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GLORIA PATRI
OUR TALKS ABOUT THE TRINITY
AND
THE NEW TRINITARIANISM
BY
i?eK JAMES MORRIS WHITOK Ph.D.
"(Bo^ is a circle, wbose centre ie everiewbece, wbo«e
circumference is nowbere."
tHDM^S ^W^HITTAKER
2 AND 3 Bible House
1904
f .
COPTKIGHT, 1892
By THOMAS WHITTAKER
A. a SHERWOOD A ca
PRINTERS. NEW YORK
AUTHOR'S NOTE.
These pages have been written for thoughtful
laymen. And yet it may be enough to deter such
readers, that the subject presented is the Trinity.
Cause enough has often been given for regarding
this subject as too enigmatical, and too unrelated
to daily uses, to attract the attention of busy men
unschooled in theological mysteries. Until the
contrary can be demonstrated by presenting it in a
different light, any attempt to secure a keener in-
terest in it among ordinary thinkers must rest un-
der the unfavorable presumption which has been
admitted. To such a demonstration it is hoped
these pages may contribute something. To facili-
tate the purpose in view, and to relieve the in-
herent difficulties of the subject-matter, the some-
what unusual form of dialogue has been adopted,
AUTHOR'S NOTE.
in which more or less of many conversations is re-
corded.
Sooner or later it must be, that the Church will
reap rich harvests of spiritual thought and life
from this now weed-groAvn field, so long left fal-
low. It cannot be that this fundamental and all
comprehending truth of Christianity will always be
left in the cloud which barren scholastic contro-
versy has raised about it.
New York, May 10, 1892.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
The course of events since 1892, when the
first edition of this book appeared, has on the
whole tended to confirm the hope in which it
was put forth as an eirenicon between opponents
whom the advance of learning and of thought
had deprived of their original grounds of con-
flict. In a widely reported discussion of their
differences that was held at Boston in May,
1903, it was admitted that Trinitarians and
Unitarians now differ from each other less than
they each differ from their own progenitors a
century ago. Differences, indeed, remain; but
these, at least among the leaders of thought,
are less in the speculative than in the practical
line, as, for instance, in missionary enterprise.
How much of the existing differences is merely
the unspent force of the past greater differ-
ences, and destined to vanish like these, is a
question whose solution hopefully depends on
the interest of the two parties in Christian
endeavors to promote the Kingdom of God. In
New England, where the schism began in 1805,
representative men of both parties have often
admitted that it could not have occurred had
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
the iDtellectual grounds then occupied been
what they are now. Such an admission evi-
dently implies that what should not have
occurred ought not to continue.
This change of attitude among leading men
is still far from extending to the larger number
of those concerned, who have been less affected
by the new intellectual conditions under which
religious thought is in many particulars now
receiving restatement. For such readers these
pages are still as timely as when first published.
Testimonies from men of note in American and
in British churches, that this book has done them
the service of investing with a fresh and vital
interest a subject which had staled in their
minds as impracticable and fruitless, indicate
that it still has a message to the rank and file of
the churches on either side of the now narrowed
breach. To these it needs to be said plainly
and positively, that whoever has fully accepted
the dominant philosophy and science of our
time — nay, more, whoever is an intelligent and
thorough-going theist — for him the ancient
ground of controversy between Trinitarian and
IJnitarian has quite disappeared. For instance,
the fallacy of the *' two natures " in the Christ,
proclaimed in the fifth century — ^' a principle of
dualism which," as Professor A. Y. G. Allen
has said, " sanctified divorce between the human
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
and the divine, the secular and the religions" —
although still in use bj half-baked theists, has
fallen under as deep discredit in philosophy as
that which has overtaken materialism.
On the Unitarian side, however, are some
who scout all discussion of the subject, protest-
ing : " We don't need a Trinity." It may be
cheerfully admitted that we need no such Trin-
ity as has unfortunately been presented to them.
But they may reasonably suspect that the acutest
intellects of many centuries have not been alto-
gether and always chasing a phantom. They
need to be told that the ancient philosophic
problem of the relation of God to the world, of
Infinite Spirit to finite form, inevitably leads
up through rigorous reflection upon the now
established data for scientific, philosophic and
religious thought to a Trinitarian conception of
Deity. They should also recall what the late
Dr. C. A. Bartol, a representative Unitarian
has said of the semi-Trinitarian creed formu-
lated at INTicaea, A. D. 325 : " Identical at the
root are God and man, and the Trinity in recog-
nizing and trying to formulate this sameness,
avoiding pantheism, is worthy of honor, even
in its failure a partial success." What the be-
ginning of Trinitarian theology that was made
in the Nicene Creed amounted to was the laying
of a foundation for the Christian doctrine of
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
man. What the Creed, in its attributing an
identical nature to God and to an elect member
of the human race, accomplished but in part
may be carried farther under the better condi-
tions of modern thought. The time is ripe for
a full expression of that primitive and half-
formed conception of the Divine Incarnation in
humanity.
Not only has the illusion that misled the
Nicene theologians been dispelled — man, being
made of clay, is of another nature than God.
Furthermore, also, as Professor E. C. Smyth, of
Andover, observed in 1892, "modern thought
has gone beyond the Mcene symbol in its doc-
trine of God. It defines its Trinity not so
much in terms of being as in terms of life. It
emphasizes what is ethical and spiritual rather
than what is metaphysical." Tliese words,
nearly contemporaneous with the first appear-
ance of this book, fairly state in general terms
what it attempts. It is not premature, there-
fore, to affirm with confidence that the doctrines
now received concerning the evolution of life
and the immanence of Deity have made a new
Trinitarianism not merely possible, but, now
that theistic modes of thought are supplanting
deistic, inevitable. To offer a more tenable con-
ception of the full Christian idea of God repre-
sented by the Trinitarian idea, whose ground in
PREFACE TO THE SEGOKD EDITION.
reality is attested by the Batisfaction found by
the religious life of mauy centuries in a partial
and distorted conception of it, is the object of
this book.
To relieve the elucidation of a supposedly
obscure theological problem of the tedium found
or feared by many in solid pages of argument,
and at the same time to hold the reader's atten-
tion amid all the windings in which ancient con-
troversies have involved the main question, if
there be a better way than the form here
adopted of dialogue between friends, it is for
those who have objected to this to point it out.
As to the objection made to an alleged un-
critical use of Scripture texts in the dialogue, it
does not seem well taken. For these texts,
whether of the first or the second century,
whether the sayings of their reputed authors or
not, are at any rate the material from which
Trinitarian doctrine as held to the present day
has been constructed. To waive modern dis-
putes as to their date and authorship, and to
take them as they stand, for an inquiry whether
they must mean what they have been taken to
mean, seems to be thoroughly legitimate, while
it is also the only way of hopeful procedure with
the majority of readers. Objection to this comes
with little force from some who recognize no
authoritativeness in any Scripture, and to whom
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
it matters nothing for the results whether texts
are treated critically or uncritically.
The title chosen for this book is intended to
be suggestive of the chant more frequently used
than any other in all Trinitarian churches. It
may serve to summarize for the reader, as in
the exposition given of that doxology in pages
153-155, the conception of the Trinity here un-
folded, as really the most practical rather than,
as fancied, the most metaphysical of religious
truths, comprehensively regulative of conduct,
as well as formative of doctrine, an incentive
to moral endeavor, a guarantee of social progress.
It remains only to say that beyond some few
corrections no revision of the preceding edition
has been deemed needful. J. M. W.
New Yoke, January, 1904.
CONTENTS,
PAGE
I. Some Misapprehensions Cleakbd - - 9
II. The Son of God 35
The Cause of Controversy - - - - 45
And the End of it 53
III. The Word or Form of God - - - 67
And How to Think of the Incarnation - - 80
IV. The Neglected Term of the Trinity - 101
V. Supernattjralism, False and True - - 127
The Trinitarian Test 136
Theocentric Theology ----- 147
Epilogue -•-«.. ^ 157
SOME MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED
Jn tain 31 tiirneli in ttjeari? queirt
45Ib pa0E? tojbcrc (<!Boti oiUe tftem rcjit)
Cbe poor ccecb'-mongerii treameii ant gucs^^eti."
Whittier.
I.
SOME MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED.
We had a mild excitement at our church to-
day, remarked our neighbor who dropped in to
talk on a Sunday evening.
Mild excitement, said I, is a thing that most
church-goers are grateful for. It keeps them
awake.
In this case it promises to keep us awake for
a few days at least, on a subject not usually excit-
ing, in fact, the Trinity.
Ah, tell us how it happened.
Why, right in the middle of the morning sermon,
Madam Sandy, our old minister's widow, who
seems to have taken a contract to see that his opin-
ions are not departed from, sniffed heresy in the
air, and marked her protest against it by straight-
>vay stalking out of church.
That was rather exciting. But are you sure it
10 MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED.
was not a sudden faiutuess i)eiliaps, or nausea, that
took her out ?
Quite unlikely. I asked Dr. Wise, her family
physician, why he didn't follow .her out to offer
assistance. He said he took a good look at lier
face as she walked by his pew, and saw that it was
a case of fire, not of faintness.
Pray what had your minister said that fired her
up?
Well, as I intimated, his discourse touched on
the Trinity. Dr. Sandy used to be very rigid on
that. He used to represent it as a doctrine indis-
pensable to salvation, and all Unitarians as lefi: to
the uncovenanted mercies of God. Now, right in
the teeth of that, our minister quoted, w^th ap-
proval, a remark by the church-historian, Neander,
to the effect that the Trinity was not a fundamental
doctrine of Christianity. Madam waited not to
hear more, but fled the place at once.
Well, that was rather an undesirable show of
ancient manners. It used to be more common to
testify dissent in that fashion than it is now.
Yes, and the old-time come-outer liked to bang
his pew door after him by way of emphasis. It
was rather a testy way of bearing testimony. I
think it requires more grace to sit decorously quiet
under a speech that you dislike.
MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED. 11
I remember a case where it would have been far
better so to do. I was once present where an am-
ateur theologian made himself rather ridiculous by
a rasli exit. The sermon was making him quite
uneasy, but he chose an unfortunate moment to
break away. The preacher had begun to quote
from the sleep-walking scene in Macbeth, when,
just as he repeated the words, " Out ! Out !
damned spot ! " the malcontent arose and left.
That was a comical coincidence. But now I
should like to know what you think of the state-
ment that produced this morning's explosion,
namely, that the Trinity is not a fundamental doc-
trine of Christianity.
Why, it is certainly true in the sense in which
Neander said it. He was speaking of the specula-
tive, metaphysical form which the doctrine has as-
sumed in theology. But he speaks very differ-
ently of the devotional and practical form in which
the Scriptures present it, as in the baptismal form-
ula, and in the apostolic benediction. In regard
to this, he says : " We recognize therein the essen-
tial contents of Christianity summed up in brief.'' *
Well, I suppose it is essential not only to sum
up in brief, but also to unfold and define these con-
* General History of the Christian Religion and Church, 12th
edition, p. 572, 573.
12 MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED.
tents, so as to understand just what the words mean.
I mean, of course, essential for thinking men.
But this is just where one quickly gets into water
too deep for him. At least, I do. The simplest
definition that I have found is in our Westminster
Catechism : " There are Three Persons in the God-
head, the Father, and the Sou, and the Holy
Ghost, and these Three are One God, the same in
substance, equal in power and glory.'' But even
this takes me a step beyond the limit between
knowledge and mystery, and leaves me where it is
impossible to form any clear conception of the
fact.
I suppose that this is the common experience.
The fact that it is so common ought to suggest the
question, whether so general a failure may not be
due to some following of a mistaken line of
thought into a sort of blind alley, a theological
(mI de sac, I doubt whether there is such a thing
as a right line of rational thought which ends in
intellectual confusion.
You speak as if you think there might be a way
out of the labyrinth.
I think there must be. The Holy Scripture as-
serts on one hand the unity of God, and on the
other hand ascribes Divinity alike to the Father,
the Son, and the Spirit. There must be some line
MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED. 13
of thought in which the attempt we are bound to
make to harmonize these two classes of statements
will not end in impenetrable mystery, but in a
clear vision of the truth.
Well, I cannot say this is incredible, but after
so many centuries of effort by the greatest intel-
lects, it seems improbable.
I cannot think it so. " To seek the head of the
Nile" was to the ancient world a proverb for a
hopeless quest. But the Nile has in om- day
yielded up its secret. You must remember that
modern learning has given us resources for theo-
logical exploration far beyond Avhat the ancients,
or even our grandfathers, possessed. Besides, even
in this Trinitarian problem, we have a historical
precedent for warranting some hopefulness in a
fresh attack upon it. Never were there keener or
stronger thinkers than the Greek theologians of the
fourth century, who first formulated Trinitarian
thought in the creed of Nicsea. And yet the
Latins of the ninth centmy gave an extension to
the Trinitarianism of the fourth century which has
been accepted by all the Western churches. Wliy
is it unlikely that the nineteenth century may also
give the old line a new extension ?
Well, it would have to be something new to be
of much interest to me. I have become weary of
14 MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED.
preachers threshing the old straw in vain attempts !
to define the indefinable and explain the inexpli- |
cable. I confess I was rather glad to hear our min- ]
ister quote so orthodox an authority as Neander for '
my idea that the Trinity is no fundamental part of I
Christian doctrine. I am afraid that I am not i
much of a Trinitarian, though I am a member of J
Trinity Church. I have about given it up in my ;
own mind as a piece of old time speculation of not
much practical value nowadays.
I regret that so great a name as Neander should
seem to endorse that unbalanced statement, which
he himself carefully restricted to the metaphysical ,
form of the doctrine. Did not your minister go |
on to tell you so ? I
I suppose he did. He went on with Neander's \
views, but Madam Sandy's performance so broke |
me up that my attention let go.
That was too bad. These rash zealots for what
they call orthodoxy always mar matters more than i
they mend them. AVhy, man, Xeander goes on to j
say, as your minister must have added, that the
Trinity belongs to the ^^ proper and fundamental
essence of Christianity." That is precisely my j
thought about it. I am as far as can be from
your notion, that it is an antiquated, profitless bit |
of speculative theology. To me it is just tlu^ opiK>- '
J
MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED. 15
site — the most comprehensive, vital, and invigorat-
ing of all Christian truths, a very triith of truths,
in touch with Christian thought, feeling, and
action, at every point of the whole circle of life.
If you fancy you are not much of a Trinitarian, I
think I can show you that you are on the wrong
track. Let me be your switchman to another line
of thought, and I dare say you will come to a very
different conclusion.
Well, you seem so sanguine that perhaps I
ought to let you try. At least I shall be inter-
ested to know how it is that you have got on to
your mountain-top of solid rock and unclouded
vision, while I have got into such a foggy swamp.
I think I shall rather enjoy an hour in comparing
notes. You are the first man who has piqued me
with a fresh interest in re-opening the subject.
Will you tell me what made you give it up as
closed ?
Why, I went with it one day to our old minis-
ter, Dr. Sandy, who used to preach on it now and
then. " How,'^ said I, ^^ can three Persons be one
God ? '' He replied that the Three were indeed
persons, as distinct from each other as Peter,
James, and John, but that they were, notwith-
standing, one in the unity of a common divine
nature, as Peter, James, and John are one in the
16 MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED.
unity of a connnon liiiman nature. Now, to my
mind, that means three Gods as really as it means
three men.
I do not wonder at your rejecting such a notion,
though I might wonder that a minister holding
such a grotesque fancy can hold his place in a
church so scrupulous for orthodoxy as your Pres-
byterians are. It only illustrates what Dr. Bush-
nell said long ago, that there was a so-called or-
thodoxy which was " a mere tritheistic compost,"
and more careful to insist on the Threeness than to
guard the Unity of God. But do not mistake such
a caricature for the reality. Let me relate my an-
ecdote in turn. Some years ago a friend of mine
was put out of Presbyterian fellowship for a theo-
logical error. He concentrated the entire Deity in
the One Pereon of Christ, and regarded the tenet
of the Three Persons as an empty speculation.
Soon after he was disfellowshipped he happened to
meet Dr. Bellows, the minister of All Souls Uni-
tarian Church, in New York, who greeted him
thus : " Ah, Mr. X., I am very sorry to hear that
you no longer believe in the Trinity. But I w^ant
to tell you that I do believe in the Trinity."
That is a good story, but what did he, a Unita-
rian, mean?
Not that he belie vwl in the Trinity as understood
MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED. 17
by IMr. X's prosecutors, but merely that he ac
cepted the Biblical Trinity as he understood it. So
do very many Unitarians. They divide from us
in their philosophy rather than in their faith. You
v/ill hear them joining in that ancient chant to the
Trinity which we call the Te Deum ; or you will
hear them use the Trinitarian apostolic benedic-
tion in public worship : The grace of our Lord
Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the commu-
nion of the Holy Ghost be with you all.
That is all very well. Nevertheless, Dr. Bel-
lows would not have consented to be classed as a
Trinitarian, because that term is monopolized by
men of a diiierent way of thinking, and that is
just my difficulty.
Why is it any more of a difficulty in your case
than in mine? The Trinity, as I understand it, is
the fundamental article of my faith, yet I utterly
dissent from the Trinitarian notions of your Dr.
Sandy. Pray, do you imagine that if you should
get at the opinions of the first dozen Trinitarian
ministers you might converse with, you would find
them identical ? Nay, you would find them vary
in every case. Let me ask if you have not ob-
served that, while " Trinity Church " is a very
common name, a Trinity sermon is a very rare
thing.
18 MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED.
1 liave, indecfl, lieard very few such, and never
one that did not perplex and weary me.
The reason is, that tlie subject perplexes the ser-
monizers also. It is a wide-spread feeling among
them that the Trinity is better adapted to the theo-
logical lectm-e room than to the pulpit. They are
very shy of it. The Episcopal Church, indeed,
has its " Trinity Sunday," but with reference to that
an Oxford man once said to me, " We have dropped
the Trinity in England, except once a year." In
my view it is a sad plight to be in, but it is the
natural recoil from the blind alley where specula-
tion on an impracticable line has proven that there
is no \vay out. Meanwhile, as you might expect,
Trinitarian opinion is in a very chaotic state. The
average preacher clings to the biblical formula, be-
yond which he dimly apprehends a tri-personal
mystery which he names the Trinity, but regards
as inexplicable. Others go on to explain and de-
fine, and their opinions will vary all along the line
from Tritheism to Sabellianism — that is, from
three Gods, w^ho somehow are One, to three
temporary agencies of One God, who, for the
puq^ose of our redemption, acts as both Father
and Son and Spirit. You may be sure, then,
that if you think the name of Trinitarian would
bind you to any one clear-cut and universally
MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED. 19
received idea of the Trinity, you have miscon-
ceived the facts.
How that can be I cannot understand. The
Nicene Creed was framed for the express purpose of
shutting out Unitarians, who did not object to the
Apostles' Creed. If so, there is at least one clear-
cut, comprehensive formula, which all varieties of
Trinitarians unite in, and by which they are dis-
tinguished from Unitarians.
It will still more surprise you to hear that it is
not quite so. On the contrary, one of my friends,
a leader among Unitarians, has told me that he
prefers the Nicene Creed to the Apostles' Creed.
Nor have I the least doubt, either of his sincerity
or of his dissent from what is popularly called
Trinitarianism. Let me repeat the Nicene state-
ments concerning Christ which my Unitarian friend
accepts :
" One Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son
of God, begotten of His Father before all worlds,
God of God, Light of Light, very God of very
God, begotten, not made, being of one substance
with the Father.''
