The  centuries following the apostolic era record a wrestling with and clarification of the data presented by the New Testament rather than a distortion of it. Although early fathers such as Irenaeus (c.115-202 AD), Tertullian (c.160-220 AD), and Origen (c.185-254 AD) did not have at their disposal the linguistic resources available to later thinkers, they did the best with the tools they had to defend the apostolic witness against heresy. It was Tertullian, in his battle against modalism, who first used the word Trinity (Latin trinitas) and such terms as substance (Latin substantia) and person (Latin persona ) in an attempt to articulate the relationships among the distinct Three included within the identity of the One, coining “a new vocabulary, a lasting legacy to the Western church” (Robert Letham, The Holy Trinity, 98).

Origen made his case against the Marcionites. Even though Origen is arguably the early church father most influenced by pagan thought, he nonetheless discerned in the biblical witness that the Son was a distinct hypostasis (individual reality) whose generation was “according to God’s own nature and eternally (not in time), having no beginning other than in God” (Letham, 102). Origen maintained that “there was not when he was not” thus acknowledging the Son's eternality and identity with the Godhead (Letham, 107). Irenaeus fought against Valentinian Gnosticism and affirmed the three articles of the rule of faith that had been firmly embedded in the liturgy of baptism:

God, the Father, uncreated, uncontainable, invisible, one God, the Creator of all…. [And] the Word of God, the Son of God, Christ Jesus our Lord…by whom all things were made, and who… became a man amongst men visible and palpable, in order to abolish death, to demonstrate life, and to effect communion between God and man…. [And] the Holy Spirit, through whom the prophets prophesied and the patriarchs learnt the things of God and the righteous were led in the paths of righteousness, and who, in the last times, was poured out in a new fashion upon the human race renewing man, throughout the world, to God (St. Irenaeus of Lyons, On the Apostolic Preaching, 1997, 43-45). [Notice the use of the personal pronouns "whom" and "who" when referring to the Son and the Spirit, revealing Irenaeus' presupposition of the personality of each].

Irenaeus was echoing Justin Martyr (c.103-165 AD) who had previously claimed that baptism was "in the name of God the Father and master of all...Jesus Christ, Who was crucified under Pontius Pilate...and the Holy Spirit, Who foretold by the prophets the whole story of Jesus" (First Apology, 61, 10-13, quoted in J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, Fifth Ed., 89). [Notice Justin's facile inclusion of both Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit within the "name" of God, revealing his assumption of their deity].

J. N. D. Kelly suggests that we find within these early liturgical triadic formulations evidence of the continuing faithfulness of the early church to the triadic conceptions of the one God found in the New Testament centuries before the Trinity was “formally ratified” at Nicaea: “The ideas implicit in these early catechetical and liturgical formulae, as in the New Testament writers’ use of the same dyadic and triadic patterns, represent a pre-reflective, pre-theological phase of Christian belief” (Early Christian Doctrines, 90). It would be the task of the future great thinkers of the church to recognize the inherent validity of these informal expressions of New Testament faith and to put theological meat on the bones.

Therefore, during this period of time between the beginning of the second century and the end of the third, the early Christian theologians, apologists, and pastors, although separated by both miles and decades, consistently saw in the apostolic witness a triune God. Far from distorting this witness, they trained their intellectual guns against those who were doing exactly that. One might say that the trinitarian beachhead was secured by the apostles and preachers of the New Testament period and that the post-apostolic advance against heresy moved steadily forward in the following two centuries, ever learning and refining its weapons, until the final battle and decisive victory at Nicaea in 325 A.D. (although the clean-up operation against fierce underground resistance would continue for another fifty years). Not surprisingly, this confrontation was spawned by yet another heresy: Arianism. We will consider this critical turning point in church history in our next article.

Blessings,

Arnie Gentile

                                       
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