BOSTON REVIEW. VOL. IV. JANUARY, 1864.-No. 19. ARTICLE I. THE TRINITY. “THERE are three persons in the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory." Westminster Assembly's Shorter Catechism. THE doctrine which this article sums up and condenses from the Scriptures, is peculiarly a Scripture doctrine. Like the doctrine of the atonement, it is not likely to be discovered from nature, but requires to be revealed. The mode of the divine existence is, from the nature of the subject, so high above all the analogies of nature or created existences, that we must depend wholly on the Bible for the statement and the proof. Nor can we reasonably expect to comprehend it fully in its philosophy. "Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?" All that can be demanded by reason is that the facts be clearly revealed and that it shall not be absurd and impossible, or contradictory to reason and the analogy of nature. This therefore is one of several truths fundamental to the Gospel system, which no man can be expected to receive who has not first fully settled in his mind the divine inspiration of the Scriptures, such as to constitute them an infallible guide. As evidence, however, that the doctrine is not contrary to reason, and that nature does not reject or cry out against it, it may be stated that, like the custom of sacrifices, the notion has been very prevalent through the world, that, in some way, the Deity has a three-fold manner of existence. This fact can only be accounted for on the supposition that the doctrine of the Trinity was revealed to the patriarchs, and, by tradition, some traces of it were preserved and spread abroad among the nations. It is well known that the ancient Egyptians, and the eastern nations generally believed in a Trinity. The missionaries find the Hindoos believing it in modern times, and find them also tracing the notion back to a very ancient date. As the philosophers thought it their province to explain every thing, we find Plato, nearly four hundred years before Christ, endeavoring by philosophy to bring down the mystery to the comprehension of men. He resolved the Trinity into, (1) God as pure reason. (2) God as the original ideas in reason. (3) God rs these ideas infused into material forms and now existing as the soul of the world. Plato had many followers who adopted these speculations with more or less addition and modification. During the first Christian century there arose various sects called Gnostics whose object was to blend the Platonic philosophy with the doctrines of the Gospel. The Ebionites, the Nicolaitans, and the followers of Cerinthus, against whom John wrote his Gospel, were all Gnostics who were corrupting this and other Christian doctrines by their speculations. Undoubtedly John in the latter part of his life wrote his Gospel more expressly to deny and refute the errors of those false teachers, who had endeavored to persuade the early Christians that the divine and the human were not actually and really united in the person of the Lord Jesus. Hence at the outset, he goes back to the very expression which the Jewish church had for ages employed to represent the Jehovah, or Lord of the Old Testament, and repeatedly, and unequivocally applies it to Christ; declaring that this same person, called by the patriarchs and prophets the Angel Jehovah, "The Lord whom ye seek," "the messenger of the covenant," was the Lord Jesus Christ, both their Creator and Redeemer. The Babylonian paraphrase, or Targum, frequently translates the Hebrew word "Jehovah," by "The Word of the Lord." John therefore seizes on this expression, well understood by the Jews, and the strongest he could employ to affirm that Jesus Christ is the very God whom the patriarchs and prophets worshipped from the beginning. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made by him. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory (i. e. we, like our fathers, beheld his shekinah) the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” This authoritatively settled the question. Accordingly we find that, during the first three centuries, the primitive preachers of the Gospel taught the doctrine of the Trinity in the most plain and simple form, stating and affirming it without attempting any explanation. But, towards the close of this period, many who had imbibed the doctrines of the Gnostics were nominally converted to Christianity; and by them a new attempt was made to blend the two; or rather by philosophy to reduce the deep mystery of the mode of Triunity to the comprehension of reason. With them the theory of emanation was the great source of explanation. The second person was viewed as an emanation from the first; and the third evolved by conjoined emanation from both the first and second. Construing the words of Jesus, "I came out from God," as if spoken of the literal generation of the Son, they said, it follows that the Son was begotten from the being of the Father. This gross view presented the Father and the Son as corporeal; and the Father as divided into two. Well has it been said, "these are the dogmas of men who never even dreamed of an invisible, incorporeal nature.” Yet they served to bring on, in the fourth century, the most ardent and metaphysical discussion which the church has ever known. On one side the distinction between the Father and the Son was made so broad that the Son became wholly a distinct being from, and inferior to the Father: this was the Arian heresy. On the other hand, the distinction was so little that the Father and the Son became both wholly the same, only under different forms of manifestation. This was the Sabellian heresy. All this shows us that the true doctrine of the Trinity, while it must be received as a fact of revelation, is not, and was never felt to be absurd or impossible. It is not contradictory to reason, but above reason, like a thousand other things which have not been as to manner yet fully revealed and unfolded. Before proceeding to the direct Scripture proof of this doctrine, it is important that we get the clearest possible view of precisely what is affirmed. It is not meant that there is simply a distinction of divine attributes, as if power stands for the Father; wisdom for the Son; and truth for the Spirit. Nor is a distinction founded on relations what is meant by the Trinity; as if God were called Father in consequence of his relation as creator and preserver. It is not the result of different manifestations, as if God as manifest to the patriarchs was the Father; and the same personality as manifest in the flesh was the Son; and as manifest on the day of pentecost, the Spirit. But it is meant that, independently of all manifestations and relations, there is in the eternal nature of the Deity a threefold distinction to such an extent as that there can be proper society and communication between them. This three-fold distinction, for want of a better term, is commonly called a personal distinction. Again, it is not, as we be slanderously reported, that we believe the one God to be three Gods; or the three Gods one God, but that the mode of his infinite and indefinable existence is that of a triunity; that the one God exists in three separate and distinct persons; that he is one in substance or being, and three in personality; that there is a basis in the high and mysterious nature of God's one only being, which renders it possible and natural that his personality should be three-fold. This can not be said to be contradictory, without asserting the identity and inseparability of substance and personality; and no one is prepared for that; for substance is defined to be, "The essential part, that which supports accidents." Substance may exist without personality. If you ask how the one being of God can exist in persons, we can not tell. Neither can we tell how man exists as soul and body, two distinct natures in one person. Indeed the mode in which any being subsists, connecting its distinct nature and known properties, is a mystery to the most learned naturalists, |