Part one on the Logical Problem of the Trinity: Modalism, Tritheism and Co-inherence as the way to avoid heretical extremes
Modalism holds that the three of the Trinity Father,
Son and Spirit are purely adjectival being “three successive manifestations of
God, or three temporary modes of his activity” (Chadwick, 1968). This denies
that God in his own inner being is triune. Rather, it claims that the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit are either temporary or successive roles adopted by God in
carrying out the divine plan of redemption and that they in no way correspond
to anything in the ultimate nature of the Godhead (Chadwick, 1968). Modalism
does not recognize Christ’s independent personality but sees his incarnation as
a mode of the existence or manifestation of the Father (Bethune-Baker, 1929)
(Kangas,1976).
Modalists hold the “Father, Son and Spirit only refer to the way in which God reveals himself but bear no relation to his inner being” (Bruce, 1953). Sabellius (fl. ca. 215) was, by far, the most original, profound, and ingenious of the modalists (Schaff, 1950). His theology was essentially that of Noetus (Noetus taught that for Christ to be God, he had to be identical with the Father (Kelly,1960)), but being more carefully worked out, a definite place being given to the Holy Spirit as well as to the Son (Walker, 1959). Sabellius seems more concerned than those before him in preserving the unity of God, claiming strongly that God is one person as well as one substance (McGiffert 1931). Sabellius taught, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all one and the same, three different names of the one God who manifests himself in different ways according to circumstance. As the Father, he is Creator, Governor, and Lawgiver, as the Son, he is incarnate as the Redeemer, and as the Holy Spirit, he is the Inspirer of the Apostles, the Regenerator and the Sanctifier (Walker, 1959), (Kangas,1976).
For Sabellius, he is the one and same God, the one and
the same divine person, who acts out in all these ways, appearing in successive
and temporary manifestations, the same way a human individual may have
different titles to denote their various roles (Walker, 1959), (McGiffert 1931),
(Kangas, 1976).
God does not act as Father, Son and Spirit at the same
time, but successively, turning from one activity to another as required, with
one and the same God appearing now as the Father, now as the Son, and now as
the Holy Spirit, but never all at the same time (Walker, 1959), (McGiffert 1931),
(Bethune-Baker, 1929), (Kangas, 1976).
Crucial to Sabellius’ thought is that God’s unity
unfolds itself in the course of the world’s development in three periods of
revelation, and after the fulfilment of redemption returns again into unity
(Schaff, 1950). His teaching was that the revelation of the Son ends with the
ascension, and that the revelation of the Spirit continues in regeneration and
sanctification (Schaff, 1950). The Trinity of Sabellius is not a Trinity of
essence, that is, of the inner being of God, but of revelation. Father, Son and
Holy Spirit are simply designations of three different transitions under which
the single divine essence reveals itself (Bethune-Baker, 1929). Sabellius
differs from orthodox doctrine, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit being temporary
phenomena, which have roles, after the completion of which led to a return of
an abstract entity (Schaff, 1950), (Kangas, 1976).
Sabellius denied that the Father, Son, and Spirit
eternally co-exist in the inner being of God. Rather, he argued that the
Father, Son, and Spirit are merely temporary and successive manifestations of
the one person of God. In the words of J. F. Bethune-Baker, expert in the
history of doctrine, for Sabellius, “there is no real incarnation; no personal
indissoluble union of the Godhead with the manhood took place in Christ. God
only manifested himself in Christ and when the part was played, and the curtain
fell upon that act in the great drama there ceased to be a Christ or a Son of
God” (Bethune-Baker, 1929), (Kangas, 1976).
