The following article was written by Benjamin Warfield on the topic of the
Holy Trinity. It is a detailed explanation of the Biblical doctrine. I
encourage all my Christian brethren to read it when they can.
May God bless,
Carl
my website -- http://www.nettally.com/saints/
my blog -- http://www.anniemayhem.com/cgi-bin/wordpress/
---
The Biblical Doctrine Of The Trinity
by Benjamin B. Warfield
The term 'Trinity' is not a Biblical term, and we are not using Biblical
language when we define what is expressed by it as the doctrine that there
is one only and true God, but in the unity of the Godhead there are three
coeternal and coequal Persons, the same in substance but distinct in
subsistence. A doctrine so defined can be spoken of as a Biblical doctrine
only on the principle that the sense of Scripture is Scripture. And the
definition of a Biblical doctrine in such unBiblical language can be
justified only on the principle that it is better to preserve the truth of
Scripture than the words of Scripture. The doctrine of the Trinity lies in
Scripture in solution; when it is crystallized from its solvent it does
not
cease to be Scriptural, but only comes into clearer view. Or, to speak
without figure, the doctrine of the Trinity is given to us in Scripture,
not
in formulated definition, but in fragmentary allusions; when we assembled
the disjecta membra into their organic unity, we are not passing from
Scripture, but entering more thoroughly into the meaning of Scripture. We
may state the doctrine in technical terms, supplied by philosophical
reflection; but the doctrine stated is a genuinely Scriptural doctrine.
In point of fact, the doctrine of the Trinity is purely a revealed
doctrine.
That is to say, it embodies a truth which has never been discovered, and
is
indiscoverable, by natural reason. With all his searching, man has not
been
able to find out for himself the deepest things of God. Accordingly,
ethnic
thought has never attained a Trinitarian conception of God, nor does any
ethnic religion present in its representations of the Divine Being any
analogy to the doctrine of the Trinity.
Triads of divinities, no doubt, occur in nearly all polytheistic
religions,
formed under very various influences. Sometimes as in the Egyptian triad
of
Osiris, Isis and Horus, it is the analogy of the human family with its
father, mother and son which lies at their basis. Sometimes they are the
effect of mere syncretism, three deities wor****pped in different
localities
being brought together in the common wor****p of all. Sometimes, as in the
Hindu triad of Brahma, Vishnu and ****va, they represent the cyclic
movement
of a pantheistic evolution, and symbolize the three stages of Being,
Becoming and Dissolution. Sometimes they are the result apparently of
nothing more than an odd human tendency to think in threes, which has
given
the number three widespread standing as a sacred number (so H. Usener). It
is no more than was to be anticipated, that one or another of these triads
should now and again be pointed to as the replica (or even the original)
of
the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Gladstone found the Trinity in the
Homeric mythology, the trident of Poseidon being its symbol. Hegel very
naturally found it in the Hindu Trimurti, which indeed is very like his
pantheizing notion of what the Trinity is. Others have perceived it in the
Buddhist Triratna (Soderblom); or (despite their crass dualism) in some
speculations of Parseeism; or, more frequently, in the notional triad of
Platonism (e. g., Knapp); while Jules Martin is quite sure that it is
present in Philo's neo-Stoical doctrine of the 'powers,' especially when
applied to the explanation of Abraham's three visitors. Of late years,
eyes
have been turned rather to Babylonia; and H. Zimmern finds a possible
forerunner of the Trinity in a Father, Son, and Intercessor, which he
discovers in its mythology. It should be needless to say that none of
these
triads has the slightest resemblance to the Christian doctrine of the
Trinity. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity embodies much more than the
notion of 'threeness,' and beyond their 'threeness' these triads have
nothing in common with it.
As the doctrine of the Trinity is indiscoverable by reason, so it is
incapable of proof from reason. There are no analogies to it in Nature,
not
even in the spiritual nature of man, who is made in the image of God. In
His
trinitarian mode of being, God is unique; and, as there is nothing in the
universe like Him in this respect, so there is nothing which can help us
to
comprehend Him. Many attempts have, nevertheless, been made to construct a
rational proof of the Trinity of the Godhead. Among these there are two
which are particularly attractive, and have therefore been put forward
again
and again by speculative thinkers through all the Christian ages. These
are
derived from the implications, in the one case, of self-consciousness; in
the other, of love. Both self-consciousness and love, it is said, demand
for
their very existence an object over against which the self stands as
subject. If we conceive of God as self-conscious and loving, therefore, we
cannot help conceiving of Him as embracing in His unity some form of
plurality. From this general position both arguments have been elaborated,
however, by various thinkers in very varied forms.
The former of them, for example, is developed by a great seventeenth
century
theologian -- Bartholomew Keckermann (1614) -- as follows: God is
self-conscious thought: and God's thought must have a perfect object,
existing eternally before it; this object to be perfect must be itself
God;
and as God is one, this object which is God must be the God that is one.
It
is essentially the same argument which is popularized in a famous
paragraph
(73) of Lessing's 'The Education of the Human Race.' Must not God have an
absolutely perfect representation of Himself - that is, a representation
in
which everything that is in Him is found? And would everything that is in
God be found in this representation if His necessary reality were not
found
in it? If everything, everything without exception, that is in God is to
be
found in this representation, it cannot, therefore, remain a mere empty
image, but must be an actual duplication of God. It is obvious that
arguments like this prove too much. If God's representation of Himself, to
be perfect, must possess the same kind of reality that He Himself
possesses,
it does not seem easy to deny that His representations of everything else
must possess objective reality. And this would be as much as to say that
the
eternal objective co-existence of all that God can conceive is given in
the
very idea of God; and that is open pantheism. The logical flaw lies in
including in the perfection of a representation qualities which are not
proper to representations, however perfect. A perfect representation must,
of course, have all the reality proper to a representation; but objective
reality is so little proper to a representation that a representation
acquiring it would cease to be a representation. This fatal flaw is not
transcended, but only covered up, when the argument is compressed, as it
is
in most of its modern presentations, in effect to the mere assertion that
the condition of self-consciousness is a real distinction between the
thinking subject and the thought object, which, in God's case, would be
between the subject ego and the object ego. Why, however, we should deny
to
God the power of self-contemplation enjoyed by every finite spirit, save
at
the cost of the distinct hypostatizing of the contemplant and the
contemplated self, it is hard to understand. Nor is it always clear that
what we get is a distinct hypostatization rather than a distinct
substantializing of the contemplant and contemplated ego: not two persons
in
the Godhead so much as two Gods. The discovery of the third hypostasis -
the
Holy Spirit -remains meanwhile, to all these attempts rationally to
construct a Trinity in the Divine Being, a standing puzzle which finds
only
a very artificial solution.
The case is much the same with the argument derived from the nature of
love.
Our sympathies go out to that old Valentinian writer - possibly it was
Valentinus himself - who reasoned - perhaps he was the first so to reason
-
that 'God is all love,' 'but love is not love unless there be an object of
love.' And they go out more richly still to Augustine, when, seeking a
basis, not for a theory of emanations, but for the doctrine of the
Trinity,
he analyzes this love which God is into the triple implication of 'the
lover,' 'the loved' and 'the love itself,' and sees in this trinary of
love
an analogue of the Triune God. It requires, however, only that the
argument
thus broadly suggested should be developed into its details for its
artificiality to become apparent. Richard of St. Victor works it out as
follows: It belongs to the nature of amor that it should turn to another
as
caritas. This other, in God's case, cannot be the world; since such love
of
the world would be inordinate. It can only be a person; and a person who
is
God's equal in eternity, power and wisdom. Since, however, there cannot be
two Divine substances, these two Divine persons must form one and the same
substance. The best love cannot, however, con-fine itself to these two
persons; it must become condilectio by the desire that a third should be
equally loved as they love one another. Thus love, when perfectly
conceived,
leads necessarily to the Trinity, and since God is all He can be, this
Trinity must be real. Modern writers (Sartorius, Schoberlein, J. Muller,
Liebner, most lately R. H. Griutzmacher) do not seem to have essentially
improved upon such a statement as this. And after all is said, it does not
appear clear that God's own all-perfect Being could not supply a
satisfying
object of His all-perfect love. To say that in its very nature love is
self-communicative, and therefore implies an object other than self, seems
an abuse of figurative language.
Perhaps the ontological proof of the Trinity is nowhere more attractively
put than by Jonathan Edwards. The peculiarity of his presentation of it
lies
in an attempt to add plausibility to it by a doctrine of the nature of
spiritual ideas or ideas of spiritual things, such as thought, love, fear,
in general. Ideas of such things, he urges, are just repetitions of them,
so
that he who has an idea of any act of love, fear, anger or any other act
or
motion of the mind, simply so far repeats the motion in question; and if
the
idea be perfect and complete, the original motion of the mind is
absolutely
reduplicated. Edwards presses this so far that he is ready to contend that
if a man could have an absolutely perfect idea of all that was in his mind
at any past moment, he would really, to all intents and purposes, be over
again what he was at that moment. And if he could perfectly contemplate
all
that is in his mind at any given moment, as it is and at the same time
that
it is there in its first and direct existence, he would really be two at
that time, he would be twice at once: 'The idea he has of himself would be
himself again.' This now is the case with the Divine Being. 'God's idea of
Himself is absolutely perfect, and therefore is an express and perfect
image
of Him, exactly like Him in every respect. . . . But that which is the
express, perfect image of God and in every respect like Him is God, to all
intents and purposes, because there is nothing wanting: there is nothing
in
the Deity that renders it the Deity but what has something exactly
answering
to it in this image, which will therefore also render that the Deity.' The
Second Person of the Trinity being thus attained, the argument advances.
