User:Gameking69/Trinity

Pauline themes

Christian universalism is often traced to Pauline themes of universality, including Paul's insistence that the people of God are not divided by ethnic, social, or gender boundaries ("you are all one in Christ Jesus," Galatians 3:28).^[13][14] In Paul, the gospel is announced without ethnic restriction, and salvation is presented as offered beyond a single people-group.^[15] Within the letters themselves, however, Paul's language moves along two tracks. On the one hand he can speak of persons who are "perishing," "condemned," or "lost," language that implies a real possibility of final exclusion.^[16] On the other hand he repeatedly uses unqualified "all" language at decisive points, especially in Adam-Christ comparisons and in the climax of his eschatology, language that naturally presses toward a universal scope.^[17]

A central example is Romans 5:18, where Paul sets "condemnation for all" in Adam alongside "justification and life for all" in Christ, a parallelism that has made the extent of the second "all" a recurrent crux in Pauline interpretation.^[18][19] The same pattern appears in 1 Corinthians 15:22 ("as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ") and in the chapter's conclusion, where the subjection of all things ends with God being "all in all" (1 Corinthians 15:28).^[20][21][22] Romans 11:32 likewise speaks of God enclosing all in disobedience "so that he may have mercy on all."^[23][24]

Petrine themes

In Acts 3:19-21, Peter's second speech in Jerusalem presents the "times of universal restoration" (apokatastasis panton) as an eschatological work of God, linked to repentance and the remission of sins.^[25] Peter uses the Greek term apokatastasis, which became a shorthand name for the doctrine of universal restoration, stating that Jesus "must be received into heaven until the times of the restoration of all, which God spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets of old."^[26] In 1 Peter 3:18-20 and 4:6, Peter teaches that Jesus descended into Hades to preach the Gospel to imprisoned spirits and the dead, suggesting redemptive activity for those who had died.^[27][28] In 2 Peter 3:9, Peter states that God "is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance," pointing to God's universal salvific will.^[29]

Several texts in the Petrine tradition support a universal-restoration expectation, including the announcement of Christ's descent to the dead in 1 Peter and in the Gospel of Peter, and the eventual salvation of the damned in the Apocalypse of Peter and in the Pseudo-Clementine belief attached to the Ethiopic Apocalypse of Peter.^[30] In the Apocalypse of Peter, Christ's final mercy is presented as delivering the damned from postmortem punishments after a period of suffering, with some versions depicting prayers for the damned as efficacious and Jesus stating that hell will not last forever.^[31]

Apocalypse of Peter

The Rainer fragment of the Apocalypse of Peter (ch. 14) describes God granting the elect whomever they request "out of the punishment."^[32] The same passage describes God giving the rescued "a fine baptism in salvation from the Acherusian lake" and giving them a "portion of righteousness" with God's holy ones.^[32] The passage presents rescue from postmortem punishment through the prayers of the elect.^[32] Later manuscript transmission does not include this intercessory rescue passage.^[33] The Ethiopic tradition adds sentences that describe the punishment as eternal.^[33]

Epistle of Barnabas

Epistle of Barnabas, dated between about AD 80 and 140.^[51] The text presents the Father, Son, and Spirit as functionally distinct but coordinated within a single redemptive economy. The Father is sovereign source: "our maker, the Lord Almighty, who governs the whole universe",^[52] who reveals "everything concerning his Son Jesus"^[53] and "enjoins on him that he should redeem us from darkness and prepare a holy people for himself".^[54] The Son is the agent of both creation and redemption—"the Lord of all the world",^[55] addressed by the Father in "Let us make man in our image and likeness",^[56] and the one who offered "the vessel of the spirit as a sacrifice for our sins".^[57] The Spirit serves as the medium of revelation and sanctification: poured out upon believers from the Lord,^[58] speaking to the heart of Moses,^[59] and inscribing the tablets "by the finger of the hand of the Lord in the Spirit".^[60]

