Over
the last few days, I have been reading the selections from Brannion Ellis'
book, Calvin, Classical Trinitarianism, and
the Aseity of the Son, that have been provided online via Google preview (LINK). The book is an interesting one, in that it is attempting to
defend a middle position between two contrasting views of Calvin's Trinitarian
thought—i.e. between the view that Calvin's doctrine of the Trinity, "marks an
epoch in the history of the doctrine of the Trinity" [1]; and the stark, contrasting view that Calvin's Trinitarian
thought, "carefully avoided anything that could have been considered an
innovation" [2]. (Though Ellis is
not the first person to present a mediating position between the two polarized
views, his is certainly the most exhaustive.)
Ellis' book brought back to mind a
definitive work penned by B. B. Warfield. It was way back in 1981, that I purchased the
Baker Book House reprint edition of "The Works of Benjamin B.
Warfield" (10 volumes). Shortly thereafter, I read volume 5, which
contained the substantive essay, "Calvin's Doctrine of the Trinity"
(pages 189-284). [This essay was originally published in The Princeton Theological Review, 1909, and is available online HERE.]
It was in this contribution by Warfield that I first came across the term αὐτόθεος
(autotheos).
Given the high regard that the Reformed community had for Warfield, I accepted the bulk of his assessments without any critical reflection,
assessments which included the following:
Clearly Calvin's position did not seem a matter of course,
when he first enunciated it. It roused opposition and created a party. But
it did create a party: and that party was shortly the Reformed Churches, of
which it became characteristic that they held and taught the self-existence of
Christ as God and defended therefore the application to Him of the term αὐτόθεος; that
is to say, in the doctrine of the Trinity they laid the stress upon the
equality of the Persons sharing in the same essence, and thus set themselves
with more or less absoluteness against all subordinationism in the explanation
of the relations of the Persons to one another. When Calvin asserted, with the
emphasis which he threw upon it, the self-existence of Christ, he unavoidably
did three things. First and foremost, he declared the full and perfect deity of
our Lord, in terms which could not be mistaken and could not be explained away.
The term αὐτόθεος served
the same purpose in this regard that the term ὁμοούσιος had served against the Arians and
the term ὑπόστασις against
the Sabellians. No minimizing conception of the deity of Christ could live in
the face of the assertion of aseity or αὐτόθεότης of Him. This was Calvin's purpose in
asserting aseity of Christ and it completely fulfilled itself in the event. In
thus fulfilling itself, however, two further effects were unavoidably wrought
by it. The inexpugnable opposition of subordinationists of all types was
incurred: all who were for any reason or in any degree unable or unwilling to
allow to Christ a deity in every respect equal to that of the Father were
necessarily offended by the vindication to Him of the ultimate Divine quality
of self-existence. And all those who, while prepared to allow true deity to
Christ, yet were accustomed to think of the Trinitarian relations along the
lines of the traditional Nicene orthodoxy, with its assertion of a certain
subordination of the Son to the Father, at least in mode of subsistence,
were thrown into more or less confusion of mind and compelled to resort to nice
distinctions in order to reconcile the two apparently contradictory
confessions of αὐτόθεότης and of θεός ἐκ θεοῦ of our Lord. It is not surprising,
then, that the controversy roused by Caroli and carried on by Chaponneau and
Courtois did not die out with their refutation; but prolonged itself through
the years and has indeed come down even to our own day. Calvin's so-called
innovation with regard to the Trinity has, in point of fact, been made the
object of attack through three centuries, not only by Unitarians of all
types, nor only by professed Subordinationists, but also by Athanasians,
puzzled to adjust their confession of Christ as "God of God, Light of
Light, very God of very God" to the at least verbally contradictory
assertion that in respect of His deity He is not of another but of Himself. (B. B. Warfield, “Calvin’s Doctrine of the Trinity”, in Calvin and Calvinism, volume
V of The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield – Baker Book House, 1981 reprint,
pages 251, 252.)