He repeated these very phrases to me, and added,
" I believe this with all my heart."
Well, that is passing strange. How can any
Unitarian believe that ? Do you understand it ?
20 MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED.
I think I do, for I liave often reflected on it as
a proof of the inadequacy of fixed theological form-
ulas to meet the shifl:ing exigencies of advancing
thought. The reason that a Unitarian can accept
such statements now, though they were framed ex-
pressly to exclude the old-time Unitarians, is that
the Nicene ideas concerning human nature as being
different in kind from the divine nature, have be-
gun to change, and both Trinitarians and Unitari-
ans are coming to agree in regarding human nature
as essentially one with the divine. It is in the
line of this changed view of human nature that I
believe we are to find whatever solution of the
Trinitarian problem is to be hoped for.
Please explain. This is something really new
to me.
Well, then, to be as brief as clearness permits,
Athanasius, who was the leader of the Trinitarian
party in the fourth century, and by whose influ-
ence the Nicene formulas were shaped, held that
there is an essential difference of nature between
man and God. He says: "We were fashioned
out of the earth. He [the Son of God] is by na-
ture and substance Word and true God . . . The
Word has real and true identity of nature with
the Father, but to us it is given to imitate it. . . .
We by imitation become virtuous and sons."
MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED. 21
Such was the dominant conception of human na-
ture when the Nicene formula put forth, as the
the test of orthodox Trinitarianism, its famous
word, komoousioSy Avhich affirms " the same sub-
stance " to belong to God and to Christ, as the
Father and the Son. On that one word Trini-
tarians and Unitarians parted irreconcilably.
But is it a fact that that word no longer parts
them?
It is. Some years since, Dr. F. H. Hedge, in
a printed essay, declared the adoption of that test
word, homoousioSj by the Council of Nicsea to have
been a grand victory of Christian truth. Not long
since, in a conversation on the Trinity, I quoted
Dr. Hedge's remark to an English theologian.
He could not understand it at all, and asked if
Dr. Hedge was speaking in a Pickwickian sense.
No wonder he asked you that. It is all dark
to me.
But it will not be, if you reflect on this : That
the core of humanity is its moral and spiritual
nature. Though man, as he appears on earth, is
composed of " spirit, soul, and body " (according
to Paul's account), the loss of the earthly body, at
death, leaves us no less human than before. This
shows that the flesh is a mere temporary accident^
as logicians say, of our humanity, while the spirit
22 MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED.
is its })ermanent essence. Now in this spiritual
core of human nature Christ was certainly of the
same nature as we, loving, praying, tempted, suf-
fering, rejoicing, as a man among men. But moral
and spiritual nature, whether divine or human, must
be of one and the same kind, however varying in
development. To deny this is to unsettle the
very foundations of conscience. Were spiritual
nature of different kinds, then goodness, truth,
justice and all spiritual qualities might be dif-
ferent in man and God, and Jesus' saying, ^'Be ye
perfect as your Father in heaven is perjedj'' would
have no practical value as a reliable rule of life.
Ah, I think I begin to imderstand. Dr. Hedge
meant that in adopting the homoousios the men of
Nicsea builded better than they knew.
Of course. He did not mean to extol their deci-
sion, with the limitations they gave it, as a finality,
but he accepted it as a basis for subsequent thought
to proceed upon. They were very far from seeing
what Dr. Hedge saw, and what Dr. Dale has lately
said : " The Christian doctrine of man is implicated
in the Christian doctrine of God, or to speak more
exactly, in the Christian doctrine of the Trinity ;
and the Christian doctrine of man determines the
Christian thcMjry of morals and the Christian theory
of society."* Concentrating their thought on the
* " Fellowship with Christ," p. 158.
MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED. 23
nature of Christ solely as related to God, and
overlooking its relation to man, they took no ac-
count of the fact that it was a nature equally one
with humanity as with Deity. They failed to see
that their favorite homoousios could not be appli-
cable to Christ apart from the human race from
which he sprang, and whose spiritual head he is.
But noAv what they asserted for Christ alone Chris-
tian thought goes logically forward to assert also
for mankind, that the race is spiritually " of one
substance with the Father.^^
I grant you this was a great gain for humanity,
though they failed to see it as we do. In establish-
ing their position, of course, they established every-
thing that logically follows from it, however long
it might be before the logical conclusion came. No
doubt it was, as Dr. Hedge says, a great victory
for truth.
Great, indeed, in view of its practical conse-
quences for morality and religion. Only in this
essential unity of all spiritual natiu-e, whether
divine or human, is there, as I was just now say-
ing, any solid certainty for conscience that right-
eousness is the same in man and in God, or any
practicable and permanent moral rule for the en-
deavor to think God's thoughts and to imitate
God's ways. Just this I take to be the import of
24 MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED.
Dr. Dale's pregnant remark, that our doctrine of
man, with our theories of morals and of society, is
involved in our conception of the Trinity. And
I now recall another remark of liis in conversation,
that ^^ the truth of the Trinity is that from which
we are to expect the most for the quickening and
deepening of Christian life."
You have given me an idea of the matter quite
unlike anything I have conceived before. Indeed,
I had fallen in with popular notions that I now
begin to suspect as both narrow and superficial. It
is too large a subject for us to finish in one inter-
view, and I would like to think over what you have
said. But you have given me the hope that there
is a way out of the long controversy into a common
understanding. On the one hand, it seems that
Trinitarians xary among themselves, ^vith no clear-
cut understanding of the Three Persons. On the
other, some Unitarians, at least, assent — of course
with their own interpretation of the words — ^to the
Nicene phrases that have till now been the very
shibboleths of Trinitarians. This being so, it begins
to look as if both parties might come together in a
common view of the subject which will contain all
of truth that they have separately contended for.
You are not the only one who thinks so. I was
talking one day with a circle of devout Unitarians,
MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED. 25
in a New England church, who expressed this very
hope. Not long since a prominent Trinitarian min-
ister in New England, who stands about midway
between consei'\^atives and liberals, said to me that
the Unitarian schism, which took place about a
century ago, could not have arisen, had the condi-
tions of Christian thought been what they are to-day.
Then there is Dr. Martineau, the leading English
Unitarian. Have you heard of his essay, ^' AWay
out of the Trinitarian Controversy ? "
I have not. What does he say ?
Comparatively few in this country seem to
have read it. I am suq^rised that it has received
so little attention among our theologians and relig-
ious journalists. It is one of the most luminous
and interesting contributions to the discussion of
our subject. In brief, his position is that Trinita-
rians and Unitarians have each been so snared in
an illusion of words, that they have been bHnd to
the fact that the Divine object of the faith of each is
really one and the same, though differently named
by each. The Unitarian worships the Father, the
Trinitarian, the Son. " But,'' says Dr. Martineau,
" He who is the Son in the one creed is the Father
in the other, and the two [creeds] are agreed, not
indeed by any means throughout, but in that which
constitutes the pith and kernel of both faiths."
26 MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED.
Why, that is novel enough, and almost para-
doxical. How does he make all that appear ?
More easily than you think. The Father, says
Dr. Martineau, is ^^ God in his primeval essence ; "
the Son is " God speaking out in phenomena and
fact.'^ In other words, the Father is Deity self-
existent, absolute, unconditioned, the inscrutable
source of all that is, the fathomless Mystery of
original and eternal being, unknowable except as
manifested in the things, events, and beings, that
proceed from him. But God as thus manifested
is not the Father who begets, but the Son who is
begotten of Him. With this thought Dr. Mar-
tineau thus addresses his Unitarian friends :
" Everything that you can say to convey a just
conception of your God — that he spread the heav-
ens, that he guided Israel, that he dwelt in the
Human Christ . . . you will discover registered
among the characters of the Son. It is in him
therefore, among the objects of your church-neigh-
bor's faith, that your belief is placed ; . . . you
omit the first Person, and begin with the second.
. . . The Father ... is really absent from the Uni-
tarian creed."
But is not Dr. Martineau here putting a broader
meaning to the term " Son " than >vill be generally
allowed ?
MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED, 27
Very likely, yet not broader than the Scriptures
allow, which regard all men as in the relation of
sonship to God. " We are kis offspring/^ said
Paul to a pagan audience, quoting the words from
a pagan poet. Nor is it any broader than reason
requires. In the dominant evolutionary conception
of science, all life is essentially one, and all life,
being derived from God, is related to him as the
filial to the paternal life. Yet, while this is so,
we properly reserve the appellation of the Son to
Christ, as the highest revelation of this filial life of
the world, which is all fi-om God.
Well, you certainly are not threshing over any
of the old straw. You have begim to give me
fresh ideas on a subject where I thought there
were none. Talk about the Trinity always seemed
to me far away, and dry, and interesting only to
folks that fancy hair-splitting on nice distinctions,
appreciable only by doctors of divinity. But
somehow it begins to look as if it might be closely
connected with human life and the world we live
in.
So it is, indeed. I think you will, in time, be
profoundly convinced that the Trinity is not a
truth for philosophers, any more than for all
thoughtful men, and that it is in Christianity the
very truth of truths, the richest of all in comfort
28 MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED.
and inspiration for heart and mind. If it has not
been such hitherto, it is because of the crudeness
of popular conceptions. It is a fact, as Dr. Mar-
tineau says, that " many a disciple, unschooled in
the fine distinctions of a Greek theology, thinks of
the Father chiefly as the God prior to the plan of
the Incarnation, of the Son as the historical figure,
of the Holy Ghost as the agent sent on the day
of Pentecost, to take the place of the ascended
Christ. He fancies these acting each on the other
as outside beings, and conducting a divine drama
among themselves." Undoubtedly this is the no-
tion which the Trinitarian cannot rationally ex-
plain, and which the Unitarian cannot rationally
accept.
Yes, and that is just the notion which I have
had, and which has made me say that I was not
much of a Trinitarian. But I will not say that
now. Not that the way is yet quite clear to me,
but I see a likelihood of its becoming clear when-
ever we can talk it through.
I do not doubt that. I hope to make it not
only as clear in your thought as it is in mine, but
also as helpful to your religious life arid spiritual
needs as it has been to me. It is a deplorable
mistake to fancy the Trinity to be a riddle which
no one can solve, and, even if one could solve it,
MISAPPEEBENSIONS CLEARED. 29
a thing of no practical benefit, like the northwest
passage to Asia, through the ice of the polar circle,
hard to find, and useless when found. Such a
Trinity there is, but it is the Trinity of scholastic
metaphysicians. With their dry and mouldy bread
we will have nothing to do. In place of that we
shall come to a truth which gives sacredness to life,
enthusiasm to philanthropy, patience and hope to
mortal struggles, and glory to the world in which
the Son and the Spirit show us the Presence and
Power of the Father.
I shall wait with eagerness for what you prom-
ise me on this new line of thought.
Pardon me, if I correct you. If it were wholly
a new line of thought, I should distrust it. It is
rather, as I have already suggested, an extension
of an old line. As I intimated, when speaking of
the hxmoousioSy we are logically obliged to carry
its application further than was done at Nicsea,
and to claim for the race of man that oneness of
spiritual nature with God which was there claimed
only for the great " Son of man." Thus extending
the Nicene line of thought, we shall find ourselves
conducted by that larger conception of God, which
the Scriptures in the light of evolutionary science
reveal, to a conception of the Trinity, alike clear
to reason, conformable to Scripture, precious to
30 MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED.
faith, and touching all the nerves of life with in^
spiring and uplifting power. I have so proved
this in my own experience, that I am always sorry
when I hear a Christian man speak of the Trinity
as more of a strain than a support to faith, and
as an old time speculation which should be re-
spectfully, but fii-mly, bowed out of our modern
thought. Those who talk so seem to me like
children who have not learned yet what an inheri-
tance is theirs.
It begins to dawn on me that the new theology,
of which I have heard so much, might have sug-
gested to me that it involved a new Trinitarianism,
as well as new conceptions of the Bible, and of the
Atonement, and of the future state of rewards and
punishments.
Yes ; those other questions, on which Christian
thought has been so warmly engaged, important
as they are, are really secondary to the question
which they all at length refer us to, concerning
the being of God, and his relation to the world.
Now, as I shall hope to show you, that question
finds its all inclusive answer in the truth of the
Trinity, which is therefore the truth of tniths.
Biblical study has been freeing us fi'om a crude
understanding of the Scriptures in general, and
from misinteq)retation of texts in particular. The
MISAPPREHENSIONS CLEARED. 31
advance of science has revealed to us the unity of
all life, and the evolution of life and all things in
an orderly and everlasting process, outside of which
not even the unique Person of Christ can now be ra-
tionally placed. Thus we have been supplied with
materials that were not available half a century
ago for fresh thought as to God and his relation
to the world. There must, therefore, be a fresh
discussion of this ; that is to say, the Trinitarian
question must be essayed again, with the fresh
light that this age has found. The reasonable pre-
sumption is, that we shall find ground, not only
to hold to all the truth that the ancients reached,
but to reach out from that to truth that is larger
and more satisfying. The hopeftilness of such a
prospect is, that here will appear fruitful fields
beyond the desert region we have wandered in,
and Christian unanimity after so much barren con-
troversy.
I share your hope for that. It seems to me
that the stubbornness of the Unitarian protest
through all the centuries of reigning orthodoxy is
most reasonably attributable, not to a perverse
hostility to truth, but to the necessarily divisive
nature of conclusions that were but partially true.
You are right there. When we get at the
whole truth, we shall all be at one.
II.
THE SON OF GOD
THE CAUSE OF CONTROVERSY
AND THE END OF IT
Cbe S»on i^ tU llitin0 Will of t\}t JTattjer." I*
Athanasitjs.
n.
THE SON OF GOD.
THE CAUSE OF CONTROVERSY
AND THE END OF IT.
How does it seem to you now ? said I, when we
next found ourselves free for conversation.
I have been thinking, he repHed, that Dr. Mar-
tineau^s view of the Father and the Son may recon-
cile more than the two parties he has especially in
mind.
How so ?
It seems to me that it opens a way out of the
agnostic difficulty as well as the Unitarian. I was
talking, since we parted, with a friend who is one
of the best of men, and leads a life of unselfish
goodness that puts many who call themselves
Christians into pitiful contrast. But he thinks
that all thought given to theology is wasted, be-
cause, as he says, the Infinite Being is utterly un-
knowable. It has occurred to me that his unknow-
able God corresponds with Dr. Martineau's con-
ception of the Father as "God in his primeval
35
THE SON OF GOD.
Of course this is unknowable to us — an
absolute mystery.
That it is and must be. What else do Christian
thinkei-s mean when they speak of God as trans-
cendant — that is, above and beyond the reach of
thought ? Yet this is the Father, the fathomless
Fountain of our life, known only by what rises to
the surface from the inscrutable depths. So much
we freely concede to the agnostic. Jesus also con-
cedes it. ^^ Neither hnoweth any man the Father
save the Son, and he to whom the Son vnUeth to re-
veal HimJ^
Do you suppose that Jesus meant by this that
He only, as the Son of God, makes known the
Father, and that there is no revelation of the
Father except through Him ?
Neither the Scriptures nor the history of thought
justifies so narrow an inference. Isaiah confessed,
" Doubtless Thou art our Father J^ The Greek
poet whom Paul quoted to the Athenians had
divined the same truth. So did the Greek philos-
ophers, especially the Platonists and the Stoics.
What Jesus did was to reveal in its fulness the
truth which His forenmners among Hebrew pro-
phets and Gentile sages had but partially glimpsed.
But did not Jesus say explicitly, ^' No man comr-
eth unto the Father but by Me f "
THE SON OF GOD. 37
Certainly, and yet we must not put a meaning
on His words which would make them untrue to
the facts. They point us along two lines of thought.
One is, that no one comes to the full revelation of
the Father except through the Christ of the Gos-
pels. The other is, that no one has come to any reve-
lation of the Father — such partial revelations as have
been preparatory to that which He made by Christ —
except through what there was of the Christ-spirit
in the world before the historic appearance of
Christ. What I have in mind is this : Before the
historical Christ was born, the essential Christ had
begun to appear, partially, of course, in a succes-
sion of more or less Christly men. It was through
such men — through what there was of Christ in
them — that Hebrews and heathen had begun to
come to the Father, before the advent of Christ
with His perfect revelation. Similar experiences
doubtless take place to-day. Why, this is what we
see whenever a Christian mother teaches her little
one to lisp " Our Father " for the first time.
It must be so, I admit. And yet it is not the
most obvious meaning of Christ's words.
Perhaps not ; and yet what seem obvious mean-
ings are often very superficial, and therefore falla-
cious. When Jesus said, " All that came before Me
are thieves and robbers/' the obvious meaning, as
38 THE SON OF GOD.
one might sa}-, ^vas that there had been only false
teaching in the world until His time. But He could
not have meant that, for He was ever quoting Moses
and the prophets. He meant only the false for-
malists, who had ruled everything for a good while
before Him. So we must not be misled to put an
obvious fallacy in place of a deeper truth in what
He says of the Father as revealed only by the Son.
Well, then, since Jesus did not intend to say that
the revelation of the Father is restricted to His
historic person, what do you think is the full scope
of His saying ?
I do not see how it can be any thing narrower
than this : The unseen can be known only by the
seen which comes forth from it. The all-generating
or Paternal Life, which is hidden from us, can be
known only by the generated or Filial Life in which
it reveals itself. The goodness and righteousness
which inhabits eternity can be known only by the
goodness and righteousness which issues from it in
the successive births of time. God above the world
is made known only by God in the world. God
transcendant, the Father, is revealed by God im-
manent, the Son. This revealing of the Father,
which is the function of the Son, did not begin
with Christ, as the Scripture itself and the history
of religious thought and life demonstrate, but it was
THE SON OF GOD. 39
perfected by Christ. In our conception of "the
Son ^' we must include, at least, all the more or less
Christly men who lived before Christ, for in them
also was the Spirit of the Son. Thus it is clear
that what Christ claims He claims specially, but
not exclusively, for that would be falsely.
I see it must be so. Any narrower interpreta-
tion of His words would put Him in contradiction
to historical facts. And it seems quite clear, in the
view you take, that we must give a wider sense to
the Trinitarian term. Son, than either Trinitarians
or Unitarians have thus far generally recognized.
Indeed we must. It has been formally restricted
to the historical person of Christ. But in reality
it must be extended to include the whole of that
Eternal Manifestation by which Transcendent
Deity — the unknown God of the agnostic, the hid-
den Father of the Trinitarian — is revealed as im-
manent, in all, as well as above all, indwelling in
His works, in the life of man, and most fully in
Jesus Christ. When He at length appears it is as
the Son of God, pre-eminently such, but not exclu-
sively.
That I take to be Dr. Martineau's view. The
Son, also called in Scripture the Word, is, as he
says, " God speaking out in phenomena and fact."
But if a Unitarian will agree to that, will he find
40 THE SON OF GOD.
Trinitarians disposed to go with him in giving this
larger meaning to their traditional formula, " God
the Son?''
Not all at once. Many have such crude concep-
tions of God, and of what personality is — especially
the divine and perfect personality, which they gen-
erally confound with the individuality, or separate-
ness of existence, which we see in the fragmentary
personality of man — that it will be only gradually
that a more spiritual theology can prevail. But
already Dr. Martineau's solution has been greeted
with a Trinitarian welcome. An orthodox Scotch
reviewer quotes Dr. Martineau's statement, " His
Word [also called Son] is as eternal as Himself,"
and says that " this is a ^ platform ' of preliminary
agreement never reached before." He says that
with " Eternal Sonship " as a basis for further dis-
cussion, a great advance has been made on the old
Unitarianism, and a hope opened " that the breach
made in the third century may be healed in our
times."
