Apocryphote of the Day: 4-8-08

Savior said, "I want you to know that all people born on earth from the foundation of the world until now, being dust, while they have inquired about God, who he is and what he is like, have not found him. Now the wisest among them have speculated from the order and movement of the world. But their speculation has not reached the truth...But I, who came from the Infinite Light, I am here, that I might speak to you about the precise nature of the truth, since I know it...He-Who-Is is ineffable. No principle knew him, no authority, no subjection, nor any creature from the foundation of the world until now, except he alone and anyone to whom he wants to reveal through him who is from First Light. From now on, I am the great Savior. But he is immortal and eternal, having no birth; for everyone who has birth will perish. He is unbegotten, having no beginning; for everyone who has a beginning has an end...He is called 'Father of the Universe.'"

Sophia of Jesus Christ 92.6-19, 94.5-21 (possibly our earliest Sethian text; late first century).

Comment: The Gnostics are already speculating about the relationship between the Father and the Son in the late first century. The Father is unbegotten, eternal, without birth. The Son is the only one who can reveal the Father to others.

Reactions to the Trinity

Several of my readers had vivid reactions to the Trinity doctrine as I outlined it last. It must be recognized that this doctrine is not universal among Christians. Some Christians today, as well as Muslims, view the doctrine as polytheistic even in the form it was framed by the Cappadocians. This criticism of the doctrine is as old as the doctrine itself. The Cappadocians in fact tell us that they were accused of creating a doctrine that allowed for the worship of not just three but even four gods.

One of my readers wanted to know what happened to the female, quoting the Genesis story about God's image being male and female. I am writing on this topic for my new book which I'm calling tentatively, You shall be like God: Sex and the Serpent in Early Christianity. Just a brief overview of one of the chapters on the Trinity which I'm writing. The mother was originally part of the Trinity. She was the Holy Spirit. As long as the Christian tradition remained attached to Aramaic traditions, the Spirit's female gender is retained. But once the church moves away from these roots, more and more into Greek (and eventually Latin) where the Spirit is neutered, the mother falls away, or is dismissed. The result is a very awkward doctrine of a Father god who births a son god from which proceeds a nebulous neutered spirit god. My readers are always asking why the "other" gospels and gnostic materials are important. Here is a case in point. They help us to reconstruct the earliest doctrine of the Trinity as it included the female.

On the difference between trinitarianism and modalism

In response to a question raised in one of the comments, I thought I'd address this in a main blog post.

First trinitarianism did not exist at the time that modalism was popular and condemned - late second and early third centuries. Trinitarianism is a doctrine that was developed by the two Gregories and Basil in the fourth century.

With that in mind, modalism was the belief that the doctrine "God is One" must be preserved at all costs. So the modalists taught that God is one persona and three activities. He is GOD acting out in history as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. There is no difference in GOD, only that HE has different names or modes. The problem that Tertullian had with their being no individuation of any kind is that this means that the Father suffered and died too. Although this is a heresy today, this is the way that most Christians in the pews still understand the Christian God. There is GOD and he is a Father (with a white beard sitting on a throne in heaven), a Son (Jesus Christ incarnate on earth), and a Spirit (charismatic activity in the church until Jesus comes again).

The Trinity is a doctrine that took on philosophical terms to try to explain the Christian God. It was framed with the concept of the universal and particulars. The idea is that there can be three different or "particular" horses in the stable - Lightening, Blaze, and Bolt. All of them, however, are horses because they share in a universal "horseness". This concept is applied to God where God is the universal and Father and Son and Holy Spirit are the particulars. They taught that there was no difference in the divine nature or ousia, only in the relations of the particulars to each other. It is the development of the idea of Tertullian that God is one substance and three persona. The Cappadocians said that different characteristics of the three (for instance, "unbegotten," "begotten," "proceeding") were not characteristics designating the divine nature, but only of the particular mode of the divine nature. The "sameness" of nature was an equality or likeness of substance, not a unity of substance.

Of course the Trinity borders on polytheism, which the Cappadocians were accused of - in their case creating a doctrine of three, even four gods. This is still the opinion of critics of this doctrine. The Cappadocians responded by affirming that the nature was indivisible and that the category of number cannot really be applied to GOD. Only material beings can be numbered. The biggest problem with the Trinity framed in this way, however, is that the distinctions, the particulars, make no difference at the transcendent level. In the transcendent realm these differences cannot be maintained, but were only put into place to deal with the doctrine of incarnation to explain the difference between Jesus and God, and yet to allow for worship of Jesus as GOD. The Cappadocians knew this and so in the final moment say that the Trinity cannot be grasped by the intellect, but only by means of mystical participation in the liturgy, in the Eucharist on the altar.