Program / Course 8: God, Trinity, and Creation / Lesson 3.3
What you will learn
- Describe how Justin Martyr, Irenaeus and Tertullian each spoke of Father, Son and Spirit.
- Explain Irenaeus’s picture of the Son and Spirit as the two hands of God.
- Identify Tertullian’s contribution of the Latin terms trinitas, persona and substantia.
- Recognize where their language was later judged incomplete or misleading.
The big idea
In the second and early third centuries Christian writers had no settled vocabulary for the Trinity. They used images, borrowed words and Scripture to say that the Father, the Son and the Spirit are distinct and yet that God is one. Justin, Irenaeus and Tertullian made real progress, and later councils built on them. Some of their phrases, taken alone, sound as if the Son is lesser than the Father, and later generations had to ask what they meant.
Key terms
- Apologist
- A Christian writer who defended the faith to outsiders, such as Justin Martyr.
- Rule of faith
- A short summary of the apostolic teaching used by early churches to read Scripture and to test teachers.
- Economy (oikonomia)
- A Greek word for management or plan. Early writers used it for God’s ordering of salvation through Father, Son and Spirit.
- Gnosticism
- A group of second-century movements that taught that salvation comes through secret knowledge and that the material world is the work of a lesser, flawed being.
- Persona
- A Latin word for a mask worn by an actor or a role. Tertullian used it for each of the three in God.
- Substantia
- A Latin word meaning substance, what a thing is made of. Tertullian used it for what the three share.
- Logos theology
- Thinking about the Son as the Word, who is with God from the beginning and through whom the world was made.
- Montanism
- A prophetic movement of the second century that stressed new revelation by the Spirit. Tertullian joined it later in life.
Background
In the first two centuries after Christ, believers said the Father, Son and Spirit in baptism, worship and the rule of faith, but there was no technical language for it. Writers had to make their own. They drew on Scripture, on the Greek idea of the Logos found in John, and on philosophy. They also had to fight on two sides. Some pagan critics said Christians worshiped two or three gods. Some Christians said Jesus was only a man, and others said that Father, Son and Spirit were only three names for one actor.
Justin Martyr, who taught in Rome and was executed around 165, is the first major apologist. Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon in the late second century, wrote against Gnostic teachers and defended the unity of the God of creation and the God of salvation. Tertullian, a lawyer-turned-theologian in Carthage around 200, wrote in Latin and shaped the vocabulary of Western theology. Their writings survive in whole or in part, and they can be read and compared with care.
None of these writers was a modern theologian. They were bishops, teachers and controversialists who used the best language they had. Some of their phrases sound unclear to later readers because they were written before the later questions had been asked. A fair reading takes this into account, and so does not judge them by standards they could not have known.
Step-by-step explanation
Step 1: Justin Martyr
Justin wrote in the middle of the second century to explain Christianity to a Roman audience. He taught that the Son is the Logos, the reason or Word of God, who was with God before creation and appeared to the patriarchs and prophets. In his Dialogue with Trypho, a conversation with a Jewish man, he argued that the Old Testament speaks of two who are called Lord, and found proof in texts like Genesis 19, where the Lord rains fire from the Lord out of heaven.
Justin used the image of fire kindled from fire without lessening the first fire, to show that the Son comes from the Father without dividing him. He worshiped the Son and the Spirit, but his language places the Son in second place and the Spirit in third (First Apology, chapter 13). Some scholars read this as an order of rank. Others read it as an order of presentation. The writings alone do not settle the point.
Step 2: Irenaeus
Irenaeus held that the one God made all things himself, through his Word and his Wisdom, whom he called the two hands of God. The Son and the Spirit are not servants or angels but God’s own presence and action. This ruled out the Gnostic idea of a lesser creator, and it kept the unity of the Old Testament God and the Father of Jesus Christ. Irenaeus also taught that the Son reveals the Father, who is invisible, saying that the Father is the invisible of the Son and the Son is the visible of the Father (Against Heresies IV.6.6).
Irenaeus gave less attention to explaining how the three are one. His interest was in the economy, the way God acts to save through the Son in the power of the Spirit. His rule of faith speaks of one God the Father almighty, one Christ Jesus the Son of God and the Holy Spirit. He thought it better to confess what God has revealed than to ask how God is in himself, and he warned against over-curious speculation.
Step 3: Tertullian
Tertullian wrote Against Praxeas around 213, to answer teachers who said that the Father himself became incarnate and suffered. He is the first writer we know to use the Latin word trinitas for the three, and he said that there is one substance in three persons: una substantia, tres personae. In Latin law persona could mean a party in a case, and in the theater a role. He used it for a real distinction, so that the Father, the Son and the Spirit are three who are really different and yet are of one substance, one status and one power.
He also used the image of a root, a shoot and a fruit, or a spring, a river and a stream, to show how three can be of one stuff. And he said that the Father is the whole substance while the Son is derived from it and is a portion of the whole, which sounds like division. Later readers have debated whether he held that the Son was subordinate in rank or only in order of origin.
Step 4: What the later church kept and corrected
The later church kept much from these writers. Tertullian’s formula became the standard Latin expression. Irenaeus’s refusal to separate the Creator from the Redeemer was permanent. Justin’s use of the Logos was the starting point for the Nicene creed’s language of the Word of God.
Some phrases were corrected. The idea that the Son became Son only when he was spoken forth for creation, found in some second-century writers, was rejected later because it suggested that the Son was not eternal. And language that placed the Son beneath the Father in being, not only in origin, was ruled out at Nicaea. Whether the earlier writers meant these things is argued. The next lesson takes up this problem.
