The Trinity

Let's begin this evening by praying together. For your heavenly Father, we thank you for your marvelous graciousness and faithfulness to your people. We thank you, Lord, for the opportunity that we have to come together to study your word and to think about you. We pray that as we do that, Lord, that we would seek to be biblical, that we would seek to be faithful to your word, and that even as we look at some rather difficult and technical things, historically, and all the rest, that we would keep in mind that the purpose is that we will know you better, that we will walk with you in humility, walk with you in obedience, and walk with you in joy. Again, we thank you for all the wonderful things you've done for us in our lives through your Son and by the power of your spirit. In Jesus' name, amen. Last time we were together looking at the issue of the Trinity, the history of the discussion about the Trinity, up through Nicae and Calcedon, we made the point that the early church lacked the framework that we have. When we think about God, most of us pretty well automatically think in terms of Jesus as God, of the Holy Spirit as God, yet we don't think in terms of three gods. But to be honest, it took the church some time to come to that, and we should appreciate that reality, and that's why I do think it's worth our time to walk through some of this stuff historically and look at the different groups and see the things they struggled with. One of the things that sometimes happens is that we see these different groups, like the Ebianites, who we looked at last week, or the dynamic monarchions, or the modeless, and think, you know, those goofy heretics, yada, yada, yada. But the fact of the matter is, many times these were earnest people. They were sincerely and faithfully trying to work with the Word of God, but they made bad choices, they made bad decisions. And we don't have to, I think we need to be careful here, we don't have to take anything away from people's piety, from their sincerity, even if they fall into very dangerous error. Many times people who are in cults, many times people who are in fairly gross doctoral error, are people who are just as sincere, just as committed, just as prayerful many times as an orthodox Christian. And we need to be praying for those people as we work with them and to realize that we don't have to demean their character, we don't have to demean their piety in any way. Does that make sense, folks? If we can, let's pick up our discussion. I think it's Roman numeral four. Is it the tradition of distinction, yes, on page 66, distinction, the economic trinity. And we start here with the issue of tri-feeism. Call last time, the last position we looked at was modalism, the tradition of identity. If modalism offered a simple solution to the dilemma posed by the problem of the one and the three, tri-feeism, the idea of three gods also offers a neat way out. Tri-feeism invites us to imagine a trinity consisting of three equal, independence and autonomous gods. Each of them fully divine. Now, you may be thinking, why is he talking about tri-feeism? It's an absurd idea, but the fact of the matter is that tri-feeism can be articulated with some degree of subtlety. It actually seems to me that in the last analysis, the problem of theological mathematics transcends our analytic abilities to fully appreciate the realities involved. I think we, again, we simply assume God is one, God is three. We don't have a problem with it. But the fact of the matter is, we does a problem. It's a mathematical problem. Orthodoxy may in the last analysis, may be a matter of not falling into the ditches on one way or the other, on one side or the other, rather than perfectly understanding the reality of God. If that's true, if Orthodoxy is staying out of the ditches, if it's staying in the middle of the road, I think the ditch that we must stay closest to is, in fact, the tri-feeist ditch. If the options are one and three, I think we need to walk closer to the three than to the one. In other words, the tradition of distinction, the Father is not the Son, and the Spirit is neither the Father nor the Son. I think that's the tradition that Scripture would commend to us, and let the mystery fall upon the Oneness. We need to affirm that God is the Father, God is the Son, and God is the Spirit. If the choice again is tri-feeism or modilism, I'm going to suggest that tri-feeism is the more appropriate one. Now, we can walk too close to the tri-feeist ditch, or we can walk close to it in different ways. We can come too close. That appears to have been the case in the writings of the late-fourth-century capidotian fathers, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nasiensis, and Gregory of Nisa. They spoke of a union, or a sympathetic union of three men, a sympathetic or moral union, in which the biblical God is like three men who are joined in a united project or purpose. In all fairness, it should be pointed out that the treatise in which Gregory of Nisa first developed the analogy of sympathetic union was entitled, and listen to his title, that there are not three gods, and while he did develop at least a prima facia case against tri-feeism, most people who have read his treatise have come away with the nagging suspicion that at the end of the day, Gregory is actually talking about three gods, so we could walk too close to the tri-feeist ditch. Another way, another approach was taken some 150 years before the capidotian fathers, and that was the tradition or the trans-Tertullian. And if anything, these two gentlemen may have walked too close to the modalist ditch, and here we want to pick up, and first of all, Tertullian of Carthage. Tertullian was the first writer or first thinker to write in Latin. He's writing just at the time that the church is making the transition from Greek to Latin. And Tertullian's concern was to articulate the father, the son, and the spirit in