NPNF2-04. Athanasius: Select Works and Letters

The council (a) had testified, by its horrified and spontaneous rejection of it, that Arianism was a novelty subversive of the Christian faith as they had received it from their fathers. They had (b) banished it from the Church by an inexorable test, which even the leading supporters of Arius had been induced to subscribe. In the years immediately following, we find (c) a large majority of the Eastern bishops, especially of Syria and Asia Minor, the very regions whence the numerical strength of the council was drawn, in full reaction against the council; first against the leaders of the victorious party, eventually and for nearly a whole generation against the symbol itself; the final victory of the latter in the East being the result of the slow growth of conviction, a growth independent of the authority of the council which it eventually was led to recognise. To understand this paradox of history, which determines the whole story of the life of Athanasius as bishop, it is necessary to estimate at some length the theological and ecclesiastical situation at the close of the council: this will best be done by examining each point in turn (a) the novelty of Arianism, (b) the ὁμοούσιον as a theological formula, (c) the materials for reaction.

(a) ‘Arianism was a new doctrine in the Church’ (Harnack, p. 218); but it claimed to be no novelty. And it was successful for a long time in gaining ‘conservative’ patronage. Its novelty, as observed above, is sufficiently shewn by its reception at the Council of Nicæa. But no novelty springs into existence without antecedents. What were the antecedents of Arianism? How does it stand related to the history within the Church of the momentous question, ‘What think ye of Christ?’

In examining such a question, two methods are possible. We may take as our point of departure the formulated dogma say of Nicæa, and examine in the light of it variations in theological statements in preceding periods, to shew that they do not warrant us in regarding the dogma as an innovation. That is the dogmatic method. Or we may take our start from the beginning, and trace the history of doctrine in the order of cause and effect, so as to detect the divergence and convergence of streams of influence, and arrive at an answer to the question, How came men to think and speak as they did? That is the historical method. Both methods have their recommendations, and either has been ably applied to the problem before us. In electing the latter I choose the more difficult road; but I do so with the conviction, firstly, that the former has tended (and especially in the ablest hands) to obscure our perception of the actual facts, secondly, that the saving faith of Christ has everything to gain from a method which appeals directly to our sense of historical truth, and satisfies, not merely overawes, the mind.

Let us then go back to ‘the beginning of the Gospel.’ Taking the synoptic gospels as our primary evidence, we ask, what did Christ our Lord teach about Himself? We do not find formal definitions of doctrine concerning His Person. Doubtless it may seem that such a definition on His part would have saved infinite dispute and searchings of heart in the history of the Church. But recognising in Him the unique and supreme Revealer of the Father, it is not for us to say what He should have taught; we must accept His method of teaching as that which Divine Wisdom chose as the best, and its sequel in history as the way in which God willed man to learn. We find then in the materials which we possess for the history of His Life and Teaching fully enough to explain the belief of His disciples (see below) in His Divinity. Firstly, there is no serious doubt as to His claim to be the Messiah. (The confession of Peter in all four Gospels, Matt. xvi. 16; Mark viii. 29; Luke ix. 27; John vi. 69; ‘Son of Man,’ Dan. vii. 13; ix. 24, &c.). In this character He is King in the kingdom of Heaven (Matt. xxv. 31–36, cf. Mk. viii. 38), and revises the Law with full authority (Matt. v. 21–44, cf. Luke v. 24; Matt. xii. 8). It may be added that whatever this claim conveyed to the Jews of His own time (see Stanton’s Jewish and Christian Messiah) it is impossible to combine in one idea the Old Testament traits of the Coming One if we stop short of the identification of the Messiah with the God of Israel (see Delitzsch, Psalms, vol. i. pp. 94, 95, last English ed.).

Secondly, Christ enjoys and confers the full authority of God (Matt. x. 40; Luke x. 16; cf. also Matt. xxiv. 35; Mk. xiii. 31; Luke xxi. 33), gives and promises the Holy Spirit (‘the Spirit of the Father,’ see Matt. x. 17, &c.; Luke xii. 12, and especially Luke xxi. 15, ἐγὼ γὰρ δώσω, &c.), and apparently sends the prophets and holy men of old (cf. Matt. xxiii. 34, ἐγὼ ἀποστέλλω with Luke xi. 49). Thirdly, the foundation of all this is laid in a passage preserved by the first and third gospels, in which He claims the unqualified possession of the mind of the Father (Luke x. 22; Matt. xi. 27), ‘No man knoweth [who] the Son [is], save the Father, neither knoweth any man [who] the Father [is] save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will (βούληται) reveal Him.’ Observe the reciprocity of knowledge between the Son and the Father. This claim is a decisive instantia fœderis between the Synoptics and the Fourth Gospel, e.g. John xvi. 15; xiv. 9, &c. Fourthly, we observe the claim made by Him throughout the synoptic record to absolute confidence, absolute faith, obedience, self-surrender, such as no frail man is justified in claiming from another; the absence of any trace in the mind of the ‘meek and lowly’ one of that consciousness of sin, that need of reconciliation with God, which is to us an indispensable condition of the religious temper, and the starting-point of Christian faith (contrast Isa. vi. 5).

