Chapter II: Doctrine Of The Trinity (4)

Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 62—“_And the Word was toward God_” =
his face is not outwards, as if he were merely revealing, or
waiting to reveal, God to the creation. His face is turned
inwards. His whole Person is directed toward God, motion
corresponding to motion, thought to thought.... In him God stands
revealed to himself. Contrast the attitude of fallen Adam, with
his face averted from God. Godet, on _John 1:1_—“Πρὸς τὸν θεόν
intimates not only personality but movement.... The tendency of
the Logos _ad extra_ rests upon an anterior and essential relation
_ad intra_. To reveal God, one must know him; to project him
outwardly, one must have plunged into his bosom.” Compare _John
1:18—_“the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father”
(R. V.) where we find, not ἐν τῷ κόλπῷ, but εἰς τὸν κόλπον. As ἦν
εἰς τὴν πόλιν means “went into the city and was there,” so the use
of these prepositions indicates in the Godhead movement as well as
rest. Dorner, System of Doctrine, 3:193, translates πρός by
“_hingewandt zu_,” or “turned toward.” The preposition would then
imply that the Revealer, who existed in the beginning, was ever
over against God, in the life-process of the Trinity, as the
perfect objectification of himself. “Das Aussichselbstsein kraft
des Durchsichselbstsein mit dem Fürsichselbstsein
zusammenschliesst.” Dorner speaks of “das
Aussensichoderineinemandernsein; Sichgeltendmachen des
Ausgeschlossenen; Sichnichtsogesetzthaben; Stehenbleibenwollen.”

There is in all human intelligence a threefoldness which points
toward a trinitarian life in God. We can distinguish a _Wissen_, a
_Bewusstsein_, a _Selbstbewusstein_. In complete
self-consciousness there are the three elements: 1. We are
ourselves; 2. We form a picture of ourselves; 3. We recognize this
picture as the picture of ourselves. The little child speaks of
himself in the third person: “Baby did it.” The objective comes
before the subject; “me” comes first, and “I” is a later
development; “himself” still holds its place, rather than
“heself.” But this duality belongs only to undeveloped
intelligence; it is characteristic of the animal creation; we
revert to it in our dreams; the insane are permanent victims of
it; and since sin is moral insanity, the sinner has no hope until,
like the prodigal, he “comes to himself”_ (Luke 15:17)_. The
insane person is _mente alienatus_, and we call physicians for the
insane by the name of _alienists_. Mere duality gives us only the
notion of separation. Perfect self-consciousness whether in man or
in God requires a third unifying element. And in God mediation
between the “I” and the “Thou” must be the work of a Person also,
and the Person who mediates between the two must be in all
respects the equal of either, or he could not adequately interpret
the one to the other; see Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 57-59.

Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:179-189, 276-283—“It is one of the effects
of conviction by the Holy Spirit to convert consciousness into
self-consciousness.... Conviction of sin is the consciousness of
self as the guilty author of sin. Self-consciousness is trinal,
while mere consciousness is dual.... One and the same human spirit
subsists in two modes or distinctions—subject and object ... The
three hypostatical consciousnesses in their combination and unity
constitute the one consciousness of God ... as the three persons
make one essence.”

Dorner considers the internal relations of the Trinity (System,
1:412 _sq._) in three aspects: 1. Physical. God is _causa sui_.
But effect that equals cause must itself be causative. Here would
be duality, were it not for a third principle of unity. Trinitas
dualitatem ad unitatem reducit. 2. Logical. Self-consciousness
sets self over against self. Yet the thinker must not regard self
as one of many, and call himself “he,” as children do; for the
thinker would then be, not _self_-conscious, but _mente
alienatus_, “beside himself.” He therefore “comes to himself” in a
third, as the brute cannot. 3. Ethical. God—self-willing right.
But right based on arbitrary will is not right. Right based on
passive nature is not right either. Right as _being_—Father. Right
as _willing_—Son. Without the latter principle of freedom, we have
a dead ethic, a dead God, an enthroned necessity. The unity of
necessity and freedom is found by God, as by the Christian, in the
Holy Spirit. The Father—I; the Son—Me; the Spirit the unity of the
two; see C. C. Everett, Essays, Theological and Literary, 32.
There must be not only Sun and Sunlight, but an Eye to behold the
Light. William James, in his Psychology, distinguishes the _Me_,
the self as known, from the _I_, the self as knower.

But we need still further to distinguish a third principle, a
subject-object, from both subject and object. The subject cannot
recognize the object as one with itself except through a unifying
principle which can be distinguished from both. We may therefore
regard the Holy Spirit as the principle of self-consciousness in
man as well as in God. As there was a natural union of Christ with
humanity prior to his redeeming work, so there is a natural union
of the Holy Spirit with all men prior to his regenerating work:
_Job 32:18—_“there is a spirit in man, And the breath of the
Almighty giveth them understanding.” Kuyper, Work of the Holy
Spirit, teaches that the Holy Spirit constitutes the principle of
life in all living things, and animates all rational beings, as
well as regenerates and sanctifies the elect of God. Matheson,
Voices of the Spirit, 75, remarks on _Job 34:14, 15—_“If he gather
unto himself his Spirit and his breath; all flesh shall perish
together”—that the Spirit is not only necessary to man’s
salvation, but also to keep up even man’s natural life.

Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:172, speaks of the Son as the centrifugal,
while the Holy Spirit is the centripetal movement of the Godhead.
God apart from Christ is unrevealed (_John 1:18—_“No man hath seen
God at any time”); Christ is the organ of external revelation
(_18—_“the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father,
he hath declared him”); the Holy Spirit is the organ of internal
revelation (_1 Cor. 2:10—_“unto us Christ revealed them through
the Spirit”). That the Holy Spirit is the principle of all
movement towards God appears from _Heb. 9:14_—Christ “_through the
eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish unto God_”; _Eph.
2:28—_“access in one Spirit unto the Father”; _Rom. 8:26—_“the
Spirit also helpeth our infirmity ... the Spirit himself maketh
intercession for us”; _John 4:24—_“God is a Spirit: and they that
worship him must worship in spirit”; _16:8-11—_“convict the world
in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.” See
Twesten, Dogmatik, on the Trinity; also Thomasius, Christi Person
und Werk, 1:111. Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 68—“It is the joy of
the Son to receive, his gladness to welcome most those wishes of
the Father which will cost most to himself. The Spirit also has
his joy in making known,—in perfecting fellowship and keeping the
eternal love alive by that incessant sounding of the deeps which
makes the heart of the Father known to the Son, and the heart of
the Son known to the Father.” We may add that the Holy Spirit is
the organ of internal revelation even to the Father and to the
Son.

(_c_) In the light of what has been said, we may understand somewhat more fully the characteristic differences between the work of Christ and that of the Holy Spirit. We may sum them up in the four statements that, first, all outgoing seems to be the work of Christ, all return to God the work of the Spirit; secondly, Christ is the organ of external revelation, the Holy Spirit the organ of internal revelation; thirdly, Christ is our advocate in heaven, the Holy Spirit is our advocate in the soul; fourthly, in the work of Christ we are passive, in the work of the Spirit we are active. Of the work of Christ we shall treat more fully hereafter, in speaking of his Offices as Prophet, Priest, and King. The work of the Holy Spirit will be treated when we come to speak of the Application of Redemption in Regeneration and Sanctification. Here it is sufficient to say that the Holy Spirit is represented in the Scriptures as the author of life—in creation, in the conception of Christ, in regeneration, in resurrection; and as the giver of light—in the inspiration of Scripture writers, in the conviction of sinners, in the illumination and sanctification of Christians.

_Gen. 1:2—_“The Spirit of God was brooding”; _Luke 1:35_—to Mary:
“_The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee_”, _John 3:8—_“born of the
Spirit”; _Ps. 37:9, 14—_“Come from the four winds, O breath.... I
will put my Spirit in you, and ye shall live”; _Rom. 8:11—_“give
life also to your mortal bodies through his Spirit.” _1 John
2:1—_“an advocate (παράκλητον) with the Father, Jesus Christ the
righteous”; _John 14:16, 17—_“another Comforter (παράκλητον), that
he may be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth”; _Rom.
8:26—_“the Spirit himself maketh intercession for us.” _2 Pet.
1:21—_“men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit”; _John
16:8—_“convict the world in respect of sin”; _13—_“when he, the
Spirit of truth, is come, he shall guide you into all the truth”;
_Rom. 8:14—_“as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are
sons of God.”

McCosh: The works of the Spirit are Conviction, Conversion,
Sanctification, Comfort. Donovan: The Spirit is the Spirit of
conviction, enlightenment, quickening, in the sinner; and of
revelation, remembrance, witness, sanctification, consolation, to
the saint. The Spirit enlightens the sinner, as the flash of
lightning lights the traveler stumbling on the edge of a precipice
at night; enlightens the Christian, as the rising sun reveals a
landscape which was all there before, but which was hidden from
sight until the great luminary made it visible. “The morning light
did not create The lovely prospect it revealed; It only showed the
real state Of what the darkness had concealed.” Christ’s advocacy
before the throne is like that of legal counsel pleading in our
stead; the Holy Spirit’s advocacy in the heart is like the
mother’s teaching her child to pray for himself.

J. W. A. Stewart: “Without the work of the Holy Spirit redemption
would have been impossible, as impossible as that fuel should warm
without being lighted, or that bread should nourish without being
eaten. Christ is God entering into human history, but without the
Spirit Christianity would be only history. The Holy Spirit is God
entering into human hearts. The Holy Spirit turns creed into life.
Christ is the physician who leaves the remedy and then departs.
The Holy Spirit is the nurse who applies and administers the
remedy, and who remains with the patient until the cure is
completed.” Matheson, Voices of the Spirit, 78—“It is in vain that
the mirror exists in the room, if it is lying on its face; the
sunbeams cannot reach it till its face is upturned to them. Heaven
lies about thee not only in thine infancy but at all times. But it
is not enough that a place is prepared for thee; thou must be
prepared for the place. It is not enough that thy light has come;
thou thyself must arise and shine. No outward shining can reveal,
unless thou art thyself a reflector of its glory. The Spirit must
set thee on thy feet, that thou mayest hear him that speaks to
thee (Ez. 2:2).”

The Holy Spirit reveals not himself but Christ. _John 16:14—_“He
shall glorify me: for he shall take of mine, and shall declare it
unto you.” So should the servants of the Spirit hide themselves
while they make known Christ. E. H. Johnson, The Holy Spirit,
40—“Some years ago a large steam engine all of glass was exhibited
about the country. When it was at work one would see the piston
and the valves go; but no one could see what made them go. When
steam is hot enough to be a continuous elastic vapor, it is
invisible.” So we perceive the presence of the Holy Spirit, not by
visions or voices, but by the effect he produces within us in the
shape of new knowledge, new love, and new energy of our own
powers. Denney, Studies in Theology, 161—“No man can bear witness
to Christ and to himself at the same time. _Esprit_ is fatal to
unction; no man can give the impression that he himself is clever
and also that Christ is mighty to save. The power of the Holy
Spirit is felt only when the witness is unconscious of self, and
when others remain unconscious of him.” Moule, Veni Creator,
8—“The Holy Spirit, as Tertullian says, is the vicar of Christ.
The night before the Cross, the Holy Spirit was present to the
mind of Christ as a person.”

