A HOLLOW ARGUMENT
Sunday, October 8, 2017
Romans [MKJV]
12:1-3 I beseech you therefore,
brothers, by the mercies of God to present your bodies a living sacrifice,
holy, pleasing to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be
conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, in
order to prove by you what is that good and pleasing and perfect will of God.
For I say, through the grace given to me, to every one who is among you, not to
think of himself more highly than he ought to think. But set your mind to be
right-minded, even as God has dealt to every man the measure of faith.
2Timothy 2:15-16
Study earnestly to present yourself approved to God, a workman that does not
need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of Truth. But shun profane, vain
babblings, for they will increase to more ungodliness.
GotQuestions.org
essay on Hinduism and avatars included suggestion of studying the trinity in
God’s word. I agree that it should be a subject among many to study in this
life time. Through the years I’ve heard argument against doing so for “It just
confuses.” This same argument broadly applied against studying the Bible,
especially applied to the Book of Revelation. I’ve even had pastors encourage
the latter.
It is a hollow
argument without sound foundation, contrary to worshipping God in a pleasing
approved manner. For those desiring God’s pleasure and approval beyond
dependence on ritual I’m providing the topical study on the Trinity from
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia.
EBB4
Trinity
trin´i-ti
1. The Term “Trinity”
2. Purely a Revealed Doctrine
3. No Rational Proof of It
4. Finds Support in Reason
5. Not Clearly Revealed in the Old Testament
6. Prepared for in the Old Testament
7. Presupposed Rather Than Inculcated in the
New Testament
8. Revealed in Manifestation of Son and Spirit
9. Implied in the Whole New Testament
10. Conditions the Whole Teaching of Jesus
11. Father and Son in Johannine Discourses
12. Spirit in Johannine Discourses
13. The Baptismal Formula
14. Genuineness of Baptismal Formula
15. Paul's Trinitarianism
16. Conjunction of the Three in Paul
17. Trinitarianism of Other New Testament Writers
18. Variations in Nomenclature
19. Implications of “Son” and “Spirit”
20. The Question of Subordination
21. Witness of the Christian Consciousness
22. Formulation of the Doctrine
LITERATURE
1. The Term “Trinity”:
The term “Trinity” is not a Biblical term, and we are not using
Biblical language when we define what is expressed by it as the doctrine that
there is one only and true God, but in the unity of the Godhead there are three
coeternal and coequal Persons, the same in substance but distinct in
subsistence. A doctrine so defined can be spoken of as a Biblical doctrine only
on the principle that the sense of Scripture is Scripture. And the definition
of a Biblical doctrine in such un-Biblical language can be justified only on
the principle that it is better to preserve the truth of Scripture than the
words of Scripture. The doctrine of the Trinity lies in Scripture in solution;
when it is crystallized from its solvent it does not cease to be Scriptural,
but only comes into clearer view. Or, to speak without figure, the doctrine of
the Trinity is given to us in Scripture, not in formulated definition, but in
fragmentary allusions; when we assemble the disjecta membra into their organic
unity, we are not passing from Scripture, but entering more thoroughly into the
meaning of Scripture. We may state the doctrine in technical terms, supplied by
philosophical reflection; but the doctrine stated is a genuinely Scriptural
doctrine.
2. Purely a Revealed Doctrine:
In point of fact, the doctrine of the Trinity is purely a revealed
doctrine. That is to say, it embodies a truth which has never been discovered,
and is indiscoverable, by natural reason. With all his searching, man has not
been able to find out for himself the deepest things of God. Accordingly,
ethnic thought has never attained a Trinitarian conception of God, nor does any
ethnic religion present in its representations of the divine being any analogy
to the doctrine of the Trinity.
Triads of divinities, no doubt, occur in nearly all polytheistic
religions, formed under very various influences. Sometimes, as in the Egyptian
triad of Osiris. Isis and Horus, it is the analogy of the human family with its
father, mother and son which lies at their basis. Sometimes they are the effect
of mere syncretism, three deities worshipped in different localities being
brought together in the common worship of all. Sometimes, as in the Hindu triad
of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, they represent the cyclic movement of a pantheistic
evolution, and symbolize the three stages of Being, Becoming and Dissolution.
Sometimes they are the result apparently of nothing more than an odd human
tendency to think in threes, which has given the number three widespread
standing as a sacred number (so H. Usener). It is no more than was to be
anticipated, that one or another of these triads should now and again be
pointed to as the replica (or even the original) of the Christian doctrine of
the Trinity. Gladstone found the Trinity in the Homeric mythology, the trident
of Poseidon being its symbol. Hegel very naturally found it in the Hindu
Trimurti, which indeed is very like his pantheizing notion of what the Trinity
is. Others have perceived it in the Buddhist Triratna (Soderblom); or (despite
their crass dualism) in some speculations of Parseeism; or, more frequently, in
the notional triad of Platonism (e.g. Knapp); while Jules Martin is quite sure
that it is present in Philo's neo-Stoical doctrine of the “powers,” especially
when applied to the explanation of Abraham's three visitors. Of late years,
eyes have been turned rather to Babylonia; and H. Zimmern finds a possible
forerunner of the Trinity in a Father, Son, and Intercessor, which he discovers
in its mythology. It should be needless to say that none of these triads has
the slightest resemblance to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. The
Christian doctrine of the Trinity embodies much more than the notion of
“threeness,” and beyond their “threeness” these triads have nothing in common
with it.
3. No Rational Proof of It:
As the doctrine of the Trinity is indiscoverable by reason, so it is
incapable of proof from reason. There are no analogies to it in Nature, not
even in the spiritual nature of man, who is made in the image of God. In His trinitarian
mode of being, God is unique; and, as there is nothing in the universe like Him
in this respect, so there is nothing which can help us to comprehend Him. Many
attempts have, nevertheless, been made to construct a rational proof of the
Trinity of the God head. Among these there are two which are particularly
attractive, and have therefore been put forward again and again by speculative
thinkers through all the Christian ages. These are derived from the
implications, in the one case, of self-consciousness; in the other, of love.
Both self-consciousness and love, it is said, demand for their very existence
an object over against which the self stands as subject. If we conceive of God
as self-conscious and loving, therefore, we cannot help conceiving of Him as
embracing in His unity some form of plurality. From this general position both
arguments have been elaborated, however, by various thinkers in very varied
forms.
The former of them, for example, is developed by a great 17th-century
theologian - Bartholomew Keckermann (1614) - as follows: God is self-conscious
thought; and God's thought must have a perfect object, existing eternally
before it; this object to be perfect must be itself God; and as God is one,
this object which is God must be the God that is one. It is essentially the
same argument which is popularized in a famous paragraph (section 73) of
Lessing's The Education of the Human Race. Must not God have an
absolutely perfect representation of Himself - that is, a representation in
which everything that is in Him is found? And would everything that is in God
be found in this representation if His necessary reality were not found in it?
If everything, everything without exception, that is in God is to be found in
this representation, it cannot, therefore, remain a mere empty image, but must
be an actual duplication of God. It is obvious that arguments like this prove
too much. If God's representation of Himself, to be perfect, must possess the
same kind of reality that He Himself possesses, it does not seem easy to deny
that His representations of everything else must possess objective reality. And
this would be as much as to say that the eternal objective coexistence of all
that God can conceive is given in the very idea of God; and that is open
pantheism. The logical flaw lies in including in the perfection of a
representation qualities which are not proper to representations, however
perfect. A perfect representation must, of course, have all the reality proper
to a representation; but objective reality is so little proper to a
representation that a representation acquiring it would cease to be a
representation. This fatal flaw is not transcended, but only covered up, when
the argument is compressed, as it is in most of its modern presentations, in
effect to the mere assertion that the condition of self-consciousness is a real
distinction between the thinking subject and the thought object, which, in
God's case, would be between the subject ego and the object ego. Why, however,
we should deny to God the power of self-contemplation enjoyed by every finite
spirit, save at the cost of the distinct hypostatizing of the contemplant and
the contemplated self, it is hard to understand. Nor is it always clear that
what we get is a distinct hypostatization rather than a distinct
substantializing of the contemplant and contemplated ego: not two persons in
the Godhead so much as two Gods. The discovery of the third hypostasis - the
Holy Spirit - remains meanwhile, to all these attempts rationally to construct
a Trinity in the Divine Being, a standing puzzle which finds only a very
artificial solution.
The case is much the same with the argument derived from the nature of
love. Our sympathies go out to that old Valentinian writer - possibly it was
Valentinus himself - who reasoned - perhaps he was the first so to reason -
that “God is all love,” “but love is not love unless there be an object of
love.” And they go out more richly still to Augustine, when, seeking a basis,
not for a theory of emanations, but for the doctrine of the Trinity, he
analyzes this love which God is into the triple implication of “the lover,”
“the loved” and “the love itself,” and sees in this trinary of love an analogue
of the Triune God. It requires, however, only that the argument thus broadly
suggested should be developed into its details for its artificiality to become
apparent. Richard of Victor works it out as follows: It belongs to the nature
of amor that it should turn to another as caritas. This other, in
God's case, cannot be the world; since such love of the world would be
inordinate. It can only be a person; and a person who is God's equal in
eternity, power and wisdom. Since, however, there cannot be two divine
substances, these two divine persons must form one and the same substance. The
best love cannot, however, confine itself to these two persons; it must become condilectio
by the desire that a third should be equally loved as they love one another.