Ignatius of Antioch

Ignatius uses a three-part prepositional series in Epistle to the Magnesians 13 when he urges believers to prosper "in the Son, and in the Father, and in the Spirit," as part of a broader call to be established in "the doctrines of the Lord and the apostles."^[61] In the opening of Epistle to the Ephesians, Ignatius addresses the church as united "by the will of the Father and of Jesus Christ our God."^[62] In the opening of Epistle to the Smyrnaeans, Ignatius addresses "the church of God the Father and of Jesus Christ the Beloved," and he says, "I give glory to Jesus Christ the God who bestowed such wisdom upon you."^[63] Monroy characterizes this Father-Son language as a "binitarian confessional formula, which confesses the Father and the Son."^[64] In Epistle to the Ephesians 9.1, Ignatius pictures believers as stones being hoisted into God's temple "by the crane of Jesus Christ, which is the cross, using for a rope the Holy Spirit," with faith as the means of ascent and love leading to God.^[65] The rope is used for hoisting or towing,^[66] and the theological point is that the Spirit places believers where they belong in God's temple, and they do not choose their place or determine it.^[67]

Outsiders

Pliny the Younger writes that Christians "sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god,"^[68] paralleling Philippians 2:9–11, where all creation confesses "Jesus Christ is Lord" yet "to the glory of God the Father,"^[69] worship directed to Christ understood not as displacing the Father but as its fulfillment, with the Holy Spirit absent from both accounts.

Shepherd of Hermas

The Shepherd of Hermas reached its final form by the middle of the second century.^[70] The Shepherd presents the Father operating in creation through the personal mediation of his Son.^[70] Similitude 9.12.2 states that the Son of God is prior in existence than all of his creation.^[71] Similitude 5.6.4 calls the Holy Spirit "preexisting" and says that he "created the whole creation".^[71] The phrase "the son is the Holy Spirit" does not equate Jesus Christ with the Holy Spirit in a personal sense.^[72] The Shepherd never equates the Son of God with an angel.^[73]

Justin Martyr

Justin Martyr described Christian worship with ordered language by saying Christians hold Christ "in the second place" and the prophetic Spirit "in the third" (1 Apol. 13).^[74][75] Some scholars view Justin's ordered language as a rudimentary version of Trinitarian doctrine.^[76][77] Justin also directed worship to the Maker of the universe and included Jesus as a recipient of reverence with God, and pagan criticism focused especially on that inclusion.^[78] According to Hurtado, Justin used "proto-trinitarian" wording when he blessed the Maker of all things through the Son, Jesus Christ, and through the Holy Spirit (1 Apol. 67.2).^[78]

Justin defended Christian devotional practice by using exegesis of biblical texts. In Dialogue 63.4-5, Justin presented Psalm 45:6-11 (LXX 44:6-11) as scriptural justification for worshipping Jesus, and he claimed the Psalm shows believers should worship Jesus "as God and as Christ."^[79] In Dialogue 64, Justin treated scriptural praise of "the Lord God of Israel who alone does wonders" and of "his glorious Name" as support for worship of God and Jesus, and he identified Jesus with God's "Name."^[80] In Dialogue 65, Isaiah 42:8 served as an objection to including a second figure in cultic devotion, and Justin answered by reading the text as naming an exclusive pairing of God and God's "Name" who share divine glory.^[81] Justin used a prior Christian reading of Isaiah that spoke of an allied figure called God's "arm," "servant," "light," and "name," and that reading identified the allied figure as Jesus.^[82] Justin's intensive exegesis responded to established Christian worship that included Jesus as a recipient of worship with God.^[83]

Justin Martyr used these scriptural traditions to discuss Jesus while calling him another God distinct in number.^[84] Justin identified the Logos with both the Sophia and the Spirit of God.^[85] The Father remains the beginning of the whole deity as the begetter of the Son.^[86]

