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Maria Grace, Ph.D.

Why the struggles of the early teachers of faith to understand the interrelationships
within the Trinity continue to be of importance today

“And there is a certain image of the Trinity: the mind itself and its knowledge, that is, its progeny
and its word concerning itself, and love. These three are one and one substance.”

Augustine of Hippo “On the Trinity, Book 9”

In the heart of the Christian faith exists the belief in a Trinitarian God. This is a God

whose nature, origin, substance and activity have been questioned and misinterpreted since the

formative years of the Christian church. As a result, inherent in the Christian faith is also its

proclamation as a creed of The Triune God, expressed in the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds.

Both Creeds were born from the long struggles of the fathers of early Church to explain, define

and defend the Trinity against the attacks it received from external and internal adversaries

alike.

This essay briefly outlines the social, religious and historical context within which the

early fathers struggled to explain the Trinity and underlines the importance of their efforts for the

founding of the Christian faith and the life of the Church in its early stages. The main purpose of

this essay is to bring attention to the fact that the fathers’ struggles to define the Trinity are as

essential today in defending the essence of the Christian faith as there were in the Greco-

Roman times.

Trinitarianism emerged as a result of the early church fathers’ attempts to incorporate

worship of Jesus into the monotheistic theology of the early church. The premise of Orthodox

Christianity is based on the claim that Jesus, the crucified man from Nazareth, is the Logos
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incarnate. Logos is the divine reason that permeates all creation, making order out of chaos,

creating humans in his own image, who are creatures with a rational soul. But this premise

generated questions regarding the relationship of Logos to God. Was Logos distinct from God

or was it God? Also, was Logos created by God at some later moment or had it always existed

in God, as stated in the prologue to John’s Gospel (John 1:1)?

Such questions found expression in the views of Arius, a 4th Century Alexandrian church

elder who wrote that “there was a time that the Logos was not.” In his attempt to preserve the

monotheistic Unity of God against emerging views about the divinity of Jesus, Arius equated

Logos to Sophia (i.e., Godʼs wisdom), referring to Scripture (Proverbs 8:22), where Sophia

speaks as a creature made by God at the beginning of his acts. Logos then, as equated to

Sophia which is a creature of God, receives divinity from God but is not God. This statement

argued against the divine identity of Jesus who was worshipped by Christians as Godʼs son,

implying that Christianity was an idolatrous religion.

Ariusʼs claims raised a host of controversies, forcing the early fathers to defend Logos as

being of the same substance with that of God (i.e., “Homoousios”), call the Arian views a heresy

and all that espoused them heretics, and exclude them from the Church. The opposing views

created a schism in the Church, aligning bishops against Arianists. Among the Christian

apologists of that time were Alexander of Alexandria, Eusebius of Caesaria, and Athanasius, all

of whom defended the essence of Jesus as divine, stating that only true divinity can save

humans from death.

The ongoing debates raised concerns in the emperor Constantine who had seen the

power of Christianity to unite his vast and diverse empire. But in order for that religion to serve

his political purposes, it should first acquire a unified theology spoken through clear and concise

terms, easily learned and expressed by all Christians alike. Therefore, he assembled the
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bishops in Nicaea and demanded a definite resolution of the controversy. Constantineʼs demand

and the pressure to find a unified expression of the Christian theology culminated in the

formation of the Nicene Creed of 325 and 381.

In the Nicene Creed, the Logos incarnate is “very God of very God”, “begotten, not

made”, “of one substance with the Father”, and “there was never a time when he was not”.

Jesus is proclaimed as of the same substance as the father but also fully human, of the same

substance as ours. The language of the Creed was consistent with the New Testament, in

which God appears as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Creed also preserved the salvific nature

of the Trinity, proclaiming faith in the Godhead as the Creator of all, Jesus as the Son begotten

from the same substance as the Father who also took human form in order to redeem the

human sinful nature and reconcile it with God, and the Holy Spirit as proceeding from the Father

and the Son, being of one and the same substance with the Father and the Son.

Continued debates about the nature of Jesus as being fully divine or fully human

prompted further struggles to formulate the doctrine of the Trinity, throughout the fourth and fifth

centuries. Three Cappadocian fathers, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory Nazianzus, and Basil of

Caesarea, formulated the Trinitarian God as one divine nature in three distinct persons, thus

preserving the monotheism of the Christian religion. By defining Christ as one person in two

natures, they preserved the distinction between the Father and the Son, while affirming the full

divinity of Christ. This formulation of the Trinity that also defines the Christological nature of

Jesus is the foundation for all the subsequent theological developments in the Eastern and

Western Christian Churches. Since that time, innumerable Christians have proclaimed their faith

in the Triune God of the Nicene Creed, fought religious wars, spread missions around the globe,

and converted billions of nonbelievers into Christianity.