Thus love, when perfectly conceived, leads necessarily to the Trinity, and
since God is all He can be, this Trinity must be real. Modern writers
(Sartorius, Schoberlein, J. Muller, Liebner, most lately R. H. Grutzmacher) do
not seem to have essentially improved upon such a statement as this. And after
all is said, it does not appear clear that God's own all-perfect Being could
not supply a satisfying object of His all-perfect love. To say that in its very
nature love is self-communicative, and therefore implies an object other than
self, seems an abuse of figurative language.
Perhaps the ontological proof of the Trinity is nowhere more
attractively put than by Jonathan Edwards. The peculiarity of his presentation
of it lies in an attempt to add plausibility to it by a doctrine of the nature
of spiritual ideas or ideas of spiritual things, such as thought, love, fear,
in general. Ideas of such things, he urges, are just repetitions of them, so
that he who has an idea of any act of love, fear, anger or any other act or
motion of the mind, simply so far repeats the motion in question; and if the
idea be perfect and complete, the original motion of the mind is absolutely
reduplicated. Edwards presses this so far that he is ready to contend that if a
man could have an absolutely perfect idea of all that was in his mind at any
past moment, he would really, to all intents and purposes, be over again what
he was at that moment. And if he could perfectly contemplate all that is in his
mind at any given moment, as it is and at the same time that it is there in its
first and direct existence, he would really be two at that time, he would be
twice at once: “The idea he has of himself would be himself again.” This now is
the case with the Divine Being. “God's idea of Himself is absolutely perfect,
and therefore is an express and perfect image of Him, exactly like Him in every
respect.... But that which is the express, perfect image of God and in every
respect like HIm is God, to all intents and purposes, because there is nothing
wanting: there is nothing in the Deity that renders it the Deity but what has
something exactly answering to it in this image, which will therefore also
render that the Deity.” The Second Person of the Trinity being thus attained,
the argument advances. “The Godhead being thus begotten of God's loving
(having?) an idea of Himself and showing forth in a distinct Subsistence or
Person in that idea, there proceeds a most pure act, and an infinitely holy and
sacred energy arises between the Father and the Son in mutually loving and
delighting in each other.... The Deity becomes all act, the divine essence
itself flows out and is as it were breathed forth in love and joy. So that the
Godhead therein stands forth in yet another manner of Subsistence, and there
proceeds the Third Person in the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, namely, the Deity in
act, for there is no other act but the act of the will.” The inconclusiveness
of the reasoning lies on the surface. The mind does not consist in its states,
and the repetition of its states would not, therefore, duplicate or triplicate
it. If it did, we should have a plurality of Beings, not of Persons in one
Being. Neither God's perfect idea of Himself nor His perfect love of Himself
reproduces Himself. He differs from His idea and His love of Himself precisely
by that which distinguishes His Being from His acts. When it is said, then,
that there is nothing in the Deity which renders it the Deity but what has
something answering to it in its image of itself, it is enough to respond -
except the Deity itself. What is wanting to the image to make it a second Deity
is just objective reality.
4. Finds Support in Reason:
Inconclusive as all such reasoning is, however, considered as rational
demonstration of the reality of the Trinity, it is very far from possessing no
value. It carries home to us in a very suggestive way the superiority of the
Trinitarian conception of God to the conception of Him as an abstract monad,
and thus brings important rational support to the doctrine of the Trinity, when
once that doctrine has been given us by revelation. If it is not quite possible
to say that we cannot conceive of God as eternal self-consciousness and eternal
love, without conceiving Him as a Trinity, it does seem quite necessary to say
that when we conceive Him as a Trinity, new fullness, richness, force are given
to our conception of Him as a self-conscious, loving Being, and therefore we
conceive Him more adequately than as a monad, and no one who has ever once
conceived Him as a Trinity can ever again satisfy himself with a monadistic
conception of God. Reason thus not only performs the important negative service
to faith in the Trinity, of showing the self-consistency of the doctrine and
its consistency with other known truth, but brings this positive rational
support to it of discovering in it the only adequate conception of God as
self-conscious spirit and living love. Difficult, therefore, as the idea of the
Trinity in itself is, it does not come to us as an added burden upon our
intelligence; it brings us rather the solution of the deepest and most persistent
difficulties in our conception of God as infinite moral Being, and illuminates,
enriches and elevates all our thought of God. It has accordingly become a
commonplace to say that Christian theism is the only stable theism. That is as
much as to say that theism requires the enriching conception of the Trinity to
give it a permanent hold upon the human mind - the mind finds it difficult to
rest in the idea of an abstract unity for its God; and that the human heart
cries out for the living God in whose Being there is that fullness of life for
which the conception of the Trinity alone provides.
5. Not Clearly Revealed in the Old Testament:
So strongly is it felt in wide circles that a Trinitarian conception
is essential to a worthy idea of God, that there is abroad a deep-seated
unwillingness to allow that God could ever have made Himself known otherwise
than as a Trinity. From this point of view it is inconceivable that the Old
Testament revelation should know nothing of the Trinity. Accordingly, I. A. Dorner,
for example, reasons thus: “If, however - and this is the faith of universal
Christendom - a living idea of God must be thought in some way after a
Trinitarian fashion, it must be antecedently probable that traces of the
Trinity cannot be lacking in the Old Testament, since its idea of God is a
living or historical one.” Whether there really exist traces of the idea of the
Trinity in the Old Testament, however, is a nice question. Certainly we cannot
speak broadly of the revelation of the doctrine of the Trinity in the Old
Testament. It is a plain matter of fact that none who have depended on the
revelation embodied in the Old Testament alone have ever attained to the
doctrine of the Trinity. It is another question, however, whether there may not
exist in the pages of the Old Testament turns of expression or records of
occurrences in which one already acquainted with the doctrine of the Trinity
may fairly see indications of an underlying implication of it. The older
writers discovered intimations of the Trinity in such phenomena as the plural
form of the divine name Ělōhı̄m, the occasional employment with reference to God of plural pronouns
(“Let us make man in our image,” Gen_1:26;
Gen_3:22; Gen_11:7;
Isa_6:8), or of plural verbs (Gen_20:13; Gen_35:7),
certain repetitions of the name of God which seem to distinguish between God
and God (Gen_19:27; Psa_45:6, Psa_45:7;
Psa_110:1; Hos_1:7),
threefold liturgical formulas (Deu_16:4;
Num_6:24, Num_6:26;
Isa_6:3), a certain tendency to
hypostatize the conception of Wisdom (Prov 8), and especially the remarkable
phenomena connected with the appearances of the Angel of Yahweh (Gen_16:2-13; Gen_22:11,
Gen_22:16; Gen_31:11,
Gen_31:13; Gen_48:15,
Gen_48:16; Exo_3:2,
Exo_3:4, Exo_3:5;
Jdg_13:20-22). The tendency of more
recent authors is to appeal, not so much to specific texts of the Old
Testament, as to the very “organism of revelation” in the Old Testament, in
which there is perceived an underlying suggestion “that all things owe their
existence and persistence to a threefold cause,” both with reference to the
first creation, and, more plainly, with reference to the second creation.
Passages like Psa_33:6; Isa_61:1; Isa_63:9-12;
Hag_2:5, Hag_2:6,
in which God and His Word and His Spirit are brought together, co-causes of
effects, are adduced. A tendency is pointed out to hypostatize the Word of God
on the one hand (e.g. Gen_1:3; Psa_33:6; Psa_107:20;
Psa_119:87; Psa_147:15-18;
Isa_55:11); and, especially in Ezekiel
and the later Prophets, the Spirit of God, on the other (e.g. Gen_1:2; Isa_48:16;
Isa_63:10; Eze_2:2;
Eze_8:3; Zec_7:12).
Suggestions - in Isaiah for instance (Isa_7:14;
Isa_9:6) - of the Deity of the Messiah
are appealed to. And if the occasional occurrence of plural verbs and pronouns
referring to God, and the plural form of the name Ělōhı̄m, are not
insisted upon as in themselves evidence of a multiplicity in the Godhead, yet a
certain weight is lent them as witnesses that “the God of revelation is no
abstract unity, but the living, true God, who in the fullness of His life
embraces the highest variety” (Bavinck). The upshot of it all is that it is
very generally felt that, somehow, in the Old Testament development of the idea
of God there is a suggestion that the Deity is not a simple monad, and that
thus a preparation is made for the revelation of the Trinity yet to come. It
would seem clear that we must recognize in the Old Testament doctrine of the
relation of God to His revelation by the creative Word and the Spirit, at least
the germ of the distinctions in the Godhead afterward fully made known in the
Christian revelation. And we can scarcely stop there. After all is said, in the
light of the later revelation, the Trinitarian interpretation remains the most
natural one of the phenomena which the older writers frankly interpreted as
intimations of the Trinity; especially of those connected with the descriptions
of tile Angel of Yahweh, no doubt, but also even of such a form of expression
as meets us in the “Let us make man in our image” of Gen_1:26 - for surely Gen_1:27
: “And God created man in his own image,” does not encourage us to take the
preceding verse as announcing that man was to be created in the image of the angels.
This is not an illegitimate reading of New Testament ideas back into the text
of the Old Testament; it is only reading the text of the Old Testament under
the illumination of the New Testament revelation. The Old Testament may be
likened to a chamber richly furnished but dimly lighted; the introduction of
light brings into it nothing which was not in it before; but it brings out into
clearer view much of what is in it but was only dimly or even not at all
perceived before. The mystery of the Trinity is not revealed in the Old
Testament; but the mystery of the Trinity underlies the Old Testament
revelation, and here and there almost comes into view. Thus, the Old Testament
revelation of God is not corrected by the fuller revelation which follows it, but
only perfected, extended and enlarged.