Gore, in Lux Mundi, 318—“It was a point in the charge against
Origen that his language seemed to involve an exclusion of the
Holy Spirit from nature, and a limitation of his activity to the
church. The whole of life is certainly his. And yet, because his
special attribute is holiness, it is in rational natures, which
alone are capable of holiness, that he exerts his special
influence. A special inbreathing of the divine Spirit gave to man
his proper being.” See _Gen. 2:7—_“Jehovah God ... breathed into
his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul”;
_John 3:8—_“The Spirit breatheth where it will ... so is every one
that is born of the Spirit.” E. H. Johnson, on The Offices of the
Holy Spirit, in Bib. Sac., July, 1892:381-382—“Why is he specially
called the Holy, when Father and Son are also holy, unless because
he produces holiness, _i. e._, makes the holiness of God to be
ours individually? Christ is the principle of collectivism, the
Holy Spirit the principle of individualism. The Holy Spirit shows
man the Christ in him. God above all = Father; God through all =
Son; God in all = Holy Spirit (_Eph. 4:6_).”

The doctrine of the Holy Spirit has never yet been scientifically
unfolded. No treatise on it has appeared comparable to Julius
Müller’s Doctrine of Sin, or to I. A. Dorner’s History of the
Doctrine of the Person of Christ. The progress of doctrine in the
past has been marked by successive stages. Athanasius treated of
the Trinity; Augustine of sin; Anselm of the atonement; Luther of
justification; Wesley of regeneration; and each of these
unfoldings of doctrine has been accompanied by religious
awakening. We still wait for a complete discussion of the doctrine
of the Holy Spirit, and believe that widespread revivals will
follow the recognition of the omnipotent Agent in revivals. On the
relations of the Holy Spirit to Christ, see Owen, in Works,
3:152-159; on the Holy Spirit’s nature and work, see works by
Faber, Smeaton, Tophel, G. Campbell Morgan, J. D. Robertson,
Biederwolf; also C. E. Smith, The Baptism of Fire; J. D. Thompson,
The Holy Comforter; Bushnell, Forgiveness and Law, last chapter;
Bp. Andrews, Works, 3:107-400; James S. Candlish, Work of the Holy
Spirit; Redford, Vox Dei; Andrew Murray, The Spirit of Christ; A.
J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit; Kuyper, Work of the Holy
Spirit; J. E. Cumming, Through the Eternal Spirit; Lechler, Lehre
vom Heiligen Geiste; Arthur, Tongue of Fire; A. H. Strong,
Philosophy and Religion, 250-258, and Christ in Creation, 297-313.

3. Generation and procession consistent with equality.

That the Sonship of Christ is eternal, is intimated in Psalm 2:7. “This day have I begotten thee” is most naturally interpreted as the declaration of an eternal fact in the divine nature. Neither the incarnation, the baptism, the transfiguration, nor the resurrection marks the beginning of Christ’s Sonship, or constitutes him Son of God. These are but recognitions or manifestations of a preëxisting Sonship, inseparable from his Godhood. He is “born before every creature” (while yet no created thing existed—see Meyer on Col. 1:15) and “by the resurrection of the dead” is not _made_ to be, but only “_declared_ to be,” “according to the Spirit of holiness” (= according to his divine nature) “the Son of God with power” (see Philippi and Alford on Rom. 1:3, 4). This Sonship is unique—not predicable of, or shared with, any creature. The Scriptures intimate, not only an eternal generation of the Son, but an eternal procession of the Spirit.

_Psalm 2:7—_“I will tell of the decree: Jehovah said unto me, Thou
art my Son; This day I have begotten thee” see Alexander, Com. _in
loco_; also Com. on _Acts 13:33_—“‘To-day’ refers to the date of
the decree itself; but this, as a divine act, was eternal,—and so
must be the Sonship which it affirms.” Philo says that “to-day”
with God means “forever.” This begetting of which the Psalm speaks
is not the resurrection, for while Paul in _Acts 13:33_ refers to
this Psalm to establish the fact of Jesus’ Sonship, he refers in
_Acts 13:34, 35_ to another Psalm, the _sixteenth_, to establish
the fact that this Son of God was to rise from the dead. Christ is
shown to be Son of God by his incarnation (_Heb. 1:5, 6—_“when he
again bringeth in the firstborn into the world he saith, And let
all the angels of God worship him”), his baptism (_Mat.
3:17—_“This is my beloved Son”), his transfiguration (_Mat.
17:5—_“This is my beloved Son”), his resurrection (_Acts 13:34,
35—_“as concerning that he raised him up from the dead ... he
saith also in another psalm, Thou wilt not give thy Holy One to
see corruption”). _Col. 1:15—_“the firstborn of all
creation”—πρωτότοκος πάσης κτίσεως = “begotten first before all
creation” (Julius Müller, Proof-texts, 14); or “first-born before
every creature, _i. e._, begotten, and that antecedently to
everything that was created” (Ellicott, Com. _in loco_). “Herein”
(says Luthardt, Compend. Dogmatik, 81, on _Col. 1:15_) “is
indicated an antemundane origin from God—a relation internal to
the divine nature.” Lightfoot, on _Col. 1:15_, says that in Rabbi
Bechai God is called the “_primogenitus mundi_.”

On _Rom. 1:4_ (ὁρισθέντος = “manifested to be the mighty Son of
God”) see Lange’s Com., notes by Schaff on pages 56 and 61. Bruce,
Apologetics, 404—“The resurrection was the actual introduction of
Christ into the full possession of divine Sonship so far as
thereto belonged, not only the _inner_ of a holy spiritual
essence, but also the _outer_ of an existence in power and
heavenly glory.” Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 353, 354—“Calvin waves
aside eternal generation as an ‘absurd fiction.’ But to maintain
the deity of Christ merely on the ground that it is essential to
his making an adequate atonement for sin, is to involve the
rejection of his deity if ever the doctrine of atonement becomes
obnoxious.... Such was the process by which, in the mind of the
last century, the doctrine of the Trinity was undermined. Not to
ground the distinctions of the divine essence by some immanent
eternal necessity was to make easy the denial of what has been
called the ontological Trinity, and then the rejection of the
economical Trinity was not difficult or far away.”

