Our Unitarian Heritage : Division 1. Christianity Before Unitarianism

  

PREFACE

 

    The present work has been prepared by request of the Department of Religious Education as a part of The Beacon Course. No one else can regret so much as the author that the preparation of it has been so long protracted; but the collection and working over a vast amount of material in nine different languages, which was essential to a satisfactory product, has involved great difficulties, and the whole has had to be done subject to the prior demands of an exacting office.

    The work is primarily designed for the use of young people presumed to be sixteen or seventeen years of age, and this fact has of course dictated scope, selection of materials, and method of treatment. It has been necessary to study the utmost compression consistent with a just treatment of the subject, and even now the work is longer by half than would have been desirable. Much more space should be given to the doctrinal element which has bulked so large in the actual movement, but this would not have been to the purpose intended. It would also have been desirable to quote generously from authorities used, to give full references to sources, and to state convincing reasons for positions taken; but these things would have served another public than the one for which the work was designed. Despite these limitations, however, the author would say that he has written as far as possible directly from the sources, and has used every endeavor to make his work as careful and accurate as if its display of scholarship were greater.

    In the nearly forty years since the publication of Professor Allen’s Historical Sketch (the only work hitherto that could make any real claim to being a history of Unitarianism), many new sources have been brought to light, and much has been published bearing especially on the European phases of the subject. The present work is therefore able to give for the first time in English much interesting and important material; and in spite of its being somewhat elementary in scope and popular in form, the author ventures to hope that it may be found quite the most adequate treatment of the subject as yet produced. If permitted, however, to continue his studies in this field, he hopes some years hence to present a work much more complete, and duly fortified with all the authorities that a history should give.

    For assistance given him the author is indebted to more kind friends than can be named here; but he wishes especially to acknowledge his obligation to the following persons who have read one or other of the several divisions in manuscript, and have made many helpful suggestions: the Rev. William Laurence Sullivan of New York; the Rev. Alexander Gordon of Belfast, Ireland; Professor George Rapall Noyes of the University of California; Professor Stanislaw Kot of the University of Krakow, Poland; Professor George Boros of the Unitarian College, Kolozsvar, Transylvania; Professors J. Estlin Carpenter and James Edwin Odgers of Manchester College, Oxford; and the late Rev. William Channing Gannett of Rochester, N. Y.

    It is hoped that the Index will facilitate the use of the work, and especially the pronunciation of the large number of foreign names occurring in the text.

IMPORTANT DATES IN UNITARIAN HISTORY

 