Stay a moment ; please make this unfamiliar
phrase, " Eternal Sonship," as clear as may be.
Most willingly, though it takes us for a few mo-
ments into rather deep waters. It was in the fourth
century the turning point of the Trinitarian dis-
cussions, and has come to be so again, though, as
THE SON OF GOD. 41
you see, with a wider meaning than then. The
contention of the Catholics against the Arians (the
representative Unitarians at Nicsea) was, that the
Son was eternal, and uncreated, and really Son, not
merely so called. Of course they did not use
^' Son " in a physical sense, but in a metaphysical.
But by it they meant to express symbolically two
truths of the utmost practical consequence. And
here we shall see what in our scientific times is con-
stantly illustrated — that the refined researches of
students connect closely with the needs of working-
men. By the Eternal Sonship, which, as I have
said, they unduly restricted to the pre-existent
Christ, the early Trinitarians sought to meet two
requirements of all seekers after God. We need to
know, first, that the inscrutable Deity has not with-
drawn Himself from human cognizance, and next,
that it is no go-between or undivine messenger, but
God Himself, who brings us knowledge of God.
These are, indeed, truths of supreme moment.
But I do not at once see how the notion of Eternal
Sonship carries them.
It will be quite clear to you as soon as you
put it in connection with two simple propositions
which you will readily grant : first, that it is the
very nature of a father to have a son ; next, that
^ son is identical in nature with his father. Ac-
42 THE SON OF GOD.
cordlngly, applying these correlative terms, Father
and Son, to God (in a symbolical and metaphysical
sense, of course), they meant by " Eternal Sonship,''
first, that it is of the very natm-e of Deity to issue
forth into visible expression. Thus they secured
Paul's faith, that God has never left Himself with-
out witness. They meant, next, that this outward
expression of God is not something other than God,
but God Himself in a self-expression as divine as is
the hidden Deity. Thus they answered Philip's
cry, '^ Shoio us the Father and it mffiMh us/^ and
thus they affirmed Jesus' declaration, "JZe that
hath seen Me hath seen the Father^' However
speculative and metaphysical you may have deemed
their thought, I think the practical value of it is
perfectly apparent.
Indeed it is. Not, however, imless we take
away the limitation of the word " Son," which was
imposed upon them by their idea of human nature
as essentially undivine. Giving that term the exten-
sion which you give it, it does not leave God out-
side of the world and far above it, but recognizes
Him as an inhabitant of it, animating it from with-
in, pervading it throughout, with us and in us, a
partaker of all human life, as well as dwelling with
men in His Christ.
Yes, and that is not all. Many scientific men
THE SON OF GOD. 43
have rejected Christianity because they fancy that
Divine Revelation is somehow an interference with
the uniform order of nature. Indeed, the mediaeval
style of Christian thought that still is popular has
given them cause for this misunderstanding. But
the early Trinitarianism was far wiser. The Eter-
nal Sonship attests that Revelation is not an after-
thought, nor an interposition, but a part of the order
of things ; nay, it is the eternal order. It is of the
very nature of Deity to issue forth in self-expres-
sion. Athanasius constantly illustrates this idea by
his favorite comparison of the relation of the Father
and the Son to that of a luminary and its rays.
'^ Who can imagine,'' he says, " that the radiance
of light ever was not ? "
You have made the point quite clear. May we
not depend upon it also in other matters, that what
is truest spiritually is also truest scientifically ?
I believe it to be so. There is no real conflict
between Reason and Revelation. President Hop-
kins once made a memorable remark about this :
Christianity and perfect Reason are identical.
Whatever is not perfect Reason is no part of Chris-
tianity.
Well, you have thus far made it plain that what
I once thought a subject of mere misty and profit-
less speculation, is not only clearly intelligible and
44 THE SON OF GOD.
reasonable, but vitally helpful to the practical
ends of spiritual life. And yet I have heard a
New England minister, who supposed himself an
orthodox Trinitarian, declare that the eternal gen-
eration of the Son " was eternal nonsense." You
can hardly wonder at the prejudice that I was
under when I first began to talk with you.
That is no wonder. What Dr. Bushnell, in re-
ply to those who accused him of Unitarianism,
called " the dilapidated and provincial orthodoxy
of New England," is responsible for no small
amount of skepticism, out of which thinkers better
acquainted with catholic Trinitarianism are en-
deavoring to lead the way. I believe that ordi-
nary Unitarianism, at present, largely supports
itself on its protests against a crude and mechanical
Trinitarianism which is beginning to dissolve.
And I see no reason to differ Avith Dr. Martineau,
when he says, " Let the advocates of both faiths
compare them from this point of view [that is,
that ' He who is the Son in the one creed, is the
Father in the other'], with mind open, not to
words only, but to the real thoughts they contain,
and with temper sensitive to sympathy rather than
to divergency, and there is hope that we may yet
all come into the unity of faith, and true knowl-
edge of the Son of God."
THE CAUSE OF CONTROVERSY. 45
I am sure that all will unite with him in his
hope and effort to realize it, who prize truth more
than party, and believe, as every truth seeker
must, that there is some truth which he has not
yet attained to. But the "way out'' does not
yet seem to be really so short and simple as Dr.
Martineau's account of it is. There is a difficulty
which I feel, yet can poorly express. It comes be-
fore me in the form of a question : How could so
long and bitter a controversy ever have arisen ?
The lines of it were first clearly drawn in the
fourth century. But it was rising as far back as
the close of the apostolic age. I believe it is gen-
erally admitted that in the Jewish section of the
primitive church Unitarian views largely ob-
tained. And even after the Council of Nicsea,
was it not long before the Trinitarian ascendency
there won was permanently established ?
Yes, the persecutions which Athanasius, as the
head of the Trinitarian interest, underwent for forty
years afterward are attested by the phrase that has
become proverbial, "Athanasius against the world."
Very well. Now this is my question : What
was the cause of this obstinate struggle ? Wliat
difficulty was at the root of it? Has this root of
opposition been removed ? If not, then, it seems
to me, we are not any nearer " the way out."
46 THE CAUSE OE CONTROVERSY.
I agree with yon. Let us first identify the root,
and next we will see whether it has been taken
away, or seems likely to be.
Well, what do you think was the cause of con-
troversy ?
It was precisely the same which now parts the
ordinary Trinitarian and Unitarian — a difference
about the relation of Christ to God, a difference
which I have already referred to as likely to be
done away with by a change of view as to the re-
lation of man to God in a common spiritual na-
ture. From then till now, the doctrine of the
Trinity has served mainly as a pedestal for the
deity of Christ. It is not far from true to say
that a Trinitarian minister may hold what view he
pleases as to the Trinity, provided he fully admits
the deity of Christ. The interest of Trinitarians
has been, and is, more in the statue than in its ped-
estal. Hence the wealth of phraseology with
which Christ's deity is affirmed in the creed of
Nicsea, and its confession of the Divine Triad,
in which the Son appears as the central personage.
The whole labor of Trinitarianism then was for
this close identification of Christ's nature with
God's. And, as Dr. Hedge tells us, we have rea-
son to be thankful for their success in it. I think
I can show you, however, that it has fur modern
THE CAUSE OF CONTROVERSY. 47
thought a still larger scope, but I cannot speak of
that till by and by.
I have observed that the Nicene creed has com-
paratively little to say about the Father and the
Holy Ghost.
True ; room is left there for us moderns to add
something for our needs, as your remark about the
agnostic difficulty suggested. But then there was
less need, perhaps less power than now, for any
greater explicitness on these points. The special
exigency of that time was to set forth the Scriptural
truth as to the nature of Christ. If the Creed gives
special emphasis to that point, it seemingly follows
the New Testament in so doing. What a wealth
of such texts the creed-makers found, as this of
PauFs, ^^ In him [^Chrisf^ dwelleth all the fulness of
(lie GodJiead bodily ; " — and this of John's, " The
Word was in the beginning with God, and was God,
and became flesh, and ice beheld His glory, as of the
only begotten from the Father.^' With these com-
pare the Nicene phrases, " God of God, Light of
Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made,
being of one substance with the Father.''
Yes, I admit that the Creed is scriptural, not
scholastic ; it contains none of the stumbling blocks
of the schools about the " three Persons,'' and the
" two natures." But why, then, if both parties
48 THE CAUSE OF CONTROVERSY.
were united in believing the Scriptures, should they
have divided upon such a creed ?
The radical difficulty was this. The Arians
could not believe that infinite Deity was subjected,
as in Christ, to human limitations. On the tes-
timony of the Scriptures, they held Christ to be
divine, but they held divinity to be a thing of
degrees, and Christ's divinity not in the highest
rank, but such only as a created being might lay
claim to, like, but not tlie same, with God in naturey
or suhdance — terms, by the way, nearly equivalent.
The Athanasians, on the contrary, contended that
when the Scripture said, "the Word was God,''
there was no qualification to be added. Christ's
nature was uncreated, and identical with God's.
This identity of nature they expressed by the test-
word we have already spoken of The Arians
said that Christ was homoioudoSj "of like sub-
stance" to God. The Athanasians said Jwmoou-
dos, "of the same substance." They differed, as
Carlyle said with a sneer, only upon a single letter,
but that letter was the small hinge on which the
door of a great truth opened.
Yes, I can see that only in regarding God and
Christ as of the same nature can we think of God
as not parted from man, and unapproachable, but
as united, at least in one point, with our humanity,
THE CAUSE OF CONTROVERSY. 49
and in Christ, at least, immediateiy accessible to
us.
Exactly so ; and this explains the pertinacity with
which the Trinitarian party insisted on the test-
word, homoousios. It Avas because, as Dr. Dale
has observed, " the ultimate — the spiritual — ques-
tion at issue was, whether God is a God nigh at
hand.''
AVell, now for my question : Has the under-
lying cause of the whole struggle been at all re-
moved, so as to give place to some hope of end-
ing controversy?
It seems so to me, and for this reason. The
ground of controversy was furnished by the belief
held in common by both parties, that human na-
ture was essentially of a different kind from the
divine. You remember my quotation to that
effect from Athanasius : " We were fashioned out of
the earth. He [Christ] is by nature and substance
Word and true God." This assumed difference
of natures made it impossible for Arians to see
how real Deity could share such humiliation and
suffering as Christ's. The Athanasians on the
other hand were content to accept the Scriptural
testimony that God Himself had so done. They
took the Pauline saying, " God was in Christ/^ in
its strict and unqualified sense. But, later, this
50 THE CAUSE OF CONTROVERSY.
difference of natures, about which nothing appears
in the Nicene Creed, had to be fully stated.
I would like to know exactly when and how.
At the Council of Chalcedon, a.d. 451. This
not only reaffirmed the Nicene statement that
Christ was of the same substance [homoousios] with
the Father, but added that He was also of the same
substance [JiomooiLsios] with man : " Consubstan-
tial with the Father according to the Godhead,
and consubstantial with us according to the man-
hood ... to be acknowledged in tw^o natures.
Two " natures,'' then, seems, as you said, to mean
about the same as two " substances."
Very nearly. By " nature " is meant the sub-
stance as manifest in its proper pow^ere and qual-
ities. This is the term used in the modern ver-
sion of the statement of Chalcedon, which you have
in the Westminster Confession, that Christ " was,
and continues to be God and man in t^vo distinct
natures, and one Pei-son forever." Now this set-
tlement has always been protested against, in the
name of reason, though not always according to
reason, from that day to this, and it cannot be re-
garded as a final settlement.
But has not the most devout and godly part of
the church always accepted it ?
It has ; but why ? For the indispensable truth
THE CAUSE OF CONTROVERSY. 51
which it contains, that " very God/' no created and
inferior being, is " in Christ, 7'econciling the world
unto Himself J^ A God who is near, not a far off
Deity, is a necessity of spiritual life. Conse-
quently, Christian thought has specially insisted
on the truly divine nature of Christ.
But has not orthodox Trinitarianism recognized
Him as having also a truly human nature ?
Yes, this has been formally recognized in creals,
but in fact it has not been so. The emphasis has
been altogether put on the other side. Insisting
on the unbiblical formula, " Christ was God,''
theologians have dropped the qualifying Biblical
phrase, " the mem Christ JesihsJ^ From early times
till recently, the so-called orthodox idea of Christ
has so sunk His humanity in His Deity, as to rec-
ognize in Him little more than the show of man-
hood.
But it is not so now, is it ?
No; the effort of Christian thought in recent
years has been to do justice to the neglected truth
of the manhood of Christ, the neglect of which has
cost the church dear through the one-sided super-
naturalism that it has fostered, as in the sacerdotal
ideas of salvation by sacraments, and the scholastic
ideas of salvation by dogmas — from both of which
most of the skepticism in Christendom has come.
^2 THE CAUSE OF CONTROVERSY.
Tlio liunian life of Christ has hcen studied for a
generation as never before. This, at least, has
been a happy result of the long Unitarian protest.
In this point, as I should judge from some ser-
mons on the humanity of Christ that I have heard
in Trinitarian churches, the two parties have come
to some agreement.
It is so ; they are very largely now at one in
recognizing Him whom Paul calls ^' The image of
the invisible God/' Him whom Paul also calls " T/ie
man Christ Jesus/' as a man thoroughly, with all
the essential limitations of human nature, but with-
out any of its accidental stain and sin. In fact, it
is beginning to be felt that in Christ there is iiot
only more of God than is elsewhere seen, but also
more of man. Christ is not only more divine than
any one of us ; He is also more human. This, as
you see, points to the truth we have already in-
sisted on, that Deity and Humanity are not two na-
tures, but one.
Yes, but now how does this tend to the removal
of the old rock on which the parties split ?
In this way : this study of humanity, as seen in
its perfection in Christ, has run parallel with and
auxiliary to the development of a better psychology
— that is, a better account of what human nature
is. For a right idea of this it seems a thing of
THE END OF CONTROVERSY. 53
course that we should study human nature at its
best, not merely in its depraved conditions. This,
with other considerations, has led many thinkers of
both parties to break with the ruling idea of the
past, and the underlying ground of their long dis-
sension, that our nature is in its essence undivine
and different from God's.
I see how the study of manhood as it appears in
Christ would tend that way. But you referred to
" other considerations.'^
We were speaking of such in our previous con-
versation, especially of this : That the moral and
spiritual element, which is the essential core of hu-
manity, must be identical in nature with the moml
and spiritual essence of Deity, else we could have
no ceiiainty that righteousness in man is the same
kind of thing that it is in God. Only on this
ground, as I have before said, can we find any im-
mutable basis for morality, or any logical and prac-
tical ground for Paul's exhoilation, " Be ye imita-
tors of God, as beloved children.^^
Yes, I remember ; and that took hold of me so
that I am eager to know what more you have to
add to it.
Let me answer by asking you if you have ever
felt a practical difficulty in recognizing Christ as
the pattern Man, whom we are bound to copy ?
54 THE END OF CONTROVERSY.
I own that I liave. When it has been put to
me in sermons that I ought to overcome my temp-
tations as Christ overcame His, the appeal has
been somewhat neutralized by the thought that
Christ could, because He was God as well as man,
while I have no such advantage.
That is just the palsying effect which the fallacy
of " two natures " in Christ produces in a great
many who hear the inspiring appeal of the Apostles
to Christ as our example, the ideal of Christian as-
piration. When men think that in Christ God
was allied with man in a kind of union forever un-
attainable by any other son of man, not all, but the
majority, feel that the obligation is weakened by
the impossibility. Hence a good deal of moral
negligence shelters itself under the idea which your
Westminster divines have expressed : " No mere
man since the fall is able perfectly to keep the com-
mandments of God.'' Here again you see there is
a moral exigency for recognizing the unity of the
divine and human. If Christ is to be our leader,
and we His followers, in the struggle for righteous-
ness, then He and we must be on the common
ground of one nature. He with no advantage of
indwelling Deity that is essentially impossible to
us.
I see this clearly. Now, as I understand you.
THE END OF CONTROVERSY. 65
the two parties are approaching agreement in the
view that there is but one spiritual nature, and that
this may he indifferently spoken of as divine or
human.
Yes ; divine on the infinite side ; human on the
finite.
Furthermore, you say that this one nature be-
longs equally to God, to Christ, and to mankind,
and that in this fact is grounded the immutableness
of moral distinctions, and the possibility of moral
progress.
Yes ; and now I think you see how it is that
Unitarians are to-day found who accept the Nicene
affirmations of the deity of Christ, and take its
test word, homooiisios, as true, not for Christ
alone, but for the whole race to which He
belongs.
I do, and I see how all who, with Dr. Hedge,
insist on the strict humanity of Christ, may join
him in thinking that the Nicene theologians builded
better than they knew, and gained a great victory
for truth, when they made the homoousios a point
of the catholic faith. But tell me now, what ob-
jection can Trinitarians make to agreement in these
views ?
Speaking as a Trinitarian myself, I can see no
reasonable objection, since in these views Christ
56 THE END OF CONTROVERSY.
appears to be all divine, as well as all human.
But this conception was long ago reached by Lu-
theran Trinitarians in their ^^ Formula of Con-
cord " (a.d. 1576), affirming that Christ is God
when He dies, and man when He judges the dead.
This thoroughly accords with Christ's thought,
''T/ie Fcdhei' is in Me and I in Him;'' ''Tlie Father
tJud dwelleth in Me He doeth the works'' Christ's
way of speaking requires us to think of Him not
as God and man, but as God in man, and man in
God.
But will not Trinitarians object that according
to these views we are all God, and that this is
Pantheism ?
Kot with good reason. It certainly is not Pan-
theism. Pantheism not only holds that God is in
all things, but that God is nothing more than a
name for the sum of all things. Pantheism recog-
nizes God as no more than immanent, that is, in-
dwelling in all things. Christianity recognizes
this also, but much more, God transcendant,
above all things. Plainly enough, God immanent
is " very God," yet is not God transcendant.
This is what Trinitarians have always been care-
ful to affirm, the Son is not the Father, but the
Father is in the Son. And do you nut remem-
ber how Jesus quotes approvingly one of the Old
THE END OF CONTROVERSY. 57
Testament sayings which attribute divinity to
man? — ^^ I said, ye are gods.^^ Microscopic, in-
deed, but divine are we, sparks, as it were, of the
flame of Deity.
But do not Trinitarians say that Christ is the
Creator of all things, and quote St. Paul for it,
^' oiie Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things f "
Yes ; I suppose many imagine that to mean that
the Son was the agent to whom the Father dele-
gated the work of creation. But Athanasius
vigorously protests against the idea that the Father
simply begot the Son, and then the Son made all
things. Not only the ancient Trinitarians, but the
Scripture itself repudiates such an idea. Jesus says,
"Jfi/ Father worketh even until nowJ' But have
you noticed that the Revised Version has changed
the text you quoted?
No ; how should it read ?
Instead of " by whom,'^ it reads " through ivhom
are all things.''^ Accordingly we must modify the
same phrase in the Nicene creed, and read ^^ through
whom " instead of ^^ by whom."
But does this materially alter the sense ?
I think it does in this way. First, it is less open
to a mechanical interpretation, in the sense of a
delegated worker. Next, while it regards Christ
^ the cause of all things, it permits us to distinguish
58 THE END OF CONTROVERSY.
between God as the original Cause, by whom all
things were made, and Christ as the final eause —
the end for whieh are all things.
