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Anglican theologian Leonard Hodgson’s 1943 book The Doctrine of the Trinity is creative, insightful, and I think believed by no one. It posits what I call a “three self” theory, what others call a “social” theory. But my purpose here is to relay his insights regarding the approach to monotheism in the first three centuries of Christianity. He observes,
…”subordinationism” …is used to describe theories current in the monarchian controversies of the third and fourth centuries. Those theories were attempts to secure the unity of the Godhead by regarding one Person as ultimately God in His own right and the others as divine in a secondary or subordinate sense. …only one of the three Persons, the Father, was in patristic times regarded in this way as the real God… [the theory is fundamentally an attempt] to find the unity by treating one of the elements as ultimate and reducing the others to terms of it.
Subordinationism… attempts to preserve the unity by making one Person ultimately the real God and the others divine because of their relation to Him. Hippolytus of Rome was notorious for the subordinationism into which he was driven in his efforts to refute Sabellius. Although in this connection Origen is chiefly memorable for the doctrine of eternal generation by which he freed trinitarian theology from one element in subordinationism, i.e. temporal secondariness, yet other elements remained…
The notion that in the Trinity one Person may be the fount or source of being or godhead for another lingered on to be a cause of friction and controversy between the East and the West, and still persists into much Christian theology of to-day. …[But in the divine] unity, there is no room for any trace of subordinationism… the thought of the Father as the Source or Fount of Godhead is a relic of pre-Christian theology which has not fully assimilated Christian revelation.
Leonard Hodgson, The Doctrine of the Trinity, pp. 88, 100, 102.
A few quibbles; first “subordinationism” as so defined was also common in the second half of the second century, with all the “logos theologians.” And in the second quote, it is anachronistic to speak of “trinitarian” theology in the early third century. On the last quote, he’s assuming equal divinity as necessary for trinitarianism, which is correct. But yeah, his basic points are correct – too many big dogs? It’s really one big dog, and two little ones.
Finally, a couple of quotations I disagree with but think are fascinating:
What was needed was that into the place hitherto held in men’s thought by the one God of their faith and worship [i.e. the Father] there should be put the Trinity as a whole.
(p. 101)
When you put it this way, you see how breathtakingly bold trinitarian speculations were! How could anything or anyone take the place of the one who, according the New Testament, Peter, John, Paul, and the Lord Jesus himself taught and worshiped as the one true God?
Christianity began as a trinitarian religion with a unitarian theology. The question at issue in the age of the Fathers was whether the religion should transform the theology or the theology stifle the religion.
(p. 103)
True: all early Christian theology was unitarian. That’s because Jesus and the apostles taught that, and the ball was not dropped – not in those days.
But in what sense was their “religion” trinitarian? As Hurtado has shown, as far as historical evidence is concerned, Christians always worshiped Jesus. But they did not, historians agree, worship the Holy Spirit in the early years, nor the three as one triune god.
They were “trinitarian” in that they used some triadic forms of speech, as occasionally in the New Testament, then commonly for baptisms by mid second century? But that practice is wholly consistent with unitarian belief and practice. And they were “trinitarian” in that that they believed in the triad – if that just means God, God’s Son, and God’s spirit – but again, this is consistent with their being unitarian. And we know that they thought the one God was not the Trinity but rather the Father.
Hodgson is right that “Christianity began as a trinitarian religion with a unitarian theology.” Some of us think that we need further Reforming in this regard!
Dale,
From what I can tell, Unitarian Subordinationism is really really close to the Eastern Orthodox view of the Trinity. It seems like the explanation and roles of the Father, Son and Spirit are described very similarly in both views but then the conclusions reached are different when it comes down to the metaphysical declarations made. Both draw heavily on early Christian writings (Origen, et al) to defend their conclusions. Just another way in which defining our terms and drawing implications are key?
That’s a strange statement by Larry Hurtado, “Christianity began as a trinitarian religion with a unitarian theology. ” If a religion has a Unitarian theology, then it’s a Unitarian religion …
Another thing, when People say that the early Christians worshiped Jesus, it needs to be clarified what exactly “worship” means. The earlierst direct record we have of this is by Pliny the younger, but I doubt he would have made a distinction between honor toward a messiah figure and sacred service to God.
I think perhaps he means that it was “trinitarian” in the sense of believing in the trinity, but not in the sense of believing in the Trinity.
Yes, we do need to realize that the words translated at “worship” had a wider sense than many now suppose. Of course, the earliest evidence of worship of Jesus would be Paul, e.g. Phil 2, and then other NT writings.
Yeah, but the “term” trinity is meaningless unless it has some theological content right? in that sense it’s almost impossible to NOT be a trinitarian if you’re a Christian right?
I agree With the NT wrightings, I was using Pliny the Younger as the first (as far as I know of) Direct statement of Christians worship Jesus, in the NT, you have praise and the such, but it’s generally quite vague as to what is being done.
Pliny’s: “…carmenque Christo quasi deo…” Quasi = “as if”. Thus: “…sing antiphonal hymns to this Christ, as if he were some sort of god…”
“Some sort of” would bring out the sense of “quasi” better, in the context of a non-Christian Roman official who is ignorant of what Christian’s really believe about Jesus “Christ”.
Others translate: “…to chant verses antiphonally amongst themselves to Christ as if to a god…”.
