THE ARIANS OF THE FOURTH CENTURY

CHAPTER II.

THE TEACHING OF THE ANTE-NICENE CHURCH IN ITS RELATION TO THE ARIAN HERESY.

SECTION IV.

VARIATIONS IN THE ANTE-NICENE THEOLOGICAL STATEMENTS.

THERE will, of course, be differences of opinion, in deciding how much of the ecclesiastical doctrine, as above described, was derived from direct Apostolical Tradition, and how much was the result of intuitive spiritual perception in scripturally informed and deeply religious minds. Yet it does not seem too much to affirm, that copious as it may be in theological terms, yet hardly one can be pointed out which is not found or strictly implied in the New Testament itself. And indeed so much perhaps will be granted by all who have claim to be considered Trinitarians; the objections, which some among them may be disposed to raise, lying rather against its alleged over-exactness in systematizing Scripture, than against the truths themselves which are contained in it. But it should be remembered, that it is we in after times who systematize the statements of the Fathers, which, as they occur in their works, are for the most part as natural and unpremeditated as those of the inspired volume itself. If the more exact terms and phrases of any writer be brought together, that is, of a writer who has fixed principles at all, of course they will appear technical and severe. We count the words of the Fathers, and measure their sentences; and so convert doxologies into creeds. That we do so, that the Church has done so more or less from the Nicene Council downwards, is the fault of those who have obliged us, of those who, "while men slept," have "sowed tares among the wheat."

This remark applies to the statements brought together in the last Section, from the early writers: which, even though generally subservient to certain important ends, as, for instance, the maintenance of the Unity of God, &c., are, still on the whole written freely and devotionally. But now the discussion passes on to that more intentional systematizing on the part of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, which, unavoidable as it was, yet because it was in part conventional and individual, was ambiguous, and in consequence afforded at times an apparent countenance to the Arian heresy. It often becomes necessary to settle the phraseology of divinity, in points, where the chief problem is, to select the clearest words to express notions in which all agree; or to find the proposition which will best fit in with, and connect, a number of received doctrines. Thus the Calvinists dispute among themselves whether or not God wills the damnation of the non-elect; both parties agree in doctrine, they doubt how their own meaning may be best expressed. However clearly we see, and firmly we grasp the truth, we have a natural fear of the appearance of inconsistency; nay, a becoming fear of misleading others by our inaccuracy of language; and especially when our words have been misinterpreted by opponents, are we anxious to guard against such an inconvenience in future. There are two characteristics of opinions subjected to this intellectual scrutiny: first, they are variously expressed during the process; secondly, they are consigned to arbitrary formulas, at the end of it. Now, to exemplify this in certain Ante-Nicene statements of the great Catholic doctrine.

1.

The word unborn, ingenerate, was the philosophical term to denote that which had existed from eternity. It had accordingly been applied by Aristotle to the world or to matter, which was according to his system without beginning; and by Plato to his ideas. Now since the Divine Word was according to Scripture generate, He could not be called ingenerate (or eternal), without a verbal contradiction. In process of time a distinction was made between increate and ingenerate, according as the letter v was or was not doubled, so that the Son might be said to be increately generate. The argument which arose from this perplexity of language, is urged by Arius himself; who ridicules the ingenerately-generate, which he conceives must be ascribed, according to the orthodox creed, to the Son of God. Some years afterwards, the same was the palmary, or rather the essential argument of Eunomius, the champion of the Anomoeans:

2.

