Let it be supposed that we further elaborate our knowledge of this supersensible fact and—to avoid the idea that the said distinction within the Supreme Being led to nothing up to the beginning of the union—teach besides that both the Second and the Third Person in the Trinity were implicated even in the creation of the world, while the Second Person was also the subject thereafter of all the Old Testament theophanies, and it was from the Third Person that the whole prophetic movement of the Old Testament received its impulse. Then these statements are still further removed from being utterances about our Christian consciousness. And we can wait all the more calmly to see whether the exegetical results on which these expansions of the doctrine rest are any more fully confirmed by the latest work on the subject than has hitherto been the case.

Postscript.—If success ever had attended, or ever could attend, the attempt to exhibit or prove a trinity in God from general conceptions or a priori (an effort perhaps stimulated by Church doctrine, apart from which it would hardly occur to anyone, but yet without any relation to the facts of redemption or any appeal to Scripture), still such a doctrine of the Trinity even though worked out with much greater elaboration than the ecclesiastical doctrine (bound up as it is with the basal facts of Christianity) has ever obtained or ever could obtain, could find no place in a Christian Dogmatic. Even although it kept strictly to the use of the same terms in denoting both the trinity and the unity as are employed in the ecclesiastical doctrine, we should firmly maintain that as a doctrine it was different. For deductions of that kind, standing in no connexion with those basal facts, do not merely show it to be quite different from the other in origin; on that very account they are of no sort of use in Christian doctrine. Therefore we must simply put them aside as ‘philosophemes’; nor are we in any way called upon to submit them to criticism, whether they originate with ancient³ or modern⁴ Church teachers.

§ 171. The ecclesiastical doctrine of the Trinity demands that we think of each of the three Persons as equal to the Divine Essence, and vice versa, and each of the three Persons as equal to the others. Yet we cannot do either the one or the other, but can only represent the Persons in a gradation, and thus either represent the unity of the Essence as less real than the three Persons, or vice versa.

Symb. Quic.: Fides autem catholica haec est ut unum deum in trinitate, et trinitatem in unitate veneremur.—Patris, filii et spiritus sancti una est divinitas, aequalis gloria, aequalis maiestas.—Et in hac trinitate nihil prius aut posterius nihil maior aut minus, sed totae tres personae coaeternae sibi sunt et coaequales… . Neque confundentes personas neque separantes substantiam.—Augs. Conf. i.: ‘That there is one Divine Essence, which is named and truly is God, and yet in this same one Divine Essence there are three Persons… . And by the word Person is understood not a part, not an attribute inhering in something else, but what subsists in itself (sed quod proprie subsistit), as the Fathers have used the word in this matter.’—Conf. Belg. viii.: … qui est unica essentia, in qua tres sunt personae incommunicabilibus proprietatibus ab aeterno revera ac reipsa distinctae. 1. There can be no doubt that from this assumption of eternal distinctions in the Divine Essence, there necessarily follows the implication of the double equality of the divine in all three Persons, and of the divine in each Person with the Supreme Being as a unity. If divinity or power and glory were less in all the three Persons together than in the Supreme Being conceived as a unity, the three Persons would not be in but under the Supreme Being. In that case, the divine in them would only improperly be called divine, and our living fellowship with Christ as well as our participation in the Holy Spirit would not be fellowship with God. The result would be the same if the divine in the Persons themselves were not the same, only the divine in (say) the Father being truly and properly divine, but the divine in Christ and the Holy Spirit unreal and subordinate. In that case our indwelling sense of need for redemption would necessarily take a different form of expression, if indeed as a hindrance to fellowship to God it would in any way be met by a redemption which did not bring us to fellowship with God. In short, everything most important in Christianity would be changed. On those assumptions, no other definition can be reached than that posited by the ecclesiastical doctrine, and the ever-renewed zeal shown in its defence is perfectly intelligible.

2. The cited credal passages undeniably assert, to begin with, that power and divinity is not less in any of the three Persons than in the other two; and this obviously would be sufficient to bar out all inequalities, if it were not for the inconsistency which emerges as soon as side by side with this equality the attempt is made to perpetuate the method of distinguishing the Persons. For it is then necessary to make this equality a canon to be followed in setting forth the difference between the Persons, in the sense that no element implying an inequality of the kind described can be admitted. If, however, Father and Son are distinguished by the fact that the Father eternally begets, but is Himself unbegotten, while the Son is begotten from all eternity but not Himself begetting, then (although this eternal generation is as different as possible from any generation that is temporal or organic in character), the term itself, if it means anything at all, must at least indicate a relationship of dependence. Hence if power has dwelt in the Father from all eternity to beget the Son as a second divine Person, whereas in the Son no such power dwells, and no relationship of dependence in which the Father stands to Him can be adduced as a counterweight, undeniably the power of the Father is greater than that of the Son, and in addition the glory which the Begetter has with the Begotten must be greater than that which the Begotten has with the Begetter.

