The Death of God pt. 3: The Church Fathers

Regarding how the Christian Trinity descends from Aristotlean misunderstandings regarding God

The Church Fathers

The early years of the Church faced the challenge of building a Biblical theology with pagan appeal. The figures tasked with doing so are known as the Church Fathers, and were in many respects accepting of philosophy. Origen, a key Platonic sympathizer reasoned that if Jesus was the incarnation of Logos, and the love of wisdom depends on reason, than what could be more Christian than employing reason to assist with Christian belief.

Many early figures found commonalities with the dominant Platonic tradition of the time. They sympathized with Philo of Alexandria, who agreed that God created the Cosmos by his Word. The Platonic analogies concerning the Maker and the Made shed light for many on the relation between God and Christ. But it was Plotinus who inspired more than any other, whose doctrine of the One, Intellect and Soul was relied on to make sense of the Christian Trinity.

In time however sympathy would give way to enmity. For the Bible inescapably taught that truth was available only to Christ and his prophets. The way of the philosopher first fell into disrepute, and then became regarded as absolute heresy for daring to assert a relationship to God through reason, rather than by faith and revelation. References to the arrogance of philosophers are numerous throughout the Bible, and came to be relied on more as Christians became more assertive in their identity and authority.

The alliance with Aristotle

However the real roots behind the antagonism to Plato lie deeper. For the early Church was beset by bitter scriptural dispute. Clear compromises were required to present a united front to their rivals. And whenever a call required choosing between inspiration and adherence to scripture, dogma would always eventually win out in the end.

In this sense they always found an ally in Aristotle, and an enemy in Plato. For Platonic teachings championed the path of the mystic, emphasizing a hidden reading of scripture that could not always be expressed in words. It emphasized the divine nature of the individual, enabled by a hidden participation in God that placed one at a level with Christ. The Church as institution denied any such notion. Man was defined by sin, and could thereby never rise to Christ's level, and must instead look to him and the scripture as the sole source of salvation. Aristotle's discursive method and ability to bypass ambiguity in favor of placing reality into neat boxes, would serve the Fathers well in presenting a unified front.

One instance serve to highlight this distinction, a dispute more fraught by infighting and violence than any other - the Doctrine of the Trinity.

On the origins of the Trinity in Plato

The doctrine of the Trinity originates in Plato. Plato argues the soul has both a unified and divided nature in the Republic, and by extension society and God. In arguing for unification, he identifies the soul with the utmost simplicity and transcendence that Plato identifies as The One, that principle that precedes all discursive reason. However in discussing how reason must navigate conflicting desires in the world, he points to a nature that possesses more than one part, settling on three that will in time be identified with the Trinity.

This connection is made clearer in Plotinus' writings. Plotinus first states that the entirety of reality is encompassed by and participates in The One, in keeping with Plato's discussion regarding the unity of God. However he also details a hierarchial structure to reality, identifying three levels, or 'hypostases', with the higher serving as the cause for the lower. He names these hypostases, from higher to lower, the One, Intellect and Soul. As will be discussed below, confusion around defining these hypostases fuels the Trinity debate. The debate is settled only by reference to Aristotle, but erroneously for it forwards an interpretation that Plotinus never in fact stated.

On the rival interpretations of the Trinity

Tensions regarding the Trinity came to a head in 321 AD. Two hundred bishops from rival factions were bought together to resolve their scriptural disputes, being mediated by Emperor Constantine in order to restore order to the Empire.

The Sabellians, named after their leader Sabellius, emphasized the unified aspect of the Platonic God. They argued the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not separate essences, but rather three different modes, or roles of God. In this sense, God is one Being that reveals itself in different modes as perceived by the believer.

However the most dangerous heretics were the Arians, named after their leader Arius. This faction lined up most directly with Platonic ideas, and emphasized the divided aspect of the Platonic God. Arians argued Christ, the Son was distinct from the Father and subordinate, while also sharing in the nature of the Father. They identified him as the Divine Logos that was begotten by the Father before creation. Therefore the Son was a medium by which all else was created, much in line with Platonic teaching regarding The Intellect. In summary, they argued for 'homoi-ousianism', that the Son was like in essence, but not identical with the Father.

