II. The Monarchian Controversy : ; :
viel C PEU bebe god Bia 4 ci liora , j ix
TERTULLIAN'S TREATISE AGAINST PRAXEAS
perhaps without a side-glance at the Florida of Appuleius.
The treatise De anima is an essay in Christian psychology, in which it is to be observed that Tertullian is unable to conceive of real existence except as in some sense corporeal (cf. Adv. Prax. 7), that almost alone among Christian thinkers he adopts concerning the origin of the individual soul the doctrine known as traducianism, and that he is probably the first to raise and attempt to answer, from a Christian standpoint, the questions connected with sleep and death.
II. THE MONARCHIAN CONTROVERSY
The double series of discussions known as the monarchian controversy began in the last decade of the second century and continued intermittently for about eighty years.
The monarchian theories attracted some attention in Alexandria, in Libya, and in Africa, though only in Rome and in Antioch is there reason to think that they seriously disturbed the general Christian public.
But the monarchian theory strictly so called—that which is attacked by Tertullian in the present treatise, and was afterwards known as Sabellianism—remained sufficiently alive in the memory of the learned to be a bugbear to theologians both orthodox and heretical a century and more after the controversy was at an end.
It is sometimes suggested ! that monarchianism was a reaction against gnosticism.
'There seems to be little or no evidence of this. 'The term monarchy was introduced into Christian *heology by the apologists as a protest against polytheism."
It was after1 E.g. by Dr Bethune-Baker, History of Christian Doctrine, p. 96.
? The term 4ovapxía (in three forms, 7; Tod 0coü uovapxía, 7) uovapxla 3j Kara Tov 0cóv, 7 povapxla) was in use from the middle of the second century, usually in contrast with polytheism.
Justin, Dial. 1 (Otto, p. 4 e), oix of $uXócoQo mept 0co0 rüv dravra mowÜvrai. Nóvyov .
. kal wept uovapxias avrots kal mpovolas ai (mrüseus ylyvovra ékáarore ; Cohort. ad gent. 17 (p. 64 €), Thy yap povapxlay duaxov elvar evuBatve (a parallel between politics and theology, introduced by the Homeric quotation ov« dyadv moXvkotpar(y, els xolpavos ora.
'l'atian, Orat. 14
(p. 64 b), rv roAvKorpavlyy uüXXov Harep rij» uovapxiav yoxjoare (another reference to the Homeric quotation).
Theophilus, Ad Autol. ii. 8 (p. 74 b), the gentile poets, inconsistent among themselves, rM» kai wyOdv eloryayov 3) kal povapxlar elroy, ibid. p. 76 d, ákóNov0a, rois mpopyrats .
. wept re Geod movapxlas xal kploews kal Tov NourQ» dv pacav: so also ibid. 35 (p. 16 c) : ibid. 38 (p. 184 b), kal wept rrAjGous ody OeGy oi cuyypadels elmóvres karijNÜov els uovapxíav : iii. 7 (p. 204 b), IIAárev de, 6 Tooatra eimüw mepi uovapx(as 0coÜ kal Wuxfs dvOpdrov.
But Theophilus in two places uses the term in opposition to dualism: ii. 4 (p. 54 c), e dé 00s dyévnros kal tn dyévmros, obkéri 0 Beds mowjris TOv ÜNw» karà robs llAaTGwikoDs, ode why
INTRODUCTION
wards used as a catchword by the professors of that form of unitarian doctrine which denied the distinction of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.!
The description "monarchian"' is applied both to these and (possibly by contemporaries but more commonly by modern writers) to those other unitarians who denied both the true deity of our Lord Jesus Christ and the personality of the Holy Spirit.
But it does not appear that monarchianism in either form was a reaction against any particular doctrine: the two theories (both of them unsatisfactory, and the second on occasion deliberately profane) arose in the attempt to answer questions which were bound to be asked as soon as Christians became conscious of the implications of their immemorial devotional practice.
Christianity inherited from Judaism the fundamental conviction that there is one God and that there can be no other, and that God alone can be legitimately worshipped, either in adoration or in prayer.
The very idea of deity implies unity, and it is impossible to conceive of God consenting to shate with any other the prerogatives of the incommunicable Name.
But, since the beginning of Christianity, invariable and unquestioned uovapxía 0coü SelkvuTa: dcov 7d Kar' abro/s : ibid. 27 (p. 136 b), Adam and Eve were not created separately, lest it might be thought that one god made the man and another the woman, ov phy adda kal tva dud roüro Oevx0y) TO mvoTHpLov THs movapxlas
Tis kara Tov bebv, dua erolnoev 6 Oeds Thy yuvaixa a/roü.
But here again it is philosophic dualism, not Marcionism, that is under consideration,
Eusebius, H.E. iv. 18. 3, mentions a work of Justin, rep! 6eo0 povapxias (apparently not the same as that printed with Justin's works) : he also, H.E. v. 20, mentions a letter of Irenaeus to Florinus, 7epi uovapxías 7) epi rod ph elvac Tov 0cüv mori kaxüv, perhaps a tract against Marcionism.
[A strange use, if the text is correct, is Tertullian, De cult. fem. ii. 6, hanc incorruptibilitatem habemus superinduere ad novam domum domini quam monarchia pollicetur: but monarchia as a synonym for deus is unparalleled, and, despite the remarks of Rigaltius (quoted by Oehler, ad loc.), cannot be defended. Perhaps read acacia (a cosmetic), making incorruptibilitatem (not domum) the antecedent of quam.]
In Liddell and Scott, movapxla is quoted only in the political sense: 4px however means (a) origin, first principle:
(b) sovranty, dominion, empire, magistracy. Athenagoras, Suppl. 22, combines the two senses ápxukàv 7) pidla xarà rov "EjreóokMéa, ápxóueva. Ta cuyxpluara, Td 0€ ápxwüv kópiov" wore éàv av Kal
Ti» abTr]» Tod Te ápxouévov kal Tod üpxovros übvapav Oder, Mía oper éavrovs lcóruov
Th» Uv... TQ) dvyevijrp . . . rotoüvres Hew.
'The term, still in a political sense, was adopted from the apologists as a convenient catchword by the school of Noetus: Hippolytus, Philos. ix. 10, referring to Cleomenes, ofrws yap doxet
"uovapxla» avvugTüv, ev kal T0 adrd pdoKkwy Urápxew, marépa kal viàv kaXoópevov, KTÉ.
The metaphysical sense first appears in [Athanasius] C. Arian. iv. 1 (quoted below). à » is also suggested that monarchianism arose from a reaction, among the more simple sort, against speculations about the Logos. But the evidence hardly proves that: the monarchians were not simplices et idiotae ; rather these latter were persons whom the monarchians found it easy to lead astray.
uei o
TERTULLIAN'S TREATISE AGAINST PRAXEAS
Christian practice had associated our Lord Jesus Christ with God as the one and only object of public and private worship.
Whereas both Jews and Christians maintained that between God and even the highest of created existences there is a sharp and clear distinction as between the infinite and eternal Creator and the finite and temporal creature, Christian thought and liturgical practice from the apostles downwards had always regarded Christ and the Holy Spirit as being on the divine side of that distinction.
