This was effected towards the close of the fourth century, A.D. 381, by the Second General Council, that of Constantinople, when the following addition was made to the previously deficient orthodoxy of the Nicene Creed. The Nicene Creed had simply stated, “We believe in the Holy Ghost.” The Council of Constantinople rectified the error thus: “We believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life; who proceedeth from the Father; who with the Father and Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spake by the prophets.” Still, however, the adjustments were not correct, nor the formula of perfect orthodoxy. It occurred to the Church, centuries after, that the Holy Spirit was described in the Scriptures as being dependent not upon the Father alone, but as being “sent” by the Son; and that therefore the Third Person must hold that relation to the Second which the Second did to the Third, and must therefore be derived not from the Father alone, but from the Father and Son together.[[496]] Accordingly this new idea, essential to Salvation, was included in the formula so long in this respect defective, with what fatal consequences we are not told; and at last, in the ninth century, a perfectly accurate and saving description of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son was embodied in the Nicene Creed, some five hundred years after its first construction. So slowly did the “unimproved and unimprovable revelation” of dogmatic divines advance to its perfection. Yet we are gravely told of the faith of the Church,—a faith human all over; and of the traditions of Christian antiquity,—traditions whose origin we can trace at a great distance from apostolic times, and whose constant increase, in proportion as we recede from those times, would seem to imply that the further Councils of the Church were removed from the Apostles the more they knew about them—the accuracy of inspired Tradition differing, as of course it should, from common Memory and common History, by being in an inverse ratio to the distance. This is no subject for ridicule; but only the sacred feelings and high themes that are necessarily associated with such extravagance, have so long saved it from the most merciless exposure. Those solemn themes, the awe and loveliness of which Ecclesiastical History has done its best to lower and degrade, have yet repaid the disservice by dropping something of their own solemnity on its unworthy pages, and by taking every thing that is associated with God and Christ within the protection of the sentiment of reverence, have shielded Ecclesiastical History from that unsparing criticism which perhaps would have been more serviceable to Truth, and productive of a reverence higher and more profitable towards both Christ and God.
In the history of the doctrine of the Trinity, the settlement of one Controversy always gave birth to another, in the progressive attempt to make mysteries intelligible. The deity of Christ naturally gave rise to some curiosity respecting the humanity of Christ. Hitherto all parties, Arians, Athanasians, and Unitarians, according to their respective views, had for the most part agreed that the Christ consisted of one body and one spirit; and their controversies related simply to the rank and nature of that spirit. The Arians believed the soul of Jesus to be the first of created intelligences, the highest Emanation from God. The Platonic Christians thought that the Logos used instrumentally the body of Jesus, and supplied the place of a human soul. When the Council of Nice, however, established that the spirit of Jesus was consubstantial with that of God, the idea naturally presented itself that, since Jesus expired upon the cross, this was to represent the divine nature as capable of suffering and death. Now those who were the most orthodox, whose views and language receded to the extremest distance from those of the heretical Arians, would necessarily fall into modes of conception and expression which implied this revolting extravagance. Accordingly Apollinaris, one of the most zealous Athanasians, and the bitter enemy of Arius, freely, and unconscious of heresy, followed out his principles with perverse consistency, and openly spoke of the Logos of God supplying the place of a human soul in the body of Christ; and, of course, undergoing all that a spirit, so situated, could suffer.[[497]] But so narrow is the way of orthodoxy, that the zealous Father was made quickly to discover that by starting aside from one heresy, only a little too sharply, he had immediately fallen into another; for the pitfalls of damnable error lie upon each side of the hair-breadth way of Salvation. By pursuing too exclusively the deity of Christ, Apollinaris overlooked his humanity, and taught the heresy of “one incarnate nature,” and the consequent sufferings and death of God. This impious extreme, being condemned by the Asiatic Church, though popular in Egypt, orthodoxy naturally took a rebound; and Apollinaris, having confused the two natures into one, Nestorius separated them into two, to such an extent, as virtually to destroy the mystical union. Here was another and an opposite heresy equally fatal to the orthodoxy of the Church and the salvation of mankind; for if such was the loose connection of the two natures, then, God being incapable of suffering, only the human nature of Jesus underwent crucifixion and death. But, on the other hand, if this was so, then the sufferings of Christ were only those of a man; and all the mystery of the Incarnation was dissipated, and became ineffectual for any theological purpose.