If Westcott and Hort’s reading ὁ μονογενὴς Θεός, “_the only
begotten God_,” in _John 1:18_, is correct, we have a new proof of
Christ’s eternal Sonship. Meyer explains ἑαυτοῦ in _Rom.
8:3—_“God, sending his own Son,” as an allusion to the
metaphysical Sonship. That this Sonship is unique, is plain from
_John 1:14, 18—_“the only begotten from the Father ... the only
begotten Son who is in the bosom of the father”; _Rom. 8:32—_“his
own Son”; _Gal. 4:4—_“sent forth his Son”; _cf._ _Prov.
8:22-31—_“When he marked out the foundations of the earth; Then I
was by him as a master workman”; _30:4—_“Who hath established all
the ends of the earth? What is his name, and what is his son’s
name, if thou knowest?” The eternal procession of the Spirit seems
to be implied in _John 15:26—_“the Spirit of truth which
proceedeth from the Father”—see Westcott, Bib. Com., _in loco_;
_Heb. 9:14—_“the eternal Spirit.” Westcott here says that παρά
(not ἐξ) shows that the reference is to the temporal mission of
the Holy Spirit, not to the eternal procession. At the same time
he maintains that the temporal corresponds to the eternal.

The Scripture terms “generation” and “procession,” as applied to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, are but approximate expressions of the truth, and we are to correct by other declarations of Scripture any imperfect impressions which we might derive solely from them. We use these terms in a special sense, which we explicitly state and define as excluding all notion of inequality between the persons of the Trinity. The eternal generation of the Son to which we hold is

(_a_) Not creation, but the Father’s communication of himself to the Son. Since the names, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not applicable to the divine essence, but are only applicable to its hypostatical distinctions, they imply no derivation of the essence of the Son from the essence of the Father.

The error of the Nicene Fathers was that of explaining Sonship as
derivation of essence. The Father cannot impart his essence to the
Son and yet retain it. The Father is _fons trinitatis_, not _fons
deitatis_. See Shedd, Hist. Doct., 1:308-311, and Dogm. Theol.,
1:287-299; _per contra_, see Bib. Sac., 41:698-760.

(_b_) Not a commencement of existence, but an eternal relation to the Father,—there never having been a time when the Son began to be, or when the Son did not exist as God with the Father.

If there had been an eternal sun, it is evident that there must
have been an eternal sunlight also. Yet an eternal sunlight must
have evermore proceeded from the sun. When Cyril was asked whether
the Son existed before generation, he answered: “The generation of
the Son did not precede his existence, but he always existed, and
that by generation.”

(_c_) Not an act of the Father’s will, but an internal necessity of the divine nature,—so that the Son is no more dependent upon the Father than the Father is dependent upon the Son, and so that, if it be consistent with deity to be Father, it is equally consistent with deity to be Son.

The sun is as dependent upon the sunlight as the sunlight is upon
the sun; for without sunlight the sun is no true sun. So God the
Father is as dependent upon God the Son, as God the Son is
dependent upon God the Father; for without Son the Father would be
no true Father. To say that aseity belongs only to the Father is
logically Arianism and Subordinationism proper, for it implies a
subordination of the essence of the Son to the Father. Essential
subordination would be inconsistent with equality. See Thomasius,
Christi Person und Werk, 1:115. Palmer, Theol. Definitions, 66,
67, says that Father = independent life; Son begotten =
independent life voluntarily brought under limitations; Spirit =
necessary consequence of existence of the other two.... The words
and actions whereby we design to affect others are “begotten.” The
atmosphere of unconscious influence is not “begotten,” but
“proceeding.”

(_d_) Not a relation in any way analogous to physical derivation, but a life-movement of the divine nature, in virtue of which Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, while equal in essence and dignity, stand to each other in an order of personality, office, and operation, and in virtue of which the Father works through the Son, and the Father and the Son through the Spirit.

The subordination of the _person_ of the Son to the _person_ of
the Father, or in other words an order of personality, office, and
operation which permits the Father to be officially first, the Son
second, and the Spirit third, is perfectly consistent with
equality. Priority is not necessarily superiority. The possibility
of an order, which yet involves no inequality, may be illustrated
by the relation between man and woman. In office man is first and
woman second, but woman’s soul is worth as much as man’s; see _1
Cor. 11:3—_“the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the
woman is the man: and the head of Christ is God.” On _John
14:28—_“the Father is greater than I”—see Westcott, Bib. Com., _in
loco_.

Edwards, Observations on the Trinity (edited by Smyth), 22—“In the
Son the whole deity and glory of the Father is as it were repeated
or duplicated. Everything in the Father is repeated or expressed
again, and that fully, so that there is properly no inferiority.”
Edwards, Essay on the Trinity (edited by Fisher), 110-116—“The
Father is the Deity subsisting in the prime, unoriginated, and
most absolute manner, or the Deity in its direct existence. The
Son is the Deity generated by God’s understanding, or having an
Idea of himself and subsisting in that Idea. The Holy Ghost is the
Deity subsisting in act, or the divine essence flowing out and
breathed forth in God’s infinite love to and delight in himself.
And I believe the whole divine essence does truly and distinctly
subsist both in the divine Idea and in the divine Love, and each
of them are properly distinct persons.... We find no other
attributes of which it is said in Scripture that they are God, or
that God is they, but λόγος and ἀγάπη, the Reason and the Love of
God, Light not being different from Reason.... Understanding may
be predicated of this Love.... It is not a blind Love.... The
Father has Wisdom or Reason by the Son’s being in him....
Understanding is in the Holy Spirit, because the Son is in him.”
Yet Dr. Edwards A. Park declared eternal generation to be “eternal
nonsense,” and is thought to have hid Edwards’s unpublished Essay
on the Trinity for many years because it taught this doctrine.

