@slimboyfat
Your
critique posits that Trinitarians systematically misinterpret early Christian
writings and biblical texts to fit their doctrine, suggesting a deliberate
distortion of plain meanings. The charge that Trinitarian theologians must
perennially rescue their doctrine by emptying words of their “plain meaning”
gains its rhetorical force from a series of surface‐level juxtapositions, yet it evaporates once those statements are
restored to the literary, philosophical, and polemical horizons in which they
were first uttered. The writers invoked—Origen, Tertullian, Justin, the composer of the Shepherd of Hermas,
Paul, and the Johannine Jesus—speak from
disparate decades, genres, and intellectual idioms. To read each utterance as
though it were a line in a modern analytic creed is to erase precisely what the
history of doctrine is meant to illuminate: how the Church gradually discovered
technical vocabulary adequate to a mystery already confessed in its worship.
This
critique targets statements by Origen, Tertullian, Justin Martyr, the Shepherd
of Hermas, Paul, and Jesus himself, claiming they support an Arian view of
Jesus as a created, subordinate being. A systematic Trinitarian response,
grounded in historical theology, linguistic analysis, and scriptural context,
refutes this claim, demonstrating that these statements align with the doctrine
of the Trinity, which affirms one God in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit, with the Son eternally begotten, not created, and consubstantial with
the Father.
Origen's
"Second God" and Subordination
Origen's
use of "second god" (deuteros theos) in works like
"Contra Celsum" must be understood within his engagement with
Platonic philosophy and second-century Christian theology. He describes the Son
as "the image of the invisible God" and "God from God,
Light from Light," echoing later Nicene formulations. While Origen
speaks of the Son as subordinate, this subordination is functional, relating to
the economy of salvation, not ontological. For instance, in "On First
Principles," he affirms the Son's eternal generation, stating, "The
Father is always Father, the Son always Son," indicating no temporal
beginning for the Son. The Arian interpretation, which takes "second
god" to mean a lesser deity, ignores Origen's broader affirmation of the
Son's divinity and his role as the mediator through whom all things were made,
consistent with John 1:3 and Colossians 1:16-17.
The same
passage of Contra Celsum that calls the Son “a second god” also insists
that the Son is eternally generated, inseparable from the Father’s own
substance, and therefore the unique mediator in whom creatures are deified.
Origen’s distinction between ὁ πρώτος θεός and ὁ δεύτερος θεός is a pastoral clarification aimed
at pagan critics who accused Christians of collapsing Creator and cosmos. The
number “second” marks personal differentiation within the simple divine
essence; it does not introduce an ontological gap. Far from anticipating
Arianism, Origen is explicit that “there was never when the Son was not,” a
line Arius himself would later reject.
Tertullian's
Alleged Statement on the Son's Non-Existence
The Arian
claim that Tertullian said "there was a time when the Son was not" is
a misattribution, as this phrase is famously associated with Arius during the
fourth-century controversy. Tertullian, in "Against Praxeas,"
articulates a proto-Trinitarian view, describing the Word (Logos) as eternally
present within the Father: "Before all things, God was alone, but not
thereby solitary; for He had His Reason within Him... This Reason is His
consciousness... This is the Word of God." Tertullian's language of
begetting, as in "the Son was begotten for the purpose of
creation," refers to an eternal relationship, not a temporal event,
aligning with Trinitarian theology. His distinction between the immanent and
economic Trinity supports the Son's eternal existence, refuting the Arian
reading.
Tertullian’s
remark that the Son was “not yet Son” before creation belongs to an argument
against modalism, not to a denial of the Logos’s eternal reality. In Adversus
Praxean the North-African jurist insists that God was always rational
(since Reason, ratio, is intrinsic to mind); what became Son ad extra
was already the Father’s eternal Word ad intra. Tertullian thus distinguishes
between the immanent procession of the Logos and his visible mission—an
economic register later standardized as the distinction between the Son’s
eternal generation and his temporal sending. A single clause lifted from that
discussion cannot be re-deployed as proof that Tertullian thought the Word
himself began to exist.
Justin
Martyr's Reference to Jesus as an "Angel"
Justin
Martyr, in "Dialogue with Trypho" 56, refers to the pre-incarnate
Christ as an "angel of the Lord," appearing in Old Testament
theophanies like the burning bush (Exodus 3:2). However, "angel"
(angelos) means "messenger" in Greek, denoting a functional role,
not ontological status. Justin clarifies that this "angel" is
"another God and Lord subject to the Maker of all things," affirming
the Son's divinity and pre-existence. He states, "I shall attempt to
persuade you... that there is, and that there is said to be, another God and
Lord... above whom there is no other God," emphasizing the Son's equality
with the Father in divinity. This functional language does not support Arian
creatureliness but aligns with Trinitarian views of the Son as the divine
revealer.
Justin’s
designation of Christ as “angel” operates in an entirely different semantic
field from later systematic theology. In second-century Greek ἄγγελος denotes a
function—messenger—rather than a species in a fixed ontological taxonomy.
Justin’s purpose in Dialogue with Trypho is to identify the figure who
appears as “the angel of the Lord” in Genesis and Exodus with the
pre-incarnate Logos who is worshipped as God. Hence he does not hesitate to say
in the same breath that this messenger is both “another God” and “Lord of the
hosts” while still subordinate in role to the Father. The Arian inference that “angel”
must mean created spirit would have dumbfounded Justin himself, who in the
very same chapter stresses that all the other angels worship this one.
