A critical history of the evolution of trinitarianism, and its outcome in the new Christology

Front matter

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Contents

CHAP. PAQB

I. Athanasianism 1

II. The Pseudo-Athanasian Attgustinianism . 58

Appendix

A. The Johannine Problem 319

B. A Criticism of Professor A. V. G. Allen's " Con-

tinuity of Christian Thought" . . 368

C. Professor Pfleiderer's Article in the "New

World" 377

Index 383

" Whatever appears to me to be true, or most probable, after candid and earnest inquiry, with all reverence for the sacredness of the subject, I utter, without looking at consequences. Whoever has a good -work to do must, as Luther says, let the devil's tongue run as it pleases. There are two opposite parties whom I cannot hope to please, viz., those who will forcibly make all things new, and fancy, in their folly, that they can shake the rock which ages could not undermine ; and those who would retain and forcibly reintroduce, even at the expense of all genuine love of truth, everything that is old ; nay, even the worn-out and the obsolete. I shall not please those hypercritics who subject the sacred writings to an arbitrary subtilty, at ouce superrational and sophistical ; nor those, on the other hand, who believe that here all criticism — or at least all criticism on internal grounds — cometh of evil. Both these tendencies are alike at variance with a healthful sense for truth and conscientious devotion to it ; both are alike inimical to genuine culture. There is need of criticism where anything is communicated to us in the form of a historical tradition in written records ; and I am sure that an impartial criticism, applied to the Scriptures, is not only consistent with that childlike faith without which there can be no Christianity or Christian theology, but is necessary to a just acuteness and profoundness of thought, as well as to that true consecration of mind which is so essential to theology." — Nbander, Preface to Life of Jesus Christ.

EVOLUTION OF TEINITARIANISM

Chapter I Atha3stasianism

The New England doctrine of the Trinity is plainly passing through a critical phase in its history. That a rapprochement of some sort is quietly going on between so-called Trinitarians and so-called Unitarians is clear to any careful observer. Trinitarians are ready to declare themselves Unitarians in some good sense, and Unitarians are equally ready to declare themselves Trinitarians in some other good sense. Mr. Joseph Cook concludes an impassioned defense of what he calls the old trinitarian faith with a description of " God's Unitarianism," which of course is his own ; while Dr. Bartol, when asked if God is in three persons, answers : " Yes, and in all persons." It is a sign of the times that the Mcene creed is enjoying a sort of revival. Trinitarians are rallying to it as the true centre of their position. Prof. A. V. G. Allen, in " The Continuity of Christian Thought," declares that " the question is not whether we shall return or ought to return to what is callet Nicene theology ; the fact is that the return ha already begun." JETomoousios is once more th trinitarian watchword. The latest Congregations creed begins with it. Unitarians are equal! in favor of it. "We are all Athanasians," ea claims Dr. Bartol. The old Channing Arianism it seems, is out of date. Dr. Hedge asserts tha the Nicene Council by its homoousian doctrin began " a new era in human thought," and claim that it contains the essential truth. Dr. J. H Allen thinks the triumph of Nicene orthodoxy wa providential, and " saved Christianity as a grea social and reconstructive force." Where are w€ and what next ? 1

Meanwhile it is in order to inquire what Atha nasianism really is, and whether Athanasius himsel would recognize many of his modern disciples This is the object of the present chapter. It pro poses a historico-critical survey of the Nicen Athanasian Trinitarianism, and its relation to eai lier and later forms of trinitarian dogma. For i must be distinctly recognized at the outset tha this doctrine is no exception to the universal la\ of historical evolution. The Nicene theology wa the product of three centuries of controversy an< growth. But this evolution, in its further history suffered one great break. A radically new epoc]

1 Joseph Cook, Boston Monday Lectures, Orthodoxy, p. 6£ Prof. A. V. G. Allen, Continuity of Christian Thought, p. It Dr. F. H. Hedge, Ways of the Spirit, p. 351. Dr. J. H. Allei Fragments of Christian History, p. 119.

in the development of the trinitarian dogma was begun by the .North African Augustin e. This celebrated-m^n^hati^Sln^^^ whole-^uo«e^-45£egtea3L^ "He^fixed^the

ei^d^e-ingfceTfalisT^

esehatalog^,; he laid the foundations of that rigid view of human depravity and of divine grace and predestination which issued in Calvinism. But more far reaching still was the new turn he gave to the doctrine of the Trinity, by which the way was opened for the Sabellianizing tendencies which have infected Western theology to this day. To.

