§ 170. All that is essential in this Second Aspect of the Second Part of our exposition is also posited in what is essential in the doctrine of the Trinity; but this doctrine itself, as ecclesiastically framed, is not an immediate utterance concerning the Christian self-consciousness, but only a combination of several such utterances.
Symb. Quic.: Fides autem catholica haec est, ut unum Deum in trinitate et trinitatem in unitate veneremur.—Conf. Aug. i.: ‘Firstly we teach … according to the decree of the Nicene Council that there is one single Divine Essence … and yet in the same single Divine Essence there are three Persons, equal in power, equal in eternity, etc.’—Exp. simpl. iii.: Eundem nihilominus Deum … credimus … personis inseparabiliter et inconfuse esse distinctum, Patrem, Filium et Spiritum sanctum, etc.—Conf. Gallic. vi.: Scriptura nos docet, in illa singulari et simplice essentiâ divinâ subsistere tres personas, Patrem, Filium et Spiritum sanctum.—Conf. Hung.: Hunc unum et solum Deum tres in coelo testes Patrem, Filium et Sp. s. esse credimus: qui, licet tres sint subsistentibus suis proprietatibus et officiis dispensatoriis, tamen hi tres unum quoque sunt. 1. An essential element of our exposition in this Part has been the doctrine of the union of the Divine Essence with human nature, both in the personality of Christ and in the common Spirit of the Church;1 therewith the whole view of Christianity set forth in our Church teaching stands and falls. For unless the being of God in Christ is assumed, the idea of redemption could not be thus concentrated in His Person. And unless there were such a union also in the common Spirit of the Church, the Church could not thus be the Bearer and Perpetuator of the redemption through Christ. Now these exactly are the essential elements in the doctrine of the Trinity, which, it is clear, only established itself in defence of the position that in Christ there was present nothing less than the Divine Essence, which also indwells the Christian Church as its common Spirit, and that we take these expressions in no reduced or sheerly artificial sense, and know nothing of any special higher essences, subordinate deities (as it were) present in Christ and the Holy Spirit. The doctrine of the Trinity has no origin but this; and at first it had no other aim than to equate as definitely as possible the Divine Essence considered as thus united to human nature with the Divine Essence in itself. This is the less doubtful that those Christian sects which interpret the doctrine of redemption differently are also necessarily without the doctrine of the Trinity—they have no point of belief to which it could be attached—which could not possibly be the case if even in Catholic doctrine there existed at least some other points than this to which the attachment could be made. It is equally clear from this why those divergent sects which are chiefly distinguishable by their denial of the Trinity are not thereby forced into still other divergences in the doctrine of God and the divine attributes, as must have been the case if the doctrine of the Trinity were rooted in a special view of the nature of the Supreme Being as such. But on the other hand, they are forced to set up a different theory of the Person of Christ, and hence also of man’s need for redemption and of the value of redemption. In virtue of this connexion, we rightly regard the doctrine of the Trinity, in so far as it is a deposit of these elements, as the coping-stone of Christian doctrine, and this equating with each other of the divine in each of these two unions, as also of both with the Divine Essence in itself, as what is essential in the doctrine of the Trinity.
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But at this point we would call a halt; we cannot attach the same value to the further elaboration of the dogma, which alone justifies the ordinary term. For the term ‘Trinity’ is really based on the fact that each of the two above-mentioned unions is traced back to a separate distinction posited independently of such union, and eternally, in the Supreme Being as such; further, after the member of this plurality destined to union with Jesus had been designated by the name ‘Son,’ it was felt necessary to posit the Father in accordance therewith as a special distinction. The result was the familiar dualism—unity of Essence and trinity of Persons. But the assumption of an eternal distinction in the Supreme Being is not an utterance concerning the religious consciousness, for there it never could emerge. Who would venture to say that the impression made by the divine in Christ obliges us to conceive such an eternal distinction as its basis? Anyone who were to find this task set us in the Johannine conception of the Logos, as if that conception definitely included one element of the doctrine of the Trinity and the completion of the doctrine were called for by that simple fact, would be in so difficult a position that he could hardly maintain his ground. For one thing, it is in this very passage that Arianism sought a foothold; and the exegesis of both sides in that controversy is so exposed to equal though opposite objections that we cannot help saying that if either of the two antagonistic views was in John’s mind as fundamental to the passage, it must be confessed that he went to work to express it in a highly unsatisfactory and ineffective manner. On the other hand, if the Trinity had been in the Apostle’s mind, his exposition would very easily have lent itself to a similar introduction of the Holy Spirit, whose name occurs so often in Christ’s discourses as reported by John; nor would he have lacked opportunity elsewhere to bring in this other member, and to speak of the place of the Spirit as that which was in the beginning with God and was God. Assuming, however, that John here declares of the divine united in Christ with human nature that it existed in God from all eternity in a distinct form, it does not follow by any means that this was meant in the sense of the doctrine of the Trinity, and that that doctrine is therefore the true and the only natural completion of the Johannine statements. For underlying the elaboration of the doctrine is not merely a desire to reproduce very exactly our Christian consciousness that the Divine Essence in both forms of union is the same, and also is equal to the being of God per se; rather, it was only after the distinction had been eternalized and made antecedent to the union that there arose a need to guard against the semblance of polytheism, and to secure that this, in a sense separated, being of God was none the less embraced within the unity of the Divine Essence. But of such a need there is in John no trace whatever, which means that he was not on the way to the doctrine of the Trinity as we have it.
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Hence the second part of our paragraph must not be understood as meaning that the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity is to be regarded as an immediate or even a necessary combination of utterances concerning the Christian self-consciousness. On the contrary, the intermediate step has been taken of eternalizing, in separation, the being of God in itself, and the being of God which makes union with human nature possible. Now if this arose so definitely out of the utterances of Christ Himself and of the Apostles concerning Him that we had to accept it on their testimony, the doctrine of the Trinity in that case would be a fully elaborated doctrine of this type, and we should accept it as a combination of testimonies regarding a supersensible fact; but it would no more be a ‘doctrine of faith’ in the really original and proper sense of that phrase than the doctrines of the resurrection and ascension of Christ;2 and it would resemble these last also in this respect that our faith in Christ and our living fellowship with Him would be the same although we had no knowledge of any such transcendent fact, or although the fact itself were different. But the exegesis meant to establish the position just mentioned has never been able to entrench itself so strongly as to escape constant attacks upon it. Hence it is important to make the point that the main pivots of the ecclesiastical doctrine—the being of God in Christ and in the Christian Church—are independent of the doctrine of the Trinity.