Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors Part 47

4. Or which defines person as only manifestation; or Sabellianism.

These four are all the views ever hitherto given, and are all untenable.

We might stop here, and say that the Trinity is utterly unsupported. There is no need of going to the Scripture to see if it is taught there; for we have, as yet, nothing to look for in Scripture.

The Trinitarian's difficulty appears to be in defining person. But possibly he may say, "I cannot, indeed, give a positive idea of person; but I can give a _negative_ one. I cannot say what it _is_; but I can say what it is _not_. It is _not_ a mere _mode_ on the one hand; and not _being_, on the other. We must neither confound the persons nor divide the substance."

We will, then, go further, and say, as Trinitarians have never yet defined person, without making it either a mode or a being, so they never can define it otherwise. There is no third between being and mode. They _must_ either confound the persons or divide the substance.

Again: that which differences one person in the Deity from another must be either a perfection or an imperfection. There is nothing between these.

But it cannot be an imperfection; for no imperfection exists in G.o.d: and it cannot be a perfection; for then the other two persons would want a divine perfection, and would be imperfect.

III. The arguments in support of the Trinity are wholly inadequate. Since, according to Neander, the Trinity is not stated in the New Testament, it follows that it is a doctrine of _inference_ only; that is, a piece of human reasoning. Now, we have, no doubt, a perfect right to infer doctrines from Scripture which are not stated there; but, as Protestants, we have no right to make these inferences fundamental, or essential to the religious life. They may, indeed, be metaphysically essential; that is, essential to a well-arranged system; but they are not morally essential; that is, not essential to the moral and spiritual life of the soul.

But this is just what Dr. Huntington attempts to do. He tries to show that there is a doctrine essential to the life, peace, and progress of man, which the New Testament has omitted to state; which is neither distinctly stated by our Saviour nor by any of his apostles; which has been left to be inferred, and inferred by the mere processes of unaided human reason.

What arguments does he allege for this?

His first and princ.i.p.al argument is the _universal belief of the Christian Church in the doctrine of the Trinity_.

On this Dr. Huntington lays great stress. He says,-

"Truth is not determined by majorities; and yet it would be contrary to the laws of our const.i.tution not to be affected by a testimony so vast, uniform, and sacred as that which is rendered by the common belief of Christian history and the Christian countries to the truth of the Trinity.

There is something extremely painful, not to say irreverent, towards the Providence which has watched and led the true Christian Israel, in presuming that a tenet so emphatically and gladly received in all the ages and regions of Christendom, as almost literally to meet the terms of the test of Vincentius,-believed always, everywhere, and by all,-is unfounded in revelation and truth. Such a conclusion puts an aspect of uncertainty over the mind of the Church, scarcely consistent with any tolerable confidence in that great promise of the Master, that he would be with his own all days." (p. 359.)

To which we answer,-

(1.) That, according to Dr. Bushnell (Dr. Huntington's own witness), there never has been, nor is now, any such belief in the doctrine of the Trinity as he a.s.serts. The largest part of the Church have always "divided the substance" of the deity, and another large portion have "confounded the persons;" and so the majority of the Church, while holding the word "Trinity," have never believed in the Triunity at all.

Dr. Huntington summons Dr. Bushnell as a witness to the practical value of the Trinity; and we may suppose something such an examination as this to take place:-

_Dr. Huntington._ Tell us, Dr. Bushnell, what instances you know of persons who have been converted or deeply blessed by the holy doctrine of the Trinity.

_Dr. Bushnell._ I have known of "a great cloud of witnesses," "living myriads," "who have been raised to a partic.i.p.ation of G.o.d in the faith of this adorable mystery," (Huntington, p. 413.)

_Dr. H._ Mention some of them.

_Dr. B._ "Francis Junius," "two centuries and a half ago,"-a professor "at Heidelberg (Leyden?), testified that he was, in fact, converted from atheism by the Christian Trinity;" also "the mild and sober Howe;" "Jeremy Taylor;" also "the Marquis de Rentz;" "Edwards," and "Lady Maxwell."

(Huntington, p. 414.)

_Unitarian._ Say, Dr. Bushnell, whether, in your opinion, the majority of Christians really believe in the Church doctrine of the Trinity.

_Dr. B._ "A very large portion of the Christian teachers, together with the general ma.s.s of disciples, undoubtedly hold three living persons in the interior nature of G.o.d." (Bushnell: "G.o.d in Christ," p. 130.)

_Unit._ Is that scriptural or Orthodox?

_Dr. B._ No. It is only "a social Unity." It is "a celestial Tritheocracy." It "boldly renounces Orthodoxy at the point opposite to Unitarianism." (Bushnell: "G.o.d in Christ," p. 131.)

_Unit._ Do I understand you to be now speaking of the properly Orthodox ministers and churches generally?

