A. Subordination.
A distinction must be made between the Nicene Creed (as amplified in that of Constantinople) and the doctrine of the Nicene fathers. The creeds are nothing more than a well-ordered arrangement of the facts of Scripture which concern the doctrine of the Trinity. They assert the distinct personality of the Father, Son, and Spirit; their mutual relation as expressed by those terms; their absolute unity as to substance or essence, and their consequent perfect equality; and the subordination of the Son to the Father, and of the Spirit to the Father and the Son, as to the mode of subsistence and operation. These are Scriptural facts, to which the creeds in question add nothing; and it is in this sense they have been accepted by the Church universal.
But the Nicene fathers did undertake, to a greater or less degree, to explain these facts. These explanations relate principally to the subordination of the Son and Spirit to the Father, and to what is meant by generation, or the relation between the Father and the Son. These two points are so intimately related that they cannot be considered separately. Yet as the former is more comprehensive than the latter, it may be expedient to speak of them in order, although what belongs to the one head, in a good degree belongs also to the other.
The ambiguity of the word ὁμοούσιος has already been remarked upon. As οὐσία, a may mean generic nature common to many individuals, not unum in numero, but ens unum in multis, so ὁμοούσιος (consubstantial) may mean nothing more than sameness of species or kind. It is therefore said, that “the term *homoousion,*in its strict grammatical sense differs from monoousionor *toutoousion,*as well as from *heteroousion,*and signifies not numerical identity, but equality of essence or community of nature among several beings.”1 “The Nicene Creed,” Dr. Schaff adds, “does not expressly assert the singleness or numerical unity of the divine essence (unless it be in the first article: ‘we believe in oneGod’), and the main point with the Nicene fathers was to urge against Arianism the strict divinity and essential equality of the Son and Holy Ghost with the Father. If we press the difference of homoousionfrom *monoousion,*and overlook the many passages in which they assert with equal emphasis the monarchiaor numerical unity of the Godhead, we must charge them with tritheism.”
Gieseler goes much further, and denies that the Nicene fathers held the numerical identity of essence in the persons of the Trinity. The Father, Son, and Spirit were the same in substance as having the same nature, or same kind of substance. This he infers was their doctrine not only from the general style of their teaching, and from special declarations, but from the illustrations which they habitually employed. The Father and the Son are the same in substance as among men father and son have the same nature; or as Basil says, Father and Son differ in rank, as do the angels, although they are the same in nature. Gieseler says that the numerical sameness of nature in the three divine persons, was first asserted by Augustine. It was he, according to Gieseler, who first excluded all idea of subordination in the Trinity.2 “Athanasius and Hilary understood the proposition, ‘There is one God’ of the Father. Basil the Great and the two Gregories understood by the word God a generic idea (Gattungsbegriff), belonging equally to the Father and the Son. Basil in the ‘Apologia ad Cæsarienses,’ says, ἡμεῖς ἕνα θεὸν, cὐ τῷ ἀριθμῷ, ἀλλὰ τῇ φύσει ὁμολογοῦμεν, and endeavours to show that there can be no question of number in reference to God, as numerical difference pertains only to material things. Augustine on the contrary expressly excludes the idea of generic unity,3 and understands the proposition ‘there is one God’ not of the Father alone, but of the whole Trinity,4 and, therefore, taught that there is one God in three persons.” This, however, is the precise doctrine of the Nicene Creed itself, which affirms faith “in one God,” and not in three. Basil in the place quoted is refuting the charge of Tritheism. His words are, πρὸς δὲ τοὺς ἐπηρεάζοντας ἡμῖν τὸ τρίθεον, ἐκεῖνο λεγέσθω ὅτιπερ ἡμεῖς ἕνα θεὸν, etc.5 On page 460 reasons have already been given for assuming that the sameness of substance taught by the Nicene fathers was not simply generic but numerical. On this subject Pearson, a thorough advocate of the Nicene Creed, says, “As it (the divine nature) is absolutely immaterial and incorporeal, it is also indivisible; Christ cannot have any part of it only communicated unto Him, but the whole, by which He must be acknowledged co-essential, of the same substance with the Father; as the Council of Nice determined, and the ancient fathers before them taught.”6 If the whole divine essence belongs equally to the several persons of the Trinity, there is an end to the question, whether the sameness be specific or numerical. Accordingly the Bishop says: “The Divine essence being by reason of its simplicity not subject to division, and in respect of its infinity uncapable of multiplication, is so communicated as not to be multiplied; insomuch that He which proceedeth by that communication hath not only the same nature, but is also the same God. The Father God, and the Word God; Abraham man, and Isaac man: but Abraham one man, Isaac another man; not so the Father one God, and the Word another, but the Father and the Word both the same God.”7