2 Corinthians 13:14 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen. The inner nature of the Deity is an impenetrable secret, which the human mind cannot explore; and the Trinity is, in one aspect of it, a name for this unfathomable mystery. We therefore freely concede at the outset the difficulties of the subject. To these difficulties those who reject the doctrine urgently appeal. On the basis of them they declare it to be inconceivable and irrational. In regard to this claim I would say that the intellectual difficulties which beset a truth are not necessarily a bar to belief in it. Nor is the credible always limited to the conceivable. The primary question respecting the Trinity is whether there are adequate grounds for belief in it. The essence of the doctrine of the Trinity is, that God exists in a threefold mode of being, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each of these is, in the strict sense, Divine, that is, partakes of the nature of Deity. All three of them together constitute the one only God. There is a unity of nature or substance in God, and there is, at the same time, a threefoldness or trinality which represents eternal distinctions in the Divine essence. God is one and God is three, but not, of course, in the same sense. He is one in substance or essence; but there exists within this one essence three persons or subsistences, which are revealed to Us under the names of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There are many notions of God's nature which stand in contrast to the Trinitarian idea. One of these is the Unitartan doctrine. On this view God is one and solitary; He is in no sense three There is no room, according to this conception, for interrelations or intercommunion within the nature of the Divine Being. Another contrasted view is the pantheistic. On this view God is at once the One and the All. The universe itself is taken up and lost in God; or, stating the idea from its other side, God is identified with the universe and lost in it. This mode of thought almost necessarily surrenders the personality of God. Still another view is the polytheistic, which admits the existence of many gods, and assigns to them various limitations of nature and function. The great fact which occasioned the development of the doctrine was the incarnation. The claims which Christ made for Himself, and the claims which the New Testament writers make for Him, compel the admission of His eternal pre-existence and His Divine nature (John 17:5; John 8:58; John 1:1; Philippians 2:6). If Christ is Divine, and yet, at the same time, can speak of the Father in distinction from Himself, these two facts, taken together, give us both the idea of the unity and that of the distinction between Him and God. But a further fact meets us. Christ speaks of the Holy Spirit as distinct both from the Father and from Himself, and yet ascribes to Him Divine prerogatives and powers. He is "another Advocate," distinct from Christ (John 14:16). He bears witness of Christ (John 15:26); and His coming to the disciples is conditioned upon the Saviour's departure (John 16:7). Personal pronouns are used in referring to the Spirit, and personal activities are constantly ascribed to Him. The doctrines of the deity of Christ, and of the Trinity, cannot be denied except upon grounds which involve the surrender of the historicity and truthfulness of the New Testament. Some persons who have acknowledged that the teaching of Jesus and of the apostles involved the doctrine of the equal Divinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, have avoided the acceptance of the commonly received doctrine of the Trinity by holding that these three terms designate three phases or modes of the Divine self-manifestation, and not essential and eternal distinctions in the nature of God. This is the so-called Sabellian doctrine. It holds to a Trinity of revelation only, a moral as opposed to an immanent Trinity. It is, however, an unsatisfactory explanation of the facts with which it seeks to deal. It does not accord with the New Testament teaching respecting the eternal pre-existence of the Son of God in a form of being distinct from the Father. Moreover, if God is revealed as a Trinity, it is reasonable to suppose that He exists as such. He is revealed as He is. I have already alluded to the objection so often made to the doctrine of the Trinity, that it is inconceivable, and therefore irrational. It is necessary to weigh this objection more carefully. If, when it is said that the Trinity is inconceivable, it is meant that the mind can form no mental picture of it, the statement is quite true. The truth of the Trinity transcends the reach and power of the imagination. But so also do thousands of truths for which the evidence is commonly deemed to be overwhelming, and which are therefore generally accepted among men. We cannot imagine, that is, form any definite mental concept, of the human soul. We cannot picture to ourselves the various faculties or powers of our own mysterious personalities. Our powerlessness to conceive of these things does not overbear the testimony in their behalf. We also accept many inconceivable facts for which the evidence is found outside our own mental life. Such are many of the truths of science. The nature and action of natural forces, and especially the marvellous phenomena of psychical action — such as the influence of mind over body, and of one mind upon another — are utterly beyond the power of the imagination to construe. The truth is, that when we come to reflect upon the matter, we find that the province of the imagination is very restricted. It can never be made, in any sphere of knowledge, the measure of our convictions, or the final test of truth. That we cannot conceive of the Trinity is, therefore, no real evidence against its truth. But when it is said that the Trinity is inconceivable, it is sometimes meant that it is contrary to reason. If the doctrine of the Trinity were that God is one and three in the same sense, it would be absurd, and belief in it would be stultifying. But this is not the doctrine. The truth of the Trinity is not contrary to reason although it is above and beyond reason. What mental law forbids us to believe that there is an external trinality in the one absolute Being? With the acceptance or rejection of the doctrine the evangelical system of theology has commonly stood or fallen. The doctrine of the Deity of Christ, and the significance of His saving work, are involved in the truth of the triune nature of God. The denial of the Trinity on account of its mysteriousness has usually carried with it the denial of some of the most characteristic doctrines of Christianity on account of their mysteriousness. If men are too impatient of mystery to accept the Trinity, they will probably be too much so to believe in the incarnation, the atonement, and related truths. We have always carefully to distinguish between the acceptance of a truth upon adequate evidence, and the satisfactory explanation of that truth in itself. If the doctrine of the Trinity is approached directly, and is taken up as a problem for solution, the mind will probably be baffled and repelled. The true method of approach is along the line of those facts of Divine revelation which lead us at length to the heights of this mystery, where we can no longer define and describe, and where thought must acknowledge its bounds and find its resting-place. If it is urged, as it sometimes is, that the doctrine is not taught in the Bible, the answer is, that, while it is not explicitly and formally taught, the elements