TRISTRAM, HENRY BAKER: Church of England; b. at Eglingham (35 m. n. of Newcastle), Northumberland, May 11, 1822; d. at Durham Mar. 8, 1906. He was educated at Lincoln College, Oxford (B.A., 1844). He was successively curate of Morchard Bishop in 1845-46, lecturer of Pembroke, Bermuda, and acting chaplain of the Bermuda dockyard, 1847-49, rector of Castle-Eden, Durham, 1849-60, and master of Greatham Hospital and vicar of Greatham, Durham, 1860-73. From 1873 until his death he was canon of Durham, of which he had been honorary canon, 1870-73. He was also proctor for the archdeaconry of Durham in 1874, 1880, and 1885, rural dean of Stockton, 1872-76, and of Cheater-le-Street (west division) from 1876-80, and rector of Sandhutton, Yorkshire, in 1891; rural dean of Durham after 1880, proctor for the dean and chapter of Durham after 1899, and chaplain to the bishop of Durham after 1901. He was also an extensive traveler and an authority in the natural history of Palestine and the East. He wrote The Great Sahara (London, 1860); The Land of Israel: A Journal of Travels with Reference to its Physical History (1865); Natural History of the Bible (1867); Ornithology of Palestine (1867); Scenes in the East (1870); The Seven Golden Candlesticks (1872); Bible Places: or, the Topography of the Holy Land (1872); The Land of Moab (1873); Pathways of Palestine (2 vols., 1882); Fauna and Flora of Palestine (1884); Eastern Customs in Bible Lands (1894); and Rambles in Japan (1895).

TRITHEISM. See Tritheistic Controversy.

TRITHEISTIC CONTROVERSY: A controversy of the sixth century which so emphasized the three persons of the Trinity as to lose sight of the unity. Its history is closely connected with that of Aristotelianism in the Church, and consequently with that of Scholasticism (q.v.). The apologists of the second century in their naive impressions of the early faith were not conscious of the inner inconsistency of the doctrine. Again, they were dependent essentially upon Stoicism and Platonism, both of which are speculative and not rigidly logical. The first to recognize the contradiction between monotheism and the Trinity were the Monarchians (see 1VIONARCHIANI$M), the modalistic school proceeding from the Stoic logic, and the dynamistic from Aristotelian dialectics. In the succeeding centuries the problem of the reconciliation of trinitarianism and monotheism sank into the background both because of the fact that the Trinity

was held to be a mystery, to be revered with silence and only to be analyzed so far as necessary to refute heretics; and because of a diminished interest in monotheism in the fourth century (perhaps on account of the entrance of certain pagan conceptions into the Church). Men like Athanasius and Basil the Great openly stated that the Christian doctrine of the Trinity was the correct mean between the extremes of the monotheism of the Jews (and the Sabellians) and the polytheism of the pagans. Thus it is clear that not even the suspected followers of the dynamistic Monarchists, the Arians (also Aristotelian), adhered to strict monotheism. To them Jesus was a man exalted by God, a hero or demigod. The mystical obscurity that veiled the doctrine, began to lift with the spread of the rigid Aristotelian logic in the sixth century. Scythian monks, chiefly Leontius of Byzantium (qv.), attempted to reconcile, with the aid of Aristotelian logic, the Alexandrine view of the acts of Chalcedon with the Western. At that time the Aristotelian philosophy led to the tritheistic controversy under Justinian I. (527-565), and Justin (565-578). The application of the Aristotelian logic might lead either to monarchianism or to tritheism, according to the subjective presupposition taken. Characteristic of the age of Justinian is the preference for the second alternative.

The origins of tritheism lie wholly in obscurity. Abulfaraj (q.v.) designates as the first tritheist a certain Johannes Askusnages (q.v.). Greek sources, on the other hand, point to Johannes Philoponos (q.v.) as the tritheistic heresiarch. At all events, tritheism arose and developed within monophysitism (see Monophysites). Johannes set forth his doctrine of the Trinity chiefly in his " Umpire; or On Unity," expressly confessing his Aristotelian basis, and identifying hypostasis and the peripatetic ktomon. According to him, there are many men each with his own " essence," but " through their common form all men are one," so that in this sense they all have the same "essence." In similar fashion he conceived the relation of the three persons of the Trinity, thus introducing an entirely new theory, and to a certain extent identifying " essence " [" nature "] and " hypostasis " by assuming that each " hypostasis " must have a " nature " of its own, and vice versa. Hence, the absurdity of diophysitism was concluded, since if Jesus had two "natures" he must also have two "hypostases." Factions soon arose among the tritheists, chiefly because of the teaching of Johannes that the earthly body is not raised an incorruptible one, but that another is received in its stead. Those of the tritheists who opposed this doctrine were led by Conon of Tarsus (q.v.). No less torn into factions were the antagonists of the tritheists. Among them were the Petriani, who contended that the hypostasis connoted the " properties without the essence "; the Condobauditse; the Agnoitae; the Paulianistae; the Angelitae, and the Damianitx (followers of Damianus of Alexandria, q.v.), who taught that neither Father, Son, nor Spirit was God in his own nature, but only in so far as they shared inseparably in the common inherent Godhead, which, common

25

to the three "hypostases," was God in essence and nature (hence called TetraditFe); and the Niobitae who held that after the union of the natures in Christ there was no further difference. The tritheiatic controversy may be assumed to have been terminated by the invasions of the Persians and Arabs into Egypt, the land which seems to have been its center.

The penetration of Aristotelianism into the West and the rise of scholasticism led to another tritheistic controversy though more restricted. The nominalist Roscelinus (q.v.; see also Scholasticism) declared that either the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost were tres res, or that the Father and the Holy Ghost had become incarnate with the Son, the former being the more probable. In 1092 Roscelinus was compelled, by a synod held at Soissons, to recant; and when he repeated his views, Anselm of Canterbury refuted him in his De fide trinitatis et de incarnatione verbi contra blas phemias Rucelini. In more recent times the Car tesian philosophy led some to tritheistic views, such as those of William Sherlock (q.v.) and Pierre Faydfft of Paris (d. 1709). Heinrich Nicolai of Danzig (d. 1660), the rationalistic Anton Oehmbs (d. 1809), and the Roman Catholic Anton Gunther (d. 1863) were charged with teaching tritheism.

(J. Leipoldt.)

Bibliography: The works of Johannes Philoponos (q.v.); Photius, Bibliotheca, xaiv., in MPG, ciii. 80 sqq.; Leontius of Byzantium, in MPG, Lexxvi. 1232D-1233B; Timothy of Constantinople, in MPG, Ixxavi. 1, pp. 44 sqq.; Sophronius of Jerusalem, in MPG, Lxxxvii.; George the Pisidian, in MPG, xcii.; John of Damascus, Her., lxxxiii., in MPG, xciv. 744 sqq.; Nicephorus, Hist. eccl., xviii. 47, 49; Abulfaraj (for his works see the article), in Aesemani, Bibliotheca orientalis, ii.; J. L. von Mosheim, Institutes of Ecclesiastical Hist., i. 431 F32, London, 1883; Harnack, Dogma, iii. 90, 93-94, 101-102, iv. 124, 235, 240, vi. 182; and part of the historical literature under Trinity.