'This famous defender of the Primitive Faith': Nelson's 'Life of Bull' on Nicene subordinationism and its critics
the greatest part of the Testimonies by [Clarke] produced, do appear in quite another Light, as they are cited by the judicious Mr. Bull, than as they are applied by Dr. Clarke for illustrating his Propositions.
It was, however, Clarke's use of Bull's work to defend an anti-Trinitarian, anti-Nicene stance that was most significant. Nelson expresses his anger at Clarke's misuse of an extract from Bull's famous work:
Everyone that reads it as it is cited, and will not be at the pains to consult either what follows it, or what is there distinctly referred to, may be easily led to think, that our Author was not a Defender, but an Underminer of the Nicene Faith, by maintaining the Son, even as he is God, to be less than the Father: which tho' it be most true in a certain Sense which he hath explained, in conformity to primitive Testimonies, and to the Confession of the Council of Nice itself, as he is God of God; yet is both most diametrically opposite to his plain Meaning, and to what he defended for the Catholick Faith with so much Strength, if thereby it be understood, that there is greater and less in the divine Nature and Essence.
Clarke's misuse of Bull's articulation of the Nicene Faith regarding the subordination of the Son led to a quite different attack, from Cambridge divine John Edwards, author of Some Animadversions on Dr. Clarke's Scripture-Doctrine of the Trinity (1712). While Clarke represented the radical Latitudinarian stream of thought in the Church of England, Edwards was a leading figure amongst the Reformed. Recent years have seen a new appreciation of Edward's importance. He features in both Stephen Hampton's Anti-Arminians: The Anglican Reformed Tradition from Charles II to George I (2008) and Samuel Fornecker's Bisschop's Bench: Contours of Arminian Conformity in the Church of England, c.1674-1742 (2022), while Jake Griesel's Retaining the Old Episcopal Divinity: John Edwards of Cambridge and Reformed Orthodoxy in the Later Stuart Church (2022) points to him as an exemplar of the post-1662 Reformed tradition in the Church of England.
As a Reformed divine, Edwards opposed Bull's rejection of autotheos, and his account of Nicene subordinationism. Clarke's misuse of such Nicene subordinationism provided Edwards with a means to open his critique of Bull. In Nelson's words:
Dr. John Edwards of Cambridge, on the other hand, hath found fault with our Author, for a Reason which made him the better accepted with Dr. Clarke; as not being able to receive the Doctrine of the Subordination of the Son to the Father, in the Sense of the ancient Writers, yea even of Athanasius himself.
As Nelson points out, Edwards' rejection of Bull's Nicene subordinationism actually assisted Clarke's attempt to present the pre-Nicene Fathers as non-Trinitarians, as those Fathers made clearly subordinationist statements. Thus, rejecting Nicene subordinationism distanced Trinitarian Faith from the pre-Nicene Fathers, making it appear as a later development and making Clarke's anti-Trinitarianism appear pre-Nicene.
After noting that Edwards accepts that there were significant patristic subordinationist voices, Nelson goes on to quote from Edwards criticising those contemporary divines who shared this understanding:
"those very learned and worthy Prelates, Bishop Pearson and Bishop Bull, with other modern Divines, have hurt the Doctrine of the Trinity by list'ning to these Writers, and by urging the Inferiority of the Son to the Father, in respect of his Divinity." And further, he saith, that, "Mr. Whiston and Dr. Clarke, have laid hold on those Writings, and have made the Son of God, a mere dependent Being, and not worthy to be stiled a God".
Nelson comments that there are "several Prejudices here to grapple with". Firstly, he points to Bull's exposition - in Section VI, Chapter 11 of Defensio Fidei Nicaenae - of patristic Trinitarian subordinationism:
For nothing surely can ever be more plain from that whole Chapter of our Author, which treateth distinctly of this very Subject, than the great and manifest Difference that there is, betwixt Order and Substance, with respect to the Persons of the Father and the Son in the Blessed Trinity; for asmuch as there is a gradation of one but not of the other, according to the most Primitive, and Catholick Tradition of the Faith: And the very same Fathers who are so plain and express for the former, and even so far as thence to be challenged by the Adversaries of the Catholick Faith, out of a mistaken Apprehension of their true and genuine Sense, are generally express against the latter.
Secondly, he then places Bull and Pearson (Bishop of Chester 1672-86) within this patristic tradition:
they asserted the same Subordination with these two Great Men of our Church, yet they never asserted it so, as to deny that Supremacy, which belongs to the Son as well as his Father; but on the contrary taught, that the very Notion of Supremacy is necessarily included in that of the Deity, and that God cannot excel God, nor one of the divine Persons be inferiour to the other, as to the divine Being and Nature; but that there is one Deity and Power in them, not unequal as to their Substances and Natures ... but every way equal and the same; not withstanding that diversity of Dispensation, and of Order, which the same Witnesses bear record of, as delivered to them from the Beginning.
This, then, was the Nicene Faith:
The result of Edwards' attack, therefore, was, in Nelson's eyes, vindication for Bull:
And thus the Charge of Dr. Edwards, through the fides of Dr. Clarke, against this famous Defender of the Primitive Faith, falleth to the Ground.
Here we see Bull defending "the Primitive Faith" against both Clarke's anti-Trinitarianism and Edwards' quite different but no less anti-Nicene theology. it was Bull who, as Nelson put it, "let the Scriptures, as interpreted by the Catholick Rule of Antiquity, be heard".
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