[ p. 180 ]
THE doctrine of the Trinity is variously regarded both by opponents and defenders of Christianity. We are well acquainted with the man who dismisses the whole conception as baseless and useless speculation having no connexion with genuine religion. He is supported in his view by those theologians who urge us to return to the simple gospel of Jesus freed from the accretions of human philosophy and word spinning. But it is also frequently asserted that the idea of the Trinity is the distinctive characteristic of the Christian thought of God, and that here we find that which marks the superiority of the Christian belief in God over all others. An clement of truth can be allowed to each of these opinions. It must be admitted by everyone who has the rudiments of an historical sense that the doctrine of the Trinity, as a doctrine, formed no part of the original message. St. Paul knew it not, and would have been unable to understand the meaning of the terms used in the theological formula on which the Church ultimately agreed. Judged by the strict standard of theological orthodoxy, some of his own statements would only escape the imputation of heresy on the ground that they were metaphorical or devotional utterances, or perhaps on that of invincible ignorance ”. The gospel gained its first and most decisive triumph without any formulated Trinitarian doctrine. But it is none the less true that a doctrine of the Trinity is an [ p. 181 ] essential part of Christian theology now, not only in the sense that the doctrine has become historically an integral part of that complex of ideas which we call the Christian Faith, but also in the sense that it sums up and guards the specifically Christian experience of God. Though the doctrine itself cannot be found explicitly stated in the New Testament, the basis on which it was erected is there, and the thoughts which have been formulated in abstract terms in the dogma of the Trinity are implicit in the earliest Christian devotion.
We shall not here review, even in the most summary way, the Biblical evidence or the history of the development of the doctrine in the Church. Dr. Wheeler Robinson, in another book of this series, has stated the salient facts with admirable clearness and precision.[1] The older theologians delighted in finding hints and adumbrations of the Trinity in the Old Testament, many of which were without any foundation. But there were developments both in Hebrew and Greek religious thought which tended in the direction of the recognition of distinctions within the Being of God. Hebrew religion made great use of the idea of the Spirit of God. At first the idea of a Divine afflatus which was the source of remarkable human activities and powers, whether of craftsmanship or of mantic frenzy, became in the course of religious development moralized and refined ; but never within the Old Testament can the Spirit of God be said to be explicitly distinct from Jahveh. The Spirit is always the power or influence of Jahveh. The Word of God, again, has, particularly in the Wisdom literature, almost the attributes of a distinct though subordinate deity. In the [ p. 182 ] same way, to the Wisdom of God is ascribed activity which, if taken literally, would be equivalent to the assertion of a second divine personality. But these and other hypostatizations of the divine attributes appear to be rather poetical and metaphorical than statements of explicit belief. The motive of reverence has had its influence on these modes of expression. Effects in the world of change and evil may be ascribed to the Word or Wisdom of God in order to avoid the suggestion of a direct contact between God in His supreme holiness and this lower sphere. But though such habits of thought and speech were a kind of preparation for trinitarian dogma and provided patristic writers with many “ proof texts ” from the Old Testament, it is certainly true that Christianity did not inherit a trinitarian conception of God from Judaism. In fact Christianity arrived at a trinitarian doctrine of God almost in spite of the Jewish monotheism out of which it came.
