explained as a mere plural of dignity, = one who combines in
himself many reasons for adoration (אלהים from אלה to fear, to
adore). Oehler, O. T. Theology, 1:128-130, calls it a
“quantitative plural,” signifying unlimited greatness. The Hebrews
had many plural forms, where we should use the singular, as
“heavens” instead of “heaven,” “waters” instead of “water.” We too
speak of “news,” “wages,” and say “you” instead of “thou”; see F.
W. Robertson, on Genesis, 12. But the Church Fathers, such as
Barnabas, Justin Martyr, Irenæus, Theophilus, Epiphanius, and
Theodoret, saw in this plural an allusion to the Trinity, and we
are inclined to follow them. When finite things were pluralized to
express man’s reverence, it would be far more natural to pluralize
the name of God. And God’s purpose in securing this pluralization
may have been more far-reaching and intelligent than man’s. The
Holy Spirit who presided over the development of revelation may
well have directed the use of the plural in general, and even the
adoption of the plural name Elohim in particular, with a view to
the future unfolding of truth with regard to the Trinity.
We therefore dissent from the view of Hill, Genetic Philosophy,
323, 330—“The Hebrew religion, even much later than the time of
Moses, as it existed in the popular mind, was, according to the
prophetic writings, far removed from a real monotheism, and
consisted in the wavering acceptance of the preëminence of a
tribal God, with a strong inclination towards a general
polytheism. It is impossible therefore to suppose that anything
approaching the philosophical monotheism of modern theology could
have been elaborated or even entertained by primitive man....
‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me’_ (Ex. 20:3)_, the first
precept of Hebrew monotheism, was not understood at first as a
denial of the hereditary polytheistic faith, but merely as an
exclusive claim to worship and obedience.” E. G. Robinson says, in
a similar strain, that “we can explain the idolatrous tendencies
of the Jews only on the supposition that they had lurking notions
that their God was a merely national god. Moses seems to have
understood the doctrine of the divine unity, but the Jews did
not.”
To the views of both Hill and Robinson we reply that the primitive
intuition of God is not that of many, but that of One. Paul tells
us that polytheism is a later and retrogressive stage of
development, due to man’s sin (_Rom. 1:19-25_). We prefer the
statement of McLaren: “The plural Elohim is not a survival from a
polytheistic stage, but expresses the divine nature in the
manifoldness of its fulnesses and perfections, rather than in the
abstract unity of its being”—and, we may add, expresses the divine
nature in its essential fulness, as a complex of personalities.
See Conant, Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar, 108; Green, Hebrew Grammar,
306; Girdlestone, O. T. Synonyms, 38, 53; Alexander on _Psalm
11:7_; _29:1_; _58:11_.
B. Passages relating to the Angel of Jehovah.
(_a_) The angel of Jehovah identifies himself with Jehovah; (_b_) he is
identified with Jehovah by others; (_c_) he accepts worship due only to
God. Though the phrase “angel of Jehovah” is sometimes used in the later
Scriptures to denote a merely human messenger or created angel, it seems
in the Old Testament, with hardly more than a single exception, to
designate the pre-incarnate Logos, whose manifestations in angelic or
human form foreshadowed his final coming in the flesh.
(_a_) _Gen. 22:11, 16—_“the angel of Jehovah called unto him
[Abraham, when about to sacrifice Isaac] ... By myself have I
sworn, saith Jehovah”; _31:11, 13—_“the angel of God said unto me
[Jacob] ... I am the God of Beth-el.” (_b_) _Gen. 16:9, 13—_“angel
of Jehovah said unto her ... and she called the name of Jehovah
that spake unto her, Thou art a God that seeth”; _48:15, 16—_“the
God who hath fed me ... the angel who hath redeemed me.” (_c_)
_Ex. 3:2, 4, 5—_“the angel of Jehovah appeared unto him ... God
called unto him out of the midst of the bush ... put off thy shoes
from off thy feet”; _Judges 13:20-22—_“angel of Jehovah
ascended.... Manoah and his wife ... fell on their faces ...
Manoah said ... We shall surely die, because we have seen God.”
The “_angel of the Lord_” appears to be a human messenger in
_Haggai 1:13—_“Haggai, Jehovah’s messenger”; a created angel in
_Mat. 1:20—_“an angel of the Lord [called Gabriel] appeared unto”
Joseph; in _Acts 3:26—_“an angel of the Lord spake unto Philip”;
and in _12:7—_“an angel of the Lord stood by him” (Peter). But
commonly, in the O.T., the “angel of Jehovah” is a theophany, a
self-manifestation of God. The only distinction is that between
Jehovah in himself and Jehovah in manifestation. The appearances
of “_the angel of Jehovah_” seem to be preliminary manifestations
of the divine Logos, as in _Gen. 18:2, 13—_“three men stood over
against him [Abraham] ... And Jehovah said unto Abraham”; _Dan.
3:25, 28—_“the aspect of the fourth is like a son of the gods....
Blessed be the God ... who hath sent his angel.” The N.T. “_angel
of the Lord_” does not permit, the O.T. “_angel of the Lord_”
requires, worship (_Rev. 22:8, 9—_“See thou do it not”; _cf._ _Ex.
3:5—_“put off thy shoes”). As supporting this interpretation, see
Hengstenberg, Christology, 1:107-123; J. Pye Smith, Scripture
Testimony to the Messiah. As opposing it, see Hofmann,
Schriftbeweis, 1:329, 378; Kurtz, History of Old Covenant, 1:181.
On the whole subject, see Bib. Sac., 1879:593-615.
C. Descriptions of the divine Wisdom and Word.
(_a_) Wisdom is represented as distinct from God, and as eternally
existing with God; (_b_) the Word of God is distinguished from
God, as executor of his will from everlasting.
(_a_) _Prov. 8:1—_“Doth not wisdom cry?” _Cf._ _Mat.
11:19—_“wisdom is justified by her works”; _Luke 7:35—_“wisdom is
justified of all her children”; _11:49—_“Therefore also said the
wisdom of God, I will send unto them prophets and apostles”;
_Prov. 8:22, 30, 31—_“Jehovah possessed me in the beginning of his
way, Before his works of old.... I was by him, as a master
workman: And I was daily his delight.... And my delight was with
the sons of men”; _cf._ _3:19—_“Jehovah by wisdom founded the
earth,” and _Heb. 1:2—_“his Son ... through whom ... he made the
worlds.” (_b_) _Ps. 107:20—_“He sendeth his word, and healeth
them”; _119:89—_“For ever, O Jehovah, Thy word is settled in
heaven”; _147:15-18—_“He sendeth out his commandment.... He
sendeth out his word.”
In the Apocryphal book entitled Wisdom, 7:26, 28, wisdom is
described as “the brightness of the eternal light,” “the unspotted
mirror of God’s majesty,” and “the image of his
goodness”—reminding us of _Heb. 1:3—_“the effulgence of his glory,
and the very image of his substance.” In Wisdom, 9:9, 10, wisdom
is represented as being present with God when he made the world,
and the author of the book prays that wisdom may be sent to him
out of God’s holy heavens and from the throne of his glory. In 1
Esdras 4:35-38, Truth in a similar way is spoken of as personal:
“Great is the Truth and stronger than all things. All the earth
calleth upon the Truth, and the heaven blesseth it; all works
shake and tremble at it, and with it is no unrighteous thing. As
for the Truth, it endureth and is always strong; it liveth and
conquereth forevermore.”
It must be acknowledged that in none of these descriptions is the idea of
personality clearly developed. Still less is it true that John the apostle
derived his doctrine of the Logos from the interpretations of these
descriptions in Philo Judæus. John’s doctrine (John 1:1-18) is radically
different from the Alexandrian Logos-idea of Philo. This last is a
Platonizing speculation upon the mediating principle between God and the
world. Philo seems at times to verge towards a recognition of personality
in the Logos, though his monotheistic scruples lead him at other times to
take back what he has given, and to describe the Logos either as the
thought of God or as its expression in the world. But John is the first to
present to us a consistent view of this personality, to identify the Logos
with the Messiah, and to distinguish the Word from the Spirit of God.
Dorner, in his History of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ,
1:13-45, and in his System of Doctrine, 1:348, 349, gives the best
account of Philo’s doctrine of the Logos. He says that Philo calls
the Logos ἀρχάγγελος, ἀρχιερεύς, δεύτερος θεός. Whether this is
anything more than personification is doubtful, for Philo also
calls the Logos the κόσμος νοητός. Certainly, so far as he makes
the Logos a distinct personality, he makes him also a subordinate
being. It is charged that the doctrine of the Trinity owes its
origin to the Platonic philosophy in its Alexandrian union with
Jewish theology. But Platonism had no Trinity. The truth is that
by the doctrine of the Trinity Christianity secured itself against
false heathen ideas of God’s multiplicity and immanence, as well
as against false Jewish ideas of God’s unity and transcendence. It
owes nothing to foreign sources.
We need not assign to John’s gospel a later origin, in order to
account for its doctrine of the Logos, any more than we need to
assign a later origin to the Synoptics in order to account for
their doctrine of a suffering Messiah. Both doctrines were equally
unknown to Philo. Philo’s Logos does not and cannot become man. So
says Dorner. Westcott, in Bible Commentary on John, Introd.,
xv-xviii, and on John 1:1—“The theological use of the term [in
John’s gospel] appears to be derived directly from the Palestinian
_Memra_, and not from the Alexandrian _Logos_.” Instead of Philo’s
doctrine being a stepping-stone from Judaism to Christianity, it
was a stumbling-stone. It had no doctrine of the Messiah or of the
atonement. Bennett and Adeny, Bib. Introd., 340—“The difference
between Philo and John may be stated thus: Philo’s Logos is
Reason, while John’s is Word; Philo’s is impersonal, while John’s
is personal; Philo’s is not incarnate, while John’s is incarnate;
Philo’s is not the Messiah, while John’s is the Messiah.”
Philo lived from B. C. 10 or 20 to certainly A. D. 40, when he
went at the head of a Jewish embassy to Rome, to persuade the
Emperor to abstain from claiming divine honor from the Jews. In
his De Opifice Mundi he says: “The Word is nothing else but the
intelligible world.” He calls the Word the “chainband,” “pilot,”
“steersman,” of all things. Gore, Incarnation, 69—“Logos in Philo
must be translated ‘Reason.’ But in the Targums, or early Jewish
paraphrases of the O. T., the ‘Word’ of Jehovah (_Memra_, _Devra_)
is constantly spoken of as the efficient instrument of the divine
action, in cases where the O. T. speaks of Jehovah himself, ‘The
Word of God’ had come to be used personally, as almost equivalent
to God manifesting himself, or God in action.” George H. Gilbert,
in Biblical World, Jan. 1899:44—“John’s use of the term Logos was
suggested by Greek philosophy, while at the same time the content
of the word is Jewish.”
Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, 174-208—“The Stoics invested the Logos
with personality. They were Monists and they made λόγος and ὕλη
the active and the passive forms of the one principle. Some made
God a mode of matter—_natura naturata_; others made matter a mode
of God—_natura naturans_ = the world a self-evolution of God. The
Platonic forms, as manifold expressions of a single λόγος, were
expressed by a singular term, Logos, rather than the Logoi, of
God. From this Logos proceed all forms of mind or reason. So held
Philo: ‘The mind is an offshoot from the divine and happy soul (of
God), an offshoot not separated from him, for nothing divine is
cut off and disjoined, but only extended.’ Philo’s Logos is not
only form but force—God’s creative energy—the eldest-born of the
‘I am,’ which robes itself with the world as with a vesture, the
high priest’s robe, embroidered with all the forces of the seen
and unseen worlds.”
Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 1:53—“Philo carries the transcendence of
God to its logical conclusions. The Jewish doctrine of angels is
expanded in his doctrine of the Logos. The Alexandrian
philosophers afterwards represented Christianity as a
spiritualized Judaism. But a philosophical system dominated by the
idea of the divine transcendence never could have furnished a
motive for missionary labors like those of Paul. Philo’s belief in
transcendence abated his redemptive hopes. But, conversely, the
redemptive hopes of orthodox Judaism saved it from some of the
errors of exclusive transcendence.” See a quotation from
Siegfried, in Schürer’s History of the Jewish People, article on
Philo: “Philo’s doctrine grew out of God’s distinction and
distance from the world. It was dualistic. Hence the need of
mediating principles, some being less than God and more than
creature. The cosmical significance of Christ bridged the gulf
between Christianity and contemporary Greek thought. Christianity
stands for a God who is revealed. But a Logos-doctrine like that
of Philo may reveal less than it conceals. Instead of God
incarnate for our salvation, we may have merely a mediating
principle between God and the world, as in Arianism.”
