sentation of what God is.

The next step must be to combine them in a unity of thought. This necessarily gives us the scriptural idea of God as triune, three in one; designated in theology by the name trinity, which is simply a contracted form of triunity. "The doctrine of the trinity is not a result of mere speculation, not a theory or hypothesis spun by theologians out of their own fancies, still less, as some eminent writers would maintain, the result of the importation of Greek metaphysics into Christian theology. It is, in the first instance, the result of a simple process of induction from the facts of the Christian revelation. . . . The triune conception of God is justified, when it is shown to be the conception which underlies the triune revelation God has given of himself, and the triune activity in the work of redemption."

" 1

The elements to be combined are three.

First. The oneness and onliness of God.

Second. The three eternal distinctions or modes of being of the one only God, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit.

Third. The proper deity of each of the three; that is, God, the one indivisible Absolute Spirit in each of these peculiar and eternal modes of being.

1. In any correct synthesis or comprehension in thought of the scriptural teaching as to the Trinity, we must begin with the oneness and onliness of God. It is necessary to apprehend and declare this in its true and full significance in order to guard against any departure from the belief of it through overstatement or misunderstanding of the scriptural representations of the threefold distinction of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The fact must be emphasized in the outset that, whatever may be the distinction of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, it is included within the unity of the one only God.

God is numerically and indivisibly one in his substance or essential being. This is the common doctrine of our evangelical Protestant creeds; as the Westminster Catechism declares that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" are one true, eternal God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory." The same has been the teaching of the great Protestant theologians. Turretin affirms that God, in his essential being, is indivisibly and numerically one,

1 James Orr, D. D., “The Christian View of God and the World, as centring in the Incarnation," pp. 303, 304.

and as such is the only God, and there can be no other; that the Son has from eternity essential being numerically the same with the Father; that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have between them numerically the same essence, the like of which does not exist among created beings. This doctrine he defends against polytheists and also against tritheists, who exaggerate the threefold distinction in the Godhead into what is equivalent to three Gods.1 So Calvin also teaches: "It is evident from our writings that we do not take away the persons of the trinity from the essence of God; but simply interpose a distinction between them while they remain in the one essence. If they were separated from the essence we should have three Gods, not a trinity of persons contained within himself by the one God."2 Augustine also says: "All those catholic expounders of the divine Scriptures whom I have been able to read, who have written before me concerning the Trinity, who is God, have purposed to teach, according to the scriptures, this doctrine, that the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit intimate a divine unity of one and the same substance in an indivisible equality; and therefore that there are not three Gods, but one God." The same is the teaching of the socalled Athanasian creed: "We worship one God in trinity, and trinity in unity; neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance." Gieseler says: "The unity and equality of the persons, which necessarily resulted from holding sameness of essence, was not fully acknowledged at once, even by the Nicenians, but continued to be more clearly perceived, until at last it was expressed by Augustine for the first time with decided logical consequence."4 And from his time on it became the established belief of the western church. But it had been the more common doctrine before Augustine's day. The real meaning of the Nicene creed on this point began to be debated almost as soon as the Council adjourned. But it seems incontrovertible that the Council meant to declare the doctrine afterwards taught by Athanasius and Augustine, that the Son is of the same substance or essential being, with the Father. This is the legitimate

1 Instit. Theologiae, Locus III., Quaestio III. ii., iii., ix. ; Quaest. XXIII. xi., xii.; Quaest. XXV. ii., iii.; Quaest. XXVIII. iii.; vol. i., pp. 163, 164, 165, 230, 238, 252; Carter's ed., New York, 1847.

2 Institutes, Lib. I., cap. xiii. 25.

8 De Trinitate, Lib. I., chap. iv. 7.

* Church History, Translation revised by H. B. Smith, vol. i., p. 313.

meaning of homoousios, oμoovσios, the word by which they described the oneness of the Son with the Father. But, because the word was used with different meanings, this of itself does not settle the question. But that this was the meaning they gave it, is evident from the fact that they used it in opposition to the error that the Son was only ououououos, of similar substance with the Father; also from the dissent of Eusebius and a considerable minority, on the ground that it meant the same substance; also because the Son is described as the true God before all ages, by whom all things were made; and because, if this was not their meaning, the creed would declare their belief in two Gods, a belief which their history shows they never held. And at a still earlier period we find this belief that God as Father, Son, and Spirit is one in substance and essential being, fully formulated by Tertullian. He says of the Son of God: "He is God and the Son of God, and both are one. And thus Spirit from Spirit and God from God becomes another in mode of being, not in number; in order, not state or standing (i. e., as divine); and has gone forth, but has not gone out of (or separated from) the original (divine) source. They are three, not in substance but in form, not in power but in a specific distinction; but of one substance and power . . Hold fast always the rule which I avow, in accordance with which I testify that the Father, Son, and Spirit are not separated. When I say that they are distinct, only ignorance or perversity will take this as meaning a diversity which issues in separation. . . . For the Son is other than the Father, not by diversity, but by distribution; not by division, but by distinction. The Father and Son are not the same, but they differ one from the other in their mode of being (modulo).” Augustine says that the Greek theologians taught that God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is one in essence (ovoría), but that the Latins used either essence or substance; because, he says, essence usually means nothing else but substance in Latin.2

