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Derivation vs. Generic Theories — part 2: Arianism and the Trinity (JT)

Arius

“I hate wearing this stupid hat.
They didn’t make me a bishop anyways.
At least the cape’s pretty cool.
It’s got St. George’s Cross going on.”

In my last post, I gave some basic definitions for the ‘derivation view’ and the ‘generic view’ of the Trinity, and I said that the historical background for the ‘derivation view’ rests in the Nicene Creed’s claim that

(Q) The Son is begotten from the substance of the Father.

Of course, the meaning of ‘from the substance of the Father’ is not exactly clear, not in a philosophical sense anyways. What exactly is Q supposed to mean? In this post, I want to explain what one interpreter, namely Athanasius, felt was at stake with Q.

As I said in my previous post, it’s very hard to know just what the authors of the Creed actually meant by Q. Not surprisingly, nobody in the 4th century seemed to know either. Everybody who wrote about Nicea over the next forty years expressed different opinions. In fact, it’s probably safe to say that there was no ‘standard’ interpretation of Q at the time.

Nevertheless, one very loud voice in the mid-4th century was that of Athanasius. For whatever reasons, at same point in history (like a few centuries later) his view came to be seen as the ‘orthodox’ interpretation of Q. Whether or not it actually was is debatable, but hey, we’re stuck with tradition, so we’re stuck with him.

One of the things Athanasius took Q to mean — though many disagreed — was this: Arius was wrong. Arius was a presbyter who taught and wrote in Alexandria during the early decades of the 4th century. He claimed that the Son was created from nothing (ex nihilo).

What does it mean to say something is created from nothing? It means that something is produced without any pre-existing ingredients (i.e., ‘parts’ or ‘constituents’). We make things with pre-existing ingredients all the time. A mason, for example, makes brick walls out of bricks. But this is not a creation. A wall would be created only if the mason caused the whole wall, and all of its parts, to pop into existence. Here’s a working definition for creation:

(CRT) For any x and y, x creates y =df iff (i) x causes y to exist,
and (ii) for any part or constituent z of y, x causes z to exist.

So why did Arius say the Son was created without any pre-existing ingredients? His logic is fairly straightforward. Arius felt that there could only be one uncaused cause; there couldn’t be two. The Father is obviously an uncaused cause, so that means there can’t be any others — and that includes the Son. Arius thus concluded that the Son had to have a cause, namely the Father.

So which ingredients did the Father use to make the Son? The Bible says that the Son was the ‘firstborn of all creation’. Arius took that to mean that the Father produced the Son before anything else, so when the Father produced the Son, nothing was lying around to use as an ingredient.

Well, there was the Father himself, but Arius maintained that the Father is a simple monad — he is not divisible into pieces and he is not made up of parts, so the Father couldn’t break off a chunk of himself and use it as an ingredient in the Son. Thus, Arius concludes that the Son had to be made without any pre-existing ingredients whatsoever (he was made from nothing).

For Arius then, to say that the Son is created from nothing means that the Son is not made with any pre-existing ingredients. But, as I said above, Athanasius thinks Q entails that Arius is wrong. As Athanasius sees it, Q entails that the Son is, in fact, made from at least one pre-existing ingredient, namely the substance of the Father.

Athanasius thus seems to take ‘the substance of the Father’ as an ingredient that goes into the Son. And since it’s the substance of the Father, it’s clearly something that’s in the Father too. But what exactly is it? Is it a part or constituent? Is it just the Father himself? For that, we’ll have to wait until the next post.

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29 thoughts on “Derivation vs. Generic Theories — part 2: Arianism and the Trinity (JT)”

  1. Mike — Thanks for your comments about making. That’s very helpful.

    My talk of ‘pre-existing ingredients’ is way too loose. When pressed, I really think a ‘pre-existing ingredient’ is something in a product that isn’t produced by the product. This may be a part, or it may be a constituent. (And when pressed, I too think matter and form are constituents, not parts.) In any case, I define it that way precisely to allow the possibility that (a) the ‘pre-existing ingredient’ is not ‘anterior’, that (b) it’s not a distinct underlying substrate, and that (c) the divine essence/substance cannot exist in the Father without also existing in the Son. So I think we’re probably thinking along the same lines here.

