'Of the same sentiment with the Nicene Fathers': Nelson's 'Life of Bull' and reading the pre-Nicene Fathers

Having seen in last week's reading from Nelson's 1713 Life of Dr. George Bull, that Bull's chief concern in Defensio Fidei Nicaenae was refute critiques of Nicaea which had emerged and become influential in Remonstrant theology, this week we turn to how this refutation was expressed.

Nelson identifies "four principal pillars" of Nicene faith defended by Bull:

Now the four principal Pillars of the Catholick doctrine concerning Christ, maintained and defended in this Book, are The Pre-existence, his Divine Substantiality, his Eternity, and his Subordination as Son. For against the Socinians he proveth, that the Son of God did preexist before he was born of the Virgin, and even before the World also was, by many great Authorities. And against the Arians, he sheweth how this Son of God is not of any created and changable Essence, but of the very same Nature with God his Father: and so is rightly called, very God of very God, and of one Substance with the Father. Also against the same he demonstrateth, how this Consubstantial Son of God, must have had a Coeternal Existence with the Father. And lastly, against the Tritheists and Sabellians, he argueth the necessity of believing the Father, to be the Fountain, Original, and Principle of the Son, and that the Son is hence subordinate to the Father.

The most controversial of these "four principal pillars" - the Son's subordination to the Father - will wait to our next reading. When considering the first three, however, it is very clear that Bull's intent is to demonstrate that the Nicene faith stood firmly in continuity with pre-Nicene teachings, rather than being - as Remonstrants were suggesting - an innovation.

On the pre-existence of the Logos, Nelson highlights Bull's view that this was the "unanimous" teaching of "the first three centuries:

This he saith, is the unanimous Doctrine of all the Fathers of the three first Centuries, nor is the Truth of it denied by the Arians. But against the Socinians, he proveth first, That all the divine Apparitions in the Old Testament, are by these ancient Writers generally explained, concerning the Son of God. For Proof of which, he appealeth to Justin Martyr, Irenaus, Theophilus Antiochenus, Clemens Alexandrinus, Tertullian, Origen, Cyprian, and the very ancient Author of the Book de Trinitate ... After which, he proveth also the actual Existence of the divine Logos before the World was made, and the Creation thereof by him, from the Testimony of the Apostolical Fathers and others. 

Mindful that Nicaea's proclamation of the Son's consubstantiality does run up against significant statements in various patristic sources which cannot straightforwardly be reconciled with this teaching, Nelson points to Bull's insistence that these sources do cohere with the Nicene teaching: 

After ... Witnesses for the Truth of his Thesis, he examineth Tertullian, and after him Caius and Hippolytus, concerning what Tradition they had received as to this Article: and then is very full in his Vindication of Origen, from an Imputation commonly cast upon him; proving out of his undoubted, and most accurate, and uncorrupted Work against Celsus, that his Doctrine, concerning the true and proper Divinity of the Son of God, was most Catholick, and altogether according to the Nicene Faith ...

That the holy Martyr Cyprian, that Novatian, or the Author of the Book de Trinitate, among Tertullian's Works, that Theognostus the Alexandrian, that Dionysius of Rome, and the other of Alexandria, were of the same Sentiment with the Nicene Fathers, as to this Point, he hath likewise endeavoured at large to shew. 

It is the case, of course, that many contemporary patristic scholars would be, to say the least, rather sceptical of Bull's reading of these sources. This, however, is entirely beside the point. The point is that Bull both read pre-Nicene theologians and encouraged others to do so in a manner which understood that those theologians, in spite of their inability to use the terminology of the Nicene confession, shared "the same sentiment" with Nicaea regarding the Son's consubstantiality.

Regarding the Son's eternity, we again see how Bull's reading of patristic sources was undertaken in a manner oriented towards the faith of Nicaea, using the council's confession as a rule by which to read the earlier sources:

That Some Catholick Writers, more ancient than the Nicene Council, seem to attribute a certain Nativity to the Son of God, as God, which sometime began, and just preceded the Creation of the World; But that these notwithstanding were very wide from the Opinion of Arius. "For if (saith he) their Sayings are accurately weighed, it will appear, that they spake of a Nativity not Real and properly so called, whereby the Son received a beginning of his Substance, and Subsistence; but of a figurative and metaphorical one: That is, their meaning was only this, that the Logos, or divine Word, which from before all Ages (or rather from all Eternity) did, as being nothing but God, exist in and with God the Father, as the Coeternal Offspring of his Eternal Mind, then when he was about to create the World, came forth unto operation or effectually, and so proceeded to the Constitution (and Formation) of all things therein, for the manifesting himself and his Father to the Creatures. 

Twenty-first century patristic scholars, including those who share in the confession of Nicaea, may regard all this as an unconvincing attempt to iron-out the Christological pluralism inherent to patristic sources. The issue is not, however, whether Bull's reading of patristic sources is convincing. What is significant is that Bull offered a reading those sources which confirmed Nicene faith, against those Remonstrants whose works - influential in England - threatened to undermine that faith. His work, then, did what its title declared: Defensio Fidei Nicaenae.