'The trinitarian blessing is of apostolic origin, and from the time of St Stephen Christians had addressed to the Lord Jesus such prayers as may be directed to none but God.!
The strength of the Christian conviction behind this practice is shown by the fact that it was not until the end of the second century that it occurred to anyone that an articulated justification was necessary.
If justice is to be done to Christian devotional usage, and to the scriptural data to which there is always a final appeal, there are three facts which must have full regard paid to them.
The divine unity is the first. That our Lord Jesus. Christ is the Son of God and is in the highest sense worshipful is the second.
"The third is that the Son of God is in some sense (into which Christian intelligence may reverently enquire) not identi the same with God the Father, The monarchians, of both schools, thought that the combined acknowledgement of the second postulate and the third amounted to a denial of the first, introducing the idea of a duality of gods.
Consequently, holding fast to the fact of the divine unity, the (self-styled) monarchians with whom
Tertullian is in controversy wished to relinquish the third fact so as to establish the second, imaking God the Son identically one with.
/ / M "
EE God the Father with the purpose of maintaining his worshipfulness: while the humanitaria of whom Tertullian does not seem to have heard, unless he is-referring to them in §
27) relinquished the second fact so as to establish the-third, denying that Jesus is in any real sense God, with the purpose of safeguarding his personal subsistence.
The theologians whom the common consent of Christendom has come to regard as orthodox, found part of the solution of the 1 Acts 7. 59: 9. 14. The verb érukaMeto0at implies this.
For the principle involved see Novatian, De trinitate, 14: si homo tantummodo Christus, quomodo adest ubique invocatus?
. st homo tantummodo Christus, cur homo in orationibus mediator invocatur, cum invocatio hominis ad praestandam salutem inefficax iudicetur ?
get emen
INTRODUCTION
problem to be involved in the word monarchy.
In itself this term is as unobjectionable as the term unity.
'Tertullian, taking the word in its original political sense, and hardly distinguishing between the objective meaning "empire" and the subjective meaning "imperial authority", points out that the delegation of imperial authority to a second and a third person involves no division of the Empire, so long as it is a fact that the delegated authority derives from one and reverts again to the one.
This is evidently no more than an argumentum ad hominem directed against those who harp on a word without considering its implications.
The term is however susceptible of a metaphysical sense, as implying that in the divine Being the Father is the sole apyx7 or origin of the Being of the Son and of the Holy
° Spirit.
'This sense is referred to occasionally by Greek fathers,! and Tertullian (though no longer professedly discussing the term) perhaps has it in mind in his three similes of the root, the fountain, and the sun ($ 8). In this way the doctrine of the divine unity in trinity is placed upon a metaphysical (the only finally, satisfactory) basis: and the unity is further safeguarded by the Mark of reciprocity, apparently first suggested by Novatian,? sufhmarised in the phrase eig avTov oU kai éoTw àvadépera, in the foregoing quotation from Athanasius, and developed by the Cappadocian fathers as the doctrine which a later age called
Teptyapnats.* The monarchianist leaders for the most part found their way to Rome, and obtained a precarious welcome there, during the episcopates of Victor (193-202), Zephyrinus (202-219), and Calixtus (219-223).
Apart from such indications as are given by Tertullian and Novatian, our contemporary information about them and their doctrines comes from Hippolytus, who was
1 The earliest of which I am aware is [Athanasius], C. Arian. iv. 1: Tod évós yap 0coü vids ay 6 Xóyos, els avrdov of Kal éarw dvapépetat, doré dUo uév elvat marépa kal vidv, wovdda dé 0córnros üüialperov kai &oxuo ov, —
Nex0elm & àv kal orc pla dpxh Bedrytos kal ob dvo dpxal. cv Kupiws kal povapxía écriv.
[ ? Novatian, De trin. 31: deus quidem ostenditur filius, cui divinitas tradita et porrecta conspicitur: et tamen nihilominus unus deus pater probatur, dum gradatim reciproco meatu illa maiestas atque divinitas ad patrem qui dederat eam rursum ab illo ipso filio missa revertitur et retorquetur: ut merito deus pater omnium deus sit, et principium ipsius quoque filii sui quem dominum genuit.
Athenagoras, Suppl. 1o (p. 10 d), has:a similar expression of the Holy Spirit: daroppéov xai éravadepóuevov ws axriva 7Alov. d ; "
3 Prestige: God in Patristic Thought, ch. xiv, '*'The earlier Latin Fathers were fruitful in anticipating the results of later Greek theology, throwing out suggestions of great fertility."
Nua ea. Seer"
TERTULLIAN'S TREATISE AGAINST PRAXEAS
resident at Rome during most of this period; though as for other reasons he was no friend of the Popes concerned, we must regard it as possible that they were better theologians and men of more steadfast character than he gives them credit for.
In our account of the history of the movement it will be convenient to consider first that school with which Tertullian was in conflict, the line of teachers beginning with Noetus and ending with Sabellius.
( These are in modern times described as modalists (a term devised by Dr Harnack), since their theory was that Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit are three modes or aspects of one divine existence.
"l'heir description of themselves was apparently monarchians: the Greek fathérs call them Sabellians, after the name of Sabellius, who expressed the theory in its most philosophic form: the Latins of the Son vid the Father implies that it was the Father, in the guise of Son, who suffered and died. _ Tertullian says that the first teacher of this doctrine was one
$245 Praxeas who, during the episcopate of Victor, came from Asia to "Rome, where he did two things, both of which annoyed Tertullian:
," he gave Victor such information about the Asiatic Montanists as caused him to give up his project of sending them his approval, and he began to teach (Tertullian does not say, with the Pope's approval) that there is one God the Father, who himself came down from heaven and was born of a virgin, and himself is Jesus
Christ.
Some time later a disciple of his found his way to Africa, where his heresy was detected by Tertullian, and he was forced by the African Church to sign a document of recantation. It seemed as though the mischief was stamped out, for the unnamed teacher gave no more trouble; but, like seed that has lain dormant for a while, it began again to germinate, and Tertullian (who. by this time had left the Church and become a Montanist) now took up the controversy in writing.
A suggestion is made,? with some plausibility, that Praxeas (which could be a rather unusual Greek word for "busybody") is a nickname designed to cover some well-known person, possibly Calixtus, who afterwards became Pope. ^
Hippolytus mentions no such name, but (after remarking that this heresy was the most dangerous that had hitherto divided the 1 Tertullian, Adv. Prax. § 1.
2 By P. de Labriolle, referred to by Bethune-Baker, op. cit. p. 432.
A gpl? uS om Alpe Abl.
INTRODUCTION
II Church) gives the following account of its origin and its propagation in Rome:
There was a person named Noetus, of Smyrna by origin.
He introduced a heresy derived from the doctrines of Heraclitus.
He had for his servant and disciple one named Epigonus, who settled at Rome and disseminated the godless opinion.
'This man's pupil was Cleomenes, a man by conduct and character alien from the Church, who gave vogue to the teaching. At that time Zephyrinus, an ignorant and grasping person, supposed himself to be ruler of the (Roman? Church.