You Avill need to explain this further; it is a
nice point, and new to me.
It is a nice point, but for any clear and true
thinking on this subject it is all important. It
can, how^ever, be made very clear. In accord with
the Scripture, the Creed recognizes not the Son but
the Father as Creator. " I believe in God, the
Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth,
and of all things, visible and invisible.'^ In
what sense, then, can Christ be the cause ^' through
whom are all things ? ^^ Certainly not as the First
Cause, but as the Final Cause. Christ, not as iso-
lated, but as the Head of the perfected humanity,
whose Divine Ideal He is, is the end for which all
things have their being, their Final Cause.
I see the reasonableness and the need of the dis-
tinction which reserves the work of creation to the
Father. But does not the phrase, "through whom,"
carry the idea that this Final Cause is somehow in-
strumental to the making of things ?
Certainly, and so that very text indicates, when
it goes on to say, *^ and ice through Him.^^ Christ
is the instrumental cause of our being, as Paul says,
" chUdr-en of God through faith in Him.^^ He is
THE END OF CONTROVERSY. 59
also the final cause of our being what we are.
That is, we exist for Him, for the realization of a
Divine humanity in solidarity mth Him. In the
combination of these two thoughts you have the
right point of view. The Divine End, or final
cause, of all things, is the consummate and perfect
life, of which Christ is the type. But this Divine
Life is not an end outside the process of its devel-
opment. It is immanent in the whole process as
the quickening and organizing principle of the
whole. It is at once the end, or consummation,
and the instrumental cause of the whole movement.
Have I made it clear ?
I think I can see it as you do. It reminds me
of the point you made, that before the advent of
the historic Christ the essential Christ had begun
to appear in a succession of more or less Christly
men, prophets and sages, who were forerunners to
prepare His way.
Undoubtedly, what we see in Christ is the Di-
vine Life that has ever been immanent in the
world, ever imfolding itself toward its perfect
glory, as both the instrumental and the final cause
of all things.
It is a grand thought, and to me, at least, it
seems grandly true. But now will not Trinita-
rians say that, after all, your idea of the strict
60 THE END OF CONTROVERSY.
identity of nature in Christ and in us lowers the
height at which the Apostles view Him as im-
mensely above all other men, even the godliest ?
Will they not say that thus we do away with the
peerless uniqueness of ^^the only begotten Son of
Godf''
Very likely, but not wtU. If they read their
Bibles more carefully than some of them seem to
do, they wnll observe that Luke speaks also of
Adam as " son of God^ AVliat we do aw^ay
with is not the uniqueness that is denoted by
" only begotten/' but only a false theory about it.
You get the Scriptural point of view when you
notice that the Epistle to the Hebrew's calls Isaac
the only begotten son of Abraham, as being the
son of special promise, though Abraham had an
older son, Ishmael. So this same epistle speaks of
Christ as "■ the first begotten." Accordingly, we
must refuse to recognize the term " only begotten "
as belonging to Christ in virtue of any difference
of nature from us. We discover the gromid of it
in an exceptional fulness of life, not only filled,
but saturated — iron white with heat is the Athana-
sian simile — w^ith consciousness of the indwelling
Father. Far beyond all human experience as
this is, yet Paul does not deem it essentially and
forever impossible to man ; for he looks forward
THE END OF CONTBOtEBSY. 61
" till we all attain unto the measure of the stature of
the fulness of Christ J'
You have so fully disposed of every point where
a possible objection might rise, that, if I suggest
one more, it is only for the sake of completeness.
Jesus, in His parable of the Wicked Husbandmen,
draws a wide contrast between the prophets, as
God's servants, and Himself, as God's Son. The
same contrast reciu-s in the Epistle to the Hebrews.
Moses is said to have been " faithful as a servant,
but Christ as a son.'' Might it not be said, that
this shows Christ to have been related to God in a
way essentially different from the godliest of the
men of old ?
Indeed, it does show this, and I admit the fact
of such a difference. But you see that the question
is still left open : In what does this difference con-
sist ? Does it consist in such a difference of na-
ture as is alleged between the divine and the hu-
man? We have observed the grave difficulties
besetting such a view. Does it not, then, consist
in a difference of spirit, as between the legal spirit
of a servant, and the loving spirit of a son ? Un-
deniably, there was such a difference between Jesus
and Moses. This, indeed, may be said to be only
a moral difference, but moral differences are as es-
sential as any. As related to God, the contrasted
62 TSE UND OF CONTBOVEEST.
terms " sen-ant " and " son " are each ethical, and
so the difference which they mark must be ethical.
In accordance with this is what Jesus says of John
the Baptist : " There hath not arisen a greater, yet
he that is hut little in the kingdom of heaven is
greater than Ae."
I cordially grant that you have cleared your
position of all objections, and that your views com-
mend themselves to me as es^ery way reasonable.
But still I can hardly deem it possible that a con-
troversy that has gone on for fifteen hundred years
can be put to rest in one generation, or in two.
You have easily convinced me, but the very diffi-
culties I have had with current ideas made it easier
for me to take the way out as soon as presented.
But those who are content with these ideas, and do
not see the rational difficulty they involve, will not
readily part with them. They w411 even resent
your pointing to the way out of the controversy, as
a solicitation to the abandonment of the true faith.
I fear they will. It has always been so, that
those who w^re merely trying to remove the
stumbling blocks from the way of faith have been
accused of trying to destroy the road. But it is
still a most Christian task, and one that we must
never give up, however defamed for it, to try to
think ourselves together on the questions which
THE END OF CONTROVERSY. 63
unhappily divide Christian people into hostile
camps, especially in regard to this truth of truths,
the Trinity, the richest of all truths in its practical
connections with human life.
What you have just said reminds me that you
are yet far from having given me your full
thought about it. I remember your remark that
the doctrine of the Trinity has even a larger inter-
est for modern than for ancient thought.
I am convinced that it has, and I desire much
to talk it through with you. But we have covered
so much ground to-day, that you must wish to go
over it in your own mind before we go on to-
gether. Very likely you will find questions to
put on points that we have already touched. Then,
of course, you are aware that there is one most im-
portant part of the Trinitarian problem that we
have not yet broached at all, the part which re-
lates to the Holy Ghost. For all this I am sure
we shall need to take more time another day.
Be sure that I shall look forward to this with
lively interest. It is not merely for my own intel-
lectual satisfaction, but for the still larger interest
that I shall find in helping others out of the
swamps from which you are extricating me.
in.
THE WORD OR FORM OF GOD
AND
HOW TO THINK OF THE INCARNATION
0 martJeHoujf! 45 toorj^bipful !
1^0 son0 or j^ounb is fjcarD,
'iJBut EUcrpttberE, anb cberip bour,
%n lobe, in toisDom, and in potocc,
€bt Ht\}tx j^peah? W licar ctcrnai toorD.
Faber.
in.
THE WORD OR FORM OF GOD
AND
HOW TO THINK OF THE INCARNATION
It seemed to me, said my friend, on our way
from chm'ch one Sunday evening a few weeks
later, that you had pretty thoroughly cleared of ob-
jections the view you gave me. But you were say-
ing when we parted, that in thinking it over I
might find need to question you further, and
doubtless you had in mind the very points I wish
now to ask about. I have been carefully reading
over the Epistles of Paul and the Gospel according
to John, which seem so clearly to testify that
Christ w^as conscious of a life that He had before He
lived in this world. There, for instance, is His
saying, " Before Abraham was, I am!' Some
might object that this is in the Fourth Gospel,
about which some critics doubt. But the same
thought is in PauFs remark : ^^ Ye know the grace
67
te THE WORD OR
of our Lord Jesus Christy that though He was ricJiy
yet for your sakes He became j)Oor, that ye through
His poverty might become richJ'^ Do not such testi-
monies to Christ's pre-existence indicate His nature
as superhuman ?
I think we shall have to look elsewhere to find
proof that Christ was superhuman. You know
that many people, some of them Christians, but
more of them Buddhists, believe that all men have
had existence in a previous life. I do not share the
belief; it is not incredible; it is rather not proven.
But I refer to it as indicating that there is nothing
essentially superhuman in the fact, which I do not
deny, of Christ's pre-existence. There is another
saying of Jesus in point here : ^^ No man hath as-
cended into heaven^ but He that descended out of
heavefiij even the Son of man which is in heaven.^^
The humanity which we see in Christ is not lim-
ited to this world, but exists before it, as wtU as
after.
But does not the Scripture expressly affirm that
Christ is superior to the angels?
No doubt it does. But it leaves the question
open, in what that superiority consists, whether in
a higher kind of nature, or in function, influence,
and achievement. The point may be illustrated
by the superior reverence which, in degree as the
FOEM OF GOB. 69
ideals of Christianity obtain preference to all
others, we accord to philanthropy as compared with
intellectual power. The most potent names, the
highest thrones, are those of benefactors. It is
these of whom the heavenly doxology in the Apoc-
alypse says, " they i^eign upon the earth.^' I think
that this is the most reasonable point of view in so
obscure a subject as the relation of Christ to the
angels. The Redeemer of the human race may
well be thought of as the Apostles describe him, a
prince of princes in the world of spirits.
I have met with the suggestion that the angels
may be simply the perfected spirits of just men.
Do you think that probable?
It is possible. The whole subject is a field for
conjectiu'e. At least, we may say that the angels
are identical in spiritual nature with men. Jesus
says of the dead who have entered into the life of
the world to come, that they are " eqical vnth the
angelsJ^ But we must not wander from our
point. What I think quite certain is, that the
homooiLsios, which the Creed afBrms of Christ and
the Father, is a universal fact in the world of
spirit. The essential core of human nature is
spirit. Jesus says, " God is Spirit.^' The Scrip-
tures term angels " spirits." However manifold in
rank, spiritual nature is of one kind.
70 THE WORD OR
Is there then no line between God and man ?
Let me answer by asking, Is there a line be-
tween the Infinite and the finite ? We recognize
what is Infinite, and what is finite. We see that
the one is not the other. But we can draw no
line and say, Here the finite ends, and here the In-
finite begins. According to the Scriptures, the one
is so in the other that no line can be drawn be-
tween them. Paul teaches, both that God is in us,
and we in God. ^^In Him we live, aiid move, arid
have our being. ^^ He " is over all, and through all,
and in all.^^
But is not John's saying, that the Word, who
w'as in the beginning with God, and who was God,
became flesh in the Christ, usually taken to mean
that, in what we call the Incarnation, God fii'st
manifested himself in humanit}^ ?
That is, no doubt, the common mistake. But it
is corrected by the fact we dwelt on in oiu" last con-
versation, that before the advent of the historical
Christ, the essential Christ had begun to come into
the world in a succession of more or less Christly
men. In every such man of God, according to
the measure of the grace given him, there had thus
been what we might call a pre-historic incarnation
of the Divine Word. Of these it is true that John
says nothing, but we must not mistake silence for
FORM OF GOD. 71
negation. Now but for these the historic Incarna-
tion could not have come to birth in " the fulness
of the time/'
I am disposed to think that the common notion
of the Incarnation is much narrower than it should
be. But now I wish you would tell me how you
understand that mysterious name, " the W(yrdJ^
As John uses it, it seems so unlike an}i;hing else in
the Bible. Has it not been supposed to be a piece
of Grecian philosophy, and no genuine thought of
the Apostle ?
Quite unjustifiably so. There is a close parallel
to it in the soliloquy of Wisdom in the eighth
chapter of Proverbs. The coeternity of Wisdom
with Jehovah is there described in terms similar to
John's description of the coeternity of the Word
with God. All there is of Grecian philosophy in
John is simply the form, suited to his times, into
which he cast this Old Testament idea of the Eter-
nal Wisdom through which God made all that is.
The term Logos, or Word, is said to have been
borrowed from Philo, a Jewish-Greek philosopher
of Alexandria. And it was certainly an improved
substitute for the Hebrew term, ^^ Wisdom."
You must explain that, for Hebrew or Greek is
all beyond me.
It can be made very plain directly. Professor
72 THE WORD OB
Max Miiller has given us the key to it in his ob-
servation, that a word is simply a spoken thought,
made audible as sound. Take away from a word
the sound of it, and what is left of it is simply
the thought in it. This simple distinction is pre-
served in the Greek noun, logos, in the double
meaning which it carries of thought and speech,
while its English synonym, '^ word," means only
speech. An English reader loses this in the trans-
lation, and it is no small loss. To us a word is
something transitory and unsubstantial, which dies
upon the air as soon as spoken. But to a Greek
there was the abiding thought behind the passing
form.
Ah, you have quickly solved the puzzle, and I
confess it was a puzzle to me, that what seems so
fugitive and unsubstantial as a word should be the
name given to that Avhich " was in the beginning
vMi God,^^ and " was God.^^
Well, you see now what John's phrase conveyed
to a Greek. His Logos, or Word, . meant first,
Eternal Thought, and next, a coetemal Utterance
of it in outward expression. Here we find that
truth of the " Eternal Sonship '' which Dr.
Martineau has recognized, the Eternal Manifesta-
tion of God. So Athanasius used to say, " The
Word is always Son," John's further meaning is,
FORM OF GOD. 73
that this Divine Word, or Son, wherein God
eternally manifests Himself, is as really Divine
as God Himself: God immanent in the finite
manifestation is one with God transcendent in His
Infinitude.
What, do you say that the Word was God, and
yet finite ?
Finite only as to form ; infinite as to what the
form suggests or expresses. How else could we
think ? By " Word " some kind of form is
meant, and any form must be finite. But the
Word is the form taken by the Infinite Intelli-
gence, which transcends all forms. And this,
whether under a form or above it, is God. I
think you must see that in the very nature of
things the Infinite Deity cannot be apprehended by
finite minds except under some finite form, or
a ^ord ; " while that which we apprehend under
such a form must be the Deity Himself.
But are you not departing here from the Atha-
nasian orthodoxy ? You were saying in our previous
conversation that the Arians held that Christ was
of a created nature, and not eternal, ' while the
Athanasians held the contrary. I agree with you
that in the nature of things the Word, the " form
of God " in which, according to Paul, Christ pre-
existed, must be finite. I do not so clearly see
74 THE WORD OB
how this differs from the Arian idea of a nature
that is created, not eternal.
But you will admit this, that while an infinite
form is a contradiction in terms and unthinkable,
it is not so with an eternal form. That is recog-
nized in Plato's doctrine of " ideas," as the eternal
patterns of the things that are created in time.
And what did Tennyson say when anticipating the
future reunion with his dead friend ?
" Eternal form shall still divide
The eternal soul from all beside."
For my part I cannot think of the eternal Intelli-
gence as without some coeternal Form of utterance
or expression. Most true is Faber's thought :
" Everywhere, and every hour,
In love, in wisdom, and in power.
The Father speaks his dear, eternal Word."
Neither can I think of this eternal Form, or
"Word," as created, in the Arian sense of the
term. By creation Arius meant an act of God
that was voluntary but not necessary to Him,
something that He could dispense with. But the
Athanasian thought is, that self-expression is a ne-
cessity of nature to the Infinite Mind. A dumb
God was to them unthinkable. And so they put
into the Nicene Creed that clause which says of the
F0E3I OF GOD. 75
Son, " Begotten, not made." By creation the
Arians understood things which did not always
exist, and their usual formula said of the Son,
"There was a time when He was not." The Atha-
nasians, on the contrary, affirmed as in the Nicene
formula His eternal existence : " Begotten of His
Father before all worlds."
Well, I cannot see but that you are orthodox
according to the ancients, even if not according to
some moderns. But now let me ask if Paul, in
that famous second chapter of his letter to Philippi,
does not imply that the pre-existing Christ was the
sole Word, or Form, of God.
Not the sole, however the supreme Form. It is
singular that the Revisers have not made the same
correction there which they made in that other
text, in the letter to Timothy, where they have rec-
tified the sense by reading, " The love of money is a
root of all evils; " not, the root. So here, Paul does
not say the Form of God, as if there were but one,
but " a form." His exact words are : " WhOj orig-
inally existing in a divine form — literally, a form
of God — thought it not a thing to grasp at to be on
an equality ivith God.^' There is no such thing,
either in Scripture or in reason, as the one sole
Form of God, which is suggested by our mistrans-
lation.
76 THE WORD OR
It also seems to me that Paul does not regard
the pre-existing Christ as possessing full equality
with God, for a thing in possession is not " a
thing to grasp at.'' But please now restate for
me concisely the points of this somewhat intricate
discussion.
Varying slightly from the order in which they
came up, they are these : What John means by
" the Word " is God's eternal self-expression in
some outward form. Such " a Form of God," as
Paul calls it, was the pre-existent humanity of
Christ. Such " a form of God " is our humanity,
which, however corrupted, is identical in nature
with Christ's. Here I am reminded of Dr. Dale's
recent remark, that Christ's Incarnation was not
" an isolated and abnormal wonder. It was God's
witness to the true and ideal relation of all men to
God." *
That is a remarkable saying. Do you think he
means to dissent from the current view as to the
miraculous birth of Jesus ?
Not at all, though it might be so understood, if
one were to take for granted what is by no means
true, that there can be no Divine incarnation with-
out a miracle. As to the miracle, that is a sepa-
rate and wholly independent question. We shall
* Christian Fellowship, p. 159.
FORM OF GOD. 77
come to this point later on. I take Dr. Dale to
mean only this : God was not word-less, dumb, or
unexpressed in form, until the historic hour when
in Christ " the Word became flesh." This event
we call by preeminence " the Incarnation," since in
Christ the Divine Word finds fullest utterance.
But it is no detached event, it is the issue of an
eternal process of utterance, the Word " whose go-
ings forth/^ as Micah said, " have been from of old,
from everlasting,''^ Since all that is finite proceeds
from the Infinite and Self-existent One, all the
forms of finite existence are embodiments of Him,
expressions of His Eternal Intelligence, and, there-
fore, though in varying fulness of expression, His
Word.
What you have said reminds me of what I was
reading the other day :
" Let each man think himself an act of God,
His mind a thought, his life a breath of God."
I realize the profound truth of this much more
clearly for what you have said.
Certainly, it is only when we enlarge our
thought of the Incarnation, and view it no longer
as an isolated and abnormal wonder, but rather as
the luminous and convincing act, which reveals the
eternal process of the Word as taking effect not in
78 THE WORD OR
Christ only, bnt in iis also, that the kinship of all
himian lives in God begins to be realized in a di-
vine sympathy of each with each ; oui' separate
lives cease to seem so exclusive of each other, and
our human brotherhood is profoundly felt in a
sense of our real unity in the Divine Fatherhood.
So the scattered pools in the rocks by the shore are
united by the inflow of the sea tide.
Yes, and now I begin to understand what your
Episcopalian friends who are interested in the
laboring men mean by their idea of studying so-
cial problems " in the light of the Incarnation."
But here, at any rate, if not before, it seems to me
we part company with the old Athanasian ortho-
doxy. What you said in our first conversation
made it plain that they diifered from Dr. Dale's
idea of the Incarnation. Did they not regard it as
an isolated and abnormal wonder ?
They certainly did. They recognized the Di-
vine Word, or Son, in Christ only. To them He
only was the proper issue of the Father's nature,
and begotten of Him. All we were of alien na-
ture, fashioned from earth. But they did well in
securing that Christian thought should ever recog-
nize, at least in one elect member of our race, the
nature of very God. Thus they laid the founda-
tion on which advancing thought now reaches up
FORM OF GOD, 79
to that larger and truer conception of our human-
ity, on which we base our hope of realizing a di-
vine morality in individual life, and a divine order
in the social organism.