We now turn to the Apostles. Here a few brief remarks must suffice. (A suggestive summary in Sanday, ‘What the first Christians thought about Christ,’ Oxford House Papers, First Series.) That S. Paul’s summary of the Gospel (1 Cor. xv. 3 sqq.) is given by him as common ground between himself and the older Apostles follows strictly from the fact that the verb used (παρέλαβον) links the facts of Redemption (v. 3, 4) with the personal experiences of the original disciples (5 sqq.). In fact it is not in dispute that the original Jewish nucleus of the Apostolic Church preached Jesus as the Messiah, and His death as the ground of forgiveness of sins (Pfleiderer, Urchrist. p. 20; Acts ii. 36, 38; iii. 26; iv. 12, &c.; the ‘Hebraic colouring’ of these early chapters is very characteristic and important). The question is, however, how much this implied as to the Divine Personality of the Saviour; how far the belief of the Apostles and their contemporaries was uniform and explicit on this point. Important light is thrown on this question by the controversy which divided S. Paul from the mass of Jewish Christians with respect to the observance of the Law. Our primary source of knowledge here is Galatians, ch. ii. We there learn that while S. Paul regarded this question as involving the whole essence of the Gospel, and resisted every attempt to impose circumcision on Gentile Christians, the older Apostles conceded the one point regarded as central, and, while reserving the obligation of the Law on those born under it (which S.

Paul never directly assailed, 1 Cor. vii. 18) recognised the Gospel of the uncircumcision as legitimate. This concession, as the event proved, conceded everything; if the ‘gospel of the uncircumcision’ was sufficient for salvation, circumcision became a national, not a religious principle. Now this whole question was fundamentally a question about Christ. Men who believed, or were willing to grant, that the Law uttered from Sinai by the awful voice of the Most High Himself was no longer the supreme revelation of God, the one divinely ordained covenant of righteousness, certainly believed that some revelation of God different in kind (for no revelation of God to man could surpass the degree of Ex. xxxiii. 11) had taken place, an unique revelation of God in man. The revelation of God in Christ, not the revelation of God to Moses, was the one fact in the world’s history; Sinai was dwarfed in comparison of Calvary. But it must be observed that while the older Apostles, by the very recognition of the gospel of the uncircumcision, went thus far with S. Paul, S. Paul realised as a central principle what to others lay at the circumference. What to the one was a result of their belief in Christ was to him the starting-point, from which logical conclusions were seen to follow, practical applications made in every direction. At the same time S. Paul taught nothing about Christ that was not implied in the belief of the older Apostles, or that they would not have felt impelled by their own religious position to accept.

The apostles of the circumcision, however, stood between S. Paul and the zealot mass of Jewish Christians (Acts xxi. 20), many of whom were far from acquiescing in the recognition of S. Paul’s Gospel. On the same principle that we have used to determine the belief of the Στῦλοι with regard to Christ, we must needs recognise that where the gospel of the uncircumcision was still assailed or disparaged, the Divinity of Christ was apprehended faintly, or not at all.

The name of the ‘Ebionite’ sect testifies to its continuity with a section of the Jerusalem Church (see Lightfoot’s Galatians, S. Paul and the Three). It should be observed, however, firstly that between the clear-sighted Apostle of the Gentiles and the straitest of the zealots, there lay every conceivable gradation of intermediate positions (Loofs, Leitf. §11. 2, 3); secondly, that while emancipation from legalism in the Apostolic Church implied what has been said above, a belief in the divinity of Jesus was in itself compatible with strict Jewish observance.

The divinity of Christ then was firmly held by S. Paul (the most remarkable passage is Rom. x. 9, 11, 13, where Κύριον ᾽Ιησοῦν = αὐτόν = Κύριον = הוהי Joel ii. 32), and his belief was held by him in common with the Jewish Apostles, although with a clearer illumination as to its consequences. That this belief was absolutely universal in the Church is not to be maintained, the elimination of Ebionism was only gradual (Justin, Dial. xlviii. ad fin.); but that it, and not Ebionism, represented the common belief of the Apostles and New Testament writers is not to be doubted.