1

We see, therefore, that the prevalent doctrine of the church and its theologians has been that God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is numerically and indivisibly one in his substance or

1 Apologeticus adv. Gentes, chap. xxi. adv. Praxeas, chap. iii. and ix. 2 De Trinitate, Lib. vii., chap. iv. 7.

essential being.1 Therefore, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not three Gods, one in a merely generic unity, as men are one in the unity of the genus; nor in a merely moral unity, as persons of the same moral character and purpose are one. They are distinguished as three only within the numerical and indivisible oneness and onliness of God.

2

It is sometimes said that God as absolute transcends all number. "To apply arithmetical notions to him may be as unphilosophical as it is profane." But this position is as fatal to monotheism as it is to tritheism and polytheism. If God transcends all forms of number it is as "profane" to say there is one only God as to say there are three, or a thousand. It is argued that, in order to count things together, there must be some point of likeness among them so that they can be designated by a common name. But Dr. Newman says, God "has not even such relation to his creatures as to allow, philosophically speaking, of our contrasting him with them." Here, then, is a complete sundering of God from all likeness to his creatures and from all relation to them. Man is no longer in the image of God nor capable of coming into any communion with him or of having any knowledge of him. This speculation is founded on some false idea of the absolute which necessarily issues in pantheism, epicureanism, or agnosticism. If God exists he must be a being, and has the name being and all its essential attributes in common with his creatures. If he is a personal Being, man is also a personal being and has reason and the attributes of a rational person like God, and is capable of knowing, loving, and serving him. Thus man knows himself in the likeness of God, and knows God, in distinction from himself and all finite beings, as the one only absolute and all-perfect Being. Thus he knows that the distinction of Father, Son, and Spirit, whatever it may be, is compatible with and included in the oneness and onliness of God.

1 The English word essence has not the same meaning with substance, either in logic or in philosophy or in popular usage. I use the phrase essential being as more nearly expressing the true meaning.

2 J. H. Newman, "Grammar of Assent," pp. 48, 49. Basil also presented the same idea. See Hodge, "Theology," vol. i. p. 463, and Dorner, "Person of Christ," vol. ii. p. 310.

3 See my "Philosophical Basis of Theism," chap. xii., and my " SelfRevelation of God," part ii., chaps. viii., ix., x., on the Absolute, and Chap. III. of this volume.

God transcends the principles of arithmetic in the same way as he transcends the principles of geometry; all these mathematical principles are eternal in him, the absolute Reason. We gain nothing in constructing our idea of the one God, Father, Son, and Spirit, by assuming that his essential being contradicts the principles which are eternal in him as the absolute being. On the contrary, we plunge ourselves in the bottomless abyss of a denial that the universe is ultimately grounded in Reason and of an assumption that it is grounded in unreason.

In our attempts to form and complete a true conception of God, we must in the outset take a strong grasp of the truth that he is the one and the only God; and this we must firmly hold through all our investigations. If any conception of the Trinity, if any speculation on the being and works of God relax this grasp, we shall drift in hopeless error.

In beginning with the oneness we follow the order and method of the biblical revelation. God in revealing himself as recorded in the Bible began with the truth that he is the one and only God. For centuries he was instructing and disciplining Israel in the knowledge of himself against the enticements of the polytheism which surrounded them. It was only after the captivity in Babylon that this truth became so vitally incorporated into the national life that they never afterwards departed from it. Then in the coming and work of Christ and the Holy Spirit he opened more fully the recesses of his being and revealed its different aspects and the diversified riches of his wisdom and love as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and further still as the God in Christ reconciling the world unto himself.

At different periods in the history of the church Christian theologians, in their zeal to defend and emphasize the distinction of Father, Son, and Spirit, have taken positions logically involving tritheism, or at least verging very closely on that great error. These exaggerations have been the occasions at different times of reactions against the scriptural doctrine itself which these have been supposed to represent. The truth that there is one God, who is the only God, is the fundamental truth of religion and appeals powerfully to the religious intuitions and sentiments of all men. Any line of thought which throws this great truth. into the background, or weakens the belief of it, imperils all the interests of the church of Christ. Therefore, in all our attempts