What you have just said recalls a remark you
have already made, that the Trinitarian doctrine
has a larger interest for modern than for ancient
thought.
Yes ; but before we take that up let me ask you
a question, for we must make it still clearer, if we
can, how we should think on this whole subject of
the Logos and the Incarnation. Have you not
had this idea of the Incarnation, that it was the
entrance of the Divine Substance, or Essence, into
combination with a human substance, or essence?
I have, but we have disposed of that idea, the
fallacy of the ^^ two natures." Indeed, it seems to
me a rather gross and mechanical conception, like
that of an alloy of different metals. I agree with
you that we ought to give up such phi^ases as " the
union of God a7id man," because they inevitably
suggest some such mechanical idea. I greatly pre-
fer the way of speaking which you have suggested,
the manifestation of God in man.
Very well ; now as to this manifestation of
God, which the Athanasians thought of under the
names of Logos (or Word) and Son, how do you
80 HOW TO THINK OF
think of it — as the manifestation of the Divine
Substance or Essence, or of Divine Powers — prop-
erties and qualities?
I do not know. I have never asked myself
that question, and have never analyzed my
thought on that subject. Does it make any differ-
ence what one thinks about that ?
It seems to me that it does. In the first place
we do not know anything about substance or es-
sence, whether material or spiritual, human or di-
vine. All that we know is the properties or qual-
ities of substances. Who can know what iron is
in its essence, apart from its properties or qualities ?
No more can we know what man is in essence,
or what God is. We must strictly keep to what
we know. Then next, to avoid pantheism, we
must distino;uish between God and all that derives
existence from Him. John does so in his thought
of the Logos, the Form in Avhich Infinite Intelli-
gence eternally finds utterance. Not only does he
say, " the Word teas GodJ^ thus identifying the
two, but also, '•'' the Word was ivith God/' thus dis-
tinguishing the two. Now I think it of great im-
portance to guard this distinction, and so I would
draw a firm line between the Divine Substance, of
which we can know nothing, so wholly transcend-
ent is it to all thought, and the Divine powers.
THE INCAENATIOK 81
properties and qualities immanent in the visible
forms of existence, and clearly recognizable as
proper objects of thought. In so doing we shall
not only steer clear of pantheism, but we shall do
justice to all of truth that agnosticism can protest
for.
I partly understand you, but I should better
appreciate your distinction if you would show me
how you apply it in your thinking.
Well, take first the subject that is central in all
Trinitarian thought, the deity of Christ. What i?
the popular conception ? The ordinary Unitarian
insists that Christ was " a mere man." As ii
there could be such a thing as " mere " man, ex-
clusive of aught above and beyond him, self-
centred and self-moved ! The ordinary Trinita-
rian, on the other hand, insists on his formula,
that Christ is God and man, which we have al-
ready discussed. Do you not see that each of them
is thinking of substances or essences, the divine
and the human, as separate or as combined?
They are at a dead-lock simply because they are
disputing about that of which it is impossible to
know anything.
I see this clearly enough, and it would seem
that the only Avay out is on the other line of
thought, dealing solely with the Divine powers
82 HOW TO THINK OF
and qufilitl«?, so confessedly found in Christ. But
it seems strange that this way should not be taken.
I suppose that Trinitarians are afraid, first, of
conceding anything to Unitarians, as persons to be
opposed always, and next, of seeming to be content
with something less divine in Christ than " very
God,'' if they should be satisfied to find in Him
Divine powers and qualities only.
A groundless fear you deem it, I suppose.
I do, and, as I think, with good reason. For,
first, every Divine power and quality pertains to
the Divine essence ; next, the Scripture itself leads
us on this line. "TFc beheld His glory, ^^ says
John, " glory as of the only begotten, full of grace
and tndhJ' Here the fulness of God in Christ is
expressly recognized as a fulness of moral qualities
— " grace and truthJ^ Then, on the other hand,
the fact that grace and truth are of the essence of
the moral nature, whether in God or man, points
to the conclusion we reached some time ago, the
identity of this nature, whether viewed in its Di-
vine side toward Infinitude, or on its human side
in finiteness.
You have made your point, that we should
study Powers, not Substances, quite clear in its ap-
plication to our thinking about Christ. Please
show me now how you apply it further.
THE INCARNATION. 83
I hold that we must take the same line of think-
ing in regard to the world itself, animate and inan-
imate, as an embodiment — a sort of incarnation — of
God. The Scriptures look on the universe as a
real logos^ or word, of God. " Th£. heavetis declare
the glory of God.'^ " Day unto day vUereth speechJ^
St. Paul tells us that " the invisible things of God
since the creation are perceived through the things
that are madeP Indeed, to a large part of man-
kind the main part of Revelation has come in this
line. Even we shall find that Nature has much to
tell us of God which even Christ has not told us,
supremely important as is what Christ has told us.
I suppose it would be well if theologians were
better students of nature as interpreted by science.
This is what Dr. Dale says about it : " This
new scientific conception of the order of nature will
compel Christendom to revise some of its theologi-
cal conceptions concerning the life of God.'^* And
Principal Fairbairn says : " As is your God, such
will your system be, and you can no more read
theology through Christ alone than you can read
Nature through one individual fact.^f Now, on the
line of the Biblical idea that the universe is a
* Christian Fellowship, p. 185.
t Address at the Congregational Council in LoTidon.
84 HOW TO THINK OF
word, or logos^ of God, what do we look to find
therein ?
Not the Divine Substance, I suppose, but the
Divine Thought, God's wisdom, power, etc.
Just so. But on the contrary, the pantheist
tries to identify the world with God in substance,
precisely as many Trinitarians identify Christ.
And we have to make the same protest in each
case ; each goes beyond the limits of possible
knowledge. The only practicable way of thought
for each is in the line of Powers. It is as plain in
the universe as in the person of Christ, that here
are embodied Divine Powers. These, as in Christ,
are of the Divine Essence, however unknowable
that is in itself
True. I remember long ago meeting the as-
tronomer Herschel's suggestion, that the force of
gravitation seemed like that of a universal will.
Even so. All the forces of the universe,
whether molecular or cosmical, must be full of In-
finite Intelligence, for the plain reason that we see
everywhere a mathematical order and proportion
and precision ; but mathematics can be nothing
else than the expression of Mind. However,
these conceptions of Power, Will, Intelligence,
may be rather too abstract for the purpose of
our discussion. I prefer the more concrete thing
THE INCARNATION. 85
which comprehends and unites them all in a
vivid form.
What is that ?
It is that familiar yet mysterious complex of
Power or Force, Will, and Intelligence or Mind,
which we know by its properties as Life, while
totally ignorant as to what it is in its essence. It
is on the line of thought which an adequate con-
ception of Life opens to us that we shall come to
that larger interest which the Trinitarian idea of
God possesses for modern as compared with an-
cient thought. It is on this line that we shall yet
find science and Scripture consenting in the Trin-
ity as the truth of truths, the comprehensive ex-
pression of God^s relation to the world and to all
that in it is.
This is so new a thought to me that I am deeply
interested to have it unfolded.
Let us then begin with what we see and know.
Here is the phenomenon of Life, myriad-faced in
its variety of form, yet strangely one in its in-
stincts, in its self-propagating energy, in its power
to transform inorganic elements into organisms.
Earth, air, and sea all teem with it, in things vis-
ible and invisible. Omnipresent, inextinguishable,
wonder-working in its evolutionary process from
the amoeba up to man, wonderful in its conscious-
86 y HOW TO THINK OF
ness, its energy, its intelligent use of means to ends,
its endless variety, and yet, from first to last, one
in its many branching, ever widening stream —
what and whence this familiar miracle, this thing
at once so natural and so supernatural, that we
name Life ? Certainly, it is the Sovereign Power
among the other powers of the world, intelligently
making all things the vassals of its will, the instru-
ments of its intelligence.
Yes, and it is not the product of anything else,
but rather the producer of things.
Exactly so; the scientists agree that life can
come only from life. It is fairly describable in
the phrase of the Nicene Creed, " begotten, not
made — through whom all things were made."
Nor do I think that any one doubts that life ex-
isted before the world was, a stream coeternal with
its fount in Deity. Here then, " in the begin-
m'ng," as the Scripture says, at the starting point
of thought, we find the Father and the Son coex-
isting, as the All generating Life and the Life
which is generated, and therefore filial.
This seems to me a rather wide enlargement of
the early Trinitarian notions.
It is, and yet not in a diiFerent line from the
suggestion of Athanasius, who tells the Arians that
'' the Son is the Living Will of the Father." Nor
THE INCARNATION, 87
can I think of a fitter phrase than this to describe
the stream of life that eternally issues from the
fontal Deity. For Will is power, both mental
and moral. So Tennyson says :
" O Living Will, that shalt endure
When all that seems shall suffer shock,
Kise from the Spiritual Eock,
Flow through our deeds, and make them pure."
Do you think it might be objected, when you
thus identify the term " Son " with the universal
Life that is begotten of God, that you take from
Christ what is a glory peculiarly His own ?
It would not be an intelligent objection.
Christ^s glory is not shown by any absence of the
Divine Life elsewhere, but by its unequalled ful-
ness in Him, in whom, as Paul says, " oil things
come to a heodJ^ ^^7? I think the view we take
is peculiarly Scriptural.
Please mention some of the passages you have
in mind.
Well, there is the Old Testament phrase so often
repeated, " the living God/^ so much better than
the modern phrase, " personal God,'' which is al-
most always misunderstood to mean that God is an
individual, existing in separateness from other in-
dividuals. This inspired thought conceived of
God as self-existent Life— a word that includes the
88 HOW TO THINK OF
necessary elements of personality — self-conscious-
ness, spontaneity, and intelligent power, without
any of the limitations that our fragmentary human
personality suggests. Then the Epistle to the
Hebrews says, " The Word of God is Iwing/^
(A. V. " auick,") which recalls Jesus' saying,
" TJie Father hath life in Himself j and hath given to
the Son to have life in Himself J^ Then John, speak-
ing of Christ, says, " We show unto you the Life, the
Eternal Life, which was ivith the FatJier^ and was
manifested unto us.^^ This, again, recalls Jesus^
great sayings, " I am the Way, the Truth, ami the
Life ; " " / am the Resurrection and the Life ; "
" The Living Father hath sefnt Me, and I live by the
Father J^ And so it seems to me, as we follow out
our line of thought about Divine Powers on the
line of Life, as the Sovereign and Comprehensive
Power, that we find it to be a truth in which sci-
ence and Scripture agree, that every incarnation of
life is, p^o tanto, and in its measure, an incarna-
tion of God ; and that the age-long way of God,
so far as we can trace it in the world, is in a perpet-
ually increasing incarnation of Life, whose climax
and crown is the Divine fulness of Life in Christ.
I quite enjoy your exposition. But please add
one more to the fresh thoughts which you have
been giving me out of these old texts : What does
THE INCARNATION. 89
the Apostle mean by saying, " In Him [Christ] aU
things consist f ''
I take it, in the literal sense of the word " con-
sist/'— i.e., stand together — to mean that all things
have their unity, reach the one common end of
their existence, in Him. This the context shows :
'' were created through — that is, because of — Him
and unto HimJ^ The Divme end for which all
things exist is the manifestation of the Divine hu-
manity in Christ, with a view to its ultimate real-
ization in all. So Jesus said : " I in them and
Thou in Me, that they may he made perfect in one.^^
For this all earlier life came forth. I may illus-
trate it thus : The dome, the crowning glory of
such a pile as St. Peter's church, is the end for
which all the lower parts of the building exist.
They all reach their end and find their unity in
this. Thus Paul would say, all the innumerable
ranks of Life, of whom Christ is the resplendent
Head, ^* were created in Him,'^ and " consist," or
stand together, in Him, whom they w^re to lead
up to and exhibit as their consummation, and the
end for which they exist.
I admit the perfect reasonableness of these
views. Yet I have seen it objected that while
God is certainly the Creator of all life, we cannot
regard all life as essentially one, and a thing di-
90 HOW TO THINK OF
vine, because it is often hideous and destructive in
its varieties, as in snakes and tigers. What would
you say to this ?
I should say it was foolishly sentimental, like
the repugnance of some sensitive people to cater-
pillars. I should put in contrast with it the better
views we find in the Bible. According to Job, it
is a divine intelligence that prompts and guides
the migrations of the birds : " Doth the hawk fly
hy thy wisdom, and stretch her icings toward the
South ? '' If so, it is Divine Intelligence by which
the hawk also seeks its legitimate prey. Thus the
psalmist thinks : " The young lions roar after their
prey, and seek their meat from GodJ' In all the
constitutional instincts of living creatures we see
the energizing of the all-pei-x^ading. Infinite Mind,
which constitutes them what they are. Much as
we dread the predaceous creatures, they are, as Dr.
Martineau observes, the necessary burial-corps and
scavengers of the animal creation. But for them,
the air and waters would be poisoned by the decay
of animal bodies. Offensive as these scavengers
may be to the fastidious tastes of perhaps over re-
fined people, we must recognize even in their de-
structive instincts the activity of the Divine Intelli-
gence that animates all life. What Paul says,
^* All fle^h w not the same flesh,'' indicates merely
THE INCARNATION, 91
that the forms are many, though the life at its root
is one.
You carry my thought irresistibly along with
yours. The larger interest which the truth of the
Trinity has for modern thought I begin to realize
better than I could clearly express, for I am only
a learner. Would you now restate for me, as con-
cisely as may be, the salient points of the position
we have reached ?
Willingly ; only bear in mind that the Trinita-
rian position will not be fully outlined, so long
as we have in reserve so important a part of it
as the Holy Ghost. What we have gone over
I would sum up in this triple statement : (1)
The Living Father, Maker of heaven and earth,
does not live apart from His creation, but lives in it
from the beginning, as its Begotten or Filial Life.
And this universal Life, whether existing or pre-
existing, whether before the world or in the world,
through all its myriad ranks from the highest to
the lowest, whether in angels or in amoebas, in
men or in the Christ, is His coetemal Word, or
Son — His utterance. His offspring. (2) The Liv-
ing God in His unknown and infinite transcendency
above the world is God the Father, but in His re-
vealed immanency in the life of the world is God
the Son, In this conception of God, the ancient
92 HOW TO THINK OF
chasm between God and man, which error has
fancied, and sin has exaggerated, is filled at all
points, not at one point only (as in the ancient fal-
lacy of the " two natiu'es " that were said to be
conjoined in Christ). The immanent is one with
the transcendent Power ; the Filial Stream is one
with its Paternal Fount. (3) To Christ supremely
belongs the name of Son, Avhich includes all the
life that is begotten of God. He is the beloved
and unique representative of this universal sonship,
^^ the first-born/' said Paul, '' of all creation.^^ In
Christ the before unconscious sonship of the world
awakes to consciousness of the Father. Worthiest
to bear the name of tJie Son of God, in a pre-emi-
nent but not exclusive right, is He. Nor only has
He revealed to orphaned men their partnership mth
Him in the Life and Love of the All Father. His
peerless distinction as the Son is, that in Him shine
at their brightest these moral glories which belong
to the very crown of Deity.
I thank you very much for this statement. It
seems to me that there is this great moral advan-
tage in your view. It makes human life seem a
more sacred thing, to be the more scrupulously
guarded from degradation, as a thing divine.
True, and here also is the impregnable ground
on which rests all philanthropic imitation of
THE INCARNATION. 93
Christ. There is in the lowest man a spark of the
Divine Life. I think it is Jean Ingelow who
says:
" The street and market place
Grow holy ground : each face —
Pale faces marked with care,
Dark, toil-worn brows — grows fair.
King's children are these all, though want and sin
Have marred their beauty, glorious within.
We may not pass them but with reverent eye."
There is in the most degraded lives an image of
Grod to be brought out, as Michael Angelo said of
the angel in the rough block. Said Paul, '^ the
head of every man is Christ J'
Yes, and furthermore, is there not a new spring
of sympathy opened by seeing that every incarna-
nation of Life is, in its measure, an incarnation of
God?
Indeed there Is. Men who have believed that
God and man have been united in Christ alone
have cruelly persecuted each other. There is no
universal bond of human sympathy but in the dis-
covery of the one Life in all lives, and something
of God in each. This is the fact that John points
to, when he says : " He that loveth not his brother,
whom he hath seen, cannot love God, ivhom he hath
not seenJ' Here opens the spring of compassion
94 HOW TO THINK OF
toward all that lives, not only in human kind, but
in the lower creatures also.
I would like to ask you if you have also found
in your larger conception of the Trinitarian idea of
sonship any personal comfort amidst the troubles
and sorrows of life.
I have. When I see that God is not only the
Giver but the Sharer of my life, that my natural
powers are that part of God's power which is
lodged with me in trust to keep and use, I feel on
one hand the spur to self-reliance on what there is
of God's power in me, as the right way of depend-
ence on what there is of God's power above me.
On the other hand, when I am burdened under my
weakness and sin, I am prompted to faith that
God will not forsake His own, will not abandon
what there is of God in me, but, as Paul said,
" vnU perfect what is lacking.'' Here it seems to
me we may find that rock of strength and peace
on which Jesus in His sorest need took refuge :
" The Father hath not left 3Ie alone ; " " The Father
is in Me, and I in Him.''
You have done me a great service. Your
thoughts lift me to a higher and holier view of life
than I ever took before. It is true that one has
to come at it by some close thinking, but it is clear
thinking, with no confusing shadows of mystery.
THE INCARNATION. 95
And it would be as foolish to grudge the effort of
getting up to these higher ranges of thought, as to
grudge the hill-climbing that rewards one with a
fair prospect from the top. But I can hardly help
smiling at the ridiculous notion I used to have,
that the Trinity was a cloudy phantom of specula-
tive philosophers, out of all connection with the
real world and practical reason. You have made
me see — at least so far as we have gone with it —
that it touches life and thought at every point, and
is full of practical value.
You will find even more of this in it before we
get through. We have been attending mainly, as
the Nicene Creed does, to the questions concerning
the Son of God. It is here that the difficulties
and the interest of the subject have always cen-
tred. For what remains we must take another
hour. But I would like to leave this remark with
you to think upon, for we shall discuss it before
we get through. In the line of thought about the
Trinity that we have followed lies all hope of rid-
dance from the false supernaturalism that has al-
ways fomented schism within the church and skep-
ticism outside. In the construction of a complete
Trinitarianism on the lines of our present thought
lies the solution of the question on which the men
of faith and the men of science are yet unhappily
96 HOW TO THINK OF
divided : Is the supernatural a reality ? And
what then is the relation of the supernatural to
the natural ?
This is a turn of the subject as unexpected as it
is interesting.
And yet you see its Immediate connection with
our theme. In the world of form, called Nature,
Life is the Supernatural Reality, for it is above
Nature, the Producer of Nature, not a product.
Life is the organizing Power, Nature the organ-
ized form. This mystery of Life is one with the
mystery of the Living God. His Trinity is the
Trinity in His Life. The Father is the Life
Transcendent, the Divine Source, " above allJ^
The Son is the Life Immanent, the Divine Stream,
''through alV The Holy Ghost— here I must
anticipate what we have yet to talk about — is the
Life Individualized, the Divine Spherule, " in oRJ^
the Divine Inflow into the individual conscious-
ness, giving inspiration to the conscience of each
separate child of the Father of all.
Your words recall to me a hymn of Faber^s.
How you have lighted up the meaning !
" We share in what is Infinite, 'tis ours,
For we and It alike are Thine."
I feel indebted to you more than I can express.
