Lord in this passage, affirm his subordination, and deny his equality
with the infinite Father. At the very moment when he is addressed as
God, he is said to have _fellows_, and to be set above them as a reward
for his goodness; in the same breath which declares his throne to be for
ever and ever, he is described as having a God who anoints him with the
oil of gladness. He is greater than the angels, not by nature, but by
the gift of a better inheritance. He is not the original divine
effulgence, but an _emanation_ of that glory, an _image_ of that
perfection; and in constituting the worlds, or rather the great æras of
its appointed history, he is not the designer of its revolutions, but
the instrument of God in effecting them.[198] If this teaches the
supreme Deity of Christ, in what language is it possible to disclaim and
to deny supremacy?
With respect to the peculiar terms of dignity applied in this passage to
Christ, I would observe as follows:—
The words “Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever,” were originally
addressed by a poetical courtier to Solomon or some other Hebrew
monarch, on his accession and marriage;[199] nor can the slightest
reason be assigned for supposing that the ode in which the words occur
had any reference more remote than the immediate occasion of its
composition. The first half of the Psalm[200] is addressed to the
prince; the remainder to his bride,[201] who is exhorted to give her
undivided affection to the new relation which she has formed; to “forget
her own people, and the house of her father;” and who is consoled with
the hope, that “instead of her fathers she shall have her sons, whom she
shall make princes through all the land.” Those who can satisfy
themselves with the theological conceit, that this is a prophetic
allegory, descriptive of the relation between Christ and his Church,
appear to have placed themselves so far beyond the reach of all the
rules of interpretation, that argument becomes fruitless; _no possible
media of refutation exist_. They must belong to the class who have
succeeded in spiritualizing the Song of Solomon; to whom therefore it
has ceased to be a matter of the smallest consequence, _what words_ are
presented to them in Scripture, as they have attained the faculty of
seeing one set of ideas, wherever they look, and an incapacity to see
anything else. Bishop Young, convinced that the prophetic claims of this
Psalm must be relinquished, and that the term _God_ in it is addressed
merely to the Hebrew monarch, and therefore used in an inferior sense,
renders the passage thus; “thy throne O mighty prince, is for ever and
ever.”[202] And surely, even those who can persuade themselves that
scripture can have two intended meanings, and who imagine the poem in
question to have referred primarily to Solomon, and remotely to the
Messiah, must perceive that a word by which the Jewish prince might be
accosted, cannot imply the supreme deity of Christ. Christ is said, in
the common translation, to have made the worlds; but it is generally
admitted that the phrase does not denote the construction of the
material universe, and is even incapable of bearing this meaning. It
describes Jesus as the agent of God in bringing about the successive
states of our social world; in introducing the preluding revolutions,
and the final catastrophe of human affairs. If it be asked, _what ages,
what revolutions_, are thus attributed to the instrumentality of Christ?
the answer must be sought in the fact, that the author was a Hebrew,
writing to Hebrews. He seized on the grand Jewish division of time and
Providence into two portions—the period before, and the period after,
the coming of the Messiah; and these were the two AGES, frequently
called “the present world,” and “the world to come,” which Christ is
said to have constituted. Does any one inquire, in what way our Lord, if
he were not at least pre-existent, could administer the arrangements of
Providence in the former of these periods, that is, before his own
mission to mankind? I submit, in answer, a suggestion which seems to me
essential to the clear understanding of all the Christian records, and
especially of those which relate to the years after the ascension. The
advent of the Messiah was represented, _during those years, not as
past_, but as _still future_;[203] they were regarded as the close of
the old and earthly epoch, not the commencement of the new and heavenly;
so that all that Jesus of Nazareth had already done, the mighty changes
which he had set in operation,—were an action upon the _former_ of the
two great ages; nor _would the latter be introduced till he returned
from heaven_; to rule, for a period vast or even indefinite, as the
personal vicegerent of God over his faithful children here. This event,
which in our own days Millenarians are expecting soon, and which the
early Christians expected sooner, was regarded as the true coming of the
Messiah—the point of demarcation between the ages—the introduction of
“the new heaven and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.”[204]
Meanwhile the old world was drawing to a close, of which a warning (like
that given to Noah before the flood)[205] had been given by the
preliminary visit, with unmistakable credentials, of him who was to be
the Messiah; he had come in the flesh, and retired in the spirit; and
was leaving time for the tidings of his appointment and his approach to