The New Testament calls Christ θεός, but not ὁ θεός. We frankly
recognize an eternal subordination of Christ to the Father, but we
maintain at the same time that this subordination is a
subordination of order, office, and operation, not a subordination
of essence. “Non de essentia dicitur, sed de ministeriis.” E. G.
Robinson: “An eternal generation is necessarily an eternal
subordination and dependence. This seems to be fully admitted even
by the most orthodox of the Anglican writers, such as Pearson and
Hooker. Christ’s subordination to the Father is merely official,
not essential.” Whiton, Gloria Patri, 42, 96—“The early
Trinitarians by eternal Sonship meant, first, that it is of the
very nature of Deity to issue forth into visible expression. Thus
next, that this outward expression of God is not something other
than God, but God himself, in a self-expression as divine as the
hidden Deity. Thus they answered Philip’s cry, ‘show us the
Father, and it sufficeth us’_ (John 14:8)_, and thus they affirmed
Jesus’ declaration, they secured Paul’s faith that God has never
left himself without witness. They meant, ‘he that hath seen me
hath seen the Father’_ (John 14:9)_.... The Father is the Life
transcendent, the divine Source, ‘_above all_’; the Son is the
Life immanent, the divine Stream, ‘_through all_’; the Holy Spirit
is the Life individualized, ‘in all’_ (Eph. 4:6)_. The Holy Spirit
has been called ‘the executive of the Godhead.’ ” Whiton is here
speaking of the economic Trinity; but all this is even more true
of the immanent Trinity. On the Eternal Sonship, see Weiss, Bib.
Theol. N. T., 424, note; Treffrey, Eternal Sonship of our Lord;
Princeton Essays, 1:30-56; Watson, Institutes, 1:530-577; Bib.
Sac., 27:268. On the procession of the Spirit, see Shedd, Dogm.
Theol., 1:300-304, and History of Doctrine, 1:387; Dick, Lectures
on Theology, 1:347-350.

The same principles upon which we interpret the declaration of Christ’s eternal Sonship apply to the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father through the Son, and show this to be not inconsistent with the Spirit’s equal dignity and glory.

We therefore only formulate truth which is concretely expressed in Scripture, and which is recognized by all ages of the church in hymns and prayers addressed to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, when we assert that in the nature of the one God there are three eternal distinctions, which are best described as persons, and each of which is the proper and equal object of Christian worship.

We are also warranted in declaring that, in virtue of these personal distinctions or modes of subsistence, God exists in the relations, respectively, first, of Source, Origin, Authority, and in this relation is the Father; secondly, of Expression, Medium, Revelation, and in this relation is the Son; thirdly, of Apprehension, Accomplishment, Realization, and in this relation is the Holy Spirit.

John Owen, Works, 3:64-92—“The office of the Holy Spirit is that
of concluding, completing, perfecting. To the Father we assign
_opera naturæ_; to the Son, _opera gratiæ procuratæ_; to the
Spirit, _opera gratiæ applicatæ_.” All God’s revelations are
through the Son or the Spirit, and the latter includes the former.
Kuyper, Work of the Holy Spirit, designates the three offices
respectively as those of Causation, Construction, Consummation;
the Father brings forth, the Son arranges, the Spirit perfects.
Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 365-373—“God is Life, Light, Love. As the
Fathers regarded Reason both in God and man as the personal,
omnipresent second Person of the Trinity, so Jonathan Edwards
regarded Love both in God and in man as the personal, omnipresent
third Person of the Trinity. Hence the Father is never said to
love the Spirit as he is said to love the Son—for this love _is_
the Spirit. The Father and the Son are said to love men, but the
Holy Spirit is never said to love them, for love _is_ the Holy
Spirit. But why could not Edwards also hold that the Logos or
divine Reason also dwelt in humanity, so that manhood was
constituted in Christ and shared with him in the consubstantial
image of the Father? Outward nature reflects God’s light and has
Christ in it,—why not universal humanity?”

Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 136, 202, speaks of “1. God,
the Eternal, the Infinite, in his infinity, as himself; 2. God, as
self-expressed within the nature and faculties of man—body, soul,
and spirit—the consummation and interpretation and revelation of
what true manhood means and is, in its very truth, in its relation
to God; 3. God, as Spirit of Beauty and Holiness, which are
himself present in things created, animate and inanimate, and
constituting in them their divine response to God; constituting
above all in created personalities the full reality of their
personal response. Or again: 1. What a man is invisibly in
himself; 2. his outward material projection or expression as body;
and 3. the response which that which he is through his bodily
utterance or operation makes to him, as the true echo or
expression of himself.” Moberly seeks thus to find in man’s nature
an analogy to the inner processes of the divine.

VI. Inscrutable, yet not self-contradictory, this Doctrine furnishes the Key to all other Doctrines.

1. The mode of this triune existence is inscrutable.

It is inscrutable because there are no analogies to it in our finite experience. For this reason all attempts are vain adequately to represent it;

(_a_) From inanimate things—as the fountain, the stream, and the rivulet trickling from it (Athanasius); the cloud, the rain, and the rising mist (Boardman); color, shape, and size (F. W. Robertson); the actinic, luminiferous, and calorific principles in the ray of light (Solar Hieroglyphics, 34).

Luther: “When logic objects to this doctrine that it does not
square with her rules, we must say; ‘Mulier taceat in ecclesia.’ ”
Luther called the Trinity a flower, in which might be
distinguished its form, its fragrance, and its medicinal efficacy;
see Dorner, Gesch. prot. Theol., 189. In Bap. Rev., July,
1880:434, Geer finds an illustration of the Trinity in infinite
space with its three dimensions. For analogy of the cloud, rain,
mist, see W. E. Boardman, Higher Christian Life. Solar
Hieroglyphics, 34 (reviewed in New Englander, Oct. 1874:789)—“The
Godhead is a tripersonal unity, and the light is a trinity. Being
immaterial and homogeneous, and thus essentially one in its
nature, the light includes a plurality of constituents, or in
other words is essentially three in its constitution, its
constituent principles being the actinic, the luminiferous, and
the calorific; and in glorious manifestation the light is one, and
is the created, constituted, and ordained emblem of the
tripersonal God”—of whom it is said that “God is light, and in him
is no darkness at all”_ (1 John 1:5)_. The actinic rays are in
themselves invisible; only as the luminiferous manifest them, are
they seen; only as the calorific accompany them, are they felt.