THE INGABNATION. 97
You have given a new inspiration to my thoughts
of God, and man, and life, and Christ. What
hard thinking you must have done to untie all the
knots of so tangled a subject !
Ah, my dear friend, the hardness is not in the
effort of thinking ; it is in the effort to live as we
think.
IV.
THE NEGLECTED TERM IN THE
TRINITY
^^oonf^
**C\>t (Con^ummatins Hobe of ^oli,
€\>z ?limit of tl)t €f)xtz*"
Faber.
IV.
THE NEGLECTED TERM IN THE TRINITY
Well, said I, as we started out for a walk some
days afterward, does oiir subject grow upon you ?
Every way it does. In the line of thought you
have given me it seems to me that I apprehend
God more clearly than ever before, as immediately
related to the world, and in continual touch with
me. No one with your conception of the Trii;iity
can live in a soulless world or an unspiritual life.
Ah, how different it seems to me from that chilly
fog-bank of mystery that I always avoided with
something, as I fancy, of Daniel Webster's feeling,
when he remarked about it, that we must not ex-
pect to understand the arithmetic of heaven.
Why is it that such an intellect as his should be
put to such confusion as that remark betrays ?
I suppose it is because of the common idea of
God, which he shared with the popular thought —
a God who is separate from man in nature and ia
101
102 THE NEGLECTED TERM
place, who controls things from outside, as a king
controls his realm. The only notion of a Trinity
that will fit this non-Christian idea of God is that
of a trio, or triplet, of Persons. Then, to save our
primal faith in the Divine Unity, it has to be ex-
plained that these Persons are not Persons in any
earthly sense. But the explanation deepens the
myster}\ And so some accept the unintelligible
and appeal to faith, and some reject it and appeal
to reason. It is all because of the false notion
they have of God, as an outside God. The Scrip-
tural conception of God, as immanent in the world
and in the spirit of man, is indispensable to any
rational conception of Trinity in the Self-Existent
One.
I suppose, then, you lay it down, as a fii'st prin-
ciple for right thinking on the subject, that no man
can have any fit idea of the Trinity except on the
basis of a true idea of God.
Precisely so ; it is the key of the temple. And
for a true idea of God we must go to the Scrip-
tures, to the Old Testament teaching of ^' The Liv-
ing Godj^ to Jesus' teaching of ^^The Living
Father y^ and of Himself as " the Life,^ and to
John's teaching of ^Hhe Eternal Life, which was
with the Fathei^, and was manifested to us/^ Here
we discard theological word-play about the un-
IN THE TRINITY. 103
knowable substances, divine or human, which long
ago brought the disputants into a hopeless dead-
lock. We turn to the manifest reality of the
Powers that issue forth from Deity, especially the
complex and Sovereign Power known as Life.
The Trinity of the Living God must be a Trinity
in His life. And this, according to the Scriptural
idea of God — as " thr^ough/' and " m," as well as
" above " us — must include these three terms : the
Transcendent Divine Life that is above the world,
the Immanent Divine Life that is universal
through the world and perfected in the Christ, and
the Individualized Divine Life that is begotten in
each separate consciousness and conscience.
I see you have answered a question that I have
not asked you, though I have sometimes put it to
myself, why there should be three terms only, a
Trinity and not a Quaternity, or more.
I am glad that you have mentioned this.
There can be no more, no less, than these three
terms, for the simple reason that these include the
entire sphere of power, and will, and mind. The
whole orb of existence is thus filled in every part,
both in mass and in molecule, with the infinite ac-
tivities of God.
Well, now I want to say that my mind has fas-
teued on the thought you gave me when we
104 THE NEGLECTED TERM
parted, that in the Trinity rightly construed we
find the true solution of the difficult question
about the relation of the natural and supernatural,
and a riddance of the false supernaturalism that
infests the church, and provokes skepticism. Shall
we take this up now ?
I w^ish by all means to talk that through with
you. It is one of the most interesting parts of our
subject. But we have not yet gone over the
ground on the Trinity. Let us do tliis first, and
then go into that application of it. The Holy
Ghost, or, as the American Revisers wish us to
say, the Holy Spirit, seems to me to be the term
in the Trinity that is specially neglected. We
shall do well to take this up at once.
Most willingly. Let me at once bring up the
point which always perplexed me. " The Holy
Spirit '' never seemed to me more than a special
name for God. The Father and the Son seem dis-
tinct enough. Then it is also plain that the
Father in His Fatherhood is more than the Son in
His Sonship. The Son must always say, as Jesus
said, ' My Father is greater than IP But the
term " Spirit '^ seems coextensive with the term
" God," as Jesus said, " God is Spirit:' So I
never was able to see any more than a nominal
distinction, quite insufficient to constitute any
IN THE TRINITY. 105
Third Person, or Personality, as in the church
doctrine.
But you were not more at fault than most Trin-
itarians are. They generally admit that this is
very indistinctly apprehended. It is just as
Jesus said : The world cannot receive the Spirit,
^^for it beholdeth Him notJ^ At any rate, this part
of the Trinitarian doctrine has been left undevel-
oped. The Nicene Creed contents itself with these
brief and general terms : " I believe in the Holy
Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life, Who proceed-
eth from the Father and the Son, Who with the
Father and the Son together is worshipped and
glorified, Who spake by the prophets.'^ But now
bear in mind what we have already insisted on,
that we shall come to no clear and rational knowl-
edge except that of Divine Powers as manifested
in their operation. It seems to me that this is
very significantly intimated by the fact that the
Spirit is called the Holy Spirit. Do you think
that this adjective " Holy " is used as a mere epi-
thet of dignity ?
No ; now that you have suggested it, it is plain
that as a mere epithet it belongs quite as much
both to the Father and the Son. When reserved
specially to the Spirit it must be to denote, besides
the general character, a special activity of God,
106 THE NEGLECTED TERM
Exactly so, and so the Scriptures use it. It is
simply a.s Spirit that " God qukkeiieth all things.'^
In imparting movement to the elements of the
world, " the Spirit of God moved upon the face of
the icaterSj'^ as Genesis tells us. In imparting life
to the creatures, the Psalmist says, " Thou sendest
forth Thy Sphiiy they are createdJ^ But the work
of the Holy Spirit Jesus describes thus : " He shall
bear loitness of Me ; " ^' He ivill convict the ivorld in
respect of sin, and of righteousness , and of judg-
ment ; " ^^ He shall guide you into all the tndhJ'
Is it not plain why He is called the Holy Spirit —
not because of what He is, but rather of what He
does in producing holiness ?
I see this clearly enough. But what reason is
there then in conceiving of the Holy Spirit as a
distinct Person ?
None at all ; this conventional and technical
phrase is so misleading that Calvin himself ex-
pressed his readiness to abandon it, provided the
truth it is aimed at be otherwise expressed. The
Holy Spirit is God Himself in a special form of
His activity — God quickening conscience to truth,
and love, and righteousness. The personality of
the Holy Spirit is the pei-sonality of God energiz-
ing in this special line of His power.
I see this, and can hardly conceive of anything
IN THE TRINITY, 107
more than this. But will all Trinitarians be con-
tent with this? They say the Holy Spirit is
something more substantial than a Divine influ-
ence. Jesus speaks of the Spirit as "He," and
they say you cannot call a mere influence " he."
That is mere word-play. What is the influence
of any person ? It is not a thing separate from
the person, and set in motion by him. Any per-
son's influence upon us is simply some one's per-
sonality influencing us. We feel it, and it is he
whom we then feel. The contention, that the
Holy Spirit must be more of a personality than a
Divine influence can be, is simply a piece of the
pagan way of thinking about God that still is com-
mon, thus : God is far off". His influence is like
that of the stars, a ray remote and faint. If He
comes to us personally, it must be by sending a
member of the Trinity, a personal being, the Holy
Spirit. But the Biblical thought of God as near,
and "in us," tolerates no such mechanism.
Wherever God is. He is personally.
" Spirit to spirit, Ghost to ghost."
His influence is Himself.
I think the objection well disposed of. Now,
as I understand you, you think of the Holy Spirit
as God in His special activity for holiness, and by
holiness you mean-
108 THE NEGLECTED TERM
Moral perfectness. ^' Be ye holy, for I am
holy.^' " Be ye perfed, cis your Father is perfectj^
Very good ; now how would you demonstrate as
clearly marked a distinction here between this
third Power and the other two, as there is between
those two? Between the Father and the Son
there is the obvious distinction of the Transcendent
Life and the Immanent — God above all forms,
and God within all forms. But what were we
saying about the manifestation of the Son ? Was
it not for the realization of the Divine Life in hu-
manity " unto the measure of the stature of the ful-
ness of Christ f " Now, what I want more clear
in my thought is this: How does this Divine
Power in the manifestation of the Son differ recog-
nizably from the Divine Power in the operation of
the Holy Spirit? Do they not seem to run to-
gether, and coalesce, as a single activity instead of
two? May not one say that the distinction be-
tween the Son and the Holy Spirit is more nom-
inal than real, each of them being really the per-
sonal activity of God for the producing of moral
perfection ?
You have clearly put a point of which I have
myself felt the force. What Paul says of Christ,
" The Lo7'd is the Spint,^ shows the coalescence of
activity you speak of, and is apparently in line
IN THE TRINITY. 109
with your suggestion that the distinction is more
nominal than real. But we shall find the ground
of a broad and plain distinction as soon as we
scrutinize the actual facts of life. Has it not
sometimes occurred to you, that while we all share
one life in common, each has a distinct individual-
ity of his own ? As no one leaf of the forest is in
every particular the duplicate of another, so it is
with us men. The type is one, the temperaments
are innumerable. The Divine Power is in us all,
in one stream of life, but it is in each with a differ-
eiice of gifts, and so it comes to pass that,
" God fulfills himself in many ways."
Our consciousness, whether of self, or of God, is
strictly our own, so as often to be incommunicable
to another. How truly Keble puts it :
'' Not even the tenderest heart, and next our own,
Knows half the reasons why we smile and sigh.
Each in his hidden sphere of joy or woe,
Our hermit spirits dwell and range apart."
In this individual consciousness each of us in the
great mass, pervaded as it is by a common life, is
by himself, both as an object of the Divine regard,
and as a subject of a Divine responsibility. Now,
this being so, what is our need ? Is it not to real-
ize, first, our community as children of one Father
110 THE NEGLECTED TERM
in the one Divine Life of tlie Son, and next, our
individual birth rii::ht of grace from Him, and of
duty to Him, through the quickening Spirit ?
I see it. This last, then, is what you view as
the work of the Holy Spirit, to awaken and sus-
tain this individual consciousness of a Divine grace
and a Divine duty.
Precisely so. Collectivism is one thing, and in-
dividualism is another, but quite as necessary.
Just here you find a sufficient ground for the
broad distinction you seek between the two lines of
the personal activity of God which are represented
by the two terms, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
I admit that this is reasonable enough. But is
it a Biblical view, as well as a philosophical ?
It is. The classical passage is in Paul's dis-
course to the Corinthians " concerning spiritual
gifts." " There are diversities of gifts, hid the same
Spirit, * * * dividing to each one severally, even
OS He uoilV
This is a somewhat new view to me. I had
always thought of the Spirit as working for collec-
tivism rather than individualism. That same
passage you refer to says, " In one Spirit were we
all baptized into one body.'^ Then there is the fa-
miliar phrase of the apostolic benediction, ^^ tJie
commu7iion of tJie Holy Spirit be nyiih you aUJ'
IN THE TRINITY. Ill
True, but what is this communion? It in-
chides the impartation of the Holy Spirit as a Di-
vine gift to all, in whatever diversities to each, to-
gether with the impartation by each to others of
his own individual share. The very differences
and inequalities of our individual shares are thus
designed for an individual communication of bene-
fits, which is to build up the collective life of the
whole as a life of love. So Paul puts it in his
figure of the body, which is ^^ knit together by that
which every joint supplieth, according to the working
in due measure of each several parf^ A healthy
collectivism is impossible apart from a healthy in-
dividualism. The life of the whole depends on
the life of each and every part. The individual is
as important as the mass composed of individuals.
As a matter of history, what has come of disre-
garding the individual? Nothing but despotism
in government, stagnation in society, corruption in
morals. And do you not see that this is a funda-
mental condition of all religious and moral pro-
gress, that the individual man should regard God
as dealing, not only with the church or the state in
general, but with him in particular? Each needs
to feel himself as responsible to God as any or all
others ; each needs to feel that God cares for him
singly as actively as for all.
112 THE NEGLECTED TERM
I admit it. And I see at once that it is this con-
viction of individuals from which has sprung all
reform, and all those ideas of human rights and
duties from which modern liberty, and philan-
thropy, and the general enrichment of life have
proceeded. Is it not just in this point of fostering
individualism that Calvin's doctrine of Election is
correlated with your doctrine of the Holy Spirit ?
This was the thing in Calvinism that powerfully
promoted democracy, as Froude observes, by mak-
ing the peasant believe that in relation to the grace
of God he was on a level with the prince.
True indeed. It needs but slight acquaintance
with history to see that spiritual life with moral
and religious power has ever spread from individ-
ual centres — from an Abraham, a Moses, an
Isaiah, a Paul, a Luther, from solitary hearts
which enshrined a sacred and contagious fire, from
lonely seers whose divinely anointed eyes made
them prophets and guides to nations. Thus from
the Holy Spirit in individual breasts ever flows
" the communion of the Spirit," diffusing from
man to man the thrill of feeling, the awe of con-
viction, the mandate of duty, the bowing of con-
science to the inner revelation of the Spirit of
Truth. Have we not plainly reached here what
we were looking for — a grandly distinct line of
IN THE TRINITY. 113
Divine Power, attested Biblically, historically,
philosophically, as the special activity of the Holy
Spirit ?
I think so. And what you have been saying
recalls a remark of Baron Bunsen, that the chief
power in the world is Personality.
I thank you for the word. It suggests this
comment, that it is precisely in this line that the
historical development has taken place, which dis-
tinguishes modern history from ancient history,
and Christian lands from non-Christian. The for-
ward movement of the world has been effectual
chiefly for the development of this idea of human
personality, with its correlated rights and duties.
And the historical fact is, that this has taken place
chiefly under those Christian influences which are
sometimes called " the dispensation of the Holy
Spirit." It is precisely in the doctrine of the Holy
Spirit that the truth of personality is glorified.
I wish you would enlarge a little on this subject
of personality. The word is common enough, but
my conceptions of the thing are all too vague.
We shall better apprehend what personality is
by thoughtful communing with ourselves, than by
any elaborate definition of this core of the self-
. conscious spirit. It is indeed " the secret place of
the Most High " within us, the very penietralia of
114 THE NEGLECTED TERM
our humanity, the shrine where resides the inviol-
able conscience ; where rests the untransferable
obligation ; where is heard the Divine Voice that
speaks to each apart ; where is felt that embrace of
the Everlasting Arms which assures the humblest
and the least of his individual preciousness to God ;
where glows the sacred fire that no floods of perse-
cution can quench ; and whence issue the inspira-
ations which uplift the w^orld. It seems most cer-
tain that the realization in the world of the Divine
humanity, which is idealized to us under the image
of the Son, depends on the realization in the indi-
vidual of the divineness and sacredness of his own
personality. Just this is the work of the Holy
Spirit, as Jesus said, " He shall gloHfy Me, for he.
shall take of Miney and shall declare it unto you^
Please explain this. I do not quite see the per-
tinence of the quotation.
Why, it is simply this : The work of the Holy
Spirit is to quicken and enlighten the apprehen-
sion, not in Christians only, but also outside of
Christian lines, of those Divine truths concerning
man's relation to God which it is the mission of
Christ to illustrate. Thus, even before the Gospel
has been carried to a pagan land, the Holy Spirit
has laid a foundation for it in the germination of
some Christian principles there. Within the great
IN THE TRINITY. 115
circle of the common life, which Is animated by
the power of God the Son, are the little circles of
the multitudinous individual life, which are the
special laboratory of God the Holy Spirit. His
distinct work is by His diverse communications to
develop in each individual personality that life of
Divine Sonship which, whether latent or manifest,
is universal in the v/orld, but perfected only in the
Christ, and through Him.
You have put it convincingly as well as clearly.
The work of the Holy Spirit is the perfection of
spiritual life, and this is a line of Divine Power as
cardinal and as distinct as the creation of life. I
judge, then, that the importance of it to us is the
measure of our need to believe in it, as pupils of
the Spirit.
I am glad to hear you say so. The Holy Spirit
is as necessary an object of Christian faith as the
Father and the Son. The poverty and weakness
of many nominally Christian lives plainly indicate
a faint idea of the Holy Spirit and of what He
does. But the w^ork of the Father and the Son is
frustrated where the work of the Spirit fails.
Thus it is that Christian faith so often degenerates
into mere dogma, lifeless and petrified, though still
called Christian. Only as led by the Spirit can
we realize our fellowship with Christ in sonship to
116 THE NEGLECTED TERM
God. In sliort, there is nothing so necessary for
the invigoration of moral clecrepitude as an intelli-
gent faith in the Holy Spirit as the Divine Soul of
the soul, " whose temple/^ says Paul, " ye areP
There is still a question I have to put. All our
convei-sation has had reference to the terms of the
Nicene Creed. Now it is just in this part which
relates to the Holy Spirit that the Creed has been
altered. It was this alteration which divided the
Greek from the Roman Church, was it not ?
It was. The creed now reads thus : " I believe
in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life,
Who proceedeth from the Father and the Son."
And the Son is the addition, made in the year 589
by a local council. Five centuries later it caused
the schism you speak of.
What do you think of the propriety of the
change ?
It seems to me sustained by Scriptural author-
ity, though we cannot cite for it the exact words of
Scripture. Jesus irideed says, that the Spirit ^'pro-
ceedeth from the Father J' But He also says, "7
will seifid Him unto youJ^ The Spirit is also called
" the Sphit of Chiist,'' and " the Spirit of the Son."
I think, however, that the change was not merely
defensible ; it was a required change. It seems to
l>e, as we said about the test-word hoviioousioSy a
IN THE TRINITY. 117
case where men builded better than they knew.
Like that, it indicates how the Spirit of truth has
guided Christian thought in these fundamental
matters in advance of the maturer attainments of
Christian knowledge.
I shall be much interested if you will go more
fully into this view of the case.
Just recall, then, what we were saying of " the
communion of the Holy Spirit,^' as including all
communication of spiritual benefits from man to
man. What is the going forth of sj^iritual life
from the church to the world but the proceeding
of the Spirit from the Son ? It is, of course, from
the Father, as the Transcendent Divine Life, that
the Spirit, like all else, originally proceeds. But
we have to distinguish in our thought between
God in His transcendent activity above the world,
and God in His immanent activity within the
world. Now the fact that it is by the spirit of
those around us that we are habitually influenced
to goodness, shows that it is to God within rather
than above the world that we must immediately
trace the process of the Spirit. It is not only from
the historic Christ, but from the Christ in men,
from the Divine Sonship that is realized in the
world, that the Spirit, who proceeds from the
Father, ever spreads.
118 THE NEGLECTED TERM
Certainly. If the Spirit of God does not pro-
ceed from the sons of God, the world that needs to
know God is in a hopeless case.
It is. And is it not wonderful that in that
dark time, when the night of the Middle Ages was
setting in, this brief addition was made to the orig-
inal Creed, supplying the further testimony needed
to so precious a truth as this, that the abiding Life
of God in human lives is the immediate source of
the Power that works for righteousness ?