'The Godhead being thus begotten of God's loving [having?] an idea of
Himself and showing forth in a distinct Subsistence or Person in that
idea,
there proceeds a most pure act, and an infinitely holy and sacred energy
arises between the Father and the Son in mutually loving and delighting in
each other.;. . . The Deity becomes all act, the Divine essence itself
flows
out and is as it were breathed forth in love and joy. So that the Godhead
therein stands forth in yet another manner of Subsistence, and there
proceeds the Third Person in the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, viz., the Deity
in act, for there is no other act but the act of the will.' The
inconclusiveness of the reasoning lies on the surface. The mind does not
consist in its states, and the repetition of its states would not,
therefore, duplicate or triplicate it. If it did, we should have a
plurality
of Beings, not of Persons in one Being. Neither God's perfect idea of
Himself nor His perfect love of Himself reproduces Himself. He differs
from
His idea and His love of Himself precisely by that which distinguishes His
Being from His acts. When it is said, then, that there 15 nothing in the
Deity which renders it the Deity but what has something answering to it in
its image of itself, it is enough to respond - except the Deity itself.
What
is wanting to the image to make it a second Deity is just objective
reality.
Inconclusive as all such reasoning is, however, considered as rational
demonstration of the reality of the Trinity, it is very far from
possessing
no value. It carries home to us in a very suggestive way the superiority
of
the Trinitarian conception of God to the conception of Him as an abstract
monad, and thus brings im****tant rational sup****t to the doctrine of the
Trinity, when once that doctrine has been given us by revelation. If it is
not quite possible to say that we cannot conceive of God as eternal
self-consciousness and eternal love, without conceiving Him as a Trinity,
it
does seem quite necessary to say that when we conceive Him as a Trinity,
new
fullness, richness, force are given to our conception of Him as a
self-conscious, loving Being, and therefore we conceive Him more
adequately
than as a monad, and no one who has ever once conceived Him as a Trinity
can
ever again satisfy himself with a monadistic conception of God. Reason
thus
not only performs the im****tant negative service to faith in the Trinity,
of
showing the self-consistency of the doctrine and its consistency with
other
known truth, but brings this positive rational sup****t to it of
discovering
in it the only adequate conception of God as self-conscious spirit and
living love. Difficult, therefore, as the idea of the Trinity in itself
is,
it does not come to us as an added burden upon our intelligence; it brings
us rather the solution of the deepest and most persistent difficulties in
our conception of God as infinite moral Being, and illuminates, enriches
and
elevates all our thought of God. It has accordingly become a commonplace
to
say that Christian theism is the only stable theism. That is as much as to
say that theism requires the enriching conception of the Trinity to give
it
a permanent hold upon the human mind - the mind finds it difficult to rest
in the idea of an abstract unity for its God; and that the human heart
cries
out for the living God in whose Being there is that fullness of life for
which the conception of the Trinity alone provides.
So strongly is it felt in wide circles that a Trinitarian conception is
essential to a worthy idea of God, that there is abroad a deep-seated
unwillingness to allow that God could ever have made Himself known
otherwise
than as a Trinity. From this point of view it is inconceivable that the
Old
Testament revelation should know nothing of the Trinity. Accordingly, I.
A.
Dorner, for example, reasons thus: 'If, however - and this is the faith of
universal Christendom - a living idea of God must be thought in some way
after a Trinitarian fa****on, it must be antecedently probable that traces
of
the Trinity cannot be lacking in the Old Testament, since its idea of God
is
a living or historical one.' Whether there really exist traces of the idea
of the Trinity in the Old Testament, however, is a nice question.
Certainly
we cannot speak broadly of the revelation of the doctrine of the Trinity
in
the Old Testament. It is a plain matter of fact that none who have
depended
on the revelation embodied in the Old Testament alone have ever attained
to
the doctrine of the Trinity. It is another question, however, whether
there
may not exist in the pages of the Old Testament turns of expression or.
records of occurrences in which one already acquainted with the doctrine
of
the Trinity may fairly see indications of an underlying implication of it.
The older writers discovered intimations of the Trinity in such phenomena
as
the plural form of the Divine name Elohim, the occasional employment with
reference to God of plural pronouns ('Let us make man in our image,' Gen.
i.
26; iii. 22; xi. 7; Isa. vi. 8), or of plural verbs (Gen. xx. 13; xxxv.
7),
certain repetitions of the name of God which seem to distinguish between
God
and God (Ps. xlv. 6, 7; cx. 1; Hos. i. 7), threefold liturgical formulas
Num. vi. 24, 26; Isa. vi. 3), a certain tendency to hypostatize the
conception of Wisdom (Prov. viii.), and especially the remarkable
phenomena
connected with the appearances of the Angel of Jehovah (Gen. xvi. 2-13,
xxii. 11. 16; xxxi. 11,13; xlviii. 15,16; Ex. iii. 2, 4, 5; Jgs. xiii.
20-22). The tendency of more recent authors is to appeal, not so much to
specific texts of the Old Testament, as to the very 'organism of
revelation'
in the Old Testament in which there is perceived an underlying suggestion
'that all things owe their existence and persistence to a threefold
cause,'
both with reference to the first creation, and, more plainly, with
reference
to the second creation. Passages like Ps. xxxiii. 6; Isa. lxi. 1; lxiii.
9-12 Hag. ii. 5, 6, in which God and His Word and His Spirit are brought
together, co-causes of effects, are adduced. A tendency is pointed out to
hypostatize the Word of God on the one hand (e.g., Gen. i. 3; Ps. xxxiii.
6;
cvii. 20; cxlvii. 15-18 Isa. lv. 11); and, especially in Ezek. and the
later
Prophets, the Spirit of God, on the other (e. g., Gen. i. 2; Isa. xlviii.
16; lxiii. 10; Ezek. ii. 2; viii. 3; Zec. vii. 12). Suggestions - in Isa.
for instance (vii. 14; ix. 6) - of the Deity of the Messiah are appealed
to.
And if the occasional occurrence of plural verbs and pronouns referring to
God, and the plural form of the name Elohim are not insisted upon as in
themselves evidence of a multiplicity in the Godhead, yet a certain weight
is lent them as witnesses that 'the God of revelation is no abstract
unity,
but the living, true God who in the fullness of His life embraces the
highest variety' (Bavinek). The upshot of it all is that it is very
generally felt that, somehow, in the Old Testament development of the idea
of God there is a suggestion that the Deity is not a simple monad, and
that
thus a preparation is made for the revelation of the Trinity yet to come.
It
would seem clear that we must recognize in the Old Testament doctrine of
the
relation of God to His revelation by the creative Word and the Spirit, at
least the germ of the distinctions in the Godhead afterward fully made
known
in the Christian revelation. And we can scarcely stop there. After all is
said, in the light of the later revelation, the Trinitarian interpretation
remains the most natural one of the phenomena which the older writers
frankly interpreted as intimations of the Trinity; especially of those
connected with the descriptions of the Angel of Jehovah no doubt, but also
even of such a form of expression as meets us in the 'Let us make man in
our
image' of Gen. i. 26--- for surely verse 27: 'And God created man in his
own
image,' does not encourage us to take the preceding verse as announcing
that
man was to be created in the image of the angels. This is not an
illegitimate reading of New Testament ideas back into the text of the Old
Testament; it is only reading the text of the Old Testament under the
illumination of the New Testament revelation. The Old Testament may be
likened to a chamber richly furnished but dimly lighted; the introduction
of
light brings into it nothing which was not in it before; but it brings out
into clearer view much of what is in it but was only dimly or even not at
all perceived before. The mystery of the Trinity is not revealed in the
Old
Testament; but the mystery of the Trinity underlies the Old Testament
revelation, and here and there almost comes into view. Thus the Old
Testament revelation of God is not corrected by the fuller revelation
which
follows it, but only perfected, extended and enlarged.
It is an old saying that what becomes patent in the New Testament was
latent
in the Old Testament. And it is im****tant that the continuity of the
revelation of God contained in the two Testaments should not be overlooked
or obscured. If we find some difficulty in perceiving for ourselves, in
the
Old Testament, definite points of attachment for the revelation of the
Trinity, we cannot help perceiving with great clearness in the New
Testament
abundant evidence that its writers felt no incongruity whatever between
their doctrine of the Trinity and the Old Testament conception of God. The
New Testament writers certainly were not conscious of being 'setters forth
of strange gods.' To their own apprehension they wor****pped and proclaimed
just the God of Israel; and they laid no less stress than the Old
Testament
itself upon His unity (Jn. xvii. 3; I Cor. viii. 4; I Tim. ii. 5). They do
not, then, place two new gods by the side of Jehovah as alike with Him to
be
served and wor****pped; they conceive Jehovah as Himself at once Father,
Son
and Spirit. In presenting this one Jehovah as Father, Son and Spirit, they
do not even betray any lurking feeling that they are making innovations.