THE EARLY CHRISTIAN CHURCH
c. 160	Apostles’ Creed composed.
c. 260	Paul of Samosata and Sabellius flourish.
318-380	The Arian Controversy.
325	Council of Nicaea: the Nicene Creed adopted.
380	Theodosius makes acceptance of the doctrine of the Trinity compulsory.
381	Council of Constantinople adopts the revised Nicene Creed.
388	Arianism suppressed in the Western Roman Empire.
431	Council of Ephesus.
451	Council of Chalcedon.
c. 460 ?	Athanasian Creed composed.
THE REFORMATION AGE: PIONEER UNITARIANS
1509	Calvin born.
1510	Francis David born.
1511	Servetus born.
c. 1515	Biandrata born.
1516	Erasmus’s Greek New Testament.
1517	Beginning of the Protestant Reformation.
1525	Rise of Anabaptism.
1526	Equal toleration granted in the Grisons to Protestants and Catholics.
1527	Cellarius publishes the earliest book against the doctrine of the Trinity.
1530	Diet of Augsburg; the Augsburg Confession.
1531	Servetus publishes De Trinitatis Erroribus.
1532	Servetus publishes Dialogues on the Trinity.
1539	Order of Jesuits founded. Faustus Socinus born.
1542	Italian Inquisition established.
1550	Anabaptist Council at Venice accepts humanity of Christ.
1553	Servetus publishes Chriatianismi Restitutio: condemned to death at Vienne; burned at the stake at Geneva, October 27.
1562	Laelius Socinus dies at Zurich.
1563	Ochino publishes Dialogues and is banished from Zurich.
1564	Calvin dies at Geneva. Ochino is banished from Poland and dies in Moravia.
1566	Helvetic Confession adopted by the Swiss churches. Gentile beheaded at Bern.
POLAND AND SOCINIANISM
1546	Antitrinitarianism first appears in Poland.
1555	Gonesius attacks the doctrine of the Trinity of Secemin.
1558	Biandrata comes from Geneva to Poland. Pinczow Reformed Church becomes Antitrinitarian.
1563	Biandrata leaves Poland for Transylvania.
1564	Jesuits enter Poland.
1565	Diet of Piotrkow: Minor Reformed Church organized.
1569	Rakow founded.
1570	Consensus Sandomiriensis.
1573	Pax Dissidentium establishes religious toleration In Poland.
1574	Schomann’s Catechism published in Poland.
1579	Faustus Socinus comes to Poland.
1588	Socinus unites all the Antitrinitarian factions at the Synod of Brest.
1591	Socinian meeting-place at Krakow destroyed by a mob.
1598	Socinus mobbed at Krakow. Ostorod and Wojdowski introduce Socinianism into Holland.
1603	Socinus dies at Luclawice.
1605	Racovian Catechism published.
1611	Jan Tyskiewicz burned at the stake at Warsaw.
1616	Socinian students expelled from Altorf.
1638	Socinians driven from Rakow.
1658	Polish Diet decrees banishment of Socinians.
1660	Socinians finally banished from Poland, July 10.
1742	Last persecution of Socinians in Holland.
1784	Socinian church at Kolozsvar disbands.
1811	Socinianism becomes extinct in Prussia.
TRANSYLVANIA
1510	Francis David born.
1540	John Sigismund born.
1555	David becomes Lutheran.
1557	David become Lutheran bishop. Diet of Torda decrees equal toleration to Protestants and Catholics.
1558	Thomas Aran publishes a book against the doctrine of the Trinity.
1563	Biandrata comes from Poland to Transylvania. Diet of Torda extends toleration to Calvinists.
1564	David becomes Reformed bishop.
1566	David begins open opposition to the doctrine of the Trinity. Trinity debated at Gyulafehervar and Torda.
1568	Debate on Trinity at Gyulafchervar, March 8 at17. Kolozsvar becomes Unitarian. David successfully pleads for full toleration at Diet of Torda. David becomes Unitarian bishop. Unitarian Church in Transylvania organizes.
1569	Debate on Trinity at Nagyvarad, October 10 at15.
1571	Rights of the Unitarian Church confirmed at Diet of Maros Vasarhely. John Sigismund dies, March 14.
1574	George Alvinczi hanged in Hungary for denying the doctrine of the Trinity.
1578	Socinus comes from Basel to Kolozsvar.
1579	David is tried for innovation, condemned, and dies in prison, November 15.
1603	Moses Szekely killed in battle.
1638	Complanatio Deesiana adopted.
1660	Polish exiles arrive at Kolozsvar.
1691	Diploma Leopoldinum issued.
1693	Unitarians lose their school at Kolozsvar.
1716	Unitarians lose the great church at Kolozsvar.
1780	Joseph II issues Edict of Toleration.
1781	Szent Abrahami’s Summa Theologica published.
1821	English and Transylvanian Unitarians discover each other.
1857	Austrian government attempts to destroy Unitarian schools.
1873	Unitarian church organized at Budapest.
ENGLAND
c. 1380	Wyclif’s translation of the Bible.
1525	Tyndale’s New Testament.
1534	The English Reformation.
1550	Church of the Strangers established in London.
1551	Dr. George van Parris burned at the stake.
1565	Aconzio’s Stratagems of Satan published.
1612	Bartholomew Legate and Edward Wightman burned at the stake.
1615 /1616	John Bidle born.
1647	Bidle’s XII. Arguments.
1648	Bidle’s Confession of Faith.
1651 /1652	Racovian Catechism published in London and ordered burned.
1654	Bidle’s Twofold Catechism.
1655	Bidle banished to the Scilly Islands.
1662	Bidle dies, September 22.
1662	Act of Uniformity.
1677	Law for burning of heretics repealed in England.
1687	Nye’s Brief History of the Unitarians.
1689	Toleration Act.
1695	Locke’s Reasonableness of Christianity.
1698	Blasphemy Act.
1702	Emlyn’s Humble Inquiry.
1703	Emlyn is imprisoned at Dublin.
1712	Clarke’s Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity.
1719	Exeter Arlan Controversy. Salters’ Hall Assembly.
1723	Theophilus Lindsey born.
1735	Joseph Priestley born.
1766	Blackburne’s Confessional.
1772	Feathers’ Tavern Petition.
1774	Lindsey opens Essex Hall Chapel, April 17.
1783	Society for Promoting Knowledge of the Scriptures.
1791	Unitarian Book Society. Birmingham riots.
1794	Priestley emigrates to America.
1804	Priestley dies.
1806	Unitarian Fund.
1808	Improved Version of the New Testament.
1813	Blasphemy Act repealed.
1817	Wolverhampton Chapel case.
1819	Association for Protection of Civil Rights of Unitarians.
1825	British and Foreign Unitarian Association formed, May 26.
1828	Repeal of Test and Corporation Acts.
1830-1842	Lady Hewley Case.
1844	Dissenters’ Chapels Act.
1871	Tests abolished at English universities.
AMERICA
1740	Great Awakening.
1785	King’s Chapel Liturgy.
1805	Sherman’s One God in One Person Only. Henry Ware elected Hollis Professor at Harvard.
1815	"American Unitarianism" published.
1818-1820	The Dedham Case.
1819	Channing’s Baltimore Sermon.
1825	American Unitarian Association formed, May 26.
1838	Emerson’s Divinity School Address.
1841	Parker’s South Boston Sermon.
1852	Western Unitarian Conference formed.
1865	National Conference of Unitarian Churches.
1867	Free Religious Association.
1875	Year Book Controversy.
1890	National Alliance.
1896	Young People’s Religious Union.
1900	International Congress of Free Christians.
1908	National Federation of Religious Liberals.
1919	Laymen’s League.
1925	General Conference merged with the American Unitarian Association.

Religion as Heritage

 

    Our religious faith, as the title of this book implies, is a heritage. We did not form it independently for ourselves.   Many of us did not even choose it, but instead received it as a precious legacy, bequeathed to us by those who have cherished it before us.  Of course it ought to be much more than merely this.  If it is to amount to anything vital, it should include at least these three elements: a profound conviction on some of the greatest subjects of thought, a sacred personal experience hallowing the deepest part of our lives, and above all a way of living as children of God.  Yet none of even these things wholly originated with ourselves; for to no small extent our convictions were implanted in us, our experiences were cultivated within us, and our way of life was trained into us, by others.  The religion of some people, indeed, seems to be an inheritance and little else, a tradition handed down to them by others, rather than a matter of personal conviction, experience, or principle; although even such a religion may yet make a very important difference in their lives.

    Inasmuch, then, as our religion has to a very considerable degree come down to us from the past, we must, if we would appreciate anything like its full meaning, know its past history. We shall appreciate more deeply the value of our religious faith if we once come to realize how much it has cost others to win what they have freely bequeathed to us: the thinkers who have labored over its problems, the apostles who have spent their lives in spreading the knowledge of it among men, the saints who have made its history sacred, the confessors who have endured reproach and loss, persecution and exile for it, and the noble army of martyrs who have suffered death rather than be untrue to it. The meaning of the religious faith we hold, and the price it has cost to secure it to us: these are the two points most strongly suggested by the title, "Our Unitarian Heritage," and it is these that we shall try to keep constantly in view as we follow the course of its history.

    We are familiar enough with this point of view in connection with our national life. As mere citizens we might in any case have been fairly satisfied with our native land, even though we had done nothing to make it what it is, but had simply entered into it as an inheritance from our forefathers. But when we read the history of our country, when we see how our fathers had to toil to subdue the wilderness, how they fought and bled to make it free, strove to develop its institutions, and struggled to defend it against its enemies, that they might leave it free and strong to their children — it is only then that we begin to appreciate what our country really means to us, to realize what its free institutions cost, to love it with patriotic love, and to feel that if need be we too would gladly suffer and die for it; arid that in any event we will do all in our power to keep it forever a land of freedom and justice to all.

