I ask you distinctly to bear in mind. He admits the Unity of God; and he
admits that when he attempts to combine that Unity with a Trinity, he
uses the word in an unintelligible sense, and understands, or rather
_marks_, by it something entirely different from the oneness of any
other being,—a oneness in short of which he himself is capable of
forming no conception. That is, he retains the form of _words_ that God
is one; but these words convey to him no distinct idea,—and yet words
are the signs of human ideas;—he confesses that God is not one in any
sense of that word that he can comprehend; and that, therefore, when he
professes his faith in the Unity of God, he is using language which is
unintelligible even to himself. This he must acknowledge, for he calls
the Trinity a mystery; but the mystery he will admit is in the Unity,
not in the Trinity: the mystery (that is, the no-meaningness to man, for
this is the only meaning the word will here bear, the difficulty being
not in the vastness or spirituality of the Conceptions, but in their
irreconcilableness,) is not that there are three Persons, but that the
three are _one_. Now this is the confession of every Trinitarian: he can
form very distinct notions of the Trinity, but he admits that he cannot
reconcile these notions with any human idea of unity; it is
unintelligible, it is inconceivable, it is an apparent contradiction to
all other men, to him only a paradox; it is an unfathomable mystery (a
sad desecration of that solemn word); but still he professes to believe
it,—he maintains that he can hold “the form of sound words;” and as to
_thoughts_, it is his duty to have none upon the subject. He _knows_
that it is revealed that God is One; and he _thinks_ it is revealed that
God is in Three; and without any attempt to harmonize these two
statements, he professes to believe them both.
Now taking our stand on the conceded truth that God is _revealed_ to be
one, we ask for equal evidence that He is revealed to be Three Persons.
We ask throughout the Bible for one plain assertion of this doctrine. We
shall be satisfied with even one, and we think it is not asking much. We
ask but for a single text in which it is declared that there are three
infinite Minds in the Unity of but one infinite God.
It is admitted that there is no distinct statement of this doctrine in
any part of the Scriptures; and here again we rest upon another
confession of all instructed Trinitarians,[512] that this mystery is
nowhere found in express terms; that if taught at all it is taught by
implication; that it is no part of the direct revelation, but merely an
inference which may be collected from certain appearances, certain
verbal phenomena. Now I ask if this doctrine was intended to be
revealed, _could it have been so left_? If the Trinity is as strictly
true as the Unity, could the one have had the witness of Prophets and
Apostles, and shine forth as the clearest light on the revealed page,
whilst the other was left to be gathered from some obscure and
incidental intimations which the most gifted minds have not been able to
perceive? Is it credible that if the Father, and the Son, and the Holy
Spirit, were three Persons in one God, there should be _nowhere in the
Bible a single_ _statement of that truth_;[513] and ought not this
extraordinary fact make us very cautious to try the soundness of the
_inferences, human and erring modes of reasoning_, upon which, as upon
its foundation, this stupendous doctrine is laid?
There are two passages in the Bible, and only two, in which God, and
Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit are mentioned together. It is recorded
in St. Matthew’s Gospel as the last words of the risen Jesus, that he
ascended to his Father, leaving to the world the legacy of his truth—“Go
ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name (properly
into the name) of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost”—baptizing them into a belief of God, and of Christ, and of the
power and comfort of the Holy Spirit accompanying the truth, and
witnessing to it in the hearts of all who receive it purely.[514] The
Apostle declares of the Jews that they were baptized into Moses, and the
Evangelist declares of Christians that they were baptized into Christ,
(see also Rom. vi. 3; Gal. iii. 27,) and the plain meaning of such
language is that they were baptized into the Truth which God had
revealed through Moses and through Christ. What support then is there
here for the doctrine of a Trinity? Is this indeed the strongest
scriptural evidence that Trinitarianism can boast of—that because three
distinctions follow one another—God, and his Prophet, and his Spirit
witnessing to his truth in the hearts and before the eyes of His
children—therefore the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God in communication
with man, must be a person, distinct from God, because the other two
words express persons—and therefore these three are co-equal and are
one. Such is the Interpretation that produces Trinitarianism. Is there a
single hint in this passage of three persons in one God? What can be
made out of it more than the Saviour’s last injunction to his followers,
to carry through the world that glorious and sanctifying truth, which
the one God manifested through his well-beloved Son, and accompanied
with the energy of his spirit. The Holy Spirit is a Scripture expression
for _God in communication with man_, naturally or supernaturally.