- Which of the three writers speaks most helpfully to me, and why?
- Why might a writer prefer to describe God’s acts rather than God’s inner life?
- How do the images of fire, hands and root help or mislead?
- How should I read an early writer whose words could be taken in two ways?
- Why did Tertullian choose legal and theatrical words?
- What does it mean to say the church keeps the language of earlier writers while correcting it?
Examples
Fire from fire
Justin says that a fire lit from another fire is not less for having given light. The first fire remains the same while the second is a true fire. He used this to say that the Son comes from the Father without making the Father less.
Two hands
Irenaeus describes the Word and Wisdom as the hands with which God made the world, so that God does not need angels or a lesser creator. The image says that God acts directly, and that Son and Spirit belong to God’s own life.
Una substantia, tres personae
Tertullian’s phrase later became the standard Latin summary of the Trinity. In his own time persona had a legal meaning. Many scholars warn that it did not mean person in the modern sense of an individual self.
Different perspectives
Catholic
Catholic theologians regard these writers as witnesses of the apostolic faith, though not of equal authority to the councils. Tertullian’s contribution is named in standard histories as foundational. His later Montanism means he is not a saint of the Catholic Church.
Orthodox
Orthodox writers honor Justin and Irenaeus as fathers of the church. Irenaeus is a saint in the East as well as the West. Orthodox thinkers tend to prefer Irenaeus’s attention to God’s saving work over Tertullian’s Latin legal terms, but they accept his core claims.
Protestant
Protestants read them as early witnesses to the consensus before Nicaea. They are used to argue that the doctrine of the Trinity was not invented in the fourth century, though Protestants do not treat them as authorities alongside Scripture.
Critical scholarship
J. N. D. Kelly and other historians note that these writers sometimes speak of the Son in ways that sound subordinate, and that they do not always see the problems later raised by Arius. Some scholars speak of pre-Nicene subordinationism, while others reply that the label is anachronistic. The debate concerns how to read them without imposing later categories.
Why it matters
These writers show that the Trinitarian faith did not begin at Nicaea. They also show that it was not formed in a vacuum. The language was made in the course of defending baptism, worship and Scripture against real opponents. Seeing the earliest words in their setting helps a student understand why the later councils chose the words they did and why they sometimes had to refine what earlier writers had said.
Common misunderstandings
Misunderstanding: Before Nicaea, Christians did not believe in the Trinity.
Correction: They baptized in the threefold name and prayed to the Father, Son and Spirit. What was lacking was the technical vocabulary and a settled answer to the later questions. The belief and the practice were present.
Misunderstanding: Tertullian used person in the modern sense.
Correction: He used the Latin persona, which had meanings in law and theater. Most scholars say it meant a distinct someone, not a separate center of consciousness in the modern sense. The question of how to translate it is still discussed.
Misunderstanding: The pre-Nicene writers all agreed on everything.
Correction: They did not. They had different emphases and different weaknesses. Scholars compare them to see development, not to prove that all spoke in one voice.
Misunderstanding: Irenaeus was uninterested in the Trinity.
Correction: He was deeply interested in God’s saving action through Son and Spirit. He did not write a treatise on the inner life of God, but he gave a clear account of the three and of their unity of action.
Knowledge check
What did Irenaeus mean by the two hands of God?
He meant the Word and Wisdom, which he identified with the Son and the Spirit, by whom the one God made and fashioned all things. The image meant that God needed no angels or lesser creator, and that Son and Spirit belong to God himself and not to the creation.
What did Tertullian contribute to Trinitarian language?
He used the Latin trinitas for the three, and the formula one substance in three persons. He argued against Praxeas that Father, Son and Spirit are really distinct yet share one substance. His terms became standard in the Latin West, though they later needed refining.
Why do some modern scholars call these writers subordinationist?
Some of their language puts the Son and Spirit in second and third place, or speaks of the Son as derived from the Father in ways that sound like a lesser rank. Others reply that they meant order of origin and not inferiority of being. The question is debated.
What was the aim of Irenaeus’s writing against the Gnostics?
He wanted to show that the God who made the material world is the same God who saves through Christ. Gnostic teachers separated a flawed creator from a higher God. Irenaeus held to one God who acts through the Word and the Spirit, and he appealed to the rule of faith and apostolic tradition.
Think it through
- Which image of the Son’s relation to the Father, fire, hands or root, seems most helpful, and where does it fail?
- What is gained and what is risked by choosing a word like persona that already has other meanings?
- Why is it unfair to judge an early writer by later standards?
Independent assignment
Reading Irenaeus
In your own notebook, write about 450 words. Read the short statement of the rule of faith in Irenaeus, Against Heresies I.10. Copy the main points and compare them with the Nicene Creed. Say what is the same, what is added in the creed, and what question in the creed Irenaeus does not address. Do not send this to anyone.
Further study
- Irenaeus of Lyon, Against Heresies Read Book I, chapter 10, for the rule of faith, and Book IV, chapter 20, on the Word and Wisdom.
- Justin Martyr, The First Apology Read chapters 13 and 61 to 67 for his account of worship and baptism.
- Tertullian, The Prescription Against Heretics A short work on heresy, useful for Tertullian’s appeal to the rule of faith.
- J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines Read the chapters on the pre-Nicene period.
- J. B. Lightfoot, ed., The Apostolic Fathers Read for the earlier background in the first and second centuries.
- Genesis 19:24 The Lord rained fire from the Lord, a text Justin used.
- John 1:3 All things were made by him.
- John 10:30 I and my Father are one.