The preceding statement is furnished in substance by Prof. William
Adams Brown. With it we agree, adding only the remark that the
Alexandrian philosophy gave to Christianity, not the substance of
its doctrine, but only the terminology for its expression. The
truth which Philo groped after, the Apostle John seized and
published, as only he could, who had heard, seen, and handled “the
Word of life”_ (1 John 1:1)._ “The Christian doctrine of the Logos
was perhaps before anything else an effort to express how Jesus
Christ was God (Θεός), and yet in another sense was not God (ὁ
θεός); that is to say, was not the whole Godhead” (quoted in
Marcus Dods, Expositors’ Bible, on _John 1:1_). See also Kendrick,
in Christian Review, 26:369-399; Gloag, in Presb. and Ref. Rev.,
1891:45-57; Réville, Doctrine of the Logos in John and Philo;
Godet on John, Germ. transl., 13, 135; Cudworth, Intellectual
System, 2:320-333; Pressensé, Life of Jesus Christ, 83; Hagenbach,
Hist. Doct., 1:114-117; Liddon, Our Lord’s Divinity, 59-71; Conant
on Proverbs, 53.
D. Descriptions of the Messiah.
(_a_) He is one with Jehovah; (_b_) yet he is in some sense distinct from
Jehovah.
(_a_) _Is. 9:6—_“unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given
... and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace”; _Micah 5:2—_“thou Bethlehem
... which art little ... out of thee shall one come forth unto me
that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth are from of old,
from everlasting.” (_b_) _Ps. 45:6, 7—_“Thy throne, O God, is for
ever and ever.... Therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee”;
_Mal 3:1—_“I send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way
before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, will suddenly come to his
temple; and the messenger of the covenant, whom ye desire.”
Henderson, in his Commentary on this passage, points out that the
Messiah is here called “_the Lord_” or “_the Sovereign_”—a title
nowhere given in this form (with the article) to any but Jehovah;
that he is predicted as coming to the temple as its proprietor;
and that he is identified with the angel of the covenant,
elsewhere shown to be one with Jehovah himself.
It is to be remembered, in considering this, as well as other classes of
passages previously cited, that no Jewish writer before Christ’s coming
had succeeded in constructing from them a doctrine of the Trinity. Only to
those who bring to them the light of New Testament revelation do they show
their real meaning.
Our general conclusion with regard to the Old Testament intimations must
therefore be that, while they do not by themselves furnish a sufficient
basis for the doctrine of the Trinity, they contain the germ of it, and
may be used in confirmation of it when its truth is substantially proved
from the New Testament.
That the doctrine of the Trinity is not plainly taught in the
Hebrew Scriptures is evident from the fact that Jews unite with
Mohammedans in accusing trinitarians of polytheism. It should not
surprise us that the Old Testament teaching on this subject is
undeveloped and obscure. The first necessity was that the Unity of
God should be insisted on. Until the danger of idolatry was past,
a clear revelation of the Trinity might have been a hindrance to
religious progress. The child now, like the race then, must learn
the unity of God before it can profitably be taught the
Trinity,—else it will fall into tritheism; see Gardiner, O. T. and
N. T., 49. We should not therefore begin our proof of the Trinity
with a reference to passages in the Old Testament. We should speak
of these passages, indeed, as furnishing intimations of the
doctrine rather than proof of it. Yet, after having found proof of
the doctrine in the New Testament, we may expect to find traces of
it in the Old which will corroborate our conclusions. As a matter
of fact, we shall see that traces of the idea of a Trinity are
found not only in the Hebrew Scriptures but in some of the heathen
religions as well. E. G. Robinson: “The doctrine of the Trinity
underlay the O. T., unperceived by its writers, was first
recognized in the economic revelation of Christianity, and was
first clearly enunciated in the necessary evolution of Christian
doctrine.”
II. These Three are so described in Scripture that we are compelled to
conceive of them as distinct Persons.
1. The Father and the Son are persons distinct from each other.
(_a_) Christ distinguishes the Father from himself as “another”; (_b_) the
Father and the Son are distinguished as the begetter and the begotten;
(_c_) the Father and the Son are distinguished as the sender and the sent.
(_a_) _John 5:32, 37—_“It is another that beareth witness of me
... the Father that sent me, he hath borne witness of me.” (_b_)
_Ps. 2:7—_“Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee”; _John
1:14—_“the only begotten from the Father”; _18—_“the only begotten
Son”; _3:16—_“gave his only begotten Son.” (_c_) _John 10:36—_“say
ye of him, whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world,
Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?”; _Gal
4:4—_“when the fulness of the time came, God sent forth his Son.”
In these passages the Father is represented as objective to the
Son, the Son to the Father, and both the Father and Son to the
Spirit.
2. The Father and the Son are persons distinct from the Spirit.
(_a_) Jesus distinguishes the Spirit from himself and from the Father;
(_b_) the Spirit proceeds from the Father; (_c_) the Spirit is sent by the
Father and by the Son.
(_a_) _John 14:16, 17—_“I will pray the Father, and he shall give
you another Comforter, that he may be with you for ever, even the
Spirit of truth”—or “_Spirit of the truth_,” = he whose work it is
to reveal and apply the truth, and especially to make manifest him
who is the truth. Jesus had been their Comforter: he now promises
them another Comforter. If he himself was a person, then the
Spirit is a person. (_b_) _John 15:26—_“the Spirit of truth which
proceedeth from the Father.” (_c_) _John 14:26—_“the Comforter,
even the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name”;
_15:26—_“when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you
from the Father”; _Gal. 4:6—_“God sent forth the Spirit of his Son
into our hearts.” The Greek church holds that the Spirit proceeds
from the Father only; the Latin church, that the Spirit proceeds
both from the Father and from the Son. The true formula is: The
Spirit proceeds from the Father _through_ or _by_ (not “and”) the
Son. See Hagenbach, History of Doctrine, 1:262, 263. Moberly,
Atonement and Personality, 195—“The _Filioque_ is a valuable
defence of the truth that the Holy Spirit is not simply the
abstract second Person of the Trinity, but rather the Spirit of
the incarnate Christ, reproducing Christ in human hearts, and
revealing in them the meaning of true manhood.”
3. The Holy Spirit is a person.
A. Designations proper to personality are given him.
(_a_) The masculine pronoun ἐκεῖνος, though πνεῦμα is neuter; (_b_) the
name παράκλητος, which cannot be translated by “comfort”, or be taken as
the name of any abstract influence. The Comforter, Instructor, Patron,
Guide, Advocate, whom this term brings before us, must be a person. This
is evident from its application to Christ in 1 John 2:1—“we have an
Advocate—παράκλητον—with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”
(_a_) _John 16:14—_“He (ἐκεῖνος) shall glorify me”; in _Eph. 1:14_
also, some of the best authorities, including Tischendorf (8th
ed.), read ὄς, the masculine pronoun: “_who is an earnest of our
inheritance_.” But in _John 14:16-18_, παράκλητος is followed by
the neuters ὁ and αὐτό, because πνεῦμα had intervened. Grammatical
and not theological considerations controlled the writer. See G.
B. Stevens, Johannine Theology, 189-217, especially on the
distinction between Christ and the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is
another person than Christ, in spite of Christ’s saying of the
coming of the Holy Spirit: “_I come unto you_.” (_b_) _John
16:7—_“if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you.”
The word παράκλητος, as appears from _1 John 2:1_, quoted above,
is a term of broader meaning than merely “Comforter.” The Holy
Spirit is, indeed, as has been said, “the mother-principle in the
Godhead,” and “_as one whom his mother comforteth_” so God by his
Spirit comforts his children (_Is. 66:13_). But the Holy Spirit is
also an Advocate of God’s claims in the soul, and of the soul’s
interests in prayer (_Rom. 8:26—_“maketh intercession for us”). He
comforts not only by being our advocate, but by being our
instructor, patron, and guide; and all these ideas are found
attaching to the word παράκλητος in good Greek usage. The word
indeed is a verbal adjective, signifying “called to one’s aid,”
hence a “helper”; the idea of encouragement is included in it, as
well as those of comfort and of advocacy. See Westcott, Bible
Com., on _John 14:16_; Cremer, Lexicon of N. T. Greek, _in voce_.
T. Dwight, in S. S. Times, on _John 14:16_—“The fundamental
meaning of the word παράκλητος, which is a verbal adjective, is
‘called to one’s aid,’ and thus, when used as a noun, it conveys
the idea of ‘helper.’ This more general sense probably attaches to
its use in John’s Gospel, while in the Epistle (_1 John 2:1, 2_)
it conveys the idea of Jesus acting as advocate on our behalf
before God as a Judge.” So the Latin _advocatus_ signifies one
“called to”—_i. e._, called in to aid, counsel, plead. In this
connection Jesus says: “I will not leave you orphans”_ (John
14:18)_. Cumming, Through the Eternal Spirit, 228—“As the orphaned
family, in the day of the parent’s death, need some friend who
shall lighten their sense of loss by his own presence with them,
so the Holy Spirit is ‘called in’ to supply the present love and
help which the Twelve are losing in the death of Jesus.” A. A.
Hodge, Pop. Lectures, 237—“The Roman ‘client,’ the poor and
dependent man, called in his ‘patron’ to help him in all his
needs. The patron thought for, advised, directed, supported,
defended, supplied, restored, comforted his client in all his
complications. The client, though weak, with a powerful patron,
was socially and politically secure forever.”
B. His name is mentioned in immediate connection with other persons, and
in such a way as to imply his own personality.
(_a_) In connection with Christians; (_b_) in connection with Christ;
(_c_) in connection with the Father and the Son. If the Father and the Son
are persons, the Spirit must be a person also.
(_a_) _Acts 15:28—_“it seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us.”
(_b_) _John 16:14—_“He shall glorify me: for he shall take of
mine, and shall declare it unto you”; _cf._ _17:4—_“I glorified
thee on the earth.” (_c_) _Mat. 28:29—_“baptizing them into the
name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”; _2 Cor.
13:14—_“the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God,
and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all”; _Jude
21—_“praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of
God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ.” _1 Pet. 1:1,
2—_“elect ... according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in
sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the
blood of Jesus Christ.” Yet it is noticeable in all these passages
that there is no obtrusion of the Holy Spirit’s personality, as if
he desired to draw attention to himself. The Holy Spirit shows,
not himself, but Christ. Like John the Baptist, he is a mere
voice, and so is an example to Christian preachers, who are
themselves “made ... sufficient as ministers ... of the Spirit”_
(2 Cor. 3:6)_. His leading is therefore often unperceived; he so
joins himself to us that we infer his presence only from the new
and holy exercises of our own minds; he continues to work in us
even when his presence is ignored and his purity is outraged by
our sins.
C. He performs acts proper to personality.
That which searches, knows, speaks, testifies, reveals, convinces,
commands, strives, moves, helps, guides, creates, recreates, sanctifies,
inspires, makes intercession, orders the affairs of the church, performs
miracles, raises the dead—cannot be a mere power, influence, efflux, or
attribute of God, but must be a person.
_Gen. 1:2_, marg.—“_the Spirit of God was brooding upon the face
of the waters_”; _6:3—_“My Spirit shalt not strive with man for
ever”; _Luke 12:12—_“the Holy Spirit shall teach you in that very
hour what ye ought to say”; _John 3:8—_“born of the Spirit”—here
Bengel translates: “_the Spirit breathes where he wills, and thou
hearest his voice_”—see also Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 166;
_16:8—_“convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness,
and of judgment”; _Acts 2:4—_“the Spirit gave them utterance”;
_8:29—_“the Spirit said unto Philip, Go near”; _10:19, 20—_“the
Spirit said unto him [Peter], Behold, three men seek thee.... go
with them ... for I have sent them”; _13:2—_“the Holy Spirit said,
Separate me Barnabas and Saul”; _16:6, 7—_“forbidden of the Holy
Spirit ... Spirit of Jesus suffered them not”; _Rom. 8:11—_“give
life also to your mortal bodies through his Spirit”; _26—_“the
Spirit also helpeth our infirmity ... maketh intercession for us”;
_15:19—_“in the power of signs and wonders, in the power of the
Holy Spirit”; _1 Cor. 2:10, 11—_“the Spirit searcheth all
things.... things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God”;
_12:8-11_—distributes spiritual gifts “to each one severally even
as he will”—here Meyer calls attention to the words “as he will,”
as proving the personality of the Spirit; _2 Pet. 1:21—_“men spake
from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit”; _1 Pet.
1:2—_“sanctification of the Spirit.” How can a person be given in
various measures? We answer, by being permitted to work in our
behalf with various degrees of power. Dorner: “To be power does
not belong to the impersonal.”
D. He is affected as a person by the acts of others.
That which can be resisted, grieved, vexed, blasphemed, must be a person;
for only a person can perceive insult and be offended. The blasphemy
against the Holy Ghost cannot be merely blasphemy against a power or
attribute of God, since in that case blasphemy against God would be a less
crime than blasphemy against his power. That against which the
unpardonable sin can be committed must be a person.
_Is. 63:10—_“they rebelled and grieved his holy Spirit”; _Mat.
12:31—_“Every sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men; but
the blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven”; _Acts
5:3, 4, 9—_“lie to the Holy Ghost ... thou hast not lied unto men
but unto God.... agreed together to try the Spirit of the Lord”;
_7:51—_“ye do always resist the Holy Spirit”; _Eph. 4:30—_“grieve
not the Holy Spirit of God.” Satan cannot be “grieved.”
Selfishness can be angered, but only love can be grieved.
Blaspheming the Holy Spirit is like blaspheming one’s own mother.