The unoriginate. As is implied in the word monarchia, as already explained, the Father alone is the arché, or origin, and the Son and Spirit are not origins. The heresy of the Tritheists made it necessary to insist upon this. Hence the condemnation, in the (so-called) Apostolical Canons, of those who baptized into the name of Three Unoriginate." And Athanasius says, "We do not teach three Origins, as our illustration shows; for we do not speak of three Suns, but of the Sun and its radiance." For the same reason the early writers spoke of the Father as the Fount of Divinity. At the same time, lest they should in word dishonour the Son, they ascribed to Him "an unoriginate generation" or "birth." Thus Alexander, the first champion of orthodox truth against Arius, in his letter to his namesake of Byzantium: "We must reserve to the unbegotten (or unborn) Father His peculiar prerogative, confessing that no one is the cause of His existence, and to the Son we must pay the due honour, attributing to Him the unoriginate generation from the Father, and as we have said already, paying Him worship, so as ever to speak of Him piously and reverently, as pre-existent, ever-living, and before the worlds." This distinction however, as might be expected, was but partially received among the Catholics. Contrasted with all created beings, the Son and Spirit are of necessity Unoriginate in the Unity of the Father. Clement, for instance, calls the Son, "the everlasting, unoriginate, origin and commencement of all things." It was not till they became alive to the seeming ditheism of such phrases, which the Sabellian controversy was sure to charge upon them, that they learned the accurate discrimination observed by Alexander. On the other hand, when the Arian contest urged them in the contrary direction to Sabellius, then they returned more or less to the original language of Clement, though with a fuller explanation of their own meaning. Gregory Nyssen gives the following plain account of the variations of their practice: "Whereas the word Origin has many significations sometimes we say that the appellation of the Unoriginate is not unsuitable to the Son. For when it is taken to mean derivation of substance from no cause, this indeed we ascribe to the Father alone. But according to the other senses of the word, since creation, time, the order of the world are referred to an origin, in respect of these we ascribe to the Only-begotten, superiority to any origin; so as to believe Him to be beyond creation, time, and mundane order, through whom were made all things. And thus we confess Him, who is not unoriginate in regard to His subsistence, in all other respects to be unoriginate, and, while the Father is unoriginate and unborn, the Son to be unoriginate in the sense explained, but not unborn."

The word cause used in this passage, as a substitute for that use of Origin which peculiarly applies to the Father as the Fount of Divinity, is found as early as the time of Justin Martyr, who in his dialogue with Trypho, declares the Father is to the Son the cause of His being; and it was resumed by the Post-Nicene writers, when the Arian controversy was found to turn in no small degree on the exact application of such terms. Thus Gregory Nazianzen says, "There is One God, seeing that the Son and Spirit are referred to One Cause."

3.

The Ante-Nicene history of the word homasion or consubstantial, which the Council of Nicaea adopted as its test, will introduce a more important discussion.

It is one characteristic of Revelation, that it clears up all doubts about the existence of God, as separate from, and independent of nature; and shows us that the course of the world depends not merely on a system, but on a Being, real, living, and individual. What we ourselves witness, evidences to us the operation of laws, physical and mora ; but it leaves us unsatisfied, whether or not the principle of these be a mere nature or fate, whether the life of all things be a mere Anima Mundi, a spirit connatural with the body in which it acts, or an Agent powerful to make or unmake, to change or supersede, according to His will. It is here that Revelation supplies the deficiency of philosophical religion; miracles are its emblem, as well as its credentials, forcing on the imagination the existence of an irresponsible self-dependent Being, as well as recommending a particular message to the reason. This great truth, conveyed in the very circumstances under which Revelation was made, is explicitly recognized in its doctrine. Among other modes of inculcating it, may be named the appellation under which Almighty God disclosed Himself to the Israelites; Yahweh being an expressive appellation of Him, who is essentially separate from those variable and perishable beings or substances, which creation presents to our observation.

Accordingly, the description of Him as God viewed as Being and as the one Being, became familiar to the minds of the primitive Christians; as embodying the spirit of the Scriptures, and indirectly witnessing against the characteristic error of pagan philosophy, which considered the Divine Mind, not as a reality, but as a mere abstract name, or generalized law of nature, or at best as a mere mode, principle, or an animating soul, not a Being external to creation, and possessed of individuality. Cyril of Alexandria defines the word usia, (being, substance), to be "that which has existence in itself, independent of every thing else to constitute it"; that is, an individual. This sense of the word must be carefully borne in mind, since it was not that in which it is used by philosophers, who by it denoted the genus or species, or the " ens unum in multis,"—a sense which of course it could not bear when applied to the One Incommunicable God.

The word, thus appropriated to the service of the God of Revelation, was from the earliest date used to express the reality and subsistence of the Son; and no word could be less metaphorical and more precise for this purpose, although the Platonists chose to refine, and from an affectation of reverence refused to speak of God except as hyperusios. Justin Martyr, for instance, speaks of heretics, who considered that God put forth and withdrew His Logos when it pleased Him, as if He were an influence, not a Persona, somewhat in the sense afterwards adopted by Paulus of Samosata and others. To meet this error, he speaks of Him as inseparable from the substance or being, usia, of the Father; that is, in order to exclude all such evasions of Scripture, as might represent the man Christ as inhabited by a divine glory, power, nature, and the like, evasions which in reality lead to the conclusion that He is not God at all.