spread, by the voice of witnesses and preachers who published the
pledges of his power. Of those pledges, which marked him out as the
future prince of life and earth, none were so distinguished as his
resurrection and ascension, by which God had given assurance that he
would one day judge or rule the world in righteousness;[206] by which he
was declared to be the son of God with power;[207] and on the very day
of which he became the first-born or the begotten child of God;[208] and
sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high.[209] Invested with
his office, he yet abstained from immediately coming to claim its
prerogatives; he continued sequestered in the heavens, allowing to the
world a time of preparation, a solemn pause before judgment;[210]
repressing the impatient moment of the great revolution, and by his
powerful word, bearing a while and upholding all things as they
are.[211] If this were really the conception of the apostles, it
follows, no doubt, that they prematurely expected the return of their
Lord; but that they did so, is no new assumption; and in adopting it I
protect myself by the authority of Mr. Locke, who says in a note on a
passage of the Epistle to the Romans, “It seems, by these two verses, as
if St. Paul looked upon Christ’s coming as not far off; to which there
are several other occurrent passages in his epistles.”[212]
If the foregoing interpretation of the introduction to this epistle be
true, it follows that all the power and dignity there ascribed to Christ
are described as _acquisition after his ascension_; that not till then
was he accosted with the title of divinity previously applied to
Solomon; not till then did he become greater than the angels, or receive
an anointment of gladness above his fellows; not till then did he
receive his heirship, his filiation, his vicegerency of God. Of his
supreme Deity scarcely could any more emphatic denial be conceived.[213]
(f.) The following passage is sometimes quoted as affirmative of the
Deity of Christ: “We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us
an understanding, that we may know him that is true; and we are in him
that is true, in (or by) his Son Jesus Christ. _This_ is _the true God_,
and eternal life.”[214] But it is surely evident that with Calvin,
Newcome, Dr. Adam Clarke,[215] we must consider the concluding pair of
epithets as parallel respectively with the two penultimates. “By him
that is true,” says the Apostle, “I mean the true God,” “and this Jesus
Christ is eternal life.”[216] As to the pretence of over-nice
grammarians, that the pronoun “_this_” must refer to Jesus Christ as the
nearest antecedent, the Apostle John himself dismisses it with this one
sentence: “Many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not
that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. _This_ (not Jesus Christ, it is
to be presumed) is a deceiver and an antichrist.”[217] The antecedent,
in this case, is not only _remote_, but _plural_.
(g.) I know of only one other set of passages requiring explanation from
a Unitarian; and of these I take the following as an example; giving,
you will observe, a translation slightly differing from the authorized
version, but to which no competent judge will probably object:—“Let this
mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus; who, being in the form
of God, never thought his equality with God a thing to be eagerly
retained; but divested himself of it, and took on him the form of a
servant, and assumed the likeness of men; and being in the common
condition of man, still humbled himself, and became obedient unto death,
aye, and the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted
him &c.”[218] Elsewhere Paul briefly expresses this sentiment thus:
being rich, for your sakes he became poor.[219]
Now, in order to appreciate the striking beauty of this passage, it is
necessary to remember that the Apostle is writing to _Gentiles_; and to
enter into his remarkable conception respecting the relation of the
Messiah to them. This great object of promise was, according to the
original idea of him, a mere national appropriation of the Jews; made
their own by birth and lineage as well as by office. So long as these
peculiarities belonged to him, _he could not_, without breaking through
all the restraints of the sacred Mosaic law, stand in any friendly
connection with the Gentiles; nor did our Lord, during his mortal life,
ever extend his ministry beyond his native land. Moreover, there was
nothing, Paul conceived, to prevent his realizing at once, had he willed
it, all the splendid anticipations of the Hebrews; nothing to obstruct
his seizing, from the hills of Galilee, or the heights of Jerusalem, the
promised royal sceptre, and making himself, without delay, the Lord of
all below; nothing but his holy resolve to be no mere Jewish Messiah,
and his desire to embrace the Gentiles, too, within the blessings of his
sway. And how could this be accomplished? _Never_, so long as the
personal characteristics of the Israelite attached to him. He determined
then to lay these aside, which could be done by death alone. On the
cross, or in the ascension, he parted from the coil of mortality, in
which were enveloped all the distinctions that made him national rather
than human; the lineage, the blood, the locality, the alliance, passed
away; the immortal spirit alone remained, and departed to the rest of
