by Joshua Shaw

There is a lively debate (still ongoing) about whether Eusebius was always a Trinitarian, or whether he is best considered Binitarian (i.e., holding that there are only two persons in the Godhead) in the period prior to the Councils of the 4th century (325-381). The most important witness to the belief that he was a Binitarian (see Volker Drecoll here) is the Praeparatio Evangelica (PE), in which he twice (Books VII and XI) broaches the subject of Pneumatology (the theology of the Holy Spirit). The question is, to put it in our terms, whether the Holy Spirit is attributed a common “essence” with the Father and Son along with his separate “hypostasis.” The answer, in these terms (as the following citation will show), is no. But is this the right question to ask?

It has often been assumed in historical scholarship that Eusebius was a Binitarian and that his Binitarian treatment of the Godhead had given rise to the later heresy of the Pneumatomachians. It has been argued variously that he turned to a Trinitarian theology post 325 A.D. (Volker Drecoll, as above cited), never became a true Trinitarian (Kretchmar, Hauschild) or in fact nominally abandoned – due to his polemic with Marcellus of Ancyra – Trinitarianism which he in fact had always held (H. Strutwolf).

The debate rests upon Eusebius’s treatment of the Holy Spirit. Some guiding questions are: How does the Holy Spirit receive his Divinity? Directly from the Father or through the Son? Is the Holy Spirit, as the Son, called θεός (God), or is he simply nearer to God than all of the other heavenly beings?

The Hierarchy of Being

A key passage for these questions is in Book VII of the PE. There Eusebius is trying to present a “Hebrew” theology (rooted in the Old Testament) which mirrors the Christian theology arising from it in the teachings of Christ. Eusebius links the two, after a certain fashion, through the Platonic lens of allegoria (ἀλληγορία), in which typology and mediating explanations of ‘God’s human attributes’ – e.g., hands, anger, and so on – are primarily meant. This way of reading the OT is attested by “Hebrews of Hebrews” (Aristobulus, Philo, and Josephus), and thus provide, systematically and formally, an essential link to the theology of the New Testament (which does not really come into full view until the next work, the Demonstration of the Gospel). It is his belief that every stage of development in the divine Scriptures, since the whole is guided by the single hand of the Spirit of God, is consistent with the next. Interestingly, this consistency is conceptualized with the help of Plato, Moses’s great commentator. (For more context here see our previous series.)

In this post we will just take a look at the key passage mentioned, though I hope to touch on his Christology in these (and other) passages in future posts.

In Book VII (as Book XI) Eusebius arranges his material according to a Platonic hierarchy of being: first the Cause of all things, God the Father, then the Second Cause the Son, and then – somewhat surprisingly for post-Nicene readers – he turns to the “noetic powers created after this principle (i.e., the Son).” In this category are included all angels and spirits made by God. This is one of the grounds in the writing of the aforementioned author for calling Eusebius a Binitarian (V. Drecoll). In this context he finally comes to the Holy Spirit, saying:

…the Third (power) is situated (τρίτης δὲ…καθισταμένης) after the second essence (οὐσίαν) in the place of the moon [the Son had been called the ‘sun of righteousness’] – whom [the Hebrews] also give a place in the first and royal office and honor of the rule (ἀρχῆς) of all things – as the principle (εἰς ἀρχὴν) of created things after all these, by which I mean those inferior beings who need his provision and rulership (χορηγίας), even him who was thus appointed (κατατεταγμένου) by the maker of all things. But he, occupying the third rank (τάξιν), provides the inferior beings with those greater powers in himself, only insofar as he received from another, the higher and greater One, whom we professed to hold second place after the highest and uncreated nature (ἀγενήτου φύσεως) of God the king over all. From Him indeed the God-Word procures and, as it were, draws divinity from an ever-flowing and bubbling spring for the sake of all others as well as the Holy Spirit himself – who is of all the nearest and most truly attached to himself – and he gives a share to those noetic and divine powers after [the Holy Spirit] abundantly and gladly (ἀνεπιφθόνως) from the rays of his own light. They say also that the uncreated principle of all things (who is the fount of all good things – divinity and life and light – and of every virtue the cause as well as the very first cause of all first things and the principle of principles (ἀρχῶν ἀρχήν) – nay rather he is even beyond every beginning (ἀρχῆς) and any first thing and every speakable or comprehensible thought) shared as much as he possesses in his unspeakable powers with the first-begotten alone. For [the Logos] alone is able to approach and receive the abundance (ἀφθονίαν) of good things from the Father which are not attainable nor reachable by others. Special gifts he imparts to each according to their worthiness through the service and mediation of the Second (principle) in keeping with what each one can achieve. The perfect and exceptionally holy among these gifts he imparts to the Third from his own resources, while [the Holy Spirit] now may rule and lead all the rest, since he receives those things given of the Father through the Son. Hence all theologians of the Hebrews name him, the Third, wisdom and a holy power, meaning this when they say “holy spirit”: in this way they call him divine (ἀποθειάζουσιν) by whom they were enlightened and inspired.