6. Prepared for in the Old Testament:
It is an old saying that what becomes patent in the New Testament was
latent in the Old Testament. And it is important that the continuity of the
revelation of God contained in the two Testaments should not be overlooked or
obscured. If we find some difficulty in perceiving for ourselves, in the Old
Testament, definite points of attachment for the revelation of the Trinity, we
cannot help perceiving with great clearness in the New Testament abundant
evidence that its writers felt no incongruity whatever between their doctrine
of the Trinity and the Old Testament conception of God. The New Testament
writers certainly were not conscious of being “setters forth of strange gods.”
To their own apprehension they worshipped and proclaimed just the God of
Israel; and they laid no less stress than the Old Testament itself upon His
unity (Joh_17:3; 1Co_8:4; 1Ti_2:5).
They do not, then, place two new gods by the side of Yahweh, as alike with Him
to be served and worshipped; they conceive Yahweh as Himself at once Father,
Son and Spirit. In presenting this one Yahweh as Father, Son and Spirit, they
do not even betray any lurking feeling that they are making innovations.
Without apparent misgiving they take over Old Testament passages and apply them
to Father, Son and Spirit indifferently. Obviously they understand themselves,
and wish to be understood, as setting forth in the Father, Son and Spirit just
the one God that the God of the Old Testament revelation is; and they are as
far as possible from recognizing any breach between themselves and the Fathers
in presenting their enlarged conception of the Divine Being. This may not
amount to saying that they saw the doctrine of the Trinity everywhere taught in
the Old Testament. It certainly amounts to saying that they saw the Triune God
whom they worshipped in the God of the Old Testament revelation, and felt no
incongruity in speaking of their Triune God in the terms of the Old Testament
revelation. The God of the Old Testament was their God, and their God was a
Trinity, and their sense of the identity of the two was so complete that no
question as to it was raised in their minds.
7. Presupposed Rather than Inculcated in the
New Testament:
The simplicity and assurance with which the New Testament writers
speak of God as a Trinity have, however, a further implication. If they betray
no sense of novelty in so speaking of Him, this is undoubtedly in part because
it was no longer a novelty so to speak of Him. It is clear, in other words,
that, as we read the New Testament, we are not witnessing the birth of a new
conception of God. What we meet with in its pages is a firmly established
conception of God underlying and giving its tone to the whole fabric. It is not
in a text here and there that the New Testament bears its testimony to the
doctrine of the Trinity. The whole book is Trinitarian to the core; all its
teaching is built on the assumption of the Trinity; and its allusions to the
Trinity are frequent, cursory, easy and confident. It is with a view to the
cursoriness of the allusions to it in the New Testament that it has been
remarked that “the doctrine of the Trinity is not so much heard as overheard in
the statements of Scripture.” It would be more exact to say that it is not so
much inculcated as presupposed. The doctrine of the Trinity does not appear in
the New Testament in the making, but as already made. It takes its place in its
pages, as Gunkel phrases it, with an air almost of complaint, already “in full
completeness” (vollig fertig), leaving no trace of its growth. “There is
nothing more wonderful in the history of human thought,” says Sanday, with his
eye on the appearance of the doctrine of the Trinity in the New Testament,
“than the silent and imperceptible way in which this doctrine, to us so
difficult, took its place without struggle - and without controversy - among
accepted Christian truths.” The explanation of this remarkable phenomenon is,
however, simple. Our New Testament is not a record of the development of the
doctrine or of its assimilation. It everywhere presupposes the doctrine as the
fixed possession of the Christian community; and the process by which it became
the possession of the Christian community lies behind the New Testament.
8. Revealed in Manifestation of Son and
Spirit:
We cannot speak of the doctrine of the Trinity, therefore, if we study
exactness of speech, as revealed in the New Testament, any more than we can
speak of it as revealed in the Old Testament. The Old Testament was written
before its revelation; the New Testament after it. The revelation itself was
made not in word but in deed. It was made in the incaration of God the Son, and
the outpouring of God the Holy Spirit. The relation of the two Testaments to
this revelation is in the one case that of preparation for it, and in the other
that of product of it. The revelation itself is embodied just in Christ and the
Holy Spirit. This is as much as to say that the revelation of the Trinity was
incidental to, and the inevitable effect of, the accomplishment of redemption.
It was in the coming of the Son of God in the likeness of sinful flesh to offer
Himself a sacrifice for sin; and in the coming of the Holy Spirit to convict
the world of sin, of righteousness and of judgment, that the Trinity of Persons
in the Unity of the Godhead was once for all revealed to men. Those who knew
God the Father, who loved them and gave His own Son to die for them; and the
Lord Jesus Christ, who loved them and delivered Himself up an offering and
sacrifice for them; and the Spirit of Grace, who loved them and dwelt within
them a power not themselves, making for righteousness, knew the Triune God and
could not think or speak of God otherwise than as triune. The doctrine of the Trinity,
in other words, is simply the modification wrought in the conception of the one
only God by His complete revelation of Himself in the redemptive process. It
necessarily waited, therefore, upon the completion of the redemptive process
for its revelation, and its revelation, as necessarily, lay complete in the
redemptive process.
From this central fact we may understand more fully several
circumstances connected with the revelation of the Trinity to which allusion
has been made. We may from it understand, for example, why the Trinity was not
revealed in the Old Testament. It may carry us a little way to remark, as it
has been customary to remark since the time of Gregory of Nazianzus, that it
was the task of the Old Testament revelation to fix firmly in the minds and
hearts of the people of God the great fundamental truth of the unity of the
Godhead; and it would have been dangerous to speak to them of the plurality
within this unity until this task had been fully accomplished. The real reason
for the delay in the revelation of the Trinity, however, is grounded in the
secular development of the redemptive purpose of God: the times were ripe for
the revelation of the Trinity in the unity of the Godhead until the fullness of
the time had come for God to send forth His Son unto redemption, and His Spirit
unto sanctification. The revelation in word must needs wait upon the revelation
in fact, to which it brings its necessary explanation, no doubt, but from which
also it derives its own entire significance and value. The revelation of a
Trinity in the divine unity as a mere abstract truth without relation to
manifested fact, and without significance to the development of the kingdom of
God, would have been foreign to the whole method of the divine procedure as it
lies exposed to us in the pages of Scripture. Here the working-out of the
divine purpose supplies the fundamental principle to which all else, even the
progressive stages of revelation itself, is subsidiary; and advances in
revelation are ever closely connected with the advancing accomplishment of the
redemptive purpose. We may understand also, however, from the same central
fact, why it is that the doctrine of the Trinity lies in the New Testament
rather in the form of allusions than in express teaching, why it is rather
everywhere presupposed, coming only here and there into incidental expression,
than formally inculcated. It is because the revelation, having been made in the
actual occurrences of redemption, was already the common property of all Christian
hearts. In speaking and writing to one another, Christians, therefore, rather
spoke out of their common Trinitarian consciousness, and reminded one another
of their common fund of belief, than instructed one another in what was already
the common property of all. We are to look for, and we shall find, in the New
Testament allusions to the Trinity, rather evidence of how the Trinity,
believed in by all, was conceived by the authoritative teachers of the church,
than formal attempts, on their part, by authoritative declarations, to bring
the church into the understanding that God is a Trinity.
9. Implied in the Whole New Testament:
The fundamental proof that God is a Trinity is supplied thus by the
fundamental revelation of the Trinity in fact: that is to say, in the
incarnation of God the Son and the outpouring of God the Holy Spirit. In a
word, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are the fundamental proof of the
doctrine of the Trinity. This is as much as to say that all the evidence of
whatever kind, and from whatever source derived, that Jesus Christ is God
manifested in the flesh, and that the Holy Spirit is a Divine Person, is just
so much evidence for the doctrine of the Trinity; and that when we go to the
New Testament for evidence of the Trinity we are to seek it, not merely in the
scattered allusions to the Trinity as such, numerous and instructive as they
are, but primarily in the whole mass of evidence which the New Testament
provides of the Deity of Christ and the divine personality of the Holy Spirit.
When we have said this, we have said in effect that the whole mass of the New
Testament is evidence for the Trinity. For the New Testament is saturated with
evidence of the Deity of Christ and the divine personality of the Holy Spirit,
Precisely what the New Testament is, is the documentation of the religion of
the incarnate Son and of the outpoured Spirit, that is to say, of the religion
of the Trinity, and what we mean by the doctrine of the Trinity is nothing but
the formulation in exact language of the conception of God presupposed in the
religion of the incarnate Son and outpoured Spirit. We may analyze this
conception and adduce proof for every constituent element of it from the New
Testament declarations. We may show that the New Testament everywhere insists
on the unity of the Godhead; that it constantly recognizes the Father as God,
the Son as God and the Spirit as God; and that it cursorily presents these
three to us as distinct Persons. It is not necessary, however, to enlarge here
on facts so obvious. We may content ourselves with simply observing that to the
New Testament there is but one only living and true God; but that to it Jesus
Christ and the Holy Spirit are each God in the fullest sense of the term; and
yet Father, Son and Spirit stand over against each other as I, and Thou, and
He. In this composite fact the New Testament gives us the doctrine of the
Trinity. For the doctrine of the Trinity is but the statement in wellguarded
language of this composite fact. Through out the whole course of the many
efforts to formulate the doctrine exactly, which have followed one another
during the entire history of the church, indeed, the principle which has ever
determined the result has always been determination to do justice in conceiving
the relations of God the Father, God the Son and God the Spirit, on the one
hand to the unity of God, and, on the other, to the true Deity of the Son and
Spirit and their distinct personalities. When we have said these three things,
then - that there is but one God, that the Father and the Son and the Spirit is
each God, that the Father and the Son and the Spirit is each a distinct person
- we have enunciated the doctrine of the Trinity in its completeness.