Without apparent misgiving they take over Old Testament passages and apply
them to Father, Son and Spirit indifferently. Obviously they understand
themselves, and wish to be understood, as setting forth in the Father, Son
and Spirit just the one God that the God of the Old Testament revelation
is;
and they are as far as possible from recognizing any breach between
themselves and the Fathers in presenting their enlarged conception of the
Divine Being. This may not amount to saying that they saw the doctrine of
the Trinity everywhere taught in the Old Testament. It certainly amounts
to
saying that they saw the Triune God whom they wor****pped in the God of the
Old Testament revelation, and felt no incongruity in speaking of their
Triune God in the terms of the Old Testament revelation. The God of the
Old
Testament was their God, and their God was a Trinity, and their sense of
the
identity of the two was so complete that no question as to it was raised
in
their minds.
The simplicity and assurance with which the New Testament writers speak of
God as a Trinity have, however, a further implication. If they betray no
sense of novelty in so speaking of Him, this is undoubtedly in part
because
it was no longer a novelty so to speak of Him. It is clear, in other
words,
that, as we read the New Testament, we are not witnessing the birth of a
new
conception of God. What we meet with in its pages is a firmly established
conception of God underlying and giving its tone to the whole fabric. It
is
not in a text here and there that the New Testament bears its testimony to
the doctrine of the Trinity. The whole book is Trinitarian to the core;
all
its teaching is built on the assumption of the Trinity; and its allusions
to
the Trinity are frequent, cursory, easy and confident. It is with a view
to
the cursoriness of the allusions to it in the New Testament that it has
been
remarked that 'the doctrine of the Trinity is not so much heard as
overheard
in the statements of Scripture.' It would be more exact to say that it is
not so much inculcated as presupposed. The doctrine of the Trinity does
not
appear in the New Testament in the making, but as already made. It takes
its
place in its pages, as Gunkel phrases it, with an air almost of complaint,
already 'in full completeness' (vollig fertig), leaving no trace of its
growth. 'There is nothing more wonderful in the history of human thought,'
says Sanday, with his eye on the appearance of the doctrine of the Trinity
in the New Testament, 'than the silent and imperceptible way in which this
doctrine, to us so difficult, took its place without struggle - and
without
controversy - among accepted Christian truths.' The explanation of this
remarkable phenomenon is, however, simple. Our New Testament is not a
record
of the development of the doctrine or of its assimilation. It everywhere
presupposes the doctrine as the fixed possession of the Christian
community;
and the process by which it became the possession of the Christian
community
lies behind the New Testament.
We cannot speak of the doctrine of the Trinity, therefore, if we study
exactness of speech, as revealed in the New Testament, any more than we
can
speak of it as revealed in the Old Testament. The Old Testament was
written
before its revelation; the New Testament after it. The revelation itself
was
made not in word but in deed. It was made in the incarnation of God the
Son,
and the outpouring of God the Holy Spirit. The relation of the two
Testaments to this revelation is in the one case that of preparation for
it,
and in the other that of product of it. The revelation itself is embodied
just in Christ and the Holy Spirit. This is as much as to say that the
revelation of the Trinity was incidental to, and the inevitable effect of,
the accomplishment of redemption. It was in the coming of the Son of God
in
the likeness of sinful flesh to offer Himself a sacrifice for sin; and in
the coming of the Holy Spirit to convict the world of sin, of
righteousness
and of judgment, that the Trinity of Persons in the Unity of the Godhead
was
once for all revealed to men. Those who knew God the Father, who loved
them
and gave His own Son to die for them; and the Lord Jesus Christ, who loved
them and delivered Himself up an offering and sacrifice for them; and the
Spirit of Grace, who loved them and dwelt within them a power not
themselves, making for righteousness, knew the Triune God and could not
think or speak of God otherwise than as triune. The doctrine of the
Trinity,
in other words, is simply the modification wrought in the conception of
the
one only God by His complete revelation of Himself in the redemptive
process. It necessarily waited, therefore, upon the completion of the
redemptive process for its revelation, and its revelation, as necessarily,
lay complete in the redemptive process.
From this central fact we may understand more fully several circumstances
connected with the revelation of the Trinity to which allusion has been
made. We may from it understand, for example, why the Trinity was not
revealed in the Old Testament. It may carry us a little way to remark, as
it
has been customary to remark since the time of Gregory of Nazianzus, that
it
was the task of the Old Testament revelation to fix firmly in the minds
and
hearts of the people of God the great fundamental truth of the unity of
the
Godhead; and it would have been dangerous to speak to them of the
plurality
within this unity until this task had been fully accomplished. The real
reason for the delay in the revelation of the Trinity, however, is
grounded
in the secular development of the redemptive purpose of God: the times
were
not ripe for the revelation of the Trinity in the unity of the Godhead
until
the fullness of the time had come for God to send forth His Son unto
redemption, and His Spirit unto sanctification. The revelation in word
must
needs wait upon the revelation in fact, to which it brings its necessary
explanation, no doubt, but from which also it derives its own entire
significance and value. The revelation of a Trinity in the Divine unity as
a
mere abstract truth without relation to manifested fact, and without
significance to the development of the kingdom of God, would have been
foreign to the whole method of the Divine procedure as it lies exposed to
us
in the pages of Scripture. Here the working-out of the Divine purpose
supplies the fundamental principle to which all else, even the progressive
stages of revelation itself, is subsidiary; and advances in revelation are
ever closely connected with the advancing accomplishment of the redemptive
purpose. We may understand also, however, from the same central fact, why
it
is that the doctrine of the Trinity lies in the New Testament rather in
the
form of allusions than in express teaching, why it is rather everywhere
presupposed, coming only here and there into incidental expression, than
formally inculcated. It is because the revelation, having been made in the
actual occurrences of redemption, was already the common property of all
Christian hearts. In speaking and writing to one another, Christians,
therefore, rather spoke out of their common Trinitarian consciousness, and
reminded one another of their common fund of belief, than instructed one
another in what was already the common property of all. We are to look
for,
and we shall find, in the New Testament allusions to the Trinity, rather
evidence of how the Trinity, believed in by all, was conceived by the
authoritative teachers of the church, than formal attempts, on their part,
by authoritative declarations, to bring the church into the understanding
that God is a Trinity.
The fundamental proof that God is a Trinity is supplied thus by the
fundamental revelation of the Trinity in fact: that is to say, in the
incarnation of God the Son and the outpouring of God the Holy Spirit. In a
word, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are the fundamental proof of the
doctrine of the Trinity. This is as much as to say that all the evidence
of
whatever kind, and from whatever source derived, that Jesus Christ is God
manifested in the flesh, and that the Holy Spirit is a Divine Person, is
just so much evidence for the doctrine of the Trinity; and that when we go
to the New Testament for evidence of the Trinity we are to seek it; not
merely in the scattered allusions to the Trinity as such, numerous and
instructive as they are, but primarily in the whole mass of evidence which
the New Testament provides of the Deity of Christ and the Divine
personality
of the Holy Spirit. When we have said this, we have said in effect that
the
whole mass of the New Testament is evidence for the Trinity. For the New
Testament is saturated with evidence of the Deity of Christ and the Divine
personality of the Holy Spirit. Precisely what the New Testament is, is
the
documentation of the religion of the incarnate Son and of the outpourcd
Spirit, that is to say, of the religion of the Trinity, and what we mean
by
the doctrine of the Trinity is nothing but the formulation in exact
language
of the conception of God presupposed in the religion of the incarnate Son
and outpoured Spirit. We may analyze this conception and adduce proof for
every constituent element of it from the New Testament declarations. We
may
show that the New Testament everywhere insists on the unity of the
Godhead;
that it constantly recognizes the Father as God, the Son as God and the
Spirit as God; and that it cursorily presents these three to us as
distinct
Persons. It is not necessary, however, to enlarge here on facts so
obvious.
We may content ourselves with simply observing that to the New Testament
there is but one only living and true God; but that to it Jesus Christ and
the Holy Spirit are each God in the fullest sense of the term; and yet
Father, Son and Spirit stand over against each other as I, and Thou, and
He.
In this composite fact the New Testament gives us the doctrine of the
Trinity. For the doctrine of the Trinity is but the statement in well
guarded language of this composite fact. Throughout the whole course of
the
many efforts to formulate the doctrine exactly, which have followed one
another during the entire history of the church, indeed, the principle
which
has ever determined the result has always been determination to do justice
in conceiving the relations of God the Father, God the Son and God the
Spirit, on the one hand to the unity of God, and, on the other, to the
true
Deity of the Son and Spirit and their distinct personalities. When we have
said these three things, then - that there is but one God, that the Father
and the Son and the Spirit is each God, that the Father and the Son and
the
Spirit is each a distinct person - we have enunciated the doctrine of the
Trinity in its completeness.
