Exegesis Against Arianism

The heart of St. Hilary’s De Trinitate is exegetical: the Arians built their case on Scripture, and Hilary answered them on the same ground. His decisive instrument is the distinction between Christ in the “form of God” and the same Christ in the “form of a servant” (Philippians 2:6–7) — the forma Dei / forma servi framework — by which he refers the “subordinationist-sounding” texts, above all “the Father is greater than I” (John 14:28), to the economy of the Incarnation rather than to the eternal being of the Son.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (pre-Schism West; Church Father)

The Battle Was Over Scripture

The Arian controversy was not a contest between Scripture and philosophy but a contest over the reading of Scripture. The “Arianising” theologians of the mid-fourth century were not crude rationalists; they were exegetes who could point to a battery of texts in which the incarnate Son speaks and acts as one who is sent, who obeys, who prays, who does not know, who is “made,” who calls the Father “greater.” Hilary grasps that the orthodox cause will be lost if these texts are simply waved away, and so the central and final books of De Trinitate are given over to reading them — closely, honestly, and in their context (De Trinitate 1.30–36, 9.2–3; trans. NPNF II/9 [Watson]). His governing rule, stated early and applied throughout, is that the sense of a scriptural statement about Christ must be drawn “from the cause of speaking” — from what is being said, of whom, and in what condition — and not wrenched from its setting to serve a heresy: “the meaning of words is to be ascertained from the cause of speaking, because the thing is not subject to the word, but the word to the thing” (De Trinitate 4.14; cf. 9.2; Watson; Weedman, The Trinitarian Theology of Hilary of Poitiers, Leiden 2007, ch. 4).

The forma Dei and the forma servi

Hilary’s master-key is St. Paul’s hymn: Christ, “being in the form of God” (in forma Dei), “did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant” (formam servi), “being made in the likeness of men” (Philippians 2:6–7). For Hilary this single text supplies the principle that orders all the others. The one Christ exists in two conditions: He is eternally in the forma Dei, possessing the whole divine nature by His generation from the Father; and in the Incarnation He took upon Himself the forma servi, the real condition of a creature, without ceasing to be what He was (De Trinitate 9.4–6, 9.14, 9.38–39; Watson; Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, Edinburgh 1988, 477–483).

The point Hilary presses is that the forma servi is not a fiction or a mere appearance: the Son genuinely assumed the lowliness, the obedience, the dependence, even the ignorance proper to the human economy He entered. The texts the Arians cite are therefore true — but they are true of the Son in the form of a servant, in the dispensation of His self-emptying, and they say nothing against His eternal equality in the form of God (De Trinitate 9.6, 9.38, 11.48). This is the move that turns the Arian arsenal against itself: every “lowly” saying becomes a witness not to the Son’s lesser nature but to the reality of His condescension (Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy, Oxford 2004, 184–186).

“The Father Is Greater Than I” (John 14:28)

The hardest text, and the one Hilary treats most fully, is the Lord’s word “the Father is greater than I” (John 14:28). Hilary devotes the climactic chapters of Book 9 to it (De Trinitate 9.51–56; Watson). His answer is layered. First, the saying belongs to the forma servi: the Son speaks it as the one who has emptied Himself, who has taken the condition of obedience and is on His way to the Father; in the economy of His humiliation the Father is indeed “greater,” for the Son has accepted a lesser estate (De Trinitate 9.51; Hanson 1988, 480–482). Second — and this is Hilary’s most characteristic argument — “greater” is not “other in nature.” Hilary insists that the very terms of the saying defeat the Arian use of it: the Father can be called “greater” only because the Son is of the same kind as He, for greatness is compared within a shared nature, not across the gulf between Creator and creature. A creature is not “less great” than God; it is simply nothing in the comparison. That the Son can be set beside the Father at all, even as “less,” presupposes that He shares the Father’s nature (De Trinitate 9.54–56; Watson; Beckwith, Hilary of Poitiers on the Trinity, Oxford 2008, 159–186).

Third, Hilary reads “greater” through the relation of origin: the Father is “greater” as the unbegotten source from whom the Son is begotten, the giver who has given to the Son all that He Himself is. But to give the whole divine nature is precisely to give equality of nature; the Father is the principle, not the superior, of the Son (De Trinitate 9.54; 3.12; cf. the Lord’s own “I and the Father are one,” John 10:30, set beside John 14:28). Hilary thus holds together what the Arians tore apart: “the Father is greater than I” and “I and the Father are one” are both true, the first of the relation of origin and the economy, the second of the unity of nature (De Trinitate 9.56).

The Son Who Does Not Know the Hour (Mark 13:32)

The saying that the Son does not know the day or the hour, “neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only” (Mark 13:32; cf. Matthew 24:36), was a favorite Arian proof that the Son is a limited creature. Hilary answers within the same framework. The ignorance is real, but it belongs to the forma servi — to the Son’s accommodation of Himself to the human condition He has assumed, in which He shares our not-knowing as He shares our hunger and weariness (De Trinitate 9.58–62, 9.66–67; Watson). Hilary develops the further point that there is a difference between not knowing and not making known: as the Word in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Colossians 2:3), the Son cannot be ignorant of what He Himself reveals; His “not knowing” is the economy by which He withholds the day, taking our condition upon Himself rather than confessing a defect in His Godhead (De Trinitate 9.62, 9.66–69; Hanson 1988, 482–483). The argument is bold and its details were debated in the tradition, but its principle is consistent: what is said of the Son in His self-emptying is not to be charged against the Son in the form of God.

