The view which I have presented excludes this subordination, at least in the sense of inferiority or dependence or beginning of existence in time. Gieseler says that all subordination in the Trinity was effectually excluded by Augustine in his teaching that the Father, Son, and Spirit are numerically one and the same in essential being. But Professor Charles Hodge says: "This does indeed preclude all priority and all superiority as to being and perfection. But it does not preclude subordination as to the mode of subsistence and operation. This is distinctly recognized in Scripture, and was as fully taught by Augustine as by any of the Greek fathers, and is even more distinctly affirmed in the socalled Athanasian Creed, representing the school of Augustine, than in the creed of the Council of Nice. There is, therefore, no just ground of objection to the Nicene Creed for what it teaches on that subject. It does not go beyond the facts of Scripture." 1 Such a subordination is indicated in the names Son and Word of God, and in Christ's representation of the Holy Spirit as sent by the Son from the Father. And it is in and through the Son that God creates and develops the universe, physical and spiritual; and in the Spirit he abides in it and brings all the influences and agencies of God's righteousness and grace to a focus on the hearts of men. In the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Son is called the effulgence or outshining of God's glory and the very image of his substance. This comparison with the sun has been used in all the ages ever since. The sun, shutting its light within itself, cannot itself be seen, and the universe is in darkness and cold and death. The light bursting forth illuminates, warms, and vivifies the universe, and is itself revealed in its overpowering glory. The sunbeams reflected and refracted in the atmosphere create the diffused and genial daylight, and, resting on the earth, unsoiled by the contact and touching every earthly thing, bring out whatever of beauty or vitality is hidden in it. And the light is one and the same, whether in the sun, or streaming forth through space, or resting on the earth and nourishing all things. So the Father is the original fountain and source of light and life and energy; in the Son he goes forth in creating the universe and energizing in it, and in the Spirit he abides in the universe, and especially in the spiritual system, quickening spiritual life and carrying forward the great designs of his wisdom and love. And yet in all conditions 1 Systematic Theology, vol. i. p. 464.

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and modes of manifestation it is one and the same God. And if we would carry our thought beyond the beginning of the created universe, God is never a dead thing, but is eternally active, and in himself must be the agent and the object of his action, the thinker and the object of his thought. And the object must in some sense be second to the agent, the object of thought to the thinker, and the medium of their conscious unity must be in some sense the third. This the Greeks designated as Tepixóρnois, the circulating energy within the absolute God. And this was called the eternal generation, not as having beginning or end, but simply as declaring that the relation of Father and Son and all the reciprocal action involved in it are eternal in the essence of God. God is eternal, ceaseless energy. Here we are trying to pass into that eternal sphere which transcends all power of imagination to picture. But this we know, that in it all, whether within his own eternal being or energizing in the creation, it is the one only indivisible God; and that in him, Father, Son, and Spirit, there is no subordination in the sense of inferiority or dependence or beginning.

4. The Trinity is the word used in theology to designate the one only God thus eternally existing as Father, Son, and Spirit. It denotes tri-unity; three in one, not three and one.

The Bible does not give the name Trinity nor explicitly formulate the doctrine. This, however, does not disprove it. We have ascertained the three elements of the biblical conception of God. If we combine these in a unity of thought, we have the Trinity. Any other conception, Sabellian, Arian, or Socinian, leaves out one or another of the three elements of the biblical idea of God. The doctrine of the Trinity merely expresses or formulates the biblical revelation of the one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is a sufficient proof of the doctrine.

We also find the elements of the doctrine brought together in the biblical representation in a way which necessarily implies the Trinity. They are thus joined in the formula of baptism. The baptism is to be in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; in the name, as of one, not in the names, as of three. They are also joined in a similar manner in the apostolic benediction; in our Lord's parting address to his disciples; in Paul's account of the distribution of spiritual gifts; in Peter's

