The Church of Jesus Christ

Below is chapter 10 of a work produced around 177ad, sometime before Tertullian and right around the Muratorian Canon, which included the Book of Wisdom.

Chapter X.—The Christians Worship the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

That we are not atheists, therefore, seeing that we acknowledge one God, uncreated, eternal, invisible, impassible, incomprehensible, illimitable, who is apprehended by the understanding only and the reason, who is encompassed by light, and beauty, and spirit, and power ineffable, by whom the universe has been created through His Logos, and set in order, and is kept in being—I have sufficiently demonstrated. [I say “His Logos”], for we acknowledge also a Son of God. Nor let any one think it ridiculous that God should have a Son. For though the poets, in their fictions, represent the gods as no better than men, our mode of thinking is not the same as theirs, concerning either God the Father or the Son. But the Son of God is the Logos of the Father, in idea and in operation; for after the pattern of Him and by Him were all things made, the Father and the Son being one. And, the Son being in the Father and the Father in the Son, in oneness and power of spirit, the understanding and reason (νοῦς καὶ λόγος) of the Father is the Son of God. But if, in your surpassing intelligence, it occurs to you to inquire what is meant by the Son, I will state briefly that He is the first product of the Father, not as having been brought into existence (for from the beginning, God, who is the eternal mind [νοῦς], had the Logos in Himself, being from eternity instinct with Logos [λογικός]); but inasmuch as He came forth to be the idea and energizing power of all material things, which lay like a nature without attributes, and an inactive earth, the grosser particles being mixed up with the lighter. The prophetic Spirit also agrees with our statements. “The Lord,” it says, “made me, the beginning of His ways to His works.” The Holy Spirit Himself also, which operates in the prophets, we assert to be an effluence of God, flowing from Him, and returning back again like a beam of the sun. Who, then, would not be astonished to hear men who speak of God the Father, and of God the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and who declare both their power in union and their distinction in order, called atheists? Nor is our teaching in what relates to the divine nature confined to these points; but we recognise also a multitude of angels and ministers whom God the Maker and Framer of the world distributed and appointed to their several posts by His Logos, to occupy themselves about the elements, and the heavens, and the world, and the things in it, and the goodly ordering of them all. (translated by Translated by the Rev. B. P. Pratten)

Easily noticed are the phrases “God the Father” and the “God the Son” but what is lacking is “God the Holy Spirit;” (It would not be until Tertullian’s time that such a heavy emphasis was placed on the person of the holy spirit) however, Athenagoras goes out of his way to address the issue that the Son is the Logos of God and that they are in ‘oneness’. He also says that the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son. The author then goes on to use the emanation doctrine found in Hebrews and Wisdom but transfer it to the Spirit.

We can look at this writing several ways. We can see a seed of a Father-Son substance which a pointing to a development of the a third part. We can see that Athenagoras was fighting (most likely pagans) the idea that the the Son was begotten, by drawing attention to the fact that the Son was in idea only, since the Son was the Logos which had existed with God as God since the beginning. There is no distinction for this author in the Deity.

Below are excerpts from his book, A Plea for Christians.

Chapter VIII.—Absurdities of Polytheism.

And indeed Socrates was compounded and divided into parts, just because he was created and perishable; but God is uncreated, and, impassible, and indivisible—does not, therefore, consist of parts.

Chapter XII.—Consequent Absurdity of the Charge of Atheism.

while men who reckon the present life of very small worth indeed, and who are conducted to the future life by this one thing alone, that they know God and His Logos, what is the oneness of the Son with the Father, what the communion of the Father with the Son, what is the Spirit, what is the unity of these three, the Spirit, the Son, the Father, and their distinction in unity

Taken apart, it presents a contradiction in the mind of Athenagoras, however, taken together, we see that the author is still promoting oneness and promoting those that know the ‘distinction in unity’ which contrary to the pagan thought at the time, is none. One cannot hold to a ‘oneness of the Son with the Father’ and that God does not ‘consist of parts’ while maintaining a ‘distinction in unity.’