In Dialogue 128, Justin explained Christ's relation to the Father with analogies that included light from the sun and fire kindled from fire.^[87] Justin asserted that Christ is numerically distinct from the Father and denied any division of the Father's "ousia."^[87] Justin also used "prosopon" language to describe prophets speaking as from the person of God the Father and as from the person of Christ.^[88] Justin used "ousia" language to deny partition in his defense of worship practice.^[88]

Irenaeus of Lyons

Irenaeus insisted that revelation, Scripture, tradition, and the Church together form the indispensable foundation for the Trinitarian rule of faith.^[89] Gnostic movements sharpened this conviction, prompting him to articulate how divine revelation is received by the Church through Scripture and authoritatively proclaimed.^[90]

He accepted the Hebrew Scriptures in the Septuagint as authentically Christian, described the gospel as "fourfold in perspective but bound together by one Spirit," and cited nearly the entire New Testament canon, omitting only Philemon, 2 Peter, 3 John, and Jude, while extending some scriptural authority also to the Shepherd of Hermas and 1 Clement.^[90] This faith was not his invention: "one and the same life-giving faith," he held, had been "preserved and transmitted in truth from the apostles up till now in the Church."^[91] That faith was irreducibly Trinitarian. Irenaeus named belief in the Father as maker of all as its "first and foremost article," while affirming the Spirit poured out "in a new way upon humanity throughout all the earth, renewing it to God."^[90]

The Spirit and Word were mutually illuminating: "the Spirit manifests the Word," and "the Word articulates the Spirit."^[91] He captured their relation to the Father in the image of the Son and Spirit as God's "two hands," the Word and Wisdom through whom God made all things, excluding any angelic intermediary from creation.^[91][92]

On Christ he was equally firm. He rejected any "pretended Christ" descending on a merely human Jesus, insisting Jesus and Christ are one and the same, and tied the Spirit's descent at the Jordan directly to salvation, "so that, receiving from the plenitude of his unction, we might be saved."^[93] The baptismal anointing equipped Jesus' human nature for messianic ministry "by a gift of divine attributes."^[94] Christian truth, for Irenaeus, traced a single ascending path through Father, Son, and Spirit.^[91]

Theophilus of Antioch

Theophilus of Antioch first used the term Triad (Τριάδος) to describe God, his Word, and his Wisdom, in To Autolycus (c. 180).^[95] In To Autolycus II.15 he uses the term Τριάδος in this triadic sense.^[96]

Theophilus, in the same work, writes about Scripture, God, his Word and his Wisdom, creation, the resurrection, and other matters, but is silent on Jesus, perhaps, opines Robert Grant, because of apologetic convention, perhaps because of his peculiar Christology.^[97]

In that discussion, Father, Word, and Spirit can appear as predicates of God, as when he says: "If I call him Light, I speak of his creature; if I call him Logos, I speak of his beginning; if I call him Mind, I speak of his intelligence; if I call him Spirit, I speak of his breath; if I call him Sophia (Wisdom), I speak of his offspring; if I call him Strength, I speak of his might ... if I call him Father, I speak of him as all things; if I call him Fire, I speak of his wrath." (To Autolycus 1.3).^[97]

Yet he also distinguishes the Word in relation to creation: God, "having his own Logos innate (endiathetos) in his own bowels, generated him together with his own Sophia, vomiting him forth before everything else" (To Autolycus 2.10).^[97] He explains that "his Logos, through whom he made all things, who is his Power and Wisdom (1 Cor. 1:24), assuming the role of the Father and Lord of the universe, was present in paradise in the role of God and conversed with Adam" (To Autolycus 2.22), and adds that the Word "is also his Son."^[97] With this distinction in place, the Word is eternal but his generation or expression is not, since "When God wished to make what he had planned to make, he generated this Logos, making him external (prophorikos), as the firstborn of all creation [Col. 1:15] without emptying himself of Reason" (To Autolycus 2.22).^[97]