But taking this as proved, we do not find an equally clear answer to the question In what sense is Christ God? The synoptic record makes no explicit reference to the pre-existence of Christ: but the witness of John and descent of the Spirit (Mark i. 7–11) at His baptism, coupled with the Virginal Birth (Mt., Lk.), and with the traits of the synoptic portrait of Christ as collected above, if they do not compel us to assert, yet forbid us to deny the presence of this doctrine to the minds of the Evangelists. In the Pauline (including Hebrews) and Johannine writings the doctrine is strongly marked, and in the latter (Joh. i. 1, 14, 18, μονογενὴς Θεός) Jesus Christ is expressly identified with the creative Word (Palestinian Memra, rather than Alexandrian or from Philo; see also Rev. xix. 13), and the Word with God. Moreover such passages as Philipp. ii. 6 sqq., 2 Cor. xiii. 14 (the Apostolic benediction), &c., &c., are significant of the impression left upon the mind of the infant Churches as they started upon their history no longer under the personal guidance of the Apostles of the Lord.

Jesus Christ was God, was one with the Father and with the Spirit: that was enough for the faith, the love, the conduct of the primitive Church. The Church was nothing so little as a society of theologians; monotheists and worshippers of Christ by the same instinct, to analyse their faith as an intellectual problem was far from their thoughts: God Himself (and there is but one God) had suffered for them (Ign. Rom. vi.; Tat. Gr. 13; Melito Fr. 7), God’s sufferings were before their eyes (Clem. R. I. ii. 1), they desired the drink of God, even His blood (Ign. Rom. vii., cf. Acts xx. 28); if enthusiastic devotion gave way for a moment to reflexion ‘we must think of Jesus Christ as of God’ (‘Clem. R.’ II. 1).

The ‘Apostolic fathers’ are not theological in their aim or method. The earliest seat of theological reflexion in the primitive Church appears to have been Asia Minor, or rather Western Asia from Antioch to the Ægean. From this region proceed the Ignatian letters, which stand alone among the literature of their day in theological depth and reflexion. Their theology ‘is wonderfully mature in spite of its immaturity, full of reflexions, and yet at the same time full of intuitive originality’ (Loofs, p. 61). The central idea is that of the renovation of man (Eph. 20), now under the power of Satan and Death (ib. 3, 19), which are undone (κατάλυσις) in Christ, the risen Saviour (Smyrn. 3), who is ‘our true Life,’ and endows us with immortality (Smyrn. 4, Magn. 6, Eph. 17). This is by virtue of His Divinity (Eph. 19, Smyrn. 4) in union with His perfect Manhood. He is the only utterance of God (λόγος ἀπὸ σιγῆς προελθών, Magn. 8), the ‘unlying mouth by which the Father spake’ (Rom. 8.) ‘God come (γενόμενος) in the flesh,’ ‘our God’ (Eph. 7, 18). His flesh partaken mystically in the Eucharist unites our nature to His, is the ‘medicine of incorruption’ (Eph. 20, Smyrn. 7, cf. Trall. 1). Ignatius does not distinguish the relation of the divine to the human in Christ: he is content to insist on both: ‘one Physician, of flesh and of spirit, begotten and unbegotten’ (Eph. 7). Nor does he clearly conceive the relation of the Eternal Son to the Father. He is unbegotten (as God) and begotten (as man): from eternity with the Father (Magn. 6): through Him the One God manifested himself.

The theological depth of Ignatius was perhaps in part called forth by the danger to the churches from the Docetic heretics, representative of a Judaic (Philad. 5, Magn. 8–10) syncretism which had long had a hold in Asia Minor (1 John and Lightfoot Coloss., p. 73, 81 sqq.). To this he opposes what is evidently a creed (Trall. 9), with emphasis on the reality (ἀληθῶς) of all the facts of Redemption comprised in it.

It was in fact the controversies of the second century that produced a theology in the Catholic Church,—that in a sense produced the Catholic Church itself. The idea of the Church as distinct from and embracing the Churches is a New Testament idea (Eph. v. 25, cf. 1 Cor. xv. 9, &c.), and the name ‘Catholic’ occurs at the beginning of the second century (Lightfoot’s note on Ign. Smyrn. 8); but the Gnostic and Montanist controversies compelled the Churches which held fast to the παράδοσις of the Apostles to close their ranks (episcopal federation) and to reflect upon their creed. The Baptismal Creed (Rom. x. 9, Acts viii. 37, Text. Rec., cf. 1 Cor. xv. 3–4) began to serve as a tessera or passport of right belief, and as a regulative standard, a ‘rule of faith.’ The ‘limits of the Christian Church’ began to be more clearly defined (Stanton, ubi supr. p. 167).

