Sophronius: “the one God is a Trinity”

At his excellent blog Contra Modalism, my friend Andrew Davis posts on yet another problem for the revisionary historical narrative offered by recent Orthodox scholars like Behr and Branson: a fairly early Eastern writer who clearly believes in a triune God – something the revisers regard as a mostly Western mistake, in large part deriving from Augustine.

In his post “Another Source Showing the Concept of a ‘Triune God’ in Official Eastern Orthodox Dogma” Davis writes,

There was an Eastern bishop active in the late sixth and early seventh century named Sophronius, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, who wrote an encyclical letter detailing, among other things, what he regards as the orthodox understanding of the Trinity. In it, he speaks clearly of the one God as the entire Trinity- that is, a triune or tri-personal God:

“Nor as the one God is a Trinity and is recognized and proclaimed as three hypostases and worshipped as three persons, Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit, is he said to be contracted or compounded or confused, that is, by coalescing himself into one hypostasis and combining [himself] into one person that cannot be numbered.” (Sophronius of Jerusalem and Seventh-Century Heresy, p. 77)

Check out Davis’s whole post here to see how this relates to the sixth ecumenical council!

This is another couple of pieces of evidence that fit well with the case I make in my recent published paper, contra the Orthodox revisionists. I would have included these if I knew about them when I wrote it.

Check out my interviews with Andrew Davis here and here to see why he calls his blog Contra Modalism. His is an interesting, study-based theological journey.