holy Spirit] do not denominate precise persons in the Trinity. They are ways of thinking about God from different points of view. And while they point beyond themselves to the necessity of making distinctions in the Godhead, they themselves are not the actual distinctions and cannot fittingly express them.

Richardson proceeded to identify various “antinomies” or “paradoxes” concerning God and to conclude that “the doctrine of the Trinity” is an artificial construct. His statements seem to warrent the conclusion that he has espoused modalism in some form

CONCLUSION#

Not every author who has favorably employed such terms as “modes of being” and “modal” is necessarily a modalist.

  • Karl Barth’s preference for “modes of being” (Seinsweise) did not mean that the Swiss theologian had embraced modalism in its classical sense.

  • Charles Lowry used “Sabellianism” to identify modalism and employed “modal” to refer to the social analogies applied to the Trinity by the Cappadocian Fathers.

Modalism can quote assuringly the saying of Jesus, “I and the Father are one” John 10:30), but it has very great difficulty in explaining why and how Jesus prayed to the Father.

III. THE TRITHEISTIC VIEW#

This view, never the acknowledged teaching of any major body of Christians, has persisted as the dangerous extreme which is common to much popular thought and speaking about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

  • These three are regarded as fully individuated beings, and hence there are three Gods.

  • The basic oneness of God is disposed of in favor of threefold deity.

  • What is allowed is a generic unity underlying the Father, the Son, and the Spirit; they all are Gods or divine.

Roscelin (c. 1050-1125), an early nominalist and the teacher of Peter Abelard, by his philosophical rejection of universals seemed to teach three separate Gods, that is, tritheism. His teaching was condemned by the Council of Soissons in 1092.

Present-day usage of language such as “cooperation within the Godhead,” “conferring among persons of the Trinity,” and “the councils of eternity” can easily lead to a tritheistic interpretation. Furthermore, some present-day usage of the historic term “person” in reference to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, when devoid of understanding about its patristic origin, tends to fall into the trap of tritheism.

SUMMARY#

The unitarian view sacrifices the deity of Jesus Christ and indeed of the Spirit for the unipersonal oneness of God the Father.

The modalist view sacrifices the personal differentiations of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit for the unipersonal oneness of God.

The tritheistic view sacrifices the oneness of God for the triune differentiations of Father, Son, and Spirit, which become three Gods.

These are sacrifices that are not demanded by integrated Christian truth. Those who are seeking to contextualize Christian theology in the Two-Thirds World, as well as those in the older centers of Christian theology in Europe and North America, need to learn important lessons from the Christian past, especially from the inadequate answers as to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.