Irenaeus, by Denis Minns: selections and reflections – Part 2

In this second installment, we shall be examining Minns’ reflections on Irenaeus’ theology concerning the doctrine of the Trinity. In chapter 4, “Knowing the one God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit”, Minns states:

Although there are the beginnings of a metaphysical theology of the Trinity in his writings, he presents us, for the most part, with a highly developed economic theology of the Trinity. (Page 38)

As we shall soon learn, Minns’ construction and assessment of Irenaeus’ ‘Trinitarian’ theology contains some conclusions that are highly suspect. I am reasonably convinced that he has misread Irenaeus on some keys points. I do not want to give the impression that Minns is ‘alone’ here, so I feel compelled to offer another comparative viewpoint, before providing further selections from Minns. In his comprehensive work, The Three-Personed God – The Trinity As A Mystery of Salvation, Willam J. Hill writes:

Irenaeus (+ c. 202), whose theology, remarkable for its vast synthetic vision, differs markedly from that of the earlier Apologists, represents in his own way this Economic Trinitarianism…The Word and Spirit are simply the two hands of God in this work. God, whose absolute oneness Irenaeus takes for granted, relates to the world in the form of Word and Wisdom—the latter his name for the Spirit. On this basis, God’s oneness includes an underlying threeness but solely in the sense that he lives eternally with his Thought and his Wisdom. The distinctness of the Three is suppressed and emerges only in terms of roles within the economy. Needless to say, there is not the slightest suggestion in this of three co-equal “persons.” (Page 33.)

Minns’ reading of Irenaeus shares some common aspects with Hill’s, concerning the oneness of God prior to the emergence of the economic “Trinity” (for creative purposes). Minns penned:

Although Irenaeus tells us that we should not ask what God was doing before the creation of the world (AH II.28.3), I think a case could be made from his arguments in Book II to the effect that he would, at the very least, not be disturbed by the notion that the Trinity did not exist as distinct persons before the creation of Adam. (Page 52.)

Let’s now attempt to determine why Minns (and perhaps Hill as well) proposed such a view (a view that is essentially modalistic, and which I believe may stem from Karl Barth’s reading of Irenaues – see Barth’s, Church Dogmatics, Eng. trans., Bromiley, IV.1.196, 197.)

Foundational to Minns’ analysis of Irenaeus’ doctrine of God entails the following:

Because of his absolute transcendence, God in himself cannot be comprehended or known by human beings…

God will be seen only because he chooses to make himself visible, and this is something God will do gradually, keeping pace with the creature’s process of development towards God. Since the power of seeing in question here is not a mystic, inward vision, but ordinary human eyesight, if God is to be visible at all it will be as an object available to human eyesight. In fact, God has chosen to become visible to us as a human being, Jesus of Nazareth.

When Irenaeus read in St. John’s Gospel that Christ said to Phillip “he who has seen me has seen the Father’ (John 14:9); cf. John 12:45: ‘ he who sees me sees him who sent me’; and John 8:19: ‘ if you knew me you would know my Father also’) he understood this in a perfectly literal sense. The Son is, he says, what is visible of the Father, and the Father is what remains invisible of the Son (AH IV.6.6). (Pages 38, 39.)

Though Minns acknowledges that, “Some scholars have argued that, for Irenaeus, the Son is, from all eternity, ‘visible’ in a way that the Father is not” (p. 39); he rejects this position, and instead offers a rather complex explanation to support his take that, “The notion that Jesus is God made visible is Irenaeus’ preferred say of accounting for the distinction between the Father and the Son” (p. 43). To assist his cause, Minns then gives a summary of thought concerning the development of the doctrine of the Trinity, beginning with the following:

The attempts of theologians in the early Church to reconcile belief in the oneness of God with belief in a divine Trinity have for long been classified in two broad schools of thought. Theologians of one school are called Subordinationists, those of the other Monarchians or Modalists…The orthodox theology of the Trinity developed after the Council of Nicaea in 325 rests largely upon a cobbling together of the central tenants of each school. It is as though the later Church was obliged to say that both were right. (Pages 43, 44.)

Minns then lists and comments on a few of the representatives of the “two broad schools of thought” (pages 44-46), and in a footnote (#12) states:

Prominent Modalists of the second and third centuries were Praxeas, Noetus, Sabellius, and Dionysius of Rome. Among the Subordinationists were Tertullian, Hippolytus, Novation, Dionysius of Alexandria, and Origen. (Page 54)

A bit later he writes:

These two schools of thought about the Trinity were beginning to develop in the Great Church when Irenaeus was writing. Can he be said to belong to either of them? This question is surprisingly difficult to answer, for Irenaeus expressed himself in terms which resonate with both of these major theological traditions. (Pages 46, 47.)

What is Minns final conclusion? Though he admits that, “Irenaeus’ use of traditional language about the Son being born of the Father before the creation of the world might seem to offer strong support for the view that he did acknowledge a real, eternal distinction between the Father and the Son” (p. 50), he later concludes:

It would be consistent with this for Irenaeus to have held that a real Trinity of distinct ‘persons’ did not exist before the beginning of the divine economy for the creation and salvation of mankind…Thus, although he understands there to be a real Trinity of distinct ‘persons’, at least from the time of the incarnation, and although he describes the operation of this Trinity in subordinationist terms, he would not allow that the Son is in any sense a lesser god than the Father, for the essential divinity of Christ is fundamental to his understanding of the work of Christ. (Pages 52, 53.)

In summation, it seems to me that Minns, in his attempt to avoid and deflect the all too obvious subordinationism found in Irenaeus’ thought (see THIS THREAD), creates a complex hybrid synthesis of an Irenaues who is both a modalist and an economic subordinationist.


Grace and peace,

David