For this purpose the word homousion or consubstantial was brought into use among Christian writers; viz. to express the real divinity of Christ, and that, as being derived from, and one with the Father's. Here again, as in the instance of its root, the word was adopted, from the necessity of the case, in a sense under the same general nature, or species; that is, it is applied to things, which are but similar to each other, and are considered as one by an abstraction of our minds; or, it may mean of the same material. Thus Aristotle speaks of the stars being consubstantial with each other; and Porphyry of the souls of brute animals being consubstantial to ours. When, however, it was used in relation to the incommunicable Essence of God, there was obviously no abstraction possible in contemplating Him, who is above all comparison with His works. His nature is solitary, peculiar to Himself, and one; so that whatever was accounted to be consubstantial or co-essential with Him, was necessarily included in His individuality, by all who would avoid recurring to the vagueness of philosophy, and were cautious to distinguish between the incommunicable Essence of Yahweh and all created intelligences. And hence the fitness of the term to denote without metaphor the relation which the Logos bore in the orthodox creed to His eternal Father. Its use is explained by Athanasius as follows. "Though," he says, "we cannot understand what is meant by the usia, being, or substance of God, yet we know as much as this, that God is, which is the way in which Scripture speaks of Him; and after this pattern, when we wish to designate Him distinctly, we say God, Father, Lord. When then He says in Scripture, 'I am God,' the Being, and ' I am Yahweh, God,' or uses the plain word God,' we understand by such statements nothing but His incomprehensible substance, and that He, who is there spoken of, is. Let no one then think it strange, that the Son of God should be said to be from the being or substance of God; rather, let him agree to the explanation of the Nicene fathers, who, for the words 'of God' substituted 'of the divine being or substance.' They considered the two phrases substantially the same, because, as I have said, the word 'God' denotes nothing but the the being of Him who is. On the other hand, if the Word be not in such sense 'of God,' as to be the true Son of the Father according to His nature, but be said to be 'of God,' merely as all creatures are such because they are His work, then indeed He is not from the being of the Father, nor Son according to being or substance, but so called from His virtue, as we may be, who receive the title from graces."

The term homousios is first employed for this purpose by the author of the Paemander, a Christian of the beginning of the second century. Next it occurs in several writers at the end of the second and the beginning of the third. In Tertullian, the equivalent phrase, "unius substantiae," "of one substance," is applied to the Trinity. In Origen's comment on the Hebrews, the homousion of the Son is deduced from the figurative title radiance, there given to Him. In the same age, it was employed by various writers, bishops and historians, as we learn from the testimonies of Eusebius and Athanasius. But at this era, the middle of the third century, a change took place in the use of it and other similar words, which is next to be explained.

The oriental doctrine of Emanations was at a very early period combined with the Christian theology. According to the system of Valentinus, a Gnostic heresiarch, who flourished in the early part of the second century, the Supreme Intelligence of the world gave existence to a line of Spirits or Eons, who were all more or less partakers of His nature, that is, of a nature specifically the same, and included in His glory, though individually separate from the true and Sovereign Deity. It is obvious, that such a teaching as this abandons the great revealed principle above insisted on, the incommunicable character and individuality of the Divine Essence. It considers all spiritual beings as like God, in the same sense that one man resembles or has the same nature as another: and accordingly it was at liberty to apply, and did actually apply, to the Creator and His creatures the word homousion or consubstantial, in the philosophical sense which the word originally bore. We have evidence in the work of Ireneus that the Valentinians did thus employ it. The Manichees followed, about a century later; they too were Emanatists, and spoke of the human soul as being consubstantial or co-essential with God, of one substance with God. Their principles evidently allowed of a kind of Trinitarianism; the Son and Spirit being considered Eons of a superior order to the rest, consubstantial with God because Eons, but one with God in no sense which was not true also of the soul of man. It is said, moreover, that they were materialists; and used the word consubstantial as it may be applied to different vessels or instruments, wrought out from some one mass of metal or wood. However, whether this was so or not, it is plain that anyhow the word in question would become unsuitable to express the Catholic doctrine, in proportion as the ears of Christians were familiarized to the terms employed in the Gnostic and Manichean theologies; nor is it wonderful that at length they gave up the use of it.