Polycarp

Polycarp opened his Philippians letter by invoking "God Almighty" and "the Lord Jesus Christ, our Saviour" as the sources of mercy and peace.^[98] Christ is described as the one who "for our sins suffered even unto death," whom God raised from the dead, gave glory, and seated "at His right hand."^[99][100] To him "all things in heaven and on earth are subject," "every spirit serves" him, and he "comes as the Judge of the living and the dead."^[100] Believers must "appear at the judgment-seat of Christ,"^[101] and God "will raise us up also" if they walk in his commandments.^[100] Polycarp called Jesus Christ "the Son of God" and "our everlasting High Priest," and closed his blessing by naming "the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" alongside Christ himself, describing faith as belief "in our Lord Jesus Christ, and in His Father."^[102] The word "spirit" appears only in moral exhortation and in sayings quoted from the Lord: "every lust wars against the spirit,"^[103] and "the spirit truly is willing, but the flesh is weak."^[104] The Holy Spirit is not placed alongside the Father and the Son in either the greeting or the closing benediction.^[98][102] Monroy describes Polycarp's Father-Son wording as a "binitarian confessional formula, which confesses the Father and the Son."^[64]

Tertullian

Tertullian used the Latin term "Trinity" ("trinitas") for God and described one God as three "persons" ("personae") who share one "substance" ("substantia").^[105][106] He defended the "rule of faith" ("regula fidei") against pagan polytheism, Christian monarchianism, and the Gnosticism of Marcion and Valentinus, and he coined terminology from the Bible, Judaism, Gnosticism, and Roman legal language.^[107] He used "one rule" ("monarchia") to express that God has a Son, and he described the Father as the supreme ruler who hands the administration of the rule to the Son within an economic Trinity.^[107] He said the inner unity in substance of Father, Son, and Spirit guarantees the one rule, and he described them as "one substance" ("una substantia").^[108] He said the Father possesses the "fullness of substance" ("substantiae plenitudo"), and he said the Son and the Spirit have a "share" ("portio") in the one substance, distinguished by the order of their origin, and he stressed "distinction" ("distinctio") or "arrangement" ("dispositio") but not "separation" ("separatio").^[108] He wrote that the Three are one reality, "one" ("unum"), not one Person, "one person" ("unus").^[108] In Against Praxeas, he wrote that the "economy" (oikonomia) "distributes the unity into a Trinity," placing "in their order the three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost."^[109] He wrote that "the simple, indeed, who always constitute the majority of believers" felt startled at his explanation.^[110]

Origen

Origen, the first Christian systematic theologian, tied his doctrine of the Trinity to his teaching on the soul's ascent to God.^[111] He set out this doctrine chiefly in On First Principles (Peri arkon) and also in Against Celsus (Contra Celsum), the Commentary on John, and On Prayer (De Oratione).^[112] He described God as a "unity" ("monas") and as "one" ("hinas") and as "incomprehensible, beyond estimate, impassible" ("incomprehensibilis, inaestimabilis, impassibilis"), and he also described God as a "triad" ("trias"), Father, Son, and Spirit.^[113] Origen distinguished the Father as "the God" (ὁ θεός) and the Son as "God" (θεός) in his exposition of John 1:1.^[114] Starting from the Incarnation as expressed in the Creed, he stated that the Son is God, distinct from the Father, begotten from eternity, and consubstantial with the Father.^[113] Wilken notes that Origen could call the Son "a second God" in his Commentary on John.^[115] Origen opposed modalism and said the Son is "other in subsistence" ("hupokeimenon") than the Father, "two in respect of their Persons" ("duo te hupostasei"), and one in unanimity, harmony, and identity of will.^[113] He used analogies and represented the unity of the Three as a moral union or as the union of man and wife in one flesh.^[113] He grounded this teaching in the Son's begetting from eternity and denied that the Son came from "a part" ("pars") of the Father's substance or from an act with a beginning and an end.^[113] He described the Son as God "in essence" ("kat' ousian"), not by participation, and as of the same substance as the Father.^[116] He said the term homoousios may not have been used by Origen and gave a Latin citation that he said shows "communion of substance" ("communionem substantiae") between Son and Father.^[117] Origen treated the Holy Spirit with reserve and said discussion had not yet fully studied the Spirit.^[117] He did not doubt the Spirit's divinity and denied evidence that the Spirit was "a making or a creature" ("factura vel creatura").^[117] He described the Spirit as eternal and as having the same dignity and holiness as the Father and the Son, and he said some held views of the Spirit's divinity "less than is fitting" ("minore quam dignum est").^[117] He said the Father alone is "unbegotten" ("agennetos"), described the Spirit's origin as "through the Son" ("per Filium") and "from the Father through the Son" ("a Patre per Filium"), and denied that this origin is a "begetting" ("generatio").^[117] He called the Son "Only-begotten" ("Unigenitus") and denied another Son in the Trinity.^[117] He called the Father alone "God of himself" ("autotheos") and "the God" ("ho theos"), called the Son "God" ("theos"), not "the God" ("ho theos"), and described the Son as the Father's agent in creation.^[117] He said Christians should not pray to Christ but to the Father only, and he limited the Father's actions to all reality, the Son's to rational beings, and the Spirit's to those being sanctified.^[117]