That this doctrine underlies the whole New Testament as its constant
presupposition and determines everywhere its forms of expression is the
primary fact to be noted. We must not omit explicitly to note, however,
that
it now and again also, as occasion arises for its incidental enunciation,
comes itself to expression in more or less completeness of statement. The
passages in which the three Persons of the Trinity are brought together
are
much more numerous than, perhaps, is generally supposed; but it should be
recognized that the for- mal collocation of the elements of the doctrine
naturally is relatively rare in writings which are occasional in their
origin and practical rather than doctrinal in their immediate purpose. The
three Persons already come into view as Divine Persons in the annunciation
of the birth of Our Lord: 'The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee,' said the
angel to Mary, 'and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee:
wherefore also the holy thing which is to be born shall be called the Son
of
God; (Lk. i. 35 m; cf. Mt. i. 18 ff.). Here the Holy Ghost is the active
agent in the production of an effect which is also ascribed to the power
of
the Most High, and the child thus brought into the world is given the
great
designation of 'Son of God.' The three Persons are just as clearly brought
before us in the account of Mt. (i. 18 ff.), though the allusions to them
are dispersed through a longer stretch of narrative, in the course of
which
the Deity of the child is twice intimated (ver. 21: 'It is He that shall
save His people from their sins'; ver. 23: 'They shall call His name
Immanuel; which is, being interpreted, God-with-us'). In the baptismal
scene
which finds record by all the evangelists at the opening of Jesus'
ministry
(Mt. iii. 16, 17; Mk. i. 10, 11; Lk. iii. 21, 22; Jn. i. 32-34), the three
Persons are thrown up to sight in a dramatic picture in which the Deity of
each is strongly emphasized. From the open heavens the Spirit descends in
visible form, and 'a voice came out of the heavens, Thou art my Son, the
Beloved, in whom I am well pleased.' Thus care seems to have been taken to
make the advent of the Son of God into the world the revelation also of
the
Triune God, that the minds of men might as smoothly as possible adjust
themselves to the preconditions of the Divine redemption which was in
process of being wrought out.
With this as a starting-point, the teaching of Jesus is Trinitarianly
conditioned throughout. He has much to say of God His Father, from whom as
His Son He is in some true sense distinct, and with whom He is in some
equally true sense one. And He has much to say of the Spirit, who
represents
Him as He represents the Father, and by whom He works as the Father works
by
Him. It is not merely in the Gospel of John that such representations
occur
in the teaching of Jesus. In the Synoptics, too, Jesus claims a Son****p to
God which is unique (Mt. xi. 27; xxiv. 36; Mk. xiii. 32; Lk. x. 22; in the
following passages the title of 'Son of God' is attributed to Him and
accepted by Him: Mt. iv. 6; viii. 29; xiv. 33; xxvii. 40, 43, 54; Mk. iii.
11; xv. 39; Lk. iv. 41; xxii. 70; cf. Jn. i. 34, 49; ix. 35; xi. 27), and
which involves an absolute community between the two in knowledge, say,
and
power: both Mt. (xi. 27) and Lk. (x. 22) record His great declaration that
He knows the Father and the Father knows Him with perfect mutual
knowledge:
'No one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know the
Father,
save the Son.' In the Synoptics, too, Jesus speaks of employing the Spirit
of God Himself for the performance of His works, as if the activities of
God
were at His disposal: 'I by the Spirit of God' --- or as Luke has it, 'by
the finger of God' - 'cast out demons' (Mt. xii. 28; Lk. xi. 20; cf. the
promise of the Spirit in Mk. xiii. 11; Lk. xii. 12).
It is in the discourses recorded in John, however, that Jesus most
copiously
refers to the unity of Himself, as the Son, with the Father, and to the
mission of the Spirit from Himself as the dispenser of the Divine
activities. Here He not only with great directness declares that He and
the
Father are one (x. 30; cf. xvii. 11, 21, 22, 25) with a unity of
interpenetration ('The Father is in me, and I in the Father,' x. 38; cf.
xvi. 10, 11), so that to have seen Him was to have seen the Father (xiv.
9;
cf. xv. 21); but He removes all doubt as to the essential nature of His
oneness with the Father by explicitly asserting His eternity ('Before
Abraham was born, I am,' Jn. viii. 58), His co-eternity with God ('had
with
thee before the world was,' xvii. 5; cf. xvii. 18; vi. 62), His eternal
participation in the Divine glory itself ('the glory which I had with
thee,'
in fellow****p, community with Thee 'before the world was,' xvii. 5). So
clear is it that in speaking currently of Himself as God's Son (v.25; ix.
35; xi. 4; cf. x. 36), He meant, in accordance with the underlying
significance of the idea of son****p in Semitic speech (founded on the
natural implication that whatever the father is that the son is also; cf.
xvi. 15; xvii. 10), to make Himself, as the Jews with exact appreciation
of
His meaning perceived, 'equal with God' (v.18), or, to put it brusquely,
just 'God' (x. 33). How He, being thus equal or rather identical with God,
was in the world, He explains as involving a coming forth on His part, not
merely from the presence of God (xvi. 30; cf. xiii. 3) or from fellow****p
with God (xvi. 27; xvii. 8), but from out of God Himself (viii. 42; xvi.
28). And in the very act of thus asserting that His eternal home is in the
depths of the Divine Being, He throws up, into as strong an emphasis as
stressed pronouns can convey, His personal distinctness from the Father.
'If
God were your Father,' says He (viii. 42), 'ye would love me: for I came
forth and am come out of God; for neither have I come of myself, but it
was
He that sent me.' Again, He says (xvi. 26, 27):' In that day ye shall ask
in
my name: and I say not unto you that I will make request of the Father for
you; for the Father Himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have
believed that it was from fellow****p with the Father that I came forth; I
came from out of the Father, and have come into the world.' Less
pointedly,
but still distinctly, He says again (xvii. 8): ' They know of a truth that
it was from fellow****p with Thee that I came forth, and they believed that
it was Thou that didst send me.' It is not necessary to illustrate more at
large a form of expression so characteristic of the discourses of Our Lord
recorded by John that it meets us on every page: a form of expression
which
combines a clear implication of a unity of Father and Son which is
identity
of Being, and an equally clear implication of a distinction of Person
between them such as allows not merely for the play of emotions between
them, as, for instance, of love (xvii. 24; cf. xv. 9 [iii. 35]; xiv. 31),
but also of an action and reaction upon one another which argues a high
measure, if not of exteriority, yet certainly of exteriorization. Thus, to
instance only one of the most outstanding facts of Our Lord's discourses
(not indeed confined to those in John's Gospel, but found also in His
sayings recorded in the Synoptists, as e.g., Lk. iv. 43 [cf. j Mk. i. 38];
ix. 48; x. 16; iv. 34; v.32; vii. 19; xix. 10), He continually represents
Himself as on the one hand sent by God, and as, on the other, having come
forth from the Father (e. g., Jn. viii. 42; x. 36; xvii. 3; v.23).
It is more im****tant to point out that these phenomena of
interrelation****p
are not confined to the Father and Son, but are extended also to the
Spirit.
Thus, for example, in a context in which Our Lord had emphasized in the
strongest manner His own essential unity and continued interpenetration
with
the Father ('If ye had known me, ye would have known my Father also'; 'He
that hath seen me hath seen the Father'; . ,, 'I am in the Father, and the
Father in me ; 'The Father abiding in me doeth his works,' Jn. xiv. 7, 9,
10), we read as follows (Jn. xiv. 16-26): 'And I will make request of the
Father, and He shall give you another [thus sharply distinguished from Our
Lord as a distinct Person] Advocate, that He may be with you forever, the
Spirit of Truth . . . He abideth with you and shall be in you. I will not
leave you orphans; I come unto you. . . In that day ye shall know that I
am
in the Father. . . . If a man love me, he will keep my word; and my Father
will love him and we [that is, both Father and Son] will come unto him and
make our abode with him. . . . These things have I spoken unto you while
abiding with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will
send in my name, He shall teach you all things, and bring to your
remembrance all that I said unto you.' It would be impossible to speak
more
distinctly of three who were yet one. The Father, Son and Spirit are
constantly distinguished from one another --- the Son makes request of the
Father, and the Father in response to this request gives an Advocate,
'another' than the Son, who is sent in the Son's name. And yet the oneness
of these three is so kept in sight that the coming of this 'another
Advocate' is spoken of without embarrassment as the coming of the Son
Himself (vs. 18, 19, 20, 21), and indeed as the coming of the Father and
the
Son (ver. 23). There is a sense, then, in which, when Christ goes away,
the
Spirit comes in His stead; there is also a sense in which, when the Spirit
comes, Christ comes in Him; and with Christ's coming the Father comes too.
There is a distinction between the Persons brought into view; and with it
an
identity among them; for both of which allowance must be made. The same
phenomena meet us in other passages. Thus, we read again (xv. 26):' But
when
there is come the Advocate whom I will send unto you from [fellow****p
with]
the Father, the Spirit of Truth, which goeth forth from [fellow****p with]
the Father, He shall bear witness of me.' In the compass of this single
verse, it is intimated that the Spirit is personally distinct from the
Son,
and yet, like Him, has His eternal home (in fellow****p) with the Father,
from whom He, like the Son, comes forth for His saving work, being sent
thereunto, however, not in this instance by the Father, but by the Son.