The history of the word probole or offspring is parallel to that of the consubstantial. It properly means any thing which proceeds, or is sent forth from the substance of another, as the fruit of a tree, or the rays of the sun; in Latin it is translated by prolatio, emissio, or editio, an offspring or issue. Accordingly Justin employed it, or rather a cognate phrases, to designate what Cyril calls above the self-existence of the Son, in opposition to the evasions which were necessary for the system of Paulus, Sabellius, and the rest. Tertullian does the same; but by that time, Valentinus had given the word a material signification. Hence Tertullian is obliged to apologize for using it, when writing against Praxeas, the forerunner of the Sabellians. "Can the Word of God," he asks, "be unsubstantial, who is called the Son, who is even named God? He is said to be in the form or image of God. Is not God a body [substance], Spirit though He be? .. Whatever then has been the substance of the Word, that, I call a Person, and claim for it the name of Son, and being such, He comes next to the Father. Let no one suppose that I am bringing in the notion of any such probole (offspring) as Valentinus imagined, drawing out his Eons the one from the other. Why must give up the word in a right sense, because heresy uses it in a wrong? besides, heresy borrowed it from us, and has turned truth into a lie ... This is the difference between the uses of it. Valentinus separates his probolo from their Father; they know Him not. But we hold that the Son alone knows the Father, reveals Him, performs His will, and is within Him. He is ever in the Father, as He has said; ever with God, as it is written; never separated from Him, for He and the Father are one. This is the true probole, the safeguard of unity, sent forth, not divided off". Soon after Tertullian thus defended his use of the word probole, Origen in another part of the Church gave it up, or rather assailed it, in argument with Candidus, a Valentinian. "If the Son is a probole of the Father," he says, "who begets Him from Himself, like the birth of animals, then of necessity both off­spring and original are of a bodily nature." Here we see two writers, with exactly the same theological creed before them, taking opposite views as to the propriety of using a word which heresy had corrupted.

But to return to the word consubstantial: though Origen gave up the word probole, yet he used the word consubstantial, as has already been mentioned. But shortly after his death, his pupils abandoned it at the celebrated Council held at Antioch (AD 264) against Paulus of Samosata. When they would have used it  as a test, this heretic craftily objected to it on the very ground on which Origen had surrendered the probole. He urged that, if Father and Son were of one substance, consubstantial, there was some common substance in which they partook, and which consequently was distinct from and prior to the Divine Persons Themselves; a wretched sophism, which of course could not deceive Firmilian and Gregory, but which, being adapted to perplex weak minds, might decide them on withdrawing the word. It is remarkable too, that the Council was held about the time when Manes appeared on the borders of the Antiochene Patriarchate. The disputative school of Paulus pursued the advantage thus gained; and from that time used the charge of materialism as a weapon for attacking all sound expositions of Scripture truth. Having extorted from the Catholics the condemnation of a word long known in the Church, almost found in Scripture, and less figurative and material in its meaning than any which could be selected, and objectionable only in the mouths of heretics, they employed this concession as a ground of attacking expressions more directly metaphorical, taken from visible objects, and sanctioned by less weighty authority. In a letter which shall afterwards be cited, Arius charges the Catholics with teaching the errors of Valentinus and Manes; and in another of the original Arian documents, Eusebius of Nicomedia, maintains in like manner that their doctrine involves the materiality of the Divine Nature. Thus they were gradually silencing the Church by a process which legitimately led to Pantheism, when the Alexandrians gave the alarm, and nobly stood forward in defence of the faith.

It is worth observing that, when the Asiatic Churches had given up the consubstantial, they, on the contrary, had preserved it. Not only Dionysius willingly accepts the challenge of his namesake of Rome, who reminded him of the value of the symbol; but Theognostus also, who presided at the Catechetical School at the end of the third century, recognizes it by implication in the following passage, which has been preserved by Athanasius. "The substance of the Son," he says, "is not external to the Father, or created; but it is by natural derivation from that of the Father, as the radiance comes from light. For the radiance is not the sun ... and yet not foreign to it; and in like manner there is an effluence from the Father's substance, though it be indivisible from Him. For as the sun remains the same without infringement of its nature, though it pour forth its radiance, so the Father's substance is unchangeable, though the Son be its Image."

