Last week there was a debate between Robert Gurr and Eastern Orthodox icon lover/idolater, John Yelland:
My friend Errol Amey offered the following comments on the debate which I am reproducing with his permission:
I
John begins with a couple straw-men
arguments: "the LDS view of the Father, specifically the idea that He is a
created being," and, "Mormonism's teaching of an eternal regression
of Gods." The former is contradicted by the Latter-day Saint dogma that
the Father is an eternal being, and thus precluding a status of having been
"created." The latter statement, as Robert rightly noted, amounts to
nothing more than a terse description of a theological speculation (as
demonstrated by John's own citation of Brigham Young: "How many Gods there
are? I do not know,"etc.) among the Saints—not any dogma of their
Church—and a speculation which many of the Saints doubt or outright reject, all
of which John is already aware of and consequently it will not do to only
address this view as if it's representative of the Saints at large.
The idea that the early Christians,
"saw Fatherhood as an essential and eternal property of God,"
contrary to the idea, "that God was not always the Father; that there was
a time when God was not the Father," is not compatible with pre-Nicene
Christendom, as demonstrated by Tertullian who was anything but a proto-Arian:
“For ever since things began to exist upon
which the power of a lord could operate, from that moment, by the accession of
this power, He both became Lord and received that name. <Nor is this
surprising,> for God is also a Father, and God is also a Judge, but He has
not always been Father and Judge for the simple reason that He has always been
God; for He could not be Father before the Son was, nor Judge before there was
sin. Now there was a time when for Him there existed neither sin nor the Son,
the former to make God a Judge, and the latter, a Father.”
(Tertullian, ca. 202, Treatise Against
Hermogenes 3:4, in Ancient Christian Writers 24:29)
John notes that, "the early Church
was almost completely unanimous in affirming that God is an unchangeable,
immaterial spirit," omitting only that Origen (who John cites in support
of his own view) was also a witness to the fact that there were some early
Christians who did believe in an anthropomorphic Father:
“The Jews indeed, but also some of our
people, supposed that God should be understood as a man, that is, adorned with
human members and human appearance. But the philosophers despise these stories
as fabulous and formed in the likeness of poetic fictions.”
(Origen, Homilies on Genesis 3:1, in
Fathers of the Church 71:89)
II
The subject of Subordinationism will need
a comment devoted just to that subject, which I'll get to on another occasion.
In the meantime, we'll start here with a correction to John's comment that,
"at the time Irenaeus was writing, the Valentinians were tolerated. He
doesn't mention them very much in his books Against the Heresies." This is
incorrect; Irenaeus mentions Valentinus himself throughout his series Against
the Heresies, from the preface to the first book all the way through his fifth
book, and frequently critiques Valentinian teachings. Indeed, Valentinianism
was the very controversy which precipitated Irenaeus' composition of this
series of book, and it didn't come to be known as "Against the
Heresies" for naught: the Valentinians were recognized as heretics and
placed squarely outside of the Church not only by Irenaeus but writers well
before him, none of this business about the Valentinians supposedly being,
"afforded a degree of toleration and flexibility," within the Church;
they were a product of pure apostasy.
Then John begins a bizarre tangent on
seminal fluids and incest. I'll leave it to others to draw their own
conclusions on this.
John asks Robert, "how do you
reconcile [Isaiah to] Mormonism's teaching that there are many Gods besides God
and that He is not the first and that He won't be the last?" This was
already answered by Origen in the writing which John said he had read; not
unique to the Restoration:
“Origen said: ‘Was He God distinct from
this God in whose form He was?’
“Heraclides said: ‘Obviously distinct from
the other and, while being in the form of the other, distinct from the Creator
of all.’
“Origen said: ‘Is it not true, then, that
there was a God, the Son of God and only begotten of God, the first born of all
creation (Col. 1.15), and that we do not hesitate to speak in one sense of two
Gods, and in another sense of one God?’
“Heraclides said: ‘What you say is
evident. But we too say that God is the almighty, God without beginning,
without end, who encompasses all and is encompassed by nothing, and this Word
is the Son of the living God, God and man, through whom all things were made,
God according to the Spirit, and man from being born of Mary.’
“Origen said: ‘You don't seem to have
answered my question. Explain what you mean, for perhaps I didn't follow you.
The Father is God?’
“Heraclides said: ‘Of course.’
“Origen said: ‘The Son is distinct from
the Father?’
“Heraclides said: ‘Of course, for how
could He be son if He were also father?’
“Origen said: ‘And while being distinct
from the Father, the Son is Himself also God?’
“Heraclides said: ‘He is Himself also
God.’
“Origen said: ‘And the two Gods become a
unity?’
“Heraclides said: ‘Yes.’
“Origen said: ‘We profess two Gods?’
“Heraclides said: ‘Yes, [but] the power is
one.’ . . .