This last feature is even more strongly emphasized in yet another passage
in
which the work of the Spirit in relation to the Son is presented as
closely
parallel with the work of the Son in relation to the Father (xvi. 5 ff.) .
'But now I go unto Him that sent me. . . . Nevertheless I tell you the
truth: it is expedient for you that I go away; for, if I go not away the
Advocate will not come unto you; but if I go I will send Him unto you. And
He, after He is come, will convict the world . . . of righteousness
because
I go to the Father and ye behold me no more. . . . I have yet many things
to
say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when He, the Spirit of
truth is come, He shall guide you into all the truth; for He shall not
speak
from Himself; but what things soever He shall hear, He shall speak, and He
shall declare unto you the things that are to come. He shall glorify me:
for
He shall take of mine and shall show it unto you. All things whatsoever
the
Father hath are mine: therefore said I that He taketh of mine, and shall
declare it unto you.' Here the Spirit is sent by the Son, and comes in
order
to complete and apply the Son's work, receiving His whole commission from
the Son - not, however, in derogation of the Father, because when we speak
of the things of the Son, that is to speak of the things of the Father.
It is not to be said, of course, that the doctrine of the Trinity is
formulated in passages like these, with which the whole mass of Our Lord's
discourses in John are strewn; but it certainly is presupposed in them,
and
that is, considered from the point of view of their probative force, even
better. As we read we are kept in continual contact with three Persons who
act, each as a distinct person, and yet who are in a deep, under lying
sense, one. There is but one God - there is never any question of that -
and
yet this Son who has been sent into the world by God not only represents
God
but is God, and this Spirit whom the Son has in turn sent unto the world
is
also Himself God. Nothing could be clearer than that the Son and Spirit
are
distinct Persons, unless indeed it be that the Son of God is just God the
Son and the Spirit of God just God the Spirit.
Meanwhile, the nearest approach to a formal announcement of the doctrine
of
the Trinity which is recorded from Our Lord's lips, or, perhaps we may
say,
which is to be found in the whole compass of the New Testament, has been
preserved for us, not by John, but by one of the synoptists. It too,
however, is only incidentally introduced, and has for its main object
something very different from formulating the doctrine of the Trinity. It
is
embodied in the great commission which the resurrected Lord gave His
disciples to be their 'marching orders' 'even unto the end of the world':
'Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them
into
the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit' (Mt. xxviii.
19). In seeking to estimate the significance of this great declaration, we
must bear in mind the high solemnity of the utterance, by which we are
required to give its full value to every word of it. Its phrasing is in
any
event, however, remarkable. It does not say, 'In the names [plural] of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost'; nor yet (what might be taken
to be equivalent to that),'In the name of the Father, and in the name of
the
Son, and in the name of the Holy Ghost,' as if we had to deal with three
separate Beings. Nor, on the other hand, does it say, 'In the name of the
Father, Son and Holy Ghost,' as if 'the Father, Son and Holy Ghost' might
be
taken as merely three designations of a single person. With stately
impressiveness it asserts the unity of the three by combining them all
within the bounds of the single Name; and then throws up into emphasis the
distinctness of each by introducing them in turn with the repeated
article:
'In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost
'(Authorized Version). These three, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy
Ghost, each stand in some clear sense over against the others in distinct
personality: these three, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, all
unite in some profound sense in the common participation of the one Name.
Fully to comprehend the implication of this mode of statement, we must
bear
in mind, further, the significance of the term, 'the name,' and the
associations laden with which it came to the recipients of this
commission.
For the Hebrew did not think of the name, as we are accustomed to do, as a
mere external symbol; but rather as the adequate expression of the
innermost
being of its bearer. In His name the Being of God finds expression; and
the
Name of God - 'this glorious and fearful name, Jehovah thy God' (Deut.
xxviii. 58) - was accordingly a most sacred thing, being indeed virtually
equivalent to God Himself. It is no solecism, therefore, when we read
(Isa.
xxx. 27), 'Behold, the name of Jehovah cometh'; and the parallelisms are
most instructive when we read (Isa. lix. 19):' So shall they fear the Name
of Jehovah from the west, and His glory from the rising of the sun; for He
shall come as a stream pent in which the Spirit of Jehovah driveth.' So
pregnant was the implication of the Name, that it was possible for the
term
to stand absolutely, without adjunction of the name itself, as the
sufficient representative of the majesty of Jehovah: it was a terrible
thing
to 'blaspheme the Name' (Lev. xxiv. 11). All those over whom Jehovah's
Name
was called were His, His possession to whom He owed protection. It is for
His Name's sake, therefore, that afflicted Judah cries to the Hope of
Israel, the Saviour thereof in time of trouble: '0 Jehovah, Thou art in
the
midst of us, and Thy Name is called upon us; leave us not' (Jer. xiv. 9);
and His people find the appropriate expression of their deepest shame in
the
lament, 'We have become as they over whom Thou never barest rule; as they
upon whom Thy Name was not called' (Isa. lxiii. 19); while the height of
joy
is attained in the cry, 'Thy Name, Jehovah, G6d of Hosts, is called upon
me'
(Jer. xv. 16; cf. II Chron. vii. 14; Dan. ix. 18, 19). When, therefore,
Our
Lord commanded His disciples to baptize those whom they brought to His
obedience 'into the name of . . . ,' He was using language charged to them
with high meaning. He could not have been understood otherwise than as
substituting for the Name of Jehovah this other Name 'of the Father, and
of
the Son, and of the Holy Ghost'; and this could not possibly have meant to
His disciples anything else than that Jehovah was now to be known to them
by
the new Name, of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. The only
alternative would have been that, for the community which He was founding,
Jesus was supplanting Jehovah by a new God; and this alternative is no
less
than monstrous. There is no alternative, therefore, to understanding Jesus
here to be giving for His community a new Name to Jehovah and that new
Name
to be the threefold Name of 'the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost.'
Nor is there room for doubt that by 'the Son 'in this threefold Name, He
meant just Himself with all the implications of distinct personality which
this carries with it; and, of course, that further carries with it the
equally distinct personality of 'the Father' and 'the Holy Ghost,' with
whom
'the Son' is here associated, and from whom alike 'the Son' is here
distinguished. This is a direct ascription to Jehovah the God of Israel,
of
a threefold personality, and is therewith the direct enunciation of the
doctrine of the Trinity. We are not witnessing here the birth of the
doctrine of the Trinity; that is presupposed. What we are witnessing is
the
authoritative announcement of the Trinity as the God of Christianity by
its
Founder, in one of the most solemn of His recorded declarations. Israel
had
wor****pped the one only true God under the Name of Jehovah; Christians are
to wor****p the same one only and true God under the Name of 'the Father,
and
the Son, and the Holy Ghost.' This is the distingui****ng characteristic of
Christians; and that is as much as to say that the doctrine of the Trinity
is, according to Our Lord's own apprehension of it, the distinctive mark
of
the religion which He founded.
A passage of such range of implication has, of course, not escaped
criticism
and challenge. An attempt which cannot be characterized as other than
frivolous has even been made to dismiss it from the text of Matthew's
Gospel. Against this, the whole body of external evidence cries out; and
the
internal evidence is of itself not less decisive to the same effect. When
the 'universalism,' 'ecclesiasticism,' and 'high theology' of the passage
are pleaded against its genuineness, it is forgotten that to the Jesus of
Matthew there are attributed not only such parables as those of the Leaven
and the Mustard Seed, but such declarations as those contained in viii.
11,12; xxi. 43; xxiv. 14; that in this Gospel alone is Jesus recorded as
speaking familiarly about His church (xvi. 18; xviii. 17); and that, after
the great declaration of xi. 27 ff., nothing remained in lofty attribution
to be assigned to Him. When these same objections are urged against
recognizing the passage as an authentic saying of Jesus' own, it is quite
obvious that the Jesus of the evangelists cannot be in mind. The
declaration
here recorded is quite in character with the Jesus of Matthew's Gospel, as
has just been intimated; and no less with the Jesus of the whole New
Testament transmission. It will scarcely do, first to construct a priori a
Jesus to our own liking, and then to discard as 'unhistorical' all in the
New Testament transmission which would be unnatural to such a Jesus. It is
not these discarded passages but our a priori Jesus which is unhistorical.
In the present instance, moreover, the historicity of the assailed saying
is
protected by an im****tant historical relation in which it stands. It is
not
merely Jesus who speaks out of a Trinitarian consciousness, but all the
New
Testament writers as well. The universal possession by His followers of so
firm a hold on such a doctrine requires the assumption that some such
teaching as is here attributed to Him was actually contained in Jesus'
instructions to His followers. Even had it not been attributed to Him in
so
many words by the record, we should have had to assume that some such
declaration had been, made by Him. In these circumstances, there can be no
good reason to doubt that it was made by Him, when it is expressly
attributed to Him by the record.