    It is quite the same with regard to the inheritance we have received in our religious faith. We may have been simply born into it, and may always have taken it for granted. We may never have had to struggle to win religious freedom, nor to sacrifice or suffer to maintain it. But when we have once read its history, and have seen how in earlier generations many men in many lands had to struggle, to sacrifice, to suffer, and in not a few cases even to die, before we could inherit our free faith, and how earnestly even in happier times and at smaller cost devoted men have labored to make religious faith purer, more reasonable, and more inspiring with each new age; then we can not fail to appreciate as never before the faith which we hold, and we shall our own selves wish to be loyal to it, and to prove ourselves worthy of the freedom it gives us.

    For this is to be the story of a progressive movement toward perfect freedom of thought and speech in religion, a freedom which has been won only in the face of odds sometimes overwhelming, and at a cost that no one, thank God, is in our time called upon to pay. It is a history rich in its saints and sages, its heroes and martyrs, and it is full of deeds of bravery that kindle the blood. The roots of this religious faith go back, of course, to earliest Christian times; and the glory and the inspirations of fifteen centuries of the history of the undivided Christian Church belong to it in common with all Christendom. But the story of this particular religious movement begins scarcely four hundred years ago, early in the period of the Protestant Reformation.

    In tracing the story of the development of our faith during these four centuries, it will not be enough for us merely to get hold of the facts of a past history. Our study of these will be to little purpose if we do not at the same time get a proper sense of what they mean for us in our own time, and of the obligation they lay upon us as possessors of a heritage that is precious and costly. As an early Christian writer wrote of a similar situation, we ought to realize that, although these heroes of our faith bore a good witness in their day, God has also placed upon us a sacred duty to continue and complete their work, since without us they will not be made perfect.

The Religion of the New Testament

 

    The common notion of Unitarianism is that it is a system of doctrine centering about belief in one God in one person (as contrasted with the Trinitarian belief in one God in three persons), and the closely related belief in the true humanity of Jesus (as contrasted with the Trinitarian belief in his deity, or supreme divinity). Unitarians who best understand their movement, however, attach much less importance to-day to these or any other particular doctrines than to certain fundamental principles of religion, centering around freedom and reason. In fact, as a matter of history, although it was the Unitarian doctrines that were first developed, and although these have been made especially prominent through controversy, and have been the occasion of long continued persecution, yet almost from the first Unitarians laid strong emphasis upon the importance of religious freedom, and asserted the rights of reason in religion; and the further the movement has proceeded, the more the emphasis has been shifted from its doctrines to its underlying principles. While we shall need, therefore, throughout the whole of our study, to keep in view the doctrines associated with this movement, we should remember that this is in its most important aspect a progressive movement toward a fuller use of reason, and a more perfect enjoyment of liberty in religion.

    The history of modern Unitarianism begins, as we have said, early in the period of the Protestant Reformation. That is to say, we can not trace any continuous development of Unitarian thought back of that time. Yet it has often been maintained that Unitarianism is simply a return from corrupted doctrines of orthodox Christianity to the pure religion of the New Testament. We shall so frequently see this claim asserted in the course of our history that we must at the outset inquire how far it is justified. Since Unitarianism from the sixteenth century on has also been largely characterized by its protests against the doctrines known as orthodox, we must also get our start toward an understanding of the movement by trying to discover what those doctrines were which the fathers of our faith felt obliged, even at the risk of their lives, to disbelieve and oppose, and how and why they came to grow up out of the simple religion of Jesus and his first disciples. Understanding these things, we shall be able at the same time to judge them more fairly. For it is possible to trace every stage of the process by which, in the course of five or six centuries or less, the simple religion of the parables and the sermon on the mount was gradually transformed into the elaborate doctrines of the Nicene and the Athanasian Creeds. This we shall now proceed briefly to do.

    To learn, then, what Jesus and his earliest disciples taught, we have to turn to the first three Gospels. These were written probably between 70 and about 100 A.D., hence from one to two generations after the death of Jesus. They therefore date from a time when the primitive belief had already begun to undergo change, and when that long process had commenced which we are about to trace, and which ended in the doctrines of the Trinity and the Deity of Christ. Yet these Gospels also show many traces of the earlier and simpler belief, as it existed in the very time  and it is these traces that we shall first notice,

    To begin with, there is in these three Gospels not the remotest suggestion of the doctrine of the Trinity. Such a doctrine would have seemed to Jesus or any other Jew of his age as little short of blasphemy; for during long centuries of their national humiliation no other conviction had been so deeply burned into the consciousness of the Jewish people as their belief in the absolute and unqualified oneness of God. In fact, down to this very day, nothing else has proved such an impassable barrier to the reception of Christianity by the Jews, as has the doctrine of the Trinity, which has seemed to them to undermine the very cornerstone of their religions.  In these Gospels we find Jesus simply regarded as the Messiah — a man, sent of God for a high purpose, endowed with superior powers, yet dependent upon God, acknowledging himself not so good as God, and limited in knowledge, authority, and power.  This primitive belief long survived among a little sect of Jewish Christians known as Ebionites.  They early became separated from the rest of the Christian Church and lived an isolated life east of the Jordan, and as late as the fifth century they retained their original belief in the unity of God, and in the pure humanity and the natural birth of Jesus.

    When we turn to the writings of Paul, a short generation after Jesus, we find this simple, natural view of Jesus already becoming transformed. In the epistles bearing Paul’s name (some of them doubtless written after his time, though more or less resembling his thought), and written from 53 to 64 A.D. or later, the figure of Jesus, receding into the distance of the past as Paul and his fellow-Christians reverently contemplate it, has grown less distinct, but at the same time grander. He is still sometimes referred to as a man, but more often as Lord; he is spoken of as sent from heaven, where he existed with God before the creation of the world; God is said to have created the world through his agency; he is regarded as in a sense divine, though still as subordinate to God.