God; and this his soul was not Hebrew, but was human; and so his
relations expanded, and the princely Son of David became, through death,
the divine Messiah of humanity. Writing then to Gentiles, the Apostle
reminds them of this; tells them of what attainable splendours Jesus had
deprived himself, what rightful glories he had resigned, what anguish he
had endured, to what death he had submitted, in order to drop his mortal
peculiarities which had excluded the nations from the peace of his
dominion, and to assume that spiritual state to which they might stand
related. It was not his Godhead, not the application of his miracles to
his personal advantage, but the dignities of the Prince of Israel, the
prerogatives and triumphs of God’s vicegerent, of which he emptied
himself, and for the Gentiles’ sakes became poor. He whose office made
him as God, became, by his pure will, a servant; he who, without the
slightest strain of his rights, might have assumed an equivalence to
Providence on earth, and administered at once the promised theocracy of
heaven, was in no eager haste to seize the privilege; but, that he might
call in those who else had been the exile and the outcast people,
entered first the shadow of suffering and shame; he who might have been
exempt from death, took the humiliation of the cross; showing a divine
and self-forgetful love, which disregards his own rights to pity others’
privations; and which gave a resistless force to the exhortation, “Look
not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of
others.”[220]
(h.) In direct contrast with this past humiliation of Christ, is the
present glory and future dominion with which, in the verses immediately
following, the Apostle describes him as invested by the rewarding
complacency of God. And here the passage enters the same class with
three others,[221] of which the introduction of the Epistle to the
Hebrews is one, but the most remarkable is the following: “Christ, ...
who is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of every creature;
for by him were all things created, that are in Heaven and that are in
earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or
principalities, or powers, all things, were created through him and for
him; and he is before all things, and by him all things consist. And he
is the head of the body, the church; who is the beginning, the
first-born from the dead; that in all things he might have pre-eminence;
for it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell.”[222]
Calvin himself warns us that “the circumstances of this place require us
to understand it as spoken,” not of the original formation of the
universe, but “of the renovation which is included in the benefit of
Redemption.”[223] Indeed a very superficial acquaintance with the
phraseology of the Apostle, is sufficient to convince us that the
language which we have here is _very unlike_ that in which he speaks of
the construction of the material system of things and _very like_ that
in which he describes the regeneration of the world by the faith of
Christ. Describing the natural creation, he makes no such strange
selection of objects as thrones, principalities, dominions, powers, with
unintelligible avoidance of everything palpable: but says plainly, “The
living God, who made Heaven and earth, and the sea, and all things that
are in them.”[224] And characterizing, on the other hand, the effects of
the Gospel, he says, “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus
unto good works;”[225] and “If any man be in Christ, he is a new
creature; the old things have passed away, behold all things have become
new.”[226] Nor does the language of this passage appear so violently
figurative as commentators have usually supposed. Apply to it the
Apostle’s conception respecting the return of his Lord from Heaven, to
reign visibly upon earth, over a community holy and immortal, and the
obscurity will no longer be felt. That advent, introducing the future
age or world to come, would be attended by a revolution which could be
called no less than a “new creation.” No term less emphatic would
adequately describe the superseding of all existing arrangements, the
extinction of earthly rule, authority, and power;[227] the recal to
earth of the spirits of the just;[228] the immortalizing of the saints
who had not slept;[229] the gathering together the whole family of the
holy in Heaven or earth;[230] the everlasting destruction of the
faithless from the presence of the Lord, and the glory of his
power;[231] the bowing of every knee before the Prince of Life;[232] the
opening of the kingdom that cannot be moved;[233] and the award of
recompense to those who, having suffered, should reign with him.[234]
Already were the elements of this blessed society drawing themselves
together, some in Heaven, others upon earth; the investiture with
immortality had commenced. Christ was the beginning, the first-born from
the dead: and the departed saints sharing his heavenly rest, and ready
for the Lord to bring with him;[235] the afflicted Church below, in
earnest expectation of the manifestation of those Sons of God, and
though waiting for the redemption of the body, yet risen together with
Christ to that spiritual mind which is life and peace;[236] all these
were kept by the power of God unto the salvation, which was ready to be
revealed in the last time.[237] The multitude of the holy was thronging