And:
In his assertion of the αὐτόθεότης of the Son Calvin, then, was so far from
supposing that he was enunciating a novelty that he was able to quote the
Nicene Fathers themselves as asserting it " in so many words." And
yet in his assertion of it he marks an epoch in the history of the doctrine of
the Trinity. Not that men had not before believed in the self-existence of
the Son as He is God: but that the current modes of stating the doctrine of the
Trinity left a door open for the entrance of defective modes of conceiving the
deity of the Son, to close which there was needed some such sharp assertion of
His absolute deity as was supplied by the assertion of His αὐτόθεότης. If we
will glance over the history of the efforts of the Church to work out for
itself an acceptable statement of the great mystery of the Trinity, we shall
perceive that it is dominated from the beginning to the end by a single motive
— to do full justice to the absolute deity of Christ. And we shall perceive
that among the multitudes of great thinkers who under the pressure of this
motive have labored upon the problem, and to whom the Church looks back with
gratitude for great services, in the better formulation of the doctrine or the
better commendation of it to the people, three names stand out in high relief,
as marking epochs in the advance towards the end in view. These three names are
those of Tertullian, Augustine and Calvin. It is into this narrow circle of
elect spirits that Calvin enters by the contribution he made to the right
understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity. That contribution is summed
up in his clear, firm and unwavering assertion of the αὐτόθεότης of the Son. By this assertion the ὁμοουσιότης of the Nicene Fathers at last came
to its full right, and became in its fullest sense the hinge of the doctrine. (Ibid. pages 283, 284- bold emphasis
mine.)
I subsequently began to notice that a number of
other Reformed theologians embraced similar views; note the following:
Students of historical theology are acquainted
with the furore which Calvin's insistence upon the self-existence of the Son as
to his deity aroused at the time of the Reformation. Calvin was too much of a
student of Scripture to be content to follow the lines of what had been
regarded as Nicene orthodoxy on this particular issue. He was too jealous for
the implications of the homousion clause of the Nicene creed to be
willing to accede to the interpretation which the Nicene fathers, including
Athanasius, placed upon another expression in the same creed, namely, 'very God
of very God' (θεόν ἀληθινὸν ὲκ θεοῦ ἀληθινοῦ). No doubt this
expression is repeated by orthodox people without any thought of suggesting
what the evidence derived from the writings of the Nicene Fathers would
indicate the intent to have been. This evidence shows that the meaning intended
is that the Son derived his deity from the Father and that the Son was
not therefore αὐτόθεος. It was precisely this position that
Calvin controverted with vigour. He maintained that as respects personal
distinction the Son was of the Father but as respects deity he was
self-existent (ex se ipso). Hence the indictments leveled against him.
(John Murray, "Systematic Theology", Studies in Theology, volume 4 in the Collected Writings
of John Murray, 1982, p. 8.)
Gerald Bray:
It therefore comes as something of a surprise to discover that the
Protestant Reformers, in spite of their links with the Augustinian
tradition, and notwithstanding Karl Barth's claim that he was walking in their
footsteps, had a vision of God which was fundamentally different from
anything which had gone before, or which has appeared since. The great
issues of Reformation theology – justification by faith, election, assurance of
salvation – can be properly understood only against the background of a
trinitarian theology which gave these matters their peculiar importance and
ensured that Protestantism, instead of becoming just another schism produced by
revolt against abuses in the mediaeval church, developed instead into a new
type of Christianity.
The radically different character of Protestantism, and especially
Calvinism, has often be recognized by secular historians, but its theological
origins have seldom been discerned. Partly this is because theology is a
difficult and unpopular subject, which many scholars in other disciplines
refuse to take seriously, preferring to treat theological statements as
mythical conceptualizations of what are really socio-economic problems.
Partly too, it is the result of theologians' failure, or sheer
inability, to perceive the uniqueness of what the Reformers taught about God.
It is often assumed that the Reformers accepted their ancient inheritance
without quarrel, and had nothing original to contribute to it. Many people
assume that that Calvin's defense of the Trinity, for example, was intended
mainly as a refutation of heretics like Servetus, and offers little that could
be termed new.
Recent ecumenical discussions have tended to confirm this
impression. Today both Roman Catholic and Protestant theologians are inclined
to stress the superficial causes of the Reformation, like the abuse of clerical
power, and play down the underlying theological differences...The great pillars
of Reformation doctrine are not Scholastic shibboleths perpetuating an
artificial divide in Western Christendom, but claims about the being of God
which are of such vital importance that those who rejected them felt that they
were no longer in spiritual fellowship with people who insisted on making them
the heart of their religion.
Far from being more or less the same as its Catholic counterpart,
Reformation theology is distinguished from it by a number of characteristics,
of which the following are the most significant. First, the Reformers believed
that the essence of God is of secondary importance in Christian theology. (Gerald
Bray, The Doctrine of God, 1993, pp. 197, 198 - bold emphasis mine.)