He, in consideration of a bribe that was offered him, allowed those who asked for permission, to become disciples of Cleomenes: and he himself after a time was induced to take the same course, his counsellor and abettor in evil being Callistus, whose life and the. heresy invented by him I shall expose a little later on.
These men's school continued through a succession of masters, strengthening itself and increasing on account of the adherence of Zephyrinus and Callistus, although I by no means acquiesced, but often resisted them and proved them wrong and forced them against their will to admit the truth: and they, being for a time abashed and convinced by the truth, admitted it, but not long afterwards returned to wallow in the same mire.!
Hippolytus proceeds to illustrate his contention that these theorists, whether they knew it or not, were followers of Heraclitus
(c. 520 B.C.) described as "the obscure".
'They had adopted his doctrine of the universal monad, which (he said) comprised in itself all contradictory qualities (which he, of course, regarded not as contradictory but as complementary), being both divisible and indivisible, created and uncreated, mortal and immortal, andsoforth. He then gives the following summary of the opinions of the Noetic school:
Cleomenes says: ''So, when as father he had not yet come into existence, he was rightly addressed as Father.
But when it was his good pleasure to submit to generation, he was born and became his own Son, not another's."
In this fashion he thinks he establishes the monarchy, by saying that there exists one and the same Being, called Father and Son, not one derived from the other, but himself from himself, nominally called |
Father and Son according to the changing of times: and that 1 Hippolytus, Philos. ix. 7 sqq.
TERTULLIAN'S TREATISE AGAINST PRAXEAS
this One is he that appeared [sc. to the patriarchs], and submitted to birth from a virgin, and conversed as man among men: on account of his birth that had taken place he confessed himself to be the Son to those who saw him, while to those who could receive it he did not hide the fact that he was the Father.
He adds that he who was nailed to the passion of the cross, and commended to himself his spirit, who died and did not die, and raised himself the third day, and was buried in the sepulchre and wounded with the spear and pierced with nails, is the God and Father of all: and by so saying, Cleomenes and his company bring Heraclitean obscurity upon many.
These are evidently the opinions with which Tertullian is in conflict.
Some further information about Noetus is given by Hippolytus in a separate discourse,? which from its conversational tone and its concluding doxology appears to be a homily rather than a treatise.
Noetus, besides saying that Christ is identical with the Father and that it was the Father who was born and suffered and died, was expelled from the ministry for blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, as having claimed that he himself was
Moses and his brother was Aaron.
He was twice examined by the presbyters, at first professing not to understand,® but afterwards making the excuse, "But what harm do I do in glorifying
Christ?"
On his expulsion from the Church he founded a school of his own.
The texts by which the Noetians supported their opinion were these: Is. 45. ly 'Surely God is in thee, and there is none else, there is no God": Baruch 3. 35, "This is our God, and there shall none other B accounted of in comparison of him" snos Us 5,- Christ... who is God over all, blessed for evermore"
John IO. M A "I and the Father are one":
John 14. 9, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father".
Once more Tertullian agrees: all these texts except that from Baruch find a place in his discussion.
So far as this, the modalist doctrine amounts to no more than an identification of the Son with the Father, speciously supported by appeal to a few scriptural texts.
Its metaphysical basis was supplied by Sabellius, who appeared in Rome about A.p. 220 and, having been at first favourably received, was afterwards
4 Hippolytus, Philos. ix. 10.
* Hippolytus, C. Noet., 8$ 1, 2.
3 'O àé jpvetro, Méeyev Tas ápxàs uh ópoveiv.
"The version of Turrianus, printed by Routh (S.E.O.S. vol. 1), hardly does justice to this sentence.
fud à (SIT . js Pd (u T :
S Aaa, pl 1 Vig nie
INTRODUCTION.
"PVT
excommunicated by Calixtus:
Hippolytus claims that Calixtus took this action through fear of his censure,! which may in a sense be true.
Precise indications as to what Sabellius' doctrines were are first given by fourth-century authorities? from whom it appears that he made use of philosophical language of Stoic origin: nor is it impossible that he was acquainted with the " work of Tertullian, whose terminology he uses to expound the
opposite opinion.
His theory indeed seems to be a reply to Tertullian's refutation of Noetus.
In the divine being, he said, .; there is one substance (or perso t three operations.
The ^.
Deity is a monad, a singular individual unity, which possesses internal powers of expansion, appearing in the act of creation as,
*: the Father, in redemption as the Son, and in grace and inspiration ? as the Holy Spirit, the Three being not three realities but three aspects of one reality.
Sabellius apparently did not make it clear whether he meant that the one reality is the Father, who by process of expansion becomes the Word and the Holy Spirit, or whether the One is something more recondite which éxpands into Father and Word and Holy Spirit: in either case he seems to have held that the process of expansion is balanced by a process of contraction by which the Three cease to be three, being withdrawn again into the One.?
This is no doubt a great advance upon the naiveté of Noetus and his school: it amounts to a new theory, which needed a separate discussion—which it apparently did not receive until the fourth century.
But the Sabellians made further difficulties, and were not in agreement among themselves, as to the precise incidence of the titles Word and Son.
Some of them said that the Son is Christ's human nature, not the Word at all: others said that the Word and the humanity together constitute the Son: while others would have it that the Word himself became
- Son at the Incarnatión.^ St Athanasius (or whoever is the author of the fourth so-called Oration against the Arians) points out
1 Hippolytus, Philos. ix. 12.
2 Notably [Athanasius], C. Arian. iv. 13 sqq.
3 Besides the term substance, Sabellius (if Epiphanius reports correctly, Haer. 62. 1) adapted to his own purposes Tertullian's illustration of the sun and its ray.
This would make the Son (the light) and the Holy Spirit (the heat) emissions from, not representations of, the Father.
Sabellius shortsightedly makes those emissions (1péowma) temporary, though as a fact of nature the light and the heat are as permanent as the sun.
* [Athanasius], op. cit. 15.
X on Ye Wor on D 706746: ) 14.
TERTULLIAN'S gen AGAINST PRAXEAS
that since the Father is father of the Word, and since father and son are correlative terms, evidently the Word is the Son: the Son is not an aspect of the Word, nor the Word an aspect of the Son, but these are two titles of one divine Person who is always the Word of God and always the only-begotten Son of the Father: the Gospel itself makes this identification: difficulties only arise when speculation is allowed to override the scriptural evidence.
But it is conceivable, once more, that these speculations were affected by 'l'ertullian's discussion of the Incarnation.
'The early monarchians, Tertullian says, wished to distinguish between a human Jesus-Son and a divine Christ-Word-Father,
This distinction he shows to be impossible: though, since he admits the existence of two substantiae, each with its proprietas, the temptation remained to make a division between them and to give to each a proper name.
It is sometimes alleged ? that the Sabellian speculations had a reflex restrictive action upon orthodox terminology, in that the word mpócomov, which ought to have been the equivalent of the Latin persona, had through the associations. of the Attic theatre suggested that the three divine Persons were no more than temporary roles like those assumed by an actor in a drama, and that consequently the orthodox tended to avoid this term as misleading.
In fact there does not seem to be any evidence that the term was used by the monarchians in this sense—or even at all except for the precarious example quoted by Epiphanius— and the theatrical usage upon which such an interpretation would have depended had been obsolete for several centuries: moreover the orthodox continued to use ig term as indicating a living selfconscious active jmóoTacus?