Much more plausible is the suggestion that the idea of the Trinity may have been adopted into the Christian religion from the pagan environment in which the Church grew up. The fact may be admitted that the conception of differentiation within the divine Being was familiar in the philosophical speculations of Hellenism. The theology of Plato himself is an obscure subject, into which it is not necessary to enter here, but it may be stated that his most mature reflection certainly seems to have led to the thought of a distinction within the Divine. The Creative God is not identical with the Idea of the Good, though we must remember that the latter cannot be described as in any sense personal.[2] Later Platonism came nearer to a definitely trinitarian doctrine, and in Plotinus we have something which resembles the Christian conception [ p. 183 ] in the three Principles—the One, the Reason and the World Soul. But we must observe that there are very important differences even here, which distinguish the neo-Platonic trinity from that of Christian theology. The Trinity of neo-Platonism is not an absolute one, for the principle of Nature is sometimes regarded as a fourth member of the divine hierarchy. It is, further, a Trinity which depends on the principle of emanation, so that the other Principles proceed by necessity from the One, and are inferior and dependent. The One alone is the Supreme Being; and though the members of the neo-Platonic trinity are “ cocternal ” they are not “ coequal.” Though the speculations of later Platonism had a great influence on the statements of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity and provided some of the categories in which it was expressed, it would be far from the truth to find in philosophy the cause of its formulation or its significance. In a learned criticism of recent theories of Pagan influence on Christian dogma Dr. Kirk has shown that the prevailing tendency of thought in the early centuries of Christianity was towards the idea of two differentiation within the Divine Nature rather than three.[3]
The suggestion that the Christian doctrine of the Trinity has been borrowed from or seriously influenced by pagan religion hardly seems worthy of serious consideration. Students of the history of religion are, of course, familiar with many divine triads as well as with dyads and other numerical groupings, but there is no evidence to support the inherently improbable hypothesis that the Christian faith borrowed from the cults which it condemned. It need scarcely be added that these mythological triads are really quite different in character from [ p. 184 ] the trinitarian conception of the being of God, and have nothing more in common with it than the number three.
We may assume then that the Christian doctrine of the Trinity springs from the Christian experience of God. That is its only root, though the form in which it has been expressed has doubtless been modified by the intellectual habits of the first three centuries of our era. We have, therefore, to describe this experience and then to consider its rationalization in the terms of present-day thought. How may we interpret to ourselves the significance of this experience, and to what extent can we show that it is in harmony with reason ?
We have already briefly indicated the chief element in the religious attitude which the doctrine of the Trinity formulates and protects. It is the experience of God in Christ. As we have seen, beyond all question a Christcentred devotion is the keynote of Apostolic Christianity.[4] Jesus, crucified and risen, is for it not only Messiah and Redeemer but the living object of adoration. Though St. Paul probably never explicitly calls Christ God, there can be no doubt that for him Christ has “the value” of God. The presence of the Living Christ as a divine and saving power is the basis of the apostolic religion. The theoretical question of the relation of Christ to God receives various answers in the New Testament, or rather many different images and ideas are employed to express the truth, which for the writers is a fact of living experience rather than an intellectual proposition. Son, Image, Logos, the Perfect Priest, these and others are “flung out” at the inexpressible reality. The doctrine of the Trinity is historically the outcome of an attempt to preserve the two essential features of Christian experience [ p. 185 ] —that God is one and that Jesus Christ is of right the object of worship, and hence neither merely human nor a demi-god.
So far the situation might have been met by a dyadic conception of God; and in fact, as has been pointed out by Dr. Wheeler Robinson, the theology of the Spirit was not thought out with anything like the consistency of the theology of the Incarnation.[5] The idea of Holy Spirit was, as we have seen, a legacy from the Jewish religion ; but at the same time there were aspects of the Christian experience which led to a modification and renewed emphasis on the work of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit in the New Testament is indissolubly connected with the Church. It was the new life of fellowship in the Brotherhood, with its heightened power of ethical achievement and confidence, which ensured that the Spirit should form a part of Christian doctrine. It is well known that the New Testament doctrine of the Holy Spirit is not easy to define. St. Paul, though he certainly at times means to distinguish between the Lord and the Spirit, does not differentiate between them in any decisive manner. It is impossible, for example, to hold that there is any real difference between the significance of the two phrases “in the Lord” and “in the Spirit”. It is also doubtful whether St. Paul conceives of the Spirit as being more than an impersonal influence or power, though he uses phrases, such as “grieve not the Holy Spirit,” which suggest personality.[6] Only in the Johannine writings do we find a clear distinction between the Son and the Spirit, who is presented as “ another Comforter ;” but even here we must observe that the distinction seems to be bound up with time, the coming [ p. 186 ] of the Spirit depending upon the going away of the Son.[7]