The
Shepherd of Hermas and Alleged Identification with Michael
The
Shepherd of Hermas, an early second-century text, presents ambiguous
Christology, but the Arian claim that it identifies Jesus with the archangel
Michael is overstated. In Similitude 8, the "angel of the Lord" is
described as glorious and tall, potentially Michael, but Similitude 9
identifies the Son of God as the law, the willow tree, preached to the world,
distinct from angelic figures. Even if some early interpretations equated Jesus
with Michael, this would be metaphorical, reflecting Jewish traditions of
exalted archangels, not implying creatureliness. The text's high view of the
Son, as "older than all his creation" and involved in creation,
aligns with Trinitarian pre-existence, not Arian subordination.
The Shepherd
of Hermas is a parable, not a creed. Its layered allegories speak of the
“holy angel” who presides over the Church and of a Son older than all creation
who builds the tower of salvation. Nowhere does the text equate that Son with
Michael by name, and patristic readers who glimpsed faint resemblances treated
them as metaphors of guardianship, not as an ontological identity. Even if a
strand of early Roman piety had blurred those figures, the convergence would
prove only that second-century Christians still lacked the later Church’s
precision in angelology, not that they considered Christ a finite seraph.
Hermas calls the Son “pre-existent before all creation” and depicts every
virtuous stone as “carried up into the tower through him”—language
irreconcilable with Arian creaturehood.
Paul's
"Firstborn of All Creation" in Colossians 1:15
The Arian interpretation takes "firstborn"
(πρωτότοκος) in Colossians 1:15 as chronological, suggesting Jesus was the first created being.
However, biblical usage, such as Psalm 89:27 ("I will make him the
firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth"), indicates
"firstborn" denotes preeminence and supremacy. In context, Colossians
1:16-17 clarifies, "For by him all things were created... and he is before
all things, and in him all things hold together," positioning Christ as
the Creator, not a creature. This genitive of subordination, not partitivity,
affirms his divine authority, consistent with Trinitarian theology and
supported by Hebrews 1:6, where angels worship him, a prerogative of God alone.
In
Hellenistic Greek πρωτότοκος followed by a genitive often signals supremacy,
not inclusion, as when Psalm 89 (LXX 88:28) makes David the “firstborn, highest
of the kings of the earth.” The Colossian hymn immediately glosses its own
title: “for in him all things were created… and he is before all things.” A
being through whom the totality of creatures comes to be is not itself numbered
among those creatures. The Apostle’s grammar therefore mirrors his theology of
cosmic mediation rather than supplying a cryptic hint that Christ emerged from
non-being.
Jesus'
Statement "The Father is Greater Than I" in John 14:28
Jesus'
words in John 14:28, "the Father is greater than I," are often
cited to argue for his inferiority. However, Trinitarian theology, with its
doctrine of the two natures of Christ, interprets this within the Incarnation.
Philippians 2:6-7 states, "Though he was in the form of God, he did not
count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the
form of a servant." Thus, in his human nature, Jesus is subordinate,
but in his divine nature, he is equal, as seen in John 10:30, "I and the
Father are one." John 14:28, in context, prepares the disciples for his
ascension, emphasizing his return to glory, not denying divinity, aligning with
Trinitarian views.
When Jesus
says “the Father is greater than I” he speaks as the incarnate Son who
has “emptied himself” into the form of a servant. The same Gospel opens
by declaring the Word to be God and closes with Thomas’s confession “my Lord
and my God.” John’s Christology unfurls along two co-ordinate axes:
equality of essence (1:1; 5:23; 10:30) and freely chosen, economic obedience (4:34;
17:4). The conciliar lexicon of “one person in two natures” was coined four
centuries later to preserve that double witness, not to impose an anachronistic
dualism onto the text. Chalcedon’s terminology crystallised what John’s
narrative already forces readers to hold together: the eternal Logos can say
both “I and the Father are one” and “the Father is greater”
without contradiction, because his deity and his assumed humanity speak from
different registers of the same person’s life.
Conclusion
and Broader Context
The pattern
that emerges across these examples is not semantic legerdemain but disciplined
attention to context. Early Christians stretched inherited words—god, beget,
angel, first-born—because they were straining to confess a reality for which no
existing idiom was entirely adequate. Arianism solved the tension by collapsing
transcendence into a highest creature; Nicene faith retained the older texts
yet re-calibrated their edges so that the full range of biblical testimony
could resonate without mutual cancellation. The result is not a flight from
“plain meaning” but the maturation of language in the face of a mystery that
resists simplification.
The Arian
critique, by suggesting Trinitarians distort meanings, fails to account for the
historical and theological development of Christian doctrine. Each point, when
examined, supports a Trinitarian framework, affirming the Son's eternal
divinity, distinct personhood, and consubstantiality with the Father. This
interpretation, rooted in scriptural synthesis and patristic reflection,
addresses the complexity of early Christian thought, refuting the Arian
reduction of the Son to a created being and upholding the orthodox confession
of the Trinity as articulated at Nicaea and beyond.
If one
insists that every ancient sentence must bear only its most facile modern
sense, the New Testament itself becomes incoherent: Christ is called lord and
servant, wisdom that is “made” and power by which all is made, life that
dies and yet cannot die. Trinitarian theology was forged precisely to let those
paradoxes stand together without sliding into contradiction. It does not
silence the sources; it harmonizes them. To treat that harmonization as
semantic trickery is to mistake theological exegesis for sophistry and to
prefer a brittle literalism over the textured witness the Church has always
proclaimed: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, one God, blessed for ever.