biblical rather than philosophical terms. In fact, Tertullian has often been thought of as an anti-philosophical thinker. His most quoted line is a kind of rhetorical question. What does Jerusalem have to do with Athens or belief with unbelief? Of course, from that quotation, it's usually assumed that he's beating up on the philosophers. While that was his intent, if you read Tertullian, you find out that he too could think fairly philosophically and fairly rigorously. But the good thing here is that Tertullian did seem to understand that rationalism may be the hobgoblin of trunitarianism, that we may just plain break our heads and break our machinery if we try to make sense in any perfect way of God as one and three. Well, while he recognized the singularity of God in Scripture, Tertullian also recognized that the New Testament witnesses to and even emphasizes the deity and personhood of the son and the spirit as well as the father. Thus, we must at one at the same time say that God is one, yet say that there is a distinction in God. Tertullian would get at this distinction in two ways and neither of us, neither of them, excuse me, should surprise us. When we realized that they came from a man who developed his thinking in response to modalism, Tertullian is, but it's been quite a bit of his time, engaging and writing against the modalistic tradition. But he's influenced by them as well. He will, for instance, use analogies. Remember subelius and different folks were trying to use analogies for the Trinity. Tertullian will as well. For instance, he used the the analogy of God as a river, a stream, and a brook. All three of those are part of the water system and he also used the analogy of a tree. A tree has parks, trunk, limbs, and leaves, and all all three of those have every much as much right to be called tree as any other park. Tertullian also used a distinction of functions for talking about the three persons. The father is the creator, the son is the redeemer, and the spirit is the sanctifier or comforter. Also, according to one analysis, Tertullian was responsible for coining some 500 new nouns in the Latin language. 284 adjectives and 161 verbs. The same as theologians like to make up words. You probably think that I've made up some words. You've never heard them before. I don't think I have that maybe one or two Williams'isms have slipped in. Happily, at least in Tertullian's case, not all of those have survived. Not all of those new words these coined have come over into theological language. I want to mention just three of them here because they're relatively important for the discussion about the Trinity. First of all, Trinitas. It's to Tertullian that we owe the word Trinity. It's not a biblical term. It is an invention. Second, the word persona. Persona originally had the same denotation as the Greek word prosopon. If you recall from last week, the word prosopon meant mask or roll. It's only slowly that the word persona, the Latin word persona, will come to take on the idea of self-consciousness as we use the word person. And third, substantia. Substantia could be translated as substance. It could be translated as essence. I like to think of it as just kind of fundamental stuff. Fairly important word as we're going to see. Well, like the modulus, Tertullian claim that God plays three roles in the history of redemption. Yet different from the modulus, he insists that there is a fundamental unity. A shared substantia. God is then one substantia in three persona. And that is Tertullian's formula. One substantia in three persona. Behind the plurality of these three persona, there is a shared substance, a shared essence, a shared substantia. This one God acts in a multiplicity of ways in the economy of salvation. And when we think of God, we must be guided by that economy, the historical administration of God's acts. Well, let's get to Tertullian, excuse me, Hippolytus involved in this discussion. Hippolytus shared Tertullian's biblical, somewhat anti-philosophical approach. He said that God's power is one, but it's differentiated in time. Now listen to his language here and see how these early Christians are struggling with the one and the three. There is no division in God, but there is extension. There is no separation in God, but there is distinction. See how the idea of an essence is helpful at this point. How this philosophical category is helpful in thinking through some biblical issues. What Tertullian hypotheses were saying. And they shared with many of the pre-Nicene fathers was that God manifests himself in three persons for the sake of his work of creation, redemption, and glorification. That God's oneness is preeminent or even prior to his threeness. Now, before we proceed, we should note that they are not modeless. However close they could come linguistically. However close they could come to an emphasis upon a historical distinction of labor. Why aren't they modeless? Because both Hippolytus and Tertullian will insist that God is all three at one time. As Tertullian insisted, the three are really three. They are different persona. They are numerically distinct. And Hippolytus will say they are capable of being counted. And of course, the modeless would not do that because what you've got in modalism, if you remember, is that the father becomes the son and who becomes the spirit. You simply have that same person changing roles. And interestingly, both Hippolytus and Tertullian were branded as polytheists by the modeless. Now, both of them can see the God as a unique solitaryness from all eternity. That's not my word I read it somewhere, solitaryness. Yet there is a distinction within God. While single, there was always plurality within God. Hippolytus put it this way. Though alone, he was multiple. For he was not without his word and his wisdom, his power and his counsel. Hippolytus was insistent on the essential unity of God, stating that there is only one. And