Tritheism
Differing from modalism, tritheism holds that there
are three Gods, the persons of the Trinity being three distinct Gods. This
separates the Father, Son and Spirit. Kangas notes “even today, some say that
the Father is one God, that the Son is one God, and that the Spirit is also one
God” (Kangas,1976). Latent tritheism is common among believers mainly due to
the use of the word person. Speaking on this matter W. H. Griffith Thomas said:
“Like all human
language, it is liable to be accused of inadequacy and even positive error. It
certainly must not be pressed too far, or it will lead to tritheism. While we
use the term to denote distinctions in the Godhead, we do not imply
distinctions which amount to separateness, but distinctions which are
associated with essential mutual co-inherence or inclusiveness” (Thomas,
1930).
It is the case talk of three persons in God often
leads to understanding of three separate consciousness, spiritual vitalities
centres of activity etc. This danger is increased by the fact discussion of
person in scholarly works on the Trinity is derived from experience and
philosophy, independent of the doctrine of the Trinity in revelation and
history.
Tritheism is present in Arius’s doctrine. For Arius the
Father was fully God, however the Son was a creature and the Spirit was
inferior to the Son. With Arius the status of the Son and Spirit with relation
to divinity is uncertain, it is a type of tritheism (Turner, 1969). Arius was
so controversial that Emperor Constantine, bought together the Council of
Nicaea in 325 A.D. to settle the dispute among the churches of the empire over
the doctrine of the Trinity. The main issue was between Arius with his form of
tritheism and Athanasius with the Trinity (Kangas, 1976). The Nicene Creed that
resulted from this council overthrew the heresy of Arius and tritheism with an
anathema at the end of the creed (Gill, 2019), (Kangas, 1976).
Modalism was defeated by the Council of Nicaea,
however since the “the time of Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory
of Nazianzus (A.D. 320-395), known as the three Cappadocians, there was a
tendency toward tritheism” (Kangas, 1976). Due to this over two hundred years
after the Nicene Council drawing from the ultimate consequences of the
Aristotelian logical terminology of the universal and particular another form
of tritheism appeared in the teaching of Johannes Philoponus. Philoponus pushed
the distinction between the Father, Son and Spirit to an extreme saying that “there
were three essences in the one common essence of the Godhead. This was
virtually tritheism” (Frank, 1953), (Kangas, 1976)- tritheistic tendencies are
always never far from the Cappadocian doctrine of the hypostases (each of the
three persons of the Trinity, as contrasted with the unity of the
Godhead).
Co-inherence as a solution
There came a point wherein the Fathers produced the
doctrine of co-inherence, which is the “the intercommunion and interpenetration
of the persons of the Godhead. Co-inherence denotes the mutual indwelling of
the three persons whereby one is as invariably in the other two as they are in
the one” (Turner, 1969), (Kangas 1976).Just as three sciences such as Physics,
Biology and Chemistry interpenetrate
each other (Physics fundamental grounds upon which Chemistry and then life
Biology are built, entailing interpenetration at various levels of analysis)
and God permeates the Universe, so much more each person interpenetrates the
others. The key to this doctrine is mysticism (experience of God as Trinity
subjectively), rather than the logic of the divine relations (Turner, 1969).
Co-inherence is how man seeks to understand the
relationship between the three of the Trinity and explain how they have one
essence. As John of Damascus puts it ““… the Son is in the Father and the
Spirit: and the Spirit in the Father and the Son: and the Father in the Son and
the Spirit, but there is no coalescence or co-mingling or confusion”
(Damascene, 749), (Kangas, 1976).
Augustus H. Strong has argued on this matter that the
Scripture’s representations of this intercommunion make it difficult to
conceive of the distinctions of Father, Son and Holy Spirit as entailing
separation between them. The intercommunion explains Christs designation as the
Spirit and the Spirit as the Spirit of Christ (Strong 1912). For Strong the
persons of the Holy Trinity are therefore not separable individuals, each
involving the other, the coming of each the coming of the others. This means
the coming of the Spirit involved the coming of the Son (Strong 1912), (Kangas,
11976). The doctrine of co-inherence,
therefore, avoids the extremes of modalism and tritheism.
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