    In the fourth Gospel, ascribed to the apostle John, but now believed to have been written by a later Christian, perhaps about 125 A.D., we find a yet more exalted view of Jesus. He is here identified with the Word, or Logos; and since this term plays so large a part in the following development of belief about Jesus, we must pause here to explain it. The conception is supposed to have grown up somewhat as follows: philosophers in the first century were accustomed to think of God as being, in his perfect wisdom and holiness, so far superior to this imperfect and sinful world that he could not be supposed himself to have had anything directly to do with the creation or with men. But Philo, a Jewish philosopher of Alexandria, discovered in the Old Testament certain passages seeming to refer to a sort of personified Wisdom, or Word, or Logos, through which as an intermediate being God had created the world and communicated with man.  This Logos thus seemed to him to bridge the great gulf otherwise existing between God and his world. At the same time there was also in the Greek philosophy of the period a belief that a divine Logos, or Reason, was manifested in the universe as a kind of world soul. These two views, then, the one Jewish and the other Greek, became more or less blended in Jewish and Greek thought from the end of the first century, and this Logos idea became widely accepted by both Jews and Greeks as one of the staple elements in their religious teaching, because it solved for them what they felt to be a critical religious problem-how sinful man might come into harmony with the perfect God.

    Now the great purpose of the author of the fourth Gospel was to recommend the Christian religion to those who held this Logos view, by showing them that the Logos was none other than Jesus himself, the founder of that religion, who had been with God in the beginning, had been his agent in the creation of the world, and had at length taken the form of a human being, thus becoming one through whom the holy God and sinful men might be brought together. The Logos doctrine in this Gospel was the highest point reached in the development of the New Testament teaching about Jesus; but although it sometimes almost seems to make Jesus one with God, in other passages it makes it clear nevertheless that he was less than God, and derived his being, and all his power and authority, from him.⁷  It was directly from this Logos doctrine, however, that the development followed which in the fourth century ended in the fully developed doctrines of the Trinity and the Deity of Christ. That further progress of Christian thought we are now ready to follow.

The Development of Christian Doctrine
Down to the Council of Nicea, 325 A.D.

 

    In the last chapter we traced the development of the New Testament teaching about Jesus, and saw that there was a steady progress of thought which began by regarding Jesus as truly human, simply a man, and ended by regarding him as the Logos, in some sense divine, and little less than God; though there was as yet no doctrine of the Trinity, and no belief in the complete deity of Christ.  But the Logos doctrine of the fourth Gospel furnished the germ out of which within the next two or three centuries those doctrines were to develop.  We must now follow the steps which this further development took.

    After all the immediate disciples of Jesus had passed away, and the Apostolic Age had come to an end with the close of the first century, there followed for something more than a hundred years what is known as the Age of the Apologists, during which Christians had to defend their new religion against the attacks of Jews or of Pagans, and were trying to prove it superior to the older religions.  The writers who made this defense are known as the Apologists.  Some of their writings have come down to us, and form the earliest Christian literature after the New Testament.  They themselves were the earliest Christian theologians, trying to state their religious beliefs in systematic form; and, their writings therefore serve to show us how Christian doctrines were taking shape.  The problem they were all earnestly trying to solve, in order to state the philosophy of Christianity in such a way that educated Greeks might accept it, was this: How was the Logos (now fully accepted as a fixed item in Christian thought) related to the infinite and eternal God on the one hand, and to the man Jesus of Nazareth on the other? They could not hope to see Christianity make much progress in the Greek world until this problem was satisfactorily solved.  Yet it was a difficult problem, for the nearer they made him to God, the more unreal his human life seemed to be; while the more fully they recognized his humanity, the farther be seemed to be from God.  It is these Apologists that take the next steps leading from the simpler teaching of the New Testament, far toward the doctrine of the Deity of Christ, as we shall now see by looking briefly at what four of the most prominent of them wrote.

    Justin Martyr had been a Greek philosopher before his conversion to Christianity.  As a Christian he wrote at Rome, some time after the year 140, two Apologies and other writings in defense of Christianity.  In these he teaches that the divine Reason, or Logos, was begotten by God, as his first-born, before the creation of the world.  Through him God created the world.  He was a distinct person from God, and inferior to him, yet he might be worshiped as a divine being.   He became a man upon earth in the person of Jesus.

    Ireneus, who had been born in Asia Minor, went as missionary to southern Gaul, and there in 178 he became Bishop of Lyons.  He wrote a book against heresies, in which he taught that the Logos existed before the creation of the world, and was God’s first-born Son.  The Logos was thus truly divine, although distinct from God and inferior to him; and he became a man in Jesus, and suffered as a man, in order to bring mankind nearer to God.

    Clement of Alexandria was born in the Greek religion, but after his conversion to Christianity he became the most eminent Christian philosopher of his time, and had great influence on the thought of the Eastern Church.  In works written after 190 he teaches that the Logos was in the beginning with God, and was somehow God, and hence deserved to be worshiped; and yet he was below the Father in rank.  In Jesus he became a man, that we might learn from him how a man may become God.   Clement also took a further step toward the doctrine of the Trinity, when he spoke of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as a “holy triad.”

    Tertullian was born at Carthage about 150, and was a pagan in religion until middle life; but after his conversion to Christianity he became as influential in the thought of the Western Church as Clement was in the Eastern.  In his writings he teaches that the Son (or Logos) existed before creation, and was of one substance with God, though distinct from him and subordinate to him.  He was born upon earth as Jesus; and Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are mysteriously united into a trinity — a term which Tertullian was the first to introduce.

    These four examples are enough to show what was going on in Christian thought during the century after the fourth Gospel appeared.  There was a growing tendency, while still insisting that Christ was less than God, to regard him more and more as divine.  Yet in this tendency there were two dangers.  As theologians speculated upon the Logos, they were more and more losing sight of the human character of Jesus, and there was a fear lest Christianity should presently find itself worshiping two divine beings instead of one God.   This latter danger was keenly felt by those who regarded the religion of the Roman Empire, in which it was customary to deify and worship the Emperors.  So that in opposition to the beliefs we have above noticed as growing up, a contrary tendency also asserted itself, and spread widely, under the name of Monarchianism.  The Monarchians were strict monotheists.  They objected that if Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were all divine, then Christianity had three Gods; and they insisted instead that God was one person as well as one being.