In any case the Latin word ersona, which by its legal associations means one. who. has an mance and a status and rights of his own as well.as relation and qpugntons in re spect -of others, was not unsuitable for iue. guarding the Christian conviction of the immutability of the three divine Persons: and in particular, if the salvation of mankind by the incarnate Word is a permanent thing, then the Incarnation once accomplished must be a permanent fact, and the Word
NE 1 Adv. Prax. § 27.
2 E.g. by BethuneBaker, Christian Doctrine, pp. 105, 234.
3 This sentence was written before the editor had read Dr G. L. Prestige's God in Patristic Thought : he can only be gratified at finding himself in agreement in this and in other matters with so weighty and well-documented a book.
ne | Hua 3j AA UE
A NA Ü 2 ; Jb: d y » iar PSY JO é j : fi pes me nares
INTRODUCTION
who was incarnate cannot be regarded as a temporary and transitory aspect of deity.
Itis on the doctrine of the Atonement that Sabellianism, like other heresies, finds itself wrecked: that, whether explicitly or not, is the fathers' final criterion.
4 The opposing school of humanitarian monarchians! is of interest here only in so far as the Church writers who controvert them—Novatian and the fathers of Antioch—make use of material furnished by Tertullian in this treatise.
'The descriptions "adoptionist" or "dynamic monarchians?, now frequently applied to them, are not very appropriate, except perhaps the latter in a specific sense of the term dv¥vapus: they, like the corresponding term
' modalist", are due to Dr Harnack.
Our information as to the origin of the sect comes once more from Hippolytus.?
Early in the episcopate of Victor a certain Theodotus, a Byzantine, came to Rome.
This man, unlike the Lov Marcionites and gnostics, admitted that God is the creator of all ^. things, but, like the Ebionites and gnostics, said that Jesus was
A a mere man (though born of a virgin) and that at his baptism the 4 heayenly Christ, who is the same as the Holy Spirit, came down .
'upon him in the form of a dove. He did not say that Jesus became God at the descent of the Spirit, though some of his school thought that he did so after his resurrection.
This piece of amateur theology was improved on by another Theodotus, a Uae banker, who said that the Christ who came down upon Jesus was — # 2
À—MMÁÀ! a kind of celestial copy of a "great power" Melchizedek, but for the rest agreed with his namesake.
Here we have that faulty exegesis (to which Tertullian draws attention) which fails to see that the title Christ signifies an office rather than a person, and that the office of Christ is the office of a man.
Once the false distinction has been made, or copied from the gnostics, between the heavenly Christ and the human Jesus, the identification of Christ and the Holy Spirit naturally results, as a reaction from the virtual polytheism of the gnostics.
'That something important happened at our Lord's 1 Origen, Comm. in loa., ii. 2, associates the two schools, as $uvo6fovs dvat evxouevous, but evAaBouuévous Sto dvayopeÜca.
0coós, the one party as dpvoupevous idcdrnTa viod érépav mapa Ti» Tov marpós, the other as dpvoupévous rjv
8córgra rod viod riWévras 0é abroU Thy ldudryTa Kal rip ovatav xarà meprypagiy ruyxdvovoay érépav rod warpés.
The latter are the Theodotians, but there is no evidence that they either called themselves monarchians or were so called by their contemporaries: see Tixeront, Histoire des Dogmes, vol. i. p. 310.
? Hippolytus, Philos. vii. 35, 36.
TERTULLIAN'S TREATISE AGAINST PRAXEAS
baptism is clear from the conspicuous place it occupies in the Gospel narrative: the Church writers, when they do not avoid the question, seem to think it was the occasion of his apprehension of the implications and powers of his ministry: if that is too little, it is certainly too much to say that it represents the seizure (one might almost say the obsession) of a human person by a hitherto alien celestial power "—for it must be remembered that "power", to the persons who use this language, always means a semi-divine personage of some sort.
The second Theodotus, having read in the Epistle to the Hebrews that Melchizedek, King of Salem, was made like unto the Son of God, twisted this into the fancy that the supposed celestial Christ was made like unto Melchizedek, and invented a heavenly Melchizedek who should be the prototype of the heavenly Christ. The wonder is that such exegesis obtained a hearing: apparently no one thought it worth answering.
Further information about this school comes to us from an unnamed contemporary writer quoted by Eusebius, who says that the founders of the school, and Artemon (or Artemas) their successor, claimed that their doctrine was that of the primitive
Church, having been maintained at Rome from the apostles until the death of Victor, after which Zephyrinus falsified the faith.
There are those to whom such a claim as this, reported at second hand and without its supporting facts (if there ever were any), will always carry more weight than the main body of the available evidence: and it is not surprising that from the seventeenth century to the present the statement has repeatedly been made that until the end of the second century the Roman Church (if no other) held humanitarian or adoptionist views of Christ, and that attempts have been made, by digging beneath the surface of the evidence, to ferret out the appearance of proof.
But, as Bishop Bull showed, and as has frequently been repeated, our unnamed author is by the extant evidence abundantly justified in his remark that this claim to antiquity is discountenanced both by the Scriptures and the writings of the apologists, "in all of which Christ is glorified as God", as well as by the works of theologians such as Irenaeus and Melito, who proclaim that Christ is God and Man, and by psalms and hymns composed by the brethren in praise of "the Word of God, the Christ".
Also, our author adds, 1 Eusebius, H.E. v. 28. For theories as to this writer's identity see Lightfoot,
Clement of Rome, vol. ii. pp. 377 sqq.
INTRODUCTION
the statement about Victor is palpably false, for it is well known that it was he who excommunicated the author of this "goddenying apostasy", who first presumed to say that Christ was a "mere man".
Concerning Artemon (or Artemas) very little is known, though as the school was for a time called by his name it is to be supposed that in his day he was of some importance.
Conceivably he was the propagator of that more thoroughgoing humanitarianism or naturalism against which Novatian directed a long section of his treatise. The two Theodoti had taught that the Christ is a celestial
"power" who took possession of the man Jesus: those whom Novatian has in view regarded Christ as a "mere man" and as nothing more than that,! though apparently they still retained the practice of addressing prayers to Christ and had not ceased to regard him as mediator and saviour.?
They did, however, overlook many texts, and indeed the whole tenor of Scripture, which throughout presents Christ as God and Man.
Novatian does not, like Eusebius' unnamed author, say that they, had corrupted or mutilated the Scriptures under the pretence of correcting them.
The most notorious disciple of this school was Paul of Samosata, bishop of Antioch, c. 260-270.
Eusebius, from whom most of our information is derived,? was only one generation removed from him in date, but seems to have been more interested in his supposed or real offences against ecclesiastical propriety than in his theological opinions: he does however mention that Paul held low and earthbound views of Christ, contrary to the teaching of the Church, that he said that Christ was a man like other men, and that he would not admit that the Son of God came down from heaven, but frankly affirmed that he was. "from beneath "—this last being a reference to John 8. 23 and a deliberate reversal of our Lord's words there recorded.