The passages just quoted show the Spirit’s possession of an
emotional nature. Hence we read of “the love of the Spirit”_ (Rom.
15:30)_. The unutterable sighings of the Christian in intercessory
prayer (_Rom. 8:26, 27_) reveal the mind of the Spirit, and show
the infinite depths of feeling which are awakened in God’s heart
by the sins and needs of men. These deep desires and emotions
which are only partially communicated to us, and which only God
can understand, are conclusive proof that the Holy Spirit is a
person. They are only the overflow into us of the infinite
fountain of divine love to which the Holy Spirit unites us.
As Christ in the garden “began to be sorrowful and sore troubled”_
(Mat. 26:37)_, so the Holy Spirit is sorrowful and sore troubled
at the ignoring, despising, resisting of his work, on the part of
those whom he is trying to rescue from sin and to lead out into
the freedom and joy of the Christian life. Luthardt, in S. S.
Times, May 26, 1888—“Every sin can be forgiven—even the sin
against the Son of man—except the sin against the Holy Spirit. The
sin against the Son of man can be forgiven because he can be
misconceived. For he did not appear as that which he really was.
Essence and appearance, truth and reality, contradicted each
other.” Hence Jesus could pray: “Father, forgive them, for they
know not what they do”_ (Luke 23:34)_. The office of the Holy
Spirit, however, is to show to men the nature of their conduct,
and to sin against him is to sin against light and without excuse.
See A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 297-313. Salmond, in
Expositor’s Greek Testament, on _Eph. 4:30_—“What love is in us
points truly, though tremulously, to what love is in God. But in
us love, in proportion as it is true and sovereign, has both its
_wrath-side_ and its _grief-side_; and so must it be with God,
however difficult for us to think it out.”
E. He manifests himself in visible form as distinct from the Father and
the Son, yet in direct connection with personal acts performed by them.
_Mat. 3:16, 17—_“Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway
from the water: and lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he
saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove, and coming upon him;
and lo, a voice out of the heavens, saying, This is my beloved
Son, in whom I am well pleased”; _Luke 3:21, 22—_“Jesus also
having been baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened, and the
Holy Spirit descended in a bodily form, as a dove, upon him, and a
voice came out of heaven, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am
well pleased.” Here are the prayer of Jesus, the approving voice
of the Father, and the Holy Spirit descending in visible form to
anoint the Son of God for his work. “I ad Jordanem, et videbis
Trinitatem.”
F. This ascription to the Spirit of a personal subsistence distinct from
that of the Father and of the Son cannot be explained as personification;
for:
(_a_) This would be to interpret sober prose by the canons of poetry. Such
sustained personification is contrary to the genius of even Hebrew poetry,
in which Wisdom itself is most naturally interpreted as designating a
personal existence. (_b_) Such an interpretation would render a multitude
of passages either tautological, meaningless, or absurd,—as can be easily
seen by substituting for the name Holy Spirit the terms which are wrongly
held to be its equivalents; such as the power, or influence, or efflux, or
attribute of God. (_c_) It is contradicted, moreover, by all those
passages in which the Holy Spirit is distinguished from his own gifts.
(_a_) The Bible is not primarily a book of poetry, although there
is poetry in it. It is more properly a book of history and law.
Even if the methods of allegory were used by the Psalmists and the
Prophets, we should not expect them largely to characterize the
Gospels and Epistles; _1 Cor. 13:4—_“Love suffereth long, and is
kind”—is a rare instance in which Paul’s style takes on the form
of poetry. Yet it is the Gospels and Epistles which most
constantly represent the Holy Spirit as a person. (_b_) _Acts
10:38—_“God anointed him [Jesus] with the Holy Spirit and with
power” = anointed him with power and with power? _Rom.
15:13—_“abound in hope, in the power of the Holy Spirit” = in the
power of the power of God? _19—_“in the power of signs and
wonders, in the power of the Holy Spirit” = in the power of the
power of God? _1 Cor. 2:4—_“demonstration of the Spirit and of
power” = demonstration of power and of power? (_c_) _Luke
1:35—_“the Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the
Most High shall overshadow thee”; _4:14—_“Jesus returned in the
power of the Spirit into Galilee”; _1 Cor. 12:4, 8, 11_—after
mention of the gifts of the Spirit, such as wisdom, knowledge,
faith, healings, miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits,
tongues, interpretation of tongues, all these are traced to the
Spirit who bestows them: “_all these worketh the one and the same
Spirit, dividing to each one severally even as he will_.” Here is
not only giving, but giving discreetly, in the exercise of an
independent will such as belongs only to a person. _Rom.
8:26—_“the Spirit himself maketh intercession for us”—must be
interpreted, if the Holy Spirit is not a person distinct from the
Father, as meaning that the Holy Spirit intercedes with himself.
“The personality of the Holy Spirit was virtually rejected by the
Arians, as it has since been by Schleiermacher, and it has been
positively denied by the Socinians” (E. G. Robinson). Gould, Bib.
Theol. N. T., 83, 96—“The Twelve represent the Spirit as sent by
the Son, who has been exalted that he may send this new power out
of the heavens. Paul represents the Spirit as bringing to us the
Christ. In the Spirit Christ dwells in us. The Spirit is the
historic Jesus translated into terms of universal Spirit. Through
the Spirit we are in Christ and Christ in us. The divine Indweller
is to Paul alternately Christ and the Spirit. The Spirit is the
divine principle incarnate in Jesus and explaining his
preëxistence (_2 Cor. 3:17, 18_). Jesus was an incarnation of the
Spirit of God.”
This seeming identification of the Spirit with Christ is to be
explained upon the ground that the divine essence is common to
both and permits the Father to dwell in and to work through the
Son, and the Son to dwell in and to work through the Spirit. It
should not blind us to the equally patent Scriptural fact that
there are personal relations between Christ and the Holy Spirit,
and work done by the latter in which Christ is the object and not
the subject; _John 16:14—_“He shall glorify me: for he shall take
of mine, and shall declare it unto you.” The Holy Spirit is not
some _thing_, but some _one_; not αὐτό, but Αὐτός; Christ’s _alter
ego_, or other self. We should therefore make vivid our belief in
the personality of Christ and of the Holy Spirit by addressing
each of them frequently in the prayers we offer and in such hymns
as “Jesus, lover of my soul,” and “Come, Holy Spirit, heavenly
Dove!” On the personality of the Holy Spirit, see John Owen, in
Works, 3:64-92; Dick, Lectures on Theology, 1:341-350.
III. This Tripersonality of the Divine Nature is not merely economic and
temporal, but is immanent and eternal.
1. Scripture proof that these distinctions of personality are eternal.
We prove this (_a_) from those passages which speak of the existence of
the Word from eternity with the Father; (_b_) from passages asserting or
implying Christ’s preëxistence; (_c_) from passages implying intercourse
between the Father and the Son before the foundation of the world; (_d_)
from passages asserting the creation of the world by Christ; (_e_) from
passages asserting or implying the eternity of the Holy Spirit.
(_a_) _John 1:1, 2—_“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word
was with God, and the Word was God”; _cf._ _Gen. 1:1—_“In the
beginning God created the heavens and the earth”; _Phil.
2:6—_“existing in the form of God ... on an equality with God.”
(_b_) _John 8:58—_“before Abraham was born, I am”; _1:18—_“the
only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father” (R. V.);
_Col. 1:15-17—_“firstborn of all creation” or “before every
creature ... he is before all things.” In these passages “_am_”
and “_is_” indicate an eternal fact; the present tense expresses
permanent being. _Rev. 22:13, 14—_“I am the Alpha and the Omega,
the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” (_c_) _John
17:5—_“Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory
which I had with thee before the world was”; _24—_“Thou lovedst me
before the foundation of the world.” (_d_) _John 1:3—_“All things
were made through him”; _1 Cor. 8:6—_“one Lord, Jesus Christ,
through whom are all things”; _Col. 1:16—_“all things have been
created through him and unto him”; _Heb. 1:2—_“through whom also
he made the worlds”; _10—_“Thou, Lord, in the beginning didst lay
the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the works of thy
hands.” (_e_) _Gen. 1:2—_“the Spirit of God was brooding”—existed
therefore before creation; _Ps. 33:6—_“by the word of Jehovah were
the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath [Spirit]
of his mouth”; _Heb. 9:14—_“through the eternal Spirit.”
With these passages before us, we must dissent from the statement
of Dr. E. G. Robinson: “About the ontologic Trinity we know
absolutely nothing. The Trinity we can contemplate is simply a
revealed one, one of economic manifestations. We may _suppose_
that the ontologic underlies the economic.” Scripture compels us,
in our judgment, to go further than this, and to maintain that
there are personal relations between the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Spirit independently of creation and of time; in other words
we maintain that Scripture reveals to us a social Trinity and an
intercourse of love apart from and before the existence of the
universe. Love before time implies distinctions of personality
before time. There are three eternal consciousnesses and three
eternal wills in the divine nature. We here state only the
fact,—the explanation of it, and its reconciliation with the
fundamental unity of God is treated in our next section. We now
proceed to show that the two varying systems which ignore this
tripersonality are unscriptural and at the same time exposed to
philosophical objection.
2. Errors refuted by the foregoing passages.
A. The Sabellian.
Sabellius (of Ptolemais in Pentapolis, 250) held that Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit are mere developments or revelations to creatures, in time, of
the otherwise concealed Godhead—developments which, since creatures will
always exist, are not transitory, but which at the same time are not
eternal _a parte ante_. God as united to the creation is Father; God as
united to Jesus Christ is Son; God as united to the church is Holy Spirit.
The Trinity of Sabellius is therefore an economic and not an immanent
Trinity—a Trinity of forms or manifestations, but not a necessary and
eternal Trinity in the divine nature.
Some have interpreted Sabellius as denying that the Trinity is eternal _a
parte post_, as well as _a parte ante_, and as holding that, when the
purpose of these temporary manifestations is accomplished, the Triad is
resolved into the Monad. This view easily merges in another, which makes
the persons of the Trinity mere names for the ever shifting phases of the
divine activity.
The best statement of the Sabellian doctrine, according to the
interpretation first mentioned, is that of Schleiermacher,
translated with comments by Moses Stuart, in Biblical Repository,
6:1-16. The one unchanging God is differently reflected from the
world on account of the world’s different receptivities. Praxeas
of Rome (200) Noetus of Smyrna (230), and Beryl of Arabia (250)
advocated substantially the same views. They were called
Monarchians (μόνη ἀρχή), because they believed not in the Triad,
but only in the Monad. They were called Patripassians, because
they held that, as Christ is only God in human form, and this God
suffers, therefore the Father suffers. Knight, Colloquia
Peripatetica, xlii, suggests a connection between Sabellianism and
Emanationism. See this Compendium, on Theories which oppose
Creation.
A view similar to that of Sabellius was held by Horace Bushnell,
in his God in Christ, 113-115, 130 sq., 172-175, and Christ in
Theology, 119, 120—“Father, Son and Holy Spirit, being incidental
to the revelation of God, may be and probably are from eternity to
eternity, inasmuch as God may have revealed himself from eternity,
and certainly will reveal himself so long as there are minds to
know him. It may be, in fact, the nature of God to reveal himself,
as truly as it is of the sun to shine or of living mind to think.”
He does not deny the immanent Trinity, but simply says we know
nothing about it. Yet a Trinity of Persons in the divine essence
itself he called plain tritheism. He prefers “instrumental
Trinity” to “modal Trinity” as a designation of his doctrine. The
difference between Bushnell on the one hand, and Sabellius and
Schleiermacher on the other, seems then to be the following:
Sabellius and Schleiermacher hold that the One _becomes_ three in
the process of revelation, and the three are only _media_ or
_modes_ of revelation. Father, Son, and Spirit are mere names
applied to these modes of the divine action, there being no
internal distinctions in the divine nature. This is modalism, or a
modal Trinity. Bushnell stands by the Trinity of revelation alone,
and protests against any constructive reasonings with regard to
the immanent Trinity. Yet in his later writings he reverts to
Athanasius and speaks of God as eternally “threeing himself”; see
Fisher, Edwards on the Trinity, 73.
Lyman Abbott, in The Outlook, proposes as illustration of the
Trinity, 1. the artist working on his pictures; 2. the same man
teaching pupils how to paint; 3. the same man entertaining his
friends at home. He has not taken on these types of conduct. They
are not masks (_personæ_), nor offices, which he takes up and lays
down. There is a threefold _nature_ in him: he is artist, teacher,
friend. God is complex, and not simple. I do not know him, till I
know him in all these relations. Yet it is evident that Dr.
Abbott’s view provides no basis for love or for society within the
divine nature. The three persons are but three successive aspects
or activities of the one God. General Grant, when in office, was
but one person, even though he was a father, a President, and a
commander in chief of the army and navy of the United States.
It is evident that this theory, in whatever form it may be held, is far
from satisfying the demands of Scripture. Scripture speaks of the second
person of the Trinity as existing and acting before the birth of Jesus
Christ, and of the Holy Spirit as existing and acting before the formation
of the church. Both have a personal existence, eternal in the past as well
as in the future—which this theory expressly denies.
A revelation that is not a self-revelation of God is not honest.