_Dr. B._ "Our properly Orthodox teachers and churches, while professing three persons, also retain the verbal profession of one person. They suppose themselves really to hold that G.o.d is one person; and yet they most certainly do not: they only confuse their understanding, and call their confusion faith. This I affirm on the ground of sufficient evidence; partly because it cannot be otherwise, and partly because it visibly is not." (_Ibid._ p. 131.)

_Unit._ Do you believe, Dr. Bushnell, that spiritual good can come from such a belief in the Trinity as you describe to be "undoubtedly" that of "the general ma.s.s of disciples"?

_Dr. B._ "Mournful evidence will be found that a confused and painfully bewildered state is often produced by it. They are practically at work in their thoughts to choose between the three, sometimes actually and decidedly preferring one to another; doubting how to adjust their mind in worship; uncertain, after, which of the three to obey; turning away, possibly, from one with a feeling of dread that might well be called aversion; devoting themselves to another, as the Romanist to his patron saint. This, in fact, is Polytheism, and not the clear, simple love of G.o.d. There is true love in it, doubtless; but the comfort of love is not here. The mind is involved in a dismal confusion, which we cannot think of without the sincerest pity. No soul can truly rest in G.o.d, when G.o.d is in two or three, and these in such a sense that a choice between them must be continually suggested." (_Ibid._ p. 134.)

_Unit._ This state of mind is undoubtedly that of the general ma.s.s of the disciples?

_Dr. B._ It is. (_Ibid._ p. 130.)

_Unit._ Are there others, calling themselves Trinitarians, who hold essentially the Unitarian doctrine?

_Dr. B._ Yes. "It is a somewhat curious fact in theology that the cla.s.s of teachers who protest over the word 'person,' declaring that they mean only a _threefold distinction_, cannot show that there is really a hair's breadth of difference between their doctrine and the doctrine a.s.serted by many of the later Unitarians. They may teach or preach in a very different manner; they probably do: but the theoretic contents of their opinion cannot be distinguished. Thus they say that there is a certain divine person in the man Jesus Christ; but that, when they use the term 'person,'

they mean, not a person, but a certain indefinite and indefinable distinction. The later Unitarians, meantime, are found a.s.serting that G.o.d is present in Christ in a mysterious and peculiar communication of his being; so that he is the living embodiment and express image of G.o.d. If, now, the question be raised, 'Wherein does the indefinable _distinction_ of one differ from the mysterious and peculiar _communication_ of the other?' or 'How does it appear that there is any difference?' there is no living man, I am quite sure, who can invent an answer." (_Ibid._ p. 135.)

_Unit._ Is it not true that both of these views are sometimes held alternately by Trinitarians?

_Dr. B._ "Probably there is a degree of alternation, or inclining from one side to the other, in this view of Trinity, as the mind struggles, now to embrace one, and now the other, of two incompatible notions. Some persons are more habitually inclined to hold the three; a very much smaller number, to hold the one." (_Ibid._ p. 134.)

_Unit._ But can they not hold the Unity with this Trinity?

_Dr. B._ "No man can a.s.sert three persons, meaning three consciousnesses, wills, and understandings, and still have any intelligent meaning in his mind, when he a.s.serts that they are yet one person. For, as he now uses the term, the very idea of a person is that of an essential, incommunicable monad, bounded by consciousness, and vitalized by self-active will; which being true, he might as well profess to hold that three units are yet one unit. When he does it, his words will, of necessity, be only subst.i.tutes for sense." (_Ibid._ p. 131.)

(2.) But suppose that the belief of the Church in the Trinity was as universal as Dr. Huntington a.s.serts and Dr. Bushnell denies, what would be its value? His argument proves too much. If it proves the Trinity to be true, it proves, _a fortiori_, the Roman Catholic Church to be the true Church, and Protestantism to be an error; for Martin Luther, at one time, was the only Protestant in the world. Suppose that a Roman priest had come to him then. He might have addressed him thus:-

"It is certainly an impressive testimony to the truth of the Church of Rome, that the Christian world have been so generally agreed in it. Truth is not determined by majorities; and yet it would be contrary to the laws of our const.i.tution not to be affected by a testimony so vast, uniform, and sacred as that which is rendered by the common belief of Christian history and the Christian centuries to the doctrines and practices of the Roman Catholic Church. We travel abroad, through these converted lands, over the round world. We enter, at the call of the Sabbath morning light, the place of a.s.sembled worshippers; let it be the newly planted conventicle on the edge of the Western forest, or the missionary station at the extremity of the Eastern continent; let it be the collection of Northern mountaineers, or of the dwellers in Southern valleys; let it be in the plain village meeting-house, or in the magnificent cathedrals of the old cities; let it be the crowded congregation of the metropolis, or the 'two or three' that meet in faith in upper chambers, in log-huts or under palm-trees; let it be regenerate bands gathered to pray in the islands of the ocean, or thankful circles of believers confessing their dependence and beseeching pardon on ships' decks, in the midst of the ocean. So we pa.s.s over the outstretched countries of both hemispheres; and it is well nigh certain-so certain that the rare and scattered exceptions drop out of the broad and general conclusion-that the lowly pet.i.tions, the fervent supplications, the hearty confessions, the eager thanksgivings, or the grand peals of choral adoration, which our ears will hear, will be uttered according to the grand ritual of the Church of Rome. This is the voice of the unhesitating praise that embraces and hallows the globe."