The _only other_ passage in which Jesus Christ, and God, and the Holy
Spirit, are mentioned in the same sentence, must receive a precisely
similar explanation. St. Paul concludes the Second Epistle to the
Corinthians in these words—“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the
love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all.” Now
what is this but a beautiful and affectionate prayer that the
Corinthians might be partakers of the grace of God that was in Jesus
Christ, of the love of their Heavenly Father, and of the gifts and
influences of his holy spirit? Indeed this passage, like all others
brought to prove the Trinity, is of itself quite sufficient to overthrow
that doctrine. The name God in it, is not applied to Jesus Christ nor to
the holy spirit: and to prove that holy spirit does not mean a person,
but the spiritual energies of God in communication with man, the word
_communion_ is used:—a participation or communion of _a person_ is
without meaning—a communion in holy and heavenly influences is beautiful
and everlasting truth. Such are the only pretences that Trinitarianism
puts forth, that it is openly taught in Scripture! We ask for no other
passages scripturally to disprove the doctrine.
Let us now attend to that _inferential_ reasoning by which it is
attempted to be proved that Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are united
with the Father, to form three persons in one God. There are some texts
in which divine attributes are supposed to be ascribed to Jesus, and the
same mode of reasoning being applied to the Holy Spirit, _it is
inferred_ that Christ is God, and that the Holy Spirit is God—and that
to preserve the consistency of Scripture, it is necessary to maintain
both that God is One, and that God is Three. Now I ask, does not this
look like a seeking of evidence for the doctrine _after_ Ecclesiastical
History had introduced it, under the influences and motives already
described, rather than like the natural way in which such a doctrine
would break from Revelation itself upon the notice of the world? Had not
the doctrine its true origin in human and worldly influences, and then
was not an origin sought for it in the Orientalisms of Scripture
language? This then is the method of _reasoning_ by which this doctrine,
so vast, so awful, if it be true, is attempted to be proved; and upon
the soundness of this _inferential_ process does Trinitarianism depend.
So that Orthodoxy after all its sneers against the pride of Human
Reason, depends for its own life upon the correctness of human
reasonings,—and then erects the results of this _process of fallible
reasoning_ into the Essentials of Salvation.
There are several passages in which Christ is supposed to be called God,
though there is not, I think, one clear instance of such an application
of the word; and even if there was, we have Christ’s own interpretation
of the only sense in which such language could be applied to him. “Jesus
answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said ye are gods? if he
called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the Scripture
cannot be broken; say ye of him whom the Father hath sanctified and sent
into the world, ‘Thou blasphemest;’ because I said I am the Son of
God?”[515]
There are only two passages in the whole gospels, in which the title has
ever been supposed to be given to Christ, and these both occurring in
the same gospel, so that three of the gospels never were even supposed
to have a trace of such language. One of these passages in the Proem of
St. John’s Gospel has already been explained in the course of the
present Controversy, and the other is the expression of Thomas, who, the
moment before he made the exclamation, knew so little of Christ and of
Christianity that he would not believe that Jesus was risen from the
dead. It is from the lips of the unbeliever of one moment, and the
inspired of the next, that we are to receive the high mystery of the
Trinity. But in truth the exclamation of Thomas will not bear to be
sobered down into a revelation of doctrines—“My Lord, and my God!” The
first of these clauses was an exclamation of surprise, a sudden and
passionate recognition of Jesus; the second was the natural and
immediate transference (common in cases of supernatural impression, with
all minds, pious or profane,) of the thoughts of Thomas to that awful
and wonder-working God, whose power and presence were so visibly
manifested in the resurrection of his Christ. There is no evidence, in
the remainder of the gospel, or in the book of the Acts, or throughout
the New Testament, that Thomas, or the rest of the Apostles, for a
moment believed that Jesus was God. Now, since this was a doctrine that
they certainly had no conception of, previous to the death of Christ,
there must have been an occasion, when, if true, it broke for _the first
time_ on the astonished minds of the disciples. Now is it possible to
believe that such an occasion could have passed _unmarked_—that no
amazement, no awe would _be expressed_—and that as we follow them in
their course, we should be unable to distinguish between the moments
when they did not, and the moments when they did understand, that the
being with whom they had been living in familiar intercourse was the
everlasting God? Could such a discovery burst upon any human mind, and
that mind manifest no emotion—not a ripple on the current of sentiment
and feeling to show when it was that these disciples first began to know
that they had been the familiar friends of the living God? I confidently
state that the thing is not credible nor possible. The disciples would
not have been human, if such things could be. We know that after the
ascension, as before, they always speak of him as “the _man_ approved by
God, by signs and miracles which God did by him, and whom God raised
from the dead?” Do such things admit of explanation from the known
course of human sentiments and emotions, if Trinitarianism is true? We
think not.