Another influence which during the same period led to a gradual formation of theology was the necessity of defending the Church against heathenism. If the Gnostics were ‘the first Christian theologians’ (Harnack), the Apologists (120–200) are more directly important for our present enquiry. The usual title of Justin ‘Philosopher and Martyr’ is significant of his position and typical of the class of writers to which he belongs. On the one hand the Apologists are philosophers rather than theologians. Christianity is ‘the only true philosophy’ (Justin); its doctrines are found piecemeal among the philosophers (λόγος σπερματικός), who are so far Christians, just as the Christians are the true philosophers (Justin and Minuc. Felix). But the Logos, who is imparted fragmentarily to the philosophers, is revealed in His entire divine Personality in Christ (so Justin beyond the others, Apol. ii. 8, 10). In the doctrine of God, their thought is coloured by the eclectic Platonism of the age before Plotinus. God, the Father of all things, is Creator, Lord, Master, and as such known to man, but in Himself Unoriginate (ἀγένητος), ineffable, mysterious (ἄρρητος), without a name, One and alone, incapable of Incarnation (for references to Justin and to Plato, D.C.B. iii. 572). His ‘goodness’ is metaphysical perfection, or beneficence to man, His ‘righteousness’ that of Moral Governor of the Universe (contrast the deeper sense of St. Paul, Rom. iii. 21, &c.). But the abstractness of the conception of God gives way to personal vividness in the doctrine of the ‘visible God’ (Tert.

Prax. 15 sq.), the Logos (the subject of the O.T. ‘theophanies’ according to the Apologists) who was ‘with’ the Father before all things (Just. Dial. 62), but was ‘begotten’ or projected (προβληθεις) by the will of the Father (ib. 128) as God from God, as a flame from fire. He is, like the Father, ineffable (Χριστός, Just. Apol. ii. 6), yet is the ἄγγελος, ὑπηρέτης of the Father. In particular He is the Father’s minister in Creation: to create He proceeded from the Father, a doctrine expressly deduced from Prov. viii. 22 (Dial. 61, 129). Before this He was the λόγος ἐνδιάθετος, after it the λόγος προφορικός, the Word uttered (Ps. xlv. 1 LXX; this distinction is not in Justin, but is found Theophil. ad Autol. ii. 10, 22: it is the most marked trace of philosophic [Stoic] influence on the Apologists). The Apologists, then, conceive of Christian theology as philosophers. Especially the Person of the Saviour is regarded by them from the cosmological, not the soteriological view-point. From the latter, as we have seen, St. Paul starts; and his view gradually embraces the distant horizon of the former (1 Cor. viii. 6, Coloss. i. 15); from the soteriological side also (directly) he reaches the divinity of Christ (Rom. v. 1–8; 1 Cor. i. 30; Rom. x. 13, as above). Here, as we shall see, Athanasius meets the Arians substantially by St. Paul’s method. But the Apologists, under the influence of their philosophy rather than of their religion, start from the cosmological aspect of the problem.

They engraft upon an Apostolic (Johannine) title of the Saviour an Alexandrine group of associations: they go far towards transmuting the Word of St. John to the Logos of Philo and the Eclectics. Hence their view of His Divinity and of his relation to the Father is embarrassed. His eternity and His generation are felt to be hardly compatible: His distinct Personality is maintained at the expense of His true Divinity. He is God, and not the One God; He can manifest Himself (Theophanies) in a way the One God cannot; He is an intermediary between God and the world. The question has become philosophical rather than directly religious, and philosophy cannot solve it. But on the other hand, Justin was no Arian. If he was Philosopher, he was also Martyr. The Apologists are deeply saturated with Christian piety and personal enthusiastic devotion to Christ. Justin in particular introduces us, as no other so early writer, into the life, the worship, the simple faith of the Primitive Church, and we can trace in him influences of the deeper theology of Asia Minor (Loofs, p. 72 sq. but see more fully the noble article on Justin in D.C.B. vol. iii.). But our concern is with their influence on the analysis of the object of faith; and here we see that unconsciously they have severed the Incarnate Son from the Eternal Father: not God (ὁ ὄντως θεός) but a subordinate divine being is revealed in Christ: the Logos, to adopt the words of Ignatius, is no longer a true breach of the Divine Silence.