When we turn from the discourses of Jesus to the writings of His followers
with a view to observing how the assumption of the doctrine of the Trinity
underlies their whole fabric also, we naturally go first of all to the
letters of Paul. Their very mass is impressive; and the definiteness with
which their composition within a generation of the death of Jesus may be
fixed adds im****tance to them as historical witnesses. Certainly they
leave
nothing to be desired in the richness of their testimony to the
Trinitarian
conception of God which underlies them. Throughout the whole series, from
I
Thess., which comes from about 52 A.D., to II Tim., which was written
about
68 A.D., the redemption, which it is their one business to proclaim and
commend, and all the blessings which enter into it or accompany it are
referred consistently to a threefold Divine causation. Everywhere,
throughout their pages, God the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the
Holy
Spirit appear as the joint objects of all religious adoration, and the
conjunct source of all Divine operations. In the freedom of the allusions
which are made to them, now and again one alone of the three is thrown up
into prominent view; but more often two of them are conjoined in
thanksgiving or prayer; and not infrequently all three are brought
together
as the apostle strives to give some adequate expression to his sense of
indebtedness to the Divine source of all good for blessings received, or
to
his longing on behalf of himself or of his readers for further communion
with the God of grace. It is regular for him to begin his Epistles with a
prayer for 'grace and peace' for his readers, 'from God our Father, and
the
Lord Jesus Christ,' as the joint source of these Divine blessings by way
of
eminence (Rom. i. 7; I Cor. i. 3; II Cor. i. 2; Gal. i. 3; Eph. i. 2;
Phil.
i. 2;II Thess. i. 2;I Tim. i. 2;II Tim. i. 2; Philem. ver. 3; cf. I Thess.
i. 1). It is obviously no departure from this habit in the essence of the
matter, but only in relative fullness of expression, when in the opening
words of the Epistle to the Colossians the clause 'and the Lord Jesus
Christ' is omitted, and we read merely: 'Grace to you and peace from God
our
Father.' So also it would have been no departure from it in the essence of
the matter, but only in relative fullness of expression, if in any
instance
the name of the Holy Spirit had chanced to be adjoined to the other two,
as
in the single instance of II Cor. xiii. 14 it is adjoined to them in the
closing prayer for grace with which Paul ends his letters, and which
ordinarily takes the simple form of, 'the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ
be
with you' (Rom. xvi. 20; I Cor. xvi. 23; Gal. vi. 18; Phil. iv, 23; I
Thess.
v.28; II Thess. iii. 18; Philem. ver. 25; more expanded form, Eph. vi. 23,
24; more compressed, Col. iv. 18; I Tim. vi. 21; II Tim. iv. 22; Tit. iii.
15). Between these opening and closing passages the allusions to God the
Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit are constant and most
intricately interlaced. Paul's monotheism is intense: the first premise of
all his thought on Divine things is the unity of God (Rom. iii. 30; I Cor.
viii. 4; Gal iii. 20; Eph. iv. 6;I Tim. ii. 5; cf. Rom. xvi. 22; I Tim. i.
17). Yet to him God the Father is no more God than the Lord Jesus Christ
is
God, or the Holy Spirit is God. The Spirit of God is to him related to God
as the spirit of man is to man (I Cor. ii. 11), and therefore if the
Spirit
of God dwells in us, that is God dwelling in us (Rom. viii. 10 ff.), and
we
are by that fact constituted temples of God (I Cor. iii. 16). And no
expression is too strong for him to use in order to assert the Godhead of
Christ: He is 'our great God' (Tit. ii. 13); He is 'God over all' (Rom.
ix.
5); and indeed it is expressly declared of Him that the 'fullness of the
Godhead,' that is, everything that enters into Godhead and constitutes it
Godhead, dwells in Him. In the very act of asserting his monotheism Paul
takes Our Lord up into this unique Godhead. 'There is no God but one,' he
roundly asserts, and then illustrates and proves this assertion by
remarking
that the heathen may have 'gods many, and lords many,' but 'to us there is
one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we unto him; and one
Lord,
Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him' (I Cor.
viii.
6). Obviously, this 'one God, the Father,' and 'one Lord, Jesus Christ,'
are
embraced together in the one God who alone is. Paul's conception of the
one
God, whom alone he wor****ps, includes, in other words, a recognition that
within the unity of His Being, there exists such a distinction of Persons
as
is given us in the 'one God, the Father' and the 'one Lord, Jesus Christ.'
In numerous passages scattered through Paul's Epistles, from the earliest
of
them (I Thess. i. 2-5; II Thess. ii. 13, 14) to the latest (Tit. iii. 4-6;
II Tim. i. 3, 13,14), all three Persons, God the Father, the Lord Jesus
Christ and the Holy Spirit, are brought together, in the most incidental
manner, as co-sources of all the saving blessings which come to believers
in
Christ. A typical series of such passages may be found in Eph. ii. 18;
iii.
2-5,14, 17; iv. 4-6; v.18-20. But the most interesting instances are
offered
to us perhaps by the Epistles to the Corinthians. In I Cor. xii. 4-6 Paul
presents the abounding spiritual gifts with which the church was blessed
in
a threefold aspect, and connects these aspects with the three Divine
Persons. 'Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And
there
are diversities of ministrations, and the same Lord. And there are
diversities of workings, but the same God, who worketh all things in all.'
It may be thought that there is a measure of what might almost be called
artificiality in assigning the endowments of the church, as they are
graces
to the Spirit, as they are services to Christ, and as they are energizings
to God. But thus there is only the more strikingly revealed the underlying
Trinitarian conception as dominating the structure of the clauses: Paul
clearly so writes, not because 'gifts,' 'workings,' 'operations' stand out
in his thought as greatly diverse things, but because God, the Lord, and
the
Spirit lie in the back of his mind constantly suggesting a threefold
causality behind every manifestation of grace. The Trinity is alluded to
rather than asserted; but it is so alluded to as to show that it
constitutes
the determining basis of all Paul's thought of the God of redemption. Even
more instructive is II Cor. xiii. 14, which has passed into general
liturgical use in the churches as a benediction: 'The grace of the Lord
Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit,
be
with you all.' Here the three highest redemptive blessings are brought
together, and attached distributively to the three Persons of the Triune
God. There is again no formal teaching of the doctrine of the Trinity;
there
is only another instance of natural speaking out of a Trinitarian
consciousness. Paul is simply thinking of the Divine source of these great
blessings; but he habitually thinks of this Divine source of redemptive
blessings after a trinal fa****on. He therefore does not say, as he might
just as well have said, 'The grace and love and communion of God be with
you
all,' but 'The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and
the
communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.' Thus he bears, almost
unconsciously but most richly, witness to the trinal composition of the
Godhead as conceived by Him.
The phenomena of Paul's Epistles are repeated in the other writings of the
New Testament. In these other writings also it is everywhere assumed that
the redemptive activities of God rest on a threefold source in God the
Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit; and these three
Persons
repeatedly come forward together in the expressions of Christian hope or
the
aspirations of Christian devotion (e. g., Heb. ii. 3, 4; vi. 4-6; x.
29-31;
1 Pet. i. 2;ii. 3-12; iv. 13-19; I Jn. v.4-8; Jude vs. 20, 21; Rev. i.
4-6).
Perhaps as typical instances as any are supplied by the two following:
'According to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of
the
Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ' (I
Pet.
i. 2); 'Praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God,
looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life' (Jude
vs.
20, 21). To these may be added the highly symbolical instance from the
Apocalypse: 'Grace to you and peace from Him which is and was and which is
to come; and from the Seven Spirits which are before His throne; and from
Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and
the ruler of the kings of the earth' (Rev. i. 4, 5). Clearly these
writers,
too, write out of a fixed Trinitarian consciousness and bear their
testimony
to the universal understanding current in apostolical circles. Everywhere
and by all it was fully understood that the one God whom Christians
wor****pped and from whom alone they expected redemption and all that
redemption brought with it, included within His undiminished unity the
three: God the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, whose
activities relatively to one another are conceived as distinctly personal.
This is the uniform and pervasive testimony of the New Testament, and it
is
the more impressive that it is given with such unstudied naturalness and
simplicity, with no effort to distinguish between what have come to be
called the ontological and the economical aspects of the Trinitarian
distinctions, and indeed without apparent consciousness of the existence
of
such a distinction of aspects. Whether God is thought of in Himself or in
His operations, the underlying conception runs unaffectedly into trinal
forms.