Fathers, as has. gp..of ten been done, is to entirely misunderstand^ him, as well as the general relation of the Greek and Latin churches in the fifth century. In Augustine's jj^-^the-'Western" ^Empire was breaking m^ej3£^.and.^deldiBg-to--barbarism. The Greek language and culture were dying out. ^^gustyieJu^self w^sjiota^rreek scholar* There iS^o^evidence that he ever read Athan asius or any of t he later Greek Fat hers. He never quotes fhem. His philosophical ideas were drawn from Western Neo-Platonic a nd Stoic sou rces r ather than from the pure Eastern fountains of Plato and ^Aristoile^---It -isncto-wonder, ^he&T^hat the-Greek Trinitarianism assumed a new shapejn^his hands. He^aT^oT^u^ersfanST its metaphysics or its terminology. Besides, he had little respect in general for Greek theology. He refers to Athanasius in terms of admiration as a hero of the faith, but he treats Origen, the greatest and most influential thinker of the ancient Greek church, as a heretic. Thus the history of Trinitarianism divides itself into two distinct chapters, -V the Greek Athanasian, and the Latin Augustiman. | This chapter will deal with the former. 7

Athanasianism has its roots in the New Testament, and behind the New Testament is the Old. Here, then, our survey must begin. The Old Testament is strictly monotheistic. God is a single personal being. The idea that a trinity is to be found there, or even is in any way shadowed forth, is an assumption that has long had sway in theology, but is utterly without foundation. The Jews, as a people, under its teachings became stern opponents of all polytheistic tendencies, and they have remained unflinching monotheists to this day. On this point there is no break between the Old Testament and the New. The monotheistic tradition is continued. Jesus was a Jew, trained by Jewish parents in the Old Testament scriptures. His teaching was Jewish to the core ; a new gospel indeed, but not a new theology. He declared that he came " not to destroy the law and the prophets, but to fulfill " them, and he accepted as his own belief the great text of Jewish monotheism : " Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one God." His proclamation concerning himself was in the line of Old Testament prophecy. He was the

" Messiah " of the promised kingdom, the " Son of Man " of Jewish hope. In all Christ's declarations concerning himself, as given in those Synoptic gospels, which contain the earliest traditional accounts of his teaching, there is a marked reticence as to his person. If he sometimes asked : " Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am ? " he gave no answer himself beyond the implied assertion of his Messiahship. There is no hint anywhere of a pre-incarnate life, or of a supernatural birth, or of a divine incarnation. He calls God his Father, but he also teaches that God is the Father of all, and gives his disciples the Pater Noster. Certainly Christ had a clear consciousness of his own intimate moral relationship with God, but there is no evidence that the idea of a peculiar metaphysical union with God ever entered his mind. At least it did not appear in his synoptic teaching. The period of nearly a generation between Christ and Paul is one in which we are dependent on the oral traditions that circulated among the original disciples. These traditions were subsequently gathered together in various gospels, of which the three Synoptic gospels have survived. These gospels in their present shape are much later than Paul, but they contain traditions that plainly go back to the time of Christ himself, and thus antedate the period in which Paul wrote his epistles. There are also in these gospels additions that as clearly belong to a later time, and it has been the important task of historical criticism to distinguish the original traditions from the later additions. Of the writings of our New Testament the epistles of Paul are the earliest in date. The First Epistle of Peter, if genuine, as it seems to be, comes next. The authorship of all the remaining portions is wholly uncertain, and the dates are plainly considerably later. Latest of all are the gospel and epistles which were attributed in subsequent times to the Apostle John. Of the much disputed question as to their Johannine authorship I shall speak later. 1 Enough to say now that the whole course and result of historical criticism has been to show that the traditional view is without any sufficient historical foundation. The fourth Gospel is undoubtedly a writing of about the middle of the second century, and the author is entirely unknown. It should also be noted that the earliest manuscript texts of the New Testament, as we have it, are as late at least as the fourth or fifth century, and that it is therefore impossible to know exactly what interpolations or additions had already crept into the original texts, though certain criteria, such as other versions and the writings of the early Fathers, afford some grounds of critical judgment. With this critical explanation, we take the New Testament writings as we find them, and ask what evidence they give us on the question of the evolution of the dogma of the Trinity. The earliest stratum of this evolution is contained in the Book