We must now glance at the important period of developed Catholicism marked especially by the names of Irenæus, Tertullian, and Clement, the period of a consolidated organisation, a (relatively) fixed Canon of the New Testament, and a catholic rule of faith (see above, and Lumby, Creeds, ch. i.; Heurtley, Harmonia Symbolica, i.–viii.). The problem of the period which now begins (180–250) was that of Monarchianism; the Divinity of Christ must be reconciled with the Unity of God. Monarchianism is in itself the expression of the truth common to all monotheism, that the ἄρχη or Originative Principle is strictly and Personally One and one only (in contrast to the plurality of ἀρχικαὶ ὑποστάσεις, see Newman, Arians4, p. 112 note). No Christian deliberately maintains the contrary. The Apologists, as we have seen, tended to emphasise the distinction of Father and Son; but this tendency makes of necessity in the direction of ‘subordination;’ and any distinction of ‘Persons’ or Hypostases in the Godhead involves to a Monotheist some subordination, in order to save the principle of the Divine Monarchia.’ The Monarchian denied any subordination or distinction of hypostases within the Godhead. This tendency we have now to follow up. We do not meet with it as a problem in Irenæus. (He ‘is said to have written against it,’ Newman, Ar.4, p. 117, citing Dodw. in Iren.) This scholar of pupils of Apostles stands in the lines of the Asiatic theology. He is the successor of Ignatius and Polycarp.

We find him, in sharp contrast to the Apologists, giving full expression to the revelation of God in Jesus (the ‘Son is the Measure of the Father, for He contains Him’), and the union of man with God in the Saviour, as the carrying out of the original destiny of man, by the destruction of sin, which had for the time frustrated it (III. xviii. p. 211, Deus antiquam hominis plasmationem in se recapitulans). Hence the ‘deification’ of man’s nature by union with Christ (a remarkable point of contact with Athanasius, see note on de Incar. 54. 3); incorruption is attained to by the knowledge of God (cf. John xvii. 3) through faith (IV. xx.); we cannot comprehend God, but we learn to know Him by His Love (ib.). At the same time we trace the influence of the Apologists here and there in his Christology (III. 6, 19, and the explanation of the ‘Theophanies,’ iv. 20). But in his younger contemporary Tertullian, the reaction of Monarchianism makes itself felt. He is himself one of the Apologists, and at the same time under Asiatic influences. The two trains of influence converge in the name Trinitas, which he is the first to use (τρίας first in the Asiatic Apologist Theophilus). In combating the Monarchian Praxeas (see below) he carries subordinationism very far (cf. Hermog. 3. ‘fuit tempus cum Ei filius non fuit’), he distinguishes the Word as ‘rationalis deus’ from eternity, and ‘sermonalis’ not from eternity (cf. again, Theophilus, supra).

The Generation of the Son is a προβολή (also ‘eructare’ from Ps. xlv. 1), but the divine ‘Substance’ remains the same (river and fountain, sun and ray, Prax. 8, 9). He aims at reconciling ‘subordination’ with the ‘Monarchia,’ (ib. 4). In the Incarnate Christ he distinguishes the divine and human as accurately as Leo the Great (ib. 27, 29). In spite of inconsistencies such as were inevitable in his strange individuality (Stoic, philosopher, lawyer, Apologist, ‘Asiatic’ theologian, Catholic, Montanist) we see in Tertullian the starting-point of Latin Theology (but see also Harnack ii. 287 note).

We must now examine more closely the history of Monarchian tendencies, and firstly in Rome. The sub-Apostolic Church, simply holding the Divinity of Christ and the Unity of God, used language (see above) which may be called ‘naively Monarchian.’ This holds good even of Asiatic theology, as we find it in its earlier stage. The baptismal creed (as we find it in the primitive basis of the Apostles’ Creed) does not solve the problem thus presented to Christian reflexion. Monarchianism attempted the solution in two ways. Either the One God was simply identified with the Christ of the Gospels and the Creeds, the Incarnation being a mode of the Divine manifestation (Father as Creator, Son as Redeemer, Spirit as Sanctifier, or the like): ‘Modalism’ or Modalistic Monarchianism (including Patripassianism, Sabellianism, and later on the theology of Marcellus); or (this being felt incompatible with the constant personal distinction of Christ from the Father) a special effluence, influence, or power of the one God was conceived of as residing in the man Jesus Christ, who was accordingly Son of God by adoption, God by assimilation: ‘dynamic’ Monarchianism or Adoptionism (‘Son’ and ‘Spirit’ not so much modes of the Divine self-realisation as of the Divine Action).