“The Lord Created Me” (Proverbs 8:22)

The Old Testament text on which the whole Arian system leaned was Wisdom’s word, in the Septuagint, “the Lord created me at the beginning of His ways for His works” (Proverbs 8:22, LXX). Read of the eternal Son, it seemed to make Him a creature outright. Hilary, who treats the verse chiefly in Book 12, refuses that reading on two grounds. First, “created” here speaks of the economy — of the Son’s being “established” or “set up” for the work of creation and redemption, of His relation to the works and ways of God in time — and not of the origin of His eternal being (De Trinitate 12.35–49; Watson; Hanson 1988, 484–486). Second, Hilary plays the same chapter against itself: a few verses later Wisdom says “before the hills He begot me” (Proverbs 8:25), and the Son is begotten, not made; the proper word for His eternal origin is generation, while “created” in v. 22 must therefore bear on the dispensation, the assumed economy in which the Wisdom of God enters upon “the works” (De Trinitate 12.44–48). Thus the Arians’ strongest text, rightly weighed in its own context, witnesses to the Son’s eternal generation rather than to His creaturehood. (Athanasius and the Cappadocians reach the same conclusion by closely related routes; see St. Athanasius the Great, St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory the Theologian.)

John 17 and the Unity of the Sent Son

The high-priestly prayer of John 17 cut both ways in the controversy. The Arians heard in the Son’s praying, in His being “sent,” and in His subordination of Himself to the Father the marks of a lesser being. Hilary hears the opposite. The Son prays as the one in the forma servi, in the economy of His mission, and His prayer is the very form of His incarnate obedience (De Trinitate 9.38–41; Watson). But the substance of the prayer is the unity of nature: “that they may be one, even as we are one” (John 17:11, 21–22). For Hilary the Lord’s own measure of the unity He asks for His disciples is the unity He has with the Father — a unity not merely of will or agreement but reaching to nature, the same unity confessed in “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30) and in the mutual indwelling, “I in the Father and the Father in me” (John 14:10–11) (De Trinitate 8.5–17, 9.38–41). The sending and the prayer belong to the economy; the oneness they presuppose belongs to the Godhead.

The Passion and the Impassible God

Hilary carries the same distinction into the Passion (Books 10–11), where the Arian argument was at its most pointed: a God who suffers, fears, and is forsaken cannot be God. Hilary holds that the sufferings are real and are truly the Son’s, but borne in the forma servi, in the body He assumed, so that the divine nature is not changed or diminished by them (De Trinitate 10.9–11, 10.23, 11.48; Watson). His handling of the Agony in the Garden and the cry of dereliction is where this is most sharply tested, and it is treated in its own place (see Christology and the Passion). The principle, however, is one with the rest: the economy of the Incarnation is the key that unlocks every text the Arians turned against the Son’s divinity, because it lets Hilary affirm the full reality of the human condition the Son assumed without surrendering the full reality of the Godhead He never laid down (De Trinitate 9.6, 11.48; Beckwith 2008, 159–186; Ayres 2004, 184–186).

A Method, Not Only a Set of Answers

What Hilary bequeaths is not merely a list of solutions to hard verses but a hermeneutic. The “subordinationist-sounding” texts are not embarrassments to be explained away; they are the language of the Son’s self-emptying, and they are read rightly only when the reader attends to the “cause of speaking” — to the two conditions, forma Dei and forma servi, in which the one Christ is spoken of (De Trinitate 4.14, 9.2–6). This is the same instinct by which Hilary reads the whole of Scripture as a unity centered on Christ, and it informs his commentaries no less than his polemic (see The Commentaries). It is also the method that allowed the West to receive the Nicene faith as a reading of the Bible and not as an imposition upon it (see The Nicene Creed; on the dogma, The Holy Trinity).

References

Hilary of Poitiers. On the Trinity (De Trinitate), Books 1–12. Trans. E. W. Watson and L. Pullan, in A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series, Vol. 9. (Cited by book.chapter: the rule of interpretation at 4.14, 9.2; the forma Dei / forma servi framework at 9.4–6, 9.14, 9.38–39; “the Father is greater than I” at 9.51–56; the Son’s not knowing the hour at 9.58–69; the unity of John 17 at 8.5–17, 9.38–41; the Passion at 10.9–23, 11.48; Proverbs 8:22 and the appeal to 8:25 at 12.35–49.)
Hilary of Poitiers. The Trinity. Trans. Stephen McKenna. Fathers of the Church 25. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1954.
Beckwith, Carl L. Hilary of Poitiers on the Trinity: From De Fide to De Trinitate. Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. (The argument of Books 9–12 and the forma servi exegesis; 159–186.)
Weedman, Mark. The Trinitarian Theology of Hilary of Poitiers. Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 89. Leiden: Brill, 2007. (Hilary’s exegetical method and the “cause of speaking.”)
Ayres, Lewis. Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. (Hilary’s pro-Nicene exegesis of the lowly sayings; 179–187.)
Hanson, R. P. C. The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy 318–381. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988. (Hilary on John 14:28, Mark 13:32, and Proverbs 8:22; 477–486.)
Scripture: Philippians 2:6–7; John 14:28; John 10:30; John 14:10–11; John 17:11, 21–22; Mark 13:32; Matthew 24:36; Colossians 2:3; Proverbs 8:22, 8:25 (LXX).