It is consistent with this that in the articles of his condemnation by the synod of Antioch he is reported to have forbidden the use of hymns
1 Novatian, De trin. $8 11 sqq. : hominem tantum et solum defendentibus .
. hominem illum nudum et solitarium "probare cupientibus.
? See the sentences quoted above, p. 9: Novatian's remonstrance would Ege! been pointless if they had been able to reply, ''But we do not pray to im S Eusebius, H.E. vii. 27-30.
Eusebius had access to a shorthand report of the final Antiochene synod: his information therefore must be regarded as authentic.
dise iio. 7) avertere 18.
"TERTULLIAN'S TREATISE AGAINST PRAXEAS
in praise of Christ, on the ground that they were of recent composition.
During the years 265-270 a series of synods was held at Antioch to discuss Paul's beliefs and conduct.?
One of the early synods, dealing gently with Paul, sent him a letter in which they stated the Church's faith in one God, and in Christ the Son of God, both God and Man, a letter which (as we shall indicate below)-^ shows evident acquaintance with the work of Hippolytus and through him (if not directly) is beholden to Tertullian.
At the final meeting, in 270, it was ascertained after some verbal fencing that Paul's views were that Christ is not the very Word and Wisdom of God, but that the Word and Wisdom of God dwelt in Christ in the same manner as in the prophets but to a greater degree.
This is not the view of either Theodotus, nor is it the doctrine of the New Testament or of the Church at large: it may
! à af (ue the doctrine of Artemas, and it is certainly the doctrine which ) y Í i now prevails under the guise of undenominational religion. ier"
The deposition of Paul brings to an end the direct line of Tertullian's influence, and there we may leave the history and turn to the literature in which that influence makes itself felt.
The humanitarian tradition apparently came to an end with Paul: but adoptionism and modalism strangely reach a reconciliation in the opinions professed in the middle of the fourth century by Photinus, the disciple of the suspected Sabellian Marcellus of Ancyra.
"HI. TERTULLIAN'S TREATISE AND ITS INFLUENCE
' The treatise Against Praxeas, written perhaps in A.D. 213,° is directed against the modalist teaching in its unmetaphysical
Noetic form.
That Tertullian in this answer managed to cover aan 1 In this he was mistaken, as the evidence shows.
The accompanying statement that he substituted hymns in praise of himself need not be untrue: the synod of Antioch (which made the statement) was composed of grave men, and we have known preachers who, while belittling Christ, are prone to magnify themselves.
2 The relevant documents, drawn from Eusebius, Athanasius, Basil, and Hilary, are collected by Routh, R.S. vol. iii. pp. 287-367.
3 "This, the date usually given, seems to have been suggested by the reference in $ 3 to the assumption by certain emperors of their sons as colleagues.
Caracalla was the colleague of Septimius Severus from 198 to 211:
Severus, Caracalla, and Geta were colleagues from 209 to 211, and Caracalla and Geta from 211 to 212.
So Liebenam, Fasti Consulares Imperii Romani, p. 110.
Te. bared Hppetyus, Norton «..
INTRODUCTION
all the necessary ground becomes evident from the fact that his successors not only use his materials (some of which he inherited from the apologists) but also follow the general lines of his arrangement and presentation of them.
That his answer in its general conception was not extemporised, but represents his own considered opinion and a respectably supported Church tradition,
| will appear from his earlier works and those of second-century authors.
Hippolytus, though aware of the existence of Sabellius, is also dealing with the Noetic form of the heresy. His discourse follows
Tertullian's general lines—brief historical narrative, correction of faulty exegesis, scriptural proof of the existence of the Word or Son, statement of the doctrine of the Incarnation: and, although there is at least one important difference of presentation, he borrows much of Tertullian's material and all his most significant terminology.
Novatian must have been personally acquainted with Hippolytus, and it is perhaps the case that he allowed himself to become the leader of that anti-papal opposition, perhaps one may say that conservative group, of which Hippolytus had been the spokesman.!
In the latter part of the second section of his book On the Trinity he briefly adverts upon the Sabellians: the greater part of his treatment of the second paragraph of the Creed is concerned (after a repudiation of the Marcionite and Gnostic
Christ) to disprove a humanitarian doctrine which is neither Ebionite nor Theodotian, but may perhaps be that of Artemas.
__ He too uses Tertullian's Old Testament texts (originally collected ~~ by Justin Martyr), gives special attention to the testimony of St John's Gospel and to the contrast between God who cannot be seen and God who has been seen, and controverts an unsatisfactory interpretation of the words of the Annunciation. The arguments used by Tertullian and Hippolytus against those who denied that the Son is a second Person beside the Father, prove equally apposite against those who, while admitting Christ's personal existence, deny that he is more than man.
1 If Hippolytus correctly represents the facts (Philos. ix. 12) the conventicle founded by Callistus will (through the attraction of its relaxed penitential system) have drawn into itself the great body of the Roman Christians, so that his 9:0ackaAetov came to be taken for the catholic body.
But that is a subject on which Cyprian would have had something to say, for the facts (if they had been facts) could not have been forgotten in so short a time.
TERTULLIAN'S TREATISE Men
PRAXEAS ee » The correspondence between Dionysius of Rome and Dionysius of Alexandria (c. 260) was occasioned by the dissemination of —
Sabellian doctrine in Libyan Pentapolis, a district over which the bishops of Alexandria had extended their patriarchal oversight.
'lhe bishop of Alexandria, taking steps to counteract the Sabellian influence, wrote a number of letters, one of which was severely criticised (apparently as unduly subordinationist in tone), and formal complaint was made to Dionysius of Rome.
A Roman synod discussed the matter and demanded explanations, while the Pope issued a document which impartially condemned both tritheists and adoptionists and patripassians,! and wrote also a private letter of remonstrance to the bishop of Alexandria, who in due course returned a long and careful reply.?
Of the fragmentary remains of this correspondence one can say that the Roman bishop says little that is not by this time common form: while the Alexandrian, though (having been trained in the school of Origen) he has an independent mind which makes him no mere copyist of other men's matter, has (whether or not he was conscious of their origin) made further use of T'ertullian's materials, rescuing them from the interpretation which Sabellius seems to have put upon them.
The letter of the synod of Antioch to Paul of Samosata (c. 265),? for all that it was composed by pupils of Origen, again has so much in common with Tertullian that his influence, either directly or through Hippolytus, has to be acknowledged.
But beyond this point, monarchianism in both its forms being dead, or at. Teast discredited, it seems that the recognisable influence of its first adversary also comes to an end.
'The revived Sabellianism (suspected or real) of Marcellus of Ancyra was attacked by Eusebius of Caesarea from the same scriptural armoury, though the arrangement and treatment of the materials suggest that they were collected afresh by Eusebius himself, and that he owes more to Origen than to any other.
The rationalism of Photinus owes nothing to the Ebionites or Theodotus or Paul of Samosata: it
1 Preserved by St Athanasius, De decret. Syn. Nic.: Routh, R.S. vol. iii, pp. 373 sqq.
Routh thinks this document is not part of the correspondence with the bishop of Alexandria.
Feltoe, The Letters of Dionysius of Alexandria, p. 176.
2 Fragments preserved chiefly by St Athanasius, De sententia Dionysii:
Routh, R.S. vol. iii. pp. 390 sqq.: Feltoe, p. 182.