that we cannot speak, excuse me, I've got the quotation wrong here. And when I speak of another, I do not mean two gods, but as it were light from light, water from its source array from the sun. Both held. I hope you see where I'm going here. Both held that the one is prior to the three, historically. They are both talking about a certain change in God, not a change in God's essential being, not a change in his substantiate, but a change in his historical manifestation. And oftentimes what they would say is that before the creation or before the incarnation, God is one. But he chooses to become three in the economy of redemption. Now, we might find this contribution less than completely adequate. But we should note that there was a contribution being made here by Trotelli and Hippolytus. First of all, far more explicitly than anyone before them, they sought to include the Holy Spirit in their discussion. In fact, we're thinking about the Holy Spirit. And second, they did contribute in terms of the language and fundamental formulas. Three persona in one substantiate. Three persons in one essence. And of course, that still stands today as the fundamental trinitarian formula. For Romans 5, derivationism or subordinationism

top of page 68. And here we need to talk about origin of Alexandria. By any measure of things, origin was certainly one of the most significant thinkers of the early church. And as I put there number one, he followed the tradition of Justin Martyr and the Lagos philosophy of middle platenism. What all of that means is simply this. Is that he was a follower of a fairly strict material spiritual dualism that Rialis made up of two kinds of substances. One is matter, the other is spirit. And he would engage that kind of metaphysic somewhat speculative way. That's what all we really need at this point for number one. But like the economic trinity of Trotelli and Hippolytus, the Alexandrian school, which of which origin was representative, also began with an emphasis upon God's oneness rather than his oneness. But with some fairly different results here. Although he was brilliant, origin is going to confuse the issue almost beyond repair. We want to see how confused we can get following him. I'll try not to confuse you too much. The starting point for origin was the monarchy of the Father. Everything must derive from something unchanged and unchanging. And this is the Father, the creator of all. He's going to start with oneness. He's going to start with the Father's oneness. The Father alone is God in the proper sense because the Father alone is ungenerated. Origin thought it was significant that in John 17, verse 3, Jesus spoke of the Father as the only true God. So the Father alone is God properly speaking. This perfect, ungenerated God cannot, however, really relate to material creation. God is spirit. And here we see his spirit, matter, dualism. God is spirit, and spirit is opposed to matter. Consequently, the sun is the mediator between the Father and creation. And this means the the logos, the word is present in Jesus of Nazareth. Now this logos or the word origin taught was true God in most ways, but in some ways was essentially subordinate to God. That's why we're going to call this position subordinationism. The sun was a species of God. The Father is the fountainhead of deity. He is auto-theos, auto-theos, simply Greek meaning God in himself. As the fountainhead of deity, the Father is the one from whom all deity is derived, you call this derivationism as well. The sun possesses deity only as he participates in the Father's essence, only as he participates in the Father's being. Thus the sun is not God in himself, but God as he participates in the Father. Now that might seem to demote the sun a little bit. What origin did for the Holy Spirit was even shakier. For for him the Spirit was a creature divine possibly but not deity. In origin we see the beginnings of a rather different understanding of the Trinity than what we saw in hypothesis and Tertullian. Over against their economic view, origin posited what would come to be called the imminentist Trinity or the essentialist Trinity. You'll recall that Tertullian antipologist said that the one precedes the three, that God who was one became three, origin will argue that whatever God is, whatever threeness there is in God has always been there. It is essentially the case that God is multiple. These three persons are eternally distinct. The Father is God unregenerated. The sun is eternally generated by the Father and the Spirit. Let me just quote him here. The Spirit is the most honorable of all beings brought into existence through the Word. The chief rank of all the beings originated by the Father through Christ. So the origin would say that the Spirit is not God at all. He will speak of the two gods and these two persons, the Father and the Son, are related not by historical extension within a shared oneness but the eternal generation of the Father's essence. Well, it's to origin that we hold the major problem of theological semantics when it comes to the Trinity. He's going to introduce some language to us that is somewhat perplexing. Origin speaks Greek rather than Latin so he's not going to say one substantiated in three persona. He's going to use Greek terms but the problem is the two terms he used can be synonymous. He will speak of three hyphostasis in one usia. Do I have that for you there? On your own? Okay, so I'll have to write that on the board. Three hyphostasis in one usia. The problem here is that most people regard these two terms. Usia and hyphostasis to be synonyms. So there's more than a little head scratching going on. That would be like saying, one white and three white if you've got two terms that are synonyms. What's the distinction between one and three? Let me do this very quickly. Tertullian has said one substantiated in three persona. Origin is going to say one usia in three hyphostasis and