What clements in the Christian experience of God necessitated a trinitarian formulation of the doctrine of God’s nature ? That there were such elements is beyond question in face of the historical development, and the fact that baptism at least from very early times, if not from the earliest, was in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Various answers have been given to this question which are not necessarily inconsistent with one another, Schleiermacher sees in the doctrine a summing up of the affirmations about Christ and His redemptive work which are implicit in the Christian consciousness : “ The union of the Divine Essence with human nature, both in the personality of Christ and in the common fellowship of the Church. . . . 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 Perpetuation of the redemption through Christ.”[8] Dr. Wheeler Robinson is content to say simply that “the values of the New Testament experience are primarily those of Fatherhood, Saviourhood, and Spirithood, and the central ideas attaching to each are respectively those of creation, redemption and sanctification.”[9] Dr. K. Kirk has an interesting suggestion which, in my opinion, takes us further. The Christian Gospel, he argues, emphasizes three distinct types of relation between God and Man. First, the Κύριος-δουλος relation: God as Creator and Lawgiver has “visited and redeemed His people”, showing Himself to be full of compassion and mercy. [ p. 187 ] Secondly, the relation of communion through Christ, in which the personal freedom and conscious choice of the individual are active. Thirdly, there remains in Christian experience something which corresponds to the Old Testament idea of possession— a relationship in which the human spirit is wholly controlled, if not superseded, by the divine”. In the New Testament the fruits of the Spirit are moral and spiritual, though “ speaking with tongues” is a spiritual gift; but it seems clear that the experience of being lifted beyond the sphere of the conscious personal activity and carried forward by a power which was “irresistible” is well attested by the Apostolic writings.[10] If we add to this the aspect to which Schleiermacher draws attention, we shall probably do greater justice to the third “moment” in the Christian attitude towards God. The partaking of the Spirit is associated with the fellowship in the community of which the Spirit is the life.
The long debate on the doctrine of the Trinity had then as its motive the preservation and defence of the Christian gospel as it was accepted and lived from the beginning. The salient points on which the controversy turned were the unity of God, the true divinity of the Incarnate Son, the reality of grace within the fellowship of the Church. It is well known that the formula which ultimately prevailed μία ούσία εν τρσιν ύποστασεσιν,—One substance in three persons—was only reached at the end of much verbal confusion, and in fact the terms employed had to be given a slightly different meaning from that which they had borne before their use for this theological purpose, since both ούσία and ύποστασεσις signified “ being” or “substance ”.[11] The word “ person ” again is one which [ p. 188 ] has a somewhat indefinite meaning in the use of theologians. It is often said that the “ persons” of the doctrine of the Trinity are not persons in our modern sense of the term. We have seen that the modern conception of “personality” is not perhaps easy to make definite ; and it is, of course, true that the idea of personality has been greatly developed since the fourth century, largely, as Professor C. C. J. Webb has shown,[12] under the influence of Christian theology ; but we must not exaggerate this difference between the concept “ person ” in ancient and in modern times. The doctrine of the Trinity does mean to assert at least that there are three distinct Beings within the unity of the Godhead, with each of whom personal relations on the part of man are possible. There is, however, a difference in approach to the conception of divine Personality which is of greatimportance. To usitis notnatural to employ the category of “substance”, though it can be used with proper explanations. To the modern thinker the ideas of “ subject ” and “ activity ” are those which suggest themselves as the most important when we are considering personality, and therefore when we are thinking of the personality of God. Our doctrine of the Trinity will be expressed in different language and must attach itself to the conclusions of the previous chapter; but it will be an attempt to justify the same experience of God and will be, in essence, the same doctrine.