    Also, thanks for the Basil reference! Good little text to discuss with my students!

  2. Of course, I would like to have a crack at the Subtle Dr. himself. But until then, let me parse this out. Evidently I put = in the wrong place.

    “the divine persons are really identical with the divine essence, though the personal properties are formally distinct from each other and from the divine essence.”

    This means: the divine persons (I think you mean, rather, the personal properties) are “ontologically inseparable from” D. And the personal properties are none of them identical to one another, nor any of them to D.

    So formal identity is =, whereas real identity means inseparability, which for properties I take it would be something like necessary coinstantiation? Is that right?

    Is this a labored way of saying that God must be a Trinity? (i.e. D entails the personal properties).

  3. Dale,

    It’s all in Scotus. You might like to read the critical edition myself and a few others are working on of Scotus when it comes out within a year from now (hopefully). It is a text usually called ‘Logica Scoti’ or ‘de formalitatibus’ which he composed while in Paris. It is one of Scotus’s latest discussions of the formal distinction between divine properties, e.g. what is the identity and distinction btwn. the divine essence and ‘paternity’. Scotus really is the top-dog when it comes to this particular discussion. There have been several articles disputing just what Scotus’s argues in the text (by Adams, Gelber, Dumont, Cross), but there is no definitive view until we finish the critical edition from the 7 extent manuscripts that we have.

    But to quickly respond, for Scotus at least, formally distinct properties are _not_ mind-dependent. If two properties are not formally identical, then he argues that they are formally distinct in the thing itself. Also, ‘really distinct’ properties = ontologically separable properties. And really identical = ontologically inseparable properties. So, by saying that e.g. the divine essence and paternity are ‘really identical’ we (or Scotus) are saying that the properties in question are not ontologically separable. But, to say they are formally distinct, means that there are ‘objectively’ distinct properties within the being in question (i.e. God).

  4. “really identical”. Knock me down and call me a Modern, but that sounds like = to me. And “formally distinct” sounds like distinguishable in thought only (but really =).

    But Mike may say that “really id but formally distinct” just means “numerical sameness” without =. And what is *that*? It means, these things are non-= (and so yes, thingS) but they’re to be counted as one.

    I say, don’t tell me how to count! 😉

  5. Mike,

    Indeed, transitivity of identity is a problem. To my mind, it is a matter of the sort of identity (and distinction) in question. Why not say the divine persons are really identical with the divine essence, though the personal properties are formally distinct from each other and from the divine essence.

    But, if we deny that there is numerically one divine essence that constitutes the three persons, then we run the risk of homoiousian-ism, no?

  6. Scott: No doubt one can define sense of ‘anterior’ that don’t entail (a) or (b); but I don’t know of any reason for thinking that Basil had those senses in mind. Also, if you say that “all divine persons…are identical with the numerically one divine essence” then it looks like you’re committed to saying that all divine persons are identical with one another (via the transitivity of identity). That would surely be bad news.

  7. Mike,

    Do you think that the property ‘being anterior’ entails (a) being temporally prior, and/or (b) being really distinct, i.e. really separable? Both (a) and (b) seem easy enough to reject. One could still posit that the divine essence functions like a foundation for the personal properties (relations), and that all divine persons (essence+relation) are identical with the numerically one divine essence (= Henry of Ghent’s view).

    But, how would Basil understand the claim that the Father generates the Son?

    Scott

  8. JT: The sense of ‘made’ that I have in mind in those last two sentences is just this: objects (if we think of them as Aristotelian hylomorphic compounds) are ‘made of’ their matter. Maybe your notion of ‘parthood’ is one according to which Aristotelian constituents also count as parts. If that’s right, then what I had in mind isn’t really different from your mereological notion of ‘making’. But I think people more typically like to distinguish parts from constituents. And, in any case, the “matter” for an eternal, unmade substance won’t pre-exist that substance as an ‘ingredient’; and it may, indeed, be utterly incapable of independent existence (especially if the substance in question is a necessary being).