I think so. And it seems to me more than a
theoretical conception, if only one looks at in your
broad way, regarding ourselves as partners with
Christ in the Divine Sonship. This added clause
in the Creed really lays emphasis on the practical
duty of every son of God to see to it that the Holy
Spirit goes forth from him to his neighbors.
Well, now in view of all this, if such an ad-
vance could be made on the original Trinitarianism
even in that period of the world, does it seem im-
probable that some further expansion of the an-
cient lines can be effected by Christian thought to-
day?
Not at all. It rather seems inevitable, in view
of what you have shown me of the fundamental
change that has come upon Christian thought, both
as to the oneness of human nature with the Divine,
IN THE TRINITY. 119
and as to the active indwelling of God within the
world and in all its life.
It has been my fixed conviction for years that
such an expansion of the original lines must ulti-
mately come. I do not think that the Christian
world can rest permanently content with the limits
of thought which the ancient Trinitarians reached.
An arrested development of theology in this point
will surely tend, as it has tended, to skepticism.
But now that we have gone through the whole
subject point by point, I doubt not that you are
quite of another mind than when you said, at the
outset, that you were not much of a Trinitarian.
Indeed, I do not see how any Christian man can
be anything but a Trinitarian, provided he has the
Scriptural idea of God as in the world, as well as
above it, and in the individual as well as in the
general life. But what has interested me most is
not the mere theoretical comprehension of the
truth that you have given me, but its evident prac-
tical worth for spiritual culture.
That is just my interest in it, and my interest in
opening it to others. It is of small consequence to
believe that there is a God. This " the devils also
believe, and shudder, ^^ as James has told us. The
momentous thing is, to know how God is related
to the world and to me. The consequential thing
120 THE NEGLECTED TERM
is, to reach such knowledge about this as to inspire
an abiding faith and liope and love. Just this is
what we come to in the Trinity. Here we are
shown that the Infinite and Self-Existent and
Hidden One, whom the agnostic hesitates even to
name, is both the Paternal Source of all that is, and
also at the growing tip as at the primal root of all
that is — inhabiting all forms with His intelligent
Power, and making all that live the multiform
channels of His Filial Stream of life — then, as the
Holy Breath, whose promptings generate our
prayers, perfecting His life in us by the inspira-
tions which become our aspirations to realize our
sonship to Him. Eepresenting all this, the Trin-
ity becomes to us the expression of the Christian
idea of God, in His gracious relation to the depend-
ent world. Now this idea of God has a name to
fit it, and what is that name ?
"The Father, and the Son, and the Holy
Ghost '' — the Triune Name, as I can now call it
with a better understanding of it.
Just so. Now by its peculiar name of God, en-
shrining and expressing its peculiar idea of God,
Christianity is the only faith in God which
answers to the world's need. The symbol of this
faith is the Trinity. The sub-apostolic, if not strict-
ly primitive baptismal formula, " into the Isarae
IN THE TRINITY, 121
of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost''
presents it as the Churcli's concise, comprehensive,
and sufficient Creed. Such it is. Dr. G. P. Fisher
has well spoken of the Trinity as " a hieroglyphic."
Such it is, a symbol pregnant with sacred power.
" It represents," says Dr. Schaff, " the whole of
Christianity, as a brief summary of all the truths
and blessings of Revelation."
You remind me of a remark of Charles Kings-
ley, that whether the doctrine of the Trinity be in
Bible, or no, it ought to be there, for our spiritual
nature cries out for it.
Even so. What we want is some watchword
and pledge of the vital and active union of the
One with the All, of the Highest with the hum-
blest. Just that has Christianity given us in the
Triune Name. To the weary and troubled world
it comes like an angeFs chant, repeating evermore,
" The Eternal is thy Befuge, and underneath are
the Everlasting Arms."
I now realize this more vividly than ever be-
fore. You have made light fall on many dark
questionings that have troubled me. There is so
much in the world that looks like grim fate. The
iron wheels of nature grind, and grind, and tears
drop, and blood flows, and there seems no sympa-
thy for us in the vast machine. Is this the work
122 THE NEGLECTED TERM
of Fatherly Power? How often I have been
tempted to cry out, There is no Father ; my Lord
is Fate !
I have had the same experience. But now
what it is that brings us out of the fog and mire of
such despondency, you see. In the worst straits
Job still cleaves to his integrity. At such a time
it is God in conscience, the Holy Spirit, who re-
minds us that we are not clay but spirit, free, at
least to what righteousness we will. Accepting
this as our true freedom, we enter through the nar-
row door of duty into the wide communion of the
Spirit with all the like-minded, especially with the
cross-bearing Christ. We hear His note of tri-
umph : " In the ivorld ye shall have tribukitwn, hut
he of good cheer ; I have overcome the loorldJ^
His assurance begets our confidence, that the
Power within the iron wheels is not malign ; that
goodness is there, eternal, invincible. Our eyes
are opened ; we see how inseparable are " th£ Mng-
dom and patience of ChristJ^
" Thy pierced Hand guides the mysterious Wheels,
Thy thorn-pierced Brow now wears the c^o)^^l of Power.
Thus we come by the Son to the Father. Thus
through the Spirit we have fellowship with the
Father and the Son, and in the wildest rage of
earthly tempests the peace of God.
IN THE TRINITY. 123
Is it your thought, then, that our faith in God,
must, so far as it a real experience, grow from
faith in the Holy Spirit, God in conscience, teach-
ing us to realize our sonship to Him ?
I do indeed think so. We may discover God
everywhere, but we close with Him nowhere, if not
within ourselves. Here only does His light first
rise on our darkness. Here, in the inspiring
Breath of '^ the Comforter," are the springs of all
our power to do or bear. The church has by no
means made enough of this. The question which
Paul put to " certain disciples " at Ephesus, is
now, as then, a critical question for us all : " Did
ye receive the Holy Spirit when ye believed f "
I believe this is what you were lately saying,
that the defectiveness of much nominally Christian
life is due to a defective recognition of the Holy
Spirit.
It is too true. The church has been so intent
on maintaining " the form of sound words " con-
cerning the deity of the Son, that she has forgotten
that without the Spirit the form is of little worth.
So there has been a great deal more of orthodoxy
than of spiritual life. There is nothing so impera-
tive now as to develop in Christian consciousness
and experience that pregnant clause of the Creed,
" I believe in the Holy Ghost."
124 THE NEGLECTED TERM IN THE TRINITY.
I think that if church teachers believed thor-
oughly in the actual guidance of the Spirit, they
would not be so afraid of new discoveries, and un-
trodden paths ; they would not in every genera-
tion repeat the Jews' mistake of stoning the
prophets.
Ah, I fear we are all of us, in one way or an-
other, under the same cloud. " Lord, hdp our vm-
hdief! " is the prayer that befits us all.
SUPERNATUEALISM, FALSE AND TRUE
THE TRINITARIAN TEST
THEOCENTRIC THEOLOGY
" — W\)tn 31 ^tt bopjtf ribe a cocft--!)tn:^e,
31 fmb it in m? fjeart to embatra^i^ ttjcm
9Bp t)intin3 tt)at tftcir jStich'j^ a mocfe fjoti^e,
3inti tbep reanp carrp to^jat tbep j^ap carriei^ ttjem."
Browning.
V.
8UPERNATURALISM, FALSE AND TRUE.
THE TRINITARIAN TEST.
THEO CENTRIC THEOLOGY.
Shortly afterward, as I was idly busy in my
library, my friend dropped in. What do you
think, he briglitly asked, has come oflenest to my
mind from our last conversation ?
Indeed, you will have to tell me that.
It was the fact of that wonderful addition to the
doctrine of the Holy Spiiit, which the Nicene
Creed acquired in the sixth century, in an age
when both learning and Christianity were in a
long decline. And with this your question con-
tinually recurred : Can we not, then, in this age,
expect some further expansion of the old lines?
It seems to me that we must expect it-.
I think so, too. But that is not all we must
expect.
127
128 SUPERNATUBALISM
Pray, what else ?
Has that sixth century extension obtained gen-
eral acceptance even yet?
No, the Orthodox Greek church still regards it
as heretical, and excommunicates all its adherents,
the larger part of Christendom.
Well, something similar we may still expect.
Doubtless, many will move on into the larger
Trinitarianism wliich modern thinking requires.
But quite as many will stay within the narrower
lines of the past, and will imitate the Greek
church in calling themselves " the orthodox.'^ I
believe the resemblance will end there. There is
too much of the Holy Spirit now in the church to
permit the new Trinitarianism to be again ex-
communicated by the old.
So I trust. And now, since you speak of the
new lines on which our thought runs, will you for
the sake of perfect clearness name in a summary
way the main points through which you think
these new lines will be drawn ?
Briefly, they are these two, the Incarnation and
the Divine Sonship. It is our enlarged concep-
tions of these two which necessarily expand the old
Trinitarianism. For instance : Men have been
pointed to Christ as the solitary Incarnation of
God. They reject it because it seems to be an iso-
FALSE AND TRUE. 129
lated wonder. To accept it, they must be shown
that, as Dr. Dale has said, it is not so. The Di-
vine Life which appears in Christ full-orbed had
had through previous periods its long prelude of
grey twilight and brightening dawn. It is an ethi-
ical life, and ethical life is not a thing of sudden
generation, but of long development. The Incar-
nation of God is not a mere event, but an age-long
process, of which we see in Christ the consummate
ripeness. In like manner, men reject the Trinita-
rian idea of the Son of God, because it is repre-
sented as an abnormal thing — the very substance
of God passing through human birth into but a
single individual of our race. We escape this dif-
ficulty also, when we gain an enlarged idea of the
Divine Sonship. We view it as constituted not
by the generation in one individual of a Divine
Substance (a thing we can know nothing of), but
by the generation in all of a Divine Power, a Life
which is, seminally at least. Divine.
Do you mean to take exception to the doctrine
of the miraculous conception and the virgin birth ?
I mean that Divine Sonship depends on nothing
so unthinkable as the generation of Divine Sub-
stance in a human body. Whether one accepts,
or not, the idea that so Jesus became the Son
of God, this at least is true : All life, whether
130 SUPERNATURALISM
miraculously or naturally generated, is generated
by God, and in all its forms and varieties is filial
to the Paternal Life of the All-Father. The biol-
ogist affirms that all life is radically one. The
theologian must add that all life is radically Di-
vine. What is ethical is Divine. In the higher
ranges of life its ethical nature becomes strikingly
apparent. The nidiments of this ethical nature
appear even in the life of the lower creatures.
What comes out in the blossom must be in the
root. And so we say with certainty, that life, be-
ing constitutionally, even when unconsciously, eth-
ical, is also Divine.
Does it not, then, seem to you that the Church
ought to rest its faith in the Divine Sonship of the
Christ on the manifest glory of His peerless ethical
life, rather than on the inscrutable process by
which it affirms that " the Word became flesh '' in
the womb?
In all reason, yes. It seems to me a most in-
consequent bit of logic by which theologians assert
that a specific physiological process — the miracu-
lous conception of the Holy Child — is the neces-
sary basis of sudi a spiritual fact as a life whose
ethical glory is manifestly Divine. Mark you, I
do not here dispute the miraculous conception. I
only deny the necessity of it to constitute the
FALSE AND TRUE. 131
Christ the Son of God. The root of Christ^s glory
isj as its flower is, ethical, not physical, and what
is ethical is fully as substantial a thing as what is
physical. The usual theological argument is an
utter non sequitur, and, as such, it works no small
damage to Christian interests. As long as some
men have doubts whether Divine power really
wrought a miraculous conception, it is of vital in-
terest to faith that they should see that the Divine-
ness of Christ does not stand or fall with that.
That the Word has become flesh was clear to the
Evangelist who ^' smo His glory , fuU of grace and
truthr It is manifest to all who see the same in
the moral perfectness of Christ. It does not in
the least depend on how the Word became flesh,
whether miraculously or naturally. To deny this
is not only to defy all logic, but it is to blind men
to the supernatural light which is in Christ.
Have we not come here to that topic which you
brought up some time ago, but reserved for subse-
quent conversation — ^the false supernaturalism, of
which you said that a true conception of the Trin-
ity makes riddance of it ?
We have, but not for the first time. We have
come to it in point after point of our whole discus-
sion. We came to it first in the Athanasian doc-
trine of the Eternal Sonship, in which we saw that
132 SUPERNATURALISM
the revelation of God in some Form, or Word, is
no intrusion into the established order of things,
but a part of the order ; that Divine self-expression
is the Divine order. Again we came to it in our
expanded view of the Incarnation, when we saw
that the Incarnation of God is " no abnormal and
isolated wonder '' — ^whatever wonders be connected
with it — but that it is the Everlasting Way of God
to embody Himself, that is, His eternal life. His in-
telhgence. His power, in successive forms of life,
from rudimentary to perfect. We have now come
to it again in our corrected view of the relation of
the Son to the Father as moral and spiritual rather
than miraculous ; when we see that Christ's perfect
Sonship to God is not constituted by a physiologi-
cal process before birth in the flesh — though we do
not deny the miracle — but by an ethical develop-
ment, a process in the spirit.
I see perfectly well what a break we have made
with those current ideas of the supernatural, which
view it as an intrusion into nature of a power
outside of nature, a break into the established
order, a sort of amendment to the constitution
of the world. But does not such an idea Im-k
in the very word supernatural — super naturam —
" above nature ? "
It does not lurk there unless you have first hid-
FALSE AND TRUE. 133
den it there by fancying that the word " above ''
means a position above, a place outside that order
of constantly appearing and disappearing things
which we call " nature " — a word which means all
things that are bom into being.
What, then, do you take the word " above ^^ to
mean?
I think it refers to the sovereign Power that is
within nature. My idea of this power is that of
Aristotle, who likened the process of nature to the
work of a carpenter capable of fashioning timber
from the inside. The supernatural is " above na-
ture " simply as moulding and controlling nature.
Is it not plain that one who objects to the super-
natural as a power interfering with nature from
outside of nature manufactures his difficulty by a
mistaken definition ?
Plain enough. This crude and fallacious defi-
nition seems to be from the same loom with that
pagan notion of an outside God which you have
often referred to as vitiating so much of current
thinking.
It is so. And, on the contrary, the basis of all
rational supernaturalism is in the Scriptural con-
ception of the Living God, as not only the original
Author of nature, but also its perpetual Inhabitant
— nay, its Life, the all animating as well as all
134 BUPERNATURALISM
transcending Power, who, as Holmes's noble hymn
says, is
" Center and Soul of every sphere."
I see the point which the whole Trinitarian con-
ception secures. It is from God at the heart and
center of things that the Power proceeds, which
moulds and governs the ever rising and vanishing
series of phenomena which we call the order of
nature.
You have fairly put it. This is the only con-
ception of the supernatural in which scientists and
theologians can agree. And I have been struck
by the fact that Aristotle's philosophic conception
of the natural process is also Neander's theological
conception of the supernatural process. Continu-
ally does this great historian of the church repeat
the remark, that the Divine work goes on " from
within outward." In the phraseology which has
come in since his day we describe God's processes
as " evolutionaiy." Exactly this is the true ac-
count of the supernatural. It is not an extraneous
and interfering, but an internal and evolutionary
control of nature. Of course, you see how our ac-
count of the Trinity leads directly to this account
of the supernatural.
Indeed I do. Wlien we do not have to look
beyond the world or outside of ourselves to find
FALSE AND TRUE. 135
God, we do not have to look anywhere but to the
heart of nature and of man to find the supernatu-
ral, the constant Power which shapes and vitalizes
the changing forms.
True, and here you observe also how our con-
ception of the Trinity informs our conception of
the supernatiu-al, as more than mere power — power
perhaps unconscious and impersonal. It is intelli-
gent, self-conscious, personal power, the power of
" the Living God/^ immanent in the collective life
and movement of the world, and individualized in
the intuitions and aspirations of each separate spirit,
so as to fulfill, " through all and in all/^ the Eter-
nal Thought of the Father who is "above all."
You see that it is on this Trinitarian idea of God
that we can build the supernaturalism which is
Christian and rational in place of that which is pagan
and irrational.
You have made the point very clear, and I
judge it to be your conviction that a variety of col-
lisions between the schools of thought would be
well ended, if men were only at one in the true
Trinitarian idea of God.
That is just so. In fact, every one of the cur-
rent questions at issue, whether between the men
of science and the men of faith, or between parties
in theological controversy, runs back into some
136 THE TRINITARIAN TEST.
difference on the radical question of all thought,
who, and what sort of being, is God? And no
answer to this question is sufficient which falls
short of the Scriptural idea of God, as involved in
the Triune Name of God, as The Father and The
Son and The Holy Ghost.
For illustration's sake I wish you would name
some current controversy, where a false supematu-
ralism is the root of division, and then show me
how a true Trinitarianism is the root of concord.
Well, there is the bm-ning question, just now, of
a Supernatural Revelation. Learned critics say
there are some errors in the Scriptures, not im-
portant, but yet errors. Hereupon some theologi-
ans unwisely decry learning. Their idea of Super-
natural Revelation is that it comes down from God
above the world, and consequently must be free
from error, or else it is not Revelation. Their
mistake is in looking to the Father above the
world, rather than to the Son and the Spirit within
the world, as the immediate source of Revelation.
God the Father is the original source of Holy
Scripture, and of all things, but not the immediate
source. If He were we should have the flawless
Bible that some insist on. You see, I think, tlie
point where this whole controversy about an iner-
rant Bible begins and ends.
THE TRINITARIAN TEST. 137
I think I do. Your idea is, that Eevelation is
the unfolding of the life and the thought of God
within the world.
Precisely. Revelation results from just that
indwelling and outworking of the life and thought
of God within the world which the Trinity repre-
sents to us. Our idea of the Trinity determines
our idea of what a Supernatural Revelation is, not
descending from above, but developing from with-
in. With such an idea of it, no one is troubled
by finding errors in the Scripture, any more than
by finding imperfections in any physical work of
God, as in the human eye.
Certainly not. Revelation by inward intuition
of Divine truth, through the work of the Holy
Spirit interpreting the life of the Son, will natu-
rally be evolutionary and progressive.
Yes, and so various human crudities may be ex-
pected to adhere to it for a time, and later to fall
away, as the teaching of the Spirit goes on. The
whole process, you see, will be thoroughly natural
in form, and yet supernatural, both in its working
power and in its results, as a Divine Revelation.
And the whole controversy, you also see, would be
impossible, but for the crude conception of the
Trinity as a Divine trio of '^ Persons " operating
upon the world, or descending into it, from outside,
138 THE TRINITARIAN TEST.
So it seems to me. Let me ask you here if we
do not find a broader idea of Revelation, in gen-
eral, involved in the broader idea of Incarnation
and Divine Sonship which belongs to your idea of
the Trinity.
Certainly. God everyrv'here immanent, and
everywhere individualized, is everywhere express-
ive. And expression, as soon as recognized, be-
comes Revelation. So Paul says of the heathen :
" That which may be knoivn of God is manifest in
themyfor God manifested it unto them.^^ And so,
every work of God is a word of God, as the nine-
teenth Psalm says :
" Their line is gone out through oil the earth.
And their words to the end of the world."
Every godly life is also a Revelation of God, as
the proverb witnesses : " the church is the irreli-
gious man's Bible.'' The wisdom of the pagan
sages is composed of rays of ^' the light that/^ as
John said, " lighteth evety man" God had proph-
ets among Gentiles as well as Jews. To admit all
this derogates nothing from the supreme glory of
Holy Scripture.
I judge, then, that you do not admit the distinc-
tion that many make between natural religion, as
among heathen, and supernatural religion, as
among Christians.