There is another passage in the Gospels supposed to teach the deity of
Christ—and hence so far used as an inferential proof of the doctrine of
the Trinity:—“I and my Father are one.” Beautiful expression of the soul
of Christ, excelled in beauty only by that life which yet more
spiritually declared that He and his Father were one, for “what the Son
seeth the Father do, these also doeth the Son likewise!” Why are we
compelled to examine coldly, or turn an instant from the deep religious
meaning of this perfect filial utterance of the Son of God? It expresses
that harmony of purpose with God which is the result and peace of the
spirit of true religion, and which was perfect in the mind of Jesus,
because in him was perfect the spirit of faith in Providence, of
trustful submission to his Father’s will. “The cup that my Father hath
given me, shall I not drink of it?” Well might _he_ say, and yet how
wondrous it is that any being could say, and yet retain his intense
humanity, “I and my Father are one!” Clear proof of the inspiration of
the Christ! But how the beauty fades away if this very being was God
himself, and all his submission of will is but an artifice of words! How
hard, artificial, and unlovely, does the ever fresh gospel become when
submitted to the tortures of systems, and system-makers! What a
difference in genuine spiritual power on the heart of man between Jesus
living and dying in the peace of _faith_, in the trust that a holy God
will keep the destinies of a holy mind, that his Providence will
recompense the Right—and Jesus not living and dying in the strength of
the _moral_ elements of faith, but actually associated with the
omniscient mind of God, so as to be an inseparable person! Such should
be the difference between the genuine spiritual energy of Unitarian and
Trinitarian representations of Christianity.
Jesus, in the context, explains in what sense he uses this beautiful
expression, “I and my Father are one,” and he there positively denies
that the employment of it implies any claim of equality with God. Let
our Lord be his own interpreter, and let the solemn and affecting words
I am about to quote, silence for ever the vain plea, that this exquisite
expression of the moral sentiment and spirit of Jesus, was intended to
be doctrinal and Trinitarian. If so, there is equal proof for all
Christians being portions of the Godhead. “Neither pray I for these
alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word;
that they all may be one; as thou Father art in me, and I in thee, that
they also may be one in us:—and the glory which thou gavest me I have
given them; _that they may be one, even as we are one_; I in them, and
thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may
know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them as thou hast loved
me.”[516]
The only other passage of any force in which deity is supposed to be
accorded to Jesus,[517] I do not notice here, because it has already
been abundantly examined in the present Controversy.
I would now call your attention to the precise state of the argument so
far as we have advanced in it. We have taken for granted the Unity of
God, which no Christian denies. We have found that the belief of three
persons in one God is not reconcilable with any _human_ conception of
that admitted unity: we have found that there was no _direct_ evidence
in the Bible for the doctrine of the Trinity: and lastly, we have
examined some of the very strongest passages of Scripture, on which that
doctrine is attempted to be established, _through an inferential mode of
reasoning_.