That this doctrine underlies the whole New Testament as its constant
presupposition and determines everywhere its forms of expression is the primary
fact to be noted. We must not omit explicitly to note, however, that it now and
again also, as occasion arises for its incidental enunciation, comes itself to
expression in more or less completeness of statement. The passages in which the
three Persons of the Trinity are brought together are much more numerous than,
perhaps, is generally supposed; but it should be recognized that the formal
collocation of the elements of the doctrine naturally is relatively rare in
writings which are occasional in their origin and practical rather than
doctrinal in their immediate purpose. The three Persons already come into view
as Divine Persons in the annunciation of the birth of our Lord: 'The Holy Ghost
shall come upon thee,' said the angel to Mary, 'and the power of the Most High
shall overshadow thee: wherefore also the holy thing which is to be born shall
be called the Son of God' (Luk_1:35
margin; compare Mat_1:18 ff). Here the
Holy Ghost is the active agent in the production of an effect which is also
ascribed to the power of the Most High, and the child thus brought into the
world is given the great designation of “Son of God.” The three Persons are
just as clearly brought before us in the account of Matthew (Mat_1:18 ff), though the allusions to them are
dispersed through a longer stretch of narrative, in the course of which the
Deity of the child is twice intimated (Mat_1:21
: 'It is He that shall save His people from their sins'; Mat_1:23 : 'They shall call His name Immanuel;
which is, being interpreted, God-with-us') In the baptismal scene which
finds record by all the evangelists at the opening of Jesus' ministry (Mat_3:16, Mat_3:17;
Mar_1:10, Mar_1:11;
Luk_3:21, Luk_3:22;
Joh_1:32-34), the three Persons are
thrown up to sight in a dramatic picture in which the Deity of each is strongly
emphasized. From the open heavens the Spirit descends in visible form, and 'a
voice came out of the heavens, Thou art my Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well
pleased.' Thus care seems to have been taken to make the advent of the Son of
God into the world the revelation also of the Triune God, that the minds of men
might as smoothly as possible adjust themselves to the preconditions of the divine
redemption which was in process of being wrought out.
10. Conditions the Whole Teaching of Jesus:
With this as a starting-point, the teaching of Jesus is conditioned
throughout in a Trinitarian way. He has much to say of God His Father, from
whom as His Son He is in some true sense distinct, and with whom He is in some
equally true sense one. And He has much to say of the Spirit, who represents
Him as He represents the Father, and by whom He works as the Father works by
Him. It is not merely in the Gospel of John that such representations occur in
the teaching of Jesus. In the Synoptics, too, Jesus claims a Sonship to God
which is unique (Mat_11:27; Mat_24:36; Mar_13:32;
Luk_10:22; in the following passages
the title of “Son of God” is attributed to Him and accepted by Him: Mat_4:6; Mat_8:29;
Mat_14:33; Mat_27:40,
Mat_27:43, Mat_27:44;
Mar_3:11; Mar_12:6-8;
Mar_15:39; Luk_4:41;
Luk_22:70; compare Joh_1:34, Joh_1:49;
Joh_9:35; Joh_11:27),
and which involves an absolute community between the two in knowledge, say, and
power: both Matthew (Mat_11:27) and
Luke (Luk_10:22) record His great
declaration that He knows the Father and the Father knows Him with perfect
mutual knowledge: “No one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any
know the Father, save the Son.” In the Synoptics, too, Jesus speaks of
employing the Spirit of God Himself for the performance of His works, as if the
activities of God were at His disposal: “I by the Spirit of God” - or as Luke
has it, “by the finger of God - cast out demons” (Mat_12:28;
Luk_11:20; compare the promise of the
Spirit in Mar_13:11; Luk_12:12).
11. Father and Son in Johannine Discourses:
It is in the discourses recorded in John, however, that Jesus most
copiously refers to the unity of Himself, as the Son, with the Father, and to
the mission of the Spirit from Himself as the dispenser of the divine
activities. Here He not only with great directness declares that He and the
Father are one (Joh_10:30; compare Joh_17:11, Joh_17:21,
Joh_17:22, Joh_17:25)
with a unity of interpenetration (“The Father is in me, and I in the Father,” Joh_10:38; compare Joh_16:10,
Joh_16:11), so that to have seen Him
was to have seen the Father (Joh_14:9;
compare Joh_15:21); but He removes all
doubt as to the essential nature of His oneness with the Father by explicitly
asserting His eternity (“Before Abraham was born, I am,” Joh_8:58), His co-eternity with God (“had with
thee before the world was,” Joh_17:5;
compare Joh_17:18; Joh_6:62), His eternal participation in the
divine glory itself (“the glory which I had with thee,” in fellowship,
community with Thee “before the world was,” Joh_17:5).
So clear is it that in speaking currently of Himself as God's Son (Joh_5:25; Joh_9:35;
Joh_11:4; compare Joh_10:36), He meant, in accordance with the
underlying significance of the idea of sonship in Semitic speech (founded on
the natural implication that whatever the father is that the son is also;
compare Joh_16:15; Joh_17:10), to make Himself, as the Jews with
exact appreciation of His meaning perceived, “equal with God” (Joh_5:18), or, to put it brusquely, just “God” (Joh_10:33). How He, being thus equal or rather
identical with God, was in the world, He explains as involving a coming forth (ἐξῆλθον, exḗlthon) on His part,
not merely from the presence of God (ἀπό, apó, Joh_16:30; compare Joh_13:3)
or from fellowship with God (παρά, pará, Joh_16:27; Joh_17:8),
but from out of God Himself (ἐκ, ek, Joh_8:42; Joh_16:28).
And in the very act of thus asserting that His eternal home is in the depths of
the Divine Being, He throws up, into as strong an emphasis as stressed pronouns
can, convey, His personal distinctness from the Father. 'If God were your
Father,' says Hebrews (8:42), 'ye would love me: for I came forth and am come
out of God; for neither have I come of myself, but it was He that
sent me.' Again, He says (Joh_16:26, Joh_16:27): 'In that day ye shall ask in my
name: and I say not unto you that I will make request of the Father for you;
for the Father Himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have
believed that it was from fellowship with the Father that I came forth;
I came from out of the Father, and have come into the world.' Less pointedly,
but still distinctly, He says again (Joh_17:8):
They know of a truth that it was from fellowship with Thee that I came
forth, and they believed that it was Thou that didst send me.' It is not
necessary to illustrate more at large a form of expression so characteristic of
the discourses of our Lord recorded by Jn that it meets us on every page: a
form of expression which combines a clear implication of a unity of Father and
Son which is identity of Being, and an equally clear implication of a
distinction of Person between them such as allows not merely for the play of
emotions between them, as, for instance, of love (Joh_17:24;
compare Joh_15:9 (Joh_3:35); Joh_14:31),
but also of an action and reaction upon one another which argues a high
measure, if not of exteriority, yet certainly of exteriorization. Thus, to
instance only one of the most outstanding facts of our Lord's discourses (not
indeed confined to those in John's Gospel, but found also in His sayings
recorded in the Synoptists, as e.g. Luk_4:43
(compare parallel Mar_1:38); Luk_9:48; Luk_10:16;
Luk_4:34; Luk_5:32;
Luk_7:19; Luk_19:10),
He continually represents Himself as on the one hand sent by God, and as, on
the other, having come forth from the Father (e.g. Joh_8:42;
Joh_10:36; Joh_17:3;
Joh_5:23, et saepe).
12. Spirit in Johannine Discourses:
It is more important to point out that these phenomena of
interrelationship are not confined to the Father and Son, but are extended also
to the Spirit. Thus, for example, in a context in which our Lord had emphasized
in the strongest manner His own essential unity and continued interpenetration
with the Father (“ If ye had known me, ye would have known my Father also”; “He
that hath seen me hath seen the Father”; “I am in the Father, and the Father in
me”; “The Father abiding in me doeth his works,” Joh_14:7,
Joh_14:9, Joh_14:10),
we read as follows (Joh_14:16-26): 'And
I will make request of the Father, and He shall ive you another
(thus sharply distinguished from Our Lord as a distinct Person) Advocate, that
He may be with you forever, the Spirit of Truth ... He abideth with you and
shall be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I come unto you.... In that day
ye shall know that I am in the Father.... If a man love me, he will keep my
word; and my Father will love him and we (that is, both Father and Son) will
come unto him and make our abode with him.... These things have I spoken unto
you while abiding with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father
will send in my name, He shall teach you all things, and bring to your
remembrance all that I said unto you.' It would be impossible to speak more
distinctly of three who were yet one. The Father, Son and Spirit are constantly
distinguished from one another - the Son makes request of the Father, and the
Father in response to this request gives an Advocate, “another” than the Son,
who is sent in the Son's name. And yet the oneness of these three is so kept in
sight that the coming of this “another Advocate” is spoken of without
embarrassment as the coming of the Son Himself (Joh_14:18,
Joh_14:19, Joh_14:20,
Joh_14:21), and indeed as the coming of
the Father and the Son (Joh_14:23).
There is a sense, then, in which, when Christ goes away, the Spirit comes in
His stead; there is also a sense in which, when the Spirit comes, Christ comes
in Him; and with Christ's coming the Father comes too. There is a distinction
between the Persons brought into view; and with it an identity among them; for
both of which allowance must be made. The same phenomena meet us in other
passages. Thus, we read again (Joh_15:26):
But when there is come the Advocate whom I will send unto you from (fellowship
with) the Father, the Spirit of Truth, which goeth forth from (fellowship with)
the Father, He shall bear witness of me.' In the compass of this single verse,
it is intimated that the Spirit is personally distinct from the Son, and yet,
like Him, has His eternal home (in fellowship) with the Father, from whom He,
like the Son, comes forth for His saving work, being sent thereunto, however,
not in this instance by the Father, but by the Son.