A new controversy consequently arose, respecting the right adjustments of these saving connections between the humanity and the deity of the Christ. “Before this time,” says Mosheim, “it had been settled by the decrees of former Councils, that Christ was truly God and truly man; but there had as yet been no controversy, and no decision of any council, concerning the mode and effect of the union of the two natures in Christ. In consequence, there was a want of agreement among the Christian Teachers in their language concerning this mystery.” This controversy, which, for some time had been carried on without attracting towards it definitively the public authorities of the Church, drew at last the eager notice of all Christendom; when Nestorius, the Prelate of Constantinople, carried the distinction between the two natures to so definite a point as to deny that the Virgin Mary could, with any propriety, be denominated the “Mother of God;” and that her titles should be limited to that of “Mother of Christ” or “Mother of Man.” This was regarded, by the orthodox, as reducing the death of Christ to that of a mere man, and the mystery of the Incarnation to little better than a trick of words. It was no easy matter in those times to avoid, on the one hand, confounding the two natures; and, on the other, separating them so distinctly as to destroy the whole theological value of the mystical combination: nor have modern Theologians been more successful in adjusting this puzzle than their perplexed and perplexing predecessors.
The chief alarmist upon this occasion of the heresy of Nestorius was Cyril, the Patriarch of Alexandria, an arrogant and aspiring man, who gladly seized upon a tempting opportunity to humble his rival, the bishop of Constantinople. “Some jealousy which at that time subsisted respecting the relative dignity of the two sees, probably heightened the contention, and is believed by some to have caused it. Whether that be or not, the two Patriarchs anathematized each other with mutual violence; and such troubles were raised that the Emperor (Theodosius the younger) deemed it necessary to convoke a General Council for the purpose of appeasing them. It was assembled at Ephesus A.D. 431, and stands in the annals of the Church as the Third General Council. Cyril was appointed to preside, and consequently to judge the cause of his adversary: and he carried into this office such little show of impartiality, that he refused even to wait for the arrival of the bishop of Antioch and others, who were held friendly to Nestorius, and proceeded to pronounce sentence, while the meeting was yet incomplete. To secure or prosecute his advantages, he had brought with him from Egypt a number of robust and daring fanatics, who acted as his soldiery; and it had been skilfully arranged that Ephesus should be chosen for the decision of a difference respecting the dignity of the Virgin; since popular tradition had buried her in that city, and the imperfect Christianity of its inhabitants had readily transferred to her the worship which their ancestors had offered to Diana.”[[498]]
Such are the assemblies from which our Creeds date their birth; by whose authority the Rule of Faith was determined; and whose character is described in the words of the Emperor Theodosius when dismissing this very Council of Ephesus—“God is my witness, that I am not the author of this confusion. His providence will discern and punish the guilty. Return to your provinces; and may your private virtues repair the mischief and scandal of your meeting.” At this council it was decreed, by bishops who could not write their own names,[[499]] that the Union of the human and divine nature in Christ was so intimate that Mary might properly be called the Mother of God. The influence of Cyril prevailed chiefly by intimidating the bishops and bribing the imperial household. “Thanks to the purse of St. Cyril,” says Le Clerc, “the Romish Church which regards Councils as infallible, is not, at the present day, Nestorian.” “The Creeds of Protestants are equally indebted to St. Cyril for their purity.”[[500]]
The triumphant opponents of Nestorius, as is invariably found in the history of Church Controversies, pushed their triumph to such an excess, as to fall into the opposite error, and revived the formerly condemned heresy of Apollinaris, of the incarnation of but one nature. Eutyches the friend of St. Cyril and the bitter enemy of Nestorius, openly preached “that in Christ there was but one nature, that of the incarnate Word.” The Church was again in a blaze, and again the Emperor summoned a Council at Ephesus, A.D. 449, over which presided Dioscorus, the successor of St. Cyril as Patriarch of Alexandria. Here the sentence of the last Council was reversed, and Orthodoxy was pronounced to be the doctrine of one divine nature in Christ, and only one. This Council, however, owing principally to the opposition made to it by the Bishop of Rome, was never authoritatively recognized by the Church, and such was its character for tumult and brutality that it is marked in Ecclesiastical History by the expressive name of the Assembly of Banditti.
