Ch. 22. What else is this voice but the Word of God, who is also His Son? Not as the poets and writers of myths talk of the sons of the gods begotten from intercourse with women, but as the Truth expounds, the Word that always exists, residing within [endiatheton] the heart of God. For before anything came into existence He had Him for His counsellor, being His own mind and thought. But when God wished to make all that He had determined on, He begat this Word proceeding forth [prophorikon], the first-born of all creation, not being Himself emptied of the Word [i.e., being without reason], but having begotten Reason and always conversing with His reason.
(B) The Doctrine of the Trinity
The doctrine of the Trinity followed naturally from the doctrine of the Logos. The fuller discussion belongs to the Monarchian controversies. It is considered here as a position [pg 133] resulting from the general position taken by the apologists. (V. infra, [§ 40].)
(a) Theophilus, Ad Autolycum, II, 15. (MSG, 6:1078.)
The following passage is probably the earliest in which the word Trinity, or Trias, is applied to the relation of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. It is usual in Greek theology to use the word Trias as equivalent to the Latin term Trinity. Cf. Tertullian, Adv. Praxean, 2, for first use of the term Trinity in Latin theology.
In like manner, also, the three days, which were before the luminaries[54] are types of the Trinity (Trias) of God, and His Word, and His Wisdom.
(b) Athenagoras, Supplicatio, 10, 12. (MSG, 6:910, 914.)
Athenagoras, one of the ablest of the apologists, was, like Justin Martyr and several others, a philosopher before he became a Christian. His apology, known as Supplicatio, or Legatio pro Christianis, is his most important work. Its date is probably 177, as it is addressed to the Emperors Marcus Aurelius and Commodus.
Ch. 10. If it occurs to you to inquire what is meant by the Son, I will briefly state that He is the first product of the Father, not as having been brought into existence (for from the beginning God, who is the eternal mind [Nous], had the Logos in Himself, being eternally reasonable [λογικός]), but inasmuch as He came forth to be idea and energizing power of all material things, which lay like a nature without attributes, and an inactive earth, the grosser particles being mixed up with the lighter. The prophetic Spirit also agrees with our statements: “The Lord, it says, created me the beginning of His ways to His works.” The Holy Spirit himself, also, which operates in the prophets we say is an effluence of God, flowing from Him and returning back again as a beam of the sun.