of truth which compose it, such as the Deity of Christ and the Personality of the Spirit, and the facts which require it, such as the incarnation and atonement, are fundamental factors in all biblical revelation and teaching. It may fairly be said, in the first place, that it is not unreasonable to suppose that the Absolute exists in a mode of being to which finite nature furnishes no adequate analogy. The Deity does not belong to any class of beings whose attributes can be made determining for the conception which we are to entertain of His nature. He stands alone and unique. It cannot be urged that because nature and human life furnish no examples of such a Trinity in Unity as we believe to exist in God, the belief is contrary to reason and experience. It is above and beyond all experience; it may be, in important respects, above and beyond reason, but it is not on that account contrary to it. There are, moreover, some suggestive facts which present themselves to our view in contemplating the universe, with which the idea of the Trinity in God does strikingly accord. We find, for example, that as we ascend the scale of being, life becomes diversified and complex. Not only do we observe this general fact in the world of matter, but in the world of mind as well. The mental life of the lower orders of creation appears very simple. Their souls act in but a few directions and in but a very limited sphere. The mental organisation of man, on the contrary, is very complex and diversified. I lay no stress on the threefoldness of this well-nigh universal analysis of man's mental constitution, nor do I urge the complexity of mental life in the highest form of being which we immediately know as, in any strict sense, an argument for the doctrine of the Trinity. I do, however, claim that it would be according to analogy to expect that in the Supreme Being there should be a manifoldness and complexity of life surpassing those which we find to exist in the highest forms of finite being. Considerations like this which I have presented are not strictly a part of the evidence for the truth of the Trinity; but they do fall into line with that evidence, and serve to confirm it from the side of reason and observation. I turn now to a brief consideration of the argument for the doctrine of the Trinity which is derived from the nature of God as love. We must suppose that there was once a time when this finite world did not exist. If God alone is uncreated and self-existent, then the entire universe, including all men and angels, must have begun to be. Let our thought now travel back to the time when God alone existed. Shall we think of Him as absolutely single and solitary, dwelling in eternal silence and self-contemplation, or as having within Himself the conditions of a social life? Which conception best befits the notion of His inherent perfection? If God is truly the absolute Being, as theists commonly suppose; if He is not dependent upon the world in respect to His own existence and perfection, but has freely created the same — then must His nature be perfect in itself, and in this nature all the conditions of blessedness must be realised. It seems to me that the Trinitarian doctrine of God, which affirms distinctions and relations as eternally existing in His essence, best answers to the idea of His inherent perfection, because it supposes the Divine life to be, by its very nature, social and self-communicating. If this seem an abstract method of presenting the subject, let us approach it by saying that there is an eternal Fatherhood in God. He is not merely the Father of men and of all higher orders of created beings. He did at some point begin to be a Father. The relations of Fatherhood and Sonship which concretely express to us what we count most dear in the nature of God, are eternal and constituent in His very being. It is commonly agreed among Christians that the most perfect description which can be given of the Divine nature is that which is contained in the Scriptural statement — "God is love." If this means, not merely that God, as a matter of fact, does love, not merely that He may be or that He has love, but that love is an eternal quality of His moral nature which is absolutely fundamental and constitutive in His being — then it would seem that there must be within His nature itself occasion and scope for the exercise of love, apart from His relations to finite existence. Love is a social attribute, and the conditions and relations which love implies must exist in the very essence of God. In the Trinitarian view of God these conditions have for ever existed in the eternal personal distinctions and reciprocal relations of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. God did not begin to love when He created, nor is His love a mere potentiality which in the silent depths of eternity looks forward to creation for its satisfaction. Love is the very core and essence of God's moral nature, and as such is ceaselessly active within the internal relations of Deity. Love is eternally in full exercise, since God is love, and love ever found in God's own perfect being the full fruition and blessedness of its exercise in self-communication and fellowship. We thus see that, despite the difficulties which the Trinitarian doctrine presents to the imagination, it has the great advantage of according with the highest conception which revelation yields us of the moral nature of God. It enables us to maintain that God eternally is what He is revealed to be. The Trinity is a practical truth. High as it is above reason, baffling as it is to the imagination and to thought, it accords with the demands and deliverances of the Christian consciousness. It conserves the truth of Christ's essential Divinity and that of the reality and power of the work of the Spirit, which He described as the sequel and completion of His own work. It accords with belief in the incarnation, and makes the redemptive work of Christ a Divine work. All this the Christian consciousness craves and requires. We want to know, not merely that God has sent us a message, not merely that in Jesus He has raised up an exceptionally pure and holy member of the human race, but that in Him God has come to us, and that His work of revelation and redemption is a work of God. Our sense of sin is met and answered only by the knowledge of a Divine Redeemer. Mystery as the Trinity is, it is a mystery which is full of heavenly light. The doctrine of the Trinity conserves the idea of the richness and fulness of the Divine life and love, and of the amplitude of their manifestation. According to its terms, God is revealed to us as our Father, and His eternal nature is shown to be fatherly; Jesus Christ is presented to us as a true incarnation of God in humanity, a Redeemer whose Divine person and work are a veritable revelation of God; and the Holy Spirit is conceived of as an actual Divine agent who dwells and works in human life, influencing and moulding it into the Divine likeness. According to the Trinitarian doctrine, we have to do, in Christianity, with Divine realities. Our religion is not a subjective play of fine ideas, memories, or aspirations. Our religion is intensely supernatural. It is fitted to quicken and foster in our hearts a living sense of God. The forces that provide and complete our salvation are truly Divine. It is God that has wrought for us and in us; our life is ensphered in Deity, and filled with the fulness of Him that filleth all in all. (George B. Stevens, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen. |
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