This letter, the echo but not the direct survival of Ebionism, was later on the doctrine of Photinus; we shall find it exemplified in Paul of Samosata; but our present concern is with its introduction at Rome by the two Theodoti, the elder of whom (a tanner from Byzantium) was excommunicated by Bishop Victor, while the younger, a student of the Peripatetic philosophy and grammatical interpreter of Scripture, taught there in the time of Zephyrinus. A later representative of this school, Artemon, claimed that its opinions were those of the Roman bishops down to Victor (Eus. H. E. v. 28). This statement cannot be accepted seriously; but it appears to be founded on a real reminiscence of an epoch in the action and teachings of the Roman bishops at the time. It must be remembered that the two forms of Monarchianism—modalism and adoptionism—are, while very subtly distinguished in their essential principle, violently opposed in their appearance to the popular apprehension. Their doctrine of God is one, at least in its strict unitarianism; but while to the Modalist Christ is the one God, to the Adoptionist He is essentially and exclusively man.14 In the one case His Personality is divine, in the other human. Now there is clear proof of a strong Modalist tendency15 in the Roman Church at this time; this would manifest itself in especial zeal against the doctrine of such men as Theodotus the younger, and give some colour to the tale of Artemon.

Both Tertullian and Hippolytus complain bitterly of the ignorance of those responsible for the ascendancy which this teaching acquired in Rome (Ζεφυρῖνον ἄνδρα ἰδιώτην καὶ ἄπειρον τῶν ἐκκλησιαστικῶν ὅρων, Hipp. ‘idiotes quisque aut perversus,’ ‘simplices, ne dicam imprudentes et idiotæ.’ Tert.). The utterances of Zephyrinus support this: ‘I believe in one God, Jesus Christ’ (Hipp., see above on the language of the sub-Apost. Church). The Monarchian influences were strengthened by the arrival of fresh teachers from Asia (Cleomenes and Epigonus, see note 2) and began to arouse lively opposition. This was headed by Hippolytus, the most learned of the Roman presbytery, and eventually bishop16 in opposition to Callistus, the successor of Zephyrinus. The theology of Hippolytus was not unlike that of Tertullian, and was hotly charged by Callistus with ‘Ditheism.’ The position of Callistus himself, like that of his predecessor, was one of compromise between the two forms of Monarchianism, but somewhat more developed. A distinction was made between ‘Christ’ (the divine) and Jesus (the human); the latter suffered actually, the former indirectly (‘filius patitur, pater vero compatitur.’ (Tert.) τὸν Πατέρα συμπεπονθέναι τῷ υἱ& 254·, Hipp.; it is clear that under ‘Praxeas’ Tertullian is combating also the modified Praxeanism of Callistus. See adv. Prax. 27, 29; Hipp. ix. 7); not without reason does Hippolytus charge Callistus with combining the errors of Sabellius with those of Theodotus. The compromise of Callistus was only partially successful.

On the one hand the strictly modalist Sabellius, who from about 215 takes the place of Cleomenes at the head of Roman Monarchianism (his doctrine of the υἱοπάτωρ, of the Trinity as successive πρόσωπα, ‘aspects,’ of the One God, pure modalism as defined above) scorned compromise (he constantly reproached Callistus with having changed his front, Hipp.) was excommunicated, and became the head of a sect. And the fierce opposition of Hippolytus failed to command the support of more than a limited circle of enthusiastic admirers, or to maintain itself after his death. On the other hand (the process is quite in obscurity: see Harnack1, p. 620) the theology of Hippolytus and Tertullian eventually gained the day. Novatian, whose ‘grande volumen’ (Jer.) on the Trinity represents the theology of Rome about 250 a.d., simply ‘epitomises Tertullian,’ and that in explanation of the Rule of Faith. As to the Generation of the Son, he drops the ‘quando Ipse [Pater] voluit’ of Tertullian, but like him combines a (modified) ‘subordination’ with the ‘communio substantiæ’—in other words the ὁμοούσιον. Monarchianism was condemned in the West; its further history belongs to the East (under the name of Sabellianism first in Libya: see pp. 173, sqq.). But the hold which it maintained upon the Roman Church for about a generation (190–220) left its mark. Rome condemned Origen, the ally of Hippolytus; Rome was invoked against Dionysius of Alexandria; (Rome and) the West formulated the ὁμοούσιον at Nicæa; Rome received Marcellus;