    There were two persons closely associated with this opposing view whose names deserve to be mentioned and remembered in a history of Unitarianism.  One was Paul of Samosata.  He became in 260 Bishop of Antioch, the most important see in the Eastern Church.  He taught that though Jesus was originally a man like other men, he gradually became divine, and finally became completely united with God.  He was accused of heresy by theological and political enemies, and after three trials was at length deposed from his office and excommunicated from the Church, about 268.   Various Unitarians in later times held views more or less resembling his, and they were therefore sometimes called Samosatenians or Paulianists.

    More famous yet, though of his life little is now known, was Sabellius, whose teaching proved very attractive to large numbers.  He sought to preserve the unity of God, and at the same time to make the mystery of the Trinity more easy to comprehend, by teaching that the one God manifested himself in three different ways, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  But this teaching seemed to his opponents to make Christ unreal, a mere reflection of another being, and it was therefore condemned as a heresy, and Sabellius himself was excommunicated from the church at Alexandria about 260.  Sabellianism, however, did not become extinct, for it has often reappeared in Christian history down to this very day.  Not only have Unitarians often held Sabellian views, and often been called Sabellians by the orthodox, but professed Trinitarians have often given their explanation of the Trinity in Sabellian terms, and have thus really been heretical.

    The great popularity of these Monarchian views in the third century shows that the movement toward the doctrine of the Trinity did not go on without much opposition; and Tertullian complains of how in his time the majority of Christians, being ignorant (of philosophical speculations), still hold to the simple unity of God, and are mistrustful of the Trinity.

    After Monarchianism had been suppressed, various attempts were made to state the relation of Christ¹ to God in some way which should avoid Sabellianism on the one hand, and tritheism on the other.  One of these attempts was embodied in the view known as Arianism; and this has had such important relations with Unitarianism, and it comes up so often in the course of Unitarian history, that it deserves to be made as clear as possible.  The bishop of Alexandria, Alexander by name, about 318 tried to make the matter clearer by teaching that Christ had never had a beginning any more than God himself, that he had always been the Son of God, “eternally begotten” by him, and that be was of the same essential being or nature with the Father.² Now there was in Alexandria a certain presbyter (priest or minister) of one of the parish churches, Arius by name, who felt bound to oppose this teaching.  Arius was a man well on in years, grave in manner, keen in argument, extremely self-denying in his life, and highly respected in the city for his piety and his work among the lower Classes.  He urged that this teaching of Alexander was mere Sabellianism, and that it practically meant belief in two Gods.   He held, on the contrary, that Christ was not equal to God, but inferior to him; that he did not exist with God from all eternity, but was, created by him before the creation of the world; that he was not of the same “substance” with the Father, but was created out of nothing.  This was Arianism: the belief that Christ, though a being far above man, was, yet less than God; that he was created before the creation, of the world; and that he was of a different nature from either God or man.  It will be well to recall this definition whenever Arianism is referred to in the course of the following history.

    Controversy over the question now became general, and lasted some three years.  The bishop at length commanded Arius to change his views; but Arius, as he wrote to a friend, said he would die a thousand deaths sooner than assent to opinions he did not believe.  He was accordingly deposed from office along with several of his followers, was excommunicated from the Church by a council at Alexandria in 321, and banished from the city “as an atheist.”  He then travelled widely in Syria and Asia Minor, finding many to take his part, and some of these of great influence; and the whole East was soon aflame with the controversy.  He even secured so much support that he was able to return to his work at Alexandria, where he had many followers, but this did not end the trouble.  The fires of controversy were now beyond control; and not only bishops but even the common people were quarrelling throughout many of the eastern provinces to such an extent that the Emperor himself felt compelled to take notice.  He sent his personal representative to Alexandria to get the parties to compose their quarrels, but in vain.  Nothing remained but to call a general council of the churches throughout the Empire, and submit the case to that for settlement.

    The council thus called to settle the questions in dispute in the Arian controversy was known as the Council of Nicea; and it was of very great importance because up to this time there had been nothing that might be called the authorized doctrine of the Church at large.  During the three centuries since Christ, as we have seen, there had been in the Church a wide difference of belief about him.  There had been a growing tendency, it is true, to give him an ever higher rank, and a teaching opposed to this tendency might here or there be condemned by some local council; but no standard of belief for the whole Church had as yet been adopted.  This was first done at the Council of Nicea in 325.  How this council came about, and what result it had on the doctrines of the Christian Church, we shall see in the next chapter.

The Council of Nicea and the Development of
the Doctrine of the Trinity, to 381 A.D.

 

    When Constantine, who had lately abandoned paganism for Christianity, became in 323 head of the whole Roman Empire, as its first Christian Emperor, he found that the Christians, on whom he relied for support against his pagan enemies, were divided against themselves throughout the whole East. In his newly founded capital of Constantinople their quarrels were the butt of jokes in the very theaters. He at once perceived that if he were to maintain his power it was of supreme importance that the factions in the Church should be brought into harmony with one another. His first attempts to this end failed, as we saw at the end of the previous chapter. He therefore determined to call together the bishops from all parts of the Empire, that they might agree as to what should be received as the true Christian belief. This gathering was the first General (or Ecumenical) Council, and it met in 325 at Nicea, a small city in northwestern Asia Minor, some forty-five miles southeast of Constantinople.

    Bishops were summoned by imperial command from every part of the Empire, and they were to travel if need be at the Emperor’s expense, accompanied by two presbyters and three servants each, and to be his guests. They came with all speed from the remotest parts, until there were over three-hundred bishops present, and a total company of some two thousand. The Emperor himself opened the Council with great pomp, and presided in person over its sessions, which lasted through six weeks. Yet though they were to discuss important matters of Christian belief, there was little calm reasoning over the points at issue, and a Christian spirit of patient forbearance was conspicuously absent. Feeling ran so high that the most abusive language was often used in debate, and sometimes, it is said, even physical violence was used by the members against one another.