The proliferation of Christian numbers around the globe may be seen as an indication

that the theological integrity of Christian faith is safe from threats and that the doctrine of the
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Triune God is free from the misunderstandings and misinterpretations that erode Christianity

from within and leave it open to attacks and criticisms from without. Perhaps this is why there

are not any contemporary Apologists to advocate on behalf of the Trinitarian God using a

vocabulary that can be easily grasped by contemporary Christians and non-Christians alike.

But, in spite of the triumphal numbers of Christian believers today, the Trinitarian nature

of God remains a controversial issue within the Christian religion, which also fuels heated

debates with other systems of faith. Within Christianity, Unitarianism believes in a single

personality of God and sees Jesus from Nazareth as a prophet of God and a great human being

with possible supernatural powers but definitely not as God. Outside Christianity, the Muslims

cannot see the Monotheistic essence of the Trinity but understand it as three distinct Gods.

Within Islam, the concept of plurality within God is denial of monotheism and considered a

blasphemy, according to the revelation found in Muslim Scripture. The Qu’ran asserts the

absolute oneness of God, denying the possibility of other substances (i.e., “hypostases”) within

the Godhead, and considering Jesus as merely an apostle, also son of Mary. (See Qur’anic

references to the doctrine of Trinity in verses 4:171, 5:73, and 5:116).

Additionally, in many Christian churches today, God is not referred to as the Trinity but

as the Father, and Lord Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit is frequently referred to as the Holy

“Ghost”, which may create theological confusion in laic Christians and non-Christians, since it

evokes the popular understanding of “ghost” as the apparition of a dead person that is believed

to appear or become manifest to the living, typically as a nebulous image.

Other threats Christianity is facing today echo those of its beginning stages when it was

taking roots amid a declining Roman Empire. Today, in a capitalist empire where state and

church are separate, the Christian faith is liberally used by the state as a means of promoting

political agendas. The cult of Roman emperor has reemerged as the cult of the Celebrity,
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embodied in the personas of Hollywood actors and entertainers, financial moguls or political

luminaries. Faith in the salvific purpose of the Triune God of Christianity has been threatened by

the redemptive promises of the Self-help movement, which is a hybrid of practical psychology,

social skills training and religion without a God that extols the powers of the Personality to save

itself from itself by believing in a God created in human image.

Another threat is that of religious pluralism, which has brought about inter-religious

tensions causing religious fanaticism and psychological rigidity that alienates Christians from

God, themselves, and their fellow humans. Additionally, technology and the immediate

gratification provided by the internet have displaced the faith of many Christians, from being

rooted in the mystery of the Trinity to following Google as the path to fast knowledge in order to

numb the human fear of the unknown.

The Doctrine of the Trinity is salvific in its essence. Whether it is interpreted symbolically

or literally, It proclaims an indestructible, ever-existing, everlasting God who creates humans in

his image and who longs for humans to be drawn closer to him. In this context, the human soul

is seen as a mirror of the Triune God’s inner nature, created with the inherent promise of

salvation from sin and reunification with God. In order for God to fulfill his promise, he must

know himself as a human by incarnating as Son in the person of Jesus. As Jesus, God

descends among humans through a supernatural birth and lives among humans as the perfect

human being who is destroyed by human sin. Through his death, God-Son reconciles evil into

himself before he resurrects and returns to God-Father, thus redeeming sinfulness as inherent

in human nature (i.e.: saving humanity from its sinful nature) and leading the human soul back

to Godhead. Once God-Son is reunited with God-Father, God always still remains among

sinners as the Holy Spirit, who guides the human soul in its continuous journey of liberation from

sin, according to God’s promise to the people whom he created in his image.
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Reconnecting with the salvific nature of the Trinity and articulating it in a vocabulary

easily understood by modern Christians and non-Christians alike is paramount in today’s world.

Contemporary Christian Apologists must reach beyond the vocabulary of the early fathers and,

grasping the essence of the Trinity in metaphorical terms that transcend literal interpretations,

safeguard its salvific purpose against more misunderstandings, thus renewing the Christian faith

in a Savior God who, in the person of the resurrected Christ, brings the human soul back to a

life that never ends.