It may, however, be objected that any speculative doctrine of the Trinity is unnecessary, and in fact precluded by the point of view which we have adopted in this book. We have based our whole discussion upon the concrete facts of religious experience as a whole and of Christian experience in particular. Must we not then be content to say that the idea of the Trinity sums up [ p. 189 ] certain important and probably permanent elements or tendencies in the Christian consciousness of God, that God is known to us as Threefold in function and yet as Unity, but that beyond this we cannot go? To turn this doctrine from a summary of experience into an “ ontological” dogma, to put it forward as a piece of insight into “ultimate reality ”, is equivalent to presuming that we can make true statements about God in Himself apart from experience. It is passing from the firm ground of experience, and theology based on experience, into the shadow-land of metaphysics. The idea of an “ economic ” Trinity, which is that God appears to us as Triune but that we have no right to say more than this or to make statements about His essential being, has been held in diverse forms, some of which would be repudiated by any Christian theologian at the present time. Among these outworn thoughts we may reckon surely the so-called Sabellian heresy, that the distinctions made between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit refer to temporal phases of the activity of God in the world and thus are connected with succession in time. We have referred already to Schleiermacher’s attitude towards the doctrine of the Trinity, and we must add that his view is definitely economic. The ecclesiastical formulations and explanations of the Trinity have for him no interest. They have no bearing upon religion. The doctrine has value simply as a concise statement of moments in the Christian experience of God.[13]
We may readily admit that the practical interests of religion depend to a very small degree on whether a man holds an “economic ” or “ ontological” Trinity ; and it [ p. 190 ] is certain that the overwhelming majority of Christians could not be made to understand the issue involved in the discussion. Yet it is not unimportant, for it raises the question of the nature of religious knowledge in general.
The view that the doctrine of the Trinity is merely economic seems to me untenable chiefly because it presupposes a distinction which most of the modern upholders of the “ economic ” view would reject. It takes for granted that there is a God in Himself and a God as revealed in human experience, and asserts that the former is unknowable, The position is therefore an ultimate agnosticism. It is assumed that the full knowledge of God would be that of God apart from creation, absolutely unrevealed, the solitary Absolute, and that this knowledge is, by its nature, beyond our ken for ever. But the conception of God in Himself in this sense is probably unmeaning. At least we shall argue later that creation and revelation—the going forth into “ otherness ” —is no accidental or arbitrary characteristic of Deity, but, of the essence of the Divine Being, so that the idea of “God in Himself” is as useless a thought as “ thing in itself” or “ self in itself”.
In our view, therefore, the Christian experience of God is an experience of Reality, and we are impelled to give some speculative account of it in order to show that the deliverances of the Christian consciousness are at least not contrary to reason.
The reader will perhaps remember that, in the previous chapter, we arrived at some conclusions with regard to the Divine Personality which seemed to throw light upon the conception of distinctions within the Divine Unity. To some of these we must now recur. We concluded that the Divine Self-Consciousness, or better, self-knowledge, which must be predicated if we hold the personality of [ p. 191 ] God, necessarily implied a distinction within the Divine Being. The “I” and the “me”, which we are compelled to distinguish from one another in considering human self-knowledge, must have their archetype in the divine Experience. But further, we saw reason to hold that the self-knowledge of the human being must always be imperfect, since the “ me ” which is the object of knowledge, the passive, constructed concept of the self, derived from the memory of past thoughts, impulses, and acts, can never be the concept of that which the I has produced and of that alone. To an indefinite degree the “ image ” of the “I” isa distorted image. In the perfectly personal life of God this imperfection will be absent. But we need not confine ourselves to the mere statement that it must be absent ; we can see why and how this disability of human self-consciousness is transcended. The source of the disability does not exist in the case of the Divine Being. Nothing in the activity of Him who is the Creator is forced from without. God’s thought of Himself, therefore, must be a completely adequate thought. We have no difficulty then in approving the proposition “In the beginning was the Thought”. God’s thought of Himself is comval with God’s existence. In thinking Himself he “ begets ” the Son.
