Introduction
Who is Jesus Christ? It’s hard to imagine a more foundational question for the Christian faith. In fact, after Jesus’ own disciples rattled off other peoples’ opinion of Him, He directly asked them: “But who do you say that I am?” (Mark 8:29, ESV) In some ways, the answer may be simple, but, in other ways, it is more complex than we might expect.
Some have argued that Jesus is a created being, even the greatest of all created beings. Some have contended that there was a time when He did not exist as a being; others have maintained that He is an eternal being since God is eternal. Yet even if the Son of God is an eternal being, is He ontologically subordinate to the Father? Or, as the Chalcedonian Creed (AD 451) argues, is He “consubstantial with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the Manhood”?[1] These questions demonstrate that there are many potential pitfalls when developing a biblical, orthodox Christology.
In Jesus’ own day and in the centuries following His death, resurrection, and ascension, Christians wrestled with the tension between two biblical truths: that Jesus was both fully God and fully man. One may accept these two truths solely on the basis of faith, but, in responding to heretical views of Jesus, the Church thought it also necessary to describe and defend reasons for affirming His full deity, His full humanity, and even the relationship between His divine and human natures.
One of the words featured in the above quotation was the word occasionally translated “consubstantial” (homoousion in Greek). The Chalcedonian Creed states that the Son is “consubstantial with the Father according to Godhead.” That is, the Son is of “identical substance or essence” with the Father.[2] Or, we might say: From eternity, the Son has and has had whatever properties are essential to God. This truth is vital to a historically orthodox understanding of the person of Christ and of the doctrine of the Trinity.
But the doctrine of the Trinity, particularly as it relates to the deity of Christ and the deity of the Spirit, increasingly came under attack in the English-speaking world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Paul Best (1590–1657) and John Biddle (1615–1662), both English anti-Trinitarians, rejected the doctrine of the Trinity, seeing it as a vestige of Roman Catholicism that didn’t square with the Bible and human reason. Yet critiques of Trinitarian doctrine grew in sophistication around the turn of the eighteenth century as theologians and historians turned to early historical manuscripts to discredit Trinitarianism as the historic Christian teaching. In the early eighteenth century, few did more to further this cause than the natural philosopher and theologian William Whiston (1667–1752).[3]
William Whiston: A Brief Biographical Sketch
William Whiston was, by all accounts, a brilliant student from an early age. In 1686, he entered Clare College, Cambridge, where he graduated with a BA in 1689 and with an MA in 1693. Whiston read Isaac Newton’s (1642–1727) landmark work Principia mathematica (1687), and the two eventually became friends. Newton’s work was foundational for Whiston.
Whiston served first as a tutor at Cambridge but, beginning in 1709, served as professor there in Newton’s place. Whiston was officially elected as professor of mathematics, replacing Newton upon his departure, in 1710. Whiston served in this role until he openly published his heretical views on the doctrine of the Trinity in 1709.[4] He was expelled from his lectureship and the university in 1710 and died outside of the Church of England.[5]
Following Whiston’s expulsion, he continued to lecture on subject of his expertise throughout England but particularly in and around London. Whiston continued to publish works on cosmography, but he also published on the Bible and theology, frequently focusing upon the doctrine of the Trinity. We’ll examine almost exclusively work on the doctrine of the Trinity.
The Forgery of Athanasius
Whiston’s most controversial academic contribution came in the realm of theology. It was likely that Whiston’s friendships with Isaac Newton and the biblical scholar Samuel Clarke (1675–1729), both of whom were anti-Trinitarians, led Whiston also to embrace anti-Trinitarian views. Samuel Clarke, in particular, published a highly influential work entitled The Scripture-Doctrine of the Trinity in 1712. In it, Clarke argued from the Bible against the historic Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Whereas Clarke dealt with the biblical text itself in order to oppose the doctrine of the Trinity, Whiston weaponized history in order to undermine the doctrine.
A variety of works demonstrate Whiston’s use of history to undermine the doctrine of the Trinity, particularly in his four-volume tome Primitive Christianity Reviv’d (1711–1712). But a much shorter work entitled Athanasius Convicted of Forgery (1712) provides a summary of Whitson’s arguments.[6] His argument is multifaceted, but the essence of it is straightforward: The Council of Nicea (AD 325) did not anathematize the Arians and their use of the word “created” in reference to the person of Christ. Furthermore, the word “consubstantial” (homoousion) was not used by the Council but was instead forged by Athanasius who disseminated forged copies of the Nicene Creed following the council.[7]
From this idea, Whiston concludes that what we know as the Christian doctrine of the Trinity was primarily the invention of Athanasius and not the view of the Council of Nicea or of the early Church. Whiston also attacks the character of Athanasius, arguing that we should trust anyone else above Athanasius, whom Whiston believed to be a complete scoundrel.[8] Therefore, Whiston examines several copies of the Nicene Creed, which he claims do not have the word “consubstantial.” Whiston concludes from this that the views of the Arians—namely, that the Son is the greatest of all created beings, but not consubstantial with the Father—is the legitimate Christian view of the person of Christ.