Stuart: Since God is revealed as three, he must be essentially or
immanently three, back of revelation; else the revelation would
not be true. Dorner: A Trinity of revelation is a
misrepresentation, if there is not behind it a Trinity of nature.
Twesten properly arrives at the threeness by considering, not so
much what is involved in the revelation of God to us, as what is
involved in the revelation of God to himself. The unscripturalness
of the Sabellian doctrine is plain, if we remember that upon this
view the Three cannot exist at once: when the Father says “Thou
art my beloved Son”_ (Luke 3:22)_, he is simply speaking to
himself; when Christ sends the Holy Spirit, he only sends himself.
_John 1:1—_“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
God, and the Word was God”—“sets aside the false notion that the
Word become _personal_ first at the time of creation, or at the
incarnation” (Westcott, Bib. Com. _in loco_).
Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 50, 51—“Sabellius claimed that the
Unity became a Trinity by expansion. Fatherhood began with the
world. God is not eternally Father, nor does he love eternally. We
have only an impersonal, unintelligible God, who has played upon
us and confused our understanding by showing himself to us under
three disguises. Before creation there is no Fatherhood, even in
germ.”
According to Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 2:269, Origen held that
the Godhead might be represented by three concentric circles; the
widest, embracing the whole being, is that of the Father; the
next, that of the Son, which extends to the rational creation; and
the narrowest is that of the Spirit, who rules in the holy men of
the church. King, Reconstruction of Theology, 192, 194—“To affirm
social relations in the Godhead is to assert absolute
Tritheism.... Unitarianism emphasizes the humanity of Christ, to
preserve the unity of God; the true view emphasizes the divinity
of Christ, to preserve the unity.”
L. L. Paine, Evolution of Trinitarianism, 141, 287, says that New
England Trinitarianism is characterized by three things: 1.
Sabellian Patripassianism; Christ is all the Father there is, and
the Holy Spirit is Christ’s continued life; 2. Consubstantiality,
or community of essence, of God and man; unlike the essential
difference between the created and the uncreated which Platonic
dualism maintained, this theory turns _moral_ likeness into
_essential_ likeness; 3. Philosophical monism, matter itself being
but an evolution of Spirit.... In the next form of the scientific
doctrine of evolution, the divineness of man becomes a vital
truth, and out of it arises a Christology that removes Jesus of
Nazareth indeed out of the order of absolute Deity, but at the
same time exalts him to a place of moral eminence that is secure
and supreme.
Against this danger of regarding Christ as a merely economic and
temporary manifestation of God we can guard only by maintaining
the Scriptural doctrine of an immanent Trinity. Moberly, Atonement
and Personality, 86, 165—“We cannot incur any Sabellian peril
while we maintain—what is fatal to Sabellianism—that that which is
revealed within the divine Unity is not only a distinction of
aspects or of names, but a real reciprocity of mutual relation.
One ‘aspect’ cannot contemplate, or be loved by, another....
Sabellianism degrades the persons of Deity into aspects. But there
can be no mutual relation between aspects. The heat and the light
of flame cannot severally contemplate and be in love with one
another.” See Bushnell’s doctrine reviewed by Hodge, Essays and
Reviews, 433-473. On the whole subject, see Dorner, Hist. Doct.
Person of Christ, 2:152-169; Shedd, Hist. Doctrine, 1:259; Baur,
Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit, 1:256-305; Thomasius, Christi Person
und Werk 1:83.
B. The Arian.
Arius (of Alexandria; condemned by Council of Nice, 325) held that the
Father is the only divine being absolutely without beginning; the Son and
the Holy Spirit, through whom God creates and recreates, having been
themselves created out of nothing before the world was; and Christ being
called God, because he is next in rank to God, and is endowed by God with
divine power to create.
The followers of Arius have differed as to the precise rank and claims of
Christ. While Socinus held with Arius that worship of Christ was
obligatory, the later Unitarians have perceived the impropriety of
worshiping even the highest of created beings, and have constantly tended
to a view of the Redeemer which regards him as a mere man, standing in a
peculiarly intimate relation to God.
For statement of the Arian doctrine, see J. Freeman Clarke,
Orthodoxy, Its Truths and Errors. _Per contra_, see Schäffer, in
Bib. Sac., 21:1, article on Athanasius and the Arian controversy.
The so-called Athanasian Creed, which Athanasius never wrote, is
more properly designated as the _Symbolum Quicumque_. It has also
been called, though facetiously, “the Anathemasian Creed.” Yet no
error in doctrine can be more perilous or worthy of condemnation
than the error of Arius (_1 Cor. 16:22—_“If any man loveth not the
Lord, let him be anathema”; _1 John 2:23—_“Whosoever denieth the
Son, the same hath not the Father”; _4:3—_“every spirit that
confesseth not Jesus is not of God: and this is the spirit of the
antichrist”). It regards Christ as called God only by courtesy,
much as we give to a Lieutenant Governor the title of Governor.
Before the creation of the Son, the love of God, if there could be
love, was expended on himself. Gwatkin, Studies of Arianism: “The
Arian Christ is nothing but a heathen idol, invented to maintain a
heathenish Supreme in heathen isolation from the world. The nearer
the Son is pulled down towards man by the attenuation of his
Godhead, the more remote from man becomes the unshared Godhead of
the Father. You have an _Être Suprême_ who is practically
unapproachable, a mere One-and-all, destitute of personality.”
Gore, Incarnation, 90, 91, 110, shows the immense importance of
the controversy with regard to ὁμοούσιον and ὁμοιούσιον. Carlyle
once sneered that “the Christian world was torn in pieces over a
diphthong.” But Carlyle afterwards came to see that Christianity
itself was at stake, and that it would have dwindled away to a
legend, if the Arians had won. Arius appealed chiefly to logic,
not to Scripture. He claimed that a Son must be younger than his
Father. But he was asserting the principle of heathenism and
idolatry, in demanding worship for a creature. The Goths were
easily converted to Arianism. Christ was to them a hero-god, a
demigod, and the later Goths could worship Christ and heathen
idols impartially.
It is evident that the theory of Arius does not satisfy the demands of
Scripture. A created God, a God whose existence had a beginning and
therefore may come to an end, a God made of a substance which once was
not, and therefore a substance different from that of the Father, is not
God, but a finite creature. But the Scripture speaks of Christ as being in
the beginning God, with God, and equal with God.
Luther, alluding to _John 1:1_, says: “‘The Word was God’ is
against Arius; ‘the Word was with God’ is against Sabellius.” The
Racovian Catechism, Quaes. 183, 184, 211, 236, 237, 245, 246,
teaches that Christ is to be truly worshiped, and they are denied
to be Christians who refuse to adore him. Davidis was persecuted
and died in prison for refusing to worship Christ; and Socinus was
charged, though probably unjustly, with having caused his
imprisonment. Bartholomew Legate, an Essexman and an Arian, was
burned to death at Smithfield, March 13, 1613. King James I asked
him whether he did not pray to Christ. Legate’s answer was that
“indeed he had prayed to Christ in the days of his ignorance, but
not for these last seven years”; which so shocked James that “he
spurned at him with his foot.” At the stake Legate still refused
to recant, and so was burned to ashes amid a vast conflux of
people. The very next month another Arian named Whiteman was
burned at Burton-on-Trent.
It required courage, even a generation later, for John Milton, in
his Christian Doctrine, to declare himself a high Arian. In that
treatise he teaches that “the Son of God did not exist from all
eternity, is not coëval or coëssential or coëqual with the Father,
but came into existence by the will of God to be the next being to
himself, the first-born and best beloved, the Logos or Word
through whom all creation should take its beginnings.” So Milton
regards the Holy Spirit as a created being, inferior to the Son
and possibly confined to our heavens and earth. Milton’s Arianism,
however, is characteristic of his later, rather than his earlier,
writings; compare the Ode on Christ’s Nativity with Paradise Lost,
3:383-391; and see Masson’s Life of Milton, 1:39; 6:823, 824; A.
H. Strong, Great Poets and their Theology, 260-262.
Dr. Samuel Clarke, when asked whether the Father who had created
could not also destroy the Son, said that he had not considered
the question. Ralph Waldo Emerson broke with his church and left
the ministry because he could not celebrate the Lord’s Supper,—it
implied a profounder reverence for Jesus than he could give him.
He wrote: “It seemed to me at church to-day, that the Communion
Service, as it is now and here celebrated, is a document of the
dullness of the race. How these, my good neighbors, the bending
deacons, with their cups and plates, would have straightened
themselves to sturdiness, if the proposition came before them to
honor thus a fellow-man”; see Cabot’s Memoir, 314. Yet Dr. Leonard
Bacon said of the Unitarians that “it seemed as if their exclusive
contemplation of Jesus Christ in his human character as the
example for our imitation had wrought in them an exceptional
beauty and Christlikeness of living.”
Chadwick, Old and New Unitarian Belief, 20, speaks of Arianism as
exalting Christ to a degree of inappreciable difference from God,
while Socinus looked upon him only as a miraculously endowed man,
and believed in an infallible book. The term “Unitarians,” he
claims, is derived from the “Uniti,” a society in Transylvania, in
support of mutual toleration between Calvinists, Romanists, and
Socinians. The name stuck to the advocates of the divine Unity,
because they were its most active members. B. W. Lockhart:
“Trinity guarantees God’s knowableness. Arius taught that Jesus
was neither human nor divine, but created in some grade of being
between the two, essentially unknown to man. An absentee God made
Jesus his messenger, God himself not touching the world directly
at any point, and unknown and unknowable to it. Athanasius on the
contrary asserted that God did not send a messenger in Christ, but
came himself, so that to know Christ is really to know God who is
essentially revealed in him. This gave the Church the doctrine of
God immanent, or Immanuel, God knowable and actually known by men,
because actually present.” Chapman, Jesus Christ and the Present
Age, 14—“The world was never further from Unitarianism than it is
to-day; we may add that Unitarianism was never further from
itself.” On the doctrines of the early Socinians, see Princeton
Essays, 1:195. On the whole subject, see Blunt, Dict. of Heretical
Sects, art.: Arius; Guericke, Hist. Doctrine, 1:313, 319. See also
a further account of Arianism in the chapter of this Compendium on
the Person of Christ.
IV. This Tripersonality is not Tritheism; for, while there are three
Persons, there is but one Essence.
(_a_) The term “person” only approximately represents the truth. Although
this word, more nearly than any other single word, expresses the
conception which the Scriptures give us of the relation between the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, it is not itself used in this
connection in Scripture, and we employ it in a qualified sense, not in the
ordinary sense in which we apply the word “person” to Peter, Paul, and
John.
The word “person” is only the imperfect and inadequate expression
of a fact that transcends our experience and comprehension.
Bunyan: “My dark and cloudy words, they do but hold The truth, as
cabinets encase the gold.” Three Gods, limiting each other, would
deprive each other of Deity. While we show that the unity is
articulated by the persons, it is equally important to remember
that the persons are limited by the unity. With us personality
implies entire separation from all others—distinct individuality.
But in the one God there can be no such separation. The personal
distinctions in him must be such as are consistent with essential
unity. This is the merit of the statement in the _Symbolum
Quicumque_ (or Athanasian Creed, wrongly so called): “The Father
is God, the Son is God, the Holy Ghost is God; and yet there are
not three Gods but one God. So likewise the Father is Lord, the
Son is Lord, the Holy Ghost is Lord; yet there are not three Lords
but one Lord. For as we are compelled by Christian truth to
acknowledge each person by himself to be God and Lord, so we are
forbidden by the same truth to say that there are three Gods or
three Lords.” See Hagenbach, History of Doctrine, 1:270. We add
that the personality of the Godhead as a whole is separate and
distinct from all others, and in this respect is more fully
analogous to man’s personality than is the personality of the
Father or of the Son.
The church of Alexandria in the second century chanted together:
“One only is holy, the Father; One only is holy, the Son; One only
is holy, the Spirit.” Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 154,
167, 168—“The three persons are neither three Gods, nor three
parts of God. Rather are they God threefoldly, tri-personally....
The personal distinction in Godhead is a distinction within, and
of, Unity: not a distinction which qualifies Unity, or usurps the
place of it, or destroys it. It is not a relation of mutual
exclusiveness, but of mutual inclusiveness. No one person is or
can be without the others.... The personality of the supreme or
absolute Being cannot be without self-contained mutuality of
relations such as Will and Love. But the mutuality would not be
real, unless the subject which becomes object, and the object
which becomes subject, were on each side alike and equally
Personal.... The Unity of all-comprehending inclusiveness is a
higher mode of unity than the unity of singular
distinctiveness.... The disciples are not to have the presence of
the Spirit instead of the Son, but to have the Spirit is to have
the Son. We mean by the Personal God not a limited alternative to
unlimited abstracts, such as Law, Holiness, Love, but the
transcendent and inclusive completeness of them all. The terms
Father and Son are certainly terms which rise more immediately out
of the temporal facts of the incarnation than out of the eternal
relations of the divine Being. They are metaphors, however, which
mean far more in the spiritual than they do in the material
sphere. Spiritual hunger is more intense than physical hunger. So
sin, judgment, grace, are metaphors. But in _John 1:1-18_ ‘Son’ is
not used, but ‘Word.’ ”
(_b_) The necessary qualification is that, while three persons among men
have only a _specific_ unity of nature or essence—that is, have the same
_species_ of nature or essence,—the persons of the Godhead have a
_numerical_ unity of nature or essence—that is, have the _same_ nature or
essence. The undivided essence of the Godhead belongs equally to each of
the persons; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each possesses all the
substance and all the attributes of Deity. The plurality of the Godhead is
therefore not a plurality of essence, but a plurality of hypostatical, or
personal, distinctions. God is not three and one, but three in one. The
one indivisible essence has three modes of subsistence.