if that's plural the single would be epostasis. You can automatically see here that the terms substantiated and hyphostasis are synonyms. This of course is the Latin term. The Greek term both basically means substance to stand under. Okay, so both these terms are blatantly synonyms, but notice the numbering here. One hyphostasis, this is the one substantiated and three hyphostasis. You get a little confused? Good. Now you know how everyone felt at the time. It's very confusing stuff. The part of this course you've got people are speaking Latin and not Greek and you've got people who are speaking Greek and not Latin. If they speak both languages, they're really out of it. Because they can say, hey, these two terms mean the same thing, but they're used in different ways. Plus, as we have substance essence, fundamental stuff used here, then what do we mean by usia? Which is a Greek term meaning being confused? Good. It wasn't meant to clear anything up. Well, one way to try to clear it up. If you're scratching your head, that's good. That head scratching will become a migraine by 325. And then I see in council, one way of trying to clear this up was arianism. And here we move to arianism in our outline. Arianism's leading idea was that since God is unbegotten, arianism by the way lives in Alexandria, the same city as origin. So he's picking up some of this origin's language of begotten, unbegotten. Since God is unbegotten, since he's unoriginated being, if God has a son, one who is begotten, the one who is begotten cannot be God. Therefore, the incarnate logos must be a creature and not God. So Arianism is basically going to do for Jesus what origin has already done for the Holy Spirit. He's going to demote him. He's going to move him from the category of deity to the category of humanity. In the early 320s, Arianism made church authorities in Alexandria squirm by quoting the Bible to them. He would quote texts like Proverbs 8.22. I'm not going to have time to read these. You might want to jot them down. Are they on your? No, they're not. You might want to jot them down. Proverbs 8.22, Mark 1332, Luke 18 verse 19 in 1 Corinthians 15, 28, and he would read all of those texts as saying that Jesus is not divine, that Jesus is simply a man. Arianism of the 4th century and their modern counterparts, the Jehovah's Witnesses, have been quick to pounce on these verses to employ their argument against orthodoxy. You might want to look those up. Proverbs 8.22, Mark 13, verse 32, Luke 18, verse 19, and 1 Corinthians 15, 28. Now like origin, Arianism believed that the principle of subordination is the only way to protect the monotheistic reality of God. Basically, as in that tradition, it says, you begin with the oneness and you've got to protect the oneness. In any sense, you can make out of three, you're going to have to do in terms of that oneness. So, it's going to protect the monotheistic reality of God. And anything else is going to be polytheism as far as Arianism is concerned. Now, it was quite natural in terms of the day that Arianism would bump up against and run a foul of the bishop of Alexandria. And this guy's name is easy to remember. His name was Alexander. Alexander believed that the deed of Christ is the fundamental issue of orthodox faith and practice. If you do not accept the deed of Christ, there is no way that you can be a believer. There's no way you can be a Christian. And that, as far as he was concerned, that's what you defended all costs. Not the oneness of God, but the deed of Christ. And I guess from things that I said about the triathistic ditch at the beginning, I'm coming from that same position. And it's the contest between these two men, the bishop of Alexandria and Arianists that would create such a rift in the North African Church of the early fourth century, that concentrating the emperor would call the first ecumenical council in 325 at Nicaea. But before we get there, we need to lay out a bit more of Arianism's understanding of God. And so we come to the point three of monarchism. Is that where we're at? I've got two different outlines here. I use my old notes and change the outlines. I go along and the three's turn to four's and A's and everything else. Arianism had visible roots in dynamic monarchian. He took the transcendence and the uniqueness of God so seriously that he couldn't conceive of God as sharing his essence with anyone else. If God could share his essence, if God's essence is divisible, then something else, something more fundamental than God must be God. To suppose that someone besides the Father is God, is to lapse into polytheism. So God is radically singular and radically simple. As Arianists put it, God is without beginning and utterly one. God is by definition unbegotten. Again, note the originous language. Whatever is begotten or generated is by definition not God. Also, like origin, the Father is the source of all being of all things. Nothing exists which does not derive from the Father. Being generated derived from the Father, Jesus cannot be God. He must be a creature. He can't be of the Father's essence because if he were, that essence would be capable of being divided, would be capable of being communicated. Thus, God would no longer be simple. You know how you're using some basic philosophical premises to define God and to get it the issue. Thus, Arianist concluded that Jesus exists only by the Father's will, just like any other creature. One of the Arian models of the day was a little song about the Trinity. In one line, speaking of Jesus, said this, there was a time when he was not. This was the fourth century. We'd all have bumper stickers if we were Arian's and those would be on our cars or horse-drawn carriages or whatever they would be, our chariots, I guess. There was a time when he was not. Yet there is a special relationship between Jesus and God. Arianist claimed that Jesus was the first creature created. While he is ontologically