Speedily then was this heresy, inconveniently sanctioned by a Council of the Church, of only one nature in Christ, which in effect represented God as subject to suffering and death, replaced by the orthodoxy of two natures in one person, which was attended, however, with the opposite difficulty of so separating the God from the Man as to nullify the mystical efficacy of his sufferings.[[501]] But who will devise a form of words in which irreconcilable ideas shall be reconciled, and no weak point be exposed in the skilful statement of a fiction? The fourth general council of the Church was held at Chalcedon, A.D. 451. There are two things most remarkable respecting this Council; first—that it declared Jesus to be of the same essence with God as to his divine nature, only in the sense in which he was of the same essence with other men as to his human nature, thus denying his numerical oneness with God, and merely referring him to the same class of Beings, making him generically one, as two men are;[[502]] and secondly—that though the majority of the Bishops favoured the doctrine of one nature, they were obliged by the obstinacy of the Emperor Marcian, in conjunction with the Bishop of Rome, to reverse at one of their sittings their decision at a former, and finally to decree that orthodoxy consisted in believing “Jesus Christ to be one person in two distinct natures, without any confusion or mixture.” “It was in vain,” says Gibbon, “that a multitude of episcopal voices (the advocates for only one nature) repeated in chorus ‘The definition of the Fathers is orthodox and immutable! The heretics are now discovered! Anathema to the Nestorians! Let them depart from the synod! Let them repair to Rome!’ The Legates threatened, the Emperor was absolute, and a committee of eighteen bishops prepared a new decree, which was imposed on the reluctant assembly. In the name of the fourth general Council, the Christ in one person, but in two natures, was announced to the Catholic world: an invisible line was drawn between the heresy of Apollinaris and the faith of St. Cyril; and the road to paradise, a bridge as sharp as a razor, was suspended over the abyss by the master hand of the theological artist. During ten centuries of blindness and servitude, Europe received her religious opinions from the Oracle of the Vatican; and the same doctrine, already varnished with the rust of antiquity, was admitted without dispute into the creed of the Reformers, who disclaimed the supremacy of the Roman pontiff. The synod of Chalcedon still triumphs in the Protestant churches; but the ferment of controversy has subsided, and the most pious Christians of the present day are ignorant, or careless, of their own belief concerning the mystery of the incarnation.”[[503]]
Still the great difficulty pressed upon this decision, that the God was so separable from the man as to destroy the mystical value of the incarnation with respect to the sufferings of Jesus. A resource was found, (for when are Theologians without resources?) in what has been called the doctrine of the Communication of Properties, which meant that though God was incapable of sufferings or death, yet that through the mystical union of the human and divine, there might be a transmission of qualities from the one to the other, so as to attach an infinite efficacy to the sufferings and death of the human part of the compound Christ. “The doctrine of the Communication of Properties,” says Le Clerc, “is as intelligible as if one were to say, that there is a circle which is so united with a triangle, that the circle has the properties of the triangle, and the triangle those of the circle.” “What sense those who have asserted the sufferings of God have fancied that the words might have, is a question which, after all that has been written upon the subject, is left very much to conjecture. I imagine that it is at the present day, the gross conception of some who think themselves orthodox on this point, that the divine and human natures being united in Christ as the Mediator, a compound nature different from either, capable of suffering, was thus formed.”[[504]]
I have now detailed the progress of the doctrine of the Trinity, as it gained accessions from the various controversies that arose out of the Nicene Creed. We come now to the Third Creed of the English Church, that of Athanasius. Orthodoxy in this creed approaches to its perfection of precise, if not intelligible, statements; though, strange to say, we shall find that even here something of completeness is wanting, and that the later schemes of the Trinity have corrected the Athanasian formula, as dwelling too much upon the derived nature of the Son, and not asserting with sufficient force his independent identity.
No general Council of the Church established the Athanasian creed; nor does any one know who wrote it, nor when it was first introduced. From one of its clauses, the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and Son, which secret was not made known to the Church until the eighth century, it becomes evident that this theological paradox proceeded from the ingenuity of some monk of the dark ages. The whole force of this Creed depends upon two distinctions, which I presume no one can perceive, between “created” and “begotten,” and between “begotten” and “proceeding.” The Son is not created but begotten—and the Holy Ghost is not begotten but proceeding. And this is saving truth! food for the Soul! the heavenly light sent from God to refresh man’s inner spirit, and to fill him with the aspirations after perfection, which in this world of temptation are to keep him true to his immortal destinies, to connect him with his Example and Fore-runner, once tried upon the Earth, now peaceful amid the skies! To one asking, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” the answer of Jesus addressed itself to the spiritual life of the disciple, but the answer of the Church of England addresses itself to a perception of certain metaphysical distinctions, and is contained in that creed which “unless a man keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.”