Primitivism and the Continued Reformation
What we find in Whiston’s writings on the Trinity is a form of what we might call primitivism, a desire to move beyond mere tradition to get back to the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles. Primitivism is inherent within Protestantism, but the English anti-Trinitarians revived the Protestant principle of sola Scriptura, combined it with the test of human reason, applied it to the doctrine of the Trinity, and found the doctrine wanting. Furthermore, they marshaled historical and biblical arguments to defend their opposition to the doctrine. They were, they believed, the true Reformers continuing the work of the Protestant Reformation.
According to Whiston, Clarke, and others of their ilk, the doctrine of the Trinity was the last remaining vestige of Roman Catholicism within Protestantism. Anti-Trinitarians often associated the doctrine of the Trinity with the Roman Catholic view of the Lord’s Supper (transubstantiation) in which the bread and wine are transformed into the actual body and blood of Christ. Transubstantiation could not accord with human reason. And neither, they contended, could the doctrine of the Trinity.
Therefore, for primitive Christianity to be restored, the doctrine of the Trinity had to be dispensed with. Philip Dixon summarizes this idea well: “The Reformation process begun two hundred years before would only be complete when this last relic of Popery, the consubstantial Trinity, was removed. Then, and only then, would the original, pristine, authentic doctrine of Christ and His Apostles prevail.”[9] They wanted to get back to the simplicity of the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles, or so they said. One might wonder if they didn’t simply want a more reasonable (read: according to the dictates of rationalism) faith and saw this position as a means to that end.
Conclusion
It is not hard to see the allure of Whiston (and Clarke’s) anti-Trinitarianism. For those who want a more “reasonable” faith and are not convinced that the doctrine of the Trinity can accord with human reason, the way of Whiston and Clarke may be tempting. The combination of a strong biblicism, anti-Catholicism, and primitivism was a powerful cocktail in eighteenth-century England. Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code proved that various forms of this argument are powerful in our day as well.
Whiston’s
arguments rest primarily upon the assumption that if Athanasius’s forgery can
be demonstrated, then Trinitarianism ceases to be the orthodox position
within the early church—it is merely a later invention. No doubt, orthodox
Christianity places much stress upon the Council of Nicea and the work of
Athanasius. But Whiston overemphasizes and overestimates what discrediting
Athanasius will accomplish. An orthodox understanding of the Trinity is not as
fragile as Whiston seems to believe. Orthodox Trinitarianism precedes and
follows Athanasius. Thus, even if Whiston were correct concerning Athanasius
and his supposed forgery (and I do not believe that he is), that still would
not undermine the fact that the majority of the Church was convinced that the
Bible taught that the Father, Son, and Spirit were consubstantial. Put more
directly: Orthodox Trinitarianism does not rest on Athanasius; it rests on
Scripture and has clear testimony in the history of the Church.
[1]Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1919), 2:62.
[2]Stephen J. Nichols, For Us and Our Salvation: The Doctrine of Christ in the Early Church (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2007), 172.
[3]You may have a copy of William Whiston’s work in your personal library. Whiston’s translation of the works of Flavius Josephus remains the standard translation to this day.
[4]Regarding Whiston’s heretical views on the Trinity, Dixon writes: “Whiston explicitly revived and propagated a form of Eusebianism, a heresy similar to Arianism in subordinating the Son to the Father but differing from it in denying that there was a time when the Son did not exist.” See Philip Dixon, ‘Nice and Hot Disputes’: The Doctrine of the Trinity in the Seventeenth Century (London, UK: T&T Clark, 2003), 181
[5]Whiston apparently joined a group of General Baptists in 1747 and was a member of a General Baptist church upon his death in 1752. By this time, some of the General Baptists had either permitted or embraced heretical views on the doctrine of the Trinity. See Stephen D. Snobelen, “William Whiston,” ODNB, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/29217.
[6]Whiston’s arguments didn’t rest solely upon his critique of Athanasius. Dixon comments: “His espousal of Eusebianism rested largely on his reading of The Apostolical Constitutions,a work he took to be an authentic first-century document, and which he became convinced what the apex of New Testament canon and to be treated as such.From his reading of The Apostolical Constitutions Whiston concluded that the Father alone was ‘God’ in the proper sense, and alone worthy of worship. He proceeded to draw up 21 propositions, which he hoped exhibited the true faith of the Church of the first two centuries in regard to the Trinity and the Incarnation. See Dixon, ‘Nice and Hot Disputes’, 181
[7]Whiston in his own words: “Athanasius therefore, who affirm’d that the Council did anathematize those that said our Savior was Created, and who inserted that Part of their Anathematism into Eusebius’s Copy to his Diocese, and into his own and his Council’s Copy to Jovian, was guilty if a known and willful Falsity and Interpolation in this important Matter, and of Propagating a Notorious Forgery over the Christian World.” William Whiston, Athanasius Convicted of Forgery (London: 1712), 28.
[8]Whiston, Athanasius Convicted, 11–15.
[9]Dixon, ‘Nice and Hot Disputes’, 181.
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