The same holds true of the Spirit, whether as in the Greek dogma He proceeds from the Father only, or, as the Latin Church teaches, from the Father and the Son. In the former case, the Son has a twofold incapacity as compared with the Father: He does not beget, nor does a Person proceed from Him. In the latter case the Spirit alone exhibits this twofold dependence—for ‘procession’ too is a relation of dependence, though meant to be a different one from being begotten, in spite of the fact that no one has ever succeeded in making clear what the difference between the two is. In this case, however, the Son has one capacity in common with the Father which places Him above the Spirit, whereas in the former case the Spirit is equal to the Son. Whichever way we take it, then, the Father is superior to the other two Persons, and the only subject of controversy is whether these two are equal to each other, or one of them subordinate to the other. But if such distinctions are made, the equality of the Persons is lost.

3. Similarly, the position that the divinity in all the three Persons is the same with that of the one Divine Essence ought to be the rule which controls our ideas of the relationship between the trinity of the Persons and the unity of the Essence. But if we are to take along with this what has just been dealt with, namely, the position that the Persons are distinguished from each other by peculiar properties not predicable of the Divine Essence in itself, while the Divine Essence itself has existence only in these three Persons, but not outside or apart from them (whether as a fourth Person or impersonally), and even in them does not distribute different attributes to different Persons,⁵ but resides in each Person whole and undivided, on such terms the desired equality cannot result. For such a relationship as is here asserted we have no closer analogy, on which to form our thought of it, than that of the conception of a species with the individual members it contains; for the conception of a species is similarly present whole and undivided in its individuals, but nowhere outside them. It is true, this has always been a moot point; some thinkers admit the analogy,⁶ others reject it.⁷ But if the relationship is not to be conceived as of this type, then, as even its opponents allow,⁸ we really are not in a position to form any definite ideas on the subject, and hence can have no interest in it. If, on the other hand, we do adopt the analogy, no equality is possible between the unity and the trinity; either more realistically we must make the unity superordinate as the essence common to all three, in which case the distinction of Persons appears subordinate and falls into the background, while the divine monarchia stands out; or more nominalistically we must make the trinity superordinate, in which case the unity as being abstract falls into the background. Then what has immediate existence for our religious consciousness—namely, the divinity of the Holy Spirit and the divinity of Christ, as also the relation of Christ as Son to the Father—comes to the front; but so, too, does the danger of falling into tritheism. Between these two lines of thought (for we must always start either from the unity or from the trinity) no genuinely middle course seems possible which would not really be an approximation to one or the other. But from our assumptions neither the subordination of the unity to the trinity nor the converse follows; hence as regards the distinctions existing in the Supreme Being from all eternity there is nothing for it but either to accept one of the two courses indicated, which conflicts with what the credal passages insist on, or, if we shrink from what they insist on, to conclude that it is impossible for us definitely to reach either point—the unity or the trinity; we remain hesitating between the two.⁹ In these circumstances the doctrine can do little to secure those two main points (which alone are in question), or to place them in a clearer light.