(PE VII.15, 5-10 ; 325-6 trans. mine)

Natures and Operations

The Holy Spirit is thus placed among “those celestial powers” who receive their “divine powers” from the “Second cause” or “second principle” or “creative power” and is given the third place (τρίτην… τάξιν). He is “appointed” (κατατεταγμένου) “as a principle” (εἰς ἀρχὴν) for the administration of all the divine gifts to angels and men, but does not in himself “possess” anything which he did not “receive” from the “God-Word.” While the second person of the Trinity is named θεός (God) and ἀρχή (principle, beginning, rule), the third person does, in this light, seem neglected, since he is said to serve “as a principle” or to be in the position of a principle (ἐν ἀρχῃ).

Light is in fact the key word here, for the “divine Word” possesses a “creative and illuminative power” whence, as Eusebius writes, he is called “the true light and the Sun of righteousness.” As the Sun, the Son possesses and generates light, whereas the Holy Spirit, as the Moon, “only” reflects that light. The “powers” after this are then parallel to the innumerable stars of the heavens (VII 15, 11f.)

Volker Drecoll argues that in understanding pre-Nicene theology we ought to think less in terms of “nature” and “essence” of the Trinity’s separate “hypostases,” but rather in terms of function and operation. So far I think he is right. This is in fact supported by our passage in Eusebius, where “nature” only occurs once and that of the Father. “Essence” (οὐσίαν) is used of the Father and the Son (not of the Spirit) but he clearly means to indicate separate essences – he is thus using the term “essence” (οὐσία) as “hypostasis” (ὑπόστασις) was later used. “Person” (πρόσωπον) does not even come into the text (or anywhere in the PE).

It is clear that Eusebius conceives of the Father as generating, the Son as creating and redeeming, and the Holy Spirit as distributing the divine presence and power; he does not think, in the first place, of a shared “nature” which is ontologically distinct from all creatures (γένητος, ‘created, generated’ is used of the Son as well as the Holy Spirit). It seems a more gradual descent from Creator to Creature and not the sharp cut-off that later Athanasian theology gives us.

So, a Binitarian?

A point can be and has been made: Eusebius’s theology here is not developed nor precise by Nicene standards. The distinction between the higher heavenly beings seems at moments – at least rhetorically – muddled. Perhaps a fuller articulation of the place of the Holy Spirit was to be drawn out by later debate with Marcellus. Yet the label Binitarian seems to me an over-systematization of an under-developed area in Eusebius’s theology. (He spent a lot of time working on things no one else did, like Church History and works of apologetics like the PE which dwarf in erudition all those before and after in the East; moreover, the point I made at the beginning about the mediating role of Platonism has force here – it formed certain parameters beyond which Eusebius would not likely go in an apologetic work.) Nevertheless, Eusebius spends hundreds of pages throughout the PE decrying the worship of all beings besides the One True God over all, meanwhile approving the worship of the Son and the Holy Spirit.

(There is, for instance, a short passage in which Eusebius notes that Plato had an idea of the World Soul as a third God (θεὸν τρίτον) and says then : “but the divine Scriptures also set up (τάττουσι) the holy and blessed Triad of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit in the place of power (εν ἀρχῆς λόγῳ) in accordance with those passages I’ve presented.” PE XI 20, 3 [Mras II.46, 17-20]).

Logical conclusion: he had a working but not scientifically developed distinction between Creature and Creator. Eusebius’s passing comment at XIII 3, 37 [Mras I.174 18f.] serves as one example among many: there he briefly divides the scale of being into 1. God over all 2. angels 3. men. Even this rough schematic makes the point I am making here: it is hard to imagine that Eusebius would name the Holy Spirit an angel, even if (as spiritus/πνεῦμα/ רוח) he shares much in common with them. (Similarly Chapter 15 of Book XIII).

When an author has only a few pages on which we may base such conclusions, any labels such as Binitarian must be seriously qualified. As Jaroslav Pelikan observes over and again in his monumental history of doctrine, The Christian Tradition, that the theology of the God whom the Church worshipped required centuries of debate to receive sophisticated and scientific articulation – precise definition only slowly replaced the language of paradox (an example for the latter would be the early Paschale sermon of Melito of Sardis). To say, however, that some thinker living amid this transition like Eusebius was a Binitarian is to give a false impression. It is suggests that he did not “worship” the God pronounced in the baptismal formular from the earliest days of the church; or, worse, that he would have undersigned a Binitarian confession.

Occasionally the strong effort since the 1800’s to avoid all forms of anachronism, and thus to avoid giving early Church Fathers the appellation Trinitarian in the sense we would now use it or as it was used after the Council of Nicaea, has ironically led to another great anachronism, namely, coining Binitarian to describe a thinker prior to the definition of Trinitarian, in contradistinction to which the former term is understood. To praise a theologian for his implicit conformity to a later distinction is hardly different than distinguishing him by his lack of conformity by reference to the later standard. The later standard did not yet exist; Binitarian presumes Trinitarian. To answer the question posed at the beginning – this does not seem like a fruitful way of framing an enquiry in Pre-Nicene theology.