Novatian (200-258) is most known today for refusing to commune with apostates who wished to return to the Church and for this he was opposed by many bishops.
"God and Parent of all virtues, so that it may truly be said that God is that, which is such that nothing can be compared to Him. For He is above all that can be said." (De Trinitatae 2.) Novatian regards God the Father as a supreme mind or intellect which created the world from nothing, "a certain Mind generating and filling all things, which, without any beginning or end of time, controls, by the highest and most perfect reason, the naturally linked causes of things, so as to result in benefit to all." (Ibid.) He goes so far as to argue that it is a logical impossibility that there is another infinite mind besides the Father, "for whatever can be God, must as God be of necessity the Highest. But whatever is the Highest, must certainly be the Highest in such a sense as to be without any equal. And thus that must be alone and one on which nothing can be conferred, having no peer; because there cannot be two infinites." (De Trinitatae 4.)
Although freely referring to the Son as "God," Novatian regarded the Son and Spirit as lesser, this is clear from his statement that "God the Father, the Founder and Creator of all things, who alone knows no beginning, invisible, infinite, immortal, eternal, is one God." (De Trinitatae 31.) He states that the Son was "obedient to His Father in all things, although He also is God, yet He shows the one God the Father by His obedience, from whom also He drew His beginning."
"He who is before all time must be said to have always been in the Father; for no time can be assigned to Him who is before all time. And He is always in the Father, unless the Father is not always Father, only that the Father also precedes Him,—in a certain sense,—since it is necessary—in some degree—that He should be before He is Father. Because it is essential that He who knows no beginning must go before Him who has a beginning; as He is the less as knowing that He is in Him, having an origin because He is born, and of like nature with the Father in some measure by His nativity, although He has a beginning in that He is born, inasmuch as He is born of that Father who alone has no beginning. He, then, when the Father willed it, proceeded from the Father, and He who was in the Father came forth from the Father... Assuredly God proceeds from God, causing a person second to the Father as being the Son, but not taking from the Father that characteristic that He is one God." (De Trinitatae 31.)
The Son is said not only to be "born" but to have "a beginning" in contrast to the Father "who alone has no beginning." This begetting was not an eternal generation but took place because "the Father willed it." He was born as an act of will on the part of God. His confession that "the Father precedes the Son" is reminiscent of the saying of Arius, "the Father pre-exists the Son." He denies an equality between the Father and Son but says that the Son was "granted" his authority and offices, "before whom there is none but the Father." (De Trinitatae 11.)
"The divine Scripture, not so much of the Old as also of the New Testament, everywhere shows Him to be born of the Father" (De Trinitatae 36.)
His exegesis of the hymn found at Philippians 2:5-11 gives more insights into his Christology. Novatian understands the passage in a distinctly subordinationist manner,
"Who, although He was in the form of God," he says. If Christ had been only man, He would have been spoken of as in "the image" of God, not "in the form" of God. For we know that man was made after the image or likeness, not after the form of God. Who then is that angel who, as we have said, was made in the form of God? But neither do we read of the form of God in angels, except because this one is chief and royal above all—the Son of God... He then, although He was in the form of God, "thought it not robbery that He should be equal with God." For although He remembered that He was God from God the Father, He never either compared or associated Himself with God the Father, mindful that He was from His Father, and that He possessed that very thing that He is, because the Father had given it Him… Thence, finally, both before the assumption of the flesh, and moreover after the assumption of the body, besides, after the resurrection itself, He yielded all obedience to the Father, and still yields it as ever. Whence it is proved that He thought that the claim of a certain divinity would be robbery, to wit, that of equalling Himself with God the Father; but, on the other hand, obedient and subject to all His rule and will." (De Trinitatae 22.)
Elsewhere Novatian denies that the Son, and Holy Spirit are co-equal, instead writing that,
"Christ is greater than the Paraclete, because the Paraclete would not receive from Christ unless He were less than Christ. But the Paraclete being less than Christ, moreover, by this very fact proves Christ to be God, from whom He has received what He declares: so that the testimony of Christ's divinity is immense, in the Paraclete being found to be in this economy less than Christ." (De Trinitatae 16.)
And far from asserting that Jesus is identical to the God of the Old Testament, he says that the Son was given the divine name only after his resurrection, "he received a name which is above every name," which assuredly we understand to be none other than the name of God." (De Trinitatae 22.) Novatian was as heretical in his theology as he was in his ecclesiology.
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