It will not have escaped observation that the Trinitarian terminology of
Paul and the other writers of the New Testament is not precisely identical
with that of Our Lord as recorded for us in His discourses. Paul, for
example - and the same is true of the other New Testament writers (except
John) - does not speak, as Our Lord is recorded as speaking, of the
Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit, so much as of God, the Lord Jesus Christ,
and
the Holy Spirit. This difference of terminology finds its account in large
measure in the different relations in which the speakers stand to the
Trinity. Our Lord could not naturally speak of Himself, as one of the
Trinitarian Persons, by the designation of 'the Lord,' while the
designation
of 'the Son,' expressing as it does His consciousness of close relation,
and
indeed of exact similarity, to God, came naturally to His lips. But He was
Paul's Lord; and Paul naturally thought and spoke of Him as such. In point
of fact, 'Lord' is one of Paul's favorite designations of Christ, and
indeed
has become with him practically a proper name for Christ, and in point of
fact, his Divine Name for Christ. It is naturally, therefore, his
Trinitarian name for Christ. Because when he thinks of Christ as Divine he
calls Him 'Lord,' he naturally, when he thinks of the three Persons
together
as the Triune God, sets Him as 'Lord' by the side of God - Paul's constant
name for 'the Father' - and the Holy Spirit. Question may no doubt be
raised
whether it would have been possible for Paul to have done this, especially
with the constancy with which he has done it, if, in his conception of it,
the very essence of the Trinity were enshrined in the terms 'Father' and
'Son.' Paul is thinking of the Trinity, to be sure, from the point of view
of a wor****pper, rather than from that of a systematizer. He designates
the
Persons of the Trinity therefore rather from his relations to them than
from
their relations to one another. He sees in the Trinity his God, his Lord,
and the Holy Spirit who dwells in him; and naturally he so speaks
currently
of the three Persons. It remains remarkable, nevertheless, if the very
essence of the Trinity were thought of by him as resident in the terms
'Father,' 'Son,' that in his numerous allusions to the Trinity in the
Godhead, he never betrays any sense of this. It is noticeable also that in
their allusions to the Trinity, there is preserved, neither in Paul nor in
the other writers of the New Testament, the order of the names as they
stand
in Our Lord's great declaration (Mt. xxviii. 19). The reverse order
occurs,
indeed, occasionally, as, for example, in I Cor. xii. 4-6 (cf. Eph. iv.
4-6); and this may be understood as a climactic arrangement and so far a
testimony to the order of Mt. xxviii. 19. But the order is very variable;
and in the most formal enumeration of the three Persons, that of II Cor.
xiii. 14, it stands thus: Lord, God, Spirit. The question naturally
suggests
itself whether the order Father, Son, Spirit was especially significant to
Paul and his fellow-writers of the New Testament. If in their conviction
the
very essence of the doctrine of the Trinity was embodied in this order,
should we not anticipate that there should appear in their numerous
allusions to the Trinity some suggestion of this conviction?
Such facts as these have a bearing upon the testimony of the New Testament
to the interrelations of the Persons of the Trinity. To the fact of the
Trinity - to the fact, that is, that in the unity of the Godhead there
subsist three Persons, each of whom has his particular part in the working
out of salvation - the New Testament testimony is clear, consistent,
pervasive and conclusive. There is included in this testimony constant and
decisive witness to the complete and undiminished Deity of each of these
Persons; no language is too exalted to apply to each of them in turn in
the
effort to give expression to the writer's sense of His Deity: the name
that
is given to each is fully understood to be 'the name that is above every
name.' When we attempt to press the inquiry behind the broad fact,
however,
with a view to ascertaining exactly how the New Testament writers conceive
the three Persons to be related, the one to the other, we meet with great
difficulties. Nothing could seem more natural, for example, than to assume
that the mutual relations of the Persons of the Trinity are revealed in
the
designations, 'the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,' which are given
them by Our Lord in the solemn formula of Mt. xxviii. 19. Our confidence
in
this assumption is somewhat shaken, however, when we observe, as we have
just observed, that these designations are not carefully preserved in
their
allusions to the Trinity by the writers of the New Testament at large, but
are characteristic only of Our Lord's allusions and those of John, whose
modes of speech in general very closely resemble those of Our Lord. Our
confidence is still further shaken when we observe that the implications
with respect to the mutual relations of the Trinitarian Persons, which are
ordinarily derived from these designations, do not so certainly lie in
them
as is commonly supposed.
It may be very natural to see in the designation 'Son' an intimation of
subordination and derivation of Being, and it may not be difficult to
ascribe a similar connotation to the term 'Spirit.' But it is quite
certain
that this was not the denotation of either term in the Semitic
consciousness, which underlies the phraseology of Scripture; and it may
even
be thought doubtful whether it was included even in their remoter
suggestions. What underlies the conception of son****p in Scriptural speech
is just 'likeness'; whatever the father is that the son is also. The
emphatic application of the term 'Son' to one of the Trinitarian Persons,
accordingly, asserts rather His equality with the Father than His
subordination to the Father; and if there is any implication of derivation
in it, it would appear to be very distant. The adjunction of the adjective
'only begotten' (Jn. i. 14; iii. 16-18; I Jn. iv. 9) need add only the
idea
of uniqueness, not of derivation (Ps. xxii. 20; xxv. 16; xxxv. 17; Wisd.
vii. 22 m.); and even such a phrase as 'God only begotten' (Jn. i. 18 m.)
may contain no implication of derivation, but only of absolutely unique
consubstantiality; as also such a phrase as 'the first-begotten of all
creation' (Col. i. 15) may convey no intimation of coming into being, but
merely assert priority of existence. In like manner, the designation
'Spirit
of God' or 'Spirit of Jehovah,' which meets us frequently in the Old
Testament, certainly does not convey the idea there either of derivation
or
of subordination, but is just the executive name of God --- the
designation
of God from the point of view of His activity - and im****ts accordingly
identity with God; and there is no reason to suppose that, in passing from
the Old Testament to the New Testament, the term has taken on an
essentially
different meaning. It happens, oddly enough, moreover, that we have in the
New Testament itself what amounts almost to formal definitions of the two
terms 'Son' and 'Spirit,' and in both cases the stress is laid on the
notion
of equality or sameness. In Jn. v.18 we read: 'On this account, therefore,
the Jews sought the more to kill him, because, not only did he break the
Sabbath, but also called God his own Father, making himself equal to God.'
The point lies, of course, in the adjective 'own.' Jesus was, rightly,
understood to call God 'his own Father,' that is, to use the terms
'Father'
and 'Son' not in a merely figurative sense, as when Israel was called
God's
son, but in the real sense. And this was understood to be claiming to be
all
that God is. To be the Son of God in any sense was to be like God in that
sense; to be God's own Son was to be exactly like God, to be 'equal with
God.' Similarly, we read in I Cor. ii. 10,11:' For the Spirit searcheth
all
things, yea, the deep things of God. For who of men knoweth the things of
a
man, save the spirit of man which is in him? Even so the things of God
none
knoweth, save the Spirit of God.' Here the Spirit appears as the substrate
of the Divine self-consciousness, the principle of God's knowledge of
Himself: He is, in a word, just God Himself in the innermost essence of
His
Being. As the spirit of man is the seat of human life, the very life of
man
itself, so the Spirit of God is His very life-element. How can He be
supposed, then, to be subordinate to God, or to derive His Being from God?
If, however, the subordination of the Son and Spirit to the Father in
modes
of subsistence and their derivation from the Father are not implicates of
tbeir designation as Son and Spirit, it will be hard to find in the New
Testament compelling evidence of their subordination and derivation.
There is, of course, no question that in 'modes of operation,' as it is
technically called - that is to say, in the functions ascribed to the
several Persons of the Trinity in the redemptive process, and, more
broadly,
in the entire dealing of God with the world - the principle of
subordination
is clearly expressed. The Father is first, the Son is second, and the
Spirit
is third, in the operations of God as revealed to us in general, and very
especially in those operations by which redemption is accomplished.
Whatever
the Father does, He does through the Son (Rom. ii. 16; iii. 22;v. 1,11,
17,
21; Eph. i.5; I Thess. v.9; Tit. iii. v) by the Spirit. The Son is sent by
the Father and does His Father's will (Jn. vi. 38); the Spirit is sent by
the Son and does not speak from Himself, but only takes of Christ's and
shows it unto His people (Jn. xvii. 7 ff.); and we have Our Lord's own
word
for it that 'one that is sent is not greater than he that sent him' (Jn.
xiii. 16). In crisp decisiveness, Our Lord even declares, indeed: 'My
Father
is greater than I' (Jn. xiv. 28); and Paul tells us that Christ is God's,
even as we are Christ's (I Cor. iii. 23), and that as Christ is 'the head
of
every man,' so God is 'the head of Christ' (I Cor. xi. 3). But it is not
so
clear that the principle of subordination rules also in 'modes of
subsistence,' as it is technically phrased; that is to say, in the
necessary
relation of the Persons of the Trinity to one another. The very richness
and
variety of the expression of their subordination, the one to the other, in
modes of operation, create a difficulty in attaining certainty whether
they
are represented as also subordinate the one to the other in modes of
subsistence. Question is raised in each ease of apparent intimation of
subordination in modes of subsistence, whether it may not, after all, be
explicable as only another expression of subordination in modes of
operation. It may be natural to assume that a subordination in modes of
operation rests on a subordination in modes of subsistence; that the
reason
why it is the Father that sends the Son and the Son that sends the Spirit
is
that the Son is subordinate to the Father, and the Spirit to the Son. But
we
are bound to bear in mind that these relations of subordination in modes
of
operation may just as well be due to a convention, an agreement, between
the
Persons of the Trinity - a 'Covenant' as it is technically called - by
virtue of which a distinct function in the work of redemption is
voluntarily
assumed by each. It is eminently desirable, therefore, at the least, that
some definite evidence of subordination in modes of subsistence should be
discoverable before it is assumed. In the case of the relation of the Son
to
the Father, there is the added difficulty of the incarnation, in which the
Son, by the assumption of a creaturely nature into union with Himself,
enters into new relations with the Father of a definitely subordinate
character. Question has even been raised whether the very designations of
Father and Son may not be expressive of these new relations, and therefore
without significance with respect to the eternal relations of the Persons
so
designated. This question must certainly be answered in the negative.