9 Routh, R.S. vol. iii. pp. 287 sqq.
INTRODUCTION
was the spontaneous outgrowth of an irreverent mind, and the weapon with which it was met was the new one of sorrowful
"amazement not untempered with invective.
At the same period St Hilary of Poitiers found Sabellianism almost as pressing a danger as Arianism: he is evidently acquainted with the work of Tertullian (whom he rarely mentions) and on several occasions seems -to be tacitly correcting phrases which are suggestive, but capable of leaving a false impression.
In the following pages we give a brief outline of the contents of each of the works referred to, drawing attention to those respects in which Tertullian's ideas and method of presentation appear to have been influential.
TERTULLIAN AGAINST PRAXEAS
After an introductory chapter describing the circumstances under which Praxean teaching was imported to Rome and Africa,
Tertullian lays his foundation by stating the traditional faith in the holy Trinity which it is his purpose to defend. The argument itself begins with an analogy intended to remove the fears of the more simple brethren:
The Roman Empire is one, though it is ruled by the emperor and his sons whom he has co-opted as his colleagues, and no one supposes that the existence of three emperors imperils the monarchy, i.e. the unity of the Empire.
In like manner the monarchy of God is not imperilled by the existence of the Son and the Holy Spirit consubstantial with him: the more so as it is clearly stated that the Son's kingship is committed to him by the Father, to whom he will also deliver it up again.
— Secondly, addressing the more instructed, Tertullian adduces scriptural testimony to the existence of the Son, who is also the Word and the Wisdom of God, proceeding by generation from the Father, as a second Person beside the Father. We do not, he maintains, by the terms generation and prolation give countenance to the Valentinian theory of prolation: for the Son is not by generation separated from the Father, seeing that the holy Trinity are three "not by diversity but by distribution, not by division but bv distinction".
~The monarchians-suggest that the Father made himself his own Son: the scriptural evidence is to the V23
22 | TERTULLIAN'S TREATISE AGAINST PRAXEAS
effect that it was another beside himself whom the Father brought forth from himself, and the Scriptures consistently present two who are called God and Lord, but not two gods or two lords.
A third line of argument arises from the pronouncement that no man can see God's face and live, brought into comparison with those many places in which it is written that God was seen, by the patriarchs and others.
This must mean that he who cannot be seen is the Father, while God who was-seen is the Son: and in fact since the foundation of the world all the Father's acts have been mediated by the Son, for the Father's attributes and powers are the Son's also.
The possession of a Son no more destroys the Father's unity than the sunlight destroys the unity of the sun in the sky.
| Fourthly: the monarchians rest their whole case on three "texts, *I am God, and beside me there is none else", and "I and émy Father are one", and ** He that hath seen me hath seen the CN ~ Father".
'They insist on these texts, in their own short-sighted interpretation of them, in spite of the numberless places of 2» Scripture which discountenance that interpretation. To confute them Tertullian extracts from St John's Gospel all the passages in which our Lord speaks of the Father as other than himself, adding also summary references to the same teaching in St Matthew and St Luke.
He adds that the words of the Annunciation to Mary, which the monarchians wrest to their own purpose, support this distinction, and that the very name, or rather title, of ** Christ" presumes the existence of One who anoints and Another who is anointed.
Lastly: not only are the monarchians wrong, even blasphemous, in suggesting that the Father became the Son and as the Son was passible, but the Son, moreover, himself is impassible in his divine Ie tule "bebes RERO flesh. "Phe-words from the cross, "Why hast thou forsaken me?", and "Into thy hands I commend my spirit", his raising up by the Father, his session at the right hand of the Father, as well as the mission of the Holy
Spirit by the Son from the Father, are only possible if the Son is not identical with the Father.
'Therefore we affirm that so to believe in the divine unity as to deny the Son and the Holy Spirit, is to deny the Father also, and is Judaism and not Christianity.
405 dpport n ius I
INTRODUCTION
HiPPOLYTUS AGAINST NOETUS
This discourse ! begins with a brief account of Noetus and of the nature of his heresy, after which Hippolytus recites the texts on which Noetus chiefly relied 2 and remarks that there are two facts we need to establish: the unity of God, and the economy—
_ by which (like Tertullian) he means the holy Trinity.
Thereafter the discourse falls into three parts, of which the first consists of a detailed examination of the Noetian texts, intended to show that within their own context they will not bear
[the interpretation put upon them.
Throughout this section the influence of Tertullian is evident, the method of approach and even the phraseology being identical.
Part two ($$ 8-14) presents proof from the Scriptures of the need to confess God the Father Almighty, and Christ Jesus the Son of God, who became Man, and to whom the Father hath subjected all things except himself and the Holy Spirit, and that these are verily three subsistences (kal Tovtous elvat OvTws tpia).* God is one because his power is one: in respect of his power there is one God, but in respect of the economy the demonstration is triple (or, reading tpuyas, "proceeds on three lines").* Before the creation, God, though alone, was manifold, having in him Word, Wisdom, Power.
When he so willed, he displayed the Word in creation: that is, the Word invisible he made visible.
So he had. Another beside him, as light kindled from light, as river from fountain, as radiance from the sun.
To the fathers the Word spoke of himself as of one who was to come: which eventually came to pass, as St John says, when the Word was made flesh.
Hence Jeremiah can say (by anticipation) that men see the Word, whereas the human word is merely heard.
1 Routh (S.E.O.S. vol. i. p. 49) describes it as the concluding portion of a lost work against all the heresies.
It is certainly the concluding part of a longer discourse which treated of several heresies, including that of Theodotus: but it is not part of the Philosophumena, which had not been discovered when Routh wrote.
The conversational style, and the concluding doxology, suggest that it was a homily.
* See above, p. 12.
3 It was perhaps this neuter rpía to which Callistus objected, saying ov« dAdo elvar warépa, dAdo Se vidv, iv dé xal rà abrd Urápxew (Hippolytus, Philos. ix. 12): he accused Hippolytus of ditheism.
, 4 El 8e Bovrerar pabely Ts els Beds dmoüelkvvrai, ywwoKérw dre pla Bvajus rovrov, kal dcov uév karü THY Sivauw els éoTe Beds, Ücov dé Kara Thy oixovoulay
Tpixns 3) émlderkis. ee a —
hs gi Tp Os unt pow Led peter
'TERTULLIAN'S TREATISE AGAINST PRAXEAS
St'John's testimony is our proof that there is one God, but two Persons, "and by the economy the grace of the Holy Spirit is third" !: and these Three are one "by an economy of unison''.?
It was because our Lord knew that only so was it the Father's will to be glorified, that he gave his disciples the trinitarian formula:
"it was the Father's will, the Son's act, the Spirit's manifestation".
Here again Tertullian's influence is beyond question, though Hippolytus is by no means a slavish copyist. The term zpógwov, evidently a translation of 'Tertullian's persona, fills a blank in , x Greek theological terminology, making for the future unnecessary such a circumlocution as Justin's aos Kat aAXos.