The Trinity is not simply a partnership, in which each member can
sign the name of the firm; for this is unity of council and
operation only, not of essence. God’s nature is not an abstract
but an organic unity. God, as living, cannot be a mere Monad.
Trinity is the organism of the Deity. The one divine Being exists
in three modes. The life of the vine makes itself known in the
life of the branches, and this union between vine and branches
Christ uses to illustrate the union between the Father and
himself. (See _John 15:10—_“If ye keep my commandments, ye shall
abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments,
and abide in his love”; _cf._ _verse 5—_“I am the vine, ye are the
branches; he that abideth in me, and I in him, the same beareth
much fruit”; _17:22, 23—_“That they may be one, even as we are
one; I in them, and thou in me.”) So, in the organism of the body,
the arm has its own life, a different life from that of the head
or the foot, yet has this only by partaking of the life of the
whole. See Dorner, System of Doctrine, 1:450-453—“The one divine
personality is so present in each of the distinctions, that these,
which singly and by themselves would not be personal, yet do
participate in the one divine personality, each in its own manner.
This one divine personality is the unity of the three modes of
subsistence which participate in itself. Neither is personal
without the others. In each, in its manner, is the whole Godhead.”
The human body is a complex rather than a simple organism, a unity
which embraces an indefinite number of subsidiary and dependent
organisms. The one life of the body manifests itself in the life
of the nervous system, the life of the circulatory system, and the
life of the digestive system. The complete destruction of either
one of these systems destroys the other two. Psychology as well as
physiology reveals to us the possibility of a three-fold life
within the bounds of a single being. In the individual man there
is sometimes a double and even a triple consciousness. Herbert
Spencer, Autobiography, 1:459; 2:204—“Most active minds have, I
presume, more or less frequent experiences of double
consciousness—one consciousness seeming to take note of what the
other is about, and to applaud or blame.” He mentions an instance
in his own experience. “May there not be possible a bi-cerebral
thinking, as there is a binocular vision?... In these cases it
seems as though there were going on, quite apart from the
consciousness which seemed to constitute myself, some process of
elaborating coherent thoughts—as though one part of myself was an
independent originator over whose sayings and doings I had no
control, and which were nevertheless in great measure consistent;
while the other part of myself was a passive spectator or
listener, quite unprepared for many of the things that the first
part said, and which were nevertheless, though unexpected, not
illogical.” This fact that there can be more than one
consciousness in the same personality among men should make us
slow to deny that there can be three consciousnesses in the one
God.
Humanity at large is also an organism, and this fact lends new
confirmation to the Pauline statement of organic interdependence.
Modern sociology is the doctrine of one life constituted by the
union of many. “Unus homo, nullus homo” is a principle of ethics
as well as of sociology. No man can have a conscience to himself.
The moral life of one results from and is interpenetrated by the
moral life of all. All men moreover live, move and have their
being in God. Within the bounds of the one universal and divine
consciousness there are multitudinous _finite_ consciousnesses.
Why then should it be thought incredible that in the nature of
this one God there should be three _infinite_ consciousnesses?
Baldwin, Psychology, 53, 54—“The integration of finite
consciousnesses in an all-embracing divine consciousness may find
a valid analogy in the integration of subordinate consciousnesses
in the unit-personality of man. In the hypnotic state, multiple
consciousnesses may be induced in the same nervous organism. In
insanity there is a secondary consciousness at war with that which
normally dominates.” Schurman, Belief in God, 26, 161—“The
infinite Spirit may include the finite, as the idea of a single
organism embraces within a single life a plurality of members and
functions.... All souls are parts or functions of the eternal life
of God, who is above all, and through all, and in all, and in whom
we live, and move, and have our being.” We would draw the
conclusion that, as in the body and soul of man, both as an
individual and as a race, there is diversity in unity, so in the
God in whose image man is made, there is diversity in unity, and a
triple consciousness and will are consistent with, and even find
their perfection in, a single essence.
By the personality of God we mean more than we mean when we speak
of the personality of the Son and the personality of the Spirit.
The personality of the Godhead is distinct and separate from all
others, and is, in this respect, like that of man. Hence Shedd,
Dogm. Theol., 1:194, says “it is preferable to speak of the
_personality_ of the essence rather than of the _person_ of the
essence; because the essence is not one person, but three
persons.... The divine essence cannot be at once three persons and
one person, if ‘person’ is employed in one signification; but it
can be at once three persons and one personal Being.” While we
speak of the one God as having a personality in which there are
three persons, we would not call this personality a
superpersonality, if this latter term is intended to intimate that
God’s personality is less than the personality of man. The
personality of the Godhead is inclusive rather than exclusive.
With this qualification we may assent to the words of D’Arcy,
Idealism and Theology, 93, 94, 218, 230, 236, 254—“The innermost
truth of things, God, must be conceived as personal; but the
ultimate Unity, which is his, must be believed to be
superpersonal. It is a unity of persons, not a personal unity. For
us personality is the ultimate form of unity. It is not so in him.
For in him all persons live and move and have their being.... God
is personal and also superpersonal. In him there is a transcendent
unity that can embrace a personal multiplicity.... There is in God
an ultimate superpersonal unity in which all persons are one—[all
human persons and the three divine persons].... Substance is more
real than quality, and subject is more real than substance. The
most real of all is the concrete totality, the all-inclusive
Universal.... What human love strives to accomplish—the overcoming
of the opposition of person to person—is perfectly attained in the
divine Unity.... The presupposition on which philosophy is driven
back—[that persons have an underlying ground of unity] is
identical with that which underlies Christian theology.” See
Pfleiderer and Lotze on personality, in this Compendium, p. 104.
(_c_) This oneness of essence explains the fact that, while Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit, as respects their personality, are distinct subsistences,
there is an intercommunion of persons and an immanence of one divine
person in another which permits the peculiar work of one to be ascribed,
with a single limitation, to either of the others, and the manifestation
of one to be recognized in the manifestation of another. The limitation is
simply this, that although the Son was sent by the Father, and the Spirit
by the Father and the Son, it cannot be said _vice versa_ that the Father
is sent either by the Son, or by the Spirit. The Scripture representations
of this intercommunion prevent us from conceiving of the distinctions
called Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as involving separation between them.
Dorner adds that “in one is each of the others.” This is true with
the limitation mentioned in the text above. Whatever Christ does,
God the Father can be said to do; for God acts only in and through
Christ the Revealer. Whatever the Holy Spirit does, Christ can be
said to do; for the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ. The
Spirit is the omnipresent Jesus, and Bengel’s dictum is true: “Ubi
Spiritus, ibi Christus.” Passages illustrating this intercommunion
are the following: _Gen. 1:1—_“God created”; _cf._ _Heb.
1:2—_“through whom [the Son] also he made the worlds”; _John 5:17,
19—_“My Father worketh even until now, and I work.... The Son can
do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father doing; for
what things soever he doeth, these the Son also doeth in like
manner”; _14:9—_“he that hath seen me hath seen the Father”;
_11—_“I am in the Father and the Father in me”; _18—_“I will not
leave you desolate: I come unto you” (by the Holy Spirit);
_15:26—_“when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you
from the Father, even the Spirit of truth”; _17:21—_“that they may
all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee”; _2
Cor. 5:19—_“God was in Christ reconciling”; _Titus 2:10—_“God our
Savior”; _Heb. 12:23—_“God the Judge of all”; _cf._ _John
5:22—_“neither doth the father judge any man, but he hath given
all judgment unto the Son”; _Acts 17:31—_“judge the world in
righteousness by the man whom he hath ordained.”
It is this intercommunion, together with the order of personality
and operation to be mentioned hereafter, which explains the
occasional use of the term “Father” for the whole Godhead; as in
_Eph. 4:6—_“one God and Father of all, who is over all through all
[in Christ], and in you all” [by the Spirit]. This intercommunion
also explains the designation of Christ as “_the Spirit_,” and of
the Spirit as “_the Spirit of Christ_,” as in _1 Cor. 15:45—_“the
last Adam became a life-giving Spirit”; _2 Cor. 3:17—_“Now the
Lord is the Spirit”; _Gal. 4:6—_“sent forth the Spirit of his
Son”; _Phil. 1:19—_“supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ” (see
Alford and Lange on _2 Cor. 3:17, 18_). So the Lamb, in _Rev.
5:6_, has “_seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven
Spirits of God, sent forth into all the earth_” = the Holy Spirit,
with his manifold powers, is the Spirit of the omnipotent,
omniscient, and omnipresent Christ. Theologians have designated
this intercommunion by the terms περιχώρησις, _circumincessio_,
_intercommunicatio_, _circulatio_, _inexistentia_. The word οὐσία
was used to denote essence, substance, nature, being; and the
words πρόσωπον and ὑπόστασις for person, distinction, mode of
subsistence. On the changing uses of the words πρόσωπον and
ὑπόστασις see Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:321, note 2. On the meaning
of the word ’person’ in connection with the Trinity, see John
Howe, Calm Discourse of the Trinity; Jonathan Edwards,
Observations on the Trinity; Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:194, 267-275,
299, 300.
The Holy Spirit is Christ’s _alter ego_, or other self. When Jesus
went away, it was an exchange of his presence for his
omnipresence; an exchange of limited for unlimited power; an
exchange of companionship for indwelling. Since Christ comes to
men in the Holy Spirit, he speaks through the apostles as
authoritatively as if his own lips uttered the words. Each
believer, in having the Holy Spirit, has the whole Christ for his
own; see A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit. Gore, Incarnation,
218—“The persons of the Holy Trinity are not separable
individuals. Each involves the others; the coming of each is the
coming of the others. Thus the coming of the Spirit must have
involved the coming of the Son. But the specialty of the
Pentecostal gift appears to be the coming of the Holy Spirit out
of the uplifted and glorified _manhood_ of the incarnate Son. The
Spirit is the life-giver, but the life with which he works in the
church is the life of the _Incarnate_, the life of Jesus.”
Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 85—“For centuries upon
centuries, the essential unity of God had been burnt and branded
in upon the consciousness of Israel. It had to be completely
established first, as a basal element of thought, indispensable,
unalterable, before there could begin the disclosure to man of the
reality of the eternal relations within the one indivisible being
of God. And when the disclosure came, it came not as modifying,
but as further interpreting and illumining, that unity which it
absolutely presupposed.” E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology,
238—“There is extreme difficulty in giving any statement of a
triunity that shall not verge upon tritheism on the one hand, or
upon mere modalism on the other. It was very natural that Calvin
should be charged with Sabellianism, and John Howe with
tritheism.”
V. The Three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are equal.
In explanation, notice that:
1. These titles belong to the Persons.
(_a_) The Father is not God as such; for God is not only Father, but also
Son and Holy Spirit. The term “Father” designates that hypostatical
distinction in the divine nature in virtue of which God is related to the
Son, and through the Son and the Spirit to the church and the world. As
author of the believer’s spiritual as well as natural life, God is doubly
his Father; but this relation which God sustains to creatures is not the
ground of the title. God is Father primarily in virtue of the relation
which he sustains to the eternal Son; only as we are spiritually united to
Jesus Christ do we become children of God.
(_b_) The Son is not God as such; for God is not only Son, but also Father
and Holy Spirit. “The Son” designates that distinction in virtue of which
God is related to the Father, is sent by the Father to redeem the world,
and with the Father sends the Holy Spirit.
(_c_) The Holy Spirit is not God as such; for God is not only Holy Spirit,
but also Father and Son. “The Holy Spirit” designates that distinction in
virtue of which God is related to the Father and the Son, and is sent by
them to accomplish the work of renewing the ungodly and of sanctifying the
church.
Neither of these names designates the Monad as such. Each
designates rather that personal distinction which forms the
eternal basis and ground for a particular self-revelation. In the
sense of being the Author and Provider of men’s natural life, God
is the Father of all. But even this natural sonship is mediated by
Jesus Christ; see _1 Cor. 8:6—_“one Lord, Jesus Christ through
whom are all things, and we through him.” The phrase “_Our
Father_,” however, can be used with the highest truth only by the
regenerate, who have been newly born of God by being united to
Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. See _Gal. 3:26—_“For
ye are all sons of God, through faith, in Jesus Christ”;
_4:4-6—_“God sent forth his Son ... that we might receive the
adoption of sons ... sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our
hearts, crying, Abba, Father”; _Eph. 1:5—_“foreordained as unto
adoption as sons through Jesus Christ.” God’s love for Christ is
the measure of his love for those who are one with Christ. Human
nature in Christ is lifted up into the life and communion of the
eternal Trinity. Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:306-310.
