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Lenten Talk 3 the Trinity: Tertullian—Origen 1. Hippolytus (C.170-C.235) and Tertullian (C.155-C.240) Reflected the Influence of the Apologists and Irenaeus

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Lenten Talk 3 the Trinity: Tertullian—Origen 1. Hippolytus (C.170-C.235) and Tertullian (C.155-C.240) Reflected the Influence of the Apologists and Irenaeus Lenten Talk 3 The Trinity: Tertullian—Origen 1. Hippolytus (c.170-c.235) and Tertullian (c.155-c.240) Reflected the influence of the Apologists and Irenaeus. Hippolytus was more archaic and less developed. Tertullian made statements of lasting value; he was the first to use the word trinitas. Advanced further than Irenaeus in two ways: (i) attempted to make explicit the oneness of the divine power or substance of which the three were expressions or forms, and (ii) in recognition of them as Persons. 2. Dynamic Monarchianism (Adoptionism) Essentially a Christological heresy. Brought to Rome in c.190 by Theodotus for whom Jesus was an ordinary man until his baptism when the Spirit dwelt in him. Excommunicated by Pope Victor but his ideas lived on in Theodotus, Asclepiodotus and Artemon. Paul of Samosata was another adoptionist; a strict unitarian who regarded the Son and the Spirit as names given by the Church for the inspired man, Jesus Christ and the grace that God poured on the apostles. Condemned at the Synod of Antioch in 268. Generally, it was an isolated and unrepresentative in Gentile Christianity. 3. Modalistic Monarchianism (Modalism) Widespread and popular; enjoying some support from the popes, Zephyrinus and Callistus. Denied that the Word or Son was a distinct Person from the Father on grounds of ditheism. The corollary is ‘patripassianism’: the idea that the Father suffers Christ’s human experiences. Noetus of Smyrna was the first theologian of this persuasion. Sabellius was more sophisticated from whence it gets its name ‘Sabellianism’. For Modalists, the Godhead expresses itself in three modes. 4. The Roman Theology Overriding concern was the unity of God grounded in the divine monarchy. Zephyrinus and Callistus were sympathetic to the popular reaction against Hippolytus and Tertullian. For the popes, God was one Person, the Word was pre-temporal and the Son, strictly speaking was the historical man, Jesus. They are not separate beings, and the Word is not another alongside the Father who ‘co-suffers’ with the Son. Developed by Novatian (c.200-258) who emphasised the Son was always with the Father; generation did not come with creation. The relationship of Father and Son is one of moral unity. All deity bestowed by the Father returns to him as do the divine attributes. The Spirit is only a divine gift poured out and not a Person. 5. Clement (c.150-c.215) and Origen (c.184-c.253) The former is a moralist rather than a systematic thinker for whom God is absolutely transcendent, and yet embraces all reality. The Father can only be known through the Son whose generation is eternal and the Spirit is the power of the Word with whom there is no real division. Thus we have a Trinity, Platonic in its lineaments but identified with Christian theism. The latter brilliantly reinterprets the triadic rule of faith. The Father is at the apex of his system, the Son is begotten by an eternal act as the express image of the Father in the world and is a secondary god. For the Spirit he departs from philosophy and relies on revelation alone. Brought into existence by the Word and chief in rank of beings originated by the Father through Christ. The three are Persons from all eternity, not just in the economy like Hippolytus and Tertullian, and though distinct remain one. The doctrine of consubstantiality cannot be attributed to Origen. Underlying structure heavily borrowed from middle-Platonism in a graded hierarchy of other beings, called gods, with subordinationism as integral. The Father’s action extends to all reality, the Son’s to rational beings, and the Spirit’s to those who are sanctified. 6. The influence of Origen (i) the Son’s essential kinship with the Father and (ii) subordinationism. Theognostos (c.250-c.280) called the Son a creature neither identical nor alien from the Father. For Pierus (c.280-c.300) the Father and the Son are two substances. Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria’s (unknown-c.264) anti-Sabellianism drove him to the opposite extreme by denying that the Son is the same substance as the Father. Shocked the pope whose theology was flavoured by Novatian. Rome regarded the Alexandrians as virtual tritheists who undermined the divine monarchy. Dionysius reformulated his doctrine in the pope’s language acknowledging the oneness without failing to recognise the three Persons. The monarchian bias in the West emphasised divine unity, and whilst acknowledging the distinction were only beginning to think of the three as Persons, whereas in the East the intellectual atmosphere was impregnated with the Neo-Platonic hierarchy of being and had a confessedly pluralistic approach. .
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