But we must carry this train of reflection a little further. There is another obstacle to self-knowledge in our human case. We have seen that at the centre of this self is an activity, which is not in any ordinary senso a substance or the potentiality of a substance, but just creative, formative act. This inmost reality of the self is precisely that which can never be to us an object of knowledge. We know of it by the intuition which we may have of the self in its activity. The “ me” then, for us, must always lack that which is the essential condition of there [ p. 192 ] being any self at all. Though in words we may state that the self is activity, as we are doing now, the actual intellectual apprehension of that activity in its concrete reality is not possible. But a perfectly self-conscious personal experience would be free from this limitation. The knowledge of self in us falls, so to speak, into two kinds of knowing, the intuitive knowing of the activity which constitutes the ego and the discursive knowing of the settled ways of acting which the ego has acquired. In God these two acts of knowing are not separate: He knows Himself fully and in one immediate act of apprehension. It follows then that the “me”, the thought of God, is not passive object but active correlated subject—the perfect Image of the Father.
It is well known that Theology has made use of two classes of analogy in order to thrown light upon the doctrine of the Trinity—that of the individual person and that of a society. The first of these has been the most common in the West and is employed by Augustine, the Father of most western Theology ; the second was used by the Cappadocian Fathers and has been revived by Dr. Tennant and others in modern times.[14] Obviously any direct application of either analogy is out of the question. The one would issue in the crudest Unitarian anthropomorphism, the other in a kind of polytheism. It is admitted that the analogies are suggestive, indicative of the line along which an understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity might lie, rather than a clear reply to our questions. If the human personality shows a multiplicity in unity, if further there are three fundamental aspects or functions included within it, then it is not absurd to hold that there is a triune nature of God ; and if again the most perfect [ p. 193 ] societies known to us exhibit a multiplicity in unity, and if this unity becomes the more complete as the society becomes more perfect, there is nothing contrary to reason in supposing the divine Nature to exhibit these characteristics in the most complete manner. In a former work I noted these two possible approaches to the understanding of the Trinity as valuable but not, so far as our thought is able to go, meeting. It then appeared to me that we must hold that the two analogies are not ultimately divergent, though we could not see how they converged.[15] It now seems to me that we can go further and see that the two analogies really converge. If our argument about the nature of the divine self-knowledge is not mistaken, the thorough working out of the personal analogy leads us to the social analogy and shows itself to be coherent with it. Perhaps in the same way if we pursued the social analogy to its conclusion and thought out the implications of a perfect social whole, we should be brought to the same conclusion of the convergence of the two analogies. But of this I do not feel so sure.
That the thought of God as personal involves us in the conclusion that there are distinctions within the Godhead is arguable also from another and more general point of view. One of the most popular and most frequently used arguments for the reasonableness of the doctrine of the Trinity is derived from the love of God. If God is love, there must have been always an object of His love. In this precise form the argument does not appear conclusive, for it assumes that there was a time when there was no created object, and it involves once again the concept of God in Himself. To the present writer neither of these ideas seems satisfactory. There is surely no logical contradietion in the belief of the Unitarian that God is love, so [ p. 194 ] long as he holds that there is always some created object of the divine love. We may agree that the bare and solitary Absolute cannot be love; but that would take us only a short distance towards the Trinity. The same thought is perhaps better stated if we use the idea of “responsiveness”. Personal life, so far as we can see, always implies the responsiveness of the person to the environment and the response of the social environment to the person. Personal life grows and exists in intercourse with other persons. The quality of that personal life depends upon the degree of responsiveness of the individual and the quality of the social environment, chiefly of the other persons, to which it responds. Thus it is conceivable that a person who had the potentialities of a very high degree of development might remain at a relatively low stage because there was no adequate stimulus or response in the social environment. A “ mute inglorious Milton ” is not a Milton but, so to speak, one half of the potentiality of a Milton. The completely personal being, the being in whom personal existence achieves the highest quality, must be a being for whom there exists a responsive object adequate to himself. Once again we are led to the thought of a plurality within the unity of the Godhead, we come back again to the conception of a reciprocal relatedness of active and conscious centres.
