Early Efforts at Understanding the Truth of the Trinity The Heresies

The liturgies and the creeds proclaimed that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. One of the best example is an ancient creed (ca second century) that have come to be known as the apostle's creed. This was the creed that was often recited in the baptismal/initiation rites.

Baptismal Profession of Faith I believe in God the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth, And in Jesus Christ, his only Son our Lord; Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit Born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried; on the third day he rose again from the dead, ascended into heaven, where he is seated at the right had of God the Father almighty, from whence he will judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the dead and life everlasting. Amen

By the middle of the second century, Christian intellectuals who were influenced by Hellenistic philosophy began to explain what this means. They were faced with two tasks: Theological - To reflect on the faith they celebrated, in terms of its own problem, within the Church. (Faith seeking understanding) Apologetic To respond to the questions and objections raised by non-believers (Jewish monotheists, Greek polytheists, Gnostics, etc.)

The basic questions that were raised How can Christians reconcile their belief in God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit with the monotheistic biblical faith = that there is only one God. If there is only one God, how can the Son and the Holy Spirit be also God? How can God be one yet Father, Son and Holy Spirit? How are the Father, Son and Holy Spirit related? What sort of relationship exists between them?

Erroneous Doctrines During the early centuries there were ideas about the Triadic God that were erroneous. These erroneous understanding became the stimuli for the development of the Trinitarian doctrine.

Modalism (also Monarchianism) - Adherents: Noetus and Praxeas in 2nd century and Sabellius in the third century. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three modes of appearance (prosopa) of the one God. In his communication through history, this one God showed himself through three modes of revelation and dwells in our midst in three different manners, as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The one God in the aspect of creator and lawgiver is called Father, In the aspect of the redeemer he is called Son in the aspect of sanctifier and giver of eternal life, he is Spirit. [A Greek play where one person can put on several masks/character]

This heresy is able to say that it was God the Father who suffered on the cross (patripassionism) This interpretation upholds the oneness of God but does away with the Trinity which becomes a word not a reality. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three pseudonyms to the same divine reality. This heresy is the extreme by-product of the approach of the Latin Fathers. For them God is above all an absolute spirit who thinks and loves. So his supreme self-understanding is called Son, and his infinite love, the Holy Spirit.

Subordinationism The Father is the only God, so the Son and Holy Spirit are subordinate creatures. The Father is greater than the Son. The Son and Holy Spirit are not really God. The Son is like (homoiousios) God but never equal (homoosios). He is the prototype of all creature but not God.

Arius and his disciples stressed the fact that Jesus was a most perfect human being, since in him the Word had pitched its tent, and he was filled with the Holy Spirit. He reached the pinnacle of human perfection, to the point that he deserved a divine name. The Father adopted him as his Son (adoptionism). He remains subordinate because he was created or generated by the Father.

Arius' thought can be summarized as follows: 1.God is a Monad, an indivisible One. To admit another to this status would mean dividing the indivisible and destroying the notion of God. 2.The Son has a beginning and is not eternal. He is creature of God brought into existence from non-existence before creation. Arius' slogan: "There was a time when he was not."

3.Being a creature, the Son is infinitely inferior to God. Like every creature, he is limited in his knowledge of God, knowing only what God wills to reveal to him. And in principle he is liable to change and evin to sin. 4.The Son is the first and totally pre-eminent of all God's creature and the one in whom all else was made. The title of honor reflecting his pre-eminent status - Son of God and even God. Monotheism is therefore maintained by regarding the Father as the only God and by denying the divinity of the Son and Holy Spirit.

Subordinationism may be the extreme by-product of the approach of the Greek Fathers who make God the Father as the starting point in the discussion of the Trinity. According to them the Father is the source and origin of all divinity. He communicates his whole substance to the Son and the Holy Spirit. The three are consubstantial but one sole God. This view risks introducing a sort of theogony, that is a genesis of God. The Father, who is uncaused, causes the Son and makes the Holy Spirit proceed from himself. It also holds the temptation to subordinationism (the Arian heresy): the Son and the Holy Spirit would be subordinate to the Father; there would be an unequal hierarchty between three Persons.

Tritheism The Father, Son and Holy Spirit as Three Gods The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all divine and the three are independent and autonomous substances. Trinity here is faith in three Gods. Tritheism persists in a hidden way form whenever the unity the three persons is weakened, as in the teaching of Joachim of Fiore. According to him, the unity of the Persons results from the collective union between them by virtue of the love they bear each other, like the union between Christians in a church, or citizens making up a nation.

Tri-theism is a risk that the one faces when the starting point of the discussion is the three divine persons as revealed in NT whereby they are seen as co-existing simultaneously and co-eternal from the very beginning.

The Effect of Heresies These three major heresies were rejected by the early Church. They forced the Church to clarify and develop the doctrine of the Trinity. If these are not acceptable teachings, then what is considered as orthodox ? The Early Church Fathers and the Church councils hammered out an acceptable doctrine of the Trinity.