I might stop here then, and without looking at the Scripture evidence
against the doctrine, but only the evidence in its favour, declare that
such a doctrine could not possibly have such an insufficient
publication. The very passages brought forward to sustain it, disprove
it. They all speak of derived powers, and of glory communicated. They
are all in the strain,—“Therefore God, even _his_ God, hath highly
exalted him, and _given_ him a name that is above every name.” Nay, take
that passage, than which there is none in which dominion is more
emphatically ascribed to Christ, and see how it closes:—“and when all
things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be
subject unto him that did put all things under him, that God may be all
in all.”—1 Cor. xv. 28. We shall not, however, treat Trinitarianism so
lightly as to dismiss it, unproved upon its own showing; we shall not
rest satisfied with pointing out the insufficiency of its Scriptural
authority, but bring against it the overpowering force of opposing
Scripture; and as we have given specimens of the biblical evidence for,
advance something of the biblical evidence against, the Trinity.
In the first place, then, this doctrine cannot be true, because there
are some passages in which _it is expressly and plainly_ declared that
the Father alone is the one God, not the Father, _and_ the Son, _and_
the Spirit, but the FATHER. “Father!—this is life eternal, that they
might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast
sent.” “But to us there is but ONE GOD, the FATHER, of whom are all
things, and we in Him, and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all
things, and we by him.”
“There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, One God and Father of all,
who is above all, and through all, and in you all.”
“Of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no not the angels which are
in Heaven; _neither the Son_, but the Father.”
These declarations are surely sufficient to protect Unitarianism from
having no warrant in Scripture. They contain direct, positive, definite
assertions; they assert that there is one God, and that Jesus Christ is
_not_ that God. It is not possible for human language to express more
clearly or more guardedly the simple faith of Unitarian Christianity.
Yet we are told that only the ingenuity of heretics has obliged
Trinitarians to have recourse to unscriptural language. Strange,
certainly, that Holy Writ should have itself expressed the creeds of
heresy and damnable error, and rendered it impossible to express in its
sacred words the Creeds of Truth!
I quote, in the second place, some passages out of a multitude, in which
ideas are connected with Christ which are utterly inconsistent with the
supposition of his deity. “I came not to do mine own will.” “I can of
myself do nothing.” “If I honour myself, my honour is nothing; it is my
Father that honoureth me.”—John viii. 54. “For as the Father hath life
in himself, so hath he _given_ to the Son to have life in himself.”—John
v. 26. “As the living Father hath sent me, and I _live by the
Father_.”—John vi. 57. “I have not spoken of myself, but the Father who
sent me, He gave me a commandment what I should say, and what I should
speak.”—John xii. 49, 50.
“The word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father’s which sent
me.”—John xiv. 24.
“I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your
God.”—John xx. 17.
“When ye have lifted up the Son of man on high, then shall ye know that
I am _he_, and that I do nothing of myself; but as my Father hath taught
me I speak these things”—John viii. 28.
Ecclesiastical History has already acquainted us with the device that
sets aside the plain meaning of these passages. It is said that Jesus
Christ had _two natures_, was composed of two minds, that he was both
man and God; and thus does Trinitarianism openly assert mysteries of an
opposite character. Three Persons in one Essence is unintelligible
enough; but no sooner is this propounded to us, than we are called off
to a directly opposite mystery of two Essences in one Person. And here
we cannot be put off with the metaphysical sophistry that we do not know
the nature of God, for we do know something of the nature of _man_; and
we do say that never was there a greater abuse of the moral meanings of
the word Faith, than to set forth, that God’s nature and man’s nature so
united together as to form one inseparable person, may be embraced as an
object of Faith. The true nature and office of Faith is to carry us from
the seen to the unseen,—to give us moral confidence in that world which
we do not see, from our moral experience in this world which we do
see,—and in that portion of God’s ways which the future conceals, from
what we know of that portion of them which the present unfolds. Faith is
moral, not metaphysical; and, above all, finds no merit and no efficacy
in assenting to unmeaning words.