Human fatherhood is a reflection of the divine, not, _vice versa_,
the divine a reflection of the human; _cf._ _Eph. 3:14, 15—_“the
Father, from whom every fatherhood πατριά in heaven and on earth
is named.” Chadwick, Unitarianism, 77-83, makes the name “Father”
only a symbol for the great Cause of organic evolution, the Author
of all being. But we may reply with Stearns, Evidence of Christian
Experience, 177—“to know God outside of the sphere of redemption
is not to know him in the deeper meaning of the term ‘Father’. It
is only through the Son that we know the Father: _Mat.
11:27—_‘Neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to
whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him.’”
Whiton, Gloria Patri, 38—“The Unseen can be known only by the seen
which comes forth from it. The all-generating or Paternal Life
which is hidden from us can be known only by the generated or
Filial Life in which it reveals itself. The goodness and
righteousness which inhabits eternity can be known only by the
goodness and righteousness which issues from it in the successive
births of time. God above the world is made known only by God in
the world. God transcendent, the Father, is revealed by God
immanent, the Son.” Faber: “O marvellous, O worshipful! No song or
sound is heard, But everywhere and every hour, In love, in wisdom
and in power, the Father speaks his dear eternal Word.” We may
interpret this as meaning that self-expression is a necessity of
nature to an infinite Mind. The Word is therefore eternal. Christ
is the mirror from which are flashed upon us the rays of the
hidden Luminary. So Principal Fairbairn says: “Theology must be on
its historical side Christocentric, but on its doctrinal side
Theocentric.”
Salmond, Expositor’s Greek Testament, on _Eph. 1:5_—“By ‘adoption’
Paul does not mean the bestowal of the full privileges of the
family on those who are sons by nature, but the acceptance into
the family of those who are not sons originally and by right in
the relation proper of those who are sons by birth. Hence υἱοθεσία
is never affirmed of Christ, for he alone is Son of God by nature.
So Paul regards our sonship, not as lying in the natural relation
in which men stand to God as his children, but as implying a new
relation of grace, founded on a covenant relation of God and on
the work of Christ (_Gal. 4:5_ _sq._).”
2. Qualified sense of these titles.
Like the word “person”, the names Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not to
be confined within the precise limitations of meaning which would be
required if they were applied to men.
(_a_) The Scriptures enlarge our conceptions of Christ’s Sonship by giving
to him in his preëxistent state the names of the Logos, the Image, and the
Effulgence of God.—The term “Logos” combines in itself the two ideas of
thought and word, of reason and expression. While the Logos as divine
thought or reason is one with God, the Logos as divine word or expression
is distinguishable from God. Words are the means by which personal beings
express or reveal themselves. Since Jesus Christ was “the Word” before
there were any creatures to whom revelations could be made, it would seem
to be only a necessary inference from this title that in Christ God must
be from eternity expressed or revealed to himself; in other words, that
the Logos is the principle of truth, or self-consciousness, in God.—The
term “Image” suggests the ideas of copy or counterpart. Man is the image
of God only relatively and derivatively. Christ is the Image of God
absolutely and archetypally. As the perfect representation of the Father’s
perfections, the Son would seem to be the object and principle of love in
the Godhead.—The term “Effulgence,” finally, is an allusion to the sun and
its radiance. As the effulgence of the sun manifests the sun’s nature,
which otherwise would be unrevealed, yet is inseparable from the sun and
ever one with it, so Christ reveals God, but is eternally one with God.
Here is a principle of movement, of will, which seems to connect itself
with the holiness, or self-asserting purity, of the divine nature.
Smyth, Introd. to Edwards’ Observations on the Trinity: “The
ontological relations of the persons of the Trinity are not a mere
blank to human thought.” _John 1:1—_“In the beginning was the
Word”—means more than “in the beginning was the _x_, or the zero.”
Godet indeed says that Logos = “reason” only in philosophical
writings, but never in the Scriptures. He calls this a Hegelian
notion. But both Plato and Philo had made this signification a
common one. On λόγος as = reason + speech, see Lightfoot on
Colossians, 143, 144. Meyer interprets it as “personal
subsistence, the self-revelation of the divine essence, before all
time immanent in God.” Neander, Planting and Training, 369—Logos =
“the eternal Revealer of the divine essence.” Bushnell: “Mirror of
creative imagination”; “form of God.”
Word = 1. Expression; 2. Definite expression; 3. Ordered
expression; 4. Complete expression. We make thought definite by
putting it into language. So God’s wealth of ideas is in the Word
formed into an ordered Kingdom, a true Cosmos; see Mason, Faith of
the Gospel, 76. Max Müller: “A word is simply a spoken thought
made audible as sound. Take away from a word the sound, and what
is left is simply the thought of it.” Whiton, Gloria Patri, 72,
73—“The Greek saw in the word the abiding thought behind the
passing form. The Word was God and yet finite—finite only as to
form, infinite as to what the form suggests or expresses. By Word
some form must be meant, and any form is finite. The Word is the
form taken by the infinite Intelligence which transcends all
forms.” We regard this identification of the Word with the finite
manifestation of the Word as contradicted by _John 1:1_, where the
Word is represented as being with God before creation, and by
_Phil. 2:6_, where the Word is represented as existing in the form
of God before his self-limitation in human nature. Scripture
requires us to believe in an objectification of God to himself in
the person of the Word prior to any finite manifestation of God to
men. Christ existed as the Word, and the Word was with God, before
the Word was made flesh and before the world came into being; in
other words, the Logos was the eternal principle of truth or
self-consciousness in the nature of God.
Passages representing Christ as the Image of God are _Col.
1:15—_“who is the image of the invisible God”; _2 Cor.
4:4—_“Christ, who is the image of God” (εἰκών); _Heb. 1:3—_“the
very image of his substance” (χαρακτὴρ τῆς ὑποστάσεως αὐτοῦ); here
χαρακτήρ means “impress,” “counterpart.” Christ is the perfect
image of God, as men are not. He therefore has consciousness and
will. He possesses all the attributes and powers of God. The word
“Image” suggests the perfect equality with God which the title
“Son” might at first seem to deny. The living Image of God which
is equal to himself and is the object of his infinite love can be
nothing less than personal. As the bachelor can never satisfy his
longing for companionship by lining his room with mirrors which
furnish only a lifeless reflection of himself, so God requires for
his love a personal as well as an infinite object. The Image is
not precisely the _repetition_ of the original. The stamp from the
seal is not precisely the _reproduction_ of the seal. The letters
on the seal run backwards and can be easily read only when the
impression is before us. So Christ is the only interpretation and
revelation of the hidden Godhead. As only in love do we come to
know the depths of our own being, so it is only in the Son that
“God is love”_ (1 John 4:8)_.
Christ is spoken of as the Effulgence of God in _Heb. 1:3—_“who
being the effulgence of his glory” (ἀπαύγασμα τῆς δόξης); _cf._ _2
Cor. 4:6—_“shined in our hearts, to give the light of the
knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” Notice
that the radiance of the sun is as old as the sun itself, and
without it the sun would not be sun. So Christ is coëqual and
coëternal with the Father. _Ps. 84:11—_“Jehovah God is a sun.” But
we cannot see the sun except by the sunlight. Christ is the
sunlight which streams forth from the Sun and which makes the Sun
visible. If there be an eternal Sun, there must be also an eternal
Sunlight, and Christ must be eternal. Westcott on _Hebrews
1:3_—“The use of the absolute timeless term ὤν, ‘_being_’, guards
against the thought that the Lord’s sonship was by adoption, and
not by nature. ἀπαύγασμα does not express personality, and
χαρακτήρ does not express coëssentiality. The two words are
related exactly as ὁμοούσιος and μονογενής, and like those must be
combined to give the fulness of the truth. The truth expressed
thus antithetically holds good absolutely.... In Christ the
essence of God is made distinct; in Christ the revelation of God’s
character is seen.” On Edwards’s view of the Trinity, together
with his quotations from Ramsey’s Philosophical Principles, from
which he seems to have derived important suggestions, see Allen,
Jonathan Edwards, 338-376; G. P. Fisher, Edwards’s Essay on the
Trinity, 110-116.
(_b_) The names thus given to the second person of the Trinity, if they
have _any_ significance, bring him before our minds in the general aspect
of Revealer, and suggest a relation of the doctrine of the Trinity to
God’s immanent attributes of truth, love, and holiness. The prepositions
used to describe the internal relations of the second person to the first
are not prepositions of rest, but prepositions of direction and movement.
The Trinity, as the organism of Deity, secures a life-movement of the
Godhead, a process in which God evermore objectifies himself and in the
Son gives forth of his fulness. Christ represents the centrifugal action
of the deity. But there must be centripetal action also. In the Holy
Spirit the movement is completed, and the divine activity and thought
returns into itself. True religion, in reuniting us to God, reproduces in
us, in our limited measure, this eternal process of the divine mind.
Christian experience witnesses that God in himself is unknown; Christ is
the organ of external revelation; the Holy Spirit is the organ of internal
revelation—only he can give us an inward apprehension or realization of
the truth. It is “through the eternal Spirit” that Christ “offered himself
without blemish unto God,” and it is only through the Holy Spirit that the
church has access to the Father, or fallen creatures can return to God.
Here we see that God is Life, self-sufficient Life, Infinite Life,
of which the life of the universe is but a faint reflection, a
rill from the fountain, a drop from the ocean. Since Christ is the
only Revealer, the only outgoing principle in the Godhead, it is
he in whom the whole creation comes to be and holds together. He
is the Life of nature: all natural beauty and grandeur, all forces
molecular and molar, all laws of gravitation and evolution, are
the work and manifestation of the omnipresent Christ. He is the
Life of humanity: the intellectual and moral impulses of man, so
far as they are normal and uplifting, are due to Christ; he is the
principle of progress and improvement in history. He is the Life
of the church: the one and only Redeemer and spiritual Head of the
race is also its Teacher and Lord.
All objective revelation of God is the work of Christ. But all
subjective manifestation of God is the work of the Holy Spirit. As
Christ is the principle of outgoing, so the Holy Spirit is the
principle of return to God. God would take up finite creatures
into himself, would breath into them his breath, would teach them
to launch their little boats upon the infinite current of his
life. Our electric cars can go up hill at great speed so long as
they grip the cable. Faith is the grip which connects us with the
moving energy of God. “The universe is homeward bound,” because
the Holy Spirit is ever turning objective revelation into
subjective revelation, and is leading men consciously or
unconsciously to appropriate the thought and love and purpose of
Him in whom all things find their object and end; “for of him and
through him, and unto him, are all things”_ (Rom. 11:36)_,—here
there is allusion to the Father as the source, the Son as the
medium, and the Spirit as the perfecting and completing agent, in
God’s operations. But all these external processes are only signs
and finite reflections of a life-process internal to the nature of
God.
Meyer on _John 1:1—_“the Word was with God”: “πρὸς τὸν θεόν does
not = παρὰ τῷ θεῷ, but expresses the existence of the Logos in God
in respect of intercourse. The moral essence of this essential
fellowship is love, which excludes any merely modalistic
conception.” Marcus Dods, Expositor’s Greek Testament, _in loco_:
“This preposition implies intercourse and therefore separate
personality.”
Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 62—“_And the Word was toward God_” =
his face is not outwards, as if he were merely revealing, or
waiting to reveal, God to the creation. His face is turned
inwards. His whole Person is directed toward God, motion
corresponding to motion, thought to thought.... In him God stands
revealed to himself. Contrast the attitude of fallen Adam, with
his face averted from God. Godet, on _John 1:1_—“Πρὸς τὸν θεόν
intimates not only personality but movement.... The tendency of
the Logos _ad extra_ rests upon an anterior and essential relation
_ad intra_. To reveal God, one must know him; to project him
outwardly, one must have plunged into his bosom.” Compare _John
1:18—_“the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father”
(R. V.) where we find, not ἐν τῷ κόλπῷ, but εἰς τὸν κόλπον. As ἦν
εἰς τὴν πόλιν means “went into the city and was there,” so the use
of these prepositions indicates in the Godhead movement as well as
rest. Dorner, System of Doctrine, 3:193, translates πρός by
“_hingewandt zu_,” or “turned toward.” The preposition would then
imply that the Revealer, who existed in the beginning, was ever
over against God, in the life-process of the Trinity, as the
perfect objectification of himself. “Das Aussichselbstsein kraft
des Durchsichselbstsein mit dem Fürsichselbstsein
zusammenschliesst.” Dorner speaks of “das
Aussensichoderineinemandernsein; Sichgeltendmachen des
Ausgeschlossenen; Sichnichtsogesetzthaben; Stehenbleibenwollen.”