This last feature is even more strongly emphasized in yet another
passage in which the work of the Spirit in relation to the Son is presented as
closely parallel with the work of the Son in relation to the Father (Joh_16:5 ff). 'But now I go unto Him that sent
me ... Nevertheless I tell you the truth; it is expedient for you that I go
away; for, if I go not away the Advocate will not come unto you; but if I go I
will send Him unto you. And He, after He is come, will convict the world
... of righteousness because I go to the Father and ye behold me no more.... I
have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when
He, the Spirit of truth is come, He shall guide you into all the truth;
for He shall not speak from Himself; but what things soever He shall hear, He
shall speak, and He shall declare unto you the things that are to come. He
shall glorify me: for He shall take of mine and shall show it unto you.
All things whatsoever the Father hath are mine: therefore said I
that He taketh of mine, and shall declare it unto you.' Here the Spirit is sent
by the Son, and comes in order to complete and apply the Son's work, receiving
His whole commission from the Son - not, however, in derogation of the Father,
because when we speak of the things of the Son, that is to speak of the things
of the Father.
It is not to be said, of course, that the doctrine of the Trinity is
formulated in passages like these, with which the whole mass of our Lord's
discourses in John are strewn; but it certainly is presupposed in them, and
that is, considered from the point of view of their probative force, even
better. As we read we are kept in continual contact with three Persons who act,
each as a distinct person, and yet who are in a deep, underlying sense, one.
There is but one God - there is never any question of that - and yet this Son
who has been sent into the world by God not only represents God but is God, and
this Spirit whom the Son has in turn sent unto the world is also Himself God.
Nothing could be clearer than that the Son and Spirit are distinct Persons,
unless indeed it be that the Son of God is just God the Son and the Spirit of
God just God the Spirit.
13. The Baptismal Formula:
Meanwhile, the nearest approach to a formal announcement of the
doctrine of the Trinity which is recorded from our Lord's lips, or, perhaps we
may say, which is to be found in the whole compass of the New Testament, has
been preserved for us, not by John, but by one of the synoptists. It too,
however, is only incidentally introduced, and has for its main object something
very different from formulating the doctrine of the Trinity. It is embodied in
the great commission which the resurrected Lord gave His disciples to be their
“marching orders” “even unto the end of the world”: “Go ye therefore, and make
disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of
the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Mat_28:19).
In seeking to estimate the significance of this great declaration, we must bear
in mind the high solemnity of the utterance, by which we are required to give
its full value to every word of it. Its phrasing is in any event, however,
remarkable. It does not say, “In the names (plural) of the Father and of the
Son and of the Holy Ghost”; nor yet (what might be taken to be equivalent to
that), “In the name of the Father, and in the name of the Son, and in the name
of the Holy Ghost,” as if we had to deal with three separate Beings. Nor, on
the other hand does it say, “In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost,” as
if “the Father, Son and Holy Ghost” might be taken as merely three designations
of a single person. With stately impressiveness it asserts the unity of the
three by combining them all within the bounds of the single Name; and then
throws up into emphasis the distinctness of each by introducing them in turn
with the repeated article: “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of
the Holy Ghost (the King James Version). These three, the Father, and the Son,
and the Holy Ghost, each stand in some clear sense over against the others in
distinct personality: these three, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost,
all unite in some profound sense in the common participation of the one Name.
Fully to comprehend the implication of this mode of statement, we must bear in
mind, further, the significance of the term, “the name,” and the associations
laden with which it came to the recipients of this commission. For the Hebrew
did not think of the name, as we are accustomed to do, as a mere external
symbol; but rather as the adequate expression of the innermost being of its
bearer. In His Name the Being of God finds expression; and the Name of God -
“this glorious and fearful name, Yahweh thy God” (Deu_28:58)
- was accordingly a most sacred thing, being indeed virtually equivalent to God
Himself. It is no solecism, therefore, when we read (Isa_30:27), “Behold, the name of Yahweh cometh”; and the
parallelisms are most instructive when we read (Isa_59:19):
'So shall they fear the Name of Yahweh from the west, and His glory from the
rising of the sun; for He shall come as a stream pent in which the Spirit of
Yahweh driveth.' So pregnant was the implication of the Name, that it was
possible for the term to stand absolutely, without adjunction of the name
itself, as the sufficient representative of the majesty of Yahweh: it was a
terrible thing to 'blaspheme the Name' (Lev_24:11).
All those over whom Yahweh's Name was called were His, His possession to whom
He owed protection. It is for His Name's sake, therefore, that afflicted Judah
cries to the Hope of Israel, the Saviour thereof in time of trouble: 'O Yahweh,
Thou art in the midst of us, and Thy Name is called upon us; leave us not' (Jer_14:9); and His people find the appropriate
expression of their deepest shame in the lament, 'We have become as they over
whom Thou never barest rule; as they upon whom Thy Name was not called' (Isa_63:19); while the height of joy is attained
in the cry, 'Thy Name, Yahweh, God of Hosts, is called upon me' (Jer_15:16; compare 2Ch_7:14;
Dan_9:18, Dan_9:19).
When, therefore, our Lord commanded His disciples to baptize those whom they
brought to His obedience “into the name of ...,” He was using language charged
to them with high meaning. He could not have been understood otherwise than as
substituting for the Name of Yahweh this other Name “of the Father, and of the
Son, and of the Holy Ghost”; and this could not 'possibly have meant to His
disciples anything else than that Yahweh was now to be known to them by the new
Name, of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. The only alternative
would have been that, for the community which He was rounding, Jesus was
supplanting Yahweh by a new God; and this alternative is no less than
monstrous. There is no alternative, therefore, to understanding Jesus here to
be giving for His community a new Name to Yahweh, and that new Name to be the
threefold Name of “the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” Nor is there
room for doubt that by “the Son” in this threefold Name, He meant just Himself
with all the implications of distinct personality which this carries with it;
and, of course, that further carries with it the equally distinct personality
of “the Father” and “the Holy Ghost,” with whom “the Son” is here associated,
and from whom alike “the Son” is here distinguished. This is a direct
ascription to Yahweh, the God of Israel, of a threefold personality, and is
therewith the direct enunciation of the doctrine of the Trinity. We are not
witnessing here the birth of the doctrine of the Trinity; that is presupposed.
What we are witnessing is the authoritative announcement of the Trinity as the
God of Christianity by its Founder, in one of the most solemn of His recorded
declarations. Israel had worshipped the one only true God under the Name of
Yahweh; Christians are to worship the same one only and true God under the Name
of “the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” This is the distinguishing
characteristic of Christians; and that is as much as to say that the doctrine
of the Trinity is, according to our Lord's own apprehension of it, the
distinctive mark of the religion which He founded.
14. Genuineness of Baptismal Formula:
A passage of such range of implication has, of course, not escaped
criticism and challenge. An attempt which cannot be characterized as other than
frivolous has even been made to dismiss it from the text of Matthew's Gospel.
Against this, the whole body of external evidence cries out; and the internal
evidence is of itself not less decisive to the same effect. When the
“universalism,” “ecclesiasticism,” and “high theology” of the passage are
pleaded against its genuineness, it is forgotten that to the Jesus of Matthew
there are attributed not only such parables as those of the Leaven and the
Mustard Seed, but such declarations as those contained in Mat_8:11, Mat_8:12;
Mat_21:43; Mat_24:14;
that in this Gospel alone is Jesus recorded as speaking familiarly about His
church (Mat_16:18; Mat_18:17); and that, after the great
declaration of Mat_11:27 if, nothing
remained in lofty attribution to be assigned to Him. When these same objections
are urged against recognizing the passage as an authentic saying of Jesus own,
it is quite obvious that the Jesus of the evangelists cannot be in mind. The
declaration here recorded is quite in character with the Jesus of Matthew's
Gospel, as has just been intimated; and no less with the Jesus of the whole New
Testament transmission. It will scarcely do, first to construct a priori a
Jesus to our own liking, and then to discard as “unhistorical” all in the New
Testament transmission which would be unnatural to such a Jesus. It is not
these discarded passages but our a priori Jesus which is unhistorical. In the
present instance, moreover, the historicity of the assailed saying is protected
by an important historical relation in which it stands. It is not merely Jesus
who speaks out of a Trinitarian consciousness, but all the New Testament
writers as well. The universal possession by. His followers of so firm a hold
on such a doctrine requires the assumption that some such teaching as is here
attributed to Him was actually contained in Jesus' instructions to His
followers. Even had it not been attributed to Him in so many words by the
record, we should have had to assume that some such declaration had been made
by Him. In these circumstances, there can be no good reason to doubt that it
was made by Him, when it is expressly attributed to Him by the record.
