§ 130. THE NICENE DOOTKINE OF THE TEINITY. 681
world, but reason back thence to a trinity of being ; for God has revealed himself as he is, and there can be no contradiction between his nature and his works. The eternal pre-existence of the Son and the Spirit is the background of the historical revelation by which they work our salvation. The Scriptures deal mainly with the trinity of revelation, and only hint at the trinity of essence, as in the prologue of the Gospel of John which asserts an eternal distinction between God and the Logos. The Nicene divines, however, agreeably to the metaphysical bent of the Greek mind, move somewhat too exclusively in the field of speculation and in the dark regions of the intrinsic and ante-mundane relations of the Godhead, and too little upon the practical ground of the facts of salvation.
6. The Nicene fathers still teach, like their predecessors, a certain suhordinationism, which seems to conflict with the doctrine of consubstantiality. But we must distinguish between a subordinatianism of essence {ovcrid) and a subordinatiaiiism of hypostasis, of order and dignity." The former was denied, the latter aflirmed. The essence of the Godhead being but one, and being absolutely perfect, can admit of no degrees. Father, Son, and Spirit all have the same divine essence, yet not in a co-ordinate way, but in an order of subordination. The Father has the essence originally and of himself, from no other; he is the primal divine subject, i:> |W}iom alone absoluteness belongs, and he is therefore called preeminently God," or the principle, the fountain, and the root of Godhead.* The Son, on the contrary, has his essence by communication from the Father, therefore, in a secondary,
' 'O ©eo's, and avrSSifos, in distinction from ©eo's. Waterland (Works, vol. L p. 315) remarks on this: " The title of 6 &(6s, being understood in the same sense with auTo^eof, was, as it ought to be, generallv reserved to the Father, as the distinguishing personal character of the first Person of the Holy Trinity. And this amounts to no more than the acknowledgment of the Father's prerogative, as Father. But as it might also signify any Person who is truly and essentially God, it might properly be applied to the Son too : and it is so applied sometimes, thougl aot so often a,s it is to the Father."
* 'H irrjyii, rj ojtio, t/ ^t'^o rrjs deoTTjTos : fons, oriffo, prificijnum.
082 TEEEl) PEKIOD. A.D. 311-590.
derivative way. " The Fiitlier is greater than the Son." The one is unLcgotteii, the other begotten ; the Son is from tiie Fathei-, but tiie Father is not from the Son ; father hood is in the nature of the case primary, sonship secondary. The same subordination is still more applicable to the Holy Ghost. The Nicciie fathers thought the idea of the divine unity best preserved by making the Father, notwithstanding the triad of persons, the monad from wliich Son and Spirit spring, and to which they return.
This subordination is most plainly expressed by Hilary of Poictiers, the champion of the Niccne doctrine in the West.* The familiar comparisons of fountain and stream, sun and light, which Athanasius, like Tertullian, so often uses, likewise lead to a dependence of the Son upon the Father.'' Even the ]!s'ic£eno-Constantinopolitan Creed favors it, in calling the Son God of God, Light of Light, very God (f very God. For if a person has anything, or is anything, of another, he has not that, or is not that, of himself. Yet this expression may bo more correctly understood, and is in fact sometimes used by the later Nicene fathers, as giving the Son and Spirit only theii hypostases from the Fatlier, while the essence of deity is common to all three persons, and is co-eternal in all.
Scriptural argument for this theory of subordination was found abundant in such passages as these : " As the Father hath life in himself i^x^^ t,wy]v Iv eavTO)), so hath he given {eSco/ce) to the Son to have life in himself; and hath given him authority
' De trinit. iii. 12: "Etqiiis non Patrem potiorcm confitebitur, ut ingenitum a genito, ut Patrem a Filio, ut euin qui miserit ab eo qui missus sit, ut voleutem ab eo quiobediat? Et ipse nobis erit testis : Pater major me est. Haec ita ut sunt intet ligenda sunt, sed cavendum est, no apud iinperitos gloiiam Filii honor Patria infirmet." In the same way Hilary derives all the attributes of the Son from the Father. Comp. also Hilary, De Synodis, scu de fide Oriontalium, pp. 1178 and 1182 (Opera, ed. Bened.), and the third iind eighteenth canons of the Sirmian council of 367.
" Comp. the relevant passages from Athanasius, Baail, and the Grcgories, in Bull, Defensio, sect. iv. (Para iL p. C88 sqq.). Even John of Damascus, with whonj Ihe productive period of the Greek theology closes, still teaches the same subordination, De Orthod. fide, i. 10: X\6.vra '6oa <x*' ^ "'^^ "■"•'^ "^ irveCua, iK loC irarphs fX** \a.\ aurb rh flv(u.