1 See, for a full discussion of this question in its historical aspects, Appendix A : — " The Johannine Problem."

of Acts, and in the Synoptic gospels, with the exception of the opening chapters of Matthew and of Luke, which are later additions, as we shall see further on. The doctrine of Christ in this first stratum is distinctly that of Messiahskip. Jesus is a man of God, sent of God to declare his gospel and exhort men to prepare for the kingdom of heaven which is at hand. There is no assertion of Christ's divinity, or of his preexistence and incarnation, or even of his miraculous birth. Jesus is everywhere described as the son of Joseph and Mary. The Book of Acts is here of primary importance. Although it evidently contains quite a large element of legend, it is equally evident that many of its accounts belong to the earliest apostolic traditions. Even when compared with the Synoptic gospels it breathes an air of historical freshness and naturalness, as if a genuine growth of the original soil. The whole picture of the Acts is that of a human Messiah, glorified by a divine mission. I have already referred to Christ's own account of himself as recorded in the Synoptic gospels. It is essentially*that of the Acts. There is one feature, however, of the narrative which is common both to Gospels and Acts, that should be noticed. I refer to the miracles. It is a mistake to suppose that the miracles were a proof or intended to be a proof of Christ's divinity. The Bible contains many miracles supposed to be wrought by men. Christ's disciples also wrought miracles. The Acts contain explicit accounts of miracles performed by Peter and Paul. Such miracles were regarded as proofs of the power given by God to his servants, not as proof that any worker of them was himself divine. Belief in such miraculous power was universal in the ancient world.

The second stratum of evolution in the New Testament is found in the opening chapters of Matthew and Luke. These chapters bear on their very face the plain marks of forming a later addition. In the first place, they are historically inconsistent with the rest of the gospels. They represent Jesus as born in Bethlehem, while all the other portions, not only of Matthew and Luke, but also of the entire New Testament, make no allusion to Bethlehem as the birthplace of Jesus, and speak of him everywhere as of Nazareth, implying that he was born there. In the second place, the genealogies in these opening chapters are inconsistent with the rest of the chapters themselves. They were written to show that Jesus was the true Messiah of Jewish prophecy, who was expected to come in the Davidic line ; and this line ran through Joseph, who was thus made the natural as well as putative father of Jesus. The concluding parts of these genealogies, in which Joseph is referred to, bear marks of interpolation and change, and the altered readings nullify the very object for which the genealogies were prepared. The grossly uncritical character of that age is here conspicuous. With the purpose of harmonizing a new legendary tradition that has grown up around

Christ's birth and infancy with the older genealogy, this rude alteration of the text is resorted to. The ancient Syriac manuscript of the gospels, recently discovered by Mrs. Lewis at Mt. Sinai, 1 sheds a

1 The most recent investigations tend to prove the very early date of the Sinaitic Syriac manuscript, and its critical value and authority in establishing the original text of the gospels. Since this book was completed the first installment of an article of great critical importance has been published in The American Journal of Theology, January, 1900, on The History of the New Testament Canon in the Syriac Churchj by J. A. Brewer. In the absence of external evidence the writer shows on internal grounds, by a thorough analysis and comparison of the several known Syriac versions, that the Sinaitic version is the earliest of all, which fixes its date as early as " the middle of the second century," He also concludes that this version is based on a Greek original, and that this original text is distinct from the Greek texts underlying the other Syriac versions ; which gives the remarkable result that behind the Sinaitic Syriac version is to be found the earliest known Greek text of the gospels. I quote the critic's general conclusion on this point. " Unless other finds show the contrary, Ss in its original form was the first translation to which we can point with historic certainty. The extraordinary value of Ss for text-critical purposes has at once been recognized. It seems to stand on the same level of authority as S and B. Merx places it even higher. Whether that, however, can be maintained, time will show. But the fact that Ss was written before T (Tatian's Diatessaron) puts it into the middle of the second century, to which the entire text bears witness ; and that places it in the front rank of the witnesses for the original Greek text of the gospels."