Both heretic factions differed with the Cappadocians, headed by Gregory of Nyssa, in a number of crucial aspects. Gregory argued for 'homo-ousianism', which argued that the Son was wholly identical in essence to the Father. For Gregory, it was essential that Jesus' Divine nature be preserved. He must be capable of taking on both divine and human forms while remaining all-powerful. However the Arians argued that Christ could not be fully divine, for then there would be no need to take on human nature to redeem it. They argued a human is subject to change and in doing so, must inevitably sin.

Gregory attacked his rivals, rebutting that God willingly offered his Son to sufferings of the flesh. He argued that though a human was born, he was the Word of God made flesh, revealing the meaning of 'Incarnation'. He marks his rivals for heresy, for stating the Son was not equal in nature and begotten would be to imply he was less than God. Christ must be God eternal in his very humanity, for this was the basis of man's hope for Salvation.

On the Aristotlean solution to the Trinity

The solution forwarded by Gregory relied on an Aristotlean argument regarding God's substance. For Aristotle, substance refers to the fundamental 'being', or essence of a subject. However he describes substance in two forms, with the secondary describing substance in its universal sense, and the primary substance being the particular form the subject takes, defining what makes it unique in its individual identity.

Gregory identifies the three persons of the Trinity with the 'hypostases' of Plotinus, and names each person as a primary substance sharing a common essence rooted in God. Each person therefore shares the same divinity as God. However this interpretation relies on a fundamental misreading of Plotinus. Plotinus argues that each hypostasis is unified by participation in God, but are also divided into a hierarchy by the degree to which they share in likeness to God, compared to the degree they share in unlikeness, or multiplicity.

To demonstrate further, we can use the example of a family tree. All descendants share one common ancestor, and an essence in the Smith bloodline. The Aristotlean interpretation makes no distinction between each, naming all members a Smith. The Plotinus interpretation makes distinctions based on the amount of blood they share with their common ancestor. Further descendants share in the common bloodline, while also sharing in the multiplicity of other natures.

The Nicene Creed

This doctrine would come to be crystallized in the Nicene Creed which formed the bedrock of Christian dogma for many years to come:

"We believe in one God the Father All-sovereign, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible; And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God…begotten not made, of one substance with the Father, through whom all things were made"

In the end, the Cappadocians identify Christ as possessing the same nature as God, differing in little but name. Through such a teaching they do away with the hierarchy implied in Plato. While Plato implies a procession of ever more finer realities, Aristotle favors an interpretation where only one world exists. His hierarchy is simply a surface classification of different labels.

The departure is a concession to nominalism, whereby rather than calling something by its real nature, the Father and Son are so only by name. For Plato this is a critical matter, for a divine name must share a nature with its bearer. This departure is rooted in the unwillingness to grant what the Father and Son relationship in the Trinity truly implies. A hierarchy implies a structure in which humanity may share in the nature of the divine, and grow from a Child towards the nature of the creative Father. The Cappadocians instead grant all three substances a nature that transcends human nature, making Christ wholly divine, and insisting that humanity must depend on the grace of a man with a wholly alien nature to achieve salvation.

Aftermath

Though the rival factions were branded heretics, and exiled by Constantine, the debate did not end there. Strife reigned for sixty more years across four different emperors who desperately mediated for peace. Julius, the last Platonic emperor with no interest in resolving Christian disputes, forgave the heretics and inflamed division further. Arius returned and continued the struggle for acceptance within Christian orthodoxy. His followers were defeated in 380 AD, however traces of his beliefs live on in Protestant sects to this day.

On the aftermath of the dispute, Jacob Bruckhardt perhaps expresses it best:

"It is one of the most intolerable spectacles in all history to see the Church, barely saved from persecution...wholly consumed in strenuous conflict over the relations of the three Persons of the Trinity… Christian factions tormented themselves and the letter of Scripture to produce some symbol which would make the incomprehensible comprehensible, and to give general validity to some expression of the idea. From homoousios and homoiousios ("equal" and "similar") the conflict proceeded through a hundred metamorphoses.... For the sake of this quarrel the Church made itself inwardly hollow; for the sake of orthodox dogma it suffered the inward man to be famished, and, itself demoralized, it completely forfeited its higher moral effect upon the individual."