    The chief purpose of the Council was to settle the bitter controversy as to the true doctrine about Christ, and on this subject there were three distinct views held. A small minority were strict followers of Arius, holding that Christ was in his essential being or nature ("substance") different from God. This party was led in the discussions by Arius himself, who though not a bishop had been especially commanded by the Emperor to appear at the Council. A second party, forming a larger minority, was composed of the opponents of Arius; and these held that Christ was of the same essential being with God. The recognized leader of these was not their aged Bishop Alexander, but a young deacon in his train, barely twenty-five, very small of stature, far from handsome in appearance, but of keen intellect and fiery temper, violent in argument, passionately devoted to his convictions, and hence narrow and intolerant in spirit. This was Athanasius, whose very name was to become a synonym for unyielding orthodoxy. But the great majority were of a third party, occupying an intermediate position, and holding that Christ was of an essential being similar to God. The leader of this middle party, who came to be known as Semi-Arians, was Eusebius of Cesarea, who stood high in influence with the Emperor, and was understood to represent his views.

    After some discussion, the Arians, confident of victory, proposed a creed for adoption; but this was at once torn in pieces by an angry mob of their opponents, and from that time on the strictly Arian view received little attention. Eusebius then brought forth a creed representing the views of the middle party, approved by the Emperor, and carefully avoiding terms offensive to either the Arians or their opponents. The Arians were willing to accept it, but this very fact made the Athanasians suspicious, and they absolutely refused to make any concession or compromise. The main point was now discussed between the Semi-Arians and the Athanasians, as to whether Christ’s nature was similar to God’s, or the same as God’s; and as it narrowed down practically to a controversy over the two corresponding Greek words, homoi- and homo-, it has been cynically said that the whole Christian Church for half a century, beginning with this Council, fought and was distracted over the smallest letter in the alphabet.

    The Emperor, seeing how unyielding the Athanasian party was, realized that no settlement could be reached on middle ground; so apparently thinking peace and harmony in his Empire of greater importance than this doctrine or that, he threw his weight at length on the side of the Athanasians.  The latter then presented a creed distinctly opposed to Arian views; the majority soon yielded, though not without some reluctance, to what was pressed as the Emperor’s wish; and nearly all of them signed the creed.  The Arians at first stood out, but at last all gave in save two; and these were sent with Arius into exile. Arius’s books were condemned to be burnt, possession of them was made a capital crime, and his followers were declared to be enemies of Christianity.  This was the first instance in Christian history of subscription being required to a creed, and the first of of many tragic instances of the civil government punishing heretics for not accepting the belief of the majority.

    The creed thus adopted is known as the Nicene Creed, the most important of the three great creeds of early Christianity, and the only one ever recognized by the whole Christian Church. It did not establish the doctrine of the Trinity, but it took a long step in that direction by permanently settling the disputed question about the deity of Christ, and declaring that he was of the same "substance" with God. This was henceforth the orthodox doctrine, fortified not only by the vote of the Council as the voice of the whole Church, but also by imperial authority as virtually the law of the Empire. It remains the orthodox doctrine throughout all Christendom to this day; but it is instructive to note how it became so — by a majority vote of persons who really preferred another view, but under strong pressure from the Emperor sanctioned this one for the sake of peace and harmony, and to escape the heavy hand of his displeasure. The Creed might of course be true for all that; but had the real convictions of the majority been expressed, the orthodox belief might have been not what it now is, but Arianism, and the one sent into exile, whose books were ordered burnt, and whose followers were declared enemies of Christianity, might have been not Arius, but Athanasius.

    The Council dispersed, and the bishops went their ways; but the great question they had met to decide was settled only in outward appearance. Despite their having signed the Creed to please the Emperor, many of them were "of the same opinion still." Apparently defeated at Nicea, Arianism, or something like it, was still popular in most of the churches of the East, and was actively promoted by many persons of influence. The Emperor himself began to feel the force of this influence, and to waver. Persuaded by his Arian sister and Eusebius, he recalled Arius from exile in 335 and had him acquitted of heresy; and Arius was on the point of being solemnly reinstated in the Church at Constantinople in the following year, when he suddenly died.

    Meantime Athanasius who, young as he was, had been chosen Bishop of Alexandria at Alexander’s death in 328, had been carrying things with such a high hand as to rouse the bitterest opposition; so that he himself was banished in 336 as a disturber of the peace of the Church, and out of the forty-six stormy years of his office he spent twenty in exile, being successively banished and recalled no fewer than five times. For the whole question of doctrine was now opened again for discussion. One local council after another met in different parts of the Empire; creed after creed was put forth by one party or the other. After the death of Constantine in 337, political considerations came into the question, and the theology of the churches but reflected the opinions of the Emperor or the court. During most of the time for forty years, Arian emperors were on the throne in the East, and Arians persecuted as intolerantly as ever their opponents had done. The West remained steadily orthodox; but in the East a modified form of Arianism became all but universal under Constantius, Emperor from 337 to 361, and at length he compelled councils in the West virtually to accept that, just as Constantine had forced the Athanasian view upon the Council of Nicea. Even two of the Popes of Rome were forced for a time to give it a nominal adherence (though with little effect upon the Western Church); and though the Nicene Creed was never abolished by a General Council, Arianism was for some time the officially supported religion of the whole Empire.

    It was this very completeness of its victory that brought Arianism to its downfall, for the Arians fell to quarreling among themselves. Under the fanatical Arian Emperor Valens (364 – 378) the intolerance of the extreme Arians drove the Semi-Arians to side with the orthodox; and when the Emperor Theodosius came to the throne, having been brought up in the orthodox faith, he determined to put an end to these controversies. Upon his baptism in 380, he issued an edict that all nations in the Empire should adhere to the Catholic (that is, the orthodox) religion, believing in the Trinity as an equal deity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. All others he branded as heretics, and threatened them with severe punishment. He expelled the Arians from Constantinople, deprived them of their churches, and forbade them to hold public worship.

    The following year, to give his action the sanction of church law, Theodosius called the second General Council, at Constantinople. At this Council a new creed was brought forth which completed the statement of the doctrine of the Trinity, by adding an article about the Holy Spirit. This subject had been barely mentioned in the Nicene Creed, but it had now for some time been much discussed, and had come to assume cardinal importance. In the new form of the Creed, therefore, the deity of the Holy Spirit was adopted (not without considerable opposition) as a part of the orthodox doctrine of one God in three persons; and thus the doctrine of the Trinity came to be received as the central doctrine of orthodox Christian belief. It was given further definition in the remarkable document known as the Athanasian Creed.