In the course of the investigation special attention is given to Matt. i. 16, 19-25, and the writer shows by a close comparison of the different versions that the Sinaitic Syriac version, which, as we have stated above, declares the real paternity of Joseph, represents the original form of the Greek text, and that the process of textual change was from the paternity of Joseph, which was necessary to prove the genealogical descent of Christ from David, to an interpolation which avoided such paternity in the interest of a miraculous virgin birth. Thus the most advanced scholarship sustains what the natural law of historical evolution remarkable light on this point. In that manuscript, Matthew i. 16, the verse that concludes the genealogy reads thus : " Joseph, to whom was betrothed the Virgin Mary, begat Jesus who is called Christ." Here is a plain trace of the original text, though later tradition has already begun to alter it by inserting the virginity of Mary, so that the two parts of the verse when compared in the light of the context involve a palpable contradiction. The Greek text, as we have it, seems to have suffered another alteration along the same line : " Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus who is called Christ." Here the paternity of Jesus is left implicitly undecided, though what follows shows what was intended to be inferred. The genealogy given in Luke has a similar curious addition to what must have been the original text, "And Jesus himself, when he began to teach, was about

and the facts of history itself, so far as they are known, unite in declaring. The earliest Greek texts that have survived are the Vatican and Sinaitic manuscripts (B, S) which cannot he earlier than the fourth century. It is a fact worthy of note that Justin Martyr, while holding to the miraculous virgin hirth, quoting Luke i. 32, and Matt. i. 21, makes no allusion to Matt. i. 16, as he surely would have done, had it been in the form which ignores Joseph's paternity. The same is true of Origen. The only ante- Nicene Father, so far as I am aware, who quotes the passage as we now read it, is Tertullian (De Came Ckristi, c. xx.). When we realize how fluxive and unsettled the text of the gospels still was, it can he readily seen that the text of Tertullian in North Africa might he quite different from that of Justin Martyr in Syria or of Origen in Alexandria. But the point especially to he noted is that the Greek text which lies behind the Sinaitic Syriac version seems to be more than a half century earlier than Tertullian.

thirty years old, being the son (as was supposed) of Joseph." How the phrase "as was supposed" got in is easily explained. The original object of the genealogy was to carry the line of descent directly back through Joseph to David. When the theory of a miraculous birth from a virgin had gained currency, "as was supposed" was apparently inserted to cover the difficulty. In any case, the real inconsistency between the plain object of the genealogies and the later theory of the virgin birth remains conspicuous, and shows that the opening chapters of Matthew and Luke, in their present shape, are later additions to the original gospels. Scholars are to-day generally agreed in making Mark the earliest gospel. That Gospel has no account of Christ's birth or infancy, but begins with his public ministry. Such, no doubt, was the original point of departure of Matthew and Luke. But when tradition and legend had begun to grow around Christ's earlier years, the opening chapters were prefixed to these gospels.