Joseph Cook: “Sunlight, rainbow, heat—one solar radiance; Father,
Son, Holy Spirit, one God. As the rainbow shows what light is when
unfolded, so Christ reveals the nature of God. As the rainbow is
unraveled light, so Christ is unraveled God, and the Holy Spirit,
figured by heat, is Christ’s continued life.” Ruder illustrations
are those of Oom Paul Krüger: the fat, the wick, the flame, in the
candle; and of Augustine: the root, trunk, branches, all of one
wood, in the tree. In Geer’s illustration, mentioned above, from
the three dimensions of space, we cannot demonstrate that there is
not a fourth, but besides length, breadth, and thickness, we
cannot conceive of its existence. As these three exhaust, so far
as we know, all possible modes of material being, so we cannot
conceive of any fourth person in the Godhead.

(_b_) From the constitution or processes of our own minds—as the psychological unity of intellect, affection, and will (substantially held by Augustine); the logical unity of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis (Hegel); the metaphysical unity of subject, object, and subject-object (Melanchthon, Olshausen, Shedd).

Augustine: “Mens meminit sui, intelligit se, diligit se; si hoc
cernimus, Trinitatem cernimus.”... I exist, I am conscious, I
will; I exist as conscious and willing, I am conscious of existing
and willing, I will to exist and be conscious; and these three
functions, though distinct, are inseparable and form one life, one
mind, one essence.... “Amor autem alicujus amantis est, et amore
aliquid amatur. Ecce tria sunt, amans, et quod amatur, et amor.
Quid est ergo amor, nisi quædam vita duo aliqua copulans, vel
copulare appetans, amantem scilicet et quod amatur.” Calvin speaks
of Augustine’s view as “a speculation far from solid.” But
Augustine himself had said: “If asked to define the Trinity, we
can only say that it is not this or that.” John of Damascus: “All
we know of the divine nature is that it is not to be known.” By
this, however, both Augustine and John of Damascus meant only that
the precise _mode_ of God’s triune existence is unrevealed and
inscrutable.

Hegel, Philos. Relig., transl., 3:99, 100—“God is, but is at the
same time the Other, the self-differentiating, the Other in the
sense that this Other is God himself and has potentially the
Divine nature in it, and that the abolishing of this difference,
of this otherness, this return, this love, is Spirit.” Hegel calls
God “the absolute Idea, the unity of Life and Cognition, the
Universal that thinks itself and thinkingly recognizes itself in
an infinite Actuality, from which, as its Immediacy, it no less
distinguishes itself again”; see Schwegler, History of Philosophy,
321, 331. Hegel’s general doctrine is that the highest unity is to
be reached only through the fullest development and reconciliation
of the deepest and widest antagonism. Pure being is pure nothing;
we must die to live. Light is thesis, Darkness is antithesis,
Shadow is synthesis, or union of both. Faith is thesis, Unbelief
is antithesis, Doubt is synthesis, or union of both. _Zweifel_
comes from _Zwei_, as doubt from δύο. Hegel called Napoleon “ein
Weltgeist zu Pferde”—“a world-spirit on horseback.” Ladd, Introd.
to Philosophy, 202, speaks of “the monotonous tit-tat-too of the
Hegelian logic.” Ruskin speaks of it as “pure, definite, and
highly finished nonsense.” On the Hegelian principle good and evil
cannot be contradictory to each other; without evil there could be
no good. Stirling well entitled his exposition of the Hegelian
Philosophy “The Secret of Hegel,” and his readers have often
remarked that, if Stirling discovered the secret, he never made it
known.

Lord Coleridge told Robert Browning that he could not understand
all his poetry. “Ah, well,” replied the poet, “if a reader of your
calibre understands ten per cent. of what I write, he ought to be
content.” When Wordsworth was told that Mr. Browning had married
Miss Barrett, he said: “It is a good thing that these two
understand each other, for no one else understands them.” A pupil
once brought to Hegel a passage in the latter’s writings and asked
for an interpretation. The philosopher examined it and replied:
“When that passage was written, there were two who knew its
meaning—God and myself. Now, alas! there is but one, and that is
God.” Heinrich Heine, speaking of the effect of Hegelianism upon
the religious life of Berlin, says: “I could accommodate myself to
the very enlightened Christianity, filtrated from all
superstition, which could then be had in the churches, and which
was free from the divinity of Christ, like turtle soup without
turtle.” When German systems of philosophy die, their ghosts take
up their abode in Oxford. But if I see a ghost sitting in a chair
and then sit down boldly in the chair, the ghost will take offence
and go away. Hegel’s doctrine of God as the only begotten Son is
translated in the Journ. Spec. Philos., 15:395-404.

The most satisfactory exposition of the analogy of subject,
object, and subject-object is to be found in Shedd, History of
Doctrine, 1:365, note 2. See also Olshausen on John 1:1; H. N.
Day, Doctrine of Trinity in Light of Recent Psychology, in
Princeton Rev., Sept. 1882:156-179; Morris, Philosophy and
Christianity, 122-163. Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 174,
has a similar analogy: 1. A man’s invisible self; 2. the visible
expression of himself in a picture or poem; 3. the response of
this picture or poem to himself. The analogy of the family is held
to be even better, because no man’s personality is complete in
itself; husband, wife, and child are all needed to make perfect
unity. Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 372, says that in the early church
the Trinity was a doctrine of reason; in the Middle Ages it was a
mystery; in the 18th century it was a meaningless or irrational
dogma; again in the 19th century it becomes a doctrine of the
reason, a truth essential to the nature of God. To Allen’s
characterization of the stages in the history of the doctrine we
would add that even in our day we cannot say that a complete
exposition of the Trinity is possible. Trinity is a unique fact,
different aspects of which may be illustrated, while, as a whole,
it has no analogies. The most we can say is that human nature, in
its processes and powers, points towards something higher than
itself, and that Trinity in God is needed in order to constitute
that perfection of being which man seeks as an object of love,
worship and service.

