5) Accommodation of Trinity and Creation doctrines post Nicea (325 AD) and Constantinople (381 AD). Augustine, Eriugena.
(Extract from Reformation and Scholasticism in Philosophy, Vol II)
At the Ecumenical Councils of Nicea and Constantinople, the Christian church formulated the doctrine of the divine Trinity as a complete oneness of nature (or being) between the three Persons of the Godhead. Following this, thinkers trod further down the road of accommodation between the logos theory and this trinitarian dogma, which earlier had been worked out in a Scriptural sense by Irenaeus and Athanasius.
Among the Greek church fathers schooled in Origen’s theology, Gregory of Nyssa (335-ca.395 AD) in particular elaborated on the logos theory at length in this new accommodated form. He combined the Jewish conception of the unity of the divine nature with the Neoplatonic conception of the deity’s three hypostases, and he interpreted the ideas in the divine Logos, which he too understood as the second Person of the divine nature, as “thoughts of God.” Eusebius of Caesarea, meanwhile, the famous church historian who was strongly influenced by Platonism, had taken a stand against the Neoplatonic theory of the emanation of the logos from the divine One, a notion that had been erroneously ascribed to Plato.
The theory of the logos first received its definitive, “orthodox” form in the thought of Aurelius Augustinus (354-430 AD), the grand master of the Latin church fathers. Under the influence of Marius Victorinus, who did not convert to Christianity until 355 AD in his old age, and who himself formulated an elaborate logos theory, Augustine made the philosophical-theological speculation of Plotinus, in particular, into an object of accommodation.
He began, however, by upholding the oneness of nature or being of the three Persons of the Godhead against Plotinus’ notion of three divine hypostases whose perfection of being is successively diminished, and by defending the Scriptural doctrine of the incarnation of the Word against the Gnostic theory that Christ’s earthly body was a mere semblance. This latter theory was inseparably tied to the religious dualism between mind or spirit and matter, which both the Gnostics and Origen carried to an extreme. Matter, in the sense of the Greek matter motive, thus was completely deprived of divinity.
Further, Augustine, whose understanding of the ground-motive of the Christian religion was basically pure, forcefully defended creation as an act of God’s sovereign will against the Plotinian theory of radiation. Despite this defense, however, someone like John Scotus Erigena [recte Eriugena = “Irish-born”] (ca. 801-877 AD) clearly reverted to this theory in the ninth century under the influence of Origen. It carried him to dangerous pantheistic consequences, just as did his logos speculation, in which the Logos functioned as the principle by which multiplicity was traced back to the divine unity.
On the other hand, Augustine did adopt the Plotinian theory of degrees of reality, although he restricted it to the created cosmos. He also adopted the Stoic theory of germinal forms (the logos spermatikos) in the material world, albeit in a semi-Plotinian accommodation to the Scriptural motive of creation. Most seriously, he adopted both the theory of the logos as the seat of the divine creative ideas and the whole theory of the objective actualization of these ideas in the material world. All these speculative philosophical doctrines were inseparably tied to the ground-motive of form and matter, whose religious nature was intrinsically pagan. Nevertheless, this was realized neither by Augustine and the scholastics who followed him, nor by Kuyper, Bavinck, and Woltjer, who followed Augustine in their logos theory.
We can grant that the accommodation of these pagan conceptions to the Scriptural doctrines of the Trinity and of creation changed their original meaning to a certain extent. It is equally true, however, that because of this process of accommodation the Christian ground-motive could no longer make itself felt in philosophical and theological thought in an unadulterated way.
78-80
(Extracted from Reformation and Scholasticism in Philosophy, Vol II, Paideia Press, 2013, pp 78-80)
The above book is available HERE
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Logos critique extracts:
1) The theory of the Logos in the critical realism of Kuyper, Bavinck, and Woltjer.
3) The Logos theory of Plotinus
4) Logos speculation in Christian thought before Council of Nicea (325).