There is in all human intelligence a threefoldness which points
toward a trinitarian life in God. We can distinguish a _Wissen_, a
_Bewusstsein_, a _Selbstbewusstein_. In complete
self-consciousness there are the three elements: 1. We are
ourselves; 2. We form a picture of ourselves; 3. We recognize this
picture as the picture of ourselves. The little child speaks of
himself in the third person: “Baby did it.” The objective comes
before the subject; “me” comes first, and “I” is a later
development; “himself” still holds its place, rather than
“heself.” But this duality belongs only to undeveloped
intelligence; it is characteristic of the animal creation; we
revert to it in our dreams; the insane are permanent victims of
it; and since sin is moral insanity, the sinner has no hope until,
like the prodigal, he “comes to himself”_ (Luke 15:17)_. The
insane person is _mente alienatus_, and we call physicians for the
insane by the name of _alienists_. Mere duality gives us only the
notion of separation. Perfect self-consciousness whether in man or
in God requires a third unifying element. And in God mediation
between the “I” and the “Thou” must be the work of a Person also,
and the Person who mediates between the two must be in all
respects the equal of either, or he could not adequately interpret
the one to the other; see Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 57-59.
Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:179-189, 276-283—“It is one of the effects
of conviction by the Holy Spirit to convert consciousness into
self-consciousness.... Conviction of sin is the consciousness of
self as the guilty author of sin. Self-consciousness is trinal,
while mere consciousness is dual.... One and the same human spirit
subsists in two modes or distinctions—subject and object ... The
three hypostatical consciousnesses in their combination and unity
constitute the one consciousness of God ... as the three persons
make one essence.”
Dorner considers the internal relations of the Trinity (System,
1:412 _sq._) in three aspects: 1. Physical. God is _causa sui_.
But effect that equals cause must itself be causative. Here would
be duality, were it not for a third principle of unity. Trinitas
dualitatem ad unitatem reducit. 2. Logical. Self-consciousness
sets self over against self. Yet the thinker must not regard self
as one of many, and call himself “he,” as children do; for the
thinker would then be, not _self_-conscious, but _mente
alienatus_, “beside himself.” He therefore “comes to himself” in a
third, as the brute cannot. 3. Ethical. God—self-willing right.
But right based on arbitrary will is not right. Right based on
passive nature is not right either. Right as _being_—Father. Right
as _willing_—Son. Without the latter principle of freedom, we have
a dead ethic, a dead God, an enthroned necessity. The unity of
necessity and freedom is found by God, as by the Christian, in the
Holy Spirit. The Father—I; the Son—Me; the Spirit the unity of the
two; see C. C. Everett, Essays, Theological and Literary, 32.
There must be not only Sun and Sunlight, but an Eye to behold the
Light. William James, in his Psychology, distinguishes the _Me_,
the self as known, from the _I_, the self as knower.
But we need still further to distinguish a third principle, a
subject-object, from both subject and object. The subject cannot
recognize the object as one with itself except through a unifying
principle which can be distinguished from both. We may therefore
regard the Holy Spirit as the principle of self-consciousness in
man as well as in God. As there was a natural union of Christ with
humanity prior to his redeeming work, so there is a natural union
of the Holy Spirit with all men prior to his regenerating work:
_Job 32:18—_“there is a spirit in man, And the breath of the
Almighty giveth them understanding.” Kuyper, Work of the Holy
Spirit, teaches that the Holy Spirit constitutes the principle of
life in all living things, and animates all rational beings, as
well as regenerates and sanctifies the elect of God. Matheson,
Voices of the Spirit, 75, remarks on _Job 34:14, 15—_“If he gather
unto himself his Spirit and his breath; all flesh shall perish
together”—that the Spirit is not only necessary to man’s
salvation, but also to keep up even man’s natural life.
Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:172, speaks of the Son as the centrifugal,
while the Holy Spirit is the centripetal movement of the Godhead.
God apart from Christ is unrevealed (_John 1:18—_“No man hath seen
God at any time”); Christ is the organ of external revelation
(_18—_“the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father,
he hath declared him”); the Holy Spirit is the organ of internal
revelation (_1 Cor. 2:10—_“unto us Christ revealed them through
the Spirit”). That the Holy Spirit is the principle of all
movement towards God appears from _Heb. 9:14_—Christ “_through the
eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish unto God_”; _Eph.
2:28—_“access in one Spirit unto the Father”; _Rom. 8:26—_“the
Spirit also helpeth our infirmity ... the Spirit himself maketh
intercession for us”; _John 4:24—_“God is a Spirit: and they that
worship him must worship in spirit”; _16:8-11—_“convict the world
in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.” See
Twesten, Dogmatik, on the Trinity; also Thomasius, Christi Person
und Werk, 1:111. Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 68—“It is the joy of
the Son to receive, his gladness to welcome most those wishes of
the Father which will cost most to himself. The Spirit also has
his joy in making known,—in perfecting fellowship and keeping the
eternal love alive by that incessant sounding of the deeps which
makes the heart of the Father known to the Son, and the heart of
the Son known to the Father.” We may add that the Holy Spirit is
the organ of internal revelation even to the Father and to the
Son.
(_c_) In the light of what has been said, we may understand somewhat more
fully the characteristic differences between the work of Christ and that
of the Holy Spirit. We may sum them up in the four statements that, first,
all outgoing seems to be the work of Christ, all return to God the work of
the Spirit; secondly, Christ is the organ of external revelation, the Holy
Spirit the organ of internal revelation; thirdly, Christ is our advocate
in heaven, the Holy Spirit is our advocate in the soul; fourthly, in the
work of Christ we are passive, in the work of the Spirit we are active. Of
the work of Christ we shall treat more fully hereafter, in speaking of his
Offices as Prophet, Priest, and King. The work of the Holy Spirit will be
treated when we come to speak of the Application of Redemption in
Regeneration and Sanctification. Here it is sufficient to say that the
Holy Spirit is represented in the Scriptures as the author of life—in
creation, in the conception of Christ, in regeneration, in resurrection;
and as the giver of light—in the inspiration of Scripture writers, in the
conviction of sinners, in the illumination and sanctification of
Christians.
_Gen. 1:2—_“The Spirit of God was brooding”; _Luke 1:35_—to Mary:
“_The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee_”, _John 3:8—_“born of the
Spirit”; _Ps. 37:9, 14—_“Come from the four winds, O breath.... I
will put my Spirit in you, and ye shall live”; _Rom. 8:11—_“give
life also to your mortal bodies through his Spirit.” _1 John
2:1—_“an advocate (παράκλητον) with the Father, Jesus Christ the
righteous”; _John 14:16, 17—_“another Comforter (παράκλητον), that
he may be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth”; _Rom.
8:26—_“the Spirit himself maketh intercession for us.” _2 Pet.
1:21—_“men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit”; _John
16:8—_“convict the world in respect of sin”; _13—_“when he, the
Spirit of truth, is come, he shall guide you into all the truth”;
_Rom. 8:14—_“as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are
sons of God.”
McCosh: The works of the Spirit are Conviction, Conversion,
Sanctification, Comfort. Donovan: The Spirit is the Spirit of
conviction, enlightenment, quickening, in the sinner; and of
revelation, remembrance, witness, sanctification, consolation, to
the saint. The Spirit enlightens the sinner, as the flash of
lightning lights the traveler stumbling on the edge of a precipice
at night; enlightens the Christian, as the rising sun reveals a
landscape which was all there before, but which was hidden from
sight until the great luminary made it visible. “The morning light
did not create The lovely prospect it revealed; It only showed the
real state Of what the darkness had concealed.” Christ’s advocacy
before the throne is like that of legal counsel pleading in our
stead; the Holy Spirit’s advocacy in the heart is like the
mother’s teaching her child to pray for himself.
J. W. A. Stewart: “Without the work of the Holy Spirit redemption
would have been impossible, as impossible as that fuel should warm
without being lighted, or that bread should nourish without being
eaten. Christ is God entering into human history, but without the
Spirit Christianity would be only history. The Holy Spirit is God
entering into human hearts. The Holy Spirit turns creed into life.
Christ is the physician who leaves the remedy and then departs.
The Holy Spirit is the nurse who applies and administers the
remedy, and who remains with the patient until the cure is
completed.” Matheson, Voices of the Spirit, 78—“It is in vain that
the mirror exists in the room, if it is lying on its face; the
sunbeams cannot reach it till its face is upturned to them. Heaven
lies about thee not only in thine infancy but at all times. But it
is not enough that a place is prepared for thee; thou must be
prepared for the place. It is not enough that thy light has come;
thou thyself must arise and shine. No outward shining can reveal,
unless thou art thyself a reflector of its glory. The Spirit must
set thee on thy feet, that thou mayest hear him that speaks to
thee (Ez. 2:2).”
The Holy Spirit reveals not himself but Christ. _John 16:14—_“He
shall glorify me: for he shall take of mine, and shall declare it
unto you.” So should the servants of the Spirit hide themselves
while they make known Christ. E. H. Johnson, The Holy Spirit,
40—“Some years ago a large steam engine all of glass was exhibited
about the country. When it was at work one would see the piston
and the valves go; but no one could see what made them go. When
steam is hot enough to be a continuous elastic vapor, it is
invisible.” So we perceive the presence of the Holy Spirit, not by
visions or voices, but by the effect he produces within us in the
shape of new knowledge, new love, and new energy of our own
powers. Denney, Studies in Theology, 161—“No man can bear witness
to Christ and to himself at the same time. _Esprit_ is fatal to
unction; no man can give the impression that he himself is clever
and also that Christ is mighty to save. The power of the Holy
Spirit is felt only when the witness is unconscious of self, and
when others remain unconscious of him.” Moule, Veni Creator,
8—“The Holy Spirit, as Tertullian says, is the vicar of Christ.
The night before the Cross, the Holy Spirit was present to the
mind of Christ as a person.”
Gore, in Lux Mundi, 318—“It was a point in the charge against
Origen that his language seemed to involve an exclusion of the
Holy Spirit from nature, and a limitation of his activity to the
church. The whole of life is certainly his. And yet, because his
special attribute is holiness, it is in rational natures, which
alone are capable of holiness, that he exerts his special
influence. A special inbreathing of the divine Spirit gave to man
his proper being.” See _Gen. 2:7—_“Jehovah God ... breathed into
his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul”;
_John 3:8—_“The Spirit breatheth where it will ... so is every one
that is born of the Spirit.” E. H. Johnson, on The Offices of the
Holy Spirit, in Bib. Sac., July, 1892:381-382—“Why is he specially
called the Holy, when Father and Son are also holy, unless because
he produces holiness, _i. e._, makes the holiness of God to be
ours individually? Christ is the principle of collectivism, the
Holy Spirit the principle of individualism. The Holy Spirit shows
man the Christ in him. God above all = Father; God through all =
Son; God in all = Holy Spirit (_Eph. 4:6_).”
The doctrine of the Holy Spirit has never yet been scientifically
unfolded. No treatise on it has appeared comparable to Julius
Müller’s Doctrine of Sin, or to I. A. Dorner’s History of the
Doctrine of the Person of Christ. The progress of doctrine in the
past has been marked by successive stages. Athanasius treated of
the Trinity; Augustine of sin; Anselm of the atonement; Luther of
justification; Wesley of regeneration; and each of these
unfoldings of doctrine has been accompanied by religious
awakening. We still wait for a complete discussion of the doctrine
of the Holy Spirit, and believe that widespread revivals will
follow the recognition of the omnipotent Agent in revivals. On the
relations of the Holy Spirit to Christ, see Owen, in Works,
3:152-159; on the Holy Spirit’s nature and work, see works by
Faber, Smeaton, Tophel, G. Campbell Morgan, J. D. Robertson,
Biederwolf; also C. E. Smith, The Baptism of Fire; J. D. Thompson,
The Holy Comforter; Bushnell, Forgiveness and Law, last chapter;
Bp. Andrews, Works, 3:107-400; James S. Candlish, Work of the Holy
Spirit; Redford, Vox Dei; Andrew Murray, The Spirit of Christ; A.
J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit; Kuyper, Work of the Holy
Spirit; J. E. Cumming, Through the Eternal Spirit; Lechler, Lehre
vom Heiligen Geiste; Arthur, Tongue of Fire; A. H. Strong,
Philosophy and Religion, 250-258, and Christ in Creation, 297-313.
3. Generation and procession consistent with equality.
That the Sonship of Christ is eternal, is intimated in Psalm 2:7. “This
day have I begotten thee” is most naturally interpreted as the declaration
of an eternal fact in the divine nature. Neither the incarnation, the
baptism, the transfiguration, nor the resurrection marks the beginning of
Christ’s Sonship, or constitutes him Son of God. These are but
recognitions or manifestations of a preëxisting Sonship, inseparable from
his Godhood. He is “born before every creature” (while yet no created
thing existed—see Meyer on Col. 1:15) and “by the resurrection of the
dead” is not _made_ to be, but only “_declared_ to be,” “according to the
Spirit of holiness” (= according to his divine nature) “the Son of God
with power” (see Philippi and Alford on Rom. 1:3, 4). This Sonship is
unique—not predicable of, or shared with, any creature. The Scriptures
intimate, not only an eternal generation of the Son, but an eternal
procession of the Spirit.
_Psalm 2:7—_“I will tell of the decree: Jehovah said unto me, Thou
art my Son; This day I have begotten thee” see Alexander, Com. _in
loco_; also Com. on _Acts 13:33_—“‘To-day’ refers to the date of
the decree itself; but this, as a divine act, was eternal,—and so
must be the Sonship which it affirms.” Philo says that “to-day”
with God means “forever.” This begetting of which the Psalm speaks
is not the resurrection, for while Paul in _Acts 13:33_ refers to
this Psalm to establish the fact of Jesus’ Sonship, he refers in
_Acts 13:34, 35_ to another Psalm, the _sixteenth_, to establish
the fact that this Son of God was to rise from the dead. Christ is
shown to be Son of God by his incarnation (_Heb. 1:5, 6—_“when he
again bringeth in the firstborn into the world he saith, And let
all the angels of God worship him”), his baptism (_Mat.