No one of these furnishes any proper analogue of the Trinity, since in no one of them is there found the essential element of tripersonality. Such illustrations may sometimes be used to disarm objection, but they furnish no positive explanation of the mystery of the Trinity, and, unless carefully guarded, may lead to grievous error.

2. The Doctrine of the Trinity is not self-contradictory.

This it would be, only if it declared God to be three in the same numerical sense in which he is said to be one. This we do not assert. We assert simply that the same God who is one with respect to his essence is three with respect to the internal distinctions of that essence, or with respect to the modes of his being. The possibility of this cannot be denied, except by assuming that the human mind is in all respects the measure of the divine.

The fact that the ascending scale of life is marked by increasing differentiation of faculty and function should rather lead us to expect in the highest of all beings a nature more complex than our own. In man many faculties are united in one intelligent being, and the more intelligent man is, the more distinct from each other these faculties become; until intellect and affection, conscience and will assume a relative independence, and there arises even the possibility of conflict between them. There is nothing irrational or self-contradictory in the doctrine that in God the leading functions are yet more markedly differentiated, so that they become personal, while at the same time these personalities are united by the fact that they each and equally manifest the one indivisible essence.

Unity is as essential to the Godhead as threeness. The same God
who in one respect is three, in another respect is one. We do not
say that one God is three Gods, nor that one person is three
persons, nor that three Gods are one God, but only that there is
one God with three distinctions in his being. We do not refer to
the faculties of man as furnishing any proper analogy to the
persons of the Godhead; we rather deny that man’s nature furnishes
any such analogy. Intellect, affection, and will in man are not
distinct personalities. If they were personalized, they might
furnish such an analogy. F. W. Robertson, Sermons, 3:58, speaks of
the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as best conceived under the
figure of personalized intellect, affection and will. With this
agrees the saying of Socrates, who called thought the soul’s
conversation with itself. See D. W. Simon, in Bib. Sac., Jan.
1887.

_Ps. 86:11—_“Unite my heart to fear thy name”—intimates a
complexity of powers in man, and a possible disorganization due to
sin. Only the fear and love of God can reduce our faculties to
order and give us peace, purity, and power. When William after a
long courtship at length proposed marriage, Mary said that she
“unanimously consented.” “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength,
and with all thy mind”_ (Luke 10:27)._ Man must not lead a dual
life, a double life, like that of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The
good life is the unified life. H. H. Bawden: “Theoretically,
symmetrical development is the complete criterion. This is the old
Greek conception of the perfect life. The term which we translate
‘temperance’ or ‘self-control’ is better expressed by
‘whole-mindedness.’ ”

Illingworth, Personality Divine and Human, 54-80—“Our sense of
divine personality culminates in the doctrine of the Trinity.
Man’s personality is essentially triune, because it consists of a
subject, an object, and their relation. What is potential and
unrealized triunity in man is complete in God.... Our own
personality is triune, but it is a potential unrealized triunity,
which is incomplete in itself and must go beyond itself for
completion, as for example in the family.... But God’s personality
has nothing potential or unrealized about it.... Trinity is the
most intelligible mode of conceiving of God as personal.”

John Caird, Fundamental Ideas of Christianity, 1:59, 80—“The parts
of a stone are all precisely alike; the parts of a skilful
mechanism are all different from one another. In which of the two
cases is the unity more real—in that in which there is an absence
of distinction, or in that in which there is essential difference
of form and function, each separate part having an individuality
and activity of its own? The highest unities are not simple but
complex.” Gordon, Christ of To-day, 106—“All things and persons
are modes of one infinite consciousness. Then it is not incredible
that there should be three consciousnesses in God. Over against
the multitudinous finite personalities are three infinite
personalities. This socialism in Deity may be the ground of human
society.”

The phenomena of double and even of triple consciousness in one
and the same individual confirm this view. This fact of more than
one consciousness in a finite creature points towards the
possibility of a threefold consciousness in the nature of God.
Romanes, Mind and Motion, 102, intimates that the social organism,
if it attained the highest level of psychical perfection, might be
endowed with personality, and that it now has something resembling
it—phenomena of thought and conduct which compel us to conceive of
families and communities and nations as having a sort of moral
personality which implies responsibility and accountability. “The
_Zeitgeist_,” he says, “is the product of a kind of collective
psychology, which is something other than the sum of all the
individual minds of a generation.” We do not maintain that any one
of these fragmentary or collective consciousnesses attains
personality in man, at least in the present life. We only maintain
that they indicate that a larger and more complex life is possible
than that of which we have common experience, and that there is no
necessary contradiction in the doctrine that in the nature of the
one and perfect God there are three personal distinctions. R. H.
Hutton: “A voluntary self-revelation of the divine mind may be
expected to reveal even deeper complexities of spiritual relations
in his eternal nature and essence than are found to exist in our
humanity—the simplicity of a harmonized complexity, not the
simplicity of absolute unity.”

3. The doctrine of the Trinity has important relations to other doctrines.

A. It is essential to any proper theism.

Neither God’s independence nor God’s blessedness can be maintained upon grounds of absolute unity. Anti-trinitarianism almost necessarily makes creation indispensable to God’s perfection, tends to a belief in the eternity of matter, and ultimately leads, as in Mohammedanism, and in modern Judaism and Unitarianism, to Pantheism. “Love is an impossible exercise to a solitary being.” Without Trinity we cannot hold to a living Unity in the Godhead.