15. Paul's Trinitarianism:
When we turn from the discourses of Jesus to the writings of His
followers with a view to observing how the assumption of the doctrine of the
Trinity underlies their whole fabric also, we naturally go first of all to the
letters of Paul. Their very mass is impressive; and the definiteness with which
their composition within a generation of the death of Jesus may be fixed adds
importance to them as historical witnesses. Certainly they leave nothing to be
desired in the richness of their testimony to the Trinitarian conception of God
which underlies them. Throughout the whole series, from 1 Thessalonians, which
comes from about 52 AD, to 2 Timothy, which was written about 68 AD, the
redemption, which it is their one business to proclaim and commend, and all the
blessings which enter into it or accompany it are referred consistently to a
threefold divine causation. Everywhere, throughout their pages, God the Father,
the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit appear as the joint objects of all
religious adoration, and the conjunct source of all divine operations. In the
freedom of the allusions which are made to them, now and again one alone of the
three is thrown up into prominent view; but more often two of them are
conjoined in thanksgiving or prayer; and not infrequently all three are brought
together as the apostle strives to give some adequate expression to his sense
of indebtedness to the divine source of all good for blessings received, or to
his longing on behalf of himself or of his readers for further communion with
the God of grace. It is regular for him to begin his Epistles with a prayer for
“grace and peace” for his readers, “from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus
Christ,” as the joint source of these divine blessings by way of eminence (Rom_1:7; 1Co_1:3;
2Co_1:2; Gal_1:3;
Eph_1:2; Phi_1:2;
2Th_1:2; 1Ti_1:2;
2Ti_1:2; Phm_1:3;
compare 1Th_1:1). It is obviously no
departure from this habit in the essence of the matter, but only in relative
fullness of expression, when in the opening words of the Epistle to the
Colossians, the clause “and the Lord Jesus Christ” is omitted, and we read
merely: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father.” So also it would have
been no departure from it in the essence of the matter, but only in relative
fullness of expression, if in any instance the name of the Holy Spirit had
chanced to be adjoined to the other two, as in the single instance of 2Co_13:14 it is adjoined to them in the closing
prayer for grace with which Paul ends his letters, and which ordinarily takes
the simple form of, “the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you” (Rom_16:20; 1Co_16:23;
Gal_6:18; Phi_4:23;
1Th_5:28; 2Th_3:18;
Phm_1:25; more expanded form, Eph_6:23, Eph_6:24;
more Compressed, Col_4:18; 1Ti_6:21; 2Ti_4:22;
Tit_3:15). Between these opening and
closing passages the allusions to God the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, and
the Holy Spirit are constant and most intricately interlaced. Paul's monotheism
is intense: the first premise of all his thought on divine things is the unity
of God (Rom_3:30; 1Co_8:4; Gal_3:20;
Eph_4:6; 1Ti_2:5;
compare Rom_16:22; 1Ti_1:17). Yet to him God the Father is no more
God than the Lord Jesus Christ is God, or the Holy Spirit is God. The Spirit of
God is to him related to God as the spirit of man is to man (1Co_2:11), and therefore if the Spirit of God
dwells in us, that is God dwelling in us (Rom_8:10
ff), and we are by that fact constituted temples of God (1Co_3:16). And no expression is too strong for
him to use in order to assert the Godhead of Christ: He is “our great God” (Tit_2:13); He is “God over all” (Rom_9:5); and indeed it is expressly declared of
Him that the “fulness of the Godhead, that is, everything that enters into
Godhead and constitutes it Godhead, dwells in Him. In the very act of asserting
his monotheism Paul takes our Lord up into this unique Godhead. “There is no
God but one” he roundly asserts, and then illustrates and proves this assertion
by remarking that the heathen may have “gods many, and lords many,” but “to us
there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we unto him; and one
Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him” (1Co_8:6). Obviously, this “one God, the Father,”
and “one Lord, Jesus Christ,” are embraced together in the one God who alone
is. Paul's conception of the one God, whom alone he worships, includes, in
other words, a recognition that within the unity of His Being, there exists
such a distinction of Persons as is given us in the “one God, the Father” and
the “one Lord, Jesus Christ.”
16. Conjunction of the Three in Paul:
In numerous passages scattered through Paul's Epistles, from the
earliest of them (1Th_1:2-5; 2Th_2:13, 2Th_2:14)
to the latest (Tit_3:4-6; 2Ti_1:3, 2Ti_1:13,
2Ti_1:14), all three Persons, God the
Father, the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, are brought together, in the
most incidental manner, as co-sources of all the saving blessings which come to
believers in Christ. A typical series of such passages may be found in Eph_2:18; Eph_3:2-5,
Eph_3:14, Eph_3:17;
Eph_4:4-6; Eph_5:18-20.
But the most interesting instances are offered to us perhaps by the Epistles to
the Corinthians. In 1Co_12:4-6 Paul
presents the abounding spiritual gifts with which the church was blessed in a
threefold aspect, and connects these aspects with the three Divine Persons.
“Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are
diversities of ministrations, and the same Lord. And there are diversities of
workings, but the same God, who worketh all things in all.” It may be thought
that there is a measure of what might almost be called artificiality in
assigning the endowments of the church, as they are graces to the Spirit, as
they are services to Christ, and as they are energizings to God. But thus there
is only the more strikingly revealed the underlying Trinitarian conception as
dominating the structure of the clauses: Paul clearly so writes, not because
“gifts,” “workings,” “operations” stand out in his thought as greatly diverse
things, but because God, the Lord, and the Spirit lie in the back of his mind
constantly suggesting a threefold causality behind every manifestation of
grace. The Trinity is alluded to rather than asserted; but it is so alluded to
as to show that it constitutes the determining basis of all Paul's thought of
the God of redemption. Even more instructive is 2Co_13:14,
which has passed into general liturgical use in the churches as a benediction:
“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of
the Holy Spirit, be with you all.” Here the three highest redemptive blessings
are brought together, and attached distributively to the three Persons of the
Triune God. There is again no formal teaching of the doctrine of the Trinity;
there is only another instance of natural speaking out of a Trinitarian
consciousness. Paul is simply thinking of the divine source of these great
blessings; but he habitually thinks of this divine source of redemptive
blessings after a trinal fashion. He therefore does not say, as he might just
as well have said, “The grace and love and communion of God be with you all,”
but “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion
of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.” Thus he bears, almost unconsciously but
most richly, witness to the trinal composition of the Godhead as conceived by
Him.
17. Trinitarianism of Other New Testament
Writers:
The phenomena of Paul's Epistles are repeated in the other writings of
the New Testament. In these other writings also it is everywhere assumed that
the redemptive activities of God rest on a threefold source in God the Father,
the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit; and these three Persons repeatedly
come forward together in the expressions of Christian hope or the aspirations
of Christian devotion (e.g. Heb_2:3, Heb_2:4; Heb_6:4-6;
Heb_10:29-31; 1Pe_1:2; 1Pe_2:3-12;
1Pe_4:13-19; 1Jo_5:4-8; Jud_1:20, Jud_1:21; Rev_1:4-6).
Perhaps as typical instances as any are supplied by the two following:
“According to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit,
unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ” (1Pe_1:2); “Praying in the Holy Spirit, keep
yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ
unto eternal life” (Jud_1:20, Jud_1:21). To these may be added the highly
symbolical instance from the Apocalypse: 'Grace to you and peace from Him which
is and was and which is to come; and from the Seven Spirits which are before
His throne; and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn
of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth' (Rev_1:4, Rev_1:5).
Clearly these writers, too, write out of a fixed Trinitarian consciousness and
bear their testimony to the universal understanding current in apostolical
circles. Everywhere and by all it was fully understood that the one God whom
Christians worshipped and from whom alone they expected redemption and all that
redemption brought with it, included within His undiminished unity the three:
God the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, whose activities
relatively to one another are conceived as distinctly personal. This is the
uniform and pervasive testimony of the New Testament, and it is the more
impressive that it is given with such unstudied naturalness and simplicity,
with no effort to distinguish between what have come to be called the
ontological and the economical aspects of the Trinitarian distinctions, and
indeed without apparent consciousness of the existence of such a distinction of
aspects. Whether God is thought of in Himself or in His operations, the
underlying conception runs unaffectedly into trinal forms.
18. Variations in Nomenclature:
It will not have escaped observation that the Trinitarian terminology
of Paul and the other writers of the New Testament is not precisely identical
with that of our Lord as recorded for us in His discourses. Paul, for example -
and the same is true of the other New Testament writers (except John) - does
not speak, as our Lord is recorded as speaking, of the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Spirit, so much as of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.
This difference of terminology finds its account in large measure in the
different relations in which the speakers stand to the Trinity. Our Lord could
not naturally speak of Himself, as one of the Trinitarian Persons, by the
designation of “the Lord,” while the designation of “the Son,” expressing as it
does His consciousness of close relation, and indeed of exact similarity, to
God, came naturally to His lips. But He was Paul's Lord; and Paul naturally
thought and spoke of Him as such. In point of fact, “Lord” is one of Paul's
favorite designations of Christ, and indeed has become with him practically a
proper name for Christ, and in point of fact, his Divine Name for Christ. It is
naturally, therefore, his Trinitarian name for Christ. Because when he thinks
of Christ as divine he calls Him “Lord,” he naturally, when he thinks of the
three Persons together as the Triune God, sets Him as “Lord” by the side of God
- Paul's constant name for “the Father” - and the Holy Spirit. Question may no
doubt be raised whether it would have been possible for Paul to have done this,
especially with the constancy with which he has done it, if, in his conception
of it, the very essence of the Trinity were enshrined in the terms “Father” and
“Son.” Paul is thinking of the Trinity, to be sure, from the point of view of a
worshipper, rather than from that of a systematizer. He designates the Persons
of the Trinity therefore rather from his relations to them than from their
relations to one another. He sees in the Trinity his God, his Lord, and the
Holy Spirit who dwells in him; and naturally he so speaks currently of the
three Persons. It remains remarkable, nevertheless, if the very essence of the Trinity
were thought of by him as resident in the terms “Father,” “Son,” that in his
numerous allusions to the Trinity in the Godhead, he never betrays any sense of
this. It is noticeable also that in their allusions to the Trinity, there is
preserved, neither in Paul nor in the other writers of the New Testament, the
order of the names as they stand in our Lord's great declaration (Mat_28:19). The reverse order occurs, indeed,
occasionally, as, for example, in 1Co_12:4-6
(compare Eph_4:4-6); and this may be
understood as a climactic arrangement and so far a testimony to the order of Mat_28:19. But the order is very variable; and
in the most formal enumeration of the three Persons, that of 2Co_13:14, it stands thus: Lord, God, Spirit.