the same as any other human being, he was created for a special function to represent or reveal the will of God. In fact, Arianist spoke of him as a tertium quid. A third thing, there's God, there's us, and there's Christ. Not quite human, but certainly not divine. He came from God and therefore is less than God. And I hope you've noticed that we've kind of conflated two of the frameworks that we first entered into in our taxonomy. Adoptionism and subordinationism. And that's intentional because Arianist really has a foot into. He is a subordinationist, a la origin in the Alexandrian school. He's also an adoptionist. We might think of his position as being metaphysical adoptionism. God adopts Jesus as his son, but does that even before creation. So we have a kind of metaphysical adoptionism. What the point is that the status of the son is not the consequence of his nature but of the will of the Father. Now, if you recall, we talked about adoptionism. We said that it didn't seem to appeal to most people. It didn't last very long in the early church because adoptionists tend to devalue Christ. He is no more than an exemplar, no more than an example. So what's all this Arian fuss about? How come the Arians are becoming so popular in 4th century North Africa? Well, the simple reason here is that Arianist followers used all the Orthodox language when they spoke about Jesus. They even said that Jesus is the Son of God. They simply meant something different by that language than the Orthodox meant by that language. They even said it was appropriate to call Jesus God. So long as we realize that he's not really God, it's an honorific title. Yes, they admit that the gospel of John does appear to say that Jesus is deity, but that language is theologically imprecise. When John says that Jesus is God as in, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God, John himself is using language in an honorific way. So we have a particular vision of the inspiration of Scripture going on here, too. It can be negotiated according to one's theological insight or position. Question here.

But the very fact that he has questions, what does, what would the Arians have done with the Virgin Birth accept it? But the fact that he has a human mother is what puts him into the category of Chertium quid automatically. At best one might say that he is a hybrid between God and God and man. And we'll see that in some of the language that's used at Nicaea. Okay. Like the adoption's tradition that came before him, Arian claimed that Jesus can be a savior only to the extent that he is capable of being followed, that he is capable of being simulated. So we're back to that exemplary notion of redemption. He is capable of imitation. By our obedience, we follow him in adoption. Jesus didn't effect salvation. He's merely a good example.

Now the implication here, and we should have noted this at other points, both with the Evianites and the dynamic monarchians. I hope you see the implications of this kind of sotaryology, this kind of doctrine of redemption. When we think of Jesus as a creature, and we see redemption as being something that's done by example, what we're saying is that God does not come to us in redemption, but we work our way to him. And quite frankly, within the early church that does make sense. We've made the point in other courses, and Dr. Calhoun does in his history courses as well. In the early centuries of the church, people tended to be very moralistic. They did tend to think in terms of our working our way to God. And it really won't be until Augustine, around 400, that there's a clear articulation of the Pauline doctrine of redemptive grace. Well, Arianism would sweep the churches. In the 320s, it would become very, very popular in North Africa. And as we've already indicated, by 325 Constantine calls, the first ecumenical council that brings us here to Roman and World 6. We want to look at the council here. But before we can do that, we need to say something about the players, the people involved here. And I've got it there somewhat listed for you. Constantine is the emperor. Clearly, he is Arian in his leanings. Eusebius of Nicomedia is a good friend of his, and Eusebius is the leader of the Arian party. Oh, by the way, Arianism is not at the council because he's not of high enough rank in the church. I think he's only a presbyter at this point. He's not a pastor. So he's not the leader of the Arian party, but Eusebius in Nicomedia will be. You have Alexander, the bishop of Alexandria, and he's the leader of the Orthodox party. That party that wants to uphold the deed of Christ. And we should mention Euseus of Córdoba. Euseus appears to have been the emperor's theological advisor. And if anyone is responsible, if anyone man is responsible for writing the Nicodan Creed, it is Euseus of Córdoba. I mention these people here this way. We can say a lot more about the folks involved. I mention them here this way because like just about any church council, this was a confusing and confused event. Political wranglings, linguistic confusion, personality conflicts, faults, allegations, undereducated bishops, you know, and on and on. It's interesting to me to look through the different councils of the church and just to count off the stabbings and people getting beaten up in the hallways. Things are pretty tame now if you go to General Assembly compared to years past. Anyway, going in, the smart money's on the Arian. They seem to have everything their way. As I've already mentioned, the emperor has Arian leanings and some of the heavy hitters, some of the big wigs within the bishops are themselves Arians. Plus, Alexander was not exactly well-liked. While he was orthodox, he was one of those guys who could pretty well manage to offend everybody in about five minutes when he walked into the room. You know, he was a person who had an awful lot of sharp edges. He was not winning a lot of converts with his