Brit. and For. Evang. Rev., Jan. 1882:35-63—“The problem is to
find a _perfect objective_, congruous and fitting, for a perfect
intelligence, and the answer is: ‘_a perfect intelligence_.’ ” The
author of this article quotes James Martineau, the Unitarian
philosopher, as follows: “There is only one resource left for
completing the needful Objectivity for God, _viz._, to admit in
some form the coëval existence of matter, as the condition or
medium of the divine agency or manifestation. Failing the proof
[of the absolute origination of matter] we are left with the
_divine cause_, and the _material condition_ of all nature, in
eternal co-presence and relation, as supreme object and
rudimentary object.” See also Martineau, Study, 1:405—“In denying
that a plurality of self-existences is possible, I mean to speak
only of self-existent _causes_. A self-existence which is _not_ a
cause is by no means excluded, so far as I can see, by a
self-existence which _is_ a cause; nay, is even required for the
exercise of its causality.” Here we see that Martineau’s
Unitarianism logically drove him into Dualism. But God’s
blessedness, upon this principle, requires not merely an eternal
universe but an infinite universe, for nothing less will afford
fit object for an infinite mind. Yet a God who is necessarily
bound to the universe, or by whose side a universe, which is not
himself, eternally exists, is not infinite, independent, or free.
The only exit from this difficulty is in denying God’s
self-consciousness and self-determination, or in other words,
exchanging our theism for dualism, and our dualism for pantheism.

E. H. Johnson, in Bib. Sac., July, 1892:379, quotes from Oxenham’s
Catholic Doctrine of the Atonement, 108, 109—“Forty years ago
James Martineau wrote to George Macdonald: ‘Neither my
intellectual preference nor my moral admiration goes heartily with
the Unitarian heroes, sects or productions, of any age. Ebionites,
Arians, Socinians, all seem to me to contrast unfavorably with
their opponents, and to exhibit a type of thought far less worthy,
on the whole, of the true genius of Christianity.’ In his paper
entitled A Way out of the Unitarian Controversy, Martineau says
that the Unitarian worships the Father; the Trinitarian worships
the Son: ‘But he who is the Son in one creed is the Father in the
other.... The two creeds are agreed in that which constitutes the
pith and kernel of both. The Father is God in his primeval
essence. But God, as manifested, is the Son.’ ” Dr. Johnson adds:
“So Martineau, after a lifelong service in a Unitarian pulpit and
professorship, at length publicly accepts for truth the substance
of that doctrine which, in common with the church, he has found so
profitable, and tells Unitarians that they and we alike worship
the Son, because all that we know of God was revealed by act of
the Son.” After he had reached his eightieth year, Martineau
withdrew from the Unitarian body, though he never formally united
with any Trinitarian church.

H. C. Minton, in Princeton Rev., 1903:655-659, has quoted some of
Martineau’s most significant utterances, such as the following:
“The great strength of the orthodox doctrine lies, no doubt, in
the appeal it makes to the inward ‘sense of sin,’—that sad weight
whose burden oppresses every serious soul. And the great weakness
of Unitarianism has been its insensibility to this abiding sorrow
of the human consciousness. But the orthodox remedy is surely the
most terrible of all mistakes, _viz._, _to get rid_ of the burden,
by throwing it on Christ or permitting him to take it.... For
myself I own that the literature to which I turn for the nurture
and inspiration of Faith, Hope and Love is almost exclusively the
product of orthodox versions of the Christian religion. The Hymns
of the Wesleys, the Prayers of the Friends, the Meditations of Law
and Tauler, have a quickening and elevating power which I rarely
feel in the books on our Unitarian shelves.... Yet I can less than
ever appropriate, or even intellectually excuse, any distinctive
article of the Trinitarian scheme of salvation.”

Whiton, Gloria Patri, 23-26, seeks to reconcile the two forms of
belief by asserting that “both Trinitarians and Unitarians are
coming to regard human nature as essentially one with the divine.
The Nicene Fathers builded better than they knew, when they
declared Christ _homoousios_ with the Father. We assert the same
of mankind.” But here Whiton goes beyond the warrant of Scripture.
Of none but the only begotten Son can it be said that before
Abraham was born he was, and that in him dwelleth all the fulness
of the Godhead bodily (_John 8:57_; _Col. 2:9_).

Unitarianism has repeatedly demonstrated its logical insufficiency
by this “facilis descensus Averno,” this lapse from theism into
pantheism. In New England the high Arianism of Channing
degenerated into the half-fledged pantheism of Theodore Parker,
and the full-fledged pantheism of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Modern
Judaism is pantheistic in its philosophy, and such also was the
later Arabic philosophy of Mohammedanism. Single personality is
felt to be insufficient to the mind’s conception of Absolute
Perfection. We shrink from the thought of an eternally lonely God.
“We take refuge in the term ‘Godhead.’ The literati find relief in
speaking of ‘the gods.’ ” Twesten (translated in Bib. Sac.,
3:502)—“There may be in polytheism an element of truth, though
disfigured and misunderstood. John of Damascus boasted that the
Christian Trinity stood midway between the abstract monotheism of
the Jews and the idolatrous polytheism of the Greeks.” Twesten,
quoted in Shedd, Dogm. Theology, 1:255—“There is a πλήρωμα in God.
Trinity does not contradict Unity, but only that solitariness
which is inconsistent with the living plenitude and blessedness
ascribed to God in Scripture, and which God possesses in himself
and independently of the finite.” Shedd himself remarks: “The
attempt of the Deist and the Socinian to construct the doctrine of
divine _Unity_ is a failure, because it fails to construct the
doctrine of the divine _Personality_. It contends by implication
that God can be self-knowing as a single subject merely, without
an object; without the distinctions involved in the subject
contemplating, the object contemplated, and the perception of the
identity of both.”

Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 75—“God is no sterile and motionless
unit.” Bp. Phillips Brooks: “Unitarianism has got the notion of
God as tight and individual as it is possible to make it, and is
dying of its meagre Deity.” Unitarianism is not the doctrine of
one God—for the Trinitarian holds to this; it is rather the
unipersonality of this one God. The divine nature demands either
an eternal Christ or an eternal creation. Dr. Calthorp, the
Unitarian, of Syracuse, therefore consistently declares that
“Nature and God are the same.” It is the old worship of Baal and
Ashtaroth—the deification of power and pleasure. For “Nature”
includes everything—all bad impulses as well as good. When a man
discovers gravity, he has not discovered God, but only one of the
manifestations of God.