4. It still remains to show how unity and trinity are related to the divine causality (apprehended in our self-conscious feeling of absolute dependence) alike in redemption and sanctification and generally in creation and preservation. The divine causality must not be divided between the Persons, however natural it might be to say that the Father alone is Creator and Preserver, the Son alone Redeemer, and the Spirit alone Sanctifier. And if it is to be kept undivided, we reach here the same conclusion as before, either that these causalities all belong to the one Divine Essence as such, and to the Persons only in so far as they are in the Essence, but not in so far as they are distinct from each other, or they belong to the three Persons as such, and to the unity of the Essence only in so far as it consists of the Persons. The former view failed to establish itself, obviously because in it the trinity falls more into the background than was permitted by the ruling tendencies of the time;¹⁰ for it may almost be said that the Persons have reality only in the previously mentioned special acts. The Father is real, in so far as He begets the Son from all eternity, but creation and preservation would appertain solely to the unity of the Divine Essence. The Son, it is true, would not be merely begotten, or the Spirit merely breathed into being, for the former also became man and the latter was also poured forth; but the justifying divine activity would not be that solely of the Son or the sanctifying divine activity that of the Spirit; both would belong to the unity of the Divine Essence. Hence the second view came to be accepted universally, that the whole divine causality belongs to the three Persons; but the form it took in ecclesiastical doctrine appears to suffer from a hidden contradiction. For if the divine causality belongs to the Persons as such, it belongs to each of them in so far as distinct from the others; and hence the same causality is, in the first Person, that of the Unbegotten, in the second that of the Begotten, and thus is in each case triple, because issuing in each case from that which is personally distinctive, though but one in effect; much as Christ executes the same thing with His two wills, the three Persons execute the same thing each in its own way, and thus each by its own act. This consistent scheme, however, failed to commend itself, obviously because the divine unity is obscured in a wholly nominalistic way, and almost nothing is left for it but to represent the equality of the three in essence and will. On the other hand, the accepted view that those causalities do indeed belong to the three Persons as such, but that each causality is one and the same in all three, and not a peculiar causality in each, means that the causality is really traced back, not to the Persons, but after all to the Divine Essence in its unity. Thus, once the eternal trinity in the unity is assumed, from this angle we arrive simply at the same difficulty as before, of choosing between the preponderance of the one and the subordination of the other, or vice versa.

5. If we now consider the manner in which this doctrine is handled almost everywhere in dogmatic expositions, it becomes still clearer to how slight an extent what is insisted on in general formulæ may be given effect to in the developed statement. In the first place, the doctrine of the Essence and attributes of God is treated apart from the trinity, God being considered in His unity. Here, however, the particular attribute under consideration is not shown within the unity, as triply divided or separated in a definite way. Instead, the doctrine of the Persons is later treated of by itself, apart from any such connexion and without being prepared for by the consciousness of the being of God in Christ and in the Christian Church. It is so treated of, however, that when it is shown that this or that attribute also belongs to the three Persons, the proof is specially led only for the Son and the Spirit, while that it belongs to the Father is usually held to be self-evident. But if the equality of the Persons is asserted not merely as a formula but as an operative rule, such self-evidence must hold either of all three Persons or of none. The pre-eminence given to the Father in this respect proves that He is after all conceived as standing in a different relation to the unity of the Essence; so that those who feel it to be superfluous to prove that divine attributes and activities belong to the Father, while they insist on proof for the Son and the Spirit, are all of them far from being strict Trinitarians; for they identify the Father with the unity of the Divine Essence, but not the Son or the Spirit. This can be traced right back to the idea of Origen, that the Father is God absolutely, while Son and Spirit are God only by participation in the Divine Essence¹¹—an idea which is positively rejected by orthodox Church teachers, but secretly underlies their whole procedure.

§ 172. We have the less reason to regard this doctrine as finally settled since it did not receive any fresh treatment when the Evangelical (Protestant) Church was set up; and so there must still be in store for it a transformation which will go back to its very beginnings.

1. If we reflect, on the one hand, that the formulæ now accepted in the doctrine of the Trinity originated at a time when Christendom was still being recruited by mass-conversion from heathendom, and consider how easily, when it became necessary to speak of a plurality or distinction in God, unconscious echoes of what is pagan could find their way in, it is not surprising that the descriptions of such plurality should from the start have been vacillating and liable to misconception, and such as were no longer suited to later times, when no further admixture of heathenism was to be feared. Cautions could not but be attached to the use of such descriptions, to guard against aberrations on different sides; but even so it is seldom that such cautions do not approximate to one extreme in seeking to guard against the other. Also they must lose their value once the danger of misunderstanding to which they relate has disappeared, and in that case the sinister suggestion they contain of the opposite error will come out all the more emphatically. If we take the original tendency of the doctrine, namely, to make clear that it is no hyperbolical expression of our consciousness of Christ and of the common Spirit of the Church to assert that God is in both, the first task of the doctrine is clearly this—to define this peculiar being of God in that which is other, in its relation both to the being of God in Himself and to the being of God in relation to the world in general. And obviously there is no prospect of ever so accomplishing this task that a formula adequate for all time could be constructed, and every departure therefrom repudiated as unchristian. We have only to do with the God-consciousness given in our self-consciousness along with our consciousness of the world; hence we have no formula for the being of God in Himself as distinct from the being of God in the world, and should have to borrow any such formula from speculation, and so prove ourselves disloyal to the character of the discipline at which we are working. Further, if we feel that our dogmatic expressions for the relation of God to the world inevitably suffer in every case from faults of anthropomorphism, how could we suppose that we should have more success with the more intricate task of distinguishing the peculiar being of God in Christ as an individual, and in the Christian Church as an historical whole, from the omnipotent presence of God in the world in general, of which these are parts? Rather we shall have to put up with the fact that the problem can only be solved approximately, and that formulæ which have antagonistic points of departure must always remain opposed in tendency; for interest in the problem is bound always to spring up afresh.