It has been said that no philosophical or theological argument has ever succeeded in showing why there should be three Persons in one God. The reality of distinctions within the Divine Experience may be shown to be a tenable proposition, but no ground can be discovered for the conclusion that these distinctions are not two or more than three. We must admit that the social analogy by itself is open to this criticism and suffers from this limitation, we must confess also that so far we have not, [ p. 195 ] in our present discussion, gone beyond the “ Binitarian ” idea—the real being of Father and Son. Many philosophical interpretations of the doctrine of the Trinity have professed, at any rate, to show the inevitability of the number three, though it may be, as Dr. Gore and Dr. Kirk allege, their confidence is misplaced. The relation between the Father and Son has been held to constitute a third term, and the formula “ in the unity of the Spirit ” suggests that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son in an analogous manner to that in which the spirit of a Society proceeds from the relation of the individuals who compose it. The abstract statement that the Third Person in the Holy Trinity is the relation between the other two is, on the face of it, unsatisfactory, since the religious value of the belief in the Holy Spirit is not in any way preserved by such a conception, and moreover the statement itself is not even logically respectable. It depends upon the unacceptable notion that the relation between two terms is itself a third term. This does not necessarily imply that the general idea of the Spirit, which has been put in this unfortunately abstract manner, is valueless. The Holy Spirit, we may say, is not a relation ; but the relation between Father and Son gives rise (not, of course, temporally) to the being of the Holy Spirit. It is well to confess that the personality of the Holy Spirit offers a real difficulty both theologically and philosophically; and any speculative suggestion which is advanced on the subject here is made in a tentative manner. The New Testament evidence for the personal conception of the Holy Spirit is mixed, and I cannot resist the conclusion that, in many cases, the Holy Spirit is thought of as the power, influence, or presence of God through Christ. I am sure that the normal attitude of most Christians towards the Holy Spirit is of this [ p. 196 ] character, and the idea of personal relations with the Spirit is very little prominent in the life of devotion. Perhaps this state of things is the mark of imperfection. It is undoubtedly true that the faith in the power and presence of the Holy Spirit is grievously weak in most Christians at the present time, and it is possible that, if we had a clearer conception of the real and distinct being of the Spirit within the unity of the Godhead, the practical defects of our religion would be remedied. At least there is some support in the New Testament and in the Christian consciousness for the belief that the Spirit is a divine Person, and the Catholic Church has decided that the doctrine is a part of the Christian faith. To the present writer this last fact, though not finally decisive, is of very groat moment. I should be very slow to recognize that, ina matter of this fundamental importance, the mind of the Church has been mistaken, and should prefer to hold, even if there were less to be said in support of the dogma than there is, that the inability to make the belief real to myself was due to defect of spiritual insight or understanding.
The analogy of society does suggest an approach to the conception of the personality of the Spirit which is worthy of consideration. The idea of the mind or will of a society has been used in modern thought by social philosophers, some of whom would regard a highly organized society on its spiritual side as an individual in a completer degree than the members who constitute it. So far has this been carried that it is even held that the individual man is a kind of abstraction from the concrete reality of the social whole.[16] In Bolshevist Russia, according to Fülöp Miller, [ p. 197 ] we are confronted with the practical attempt to create the “collective man” who abolishes all individuality but his own.