Tertullian holds from Against (Adv.) Praxeas that: This one only God has also a Son, His Word, who proceeded from Himself, by whom all things were made...All are of one, by unity (that is) of substance; while the mystery of the dispensation is still guarded, which distributes the Unity into a Trinity, placing in their order the three Persons- the Father, the Son and the Holy [Spirit]: three however, not in condition but in degree; not in substance but in form; not in power but in aspect; yet of one substance, and of one condition, and of one power inasmuch as He is One God, from whom these degrees and forms and aspects are reckoned, under the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy [Spirit]... (II); Tertullian also says that the Father raised the Son from the dead (II). Thus Tertullian makes important distinctions in the interrelationship of the three entities, which are aspects of the operation of God in degree. The Son and the Spirit are processions from the Father and subordinate aspects of His manifestation. Tertullian gave the Trinity a numerical order and distribution (III). He also held that the Monarchy of God came from the Father (III), but that it was equally the Sons, being held by both (III) yet committed to the Son by the Father (IV). Tertullian held that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father through the Son. Tertullian also held (IV) that the Father and the Son are two separate persons. Thus it might be asserted that true Binitarianism commenced with Tertullian. He who subjected (all things) and He to whom they were subjected - must necessarily be two different Beings (ibid.). However, Tertullian says at Chapter V that before all things God was alone. For before all things God was alone - being in Himself and for Himself universe, and space, and all things. Moreover He was alone, because there was nothing external to Him but Himself. The fact that He possessed Reason made him in fact not alone and Tertullian holds that this faculty of Reason termed by the Greeks logos, was the faculty from the beginning which was more correctly reason rather than word as He had reason but did not speak. Thus Tertullian makes the distinction that Christ is the reason of God and that this reason must have been instantiated in the Divine essence from the beginning. The argument is open to various objections. The first error is that Christ was the entire aspect of Word and Wisdom and not just a manifestation of those aspects. Thus he was Logos as part of The Logon (for development see the paper Early Theology of the Godhead (No. 127) and others listed). The logos that appeared to man was Christ. If Christ was with God before the beginning – as Tertullian states that God had reason even before the beginning – then Christ is an attribute of God which is capable of distribution but is incapable of isolation to a single entity. It is absurd to suggest that Christ apart from God renders God without reason or Wisdom and hence not God. Christ was the beginning of the creation of God (Rev. 3:14). We are thus identifying the beginning as understood by the early theologians as the beginning of creation, which began time. Tertullian holds that only God existed before the beginning in his abiding perpetuity (V), distinct from and greater than the Son (IX) who is both Word and Wisdom (VI). God did not become Father until after the creation of the Word (VII) to effect the creation (Adv. Hermog. 3). God the Father thus stood outside of time and all other beings did not. Only He is the Supreme God. The N.C.E. states that: By the middle of the 3[r]d century, as one may see reflected in Novatians treatise De Trinitate, the Roman Church, originally cool towards this stress on otherness and plurality, had come to incorporate Tertullians main insights. Novatian, moreover, insists (ch. 31) quite frankly on the unequivocal eternity of father and sonship in the Godhead. (op. cit., p. 297) As can be seen above, the later teachings, while incorporating some of Tertullians sentiments, became based on Novatians (alleged) concept of co-eternality in opposition to the express words of Tertullian. Thus the dogma was a hybrid construction of the third-century Church. It was not based upon the biblical narrative but upon gradually developing faulty theology. The comments above indicate that the authorities are incorrectly cited, totally reversing the meaning of the texts – which seemingly indicates selected readings. The Eastern school, centred on Alexandria and writing close to the time of Hippolytus and Tertullian, had incorporated the teaching of the Son as a generation of the Father, commencing with Clement (above). But Clement was subordinationist, as were all the early theologians. Clements successor was Origen. We see from this sequence that the doctrine of the co-eternality of Christ is the teaching of Novatian (ca. 250). The quote above by the N.C.E. regarding the position of the co-eternality of Father and son in the Godhead is perhaps an overstatement. Kelly holds that Novatian was more archaic than Hippolytus and Tertullian, whose influence he reflected. He held that the One and only Godhead is the Father, the author and sustainer of all reality (De Trin. 31). Nevertheless, from Him, when He willed it, was born a Son, His Word ... being a second person after the Father. He does not tie the generation of Son to creation. He alleges that the Father was always Father and, hence, He must always have had a Son. This concept was developed from the view that Christ existed substantially before the foundation of the world (De Trin. 16). The limitation appears to be Novatian’s view of the foundation of the world as the beginning of creation. In this sense, Christ existed before such creation. However, there were two aspects of the creation: the physical and the spiritual. In this sense, Novatian does not understand the Old Testament relationships of the sons of God and hence his theology is flawed. This is invariably the case with Binitarians as well as Trinitarians. However, his position seems to deny any aspect of co-equality, which is more in keeping with the modern Binitarians than with the Trinitarians. This quasi-Trinitarian view is now espoused as seemingly biblical doctrine yet it was not held until Novatian. Novatianists also caused a schism in the Church because of their attitude to those who lapsed in the Decian persecution (Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, pp. 204, 436ff.).
Posted on: Sun, 09 Mar 2014 23:02:27 +0000
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