Rome rejected the τρεῖς ὑποστάσεις and supported the Eustathians at Antioch; it was with Rome rather than with the prevalent theology of the East that Athanasius felt himself one. (Cf. also Harnack, Dg. 11, p. 622 sqq.) Monarchianism was too little in harmony with the New Testament, or with the traditional convictions of the Churches, to live as a formulated theology. The ‘naive modalism’ of the ‘simplices quae major semper pars credentium est’ (Tert.) was corrected as soon as the attempt was made to give it formal expression17. But the attempt to do so was a valuable challenge to the conception of God involved in the system of the Apologists. To their abstract, transcendent, philosophical first Principle, Monarchianism opposed a living, self-revealing, redeeming God, made known in Christ. This was a great gain. But it was obtained at the expense of the divine immutability. A God who passed through phases or modes, now Father, now Son, now Spirit, a God who could suffer, was not the God of the Christians. There is some justice in Tertullian’s scoff at their ‘Deum versipellem.’

The third great name associated with the end of the second century, that of Clement, is important to us chiefly as that of the teacher of Origen, whose influence we must now attempt to estimate. Origen (185–254) was the first theologian in the full sense of the term; the first, that is, to erect upon the basis of the rule of faith (Preface to de Princ.) a complete theological system, synthesising revealed religion with a theory of the Universe, of God, of man, which should take into account the entire range of truth and knowledge, of faith and philosophy. And in this sense for the Eastern Church he was the last theologian as well. In the case of Origen the Vincentian epigram, absolvuntur magistri condemnantur discipuli (too often applicable in the history of doctrine) is reversed. In a modified form his theology from the first took possession of the Eastern Church; in the Cappadocian fathers it took out a new lease of power, in spite of many vicissitudes it conquered opposing forces (the sixth general council crushed the party who had prevailed at the fifth); John of Damascus, in whom the Eastern Church says its last word, depends upon the Origenist theology of Basil and the Gregories. But this theology was Origenism with a difference. What was the Origenism of Origen? To condense into the compass of our present purpose the many-sidedness of Origen is a hopeless task.

The reader will turn to the fifth and sixth of Bigg’s Bampton Lectures for the best recent presentation; to Newman’s Arians (I. §3), especially the ‘apology’ at the end); to Harnack (ed. 1, pp. 510–556) and Loofs (§28); Shedd (vol. i. 288–305, should be read before Bigg and corrected by him) and Dorner; to the sections in Bull (Defens. ii. 9, iii. 3) and Petavius (who in Trin. I. iv. pursues with fluent malignity ‘omnigenis errorum portentis infamem scriptorem’); to the Origeniana of Huet and the dissertations of the standard editors; to the article Origenist Controversies, and to the comprehensive, exact, and sympathetic article Origen in the Dictionary of Christian Biography. The fundamental works of Origen for our purpose are the de Principiis, the contra Celsum, and the de Oratione; but the exegetical works are necessary to fill out and correct first impressions.

The general position of Origen with regard to the Person of Christ is akin to that of Hippolytus and Tertullian. It is to some extent determined by opposition to Gnosticism and to Monarchianism. His visit to Rome (Eus. H. E., vi. 14) coincided with the battle of Hippolytus against Zephyrinus and his destined successor: on practical as well as on doctrinal points he was at one with Hippolytus. His doctrine of God is reached by the soteriological rather than the cosmological method. God is known to us in the Incarnate Word; ‘his point of view is moral, not…pseudo-metaphysical.’ The impassibility of the abstract philosophical idea of God is broken into by ‘the passion of Love’ (Bigg, p. 158). In opposition to the perfection of God lies the material world, conditioned by evil, the result of the exercise of will. This cause of evil is antecedent to the genesis of the material universe, the καταβολὴ κόσμου; materiality is the penalty and measure of evil. (This part of Origen’s doctrine is markedly Platonic. Plotinus, we read, refused to observe his own birthday; in like manner Origen quaintly notes that only wicked men are recorded in Scripture to have kept their birthdays; Bigg, 203, note; cf. Harnack, p. 523, note.) The soul (ψυχή as if from ψύχεσθαι) has in a previous state ‘waxed cold,’ i.e. lost its original integrity, and in this condition enters the body, i.e. ‘is subjected to vanity’ in common with the rest of the creature, and needs redemption (qualify this by Bigg, pp. 202 sqq., on Origen’s belief in Original Sin).