style, with his presentation. You know, sometimes people can be dead right. Alexander seems to have been one of those fellows. Well, this very reality, that things look so good for the Arians worked against them. They got cocky. They got presumptuous. And here's where the providing hand of God stepped in. As the story goes, Eusebius of Nicomedia stood up and read a document that was blatantly in departure from any kind of historical orthodoxy. If I historical orthodoxy, we mean no more than saying Jesus is God, okay? Because he blatantly argued against the deity of Christ. The majority of the bishops were so scandalized by the address that several of them rushed the podium. They tore the document from his hands and ripped it up in front of him. And then in very short order, that kind of changed the whole tenor of the conference. In a very short order, the bishops approved a statement, probably drafted by Hussias of Córdoba, which said that the son is Homo Useas. Homo Useas. You see Useas from here, same thing, being, or essence? Homo, same. The son is of the same essence as the father. Sometimes in English, it's translated as consubstantial. Notice the word substance there. You're getting it from substantiate here, the Latin version of it. Christ is true God of true God. And from the same Useas as the father. Further, the council unathematized, the word unathematized means to curse. The council unathematized Aryan language. Anyone who says there was a time when he was not, let him be anathema, let him be accursed. Anyone who says that the son is a creature, let him be anathema, let him be accursed. By the way, those anathemas have been taken out of our modern version of the ICN Creed, but they were, as one commentator put, if they were the studded tale of the Creed, as originally appeared, in order to tell the Aryans that they didn't fit. Okay, Romulan 17, a ICN epilogue. Yes, question. Oh, I'm sorry. This was, it seems, it was questions. What does the, I skipped over point three there, was it? Christ has been gotten not made. I think this was a about origin since you have, one of the realities is, I don't mean to deny the truth of it, because we certainly have a clear statement of the son has been gotten to the father, but one of the realities of all ecclesiastical gatherings is that they're political affairs. And areas and his followers were so firmly crushed at Nicaea that there seems to have been some intentional bows to origin. Remember, both these guys are Alexandria. So if you're, you know, kind of putting a cabosh on some folks from Alexandria, you might want to build up some others. So they, it seems to have, they seem to have intentionally picked up some originist language. But what this did did is it also would put the orthodox tradition, would move the orthodox tradition away from the economic trinity of Tertullian and Hippolytus with its idea that God was originally one and became three, and will move it toward an essentialist view of the trinity, or an, an immunist view of the trinity, that that God is eternally three. And it will, as we're most of us, who are from creedal tradition, are probably fairly comfortable with this language. The, the, the son is begotten, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the father. Does that make sense? And I see an epilogue. And here we come to a rather famous name in the history of this discussion, Athanasius of Alexandria. The fact of the matter is that no one was really happy with Naisia. The language here's pretty fuzzy. This homo-usias, same essence language. When they used this language, did they mean that the son shares in the essence of the father, which it could mean, or that the son is the father? It could mean that too. You could read this, remember the two ditches? You could read this modalistically. You could also read it polytheisticly. You know, if you've got ditch one and ditch two, you can read it here, you can read it here, you can read it anywhere. You can be just about any place here. Are we talking about an underlying reality that's common to all individuals of the class? Like the species of godness and therefore polytheism? Or are we meaning to identify a single thing? And it's a way of getting a hold of this. Think of this sentence. Those two women are wearing the same dress. See the ambiguity built into the sentence? How'd you get both those women in the dress? Or maybe those two women are the same girl? That's probably more options than that. Also here, the emperor and his closest advisors remained within the Aryan camp, or at least with Aryan leanings. And even though the Aryans were defraught at NYSEA, it's not very long before the emperor re-instates areas and the rest of them. Even though someone like you see this in the Comedia, pretty well weaseled his way back into the Empresshood graces, the rest of them, and not very long. In very short order, they'll all be reinstated. But even as this is going on, and even as the Aryans are again moving into ascendancy, God is raising up his man for the occasion as well. Athanasius had been merely a deacon at the time of the NYSEA in council, but after Alexander's death, NYSEA, who he's often called the black dwarf, because he was a very short little black man. But at Alexander's death, Athanasius became the bishop of Alexandria, a post he filled for some 46 years. This reminds me of a little aside. It's interesting that up through, almost up to the 4th century, the 5th century, the time of Augustine, almost all the theology of the Christian church is African theology. Aside from Iron Ancet Leon, it was a Frenchman. Every theologian of real merit in the church is black. Very, very interesting stuff. We look back at the pre-NICAN fathers, and interesting for those of us who think of the Christian church as a white thing need to come to terms with that. God saved his church right here for this man, a black man. Anyway, like Alexander before him, Athanasius would fight