Although, no doubt, in many of the instances in which the terms 'Father'
and
'Son' occur, it would be possible to take them of merely economical
relations, there ever remain some which are intractable to this treatment,
and we may be sure that 'Father' and 'Son' are applied to their eternal
and
necessary relations. But these terms, as we have seen, do not appear to
imply relations of first and second, superiority and subordination, in
modes
of subsistence; and the fact of the humiliation of the Son of God for His
earthly work does introduce a factor into the interpretation of the
passages
which im****t His subordination to the Father, which throws doubt upon the
inference from them of an eternal relation of subordination in the Trinity
itself. It must at least be said that in the presence of the great New
Testament doctrines of the Covenant of Redemption on the one hand, and of
the Humiliation of the Son of God for His work's sake and of the Two
Natures
in the constitution of His Person as incarnated, on the other, the
difficulty of interpreting subordinationist passages of eternal relations
between the Father and Son becomes extreme. The question continually
obtrudes itself, whether they do not rather find their full explanation in
the facts embodied in the doctrines of the Covenant, the Humiliation of
Christ, and the Two Natures of His incarnated Person. Certainly in such
circumstances it were thoroughly illegitimate to press such passages to
suggest any subordination for the Son or the Spirit which would in any
manner impair that complete identity with the Father in Being and that
complete equality with the Father in powers which are constantly
presupposed, and frequently emphatically, though only incidentally,
asserted
for them throughout the whole fabric of the New Testament.
The Trinity of the Persons of the Godhead, shown in the incarnation and
the
redemptive work of God the Son, and the descent and saving work of God the
Spirit, is thus everywhere assumed in the New Testament, and comes to
repeated fragmentary but none the less emphatic and illuminating
expression
in its pages. As the roots of its revelation are set in the threefold
Divine
causality of the saving process, it naturally finds an echo also in the
consciousness of everyone who has experienced this salvation. Every
redeemed
soul, knowing himself reconciled with God through His Son, and quickened
into newness of life by His Spirit, turns alike to Father, Son and Spirit
with the exclamation of reverent gratitude upon his lips, 'My Lord and my
God!' If he could not construct the doctrine of the Trinity out of his
consciousness of salvation, yet the elements of his consciousness of
salvation are interpreted to him and reduced to order only by the doctrine
of the Trinity which he finds underlying and giving their significance and
consistency to the teaching of the Scriptures as to the processes of
salvation. By means of this doctrine he is able to think clearly and
consequently of his threefold relation to the saving God, experienced by
Him
as Fatherly love sending a Redeemer, as redeeming love executing
redemption,
as saving love applying redemption: all manifestations in distinct methods
and by distinct agencies of the one seeking and saving love of God.
Without
the doctrine of the Trinity, his conscious Christian life would be thrown
into confusion and left in disorganization if not, indeed, given an air of
unreality; with the doctrine of the Trinity, order, significance and
reality
are brought to every element of it. Accordingly, the doctrine of the
Trinity
and the doctrine of redemption, historically, stand or fall together. A
Unitarian theology is commonly associated with a Pelagian anthropology and
a
Socinian soteriology. It is a striking testimony which is borne by F. E.
Koenig ('Offenbarungsbegriff des AT,' 1882, 1,125):: J have learned that
many cast off the whole history of redemption for no other reason than
because they have not attained to a conception of the Triune God.' It is
in
this intimacy of relation between the doctrines of the Trinity and
redemption that the ultimate reason lies why the Christian church could
not
rest until it had attained a definite and well-compacted doctrine of the
Trinity. Nothing else could be accepted as an adequate foundation for the
experience of the Christian salvation. Neither the Sabellian nor the Arian
construction could meet and satisfy the data of the consciousness of
salvation, any more than either could meet and satisfy the data of the
Scriptural revelation. The data of the Scriptural revelation might, to be
sure, have been left unsatisfied: men might have found a modus vivendi
with
neglected, or even with perverted Scriptural teaching. But perverted or
neglected elements of Christian experience are more clamant in their
demands
for attention and correction. The dissatisfied Christian consciousness
necessarily searched the Scriptures, on the emergence of every new attempt
to state the doctrine of the nature and relations of God, to see whether
these things were true, and never reached contentment until the Scriptural
data were given their consistent formulation in a valid doctrine of the
Trinity. Here too the heart of man was restless until it found its rest in
the Triune God, the author, procurer and applier of salvation.
The determining impulse to the formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity
in
the church was the church's profound conviction of the absolute Deity of
Christ, on which as on a pivot the whole Christian conception of God from
the first origins of Christianity turned. The guiding principle in the
formulation of the doctrine was supplied by the Baptismal Formula
announced
by Jesus (Mt. xxviii. 19), from which was derived the ground-plan of the
baptismal confessions and 'rules of faith' which very soon began to be
framed all over the church. It was by these two fundamental principia ---
the true Deity of Christ and the Baptismal Formula --- that all attempts
to
formulate the Christian doctrine of God were tested, and by their molding
power that the church at length found itself in possession of a form of
statement which did full justice to the data of the redemptive revelation
as
reflected in the New Testament and the demands of the Christian heart
under
the experience of salvation.
In the nature of the case the formulated doctrine was of slow attainment.
The influence of inherited conceptions and of current philosophies
inevitably showed itself in the efforts to construe to the intellect the
immanent faith of Christians. In the second century the dominant neo-Stoic
and neo-Platonic ideas deflected Christian thought into subordinationist
channels, and produced what is known as the Logos-Christology, which looks
upon the Son as a prolation of Deity reduced to such dimensions as
com****ted
with relations with a world of time and space; meanwhile, to a great
extent,
the Spirit was neglected altogether. A reaction which, under the name of
Monarchianism, identified the Father, Son, and Spirit so completely that
they were thought of only as different aspects or different moments in the
life of the one Divine Person, called now Father, now Son, now Spirit, as
His several activities came successively into view, almost succeeded in
establi****ng itself in the third century as the doctrine of the church at
large. In the conflict between these two opposite tendencies the church
gradually found its way, under the guidance of the Baptismal Formula
elaborated into a 'Rule of Faith,' to a better and more well-balanced
conception, until a real doctrine of the Trinity at length came to
expression, particularly in the West, through the brilliant dialectic of
Tertullian. It was thus ready at hand, when, in the early years of the
fourth century, the Logos-Christology, in opposition to dominant Sabellian
tendencies, ran to seed in what is known as Arianism, to which the Son was
a
creature, though exalted above all other creatures as their Creator and
Lord; and the church was thus prepared to assert its settled faith in a
Triune God, one in being, but in whose unity there subsisted three
consubstantial Persons. Under the leader****p of Athanasius this doctrine
was
proclaimed as the faith of the church at the Council of Nice in 325 A.D.,
and by his strenuous labors and those of 'the three great Cappadocians,'
the
two Gregories and Basil, it gradually won its way to the actual acceptance
of the entire church. It was at the hands of Augustine, however, a century
later, that the doctrine thus become the church doctrine in fact as well
as
in theory, received its most complete elaboration and most carefully
grounded statement. In the form which he gave it, and which is embodied in
that 'battle-hymn of the early church,' the so-called Athanasian Creed, it
has retained its place as the fit expression of the faith of the church as
to the nature of its God until today. The language in which it is couched,
even in this final declaration, still retains elements of speech which owe
their origin to the modes of thought characteristic of the Logos
Christology
of the second century, fixed in the nomenclature of the church by the
Nicene
Creed of 325 A.D., though carefully guarded there against the
subordinationism inherent in the Logos-Christology, and made the vehicle
rather of the Nicene doctrines of the eternal generation of the Son and
procession of the Spirit, with the consequent subordination of the Son and
Spirit to the Father in modes of subsistence as well as of operation. In
the
Athanasian Creed, however, the principle of the equalization of the three
Persons, which was already the dominant motive of the Nicene Creed - the
homoousia - is so strongly emphasized as practically to push out of sight,
if not quite out of existence, these remanent suggestions of derivation
and
subordination. It has been found necessary, nevertheless, from time to
time,
vigorously to reassert the principle of equalization, over against a
tendency unduly to emphasize the elements of subordinationism which still
hold a place thus in the traditional language in which the church states
its
doctrine of the Trinity. In particular, it fell to Calvin, in the
interests
of the true Deity of Christ - the constant motive of the whole body of
Trinitarian thought - to reassert and make good the attribute of
self-existence (autotheotos) for the Son. Thus Calvin takes his place,
alongside of Tertullian, Athanasius and Augustine, as one of the chief
contributors to the exact and vital statement of the Christian doctrine of
the Triune God.
|