In the next two paragraphs, Bray provides his support for the
above 'characteristic', and then moves on to the second:
The second point which distinguishes the theology of the Reformers
is their belief that the persons of the Trinity are equal to one another in
every respect. (Ibid. p. 200)
His extrapolation of the 'point' over the next two pages leads
into number three:
...the third principle of Reformation theology, which is that knowledge
of one of the persons involves knowledge of the other two at the same time. (Ibid.
p. 202)
In what follows, Bray outlines his understanding of how the
Reformers avoided what he terms the "semi-Sabellian" understanding of
the Trinity that dominated the Western tradition, prior to the Reformation
period, quoting the following from Calvin's Institutes:
. . . to the Father is attributed the beginning of action, the
fountain and source of all things, to the Son, wisdom, counsel, and arrangement
in action, while the energy and efficacy of actions is assigned to the Spirit
(I,13,18).
He immediately then writes:
Viewed in relation to action, the three persons of the Trinity can
be distinguished as follows:
Father : beginning
Son : arrangement
Spirit : efficacy
This scheme preserves the priority of the Father, which from
ancient times has been expressed by the term 'source of the Godhead' (Greek: pēgē
tēs Theotētos; Latin: fons Deitatis) without the ontological
implications which such a statement is bound to have in the context of an
Origenist theology. (Ibid. p. 203)
After introducing the fact Calvin stated, "that each person
of the Trinity is autotheos", he goes on to emphasize that
Calvin's, "words are carefully chosen so as to avoid any hint of
causality", and that the Son is not, "ontologically dependent on the
Father as the only true autotheos." (Ibid. p. 204)
This is not the place to critique Bray's sweeping assessments (of
which I think there are a number of significant problems); the intent of the
quotations are to establish that he clearly believes the Reformers (especially
Calvin) understanding of the Trinity introduces a break within the Western
tradition via some novel aspects.
Richard A. Muller:
The Reformed doctrine of the Trinity (and, of course, also the
doctrine of the Person of Christ) is characterized by a declaration of the
aseity of Christ's divinity: considered as God, the Second Person of the
Trinity is divine a se ipso — he is autotheos. This had been a
point of controversy with both the antitrinitarians and with Rome since the
time of Calvin, and in the course of the development of Reformed dogmatics in
the late sixteenth and seventeenth century, it became not only the distinctive
feature of Reformed trinitarianism but also a crucial point, defended against
any and all opponents. (Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics - The Triunity
of God, 4.324.)
Interestingly enough, a bit later, Muller adds:
The radical statement of the son's aseity found in Calvin's
trinitarian polemic is not echoed by all of the early orthodox Reformed
theologians: as Amyraut noted, there as no debate among the orthodox over the
distinct personal identify of the Son, but there was discussion over whether he
stood in utterly equal majesty and dignity with the Father. (Ibid. p.
326)
He then provides the following quote from Ursinus:
God the Father is that Being who is of himself, and not from
another, The Son is that self-same Being, or essence, not of himself, but of
the Father. (Ibid. p. 236)
Morton H. Smith:
It is of interest to observe the treatment of these concepts by the
Nicene theologians (325 A. D.). They sought to define to define the eternal
generation of the Son as follows: first, it was not by creation that Christ is
the Son of God. Second, it is temporal, but eternal. Third, it is not after the
manner of human generation. Fourth, it is not by the division of essence. After
giving these four negations, the following positive speculations are suggested:
first, the Father is the beginning, the fountain, the cause, the principle of
the being of the Son. Second, the Son thus derives his essence from the Father
by eternal and indefinable generation of the divine essence from the Father to
the Son. Calvin was the first one to challenge these last two speculations. He
taught that the Son was a se ipso with regard to his deity. He did not
derive his essence from the Father. (Systematic Theology, volume one,
1994, p. 152 - bold emphasis mine.)
Warfield, Murray, Bray, Muller and Smith are representatives of the view
that Calvin's doctrine of the Trinity, "marks an
epoch in the history of the doctrine of the Trinity". (It is important to
note that those who are supporters of this view do not believe Calvin's overall
Trinitarianism lies outside the Augustinian tradition—or that it is devoid of any
historical precedent—but rather, they focus on features of his thought they feel are innovative.)
In my next post, I will provide selections from the opposing
view; that Calvin, concerning the Trinity,
"carefully avoided anything that could have been considered an
innovation".
Grace and peace,
David
Notes:
1. B. B. Warfield,
“Calvin’s Doctrine of the Trinity”, in Calvin
and Calvinism, volume V of The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield – Baker Book House, 1981 reprint, page
283.
2. Francois Wendel, Calvin - Origins and Development of His Religious
Thought, English trans., Philip Mairet, 1963, Baker Books edition, 1997, p.
168.
