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VIII. The Holy Trinity
A. The Doctrine of the Trinity in History.
The doctrine of the Trinity has always bristled with difficulties, and therefore it is no wonder
that the Church in its attempt to formulate it was repeatedly tempted to rationalize it and to
give a construction of it which failed to do justice to the Scriptural data.
1. THE PRE-REFORMATION PERIOD.
The Jews of Jesus’ days strongly emphasized the unity of
God, and this emphasis was carried over into the Christian Church. The result was that some
ruled out the personal distinctions in the Godhead altogether, and that others failed to do full
justice to the essential deity of the second and third persons of the Holy Trinity. Tertullian was
the first to use the term “Trinity” and to formulate the doctrine, but his formulation was
deficient, since it involved an unwarranted subordination of the Son to the Father. Origen went
even farther in this direction by teaching explicitly that the Son is subordinate to the Father in
respect to essence, and that the Holy Spirit is subordinate even to the Son. He detracted from
the essential deity of these two persons in the Godhead, and furnished a steppingstone to the
Arians, who denied the deity of the Son and of the Holy Spirit by representing the Son as the
first creature of the Father, and the Holy Spirit as the first creature of the Son. Thus the
consubstantiality of the Son and the Holy Spirit with the Father was sacrificed, in order to
preserve the unity of God; and the three persons of the Godhead were made to differ in rank.
The Arians still retained a semblance of the doctrine of three persons in the Godhead, but this
was sacrificed entirely by Monarchianism, partly in the interest of the unity of God and partly to
maintain the deity of the Son. Dynamic Monarchianism saw in Jesus but a man and in the Holy
Spirit a divine influence, while Modalistic Monarchianism regarded the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Spirit, merely as three modes of manifestation successively assumed by the Godhead. On
the other hand there were also some who lost sight of the unity of God to such an extent that
they landed in Tritheism. Some of the later Monophysites, such as John Ascunages and John
Philoponus, fell into this error. During the Middle Ages the Nominalist, Roscelinus, was accused
of the same error. The Church began to formulate its doctrine of the Trinity in the fourth
century. The Council of Nicea declared the Son to be co-essential with the Father (325 A.D.),
while the Council of Constantinople (381 A.D.) asserted the deity of the Holy Spirit, though not
with the same precision. As to the interrelation of the three it was officially professed that the
Son is generated by the Father, and that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.
In the East the doctrine of the Trinity found its fullest statement in the work of John of
Damascus, and in the West, in Augustine’s great work De Trinitate. The former still retains an
element of subordination, which is entirely eliminated by the latter.