Dionysius of Rome

Athanasius preserves a letter in which Dionysius of Rome speaks of the "Divine Trinity" and rejects division into "three Godheads" and confusion of Father and Son.^[118] Dionysius reported the accusation that Sabellius taught that the Son is the Father and the Father is the Son.^[119] Simultaneously, he criticized those who tear apart the divine unity, which is the most sacred proclamation of the Church of God, by splitting it into three separate powers, three distinct beings, and three different gods.^[119] Dionysius insisted the Divine Word and Holy Spirit must remain united to God so the "Divine Trinity should be reduced and gathered into one... the omnipotent God of all."^[119] He condemned the "great impiety" of claiming the Son was created, noting that divine declaration proves He was begotten, not made.^[119] He concluded that the divine unity must not be split into three deities, nor Christ's dignity diminished by the "name of creation"; instead, one must believe in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, grounded in Christ's words: ("I and the Father are one"^[120]) and ("I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me"^[121]).^[119]

Novatian

Novatian wrote a treatise commonly known as On the Trinity and argued for real distinction between the Father and the Son against monarchian interpretations associated with Sabellius.^[122] He treated the Son as coming from the Father and as acting as mediator of divine works toward creation and salvation.^[122] In his trinitarian teaching, Novatian also stressed the unity of God as God the Father and used subordinationist language for the Son and the Spirit.^[123] He included the Holy Spirit in his account of divine action and Christian confession, and he associated the Spirit's role especially with bestowing blessings given in baptism.^[124][122]

Gregory the Wonderworker

Gregory the Wonderworker wrote a Declaration of Faith that states: ("There is one God, the Father of the living Word, who is His subsistent Wisdom and Power and Eternal Image: perfect Begetter of the perfect Begotten, Father of the only-begotten Son."^[125]) Of the Son he writes: ("There is one Lord, Only of the Only, God of God, Image and Likeness of Deity... true Son of true Father, Invisible of Invisible, and Incorruptible of Incorruptible, and Immortal of Immortal and Eternal of Eternal."^[125]) Of the Spirit he states: ("There is One Holy Spirit, having His subsistence from God, and being made manifest by the Son... in whom is manifested God the Father, who is above all and in all, and God the Son, who is through all."^[125]) The Declaration culminates in a coordinated confession of all three: ("There is a perfect Trinity, in glory and eternity and sovereignty, neither divided nor estranged. Wherefore there is nothing either created or in servitude in the Trinity... neither was the Son ever wanting to the Father, nor the Spirit to the Son; but without variation and without change, the same Trinity abideth ever."^[125])