Secondly, most Tri{3}nitarian translations use capitalization: “(G)od” here. Whereas, the Latin language didn’t introduce minuscule, or lower case lettering into the language until the 9th century C.E. So this is both bias, and anachronistic, (in my opinion – others are free to disagree).
Thirdly, and most importantly. The original MSS of Tertullian’s Apology Book 1, Chapter 2, (who quotes this very passage of Pliny ), have a very different reading, with a very different sense:
Latin: “…canendum Christo et deo…” “…to sing to Christ ( and ) to God…”.
Note: “et” = “and”.
Thus, this put’s it in a whole different light.
One last note. The modern, (in a relative sense), or newer versions, of the printed texts of Tertullian’s Apology, (plus translations), change: “et” into: “ut”, against the almost unanimous MSS reading. So, caveat emptor. The older the printed texts generally retain the proper, (i.e. actual), MSS reading.
“the Latin language didn’t introduce minuscule, or lower case”
Yes, and worse, it doesn’t have the definite article “the”! So it lacks the theos vs. ho theos (a god vs. God, literally “the god”) distinction. AND it lacks quotation marks too, like all ancient languages.
So when, in Latin, someone writes about Jesus that “Deus est”, this might mean that
he’s God (i.e. God himself)
he’s a god (i.e. divine in some sense)
is described or addressed as “God” or as “a god”
This is really a problem when translating and interpreting authors c. 150-380.
Hello MdS,
I am Christian who in his view of Godhead would identify to a large degree with the views of Samuel Clarke (thanks Dale, I hope and wish the Clarkian view will gain a traction in the years ahead). From time to time I visit this blog and other humanitarian Unitarian (hereafter HU) webs to better understand this position. Now here are several friendly questions that I am asking in order to better understand your position:
Is Holy Spirit numerically identical to God the Father or not?
Before Word became flesh, was God’s Word/Logos/Davar numerically identical with God YHWH or not?
Who ate lunch with Abraham in Genesis 18:1 – 8?
Who stood in front of Abraham in Genesis 18:22?
Who is the Angel of the Lord in Exodus 23:20 – 21?
Who is standing there next to laying Samuel in 1. Samuel 3:10?
In Isaiah 63:9 – 10, who or what are the angel of Lord’s presence and His Spirit? Are they simply literary devices along line of “hands” to describe the activity of one personal God so that no personal agents are in view in any form what so ever?
I wish nice weekend to everyone who is following this thread.
Christian Thinker
@ Dale
Of course early Christianity was neither “trinitarian” nor Trinitarian in any sense whatsoever. So, the real question to ask is: what, eventually, from those beginnings, led to the full fledged doctrine of the Trinity (co-equal, co-eternal, tri-personal)?
There are no passages in the NT whose “trinitarian” interpretation cannot be debunked, except for one (the Comma Johanneum at 1John 5:7-8 doesn’t count, because it is manifestly spurious and apocryphal), this:
“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, …” (Matt 28:19, with Trinitarian Baptismal Formula)
Although ALL extant NT mss have it, I believe (with the commentators of the Bible de Jérusalem) that it was an insertion in the text of Matthew’s Gospel (rather early, as the parallel in the Didache suggests). BTW, it is rather amusing that the (literalist inerrantist) JW don’t find it problematic, whereas, obviously the formula “in the name of … the Holy Spirit”, with that reference to the “name” (=authority) clearly suggests that the Holy Spirit would be a person.
You speak of the early worship of Jesus as a possible “seed” of later of trinitarianism. BUT the worship was NOT applied to Jesus in general, it was applied to the resurrected Jesus inasmuch as he had been made Lord by the One God and Father (see Acts 2:32-36; Rom 10:9; Phil 2:9-11; etc.).
OTOH, as you rightly remark, Christians “simply did not, historians agree, worship the Holy Spirit in the early years”.
So, perhaps, rather than dubious “seeds” of later trinitarianism, we have to look for the real root. For the umpteenth time, for those who read the history of Christianity until Nicea 325 and right to Constantinople 381 without indulging in “hindsight trinitarian apologism”, it is quite transparent that there is a specific root: the filching of the theo-philosophical Philonian understanding of the Logos/Dabar as deuteros theos (“second god”), which is radically different from the Johannine Logos, as is evident especially now that we can make comparisons with the Dead Sea Scrolls.
From this “original sin”, from here on, it is all a gradual worsening towards a heathen-philosophical pollution of the Scriptural source: even the struggle against Gnosticism becomes an occasion for assimilating the Gnostic notion of hypostases and the Hermetic homoousios. Paradoxically, it is Arius, with his rationalism, that precipitates the situation, until one of its two possible outcomes is reached: the “co-eternal, co-equal, tri-personal” trinity. What Anthony Buzzard calls “Christianity’s self-inflicted wound”.
The other outcome (the ONLY scripturally legitimate outcome) would have been a return to the original Strict Monotheism, whereby God’s Word/Logos/Dabar and Spirit/Pneuma/Ruwach are NOT distinct hypostases, BUT God’s eternal “hands”.
And Jesus is the true Son of God (NOT an imaginary “god-the-son”), the Incarnation of God’s Eternal Word/Logos/Dabar, His Messiah, and, after his Resurrection and Ascension, proclaimed Lord and exalted to His right by God Himself.
And the Holy Spirit is God’s power and gift (NOT an imaginary “god-the-spirit”), in which and by which all God’s elect will be deified, “that God may be all in all” (1 Cor 15:28).
MdS
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