    As for the coin analogy in Basil: It’s in Epistle 52. Here’s the relevant bit:

    “For they maintained that the homoousion set forth the idea both of essence and of what is derived from it, so that the essence, when divided, confers the title of co-essential on the parts into which it is divided. This explanation has some reason in the case of bronze and coins made therefrom, but in the case of God the Father and God the Son there is no question of substance anterior or even underlying both; the mere thought and utterance of such a thing is the last extravagance of impiety.”

    My own view avoids the objection by denying (a) that what plays the role of matter in each Person is “anterior”, and (b) that it is a (distinct) underlying substance.

  9. Oh, and I take a ‘generation’ to be the production of the same kind of thing (humans generate humans, cows generate cows, etc.). And I take ‘constructing an artifact’ to be the voluntary production of a different kind of thing (e.g., when someone chooses/decides to make a clay statue). But those are just working definitions at the moment.

  10. Here’s an attempt to clarify some of my terminology. In the post above, I talk about making something with (or without) pre-existing ingredients. By ‘make’, I just mean ‘to produce’ or ’cause to exist’, so substitute the word ‘produce’ for any occurrence of ‘make’ above. And I take ‘produce’ as a neutral word. It doesn’t necessarily entail creating, generating, constructing an artifact. I just mean it in the sense of ’cause to exist’.

    A pre-existing ingredient, as I’m using the term, is a part or constituent of a product which does not depend for its existence on the production of the product. If x produces y by a production P, any part or constituent z of y is a ‘pre-existing ingredient’ iff z causally depends on P for its existence (where ‘x’ may be one or more producers co-operating to produce).

    For example, when I build a brick wall, I cause the wall to come into existence, but I don’t cause the bricks to come into existence. My productive activity doesn’t cause the bricks to exist (it just causes them to find their way into the wall), so the bricks are ‘pre-existing ingredients’. It doesn’t really matter how the bricks themselves came into existence. They could even be eternally existing, indestructible bricks. What makes the bricks ‘pre-existing ingredients’ in my sense of the term is just that my act of building the wall doesn’t cause those bricks to come to exist.

    This determines the definition of creation I’ve given above. The idea is that some x creates some y iff x’s productive activity is responsible for causing each and every part or constituent z of y to exist. If x’s productive activity does not cause any of y’s parts or constituents z to exist simpliciter, then it doesn’t count as a creation. Instead, it would count as some other kind of production.

    I hope that makes my statements above a little clearer.

    (Of course, the notion of ‘constituent’ needs to be defined, but I’m including as a constituent any tropes, and maybe any individual instantiations of a property (e.g., your humanity instantiation would be a constituent of you, my humanity instantiation would be a constituent of me, etc.).)

  11. PS. I don’t know where Athanasius says the persons are ‘made of Godness’, but I like that. I’m going to suggest something like it in my next post.

    PPS. As you suggested, Athanasius does consider eternal generation to be a species of natural generation, and that idea sticks in the tradition (e.g., the scholastics maintain it).

  12. Mike, your last two sentences are intriguing! Could you say more about what you mean? I think of something being ‘made’ as being composed of parts, or as being a constructed artifact, but you may have something different in mind.

    Also, what’s the coin analogy you’re thinking of? I know very little of Basil.

  13. JT–I didn’t have any one of those senses specifically in mind; but all seem to be ruled out by the claim that the Son is “not made” (unless “eternal generation” is somehow a species of “natural generation”). Linwood Urban (Short History of Christian Thought) attributes to Athanasius the idea that the Son & Spirit (and maybe the Father too) are “made of Godness”. That’s a nice turn of phrase (though I couldn’t find it in Athanasius–maybe you know where it is, or maybe it’s Urban’s invention). And I don’t think *that* sense of “made of” is ruled out–mainly because X can be made of Y without being made simpliciter. (I also think that X can be made of Y without Y being the sort of “anterior substratum” that gets ruled out in Basil’s discussion of the coin analogy.)

  14. Doesn’t Anselm have a discussion of what ‘ex nihilo’ might mean–so, we could probably add his three accts. of ‘ex nihilo’ as possible explications of (ii).

    At first glance, I’d think (ii) is ‘mediated’ by divine ideas of possible creatures, whereas (iii) is immediate from the divine essence/substance.