Tertullian, repudiating the suggestion that by maintaining the existence of three Persons he is rejecting the monarchy, begins by thinking of the monarchy as subjective but ends by objectifying it as regnum: Hippolytus avoids this equivocation by maintaining one dvvapus, thus placing the ground of unity (as Tertullian does when he gets down to the subject) in the inmost being of God.
Hippolytus is rather less guarded than Tertullian in the suggestion that the Word was displayed for the purpose of creation, though the language of both is probably defensible in terms of later orthodoxy.
He borrows the illustrations of the sun arid the fountain (but not the root), and adds from elsewhere the kindred image of light kindled from light. 'The text from Jeremiah which anticipates the Word made visible in the Incarnation may have been suggested by Tertullian's non alius quam sermo qui caro erat futurus (§ 16); but the striking though unsatisfactory phrase oikovopía ovppwvias, and the suggestive thought that the trinitarian formula was communicated by our Lord because it is only through the Son and in the Holy Spirit that the Father is willing to be worshipped, are due to Hippolytus himself.
The third part of the homily treats of the Incarnation.
There are those ? who deny the identity of the Son with the Word who (as the apostle says) was incarnate: but these are refuted by Apocalypse 19. 13 where "a garment dipped in blood" can only mean the flesh with which the Word clothed himself: and St Paul
1 Hj dé otv 6 Aóyos mpds Tov 0€óv 0€üs àv, rl otv gphoevev dv Tis. dbo Mévyeis Ocoís ; Sto uév odk ép Ocobs add' 7) eva, mpbowra dé Do, oixovoula (so Routh, for olkovouíav) dé rpiírqv Tiv xapw rod aylou mvevmaros.
2 Olxovoula cumpuvlas cvvdyerac eis eva Oedv.
3 Le. a section of the monarchians : see above, p. 13.
Nove lan
INTRODUCTION
explicitly says that God sent his own Son.
That it was not the Father himself who was incarnate is evident from such a text as "I came forth from the Father" and from the Father's words
"Out of the womb before the dawn have I begotten thee "— which Hippolytus, like Tertullian; takes as referring to the Incarnation, not to the eternal generation.
The incredulity of these people was foreseen, as is shown by the often repeated text,
* Who hath believed our report?"
But we must believe that the Word was incarnate for our salvation, and that, being incarnate, he is both heavenly and earthly, and that not in mere appearance, nor by change from one to the other, but God who has been made
Man in very truth.
Here Hippolytus is much more independent.
'The themes indeed are those of Tertullian, but Hippolytus approaches the subject from a new direction.
If the language of Tertullian insisting on the permanence of the proprietas utriusque substantiae in the Word incarnate suggests that of Leo the Great, Hippolytus maintaining the unity of Christ's Person in his sufferings as in his glories approaches more nearly to the standpoint of Cyril of Alexandria—in theology a much more satisfactory guide.
"The whole section abounds in suggestive phrases which Hippolytus apparently owes to no one but himself.?
NOVATIAN ON THE TRINITY
C St Jerome says? that Novatian's grande volumen is a sort of epitome of a work of 'Tertullian.
This has been called in question, since Tertullian is not known to have written a book expressly on the Trinity, nor is Novatian's work an epitome of any particular treatise of his. Probably what Jerome (or his informant) had in mind was that Novatian combines in one volume the results of Tertullian's dispersed discussions.
And this is substantially true: for the first section of this work, on God the Father, the Creator, undoubtedly owes something to passages in Tertullian's
Apology, while the second section, on God the Son, though largely occupied in combating an opposite heresy, shows evident acquaint1 Adv. Marc. v. 9.
? The parallels between Tertullian and Hippolytus are set out in full by Semler (printed in Oehler's vol. iii. pp. 688 sqq.).
3 Jerome, De viris illustribus, 70.
TERTULLIAN'S TREATISE AGAINST PRAXEAS
ance with the treatise Against Praxeas.
Only in the third section, on the Holy Spirit, does Novatian strike a line of his own, and here he is expository, almost encomiastic, rather than controversial or theological.
As already indicated, Novatian's book, being not in the first instance a work of controversy but of instruction, an exposition of the leading sentences of the Rule of the Faith, falls naturally into three parts.
In part ome, having summarised the scriptural teaching of the work of God in the creation of the world and of man, and having briefly stated the fact of the fall, and of heaven and hell, Novatian goes on to say that God, who is above all, also contains all, being infinite and eternal, far transcending the powers of human thought and speech.
Yet as creator he manifests himself in his works: he is good, always the same, without peer, without name, immortal and incorruptible.
When the Scripture speaks of the wrath of God it indicates no defect in his nature, since his wrath affects not him but us: and likewise the other anthropomorphisms of holy Scripture are meant to help man's understanding, certainly not for a description of God.
Even the statement "God is a spirit" (and here Novatian disagrees with Tertullian) is not an exhaustive definition of his essence, any more than '* God is love", "God is light", '* God is a consuming fire".
The Scripture also shows that God's providential care extends both to the whole and to every smallest part of his creation.
The second and by far the longest section of the book is concerned with Christ Jesus the Son of God, who was promised of old in the law, the prophets, and the psalms.
Neither the Marcionite Christ nor the Christ of the docetists and the gnostics is of any use to us Christians:
Christ comes to us not as an unannounced stranger into an alien world, but as the saviour of his own creation: he is also fully human.
But he is not merely human, being both God and Man.. There are places in the Old
Testament which promise a saviour who is God:
God says, in Hosea, "I will save them by the Lord their God", and, Isaiah says, our Saviour is Emmanuel, "God with us".
The apostles John and Paul bear the same testimony.
Now follows a long argument directed against those who will have it that Christ is nought but man.
These are evidently not Ebionites, nor adherents of either Theodotus: we have suggested that this thoroughgoing humanism was the teaching of Artemas.
: i) j e.
A) | J C ^ Oy uS. hee Ga the Son
INTRODUCTION
ds In this section the influence of Tertullian is very apparent: the themes and the scriptural quotations and many of the interpretations are borrowed from him, but with the difference that what he uses to prove that the Son is a second divine Person beside the Father, Novatian (whose adversaries admit Christ's personal existence) finds equally apposite to prove his deity (which Tertullian's adversaries did not deny).
First, the testimony of St John's Gospel is adduced in detail, and it is shown that both Moses and David anticipate John's teaching.
Next, asserting the principle that "No man hath seen God at any time", Novatian (like Tertullian) remarks that as God did appear to the patriarchs and others it must have been
God the Son whom they saw.
In some of these places the visitant is described as both "God" and "Angel of the Lord": and as it is impossible to suppose that the Father could be the angel or messenger of any greater than himself, we must conclude that Christ the Son, the Father's messenger, is here declared to be God.
In the wrestling at Penuel, Jacob's antagonist is\called Man as well as God, the former by anticipation of the Incarnation.
These two points Novatian seems to owe not to Tertullian but directly to Justin.
If the heretics contend that an ordinary angel is here indicated, they do not improve their case: for it is declared that all things in heaven and earth are subject to Christ, and consequently he is superior to the angels and (on the heretics' contention) to the angel who is described as God and Lord.
Further, Christ's own testimony concerning himself is that he is both God and Man.