4.

Some notice of the voluntary generation, will suitably follow the discussion of the consubstantial; though the subject does not closely concern theology. It has been already observed that the tendency of the heresies of the first age was towards materialism and fatalism. As it was the object of Revelation to destroy all theories which interfered with the belief of the Divine Omniscience and active Sovereignty, so the Church seconded this design by receiving and promulgating the doctrine of the "He that is," or the Divine "Being" or "Essence," as a symbol of His essential distinction from the perishable world in which He acts. But when the word substance or essence itself was taken by the Gnostics and Manichees in a material sense, the error was again introduced by the very term which was intended to witness against it.

According to the Oriental Theory, the emanations from the Deity were eternal with Himself, and were considered as the result, not of His will and personal energy, but of the necessary laws to which His nature was subjected; a doctrine which was but fatalism in another shape. The Eclectics honourably distinguished themselves in withstanding this blasphemous, or rather atheistical tenet. Plotinus declares, that "God's substance and His will are the same; and if so, as He willed, so He is; so that it is not a more certain truth that, as is His substance or nature, so is His will and action, than, as His will and action, so is His substance." Origen had preceded them in their opposition to the same school. Speaking of the simplicity and perfection of the Divine Essence, he says, "God does not even participate in substance, rather He is partaken; by those, namely, who have the Spirit of God. And our Saviour does not share in holiness, but, being holiness itself, is shared by the holy." The meaning of this doctrine is clear;—to protest, in the manner of Athanasius, in a passage lately cited, against the notion that the substance of God is something distinct from God Himself, and not God viewed as self-existent, the one immaterial, intelligent, all-perfect Spirit; but the risk of it lay in its tendency to destroy the doctrine of His individual and real existence (which the Catholic use of substance symbolized), and to introduce in its stead the notion that a quality or mode of acting was the governing principle of nature; in other words, Pantheism. This is an error of which Origen of course cannot be accused; but it is in its measure chargeable on the Platonic Masters, and is countenanced even by their mode of speaking of the Supreme Being, as not sub­stantial, but above the notion of substance."

The controversy did not terminate in the subject of Theism, but was pursued by the heretical party into questions of Christian Theology. The Manichees considered the Son and Spirit as necessary emanations from the Father; erring, first, in their classing those Divine Persons with intelligences confessedly imperfect and subservient; next, in introducing a sort of materialism into their notion of the Deity. The Eclectics on the other hand, maintained, by a strong figure, that the Eternal Son originated from the Father at His own will; meaning thereby, that the everlasting mystery, which constitutes the relation between Father and Son, has no physical or material conditions, and is such as becomes Him who is altogether Mind, and bound by no laws, but those established by His own perfection as a first cause. Thus Iamblichus Calls the Son self-begotten.

The discussion seems hardly to have entered farther into the Ante-Nicene Church, than is implied in the above notice of it: though some suppose that Justin and others referred the divine gennesis or generation to the will of God. However, it is easy to see that the ground was prepared for the introduction of a subtle and irreverent question, whenever the theologizing Sophists should choose to raise it. Accordingly, it was one of the first and principal interrogations put to the Catholics by their Arian opponents, whether the generation of the Son was voluntary or not on the part of the Father; their dilemma being, that Almighty God was subject to laws external to Himself, if it were not voluntary, and that, if on the other hand it was voluntary, the Son was in the number of things created. But of this more in the next Section.

5.

The Word as internal or external to the Father:—One theory there was, adopted by several of the early Fathers, which led them to speak of the Son's generation or birth as resulting from the Father's will, and yet did not interfere with His consubstantiality. Of the two titles ascribed in Scripture to our Lord, that of the "Word" expresses with peculiar force His co-eternity in the One Almighty Father. On the other hand, the title "Son" has more distinct reference to His derivation and ministrative office. A distinction resembling this had already been applied by the Stoics to the Platonic Logos, which they represented under two aspects, the internal Thought and Purpose of God, and its external Manifestation, as if in words spoken.