Cyprian of Carthage

Wallace links the earliest mention of the Johannine Comma to Cyprian of Carthage and explains it as a trinitarian interpretation of 1 John 5:8 rather than a quotation of the later gloss.^[126] In his De Unitate Ecclesiae, Cyprian writes: ("The Lord says, 'I and the Father are one,' and again it is written of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, 'And these three are one.'"^[127]) Scrivener judged it "safer and more candid to admit that Cyprian read verse 7 in his copies", though he acknowledged that mystical interpretation of verse 8 was also attested in writers such as Eucherius and Augustine.^[128] In a second reference, from Ad Jubaianum, Cyprian again invokes the unity of the three persons, asking: ("Since the Three are One, what pleasure could the Holy Spirit take in the enemy of the Father and the Son?"^[129]) The United Bible Societies' Greek NT apparatus records Cyprian as a witness to the text.^[130]

Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 1786

Papyrus Oxyrhynchus XV 1786 is a late third-century papyrus preserving a Christian Greek hymn with both lyrics and musical notation, often treated as the earliest surviving notated Christian hymn.^{[131][132][133]} The manuscript was discovered at Oxyrhynchus in 1918 and published in 1922 in The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Part XV (21 to 25), where A. S. Hunt edited the fragment and H. Stuart Jones supplied a transcript of the music.^[134][135] The music is written in ancient Greek vocal notation (Greek vocal notation).^[136][137] The text as calling for cosmic stillness while Christians hymn the Trinity, and the surviving doxology explicitly names "Father and Son and Holy Spirit" (Πατέρα καὶ Υἱὸν καὶ Ἅγιον Πνεῦμα), followed by the congregational response "Amen, amen" (Ἀμήν, ἀμήν).^[138][134] In Cosgrove's translation the line continues, "Let all the powers reply, 'Amen, amen, strength, praise, and glory forever to God, the sole giver of all good things'" (... πᾶσαι δυνάμεις ἐπιφωνούντων· Ἀμήν, ἀμήν· κράτος, αἶνος καὶ δόξα ... θεῷ δοτήρι μόνῳ πάντων ἀγαθῶν· ἀμήν, ἀμήν).^[139][134] The fragment is frequently described as the only surviving notated Christian Greek music from the first four hundred years, and (alongside Phos Hilaron) as one of the earliest extant Christian Greek hymn texts reasonably certain to have been used in Christian worship.^[140][141]

Scandals and Councils

The Synods of Antioch in 269 condemned Paul of Samosata and rejected "homoousios" in the modalist sense associated with him.^[142]

Writers used the labels "modalistic" and "patripassian" for unity-focused views.^[143] Latourette describes Sabellianism as a monarchian form associated with Sabellius and links it to Noetus and Praxeas.^[144] Although, no writings from Sabellius survive and it is primarily sourced from opponents supply the evidence.^[144] Berkhof stresses limits created by fragmentary survival and reliance on opponents.^[145] Critics used "patripassianism" for teachings that identified Father and Son so closely that they implied the Father's participation in the Son's suffering.^[143] Dionysius of Rome reports the charge that Sabellius taught "the Son himself is the Father and vice versa."^[119]

Christian writers incorporated the synthesis of Christianity with Platonic philosophy (namely Platonist categories about divine reality) into Trinitarian formulas by the end of the 3rd century.^[146]

Arius controversy

Arius (c. 250 or 256-336) believed that the pre-existent Son of God came from the Father's direct act of creation before all ages, and he treated the Son as subordinate to God the Father.^[151] Arius saw in Scripture, the Apologists, and Origen two interwoven ideas, that the Son is God and that the Son stands subordinate and inferior to the Father in divinity.^[152] Arius asked a blunt question, "Is the Son God or creature?"^[152] Arius answered that the Son is not God.^[152] Arius answered that the Son is a perfect creature.^[152] Arius answered that the Son is not eternal.^[152] Arius answered that the Father made the Son out of nothing.^[152] This answer brought the subordinationist tendency in the Apologists and Origen to full term.^[152] Arianism became the dominant view in some regions of the Roman Empire, and remained prominent among the Visigoths until 589.^[151] Arianism emerged as a strong pushback against Sabellianism.^[153] Sabellianism was widespread in some eastern parts of the church.^[153] Rufinus transmitted a version of the Apostles' Creed that clearly stated that the Father cannot suffer, as a direct response to the idea that the Father Himself suffered on the cross.^[154]