The question naturally suggests itself whether the order Father, Son, Spirit
was especially significant to Paul and his fellow-writers of the New Testament.
If in their conviction the very essence of the doctrine of the Trinity was
embodied in this order, should we not anticipate that there should appear in
their numerous allusions to the Trinity some suggestion of this conviction?
19. Implications of “Son” and “Spirit”:
Such facts as these have a bearing upon the testimony of the New
Testament to the interrelations of the Persons of the Trinity. To the fact of
the Trinity - to the fact, that is, that in the unity of the Godhead there
subsist three Persons, each of whom has his particular part in the working out
of salvation - the New Testament testimony is clear, consistent, pervasive and
conclusive. There is included in this testimony constant and decisive witness
to the complete and undiminished Deity of each of these Persons; no language is
too exalted to apply to each of them in turn in the effort to give expression
to the writer's sense of His Deity: the name that is given to each is fully
understood to be “the name that is above every name.” When we attempt to press
the inquiry behind the broad fact, however, with a view to ascertaining exactly
how the New Testament writers conceive the three Persons to be related, the one
to the other, we meet with great difficulties. Nothing could seem more natural,
for example, than to assume that the mutual relations of the Persons of the
Trinity are revealed in the designations, “the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit,” which are given them by our Lord in the solemn formula of Mat_28:19. Our confidence in this assumption is
somewhat shaken, however, when we observe, as we have just observed, that these
designations are not carefully preserved in their allusions to the Trinity by
the writers of the New Testament at large, but are characteristic only of our
Lord's allusions and those of John, whose modes of speech in general very
closely resemble those of our Lord. Our confidence is still further shaken when
we observe that the implications with respect to the mutual relations of the
Trinitarian Persons, which are ordinarily derived from these designations, do
not so certainly lie in them as is commonly supposed.
It may be very natural to see in the designation “Son” an intimation
of subordination and derivation of Being, and it may not be difficult to
ascribe a similar connotation to the term “Spirit.” But it is quite certain
that this was not the denotation of either term in the Semitic consciousness,
which underlies the phraseology of Scripture; and it may even be thought
doubtful whether it was included even in their remoter suggestions. What
underlies the conception of sonship in Scriptural speech is just “likeness”;
whatever the father is that the son is also. The emphatic application of the
term “Son” to one of the Trinitarian Persons, accordingly, asserts rather His
equality with the Father than His subordination to the Father; and if there is
any implication of derivation in it, it would appear to be very distant. The
adjunction of the adjective “only begotten” (Joh_1:14;
Joh_3:16-18; 1Jo_4:9) need add only the idea of uniqueness, not of
derivation (Psa_22:21; Psa_25:16; Psa_35:17;
The Wisdom of Solomon 7:22 margin); and even such a phrase as “God only
begotten” (Joh_1:18 margin) may contain
no implication of derivation, but only of absolutely unique consubstantiality;
as also such a phrase as 'the first-begotten of all creation' (Col_1:15) may convey no intimation of coming
into being, but merely assert priority of existence. In like manner, the
designation “Spirit of God” or “Spirit of Yahweh,” which meets us frequently in
the Old Testament, certainly does not convey the idea there either of
derivation or of subordination, but is just the executive name of God - the
designation of God from the point of view of His activity - and imports
accordingly identity with God; and there is no reason to suppose that, in
passing from the Old Testament to the New Testament, the term has taken on an essentially
different meaning. It happens, oddly enough, moreover, that we have in the New
Testament itself what amounts almost to formal definitions of the two terms
“Son” and “Spirit,” and in both cases the stress is laid on the notion of
equality or sameness. In Joh_5:18 we
read: 'On this account, therefore, the Jews sought the more to kill him,
because, not only did he break the Sabbath, but also called God his own Father,
making himself equal to God.' The point lies, of course, in the adjective
“own.” Jesus was, rightly, understood to call God “his own Father,” that is, to
use the terms “Father” and “Son” not in a merely figurative sense, as
when Israel was called God's son, but in the real sense. And this was
understood to be claiming to be all that God is. To be the Son of God in any
sense was to be like God in that sense; to be God's own Son was to be exactly
like God, to be “equal with God.” Similarly, we read in 1Co_2:10, 1Co_2:11
: 'For the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For who of
men knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? Even
so the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God.' Here the Spirit
appears as the substrate of the divine self-consciousness, the principle of
God's knowledge of Himself: He is, in a word, just God Himself in the innermost
essence of His Being. As the spirit of man is the seat of human life, the very
life of man itself, so the Spirit of God is His very life-element. How can He
be supposed, then, to be subordinate to God, or to derive His Being from God?
If, however, the subordination of the Son and Spirit to the Father in modes of
subsistence and their derivation from the Father are not implicates of their
designation as Son and Spirit, it will be hard to find in the New Testament
compelling evidence of their subordination and derivation.
20. The Question of Surbordination:
There is, of course, no question that in “modes of operation,” as it
is technically called - that is to say, in the functions ascribed to the
several persons of the Trinity in the redemptive process, and, more broadly, in
the entire dealing of God with the world - the principle of subordination is
clearly expressed. The Father is first, the Son is second, and the Spirit is
third, in the operations of God as revealed to us in general, and very
especially in those operations by which redemption is accomplished. Whatever the
Father does, He does through the Son (Rom_2:16;
Rom_3:22; Rom_5:1,
Rom_5:11, Rom_5:17,
Rom_5:21; Eph_1:5;
1Th_5:9; Tit_3:5)
by the Spirit. The Son is sent by the Father and does His Father's will (Joh_6:38); the Spirit is sent by the Son and
does not speak from Himself, but only takes of Christ's and shows it unto His
people (Joh_17:7 ff); and we have our
Lord's own word for it that 'one that is sent is not greater than he that sent
him' (Joh_13:16). In crisp
decisiveness, our Lord even declares, indeed: 'My Father is greater than I' (Joh_14:28); and Paul tells us that Christ is
God's, even as we are Christ's (1Co_3:23),
and that as Christ is “the head of every man,” so God is “the head of Christ” (1Co_11:3). But it is not so clear that the
principle of subordination rules also in “modes of subsistence,” as it is
technically phrased; that is to say, in the necessary relation of the Persons
of the Trinity to one another. The very richness and variety of the expression
of their subordination, the one to the other, in modes of operation, create a
difficulty in attaining certainty whether they are represented as also
subordinate the one to the other in modes of subsistence. Question is raised in
each case of apparent intimation of subordination in modes of subsistence,
whether it may not, after all, be explicable as only another expression of
subordination in modes of operation. It may be natural to assume that a
subordination in modes of operation rests on a subordination in modes of
subsistence; that the reason why it is the Father that sends the Son and the
Son that sends the Spirit is that the Son is subordinate to the Father, and the
Spirit to the Son. But we are bound to bear in mind that these relations of
subordination in modes of operation may just as well be due to a convention, an
agreement, between the Persons of the Trinity - a “Covenant” as it is
technically called - by virtue of which a distinct function in the work of
redemption is voluntarily assumed by each. It is eminently desirable,
therefore, at the least, that some definite evidence of subordination in modes
of subsistence should be discoverable before it is assumed. In the case of the
relation of the Son to the Father, there is the added difficulty of the
incarnation, in which the Son, by the assumption of a creaturely nature into
union with Himself, enters into new relations with the Father of a definitely
subordinate character. Question has even been raised whether the very
designations of Father and Son may not be expressive of these new relations,
and therefore without significance with respect to the eternal relations of the
Persons so designated. This question must certainly be answered in the
negative. Although, no doubt, in many of the instances in which the terms
“Father” and “Son” occur, it would be possible to take them of merely
economical relations, there ever remain some which are intractable to this
treatment, and we may be sure that “Father” and “Son” are applied to their
eternal and necessary relations. But these terms, as we have seen, do not
appear to imply relations of first and second, superiority and subordination,
in modes of subsistence; and the fact of the humiliation of the Son of God for
His earthly work does introduce a factor into the interpretation of the
passages which import His subordination to the Father, which throws doubt upon
the inference from them of an eternal relation of subordination in the Trinity
itself. It must at least be said that in the presence of the great New
Testament doctrines of the Covenant of Redemption on the one hand, and of the
Humiliation of the Son of God for His work's sake and of the Two Natures in the
constitution of His Person as incarnated, on the other, the difficulty of
interpreting subordinationist passages of eternal relations between the Father
and Son becomes extreme. The question continually obtrudes itself, whether they
do not rather find their full explanation in the facts embodied in the
doctrines of the Covenant, the Humiliation of Christ, and the Two Natures of
His incarnated Person. Certainly in such circumstances it were thoroughly
illegitimate to press such passages to suggest any subordination for the Son or
the Spirit which would in any manner impair that complete identity with the
Father in Being and that complete equality with the Father in powers which are
constantly presupposed, and frequently emphatically, though only incidentally,
asserted for them throughout the whole fabric of the New Testament.