[17] But these extreme views are not the only possible version of the theory of a social mind. A more reasonable opinion is that the individuality of the members of the society is not abolished by the collective consciousness, nor are they mere abstractions, but that their individuality depends upon and is nourished by the “social mind ” within which they live. Thus Dr. Bosanquet, commenting on Plato’s Republic and the rule of the philosopher Guardians remarks: “Thoso who have to deliberate on behalf of society as a unit must bring to bear on every problem a complete or concrete idea of the social whole, in which idea society becomes, as it were, self-conscious through the minds of its members. We do not now rely as Plato proposed to do, mainly on the completeness of the statesman’s knowledge, but rather on a logie of fact and community of sentiment by which the ideas of all classes work out their joint results.”[18] There is much virtue in “as it wero”, and we must recognize the note of hesitation, but the suggestion is clearly that the social mind is, in some sense, a reality which transcends the individuals, though having no existence apart from them. On the other hand, it is argued that the social mind or will is nothing more than a misleading metaphor, the sole basis of which is the obvious truth that individuals in social relations with one another are affected intellectually, emotionally and volitionally by that relation.[19]
The debate between social philosophers on this subject seems likely to continue indefinitely. We must not enter [ p. 198 ] upon it here; but wo shall do well to keep it in mind in order that we may not attribute too much certainty to statements about the “social mind ” when they are used with theological intention. With this caution, however, we may note that even if the “ social mind ” is a mere meta phor, it is a metaphor for some real group of phenomena. There is a true meaning of the phrase “ the mind of the nation ” or “the mind of the Church ”, and to speak of a “general will” is not to use words without any significance. The association of human beings in any kind of group, whether family, club, or state, or even crowd, engenders some impulse to common action and hence some common thought and feeling. Nor can the common action, thought, or fecling be identified with that of any single person or class of persons within the group. The leaders may have the greatest influence, or may be really “ representative men”, but they do not sum up in themselves completely what we describe, perhaps wrongly, as the mind of the society. If then there is, in the very imperfect societies which are known to us, something which, transcending all individuals taken singly, can be called even metaphorically a social mind, we might expect that this characteristic would be perfectly developed in a perfect Society. Perhaps that would mean that, in this instance alone, the “ social mind ” would have passed beyond all metaphor and be “ real mind ”—fully personal will and intelligence. This speculation may be accepted for what it is worth. I do not claim more for it than that it indicates the possibility that, in the case of the Godhead, the relation between the First and Second Persons may itself be Personal.
We must avert our eyes from the heights towards which they have been straining and, admitting the inevitable failure of the human reason to catch more [ p. 199 ] than a glimpse of the nature of God, seek to discern the activity of the Trinity in the created order. That in general will be the subject of the following chapter, but here, for the sake of completeness, something must be said on the distinct operations of the one divine Life and Thought.
Christian Theology has always associated the Son with the creative process, though of course both Biblical and dogmatic authority would be against any belief that the Father and Holy Spirit were not concerned in creation. It is the Son, “ through whom the worlds were made.” We may interpret this in full accordance with the Platonic thought of orthodoxy. The ground of Creation, the motive of the process, is the ideal perfection which each level and aspect of the created order contains within it, half revealed and half concealed. In every thing which has its place in finite existence there is, revealed to thought or to imaginative insight, a state of being, which is not in fact actually achieved, but which if achieved would be the perfection, the realization of the full value, of that object. For the sake of that perfection, which is as yet suggested and not attained, the objects have been or are being created. The full justification of creation would be the complete realization of that order, inclusive of every aspect of the finite world, which now and for our experience is but partially manifested.