  15. Hi Mike,

    Yeah, ‘made’ can be a loaded term. I was speaking very loosely, but I should define my terms more carefully.

    So what are the different kinds of production at play here? Athanasius discusses three:

    (i) constructing an artifact (call this ‘construction’),
    (ii) creation from nothing (call this ‘creation’)
    (iii) naturally generating an offspring (call this ‘generation’, or the older English term ‘begetting’).

    When you say ‘made’, are you thinking of one of these senses? Anybody have any idea how we might define these?

  16. Also, yeah, Swinburne thinks his view is faithful to ‘homoousios’. That raises the question: what exactly is the ‘homoousios’ relation? Same in kind, or same in number?

    Same in kind would be something like this: the Father and Son each have their own deity trope/instantiation, but there are two deity tropes/instantiations there — one for the Father, and one for the Son.

    Same in number would be something like this: there is just one deity trope/instantiation — one that is shared by the Father and Son.

    Do you think both of these views are faithful to the Nicene Creed? Which camp does Swinburne and Athanasius fall into? Does the ‘same in kind’ view count as ‘homoiousian’ (alike in essence/being/substance)?

  17. Aurelius —

    Good points. The term ‘neo-Arianism’ is usually associated with Aetius and his student Eunomius, so maybe we could call it ‘authentic Arianism’ versus ‘Nicene Arianism’?

    (For those who are curious, there have been some important studies on Arius in the last 100+ years by Gwatkin, Cardinal Newman, Simonetti, and Rowan Williams. This is all useful research (especially Rowan’s), and it tries to recover the ‘real’ Arius.)

  18. Correction:

    In my second to last sentence it should read:

    ‘In most all productions, you’ve got some sort of change that happens’.

  19. And, I imagine Ath. will say that the substance that constitutes the Father also constitutes the Son. In which case, the Father communicates ‘his own’ essence to the Son. I put ‘his own’ in quotes b/c as JT is trying to show, we can take the divine essence to be identical with the Father in a way that is asymmetrical with the Son and Holy Spirit, or that the divine essence is not a unique attribute of the Father, but that it is just common among the three divine persons.

    Also, it will matter a lot (at least to Henry of Ghent’s point of view) in the discussion down the line whether we think of ‘the Father’ as having absolute person constitution or relative person constitution. If the former, then the Father’s production of the Son might seem more analogous to human acts of production. But if the latter, then it is a bit different. But in either case, the ‘product’ is not like any product any human or any creature could produce.

    But yeah, to talk about ‘ad intra production’ is tough stuff. Especially when you put in the premise that [Nchange]

    There is no change that is a foundation or circumstance of this production.

    In most all changes, you’ve got some sort of change that happens. But in the divine case, no change happens.

  20. JT and “Aurelius” – excellent discussion!

    and,

    Hi Mike,

    Yeah, Ath is determined to show that the Son falls on more exalted side of the absolute creator/creature distinction. I think you’re right that he’d react to “made” if that is taken as a synonym for created.

    BUT it needn’t be taken that way. Picking up my copy of Clarke, is see him quoting Athanasius saying that the Father (or God, or the phusis of God – all those denote the same thing because of simplicity) is the aitia (cause, source), root, and fountain of the Son.

    A particularly striking quote:
    “The Nature of God, is the Cause both of the Son and Holy Spirit, and of all Creatures.” (p. 156 – from Ath’s Dissertat. Orthodoxi & Anomaei)

    Whatever this “causing” amounts to, it’s clear in the context that it’s supposed to be such that the “product” is eternal – as eternal as God the Father is. But it’s pretty mysterious what is meant. It sounds like he’s saying more than that Father and Son are constituted by the same immaterial stuff (or something like a stuff). In some sense, the Son got it from the Father…

  21. Another correction:

    The sentence “But, even if he does accept (3), he does not accept (2)” should read “But, even if he does accept (3), he does not accept (1).” Sorry, again!

  22. I was surprised to see you say that, on Athanasius’ view, the Son was “made from” a pre-existing ingredient. I would have thought that he’d reject the claim that the Son is made, and that this would be the more substantial point of disagreement between him and Arius. (This, of course, connects to the point above about there being a “time when the Son was not”…).