21. Witness of the Christian Consciousness:
The Trinity of the Persons of the Godhead, shown in the incarnation
and the redemptive work of God the Son, and the descent and saving work of God
the Spirit, is thus everywhere assumed in the New Testament, and comes to
repeated fragmentary but none the less emphatic and illuminating expression in
its pages. As the roots of its revelation are set in the threefold divine
causality of the saving process, it naturally finds an echo also in the
consciousness of everyone who has experienced this salvation. Every redeemed
soul, knowing himself reconciled with God through His Son, and quickened into
newness of life by His Spirit, turns alike to Father, Son and Spirit with the
exclamation of reverent gratitude upon his lips, “My Lord and my God!” If he
could not construct the doctrine of the Trinity out of his consciousness of
salvation, yet the elements of his consciousness of salvation are interpreted
to him and reduced to order only by the doctrine of the Trinity which he finds
underlying and giving their significance and consistency to the teaching of the
Scriptures as to the processes of salvation. By means of this doctrine he is
able to think clearly and consequently of his threefold relation to the saving
God, experienced by him as Fatherly love sending a Redeemer, as redeeming love
executing redemption, as saving love applying redemption: all manifestations in
distinct methods and by distinct agencies of the one seeking and saving love of
God. Without the doctrine of the Trinity, his conscious Christian life would be
thrown into confusion and left in disorganization if not, indeed, given an air
of unreality; with the doctrine of the Trinity, order, significance and reality
are brought to every element of it. Accordingly, the doctrine of the Trinity
and the doctrine of redemption, historically, stand or fall together. A
Unitarian theology is commonly associated with a Pelagian anthropology and a
Socinian soteriology. It is a striking testimony which is borne by E. Koenig (Offenbarungsbegriff
des Altes Testament, 1882, I, 125): “I have learned that many cast off the
whole history of redemption for no other reason than because they have not
attained to a conception of the Triune God.” It is in this intimacy of relation
between the doctrines of the Trinity and redemption that the ultimate reason
lies why the Christian church could not rest until it had attained a definite
and well-compacted doctrine of the Trinity. Nothing else could be accepted as
an adequate foundation for the experience of the Christian salvation. Neither
the Sabellian nor the Arian construction could meet and satisfy the data of the
consciousness of salvation, any more than either could meet and satisfy the
data of the Scriptural revelation. The data of the Scriptural revelation might,
to be sure, have been left unsatisfied: men might have found a modus vivendi
with neglected, or even with perverted Scriptural teaching. But perverted or
neglected elements of Christian experience are more clamant in their demands
for attention and correction. The dissatisfied Christian consciousness
necessarily searched the Scriptures, on the emergence of every new attempt to
state the doctrine of the nature and relations of God, to see whether these
things were true, and never reached contentment until the Scriptural data were
given their consistent formulation in a valid doctrine of the Trinity. Here too
the heart of man was restless until it found its rest in the Triune God, the
author, procurer and applier of salvation.
22. Formulation of the Doctrine:
The determining impulse to the formulation of the doctrine of the
Trinity in the church was the church's profound conviction of the absolute
Deity of Christ, on which as on a pivot the whole Christian conception of God
from the first origins of Christianity turned. The guiding principle in the
formulation of the doctrine was supplied by the Baptismal Formula announced by
Jesus (Mat_28:19), from which was
derived the ground-plan of the baptismal confessions and “rules of faith” which
very soon began to be framed all over the church. It was by these two
fundamental principia - the true Deity of Christ and the Baptismal
Formula - that all attempts to formulate the Christian doctrine of God were
tested, and by their molding power that the church at length found itself in
possession of a form of statement which did full justice to the data of the
redemptive revelation as reflected in the New Testament and the demands of the
Christian heart under the experience of salvation.
In the nature of the case the formulated doctrine was of slow
attainment. The influence of inherited conceptions and of current philosophies
inevitably showed itself in the efforts to construe to the intellect the
immanent faith of Christians. In the 2nd century the dominant neo-Stoic and
neo-Platonic ideas deflected Christian thought into subordinationist channels,
and produced what is known as the Logos-Christology, which looks upon the Son
as a prolation of Deity reduced to such dimensions as comported with relations
with a world of time and space; meanwhile, to a great extent, the Spirit was
neglected altogether. A reaction which, under the name of Monarchianism,
identified the Father, Son, and Spirit so completely that they were thought of
only as different aspects or different moments in the life of the one Divine
Person, called now Father, now Son, now Spirit, as His several activities came
successively into view, almost succeeded in establishing itself in the 3rd
century as the doctrine of the church at large. In the conflict between these
two opposite tendencies the church gradually found its way, under the guidance
of the Baptismal Formula elaborated into a “Rule of Faith,” to a better and
more well-balanced conception, until a real doctrine of the Trinity at length
came to expression, particularly in the West, through the brilliant dialectic
of Tertullian. It was thus ready at hand, when, in the early years of the 4th
century, the Logos-Christology, in opposition to dominant Sabellian tendencies,
ran to seed in what is known as Arianism, to which the Son was a creature, though
exalted above all other creatures as their Creator and Lord; and the church was
thus prepared to assert its settled faith in a Triune God, one in being, but in
whose unity there subsisted three consubstantial Persons. Under the leadership
of Athanasius this doctrine was proclaimed as the faith of the church at the
Council of Nice in 325 AD, and by his strenuous labors and those of “the three
great Cappadocians,” the two Gregories and Basil, it gradually won its way to
the actual acceptance of the entire church. It was at the hands of Augustine,
however, a century later, that the doctrine thus become the church doctrine in
fact as well as in theory, received its most complete elaboration and most
carefully grounded statement. In the form which he gave it, and which is
embodied in that “battle-hymn of the early church,” the so-called Athanasian
Creed, it has retained its place as the fit expression of the faith of the
church as to the nature of its God until today. The language in which it is
couched, even in this final declaration, still retains elements of speech which
owe their origin to the modes of thought characteristic of the
Logos-Christology of the 2nd century, fixed in the nomenclature of the church
by the Nicene Creed of 325 AD, though carefully guarded there against the
subordinationism inherent in the Logos-Christology, and made the vehicle rather
of the Nicene doctrines of the eternal generation of the Son and procession of
the Spirit, with the consequent subordination of the Son and Spirit to the
Father in modes of subsistence as well as of operation. In the Athanasian
Creed, however, the principle of the equalization of the three Persons, which
was already the dominant motive of the Nicene Creed - the homooúsia - is so
strongly emphasized as practically to push out of sight, if not quite out of
existence, these remanent suggestions of derivation and subordination. It has
been found necessary, nevertheless, from time to time, vigorously to reassert
the principle of equalization, over against a tendency unduly to emphasize the
elements of subordinationism which still hold a place thus in the traditional
language in which the church states its doctrine of the Trinity. In particular,
it fell to Calvin, in the interests of the true Deity of Christ - the constant
motive of the whole body of Trinitarian thought - to reassert and make good the
attribute of self-existence (autotheotṓs) for the Son. Thus Calvin takes his place, alongside of Tertullian,
Athanasius and Augustine, as one of the chief contributors to the exact and
vital statement of the Christian doctrine of the Triune God.
Literature.
F. C. Baur, Die christliche Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit Gottea,
3 volumes, Tubingen, 1841-43; Dionysius Petavius, De Trinitate (vol II,
of De Theologicis Dogmaticis, Paris, 1647); G. Bull, A Defence of the
Nicene Creed (1685), 2 volumes, Oxford, 1851; G. S. Faber, The
Apostolicity of Trinitarianism, 2 volumes, 1832; Augustine, On the Holy
Trinity (Volume III of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian
Church, 1-228), New York, 1887; Calvin, Institutes of the Christian
Religion, I, chapter xiii; C. Hodge, Systematic Theology and Index,
I, New York, 1873, 442-82; H. Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatick2,
II, Kampen, 1908, 260-347 (gives excellent references to literature); S.
Harris, God, Creator, and Lord of All, New York, 1896; R. Rocholl, Der
christliche Gottesbegriff, Gottingen, 1900; W. F. Adeney, The Christian
Conception of God, London, 1909, 215-46; J. Lebreton, Lea origines du
dogme de la Trinite, Paris, 1910; J. C. K. Hofmann, Der Schriftbeweis2,
Nordlingen, 1857-60, I, 85-111; J. L. S. Lutz, Biblische Dogmatik,
Pforzheim, 1817, 319-94; R. W. Landis, A Plea for the Catholic Doctrine of
the Trinity, Philadelphia, 1832; E. H. Bickersteth, The Rock of Ages,
etc., London, 1860, New York, 1861; E. Riggenbach, “Der trinitarische
Taufbefehl, Mat_28:19” (in Schlatter
and Cremer, Beitrage zur Forderung christlicher Theologie, 1903, VII;
also 1906, X); F. J. Hall, The Trinity, London and New York, 1910,
100-141; J. Pearson, An Exposition of the Creed, edition Chevallier and
Sinker, Cambridge, 1899; J. Howe, “Calm Discourse on the Trinity,” in Works,
edition Hunt, London, 1810-22; J. Owen, “Vindication of the Doctrine of the
Holy Trinity,” and “Saint's Fellowship with the Trinity,” in Works,
Gould's edition, London, 1850-55; J. Edwards, Observations concerning the
Scripture Economy of the Trinity, etc., New York, 1880, also An
Unpublished Essay on the Trinity, New York, 1903; J. R. Illingworth, The
Doctrine of the Trinity Apologetically Considered, London and New York,
1907; A. F. W. Ingrain, The Love of the Trinity, New York, 1908.
(NOTE. -
In this article the author has usually given his own renderings of original
passages, and not those of any particular version - EDITORS.)
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