The new theory advanced in these chapters concerning Christ is that of his true human nature on his mother's side, coupled with a superhuman miraculous birth through the agency of the Holy Ghost, thus making Christ a sort of demi-god. This theory of the miraculous conception and birth does not appear in any other portion of the New Testament, and plainly belongs chronologically to a later date. Outside of the New Testament it first certainly appears about the middle of the second century in the writings of Justin Martyr, 1 and is made to rest by him solely on the Emmanuel passage in the seventh chapter of Isaiah, of which it is supposed to be a distinct fulfillment, — a point borrowed from Matthew i. 22, 23. The passage in Isaiah has plain reference to events occurring in the prophet's own day, but was by the early Christians regarded as a direct messianic prediction. The prophet declared that a marriageable young woman would shortly bear a son who, as a sign of the fulfillment of the prophecy, would be called Emmanuel. In the Septuagint Greek version, which was universally used by the Greek-speaking Jews of Christ's day and after, the Hebrew word for " marriageable young woman " was translated " a virgin," and this mistaken translation was made the basis of the theory of the miraculous birth. It is a fact which bears directly on the question of the comparative lateness of this tradition, that Justin Martyr is the first of the post-apostolic Fathers to quote the accounts of the miraculous birth from Matthew and Luke, and he plainly follows the account in Matthew, in making that event a fulfillment of an

1 It may be asked what I do with the references in the Ignatian epistles to the virginity of Mary. I answer that most of these references are in the longer recension which is allowed by Lightf oot and scholars generally to be largely interpolated and to belong to a later age. As to the one or two allusions to the subject in the shorter recension, I am convinced that the shorter epistles are not free from interpolations, and on the whole I accept the judgment of Neander that no use can be made of them on any donbtf al question of early church history.

Old Tastament prediction. Justin Martyr's whole argument against the Jew Trypho for Christ's miraculous birth indicates that it was a question under discussion among Christians as well as among their Jewish opponents, and he allows that " there are some who admit that he is Christ, while holding him to be man of men, with whom I do not agree." This was the position of Trypho himself, who was made by Justin to represent the Jews of his day : " We all expect that the Messiah will be a man born of men." When we consider that this is the first time that the question is raised and discussed in the historical remains of the post-apostolic Fathers, and that the opening chapters of Matthew and Luke are in this discussion first introduced in defense of the miraculous birth, the conclusion is well-nigh irresistible that these chapters were a late addition to the gospels. At all events, the whole story of the virginity of Mary and of her conception by the Holy Ghost is purely legendary, as is shown by the fact that it is closely connected with other legendary traditions, and cannot be separated from them. The account of the angels announcing by songs to shepherds the birth of Jesus, that of the Magi and the star in the east, the massacre of the little children by Herod, the flight into Egypt, are without any historical basis. They belong to a later time when legend had begun its work around the facts of Christ's early life, the results of which are seen in the so-called apocryphal gospels and acts of apostles and discipies.

There is a whole volume extant of these legendary writings in which Jesus and Mary are the principal actors. The childhood of Christ is filled with marvels. But the legendary history of Mary has the most remarkable growth. Her birth, like that of her son, becomes miraculous and immaculate, and she herself is elevated into a sort of divinity, and the way is thus prepared for the cultus of the Virgin Mary in the Catholic Church. The opening chapters of Matthew and Luke are simply extracts from such apocryphal narratives. The legendary accounts of these chapters are quite independent of each other and wholly irreconcilable with each other, as is evident at once when they are compared. It is true that there are still biblical scholars who attempt to defend the historicity and harmony of these accounts. But such attempts are worse than vain, and I need not dwell on them. Legend has always played a prominent part in history and biography, especially in uncritical times. Ancient literature is full of similar legends, having their background in the mythologies of primeval ages. Gods and goddesses were fathers and mothers of many a legendary hero, and a halo of supernatural birth and ancestry soon surrounded historical men of renown. Buddha was a real historical personage, but later legend made his birth miraculous from a virgin mother. The same legendary element appears in the life of Zoroaster, the ancient Persian sage. Even Plato did not escape a partial divinization. Later Greek tradition made his father the god Apollo. Nor did this superstition of miraculous human births, through a divine parentage, cease with the advent of Christianity. The famous " Secret History " attributed to Procopius informs us that the mother of Justinian declared that his father was a demon.