2. This being so, it might seem very surprising that while so many other problems of later origin have been solved in a tolerably satisfactory way, precisely this one, so comprehensive in character, has remained so long stationary at the very unsatisfactory point to which it was brought at (so to say) the first rush. But the fact is, those later questions—particularly that of the Person of Christ and of the gracious operations of the Spirit—dealt with the same subject on the side next to the direct interests of faith; and the Trinitarian definitions proper (all the more that they were made fundamental in the discussions just referred to) had to remain as they had already come to be, in spite of the undeniable fact that impassioned polemical zeal—so prone to error—had had only too large a share in their construction. But if the doctrine of the Trinity is not even yet free from vacillations as indicated above between equality and subordination on the one hand, and on the other between Tritheism and such a Unitarianism as must obscure all over again what was felt to be of the very first importance, namely, the eternal distinctness of the Persons, we ought not to feel too much surprise that anti-trinitarian opinions should ever and again emerge and should occasionally gain ground; nor ought we to be precipitate in condemnation. It is here as with the doctrine of God in general: many not merely profess to be but actually think they are opposed to every belief in God, when in fact they are simply repelled by ordinary presentations of the subject, but have by no means parted with all those spiritual affections which spring from the God-consciousness. Similarly, it is natural that people who cannot reconcile themselves to the difficulties and imperfections that cling to the formulæ current in Trinitarian doctrine should say that they repudiate everything connected with it, whereas in point of fact their piety is by no means lacking in the specifically Christian stamp. This is the case often enough at the present moment not only in the Unitarian societies of England and America, but also among the scattered opponents of the doctrine of the Trinity in our own country. That circumstance supplies a further reason why we should strive to secure freedom for a thoroughgoing criticism of the doctrine in its older form, so as to prepare the way for, and introduce, a reconstruction of it corresponding to the present condition of other related doctrines.

3. The position assigned to the doctrine of the Trinity in the present work is perhaps at all events a preliminary step towards this goal. One who is a believer in the ecclesiastical sense of that word can scarcely arm himself with the equanimity needful alike for an impartial criticism of the old procedure and for a new construction, until he has become convinced that it is possible for our faith in the divine present in Christ and in the Christian communion to find fit theological expression, even before anything has been heard of those more exact definitions which go to form the doctrine of the Trinity. But this independence of mind can never attain to clearness so long as that doctrine is dealt with before the chief points of faith just mentioned; for that arrangement of topics only too easily leads to an impression (utterly contradicted by the history of the Church) that acceptance of the doctrine of the Trinity is the necessary precondition of faith in redemption and in the founding of the Kingdom of God by means of the divine in Christ and in the Holy Spirit. Not to speak of the fact that the theological character of the entire presentation is distorted, and that neither the criticism nor the points of attachment needed for the new construction can be placed on a right foundation if the doctrine in question (which is not directly a statement about our Christian consciousness at all) is set up as a fundamental doctrine, and therefore, of course, arrived at in a speculative way. The same speculative tone then comes to be imported into the doctrine of the Redeemer and of the Holy Spirit, as being dependent on the doctrine of the Trinity; and thus the door is opened wide to the influx of speculative elements.