3:17—_“This is my beloved Son”), his transfiguration (_Mat.
17:5—_“This is my beloved Son”), his resurrection (_Acts 13:34,
35—_“as concerning that he raised him up from the dead ... he
saith also in another psalm, Thou wilt not give thy Holy One to
see corruption”). _Col. 1:15—_“the firstborn of all
creation”—πρωτότοκος πάσης κτίσεως = “begotten first before all
creation” (Julius Müller, Proof-texts, 14); or “first-born before
every creature, _i. e._, begotten, and that antecedently to
everything that was created” (Ellicott, Com. _in loco_). “Herein”
(says Luthardt, Compend. Dogmatik, 81, on _Col. 1:15_) “is
indicated an antemundane origin from God—a relation internal to
the divine nature.” Lightfoot, on _Col. 1:15_, says that in Rabbi
Bechai God is called the “_primogenitus mundi_.”
On _Rom. 1:4_ (ὁρισθέντος = “manifested to be the mighty Son of
God”) see Lange’s Com., notes by Schaff on pages 56 and 61. Bruce,
Apologetics, 404—“The resurrection was the actual introduction of
Christ into the full possession of divine Sonship so far as
thereto belonged, not only the _inner_ of a holy spiritual
essence, but also the _outer_ of an existence in power and
heavenly glory.” Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 353, 354—“Calvin waves
aside eternal generation as an ‘absurd fiction.’ But to maintain
the deity of Christ merely on the ground that it is essential to
his making an adequate atonement for sin, is to involve the
rejection of his deity if ever the doctrine of atonement becomes
obnoxious.... Such was the process by which, in the mind of the
last century, the doctrine of the Trinity was undermined. Not to
ground the distinctions of the divine essence by some immanent
eternal necessity was to make easy the denial of what has been
called the ontological Trinity, and then the rejection of the
economical Trinity was not difficult or far away.”
If Westcott and Hort’s reading ὁ μονογενὴς Θεός, “_the only
begotten God_,” in _John 1:18_, is correct, we have a new proof of
Christ’s eternal Sonship. Meyer explains ἑαυτοῦ in _Rom.
8:3—_“God, sending his own Son,” as an allusion to the
metaphysical Sonship. That this Sonship is unique, is plain from
_John 1:14, 18—_“the only begotten from the Father ... the only
begotten Son who is in the bosom of the father”; _Rom. 8:32—_“his
own Son”; _Gal. 4:4—_“sent forth his Son”; _cf._ _Prov.
8:22-31—_“When he marked out the foundations of the earth; Then I
was by him as a master workman”; _30:4—_“Who hath established all
the ends of the earth? What is his name, and what is his son’s
name, if thou knowest?” The eternal procession of the Spirit seems
to be implied in _John 15:26—_“the Spirit of truth which
proceedeth from the Father”—see Westcott, Bib. Com., _in loco_;
_Heb. 9:14—_“the eternal Spirit.” Westcott here says that παρά
(not ἐξ) shows that the reference is to the temporal mission of
the Holy Spirit, not to the eternal procession. At the same time
he maintains that the temporal corresponds to the eternal.
The Scripture terms “generation” and “procession,” as applied to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit, are but approximate expressions of the truth, and
we are to correct by other declarations of Scripture any imperfect
impressions which we might derive solely from them. We use these terms in
a special sense, which we explicitly state and define as excluding all
notion of inequality between the persons of the Trinity. The eternal
generation of the Son to which we hold is
(_a_) Not creation, but the Father’s communication of himself to the Son.
Since the names, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not applicable to the
divine essence, but are only applicable to its hypostatical distinctions,
they imply no derivation of the essence of the Son from the essence of the
Father.
The error of the Nicene Fathers was that of explaining Sonship as
derivation of essence. The Father cannot impart his essence to the
Son and yet retain it. The Father is _fons trinitatis_, not _fons
deitatis_. See Shedd, Hist. Doct., 1:308-311, and Dogm. Theol.,
1:287-299; _per contra_, see Bib. Sac., 41:698-760.
(_b_) Not a commencement of existence, but an eternal relation to the
Father,—there never having been a time when the Son began to be, or when
the Son did not exist as God with the Father.
If there had been an eternal sun, it is evident that there must
have been an eternal sunlight also. Yet an eternal sunlight must
have evermore proceeded from the sun. When Cyril was asked whether
the Son existed before generation, he answered: “The generation of
the Son did not precede his existence, but he always existed, and
that by generation.”
(_c_) Not an act of the Father’s will, but an internal necessity of the
divine nature,—so that the Son is no more dependent upon the Father than
the Father is dependent upon the Son, and so that, if it be consistent
with deity to be Father, it is equally consistent with deity to be Son.
The sun is as dependent upon the sunlight as the sunlight is upon
the sun; for without sunlight the sun is no true sun. So God the
Father is as dependent upon God the Son, as God the Son is
dependent upon God the Father; for without Son the Father would be
no true Father. To say that aseity belongs only to the Father is
logically Arianism and Subordinationism proper, for it implies a
subordination of the essence of the Son to the Father. Essential
subordination would be inconsistent with equality. See Thomasius,
Christi Person und Werk, 1:115. Palmer, Theol. Definitions, 66,
67, says that Father = independent life; Son begotten =
independent life voluntarily brought under limitations; Spirit =
necessary consequence of existence of the other two.... The words
and actions whereby we design to affect others are “begotten.” The
atmosphere of unconscious influence is not “begotten,” but
“proceeding.”
(_d_) Not a relation in any way analogous to physical derivation, but a
life-movement of the divine nature, in virtue of which Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit, while equal in essence and dignity, stand to each other in an
order of personality, office, and operation, and in virtue of which the
Father works through the Son, and the Father and the Son through the
Spirit.
The subordination of the _person_ of the Son to the _person_ of
the Father, or in other words an order of personality, office, and
operation which permits the Father to be officially first, the Son
second, and the Spirit third, is perfectly consistent with
equality. Priority is not necessarily superiority. The possibility
of an order, which yet involves no inequality, may be illustrated
by the relation between man and woman. In office man is first and
woman second, but woman’s soul is worth as much as man’s; see _1
Cor. 11:3—_“the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the
woman is the man: and the head of Christ is God.” On _John
14:28—_“the Father is greater than I”—see Westcott, Bib. Com., _in
loco_.
Edwards, Observations on the Trinity (edited by Smyth), 22—“In the
Son the whole deity and glory of the Father is as it were repeated
or duplicated. Everything in the Father is repeated or expressed
again, and that fully, so that there is properly no inferiority.”
Edwards, Essay on the Trinity (edited by Fisher), 110-116—“The
Father is the Deity subsisting in the prime, unoriginated, and
most absolute manner, or the Deity in its direct existence. The
Son is the Deity generated by God’s understanding, or having an
Idea of himself and subsisting in that Idea. The Holy Ghost is the
Deity subsisting in act, or the divine essence flowing out and
breathed forth in God’s infinite love to and delight in himself.
And I believe the whole divine essence does truly and distinctly
subsist both in the divine Idea and in the divine Love, and each
of them are properly distinct persons.... We find no other
attributes of which it is said in Scripture that they are God, or
that God is they, but λόγος and ἀγάπη, the Reason and the Love of
God, Light not being different from Reason.... Understanding may
be predicated of this Love.... It is not a blind Love.... The
Father has Wisdom or Reason by the Son’s being in him....
Understanding is in the Holy Spirit, because the Son is in him.”
Yet Dr. Edwards A. Park declared eternal generation to be “eternal
nonsense,” and is thought to have hid Edwards’s unpublished Essay
on the Trinity for many years because it taught this doctrine.
The New Testament calls Christ θεός, but not ὁ θεός. We frankly
recognize an eternal subordination of Christ to the Father, but we
maintain at the same time that this subordination is a
subordination of order, office, and operation, not a subordination
of essence. “Non de essentia dicitur, sed de ministeriis.” E. G.
Robinson: “An eternal generation is necessarily an eternal
subordination and dependence. This seems to be fully admitted even
by the most orthodox of the Anglican writers, such as Pearson and
Hooker. Christ’s subordination to the Father is merely official,
not essential.” Whiton, Gloria Patri, 42, 96—“The early
Trinitarians by eternal Sonship meant, first, that it is of the
very nature of Deity to issue forth into visible expression. Thus
next, that this outward expression of God is not something other
than God, but God himself, in a self-expression as divine as the
hidden Deity. Thus they answered Philip’s cry, ‘show us the
Father, and it sufficeth us’_ (John 14:8)_, and thus they affirmed
Jesus’ declaration, they secured Paul’s faith that God has never
left himself without witness. They meant, ‘he that hath seen me
hath seen the Father’_ (John 14:9)_.... The Father is the Life
transcendent, the divine Source, ‘_above all_’; the Son is the
Life immanent, the divine Stream, ‘_through all_’; the Holy Spirit
is the Life individualized, ‘in all’_ (Eph. 4:6)_. The Holy Spirit
has been called ‘the executive of the Godhead.’ ” Whiton is here
speaking of the economic Trinity; but all this is even more true
of the immanent Trinity. On the Eternal Sonship, see Weiss, Bib.
Theol. N. T., 424, note; Treffrey, Eternal Sonship of our Lord;
Princeton Essays, 1:30-56; Watson, Institutes, 1:530-577; Bib.
Sac., 27:268. On the procession of the Spirit, see Shedd, Dogm.
Theol., 1:300-304, and History of Doctrine, 1:387; Dick, Lectures
on Theology, 1:347-350.
The same principles upon which we interpret the declaration of Christ’s
eternal Sonship apply to the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father
through the Son, and show this to be not inconsistent with the Spirit’s
equal dignity and glory.
We therefore only formulate truth which is concretely expressed in
Scripture, and which is recognized by all ages of the church in hymns and
prayers addressed to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, when we assert that in
the nature of the one God there are three eternal distinctions, which are
best described as persons, and each of which is the proper and equal
object of Christian worship.
We are also warranted in declaring that, in virtue of these personal
distinctions or modes of subsistence, God exists in the relations,
respectively, first, of Source, Origin, Authority, and in this relation is
the Father; secondly, of Expression, Medium, Revelation, and in this
relation is the Son; thirdly, of Apprehension, Accomplishment,
Realization, and in this relation is the Holy Spirit.
John Owen, Works, 3:64-92—“The office of the Holy Spirit is that
of concluding, completing, perfecting. To the Father we assign
_opera naturæ_; to the Son, _opera gratiæ procuratæ_; to the
Spirit, _opera gratiæ applicatæ_.” All God’s revelations are
through the Son or the Spirit, and the latter includes the former.
Kuyper, Work of the Holy Spirit, designates the three offices
respectively as those of Causation, Construction, Consummation;
the Father brings forth, the Son arranges, the Spirit perfects.
Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 365-373—“God is Life, Light, Love. As the
Fathers regarded Reason both in God and man as the personal,
omnipresent second Person of the Trinity, so Jonathan Edwards
regarded Love both in God and in man as the personal, omnipresent
third Person of the Trinity. Hence the Father is never said to
love the Spirit as he is said to love the Son—for this love _is_
the Spirit. The Father and the Son are said to love men, but the
Holy Spirit is never said to love them, for love _is_ the Holy
Spirit. But why could not Edwards also hold that the Logos or
divine Reason also dwelt in humanity, so that manhood was
constituted in Christ and shared with him in the consubstantial
image of the Father? Outward nature reflects God’s light and has
Christ in it,—why not universal humanity?”
Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 136, 202, speaks of “1. God,
the Eternal, the Infinite, in his infinity, as himself; 2. God, as
self-expressed within the nature and faculties of man—body, soul,
and spirit—the consummation and interpretation and revelation of
what true manhood means and is, in its very truth, in its relation
to God; 3. God, as Spirit of Beauty and Holiness, which are
himself present in things created, animate and inanimate, and
constituting in them their divine response to God; constituting
above all in created personalities the full reality of their
personal response. Or again: 1. What a man is invisibly in
himself; 2. his outward material projection or expression as body;
and 3. the response which that which he is through his bodily
utterance or operation makes to him, as the true echo or
expression of himself.” Moberly seeks thus to find in man’s nature
an analogy to the inner processes of the divine.
VI. Inscrutable, yet not self-contradictory, this Doctrine furnishes the
Key to all other Doctrines.
1. The mode of this triune existence is inscrutable.
It is inscrutable because there are no analogies to it in our finite
experience. For this reason all attempts are vain adequately to represent
it;
(_a_) From inanimate things—as the fountain, the stream, and the rivulet
trickling from it (Athanasius); the cloud, the rain, and the rising mist
(Boardman); color, shape, and size (F. W. Robertson); the actinic,
luminiferous, and calorific principles in the ray of light (Solar
Hieroglyphics, 34).