I have introduced this stage of trinitarian evolution, in which Christ's miraculous, superhuman birth is set forth, as the second stratum of development, because it logically belongs here. It is a direct evolution of the Palestinian synoptic tradition, and is based on the Messiahship of Jesus as set forth in the Acts and in the Synoptic gospels. It was natural, therefore, that the chapters which contain this new dogma should be prefixed to Matthew and Luke. They are distinguishable from the remaining portions of these gospels in this, that they illustrate the growing disposition to find proofs of Jesus' Messiahship in the Old Testament; and it was thus from certain supposed messianic predictions in the later prophets that the unhistorical tradition of Christ's miraculous birth in Bethlehem was derived. The opening chapters of Matthew make this event to be the direct fulfillment of Isaiah vii. 14 and of Micah v. 2 ; and it is important to note that Justin Martyr gives no other ground for his acceptance of the dogma of the miraculous birth than the one given in Matthew, and that Origen, the most learned of the early Christian Fathers, defends it against the objections of Celsus on the same ground. Origen was scholar enough to know that the Hebrew word translated " virgin " in the Septuagint version did not necessarily mean virgin, but he insisted that such was the meaning in the passage, assuming the divine inspiration of the prophet to predict the exact circumstances of the birth of the Messiah whose advent was to be several centuries later, and also assuming that the miraculous birth of Jesus from a virgin in Bethlehem was a historical fact. Thus it plainly appears that the idea of the miraculous birth did not come from Alexandrian Greek sources, but is of Jewish Palestinian origin, though not necessarily from Jewish Christians. This helps to explain the entire absence of the tradition from the fourth Gospel. A divine incarnation and a miraculous birth have no necessary connection, though later Christian theology brought them together. It is a notable fact that they are kept wholly apart in the New Testament. There is no incarnation in the opening chapters of Matthew and Luke, and there is no miraculous birth from a virgin in any other part of the New Testament.

But while this dogma holds its place logically as closely following the messianic doctrine of the Synoptic gospels, it must not be inferred that it chronologically follows these gospels in the historical evolution of Christian literature and thought. The exact date of the opening chapters of Matthew and Luke cannot be given, but there is little doubt that they belong to a period subsequent to that of all the other New Testament writings. The onlyquestion would be as to the fourth Gospel. But that gospel knows nothing of the miraculous birth in Bethlehem or of the virginity of Mary. Joseph is the reputed father of Jesus, and Nazareth is supposed to be the place where he was born, as is shown in the argument of the Jews against the claim that Jesus was the Messiah. " But some said : What ! doth the Christ come out of Galilee ? Hath not the scripture said that the Christ Cometh of the seed of David, and from Bethlehem, the village where David was ? " (John vii. 41, 42.) In this argument the implied minor premise is that Jesus was in fact born in Nazareth. How then could he be the true Messiah ! It is to be ' noted that not the slightest doubt is expressed on that point, showing again how late must have been the introduction into the Christian tradition of the legend of the miraculous birth in Bethlehem. This does not make the priority of the fourth Gospel to the opening chapters of Matthew and Luke certain, but, so far as the evidence goes, it points directly that way.

The third stratum of trinitarian evolution is marked by the intrusion of Greek philosophical thought into the Jewish Palestinian. The first two strata belong to Palestinian Aramaic soil, but the third stratum, which is introduced by the Epistles of Paul and the Epistle to the Hebrews, is of Alexandrian Greek origin and character, Paul was a Jew, and trained in Jewish schools ; but he also had a Greek education, and his epistles bear plain marks of his acquaintance with Greek philosophic literature. It is an interesting question whether he had actually read the writings of the Alexandrian Jewish Philo. This cannot be conclusively proved, but there are some remarkable coincidences of thought and expression between the two writers. At all events, it must be conceded that Paul was at home in the atmosphere of Phi- Ionic thought, and we may be quite sure that he owed the real starting-point of his new theological departure indirectly if not directly to Philo himself ; for his doctrine of Christ as a fi&rCn^ (mediator) between God and men, with all its metaphysical results, is an integral feature of the Philonic Logos doctrine. The very term /aco-it^s, which first appears in Paul among Christian writers, was used by Philo again and again. The Epistle to the Hebrews gives equally clear evidence of Alexandrian and Philonic relationship. It is a most remarkable and significant fact that /ico-it^$, in the special sense of a metaphysical go-between or mediator between God and mankind, is found only in Philo, Paul, and the Epistle to the Hebrews.