What would Luther have replied to that? He would have said, "Truth must have a beginning. It is always, at first, in a minority. The gate of it is strait, the path to it narrow, and few find it. All reforms are, at the beginning, in the hands of a small number. If G.o.d and truth are on our side, what do we care for your mult.i.tudes?" We can make the same answer now.

Dr. Huntington proceeds to give his own creed in regard to the Trinity,-to state his own belief.

G.o.d, in himself, he declares, we cannot know at all. We know him only, in his revelation. "Out of that ineffable and veiled G.o.dhead-the groundwork, if we may say so, of all divine manifestation; a theocracy-there emerge to us, in revelation, the three whom we rightly call persons-Father, Son, and Holy Ghost."

We can only conceive of G.o.d, he says, in action; and in action we behold him as three. But action and revelation take place in time. The Trinity, therefore, according to Dr. Huntington, is only known to us in temporal manifestation: whether it exists in eternity or not, we cannot tell. And yet, in the next sentence, he goes on to say that "the Son is eternally begotten of the Father," and "the Holy Ghost proceeds out of the Father, _not in time_;" which is the very thing he had a moment before professed to know nothing about. It is very difficult, therefore, to tell precisely what his view is. With regard to the incarnation of the Son, he is still more obscure. He says that "Christ comes forth out of the G.o.dhead as the Son;" that he "leaves the glory he had with the Father;" that, while he is on earth, the Father alone represents the unseen personality of the G.o.dhead, and that therefore the Son appears to be dependent on him, and submissive; that temporarily, while the Son is in the world, he remains ignorant of what the Father knows, and says that his Father is greater than he. "He lessens himself to dependency for the sake of mediation."

"All this we might expect." This he calls an "instrumental inequality between Son and Father:" it "is wrought into the biblical language, remains in all our devotional habit, and ought to remain there."

In other words, Dr. Huntington believes that the Infinite G.o.d became less than infinite in the incarnation. The common explanation of those pa.s.sages, where Christ says, for example, "My Father is greater than I,"

does not satisfy him. He is not satisfied that Jesus said it "in his human nature." No. It was the divine nature which said it; and it was really G.o.d THE SON, who did not know the day nor the hour of his own coming. He lost a part of his omniscience. He ceased to be perfect in all his attributes.

We should say, then, that he ceased to be G.o.d; but Dr. Huntington maintains that he was G.o.d, nevertheless; but G.o.d less than omnipotent,-G.o.d less than omniscient; G.o.d the Son, so distinct from the Father as to be ignorant of what the Father knew, and unable to perform what the Father could do.

Dr. Huntington (p. 366) ascribes it to "condescension" in Christ, to say that "of that day and hour knoweth not the Son." "_It is condescension indeed!_" says he. But this word "condescension" does not well apply here.

One does not condescend to be ignorant of what he knows: still less does a truthful person condescend _to say_ he is ignorant of what he knows. We may wisely condescend to help the feeble, and sympathize with the lowly, but hardly to be ignorant with them, or to pretend to be ignorant. It is a badly chosen word, and seems to show the vacillation of the writer's thought.

IV. The arguments against the doctrine of the Trinity are unanswerable.

We infer that they are unanswerable from the fact that they are not answered. It is to be presumed that Dr. Huntington, having been for so many years a preacher of Unitarian doctrine, is acquainted with our arguments. It is a remarkable fact that, in this sermon, he has nowhere attempted to reply to them. He has pa.s.sed them wholly by. You would not know, from reading the discourse, that he had ever been a Unitarian, or had ever heard of the Unitarian objections to the Trinity; still less that he had himself preached against it. Unitarians, for instance, have said, that _if the Trinity be true, and if it be so important to the welfare of the soul as is contended, it would be somewhere plainly taught in the New Testament_. Does Dr. Huntington answer this argument? No; he answers the argument from the _word_ "Trinity" not being in the Bible, and his answer is sufficient; but he does not answer the argument from the fact, that the doctrine itself is not anywhere distinctly taught, and that none of the terms which have been found essential to any Orthodox statement of the doctrine are to be met with in the New Testament.(93)

Nor does Dr. Huntington anywhere fairly meet the Unitarian argument from the impossibility of stating the doctrine in intelligible language. He tells us, with his usual eloquence, what we have often enough been taught before, that there are many things which we do not understand, and that we must believe many facts the _mode_ of which is unintelligible. But when we say, "Can we believe _a doctrine_ or proposition which cannot be distinctly stated?" He has no answer. The Trinity is _a doctrine_, and must therefore be distinctly stated in order to be believed. It has not been distinctly stated,(94) and therefore cannot be believed. To this objection Dr. Huntington has no reply; and we may conclude that it is an unanswerable objection.