The terms were received among Catholics; the "Endiathetic" standing for the Word, as hid from everlasting in the bosom of the Father, while the "Prophoric" was the Son sent forth into the world, in apparent separation from God, with His Father's name and attributes upon Him, and His Father's will to perform. This contrast is acknowledged by Athanasius, Gregory Nyssen, Cyril, and other Post-Nicene writers; nor can it be confuted, being Scriptural in its doctrine, and merely expressed in philosophical language, found ready for the purpose. But further, this change of state in the Eternal Word, from repose to energetic manifestation, as it took place at the creation, was called by them a genesis and here too, no blame attaches to them, for the expression is used in Scripture in different senses, one of which appears to be the very signification which they put on it, the mission of the Word to make and govern all things. Such is the text in St. Paul, that He is "the image of the Invisible God, the First-born of every creature;" such is His title in St. John as "the Beginning of the Creation of God." This gennesis or generation was called also the "going­forth," or "condescension," of the Son, which may Scripturally be ascribed to the will of the all-bountiful Father. However, there were some early writers who seem to interpret the gennesis in this meaning exclusively, ascribing the title of "Son" to our Lord only after the date of His mission or economy, and considering that of the "Word" as His peculiar appellation during the previous eternity. Nay, if we carry off their expressions hastily or perversely, as some theologians have done, we shall perhaps conclude that they conceived that God existed in One Person before the "going-forth," and then, if it may be said, by a change in His nature began to exist in a Second Person; as if an attribute (the Internal Word, "Endiathetic,") had come into substantive being, as "Prophoric." The Fathers, who have laid themselves open to this charge, are Athenagoras, Tatian, Theophilus, Hippolytus, and Novatian, as mentioned in the first Chapter.

Now that they did not mean what a superficial reader might lay to their charge, may be argued, first, from the parallel language of the Post-Nicenes, as mentioned above, whose orthodoxy no one questions: Next, from the extreme absurdity, not to speak of the impiety, of the doctrine imputed to them; as if, with, a more than Gnostic extravagance, they conceived that any change or extension could take place in that Individual Essence, which is without parts or passions, or that the divine generation could be an event in time, instead of being considered a mere expression of the eternal relation of the Father towards the Son. Indeed, the very absurdity of the literal sense of the words, in whatever degree they so expressed themselves, was the mischief to be apprehended from them. The reader, trying a rhetorical description by too rigid a rule, would attempt to elicit sense by imputing a heresy, and would conclude that they meant by the External or Prophoric Word a created being, made in the beginning of all things as the visible emblem of the Internal or Endiathetic, and the instrument of God's purposes towards His creation. This is in fact the Arian doctrine, which doubtless availed itself in its defence of the declarations of incautious piety; or rather we have evidence of the fact, that it did so avail itself, in the letter of Arius to Alexander, and from the anathema of the Nicene Creed directed against such as said that "the Son was not before His gennesis."

Lastly, the orthodoxy of the five writers in question is ascertained by a careful examination of the passages, which give ground for the accusation. Two of these shall here be quoted without comment. Theophilus then says, "God having His own Word in His womb, begat Him together with His Wisdom" (that is, His Spirit), "uttering them prior to the universe." "He had this Word as the Minister of His works, and did all things through Him ... The prophets were not in existence when the world was made; but the Wisdom of God, which is in Him, and His Holy Word, who is ever present with Him." Elsewhere he speaks of " the Word, eternally seated in the heart of God;" "for," he presently adds, "before anything was made, He possessed this Counseller, as being His mind and providence. And when He purposed to make all that He had deliberated on, He begat this Word as external to Him, being the First-born antecedent to the whole creation; not, however, Himself losing the Word" (that is, the Internal), but begetting it, and yet everlastingly communing with it."

In like manner Hippolytus in his answer to Noetus: —"God was alone, and there was no being coeval with Him, when He willed to create the world. Not that He was destitute of reason (the Logos), wisdom or counsel. They are all in Him, He was all. At the time and in the manner He willed, He manifested His Word [Logos] ... through whom He made all things ... Moreover He placed over them His Word, whom He begat as His Counseller and Instrument; whom He had within Him, invisible to creation, till He manifested Him, uttering the Word, and begetting Light from Light ... And so Another stood by Him, not as if there were two Gods, but as though Light from Light, or a ray from the Sun."

And thus closes our survey of Catholic Ante-Nicene theology.