Matthew 28:19 Go you therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Although we shall never again paint the Almighty as Giotto painted Him, as an old man with white hair in the clouds, with a young man at His side, and a dove flying from beneath His feet; and whilst we shall never again describe God as described Him, yet the doctrine of a Trinity in Unity is fundamental, and rests on an impregnable basis. The Unity, the Humanity, and the Affinity or Immanent Deity, these are the root conceptions of all true theology, and these remain. The conception of variety in unity, the many and the one, pervades all life and nature, and is presented to us in man in a trinity of body, mind, and spirit. So Trinity in Unity is in God a diversity of manifestation or function, combined with a unity of life and purpose. We can hardly think of the Almighty in any other way. It is the normal order of thought metaphysically. Let us see. First, our conception of God is vague and indefinite: Creative Force pervading, correlating, co-ordinating all things everywhere. It is the All-Father, the First Person. But the instant we think more closely, our only definite conception proves insensibly anthropomorphic. All power, wisdom, intelligence, love, is, in some sort, human, manifested and transferred to God, but still human in nature and thought; and thus, the Ideal Man, the God under the limitations of humanity, steps forth. This would be so in the order of thought were there no figure of Jesus in history. We cannot but — we always have made God in our own image, God the Son, or the Second Person. But in prayer and worship He is apprehended as a Spirit only, in communion, in sympathy with ours; then He is God the Holy Ghost, or the Third Person. God the Vague, God the Definite, God the Immanent, that is the inexorable order of thought, and that is the eternal doctrine of the Trinity in Unity. This would be true whether we call ourselves Christians or not. But if you are a Christian, you believe in addition that the Ideal Humanity of God has once in all time been realized, and realized in Jesus. You believe that the eternally human side of God — which was before the Life Divine in Galilee, and will be for ever after it, the life-giving and the love-giving One — that all of Him which could become incarnate did become incarnate — came forth and dwelt amongst us as it has never before or since; that then and there, in the fulness of time, amongst the chosen people and in the holy land 1,900 years ago, a special use of human nature was made for a special purpose, and that we beheld His glory, the glory as of the Only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. (H. B. Haweis, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: |
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