Note 286 — Chapter II · THE ALEXANDRIAN DIVINITIES (continued 2)

That the Trinitarian doctrine of the Creed of Nicaea evolved gradually will now, I suppose, be admitted by all. Mr Conybeare, Apology of Apollonius, 1894, p. 14, probably goes too far when he says that “the doctrine of the Trinity in Unity” is not met with till the end of the third century. So Guignebert, L’Évolution des Dogmes, Paris, 1910, pp. 293, 294, tells us how in his opinion the dogma followed “at some distance” the assertion of the Divinity of Christ. Harnack, Expansion of Christianity, Eng. ed. 1904, II. pp. 257, 258, seems to attribute the first formulation of the dogma to Tertullian who, according to him, owed something to the Gnostics. It is at any rate plain that neither Hermas, nor the Apologists, nor Irenaeus, nor Clement of Alexandria, nor Origen were in accord with later orthodoxy on the point. Monsignor Duchesne, Early History of the Christian Church, Eng. ed. 1909, p. 20, puts the matter very frankly when he suggests that the average Christian troubled himself very little about it. “This is the Christian doctrine of the Trinity,” he says after defining it, “not certainly as it was formulated later in opposition to transient heresies, but as it appeared to the general conscience of the early Christians.... The generality of Christians in the first century even in apostolic days stood here almost exactly at the same point as present-day Christians. Theologians knew, or at any rate said, far more about it.”