We ought not, however, to rest satisfied with this preliminary step; we must at least give some indications of what yet remains to do. And on the present state of the question we may base, I think, the following reflections. The first unsolved difficulty lies in the relation of the unity of the Essence to the trinity of the Persons; and here everything depends on the original and eternal existence of distinctions within the Divine Essence. Hence it would first be necessary to inquire whether this idea is so clearly and definitely present in passages of the New Testament that we are bound to regard it as a self-descriptive utterance of Christ and of the divine Spirit that guided the thinking of the Apostles. Of this there can scarcely be a better test than to ask whether these passages could not also be explained by the Sabellian view set up in opposition to our ecclesiastical interpretation. If this question must be answered in the negative, nothing is left but to try whether the ecclesiastical doctrine could not, without injury to the essential presuppositions mentioned above, be stated in formulæ which should not contradict the Biblical passages and yet should avoid the rocks on which the ecclesiastical presentation comes to grief. If, on the other hand, the question can be answered affirmatively, so that it is no longer possible to hold that the ecclesiastical doctrine, even if not purely exegetical in origin, can at least be sustained by purely exegetical proof, then the Athanasian hypothesis is simply on a par with the Sabellian; and the question must be raised whether the latter cannot render us equal service, without involving us in equally insoluble difficulties. In other words, the question is whether formulæ cannot be devised which, without asserting eternal distinctions in the Supreme Being, are yet equally capable of exhibiting in their truth both unions of the Essence with human nature. Only, no mutability must thereby be ascribed to the Supreme Being; and although the activities of the Supreme Being in effecting the unions are represented as taking place in time, this must be done no otherwise than we do it everywhere else; for we cannot conceive the divine causality otherwise than as decree in its eternity, while yet we cannot represent its fulfilment otherwise than as in time. The second difficulty suggested by the ecclesiastical doctrine was this, that the designation of the First Person as Father, as well as the relations of the First Person to the other two Persons, seems rather to set forth the relation of the Persons to the unity of the Essence than to be consistent with the equality of the three Persons. Here the question really comes to be, whether it was right at the outset to give the name ‘Son of God’ solely to the divine in Christ, and to relate the term ‘Father’ to one of the distinctions in the Divine Essence and not rather to the unity of the Divine Essence as such. If it transpires that by ‘Son of God’ Scripture always and exclusively means the whole Christ Himself, and recognizes no difference between ‘God,’ as denoting the Supreme Being, and ‘the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,’ but uses the latter name in exactly the same sense as the former, we should then have to try whether a similar question might not be raised with regard to the Holy Spirit, with a similar answer, leading to such forms of statement as would solve our second difficulty. If the results of both problems combined in one, a new construction could easily be arrived at; if otherwise, we should have to seek new solutions, as we could, of the remaining differences. This is of itself a sufficient explanation why we are here unable to go beyond these indications in such a way as to complete the whole task.

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← The Divine Wisdom · Contents

Footnotes

1. Cf. § 94 and § 123. ↩

2. Cf. § 99. ↩

3. E.g. Anselm, Monolog. ep. 29–61. ↩

4. E.g. Daub, Theolog., §§ 126, 127. ↩

5. Passages like the following: … filium eius (sc. patris) sapientiam … spiritum s. eiusdem virtutem potentiam et efficaciam (Conf. Gallic. vi.), even if credal, are too vague to be taken into account. ↩

6. Τὸ οὐσία φύσιν σημαίνει, τὸ δὲ ὑπόστασις ἰδιότητας (Greg. Naz., Encom. Athan.). ῾Ον ἔχει λόγον τὸ κοινὸν πρὸς τὸ ἴδιον, τοῦτον ἔχει ἡ οὐσία πρὸς τὴν ὑπόστασιν (Basil, Ep. ccxiv.). Κατά γε τὴν τῶν πατέρων διδασκαλίαν, ἣν ἔχει διαφορὰν τὸ κοινὸν ὑπὲρ τὸ ἴδιον, ἢ τὸ γένος ὑπὲρ τὸ εἶδος ἢ τὸ ἄτομον, ταύτην ἡ οὐσία πρὸς τὴν ὑπόστασιν ἔχει (Theodoret, Dial. I. ed. Hal. iv. p. 7). ↩

7. Non itaque secundum genus et species ista dicimus… . Nec sic ergo Trinitatem dicimus tres personas unam essentiam tanquam ex una materia tria quaedam subsistant (Augustine, de Trin. vii. 11). ↩

8. … propter ineffabilem coniunctionem haec tria simul unus Deus (Augustine, ibid. 8). ↩

9. Οὐ φθάνω τὸ ἓν νοῆσαι καὶ τοῖς τρισὶ περιλάμπομαι. οὐ φθάνω τὰ τρία διελεῖν, καὶ εἰς τὸ ἓν ἀναφέρομαι (Greg. Naz., l.c.). ↩

10. That the tendency of Church teaching tends to emphasize the Persons rather than the unity of the Essence may be seen clearly enough from the following words of the Symb. Quic., 19: Sicut singillatim unamquamque personam et deum et dominum confiteri christianâ veritate compellimur, ita tres deos aut dominos dicere catholica religione prohibemur. ↩

11. αὐτόθεος ὁ θεὸς ἐστι … πᾶν δὲ τὸ παρὰ τὸ αὐτόθεος μετοχῇ τῆς ἐκείνου θεότητος θεοποιούμενον κτλ. Comm. in Joann. (ed. R. iv. p. 50), where the connexion puts it beyond doubt that αὐτόθεος is the Father. Cf. de princ. i. vol. i. p. 62. ↩