    Thus Arianism was finally outlawed in the Roman Empire. Its downfall was rapid. It was suppressed in the West in 388, and thenceforth survived only among the barbarian nations. For the Goths, the Vandals, the Lombards, and the Burgundians had originally been converted to Arian Christianity, and it did not become extinct among them until late in the sixth century. Individuals here and there may still have held Arian views, but as an organized movement it was no more. Unitarians in modern times have often been called Arians, and have sometimes held Arian views; but they have had no historical connection with the Arians of the fourth century. Unitarians, too, have often felt a sentimental sympathy with these earlier heretics, if only because they were opposed to the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. Yet if we were compelled to choose between the two today, the doctrine of Athanasius should be less objectionable than that of Arius. The latter left too wide a gulf between God and man, and its Christ, being neither God nor man, did nothing to bring the two together. The needs of religion were better served by the view of Athanasius, and it was well for Christianity that that prevailed.

    But whether either doctrine is adapted to our day, when we do not begin as men then did by taking it for granted that an immense chasm separates the Father in heaven from his children on earth — that is another question, though the discussion of it does not properly belong in a history.

    The whole controversy was really one between speculative theologians. The great mass of the people can have had no real understanding of it. They might prefer the doctrine of Athanasius because it seemed to give more honor to Christ than did that of Arius, but the subtle distinctions of the creeds they did not comprehend. The unfortunate result was, and long remained, that Christian doctrines came more and more to be regarded by the people at large as mysteries, not to be understood, nor even inquired into, but simply to be taken on faith, and on the authority of the Church. Men were not supposed to reason about religion. It was this condition of things that in the sixteenth century, when men’s minds were becoming emancipated, led to the rise of Unitarianism with its insistent demand for freedom of thought and the use of reason, in religion. There were, however, yet other questions to be settled before the system of orthodox beliefs should be quite complete; and in order to understand the story that is to follow, we shall have in another chapter to glance also at those.

The Completion of the Orthodox Theology, to 451 A.D.

 

    The last chapter showed how the Arian controversy led to two main results. It established the doctrine of the deity of Christ at the Council of Nicea, and that of the Trinity at Constantinople. It had lasted for over sixty years, and it might well have been hoped that the Church would now have peace. But not so. The accepted Creed left open more questions than it had settled; so that almost immediately a new controversy broke out, which lasted for seventy years more, and not only was thus longer, but also was far more violent, than the previous one. Discussion which in the former period had begun with Christ and ended with God now swung back to Christ again. The new question was as to the relation of the divine and the human natures in him. No authority had yet settled this question, and no one had thought out the answer to it. But everyone who wished might guess at it, and it offered an endless field for speculation until some statement should be found which could be generally agreed to. There is no telling how long it might have lasted, had there not been such institutions as General Councils, to decide what opinions must be held as Christian truth, and that whoever holds otherwise is no Christian, but must be put out of the Church, and be punished by the State as his case deserves.

    The question disputed about was this: It had always been taken for granted that Christ had lived upon earth as a human being, and hence had a human nature; and now the Nicene Creed made it necessary also to believe that he was a divine being, and hence had a divine nature. But how could both these apparently contradictory statements be true of one person? Hence the discussion went from one extreme to its opposite, for no middle view seemed possible.

    It will be enough for our purpose if we follow simply the brief outlines of the long story. First came Apollinaris, Bishop of Laodicea in Syria, who was teaching about the time of the Council of Constantinople that Christ’s two natures were so much alike as not to be distinguishable: his divine nature was so human, and his human nature was so divine, that there was scarcely any difference between them. But the result of this view was that he did not seem to have been really a human being at all. Apollinaris himself at length withdrew from the Church, and so escaped trial and punishment for heresy, but his doctrine was condemned by various councils.

    Some of his followers, continuing his doctrine, drew the conclusion that since Christ was so wholly divine, Mary might be called the Mother of God, and this view was widely accepted. Others thought this to be absurd blasphemy; and in opposition to it Nestorius, who was Metropolitan (chief bishop) of Constantinople from 428, taught that the two natures in Christ were perfectly distinct, so that Mary was mother only of the human nature in Christ. The people fancied he was thus denying the Christ they worshiped, and insulted him on the street; while Cyril, Patriarch (chief bishop) of Alexandria, going to the opposite extreme, taught that in Christ the two natures were completely united; and, wishing for personal reasons to humiliate Nestorius, he used his influence to get the third General Council called, at Ephesus, 431. The bishops on both sides came to it armed as if for battle, and accompanied by a mob of followers; the meetings were turbulent and feeling ran high; but the purpose of the Council was realized, and Christ was declared a little later to be perfect God and perfect man, having two natures united with each other. The teaching of Nestorius was condemned, and he himself was sent into exile, where a few years later he died miserably in some remote part of Egypt. His doctrine nevertheless spread widely in the far East, and a sect of Nestorians still exists among Christians of Armenia and India.

    Next came Eutyches, an aged archimandrite (chief abbot) of Constantinople, who, starting with this new orthodox doctrine that in Christ there was a union of two natures, carried it out further by teaching that in this union the human nature was wholly absorbed into the divine; so that he had no human body, but only a divine one; whence it must follow that it was God himself that was born in Bethlehem, suffered, and died on the cross. This extraordinary doctrine, and its teacher, were at once attacked with great violence at Constantinople; and Eutyches was deposed and his doctrine condemned at a local council. But he had powerful friends at court, so that the next year a fourth General Council was called in his behalf at Ephesus, 449; where, under the threats and coercion of the Emperor, his doctrine was actually approved as orthodox, and even Pope Leo of Rome, who had opposed him, was excommunicated for doing so. What manner of Council this was, however, and how much its opinion on a point of Christian doctrine was worth, may be judged from the fact that in the process of the discussion one of the bishops is said to have been beaten and kicked so that he died, and that it has ever since been known as “the Robber Council.”