against all subordinationist views of Christ. But as I said, he spent 46 years of his tenure in exile. He'd have to do most of his fighting in exile. He was never deposed, but the Aryans were either so frightened of him or so disliked him, that they would cook up one scheme, one charge after another. At one point he was charged with having rape to prostitute and sired a son, but then at his trial she couldn't identify him. There were these kinds of stories. Their rampant throughout his career. Another was the Aryans had hired some assassins to kill him, and they were coming down the river to get him, and at the same time they're coming down the river and about. He's headed up the river and passes them waiting at them. All kinds of cool stuff here, but we should be at time to go into it all. However in 360, as Athanasius get my A guy straight here, as Athanasius is an exile in 360, Constantine's son, Constantine's dies. What that does is it opens the throne to Julian, and Julian's nickname is appropriate. Julian the apostate. Julian is not a Christian, as a matter of fact he intentionally throws off Christianity, and he goes back to the ancient Roman ways and the Roman civic gods. With that, again interesting, shows how gods' providence uses pagans. What Julian does, he says, you guys can't come to me anymore with your theological problems. See, after this point, if I didn't like you, I just went to the emperor and got you, you know, beheaded. I got you exiled. Now, Aryans can't use this stuff. They had overly politicized the debate. Now you guys are going to have to do theology. You're going to have to do it the old fashioned way. You're going to have to make your case in the ecclesiastical court, and do theology is just what Athanasius did. Now what drives Athanasius here? I'm sure some of its disliked for the Aryans, but what drives him fundamentally is his understanding of the gospel. Years before when he was about 21 years old, he wrote a book called On the Incarnation, and most of his arguments from this point forward, that he'll use this point, go back to that early work of his. He would argue his point through some rather simple syllogisms. As a busy pastor, as a busy bishop, he is seeking to find easy ways of getting hold of the issues that people are going to understand. Now, I put some of these analogies for you here. This is under, this on page 71, and it's a sociological principle. For instance, he said this, no creature can redeem another creature. For all creatures are under the curse of death. That's the primary thesis. The second is this. Jesus is the savior, as scripture alleges everywhere. Therefore, Jesus must be something other than a creature. Now you can see who is aiming out here. He's aiming at the Aryans. Remember their insistence that Jesus is a creature. Another Athanasian syllogism. Only God can save. Jesus is the savior. Ergo, Jesus is God. The underlying point here, and that's why I've called this sociological principle, is that Athanasius draws attention to the fact that our understanding of Jesus, our understanding of redemption are interconnected. You can't tear the two apart. So, a matter of fact, our understanding of Jesus, our understanding of the Trinity, and our understanding of redemption are all tied together. He's not looking at the issue of the Trinity in abstraction. He's not looking at it as a philosophical problem. He has now entered into, he has now raised the question of redemption. Guys, you need to look at this in terms of who is the savior. He could even put the Aryan position in a syllogism to show it's inadequacy. And one of those went this way. The first premise, no creature can redeem another creature. Second, Jesus is a creature. Therefore, Jesus cannot save. Now, how he could use that to his benefit is that he could point out that the Aryans, even though they wanted to devote Jesus, even though they wanted to say that he's not at the same essence as the Father, they in some way did worship him. Their liturgies even prayed to him. He pointed out it. How have you guys prayed with creature? Make up your mind. Either don't pray to Jesus, or admit that he's God. So he's not only going to use redemption, he's also going to use the Church's own liturgy as an argument against the Aryans. In many ways, the question is what did the Aryans seek to get out of all this? It's because of their view of truth. Their view of truth is goes right back to that whole issue of monarchism. God is one. It's in its really based, upon a kind of philosophical premise. It's really that simple. I don't think they have any, I think their intentions are just about the same as the Orthodox side. I don't think it's that they see some economic benefit. Again, I don't think that we need to take anything away from their piety here. Well, they didn't see it that way. The statement is, by calling Jesus as a creature, they seem to, they were calling into mind their own salvation. Remember how they, how they said, he functions, how Jesus functions in redemption. Their concern was, they could look at your position. I'm assuming you're Orthodox. They could look at your position and say, you have called into mind the very deed of God. You have besmirched the integrity of God. You've said that a mere man is God. That argument can come from a very pious commitment. In a certain light, I think it makes sense. If Joe Blow walks the door and says he's God, what's going to be our response to him? Think of what he's doing to the dignity of Yahweh, think of what he's doing to the dignity of Jesus. So it does come from a certain point of a piety and devotion, but it also comes from a certain, a certain philosophical bent that God is a singularity, that he's won, but that's the thing that's got to be protected. And they don't really see that Jesus needs to be divine because it's not his cross that it's redemptive. It's his example. It's the fact that he is capable of being imitated.