recognition of the three in the redemption of man; and in the baptism of Jesus.1

The objection that neither the word Trinity nor any explicit formulation of the doctrine is in the Bible is equally valid against all theological thought, or, what is the same thing, against all attempts to gain true and clear ideas of what the Bible teaches. Christianity, free agency, free will, the personal God, and many other familiar words and phrases are not in the Bible; but the realities which they denote are there. The fact that a truth of God is revealed in its practical relations rather than in a scientific formula does not make it any less a truth. If the elements of a great reality are separately revealed, and a theological doctrine fairly takes them up and expresses them, the doctrine is as true as if it had been formulated in the revelation. It does not become a human invention any more than the scientific law of gravitation is a human invention because it merely formulates the result of scientific thought on many observed facts. The law of gravitation is not formulated in nature any more than the doctrine of the Trinity is formulated in the Bible. Both in the physical and the spiritual worlds God acts before us and reveals himself in the action, and leaves us to interpret his action and declare its significance. There is no more science in nature than there is theology in the Bible. But neither in the one nor the other are our scientific statements of the facts and their laws false.

It is objected that the doctrine of the Trinity was not held by the Christian fathers during the first three centuries of the Christian era. But the elements of the doctrine were held by the ante-Nicene fathers, and thought was already busy in attempting to grasp and formulate them. In faith in the God in Christ the church was founded and began its career of conquest; in this faith its apostles and missionaries preached and its martyrs died. This objection also, like the former, is an objection against all theological thinking. The study of God's revelations of himself, in order to define clearly what they reveal, to learn their significance, and to comprehend them all in their harmonious relations and their unity as revelations of God, must be a work of time. Therefore the history of the doctrine in the first centuries, instead

1 Matth. xxviii. 19; 2 Cor. xiii. 14; John xiv.-xvii.; 1 Cor. xii. 4, 5; I Pet. i. 1, 2; Matth. iii. 16, 17.

of being an objection to it, is rather an evidence of its truth. It shows that this doctrine stood forth so conspicuously in the life and teachings of Christ and the apostles that it forced itself on the attention of the early churches, and was one of the first to be discussed and formulated. The whole history shows that it was not the discussion and formulating of the doctrine which produced the belief of its truth; but it was the practical living faith in the God in Christ, in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which produced the discussion and led to the formulating of the doctrine. Professor Goltz says: "There were Christians before the ecclesiastical dogma of Christ was formulated, and who had no knowledge of it. Therefore it was not the dogma concerning Christ which generated Christianity, but the historical personality of Jesus that generated the doctrine respecting him. . . . What was Christ, the historical founder of Christianity, in the inmost core of his being? What made Jesus of Nazareth into the Christ of God, into the centre of divine revelation and sacred history, into the centre of his own testimony and of the apostolic preaching, into the personal, living ground of the church in its doctrine, culture, and conduct, into the pivotal point of Christian piety in faith, hope, and love?" It is precisely because Jesus was what he was, and his testimony respecting himself and the testimony of the apostles respecting him were what they were, that the Christians trusted and worshiped and served him, and were ready to die for him as the God in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, and in and through him found the one God revealed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

1 Die Christlichen Grundwahrheiten, pp. 134, 135.

CHAPTER IX

THE TRINITY: ITS PHILOSOPHICAL SIGNIFICANCE

THE doctrine of the Trinity presents to the intellect the clearest, most comprehensive, and reasonable idea of God and of his relations to the universe.

I. THE IDEA OF GOD.-The Trinity proves itself to be, in its essential contents, the only worthy and satisfactory philosophical conception of God and of his revelation of himself in the finite. As revealed in the God in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, it is essential to supplement the half truths of philosophy, to clear away its seeming contradictions, to harmonize the philosophical conception of God with that of religious faith and the revelation in the Bible, and to give a reasonable, comprehensive, and self-consistent idea of him.

1. In the Trinity the two phases of the idea of God as the absolute Being and as personal Spirit are comprehended in unity. Philosophy, trying to comprehend God merely as the absolute Being, often misses the way and loses itself in the abyss of agnosticism. The absolute becomes an adjective without a noun, a negative idea without positive contents, a being identified with non-being, a zero which is the symbol of the cessation of thought. On the other hand, when men think of God only as a personal spirit, his absoluteness is overlooked and God is regarded merely as a magnified man. But the Trinity combines both aspects of the absolute Spirit and presents them in harmony and unity in God. It gives full emphasis both to his personality and to his absoluteness. It reveals his absoluteness in his personality, as that which gives the absolute positive contents. It presents God as the personal Spirit more clearly and forcibly than any other conception of him. It opens out his personality to us, amplifies cur knowledge of it, and discloses in him a personality of which