On this ground, again, wo can seo the fundamental reasonableness of the dogma that the Son is the Person of the Trinity who becomes Incarnate. The doctrine of the Incarnation is the assertion that the divine Person, who is the Agent of creation, is Himself manifested within the creation. Here, in this historical Person, the Perfection which is the source of all being takes flesh and dwells [ p. 200 ] among us. Nothing can minimize the paradoxical character of this belief. But the Christian doctrine of God has been based upon it; and though it can never be “demonstrated”, it does at least harmonize with a conception of the universe which has rational ground. Malebranche, among other Christian thinkers, has put forward the view that God creates the world for the sake of Jesus Christ, or for the sake of His Glory in Jesus Christ.[20] We may adopt this opinion, if we are allowed to give it a scope which probably Malebranche himself would have admitted. The justification of creation is in those ideal elements, or suggested tendencies, which we may discern, in the perfection at which the world hints. This perfection, in the sphere of human life, lives in the person of the Incarnate Son. In the light of this eonception we may interpret those sayings of the Fourth Gospel in which Jesus seems to claim an exclusive right to introduce men to the Father. No man cometh unto the Father but by me.”[21] Here the eternal Son is speaking. The divine Logos proclaims His universal mediatorship. As the words of the Son they are true, and so far from being exclusive, are universal in their implication. No man has come or can come to the Father except through the apprehension and contemplation of that within himself and the environment which speaks of a higher than self and a beyond nature. Through the image of God, which is obscured but still present in the creature, all approach to the Reality of God must take place. The activity of the Spirit may perhaps best be expressed, in the most general terms, as that nisus in things and in persons which seems to drive them forward towards a higher degree of perfection. As we have seen, the idea of a nisus of this character is not foreign to modern philosophies [ p. 201 ] of evolution. Alexander and Bergson, in their different manners, and the New Idealists have recognized a tendency in the natural world towards higher types and states of existence. It has been widely admitted that here the philosophy of evolution seems to hold out a hand to the Christian belief in the Holy Spirit. But it is not always seen that the Christian doctrine of the Trinity has one great advantage over the pure doctrine of the immanent life-force or the nisus in things. It has a basis for the idea of value, for the conception of “higher” and “more perfect.” In the words of the prayer, “ all things are returning to perfection through Him from whom they took their origin”—they are moving towards the Creator. In the higher reaches of creation this movement or impulse of transcendence takes a specific form. What in the lower types of being appears as a tendency or striving, becomes in persons a conscious act of will which is guided by the idea of value. The movement of “return” is no longer one in which the objects appear to be acted upon, or to be the passive participants in a general trend; the individuals are now moved from within by the spontaneous response of the self to ideal ends. Thus it is said of the Spirit both that “ He shall take of mine and show it unto you,” and that “ He shall guide you into all truth.”[22] These two activities of the Spirit are identical. The Spirit moves the will of personal beings by presenting to them the Son in whom they sce the truth of their nature, its ideal perfection, And when they perceive Him, they desire to move towards Him.
See his Christian Experience of the Holy Spirit, Part II; also Dr. Kirk’s essay on “The Evolution of the Doctrine of the Trinity” in Essays on the Trinity and the Incarnation, edited by A. E. J, Rawlinson. ↩︎
See A. E. Taylor, Plato : the Man and his Work, pp. 489 ff. ↩︎
In his essay, already referred to, in The Trinity and the Incarnation. ↩︎
See Chap. vi. ↩︎
The Christian Experience of the Holy Spirit, pp. 1 and 2. ↩︎
Eph. IV. 30. ↩︎
St. John XVI. 16; XVI: 7. ↩︎
Christliche Glaube, 170. 1. B.T., p. 738. ↩︎
Christian Experience of the Holy Spirit, p. 236. ↩︎
Kirk, op. cit., pp227 ff. ↩︎
Cf. The Doctrine of the Incarnation, by R. L. Ottley, pp. 572 ff. ↩︎
God and Personality. ↩︎
Cf. A. E. Garvie: Christian Doctrine of the Godhead, pp. 462 #. T do not mean to imply that Dr. Garvie’s doctrine of the Trinity is an economic one. ↩︎
Cf, however, F. R. Tennant, Philosophical Theology, Vol. II, p. 267, or Dr. Tennant’s latest view. ↩︎
Cf. Studies in Christian Philosophy, 2nd Ed. pp. 170 ff. ↩︎
Mr. Albion W. Small, we are told, advocates “ the abolition of the word individual ”, finding in it the suggestion of a “ discredited hypothesis "1 (Technique of Controversy by Rozoslovsky, p. 6.) ↩︎
Cf. The Mind and Face of Bolshevism. ↩︎
Companion to the Republic, p. 136. ↩︎
See, e.g, R. M. Maciver in Community, pp. 74 fl. ↩︎
Dialogues on Metaphysics, IX. ↩︎
St. John XIV. 6. ↩︎
St. John XVI. 14. St. John XVI. 13. ↩︎