“What, then, is the meaning of such sacred
texts as: Before me no other god was formed, nor shall there be any other after
me (Isa. 43.10), and the text: I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me
(Deut. 32.39)? In these texts, one is not to think that the unity refers to the
God of the universe in his purity (as the heretics would say) apart from
Christ, nor that it refers to Christ apart from God; but we say that it is just
as Jesus expresses it: I and the Father are one (John 10.30).’”
(Origen, ca. 246, Dialogue with Heraclides
1-4, in Ancient Christian Writers 54.58-60)
Again we see John's claim that, "the
early Church Fathers were unanimous in the incorporeality of God—the
immateriality of God." The falseness of this claim was demonstrated in my
last post by Origen's own admission. It's also worth noting that Origen elsewhere
expressed his belief that Melito, the celebrated bishop of Sardis, also held to
an anthropomorphic view of the Father.
John continues his closing statement with
some tangential examples, "[Robert] needs to reconcile the unanimity of
belief in the early Church in transubstantiation,"—none of the pre-Nicene
Christians believed in transubstantiation; Irenaeus even contradicts it by
stating that there are two realities within the Eucharist, both a heavenly and
an earthly, as opposed to just one reality—"monogamy,"—the early
Christians believed that polygyny had a proper place in it's time during the
Old Testament, and Latter-day Saints likewise attest that it is circumstantial
which should be obvious given their current practice of strict
monogamy—"the perpetual virginity of Mary,"—also not a unanimous
belief; Hegesippus and Tertullian both indicated a belief that the brothers of
Jesus mentioned in the New Testament were biologically related to Him—"the
uniqueness of God,"—which is what we've been discussing—"and so
on." I find it doubtful that further examples would be any more valid than
the claims already given.
III
Returning to Subordinationism, John
attempts to brush it aside by stating of the Eastern Orthodox, "we do not
have a problem with Subordination understood correctly." The problem being
that in order to vindicate a supposedly consistent view of the Trinity
throughout church history he would in effect have to argue that patristic
scholars don't have a "proper" understanding of the pre-Nicene view.
Let us consider one of the early writers of whom John claims a compatible view,
viz., that of Origen. We already saw in my last post Origen's belief that the
Father and Son are in a sense two Gods, which point John struggled to grapple
with during the Q&A portion of the exchange. Consider further this primary
source:
“[Origen said:] God the Father, since he
embraces all things, touches each thing that exists, since he bestows on all
existence from his own existence; for he is ‘He who is’. [Exodus 3:14] The Son
is inferior in relation to the Father, since he touches only things endowed
with reason; for he is subordinate to the Father. The Holy Spirit is still
lower in degree, pertaining to the saints. So then the power of the Father is
superior to the Son and the Holy Spirit, while the Son’s power is greater than
the Holy Spirit; and again the power of the Holy Spirit excels all other holy
things.”
(Origen, cited by Justinian, Ad Menam, in
The Early Christian Fathers, pg. 239)
And the scholarly commentary of the translator:
“According to the quotation in Justinian,
Origen gave here a bold statement of the subordination of the Son and the Holy
Spirit. ‘Subordinationism,’ it is true, was pre-Nicene orthodoxy”
(Henry Bettenson, The Early Christian
Fathers, pg. 239)
That Bettenson specifies Subordinationism
as the orthodoxly of the pre-Nicene Church indicates that it was not
representative of post-Nicene orthodoxy. This is noted explicitly by another
patristic scholar:
“Interestingly, in light of later
criticisms of Origen for having a ‘subordinationist’ understanding of Christ’s
relationship to the Father, putatively inconsistent with equality of the
persons of the Trinity proclaimed by post-Nicene orthodoxy, what Origen would
consider impious (asebes) is not the belief that Christ is subordinate, but the
prospect that he might not be subordinate to the Father.”
(Joseph W. Trigg, Fathers of the Church
141.91)
And thus we see that Origen, et al.,
cannot, in fact, be reconciled to the later view of the Trinity which developed
as an overreaction to the Arian heresy. And here is scholarly commentary on
statements by Origen even bolder than those cited by Bettenson above:
“the Savior said, ‘The Father who sent me
is greater than I,’ and ‘although the Savior transcends in his essence, rank,
power, divinity . . . , and wisdom, beings that are so great and of such
antiquity, nevertheless, he is not comparable with the Father in any way.’
[13.151-152] . . .
“There is, moreover, a clear subordination
of the Son to the Father in the Commentary [on John]. ‘The Father exceeds the
Savior as much . . . as the Savior himself . . . exceeds the rest.’
[13.151-153] When ‘the Son of Man is glorified in God,’ it is a case of ‘the
lesser’ being glorified ‘in the greater.’ [32.363-365] In spite of these
subordinationist views, however, Origen rejects the view of those who, ‘in the
delusion of glorifying the Father,’ declare ‘that something known by the Father
is not known by the Son who refuses to be made equal to the perceptions of the
unbegotten God.’ [1.187] It is perhaps in this same vein that one should
understand Origen’s assertion that it is on the basis of the unity of the Son’s
will with the Father’s that he says, ‘I and the Father are one.’ [13.228]”
(Ronald E. Heine, Fathers of the Church
89.28,34)