by Daniel Mcclellan

Created on: April 24, 2008

The Trinity is a difficult concept for most Christians to understand, let alone explain. This arises from the fact that an explanation of the Trinity has to be able satisfy a long list of criteria established by a univocal perspective of the scriptures. Univocality in scripture means the theological backdrop of the biblical text is identical from author to author, beginning to end. Early church councils that focused on the proper conception of the relationship of God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit used the scriptures as the foundation for their dialectic, and a primary concern was the reconciliation of logical extrapolations from the scriptures with the body of scripture as a whole. An explication of one scripture was required to coalesce with all other scriptures. This investigation will examine the development of Trinitarian ideologies, as well as the philosophical and social contexts that catalyzed the same. Ultimately, it will be shown that the idea of an ontological Trinity was born of social necessity.

The foundation of the Trinity is the Council at Nicea and the Greek word homoousios. The primary topic of concern at the council was the correct perception of the relationship of Christ to God the Father. Was Christ subordinate to God, or equal to him? The discussion was brought to a head by a presbyter, Arius, who advocated a subordinate Christology, and was backed up by the Antiochene church. The church in Alexandria supported Alexander, Arius' bishop, who supported Christ as equal to God. The Nicean council was convened in 325 CE by the Roman emperor Constantine in an effort to reach some manner of accord between the various factions of the growing Christian church, which were straining his empire. The council of Nicea was the first of many theological confrontations over the subsequent centuries that would ultimately develop and refine a definition of the Trinity that satisfied the needs of what would become the "orthodox" branch of Christianity.

The term homoousios is a Greek word that means "of the same substance." It was introduced in the council by Constantine (probably at the insistence of Hosius of Cordova) as a solution to the disagreement. It was not an entirely new word. It was actually rejected by the Synod of Antioch 70 years earlier because of its relationship to Gnostic philosophy. Later orthodox writers would argue that the way it was presented at Antioch had a slight Gnostic nuance that differentiated their usage from that

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