  23. The last sentence of my previous post (i.e., Perhaps we will have to create a new term or camp to place him, say, neo-Arianism) should be ignored. It is the remnant of a paragraph that was supposed to be deleted, but obviously was not. Sorry.

  24. JT:

    I think your comments lead us to a very important distinction, namely, the views of Arius himself and Arianism as a theological system; for they may not be the same thing.

    As you point out, Arius himself may not have believed or stated what is attributed to him by his opponents, namely, that “there was a time when the Son was not.” That being said, Arianism, as a theological system, does make that very claim. And, thus, since Swinburne rejects that claim, we cannot place him in the Arian camp.

    It may be, however, that Swinburne accepts what Arius himself believed. But, of course, it is not exactly clear what Arius believed. In his Thalia, Arius states that the Son is not “of the same substance” as the Father and that this is so because only the Father “is without beginning.”

    Now it is easy to see how someone might read this to mean that “there was a time when the Son was not.” But that is not necessarily the case; for the term “beginning” is ambiguous. It can refer to either a temporal beginning or an ontological beginning. In context, it seems that Arius means the latter. That is, that only the Father is unorginate and that the Son is orginate (i.e., has a beginning ontologically speaking).

    Thus, I think we can safely say that Arius himself believed the following two things:

    (1) The Son is not homoousios with the Father

    (2) The Son has an ontological beginning.

    And it is also possible that Arius held

    (3) The Son was created from “the things that did not exist” (i.e., ex nihilo or exs ouk onton).

    But as I understand it (3) is attributed to him by Athanasius and there is no extant text of Arius’ to confirm this (I could be wrong on this. But I think this is what Lewis Ayres claims in his book _Nicaea and Its Legacy_.). But, nevertheless, let’s assume that he did believe this; for it seems to be logically entailed by (1) and (2).

    So, I guess now the question is “Does Swinburne subscribe to this revisionist Arian view or neo-Arian view?” That is, does Swinburne accept (1)-(3)? It seems clear that he accepts (2). Truthfully, I have no clue if he accepts (3). Is there anywhere that he discuss this? But, even if he does accept (3), he does not accept (2). As Swinburne states in his book _The Christian God_, “The Council of Nicaea declared the Son to be homoousios with the Father . . . I have explained the sense in which that is also true” (185). Thus, I don’t think he can be lumped in the neo-Arian camp either.

    Perhaps we will have to create a new term or camp to place him, say, neo-Arianism.

  25. Oops. I forgot something. I said:

    ‘He did say that

    (b) before the Son was, he was not,

    and he explicitly claims that the Son exists eternally.’

    I meant to say:

    ‘He did say that

    (b) before the Son was, he was not,

    and he explains that when he says this, he means that the Father is unbegetton, but the Son is not. And Arius explicitly claims that the Son exists eternally.’

  26. I like your question Aurelius. Arius never said (at least not in the extant bits we have from him)

    (a) there was a time when the Son was not.

    He did say that

    (b) before the Son was, he was not,

    and he explicitly claims that the Son exists eternally.

    So the difference between (a) and (b) is the reference to time.

    As you’ve pointed out, the Creed explicitly anathematizes (a), but not (b). Do you think this time reference make any difference?

  27. Doesn’t Arianism also entail the truth of the proposition “There was a time when the Son was not”? If so, then, merely holding that the Son is begotten ex nihilo is not sufficient to make one an Arian. Rather, one must also hold that there was some time T such that the Father was not begetting the Son at T. As far as I know, Swinburne does not hold this latter position. Thus, I don’t think one can or should place Swinburne in the Arian camp.

  28. Here’s a question. What about a social trinitarian, e.g., Swinburne? Does he have an Arian or an Athanasius view of the Son’s production?

    As far as I can tell, Swinburne doesn’t think the Son is made with any pre-existing ingredients, and the Son doesn’t share any of the Father’s parts or constituents. The Son would, then, be ‘created’ (at least, according to the definition given above), and so wouldn’t Swinburne fall into the Arian camp on that particular issue?

    Swinburne says he wants to be faithful to the creeds. Is the Arian view that the Son is ‘created’ compatible with the Nicene Creed?

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