To meet this need the Word takes a Soul (but one that has never swerved from Him in its pre-existent state: on this antinomy Bigg, 190, note, 199) and mediante Anima, or rather mediante hac substantia animæ (Prin. II. vi.) unites the nature of God and of Man in One. (On the union of the two natures in the θεάνθρωπος, in Ezek. iii. 3, he is as precise as Tertullian: we find the Hypostatic Union and Communicatio Idiomatum formally explicit; Bigg, 190.) The Word ‘deifies’ Human Nature, first His Own, then in others as well (Cels. iii. 28, ἵνα γένητυι θεία: he does not use θεοποιεῖσθαι; the thought is subtly but really different from that which we found in Irenæus: see Harnack, p. 551), by that perfect apprehension of Him ὅπερ ἦν πρὶν γένηται σάρξ, of which faith in the Incarnate is the earliest but not the final stage (applying 2 Cor. v. 16; cf. the Commentary on the Song of Songs).

What account then does Origen give of the beginning and the end of the great Drama of existence? He starts from the end, which is the more clearly revealed; ‘God shall be all in all.’ But ‘the end must be like the beginning;’ One is the end of all, One is the beginning. From 1 Cor. xv. he works back to Romans viii.: the one is his key to the eternity after, the other, to the eternity before (Bigg pp. 193 sq.). Into this scheme he brings creation, evil, the history of Revelation, the Church and its life, the final consummation of all things. The Universe is eternal: God is prior to it in conception, yet He was never other than Creator. But in the history of the Universe the material world which we know is but a small episode. It began, and will end. It began with the estrangement of Will from God, will end with its reconciliation: God, from Whom is the beginning of all, ‘will be all in all.’ (For Origen’s eschatology see Bigg, 228–234.) From this point of view we must approach the two-sided Christology of Origen. To him the two sides were aspects of the same thing: but if the subtle presupposition as to God and the Universe is withdrawn, they become alternative and inconsistent Christologies, as we shall see to have actually happened. As God is eternally Creator, so He is eternally Father (Bigg, 160, note). The Son proceeds from Him not as a part of His Essence, but as the Ray from the Light; it cannot be rightly or piously said that He had a beginning, ἦν ὅτε οὐκ ἦν (cf. De Princ. i. 2, iv. 28, and infr. p. 168);

He is begotten from the Essence of the Father, He is of the same essence (ὁμοούσιος) (Fragm. 3 in Heb., but see Bigg, p. 179), there is no unlikeness whatever between the Son and the Father (Princ. i. 2, 12). He was begotten ἐκ τοῦ θελήματος τοῦ Πατρός (but to Origen the θέλημα was inherent in the Divine Nature, cf. Bigg. 161, Harnack, p. 534 against Shedd, p. 301, note) not by προβολή or emanation (Princ. iv. 28, i. 2. 4), as though the Son’s generation were something that took place once for all, instead of existing continuously. The Father is in the Son, the Son in the Father: there is ‘coinherence.’ On the other hand, the Word is God derivatively not absolutely, ῾Ο λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν Θεόν, καὶ Θεὸς ἦν ὁ Λόγος. The Son is Θεός, the Father alone ὁ Θεός. He is of one οὐσία with the Father as compared with the creatures; but as contrasted with the Father, Who may be regarded as ἐπ™κεινα οὐσίας18, and Who alone is αὐτόθεος, αὐτοαγαθός, ἀληθινὸς θεός, the Son is ὁ δεύτερος θεός (Cels. v. 39, cf. Philo’s δευτερεύων θεός). As the Son of God, He is contrasted with all γενητά; as contrasted with the Ingenerate Father, He stands at the head of the series of γεννητά; He is μεταξὺ τῆς τοῦ ἀγεν[ν]ήτου καὶ τῆς τῶν γενητῶν φύσεως19. He even explains the Unity of the Father and the Son as moral (δύο τῇ ὑποστάσει πράγματα ἓν δὲ τῇ ὁμονοί& 139· καὶ τῇ ταύτότητι τοῦ βουλήματος, Cels. viii. 12).

The Son takes His place even in the cosmic process from Unity to Unity through Plurality, ‘God is in every respect One and Simple, but the Saviour by reason of the Many becomes Many’ (on John i. 22, cf. Index to this vol., s.v. Christ). The Spirit is subordinated to the Son, the Son to the Father (ἐλάττων παρὰ τὸν πατέρα ὁ υἱ& 232·ς…ἔτι δὲ ἧττον τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον, Princ. I. 3, 5 Gk.), while to the Spirit are subordinated created spirits, whose goodness is relative in comparison with God, and the fall of some of whom led to the creation of matter (see above). Unlike the Son and the Spirit they are mutable in will, subject to προκοπή, capable of embodiment even if in themselves immaterial.