As before, of the doctrine of the Trinity, so now of this doctrine of
the Hypostatic Union, as it is called, I ask for a single hint
throughout the New Testament of the inconceivable fact that, in the body
of Jesus, resided the mind of God and the mind of man,—two natures, the
one finite, the other infinite, yet making but one person,—a difficulty
you will perceive the very opposite of that of the Trinity; for whereas
it teaches three persons in one nature, this teaches two natures in one
person. But we have already traced, in Ecclesiastical History, the
origin of this view, and the necessity of its appearance, in
subservience to the doctrine of the Trinity.
I will only apply one scriptural test to this theory of the two natures
in Christ. And it is one from which Trinitarians cannot escape by their
ordinary refuge of avoiding one set of statements by referring them to
the humanity of Jesus, and another set of statements by referring them
to his deity. It is God the Son, whom Trinitarians represent as becoming
incarnate in the body of Jesus; it was God the Son who took humanity
into union with deity; therefore whenever Jesus, in his human nature,
speaks of the divinity that dwelt within him, inspired him, and wrought
through him, it must be God the Son to whom he refers. But this is never
the case: Scripture does not know this doctrine, nor support its
requisitions. It is always, “_the Father_ who dwelleth in me, He doeth
the works.”
It was asserted in Christ Church, that if there is not a plurality of
persons in the godhead, the oriental style, “let us make man in our own
image,” and the use of the plural where we use the singular, made the
word of God an agent of deception, and affected the morality of the
divine mind. This is bold language; and, considering the evidence, as
unscholarlike as bold. We refrain from a retort in the same spirit. We
look with unaffected wonder upon the mind that is reckless enough, and
ignorant enough of the sources of error within itself, to dare to say,
“if I am not right in my interpretation of Scripture, God is a
deceiver.” Yet such men can charge others with making themselves judges
of revelation, and saying what God _must_ mean.
I have not taken up that other thread of supposed scriptural
intimations, which is thought to connect the Holy Spirit as a third
Person in the unity of the godhead. This portion of the argument,
strangely neglected by Trinitarians, who generally take for granted the
deity and personality of the Holy Ghost as following without debate from
the deity of Christ, since three not two is the favourite mythological
and theological number, is however to form the subject of a separate
Lecture in Christ Church, not yet delivered. Why there should be any
necessity, on Trinitarian principles of theology, for a third person in
the Godhead to perform “_the work_,” as it is called, of the spirit of
God in communication with man, after the sacrifice of Christ had left
the Father’s love free to operate, we cannot perceive, except upon the
Platonic principle, that the Supreme One in the Trinity is an Essence
perfectly abstracted, immoveable, and without action. Not wishing,
however, to anticipate the argument, I shall only adduce one remarkable
passage, in proof that the Holy Spirit could not, in the first age of
the Gospel, have a deity and personality ascribed to it distinct from
the deity and personality of God the Father. When Paul came to Ephesus,
he found there some disciples, of whom he inquired,—“Have you received
the Holy Ghost since you believed?” The answer is remarkable: “We have
not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost.” Now is it
possible that the Holy Ghost should be the third person of the Trinity,
a constituent person in the Christian God, and that these “believers,”
though only disciples of John, should have been uninstructed in the
doctrine? The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God, God himself in
communication with man, naturally or supernaturally, the enlightening
influence of the Spiritual Father revealing Himself to the spiritual
nature of His children.
I do not know what may appear convincing to other minds, but to me the
Ecclesiastical History of the doctrine of the Trinity, with its rise in
_human_ sources of Philosophy and Motive, and not in Revelation, seems a
fact capable of being most clearly traced. Rarely indeed does the origin
of an error so conspicuously disclose itself: rarely is its course so
open to observation. On the other hand, if there is not decisive proof
in Scripture of the strict and personal Unity of God, I must think that
it is vain to prove any doctrine from the words of the Bible—for sure I
am that there is no doctrine more distinctly, more guardedly, more
simply, more repeatedly stated, than the great doctrine, that there is
One God, and that the FATHER is that God.