    A reaction now came. A new Emperor soon afterwards came to the throne, and in his first year he called a fifth General Council, at Chalcedon, across the Bosporus from Constantinople, 451. This was the last of the great Councils to settle the main lines of doctrine in the early Church, and it was the most important of all save Nicea. It was attended by five- or six-hundred bishops, and as usual in these Councils it was full of tumult and disorder; but, forced again by threats from the Emperor, it took three important actions. It annulled the actions of the Robber Council; it reaffirmed the Nicene Creed as revised at the Council of Constantinople; and it settled permanently the longstanding controversy as to the two natures in Christ. The way in which it contrived to do this is highly interesting. Some had been saying, as we have seen, that Christ had two separate natures, and others had been saying that he had but one nature. Now the Council of Chalcedon got rid of this contradiction by simply saying these two opposite things in one breath, only, in the second case it substituted for the word nature the word person. It declared that Christ had two distinct natures, and that these were both united in one person, thus making him a GodMan, both divine and human. The Emperor then embodied this doctrine in a law, and ordered all Eutychians banished from the Empire; and the Emperor Justinian a century later ratified and included in his Code of Roman Law the decrees of the four General Councils. This doctrine about the person of Christ, supplementing that of the Trinity, was also included in the Athanasian Creed, and has been generally accepted by orthodox Protestantism.

    Even now the question would not down. There were still those who insisted that Christ had but one nature, and were consequently named Monophysites. Their contentions distracted the Eastern Church for over a century more, and they exist even today as a separate sect in Syria, Armenia, and Egypt; as do also the Monothelites, so called because they insisted, a century later, that though Christ had two natures he had but one will. But these heresies were both duly condemned, and the echoes of the controversy at last died away.

    Thus the orthodox theology as to God and Christ was completed. See now, in review, by what gradual steps its doctrines grew up.

1. The first three Gospels make Jesus the Messiah, but a man.
2. Paul makes Jesus a man, but one raised up by God to unique position in the universe.
3. The Gospel of John makes Christ the Logos, subordinate to God, yet somehow sharing his divinity.
4. The Fathers of the second and third centuries waver between the simple humanity and the complete divinity of Christ.
5. The Council of Nicea makes Christ of the same essential nature with God.
6. The Council of Constantinople unites Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in one Trinity.
7. The Council of Ephesus makes Christ’s two natures not distinct but united.
8. The Council of Chalcedon makes these two natures united in one person.

    The orthodox doctrine, then, against which Unitarianism was to protest, was, in brief, this: that the one God exists in three persons, and that one of these persons has two natures.

    The whole controversy which we have been following, and which convulsed the growing Christian Church religiously, and the declining Roman Empire politically, for over a hundred and thirty years, may seem to us now to have been a controversy not about living realities, but about mere words; and the solutions reached at Nicea and Chalcedon may seem to us to have been mere verbal solutions, which leave the question after all pretty much where it was at the start. We must not forget, however, that to many Christians of the third and fourth centuries these seemed supremely vital matters, involving the very essence, and even the permanent existence, of their Christian faith; for all this struggle had also its deep religious side, and expressed an earnest and sincere purpose in many hearts.

    The character and methods of the Councils that established these doctrines are not, it is true, calculated to give us great reverence for their Christian character, nor much respect for their opinions; while the repeated interference of the civil power to enforce decisions of doctrine in its own interest was as vicious as it well could be. Yet the changes of thought that we have noted do not quite deserve to be called, as they often have been, “corruptions of Christianity.” No one tried, or wished, to “corrupt” the Christian faith. It was, indeed, a vast change from the simple religion of the sermon on the mount and the parables of Jesus to the theology of the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds; and the whole emphasis shifted from a religion of the heart and life to abstract speculations of the head. Yet when we have made all deductions for the political intrigues and the mean jealousies and the unscrupulous ambitions that so often accompanied them, we find at the bottom of these controversies an earnest and honest desire in the best minds to state the theory of the new Christian religion in terms which the cultured old world of Greek thought could accept. For at the beginning of the fourth century the Christian Church was in grave danger of falling to pieces unless it could establish a place for itself in Greek civilization, which still did the world’s thinking; and the movement we have been following probably saved Christianity for the Greek and Roman world.

    The development of the doctrines of the Trinity and the Deity of Christ must therefore have a profound interest for every one that follows the history of the Christian Church in the days of its struggling young life. Small wonder that after this life and death struggle over them these doctrines should have been guarded as the very soul of Christian faith, so that whoever doubted or denied them seemed to be striking at the heart not merely of Christian orthodoxy, but even of all religion, and to be little if any better than an atheist. This feeling became deeply rooted in the minds of Christians the world over; and it was intensified by laws which made heresy a terrible crime. It will help us to understand why in later times those who, after comparing the Creeds with their New Testaments, came to prefer the simple belief in the unity of God and the humanity of Christ to the mysteries of the Trinity and the GodMan, were looked on as deadly enemies of Christianity, and as deserving of the most extreme punishment. It will give a clue to the current of persecution which flows through almost the whole history of Unitarianism, and makes it tragic with the sufferings of confessors and the blood of martyrs.

    Before closing this chapter we should briefly mention three other doctrines that presently took form, which Unitarianism also came to oppose. First, the doctrine worked out by Augustine, and later adopted by Calvin, that man even from infancy has a nature totally depraved by sin. Second, the doctrine, also from Augustine and emphasized by Calvin, that God from the beginning chose (by “election,” or “predestination”) certain souls to be saved, and others to be lost. Third, the doctrine that Jesus, by a “vicarious atonement,” saved men by suffering in their stead, as their substitute. It was against the two great central doctrines of orthodox theology, together with these three minor ones, that the pioneers of Unitarianism raised their protest, as inconsistent with Scripture, and offensive to reason or the moral sense.

    The Unitarian movement, as we saw in the first chapter, does not really begin till the time of the Protestant Reformation; but it continually harks back to the simple faith of primitive Christianity, and continually protests against the central doctrines of the orthodox Creeds. We should only half understand the reason and meaning of these protests if we had not seen why and how these Creeds came into being, what they are, and what they mean. Now that we have done that, we are prepared to start where the first Unitarian reformers started, and to follow the whole story of the movement they began, with a clear understanding of their task, and of their aims in pursuing it.