And again, if Christ were nought but man, he would be in the image of God (as are all men) but not in the form of God (as St Paul affirms): and moreover a mere man by being born is not "emptied" but increased, and it is impossible that to a mere man every knee should bow.
The Sabellians and - the docetists, though^we do not approve of their errors, at least testify to the strength of the scriptural evidence for Christ's deity.
If the heretics allege the words of the Annunciation as saying that the Son of Mary as such is the Son of God, they have misread their text: the word "also" must not be disregarded.
And finally, if they object that God cannot die, we reply that in the Passion of Christ it was not the godhead but the manhood that died, even as in the death of every man it is the body that dies and not the soul.
28 | TERTULLIAN'S TREATISE AGAINST PRAXEAS
Having thus dealt at length with the humanitarians, Novatian turns to deal briefly with the Sabellians.
The references to the obedience of Christ are sufficient proof that the Son is not the Father, for no one is obedient to himself.
An examination of the. texts I and my Father are one" and * He that hath seen me hath seen the Father" which concludes the second part of the book, follows Tertullian's general line, but with a few details of Novatian's own.
The third, a very brief, section of the work, expounds, on what seem to be Novatian's own lines, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.
If there are differences in the manner of the Holy Spirit's operations as between the Old Testament and the New, there are sufficient likenesses to prove that it is the same Spirit.
His present working is by no means only in the so-called "spiritual gifts": for the Holy Spirit rested fully upon Christ, and operates fully from him, working in the Christian person both for the formation of character and for moral power, as well as in prophetic and intellectual enlightenment and in ascetic self-mastery.
Novatian here greatly improves upon Tertullian, who regarded the Paraclete as acting almost exclusively in the revelations of the *new prophecy", and had little conception of the general
Christian life as one lived in the grace of the Holy Spirit: indeed, to Novatian apparently belongs the credit of rescuing this Pauline teaching from the oblivion into which since apostolic days it had (except for Irenaeus) for the most part been allowed to fall.
The work ends with two chapters of recapitulation of the doctrine of God and of Christ, which contain the remarkable sentence (already quoted) which seems to anticipate the doctrine afterwards called zepuxópwows.
This thought also seems to be Novatian's own, though Athenagoras has something like it in reference to the Holy Spirit: daoppéov xai émavadQepópevov dg dkTiva, TOv.
THE CORRESPONDENCE OF THE TWO DIONYsItI
The fragment of the letter of Dionysius of Rome preserved by Athanasius is directed against persons whom he accuses of the unlikely heresy of tritheism, and others who make the Son a created being.
Its expressions seem to be such as had by now become common form.
Christ is the Word and Wisdom and
Ada s 4 Nye 5 Vase
INTRODUCTION
Power of God, and as it is impossible to conceive that God can ever have been devoid of these, it is equally impossible that the Son should ever have been non-existent, and consequently he cannot be a creature.
A misinterpretation of "The Lord created me" is corrected with the remark that ékrwce here means eréotnoe.
"Out of the womb before the dawn" and "Before all the hills doth he beget me" are adduced as prooftexts, as are "I and the Father are one" and "I am in the Father and the Father in me".
The "preaching of the monarchy" is insisted on as essential:
Dionysius perhaps regarded Sabellianism as a lesser evil than subordinationism.
The epistula quadripartita of Dionysius of Alexandria (the fragments of which are again for the most part preserved by Athanasius) seems to have been largely occupied with the defence of a former epistle.
In this use had been made of the image atravyacpa dorós adiov, and the term d6uoovctos had been remarked on as non-scriptural (apparently it was already an accepted expression even in other than Origenistic circles, and Dionysius here regards it as equivalent in the divine sphere to ój.oyevijs in the human or to ouodvuys in vegetable life). He uses the figures of plant springing from seed or root, and river from fountain, his purpose in these and in the figure of the light being to illustrate homogeneity but distinctness.
'There is a Aóyos which is duóppoua vod, érepos ToU év Kapdia Adyou, 6 dua ykdéoons voUs mpoTyndav: the one Aóyos remains where it was, after emitting the other, yet both are in each other,
Kat €v cio, Ovtes SVo: so the Father and the Son are é, and within each other.
This seems a new illustration, perhaps suggested by Tertullian, but certainly not one which he would have thought it safe to use.
Again, father and son being relative terms, the mention of the Father implies (even without express mention) the acknowledgement of the Son.
But Dionysius is greatly concerned to avoid Sabellianism: the Word who was in the beginning was not sent forth by the Word, but was "with God": we must acknowledge three tzrootdcets, or we deny the Trinity.
On the text "My heart hath sent forth a good Word", he remarks that Aóyos is so to speak the child of vous, the angel. and interpreter of vovs, but is not itself vovs. Once more we may suspect that Tertullian's arguments and illustrations have become by now common property: in any case, the pupil of 2s "d
TERTULLIAN'S TREATISE AGAINST PRAXEAS
Origen was not likely to be entirely beholden to a western tradition.
THE SvNop or ANTIOCH TO PAUL OF SAMOSATA This letter, a statement of the faith delivered by the blessed
Apostles and preserved in the holy catholic Church, declares:
(1) that God is unbegotten, one only, without beginning, invisible, immutable, whom no man hath seen nor can see, of glory beyond description, yet known (to the measure to which he is known) through the revelation of his Son.
(2) That the only begotten Son of God, the Wisdom and Word and Power of God, exists before the ages, not in foreknowledge, but God in actual subsistence,! as both Old and New Testaments testify, Ps. 45. 6, 7:
Is. 35. 4,.5:. 45. 14:, Rom. 9. 5: Hos. 1x. 9, 10.
(3). [bat the Son, being ever with the Father, fulfilled the Father's counsel in the creation of the world, and it was he who appeared to the patriarchs Abraham and Jacob: this also is evident from the Scriptures, Ps. 148. &:., Gen. 1, 26: Joh 1:3:
Col 1 Prov. 8. 30: and Gen. 18. 1: 19. 24: Is. 9. 6: Gen. 22. 11, 15:
31. 11-13, in some of which places the Lord is called Angel, an appellation inapplicable to the Father but appropriate to the Son.
(4) That the Son was the mediator at the giving of the Law, and was seen by Moses, though he testifies that God the Father cannot be seen.
(5) That the Son, sent by the Father, was incarnate, and the body born of the virgin received the whole fullness of the Godhead bodily, being without detriment to its proper nature (&rpémros) united to the Godhead and deified, wnerefore the prophets preached beforehand of Jesus Christ the same both
God and Man: the signs and wonders were the work of God, but in that he became partaker of flesh and blood he, the same, was in all points tempted like as we are, apart from sin: Lam. 4. 20:
2 Wor. 3. 17> (p Cor. 10. 440 PAC ot Ra tee eet EL 1 Cots 1,24.
The similarities, both in detail and in general construction, of this letter with the works of Tertullian and Hippolytus, seem too close to be accidental, and it appears likely that the work
1 [Ipd aióvcw Óvra, ob Tpo'*yvóce| adn odcla kal droordoe 0cóy 0coÜ vió.
The three verbal substantives are evidently here more verbal than substantival, and ' the sentence would lose nothing if rewritten ov piv mpoeyvicbn &XN Fv re kal umréstn 0cós.