They think they're defending the integrity of God of Jesus. Well, I think they can follow his example. One, because he's human, just like me, and two, they live in a very moralistic world. One of the interesting things is, when you look at the early history of the church, and we do it today, still today, is that many of us do have a kind of presumption of our own ability to be righteous. Don't we? I do, except that one minute a day that I'm honest with myself. When I'm calling down, the wrath of God and the guy who drives by in his car with his radio full blast and all the other things that go on in my life, we tend to be fairly moralistic creatures. We tend to be in our own pride and our own arrogance. We tend to be the kinds of creatures who say, hey, I can do it, especially as Americans. It's kind of bred into us, and the English. We'll pick it. And the Australia's. Let's go to the Senate of Alexandria in 362. During this time, I might say something you're coming up with is just before 362, Athanasius has started to make a lot of strong points and he started to get some some converse as people, especially as bishops came to see the redemptive implications. The very thing we're talking about here, they attended it, they saw that if Jesus is just a creature, then his cross is not redemptive. And that that insight had to break through slowly, and it did break through slowly. But then at the Senate of Alexandria in 362, Athanasius made two more contributions. The first one's this. He declared that the verbal problems that were raised at NICIA should not be allowed to cloud the issue. He said it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter whether one speaks of three hyphostasis or one. One he's thinking up here because these are synonyms. The point is that no one wants to fall into the extremes. No one wants to fall into the ditch of polytheism. No one wants to fall into the ditch of modalism. Orthodoxy is the center. Don't absolutize your language. Don't become a victim of your language. And it's interesting, again, how God's Providence works. Where did Athanasius learn this? By 46 years in exile, by traveling all over the place, by meeting people who spoke other tongues and figured out that it's not the language you use, it's the meaning behind the language. And you can be able to, you can say the same thing in many ways.

It's that we've got to preserve the real mystery here and not push beyond the limits of human rationality. Our language will only get us so far. And again, we might, what we need to do is maybe to define the extremes, define the ditches. Augustin would later say that human attempts to understand the trinity is a bit like trying to catch the ocean with a bucket. Second contribution that Athanasius made, and I've already hinted at it in some ways, is that he turns away from the kind of speculative, crystallological speculations of the day. He turns to the question of redemption. What kind of redeemer say? Can the Aryan Christ save anyone? Can a Jesus who is not God save me after all? And he'll move toward the question of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is almost invisible at Nicaea. He isn't there. The whole debate is about the Aryan Jesus. At one point, Athanasius said this, if we baptize in the name of the Father who is God and the Son who is God, who is the Spirit in whose name we baptize. That brings us to our last point here, and then we'll take our break, Constantinople in 381. Finally, here at Constantinople, the NIC in language is standardized by creating a distinction between Usea and Hyphostasis. And they will speak up one Usea, and this term should now be used in reference to the essence that is commonly held by the three members of the trinity. Remember when we talked about essences and being in all the respa- before we said that language didn't help us very much, but I say, hold on at some point, it does. And here in this discussion, this philosophical category does help us. Constantinople would also say that the word hypostasis should refer to each individual identity, and thus it would approve. Remember Constantinople is an eastern council, by the way, it's in a Greek speaking area of the church, so they will say one Usea in three hypostasis. I think the irony here, the wonderful irony here is that this is 150 years after Tritolian had already said that God has three persona in one substantiate.