in, showing that no scant dominion was forming; but that it pleased the
Father that, in his vicegerent, all fulness should dwell, and whatever
is perfect be united. Lifted above the hostile reach of human might and
dominion, above all mean comparison with earthly names of dignity, he
sees all things already beneath his feet in the world as it is, and all
things prospectively submissive in the world as it is to be.[238] Nor
was Jesus, in his retirement above, unoccupied with the glories of his
commission, or indifferent to the recompense of his followers; rather is
he preparing and allotting to the glorified there, and the toiling here,
the privileges and powers of the everlasting age which shall take place
of the thrones and principalities of this. Over both portions of the
community of Saints, the seen and the unseen, the Heavenly and the
earthly, he is the living head, and his spirit filleth all.[239]
This vision of the Advent, with all the magnificent ideas which gathered
round it, seems to me to have given rise to the glorious “rapture” of
this passage; to have thrown in, at first, its light and darkness, and
when applied now to its interpretation, to disclose the dim outline of
its plan. And though, in form, the anticipation itself was at least
premature, in spirit it receives, in the providence of the Gospel, one
prolonged fulfilment; and many of its accompanying conceptions realize
themselves perpetually. Though as yet Christ comes not back to us, yet
do the faithful go to him, and there, not here, are for ever with the
Lord. Though with no visible sway he dwells on earth, he more and more
rules it from afar; wins and blesses the hearts of its people, bends
their wills, sends his image to be their conscience; and long has he had
a might and name among us, far above our principalities and powers, and
made the cross superior to the crown. And who can deny that he hath
united in one the family in heaven and earth, compelled death to fasten
innumerable ties of love between the kindred spheres, and trained our
rejoicing sympathies to see in creation but one society of the good,
whether they toil in service and exile here, or have joined the colony
above of the emancipated sons of God.
What then is the result of our inquiry into the scriptural use of the
word God? That it is once applied, by way of transference, to Christ, in
a passage of whose honours Solomon was the first proprietor. The views
of the writer, and the purpose of his letter, might make this secondary
application of the Hebrew poem right and useful. But now, how miserably
barren must be that religion, how unspeakably poor that appreciation of
Christ, which thinks to glorify him, by throwing around him the cast-off
dignities of a Jewish prince! All these convulsive efforts to lift up
the rank of Jesus, do but turn men from that greatness in him which is
truly divine. And after all they utterly fail—except in turning into
caricature the image of perfect holiness, and into a riddle the
statement of the grandest truths: for the scanty evidence will not bear
the strain that is put upon it. Nothing short of centuries of
indoctrination could empower so small a testimony to sustain so enormous
a scheme, and enable ecclesiastics, by sleight of words, to metamorphose
the simplicity of the Bible into the contradictions of the Athanasian
creed.
Our remaining criteria may be very briefly applied.
(3.) Our next demand from a Trinitarian Bible is this; that as there are
three persons equally entitled to the name of God, that word must never
be _limited_ to One of these, to the exclusion of the other two.
Yet do the Scriptures repeatedly restrict this title to the Father so
positively, that no more emphatic language remains, by which it would be
possible to exclude all other persons from the Godhead. If the texts we
shall adduce of this class _do not_ teach the personal unity of God, let
it be stated what terms _would_ teach it; or whether we are to consider
it as a doctrine incapable of being revealed at all, however true in
itself. Meanwhile, I would ask, whether the most skilful logician could
propose a form of speech, closing the Godhead against all but the
Father, more absolutely than these passages; “There is but One God, the
FATHER.”[240] “FATHER! ... this is life eternal, to know THEE THE ONLY
TRUE GOD, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.”[241] “The _true
worshippers_ shall worship THE FATHER in spirit and in truth; the Father
seeketh such to worship him; GOD is a spirit, and they that worship him
must worship him in spirit and in truth.”[242] “There is ONE GOD AND
FATHER OF ALL.”[243]
If such passages as these do not deny the Deity of all persons but One,
it must be because the word “Father” is used in them to denote the whole
Trinity; and if this be so, then this name ceases to be distinctive of
the first person in the Godhead; no discriminative title of that person
remains; it becomes impossible for language to characterize him; and the
whole mechanism of speech, by which alone a verbal revelation could
disclose the distinctions in the divine nature, vanishes away. You must
either confess absence of the distinctions themselves, or show the
presence of distinctive names.
(4.) Our next demand from a Trinitarian Bible would be this; that when
the _persons_ are named, by their distinctive Divine titles, their
equality will be recognized, nor any one of them be represented as
subordinate to another.