First Council of Nicaea

The First Council of Nicaea adopted the Nicene Creed in 325.^[155] The 325 creed described the Son as "begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father".^[155] Arians willingly recited these affirmations while reading into them their own meaning.^[152] Nicaea answered this by turning biblical affirmations into statements about what the Son is.^[152] Nicaea gathered scriptural affirmations, titles, symbols, images, and predicates about the Son into one affirmation that the Son is "not made but born of the Father," that the Son is "true God from true God," and that the Son is consubstantial with the Father.^[152] The 325 creed as functionally binitarian in focus,^[156] while the creed concentrated on Father-Son relations and mentioned the Spirit only briefly.^[157]

Defenders of Nicaea treated the Gospel of John as central in these disputes, and they cited John 5:23 against the Arians.^[115] By the 360s the central debate increasingly concerned the status of the Holy Spirit.^[158] This dispute arose in liturgical practice,^[158] this resulted in the Holy Spirit being affirmed as the third Person, by the Council of Alexandria in 362.^[159]

Athanasius

On the Father and Son, Athanasius argued that the Son was not created but consubstantial (homoousios) with the Father, insisting that ("the Word is ever in the Father and the Father in the Word, as the radiance stands towards the light"^[160]) and that ("the whole being of the Son is proper to the Father's Being... the Form of the Godhead of the Father is in the being of the Son."^[161])

Regarding the Holy Spirit, Athanasius defended the Spirit's full deity against those who claimed the Spirit was a created being, writing: ("If the Son is named, the Father is in the Son, and the Spirit is not outside the Word. For there is from the Father one grace which is fulfilled through the Son in the Holy Spirit; and there is one divine nature, and one God who is over all and through all and in all."^[162])

He concluded that ("the Father is properly Father... the Son is properly the Son... and the Holy Spirit is always the Holy Spirit... given from the Father through the Son. Thus the Holy Trinity remains invariable."^[163])

Phos Hilaron

Basil of Caesarea reports an "ancient form" of lamp-lighting thanksgiving with the wording: "We praise Father, Son, and God's Holy Spirit."^[164] Phos Hilaron is first mentioned as the lamp-lighting hymn (epilychnios eucharistia) in the Apostolic Constitutions (Book 8, 34ff), written in the late third or early fourth century.^[165] In the Apostolic Constitutions, the bishop assembles the church "when it is evening" and the service begins "after the repetition of the psalm at the lighting up the lights".^[166] The text then gives an evening bidding prayer for peace, mercy, and a night "free from sin", followed by a set "Thanksgiving for the Evening" that thanks God for ordering day and night and asks preservation "by Your Christ".^[167] The thanksgiving ends with a doxology that offers "glory, honour, and worship" to the Father "in the Holy Spirit", and the concluding blessing describes Christ as the one "through whom You have enlightened us with the light of knowledge", with "worthy adoration" offered to the Father and to the Spirit who is named "the Comforter".^[168] This placement of psalmody and thanksgiving at the lighting of lamps provides a liturgical setting in which tradition locates the singing of Phos Hilaron as a lamp-lighting hymn, alongside other forms of evening praise.^[165]

First Council of Constantinople

The First Council of Constantinople met in 381.^[169] The creed from this council included the Holy Spirit in its confession.^[169] The council clarified three hypostases sharing one ousia.^[169] The Cappadocian Fathers helped define the settlement at Constantinople in 381.^[158] Although, modern textual scholarship does not find 1 John 5:7, which reads "the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one," in the oldest Greek and Latin manuscripts.^[147] This reading appears only in later textual traditions, where Latin authors such as Priscillian employed it in the 4th century.^[147]