THE TRINITARIAN TEST. 139
I do not. It is another bit of that false super-
naturalism we have spoken of All religion, so far
as it is religious, is supernatural, if we use the
word to signify the Power moulding nature from
within. It was in the third century that Tertul-
lian \vrote, " The soul is naturally Christian."
All men pray. And, as the poet says,
" Prayer is the breath of God in man,
Returning whence it came."
All this is specially interesting to me. In one
of our conversations you did me good by showing
me what I had never dreamed of — the relation of
the Trinity to the practical religious life. And
now I am equally glad to discover how it deter-
mines the doctrines of Christianity. All this is so
different from the common notion that the Trinity
is an isolated mystery, and more of a strain on
faith than a help either in conduct or in belief.
You have good reason to call it, as you did, the
truth of truths.
It is no less than that. You will find, as you
think things through, that there is not a doctrine
of Christian theology which is not determined for
us, and in a way that often differs much from pop-
ular notions, by the doctrine of the Trinity in the
expanded view we have taken of it. Men reject
the Trinity because presented to them in a form all
140 TBE TRINITARIAN TEST.
too narrow, as having only one visible point of
contact with the life of the world, in a single
epoch, and in the single life of Christ. They will
believe more of it as they see more of it. And
such belief will carry other helpfiil beliefs along
with it. In fact, you will here find Principal
Fairbairn's remark not only thoroughly but hap-
pily true : " You may have a system of theology
in a single doctrine."
If I am not taxing you, please lead me a little
further in this line of thought.
Well, as we have been speaking of Supernatural
Eevelation, let us speak of Supernatural Grace.
The majority of nominal Christians regard this as
limited to a special form of church order, and to
the ministrations of a special class of ordained per-
sons, called clergy, as the exclusive channels of
that grace to the world. Even in this nineteenth
century, only a minority in Christendom hold a
larger thought of it. The controvei'sy still goes
on, but slight progress is made by it.
No ; the dispute over texts, such as, " / give
unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven/^ really
seems unprofitable. Where each contradicting in-
terpretation claims to be the only correct one, who
is to decide? And meantime outsiders have a
show of reason in saying, We shall not join the
THE TRINITARIAN TEST. 141
church till you have determined which is the
church.
Well, then, in all such cases of barren contro-
versy over texts, what one needs to find is some
" master of sentences,'^ some regulative principle of
interpretation, as '^ the judge that ends the strife."
Such an arbiter is the doctrine of the Trinity.
The sacerdotal sense put upon those proof-texts, so
called, which can prove nothing apart from their
underlying principle, is decisively set aside by the
Trinitarian principle, that God is immanent in all
the social life and growth, and individualized in
each personal conscience. This makes it clearly
impossible that the flow of Divine quickening
should be restricted to the channel of a single or-
ganization and a special class of men. What then
should we have to think of the family as a channel
of Divine grace, and of the influence of religious
parents upon children too young to be ministered
to by clergy? That notion of sacerdotalism is
simply one of many sprouts from the pagan fallacy
that God, secluded from the multitude like a king,
deals with them from a distance by a class of min-
isterial agents.
In so saying do you side with those who, like
the Plymouth Brethren, decry organized churches
and ordained ministers ?
142 THE TRINITARIAN TEST
Not at all. What is essential to the well-being
of religion is to be distinguished from what is es-
sential to its being. A chiu-ch militant must be a
church organized. An episcopal organization may,
under certain social conditions, promote the well-
being of religion better than any other. What is
most efficient for religious life at any time is the
way of God for that time. I only contend for the
principle, " Where Clirist is, there the church is."
The Divine life in Christly men owns no bound-
aries of priestly prescription. Ecclesiastical organ-
ization and orders cannot limit the gracious com-
munications of the everywhere indwelling and
outworking God.
You have referred to the so-called proof-texts of
controversialists as requiring to have their true
sense determined by some master truth like the
Trinity. What seems to you the most important
case of this sort ?
To name one as important as any, I will in-
stance the doctrine of the Atonement. What do
you take to be the current idea of this ?
This, in brief — an offended Deity who is pla-
cated by an equivalent of suffering endured by a
substitute for the guilty, the release of whom
makes it a necessity of government that there
should be an exemplary exhibition of justice.
THE TRINITARIAN TEST 143
Well, is not this logically demonstrated out of
the Bible as the proper view to take ?
It seems to be. I have never been able to re-
ftite the argument for it that I often hear con-
structed from the proof-texts, and yet I am never
convinced. It has seemed to me that there must
be a fallacy, though I could not discover it.
The fallacy lies in that misconception of God
which the Trinity protests against. It comes of
regarding God as a Potentate external to His realm,
who enacts and administers a statutory law exter-
nal to the nature of His subjects. In the light of
the Christian idea of God, which is given us by
the Trinity, those dogmas about a governmental
expedient for a legal quittance of the guilty lose all
that semblance of reality with which a sensuous
fancy invests them, and the proof-texts into which
they have been smuggled by such a fancy will be
found full of an ethical and spiritual teaching that
is far more true.
There are a great many of those texts, but you
might instance one for illustration.
Well, take those which speak of Christ as " the
propitkdion for cmr sins.'^ If this is made to point
tow^ard God in heaven, as requiring to be propi-
tiated, the idea is abhorrent to Jesus' teaching in
the parable of the father and the prodigal son. It
144 THE TRINITARIAN TtlST
can only be accepted as pointing to God in the
conscience. It means that Christ brings peace to
the conscience, and satisfies the Divine demand
which is felt therein.
I suppose we are too much given to using the
altar language of the Biblical writers in a literal
sense.
Yes, and the only adequate corrective is the
Trinitarian conception of God as the Supreme
Moral Power, who inhabits the inner world of
thought and feeling, as he inhabits the outer world,
and the highest heavens. In this view the Atone-
ment of Christ, while indeed drawing its material
and its imagery from the work of God in historj^,
is not a reparation offered at a historical epoch to
God on a heavenly throne, but rather to the Di-
vine Spirit in the sinner^s breast. It is in the pen-
itent and praying heart that, as Paul says, ^'the
Spirit Himself malceth intercession for us mth
groanings which cannot be uttered.''^ And here the
true Atonement of Christ is T^Tought, where groan-
ing conscience in the purifying fellowship oi
Christ discharges its burden by repentance, and is
at peace. Such an Atonement is not a govern-
mental work outside of us, but an educational
work within us. It is valid in heaven, because
it is complete on earth. Of course, I have here
THE TRINITARIAN TEST. 145
condensed much into a few words. The general
principle is, that the Atonement, however mediated
by historical incidents, is not an historical propitia-
tion of God in space and time, but a spiritual pro-
cess of God within the conscience. I will give
you a little book in which you will find this con-
ception thoroughly worked out.*
If I might push inquiry but one point further,
do you think that the problem of the future state
is open to modification by your conception of the
Trinity?
In this one point, certainly. The idea that the
death of the body draws a line, beyond which
God's saving grace is cut off from those who have
till then resisted it, must be given up. This
might square with the notion of God as operating
from without. He is supposed to fix a time be-
yond which His offers expire. It is when you die,
whether soon or late. But this arbitrary limit —
twenty years to one, ninety to another, is utterly
inconsistent with the conception of God the Spirit
as the perpetual Inhabitant of conscience so long as
conscience exists. It is the fact that God is in
conscience, which makes redemption possible now.
So long as God is in conscience redemption cannot
* The Divine Satisfaction : a Eeview of what should, and
should not, be thought about the Atonement. — T. Whittaker,
New York. James Clarke & Co., London.
146 THE TRINITARIAN TEST.
be impossible. But the awful possibility is not to
be forgotten, that, in the incorrigible sinner, con-
science may become extinct. Then, as Jesus said,
" If the light that is in thee be darkness^ how great is
that darkness ! "
Well, I agree with you that the popular notion
of an outside God is the prolific mother of theolog-
ical fallacies. And it is a rare service you have
done me in showing me how to apply the principle
which cuts them all up at the root. I see how
true in the world of thought, as in the world of
matter, are the words, " In the beginning, God."
Every step in Christian thinking depends on our
thought of God. And to secure the Christian
thought of God the Christian Name of God is
given us in the Trinity.
Yes, that is exactly what Christ has told us in
the w^ords of His last prayer with the disciples :
" I have manifested Thy Name unto the men whom
Thou gavest Me.^^ Of course. He did not mean
merely that He had named God to them, but
rather, had given them a name of God which con-
veyed a true thought of God. The name He then
had given them was simply the name of the
Father ; true, but not complete. Later He com-
pleted it by the full announcement of the all com-
prehending Triune Name.
THEOCENTRIC THEOLOGY. 147
We hear much now about the present interest of
Christian thinking as being Christological. Does
that mean that Christ is the centre of it ?
In one point of view, yes. All the lines of true
thinking about God run back to Christ, as our
source of true theology. But the ultimate centre
of thought is for us, as it was for Christ, the trans-
cendent God, the Father. He whom the Apostle
calls, " the effulgence of the Father^ s glory, ^^ is to us
as the mirror from which are flashed upon us the
rays of the hidden luminary. Theology, as Prin-
cipal Fairbairn says, must be on its historical side
Christocentric, but on its doctrinal side theo-
centric* The thought of God which we get from
Christ becomes the centre which determines the
lines of our religious faith, our doctrinal belief, our
moral effort, our social aim. And so our thought
must be in its development Christocentric, in order
to become in its ground and working theocentric,
as Christ's thought w^as. And whatever, either
in thought or practice, is not theocentric, will
sometime break doAvn and pass away.
I remember reading, years ago, of a famous ser-
mon of Lyman Beecher's, which he began with
this striking remark : " Jesus Christ is the acting
Deity of the universe." That looks very Christo-
* Address at the Congregational Council in London.
14^ THEOCENTRIC THEOLOGY.
centric, but I suppose you would say it is very im-
perfectly and crudely so.
Yes ; and it fairly illustrates the recent remark
of a Trinitarian reviewer, " the current orthodoxy
is current heresy." In their ill-proportioned
thought of the Trinity orthodox divines have made
the Son overshadow the Father and the Spirit.
It is a way they have of riding single texts so as
to override the salient facts of the Scripture, in
which Deity absolute always overshadows Deity
revealed in form. Remarkable, indeed, is the Di-
vine self-consciousness of Christ. Equally re-
markable His Apostles' adoration of Him as above
every other name in earth or heaven. But equally
significant is it, that He joins ^vith His Apostles in
looking up to the infinite Father both as " My God
and your God/^ over all, as well as through and
in all. The oft recurring theocentric phrase of
Scripture, which places Christ " at the right hand
of Gody^ shows how unbiblical i* the orthodoxy
which insists on ignoring the subordination of
Christ to God. Wlien the church comes at length
out of the rudiments into the completeness of the
Incarnation doctrine, it will be plain enough that
God within the limits of form is a particular being,
not to be confounded with God as the formless and
universal Being.
THEOGENTBIG THEOLOGY. 149
But are there not texts which give plausible
color to Dr. Beecher's statement? For instance,
we read in Hebrews i : 2 and 8, " By whom also
He made the worlds ; " and again, " Upholding all
things by the word of His power J' This might be
thought to carry the idea that Christ is both the
Creator and Preserver of the universe.
Well, the Revisers have here, as in 1 Corinth-
ians viii : 6, given another turn to the thought.
You remember our discussion of that passage.*
Instead of " by whom " we now read " through
whom," and explain it in this present as in that
previous case. The Revisers also in the margin
explain " the worlds " as " the ages." It is not
the worlds of astronomy, but the worlds of human
history, ancient and modern, that are meant. The
thought is, that the Divine Life which was with
the Father, and was manifest to us in the Christ,
is immanent in the whole course of history as the
quickening and organizing power of the successive
periods of development which we term " the ages."
What, then, does this require us to understand by
the closely connected expression, " Upholding all
things by the word of His power ? " Evidently the
context limits it to the course of the ages, " all
things " in which are upheld — or as the word may
♦See pages 57-59.
150 THEOCENTRIC THEOLOGY.
just as truly mean, carried on — by the Christ-
Spirit immanent at the centre of the whole move-
ment. In this sense we may recall !Mrs. Stowe's
line, already quoted :
" Thy pierced Hand guides the mysterious Wheels."
Whatever more than tliis may be true of Christ^s
activity in other worlds than this planet, this text
has nothing to say of it. And then you will no-
tice how the passage goes on to speak of Him to
whom it attributes all this, not as in the central
seat of Divine control, but as " on the right Imnd
of the Majesty on high.''^ To speak of Him as
" the acting Deity of the universe," is merely a bit
of careless rhetoric, and in such a subject careless-
ness is culpable.
So it strikes me. Christ constantly identified
Himself with God, but He never confounded
Himself with God. There was a distinction which
He always reverently observed. It seems to me
that His favorite affirmation, " The Father is in
J!fe," carries with it the implication, " The Father
is above Jfe."
Doubtless it does. This is the theocentric and
truly Christocentric line of thought about the Trin-
ity. And this line, I should say, must be drawn
through these three points : (1) The eternal subor-
dination of the Son to the Father, clearly recog-
THEOCENTBIC THEOLOGY. 151
nized in Scripture, though disallowed by an unbib-
lical dogmatism. (2) The eternal generation of
the Son by the Father in perpetual incarnations or
embodiments of the Uncreated and All-creating
Life, idealized to us primordially in the Logos, or
Word, and historically perfected in the Christ.
(3) The relation of Christ to God as unique yet not
abnormal, but the ideal of our relation to God in
a Sonship essentially ethical, and constituted both
for Him and for us by the communion of the Spirit.
The first of these points secures us against Panthe-
ism ; the second against Deism ; the third against
the immoral tendency, observable in Protestants
and still more in Romanists, of regarding Christ
as a hopelessly inimitable ideal of Divine Sonship.
Only as these points are held fast by Trinitarian
thought can the rights of reason, the rights of con-
science, and the rights of Christian fellowship be
inviolably secured.
It is an inspiring outlook ; but do you think we
are coming on to any such broad and high ground ?
I do, and, as I view it, with good reason.
Principal Fairbairn tells us that theology is now,
to a degree that would have been inconceivable a
generation ago, " intensely Trinitarian." I cannot
think this is due at all to a greater interest in the
discussions that raged a century ago, when the
152 THEOCENTBIC THEOLOGY,
Unitarian schism occurred. It is due rather to a
change of ground — the restoration of the Incarna-
tion to its proper place as the focus of Christian
thought, and to a fresh perception of its real sig-
nificance when viewed through the Biblical truth
of the Divine Immanence. The fact is, that we
have been like Paul's " foolish Galatians," in
bondage to the rudiments of a great truth, and are
only now beginning to come into the realization of
a glorious inheritance.
I suppose that the incident you referred to in
our first conversation — your Unitarian friend con-
fessing agreement ^dth the Nicene Creed, as viewed
from his spiritual standpoint — is fairly indicative
of the change of view that comes with the change
of ground you speak of.
It is ; and in degree as the idea of God, as ever
immanent, and ever incarnating Himself — which
is the centre of the Trinitarian conception — works
in men's minds, we shall find not only the theolog-
ical schism healing, but the chasm between faith
and science filling up. The conception of the uni-
verse and of life which evolutionary science insists
on finds its appropriate theological symbol in the
Trinitarian doctrine of the Eternal Sonship. Like-
wise, the Supernatural energy, which the scientist
fails to find outside of nature, is here discovered
THEOCENTRIC THEOLOGY. 153
hidden in the roots and vitals of nature, as the
universal life that is affiliated to the Life of God.
Men are beginning to see that the order and uni-
formity of nature are no less divine than the ap-
parent breaks in it that are called miraculous. It
is not a stagnant but a progressive order, and God
in it is its Power for progress. The unhasting, un-
resting, but increasing purpose which impels the
ancient course of nature toward its far-off goal and
ideal is nature's testimony to what is at the heart
of nature ; it is nature's perpetual " Gloria PatrV^
I thank you for the suggestion of that noble
chant. I shall never listen to it again without a
profounder stir of soul. I used to think of it
simply as a fine piece of music composed in honor
of a mysterious Three on a far-off throne.
I, indeed, never weary of its repetition any more
than of the Lord's Prayer. There is a sublimity
in it as of the mountains of God :
"Glory be to the Father, and to the
Son, and to the Holy Ghost ;
as it was in the beginning, is now, and
EVER SHALL BE, WORLD WITHOUT END, AmEN."
No incense-burning is here ; no distant salute.
It is the comprehensive confession both of our faith
and of our duty.
Pray tell me what thoughts in particular you fit
154 THEOCENTRIC THEOLOGY.
it to correspondently ^vith your enlarged thought
of the Trinity.
It reminds me that we give glory to the Father
when we humbly devote ourselves to fill our allotted
place with service to the Father ; when we take an
interest in seeking the tinith, that we may learn oi
the Father ; when we let oiu- light shine in good
works, that through our brotherhood others may
come to the Father. "We give glory to the Son
when we honor the Divine rights of humanity, both
by making the most of ourselves and by helping
others to do the same, for the reali2;ation in us and
in all of the life that is truly filial to God. We
give glory to the Holy Spirit when we alike obey
our own consciences and respect those of our neigh-
bors, when we prefer the fellowship of a truth-
seeking spirit to that of a truth-containing form,
when we press on to find God in new forms as well
as in old, and receive men to sympathy as broadly
as God invites them.
How your words take hold of my conscience.
This grand old chant draws heaven and earth into
unison. It is not for church-service only, but for
the daily path of plodding patience in well doing.
It is an exhortation to ourselves to lead the life
that the Trinity inspires, to live by the truth that
the Trinity expresses. Its words are not in the
THEOGENTRIC THEOLOGY. 155
Scriptures, but they are the sum and substance oi
the Scriptures.
You have well said. Here is the sum of all
Revelation, here the necessary object of all saving
faith, here the simple rule of all human duty : — to
know and to glorify God as The Fatblee, AKD
THE Son, and the Holy Ghost.
EPILOGUE.
Br way of epilogue to the foregoing record of
our conversations, it is fit to subjoin, with special
reference to some practical bearings of the subject
discussed, an extract from a letter written shortly
after, while my friend was spending the winter of
1892 in California.
" In return for your favor in sending me the
report of speeches by Dr. Abbott and others at the
Unitarian Club, I enclose some clippings of a sim-
ilar sort from the California papers. It is a sign
of the times to find Boston and San Francisco
simultaneously interested in our recent theme of
discussion. As you see, the Trinitarian contro-
versy has been running on in our papers for weeks.
Your remark, that a fresh discussion of the old
question was at hand, seems to have been prophetic.
'^ Mr. Cook's strictures on Dr. Abbott's position
do little credit to his sagacity. When he says :
^The attribute of self-existence causes God to differ
157
158 EPILOGUE.
from man, not merely in quantity and quality of
being, but in its inmost essence,' he strangely fails
to see that moral nature cannot exist in us without
having previously existed in God. Individually,
of course, we are not self-existent, but we share in
the moral nature which is, as belonging originally
to God. As you used to insist, there cannot be
two kinds of moral nature, divine and human, es-
sentially different from each other, unless there are
also two kinds of morality, likewise different.
" But our Californian debate convinces me more
firmly of the truth of your remark, that the old
line of Trinitarian argument can lead to nothing
but a dead-lock. Each party scores some hits,
and that is the end of it. If the thing aimed at
in theological discussion is not victory, but har-
mony in the truth, the road to this, on the present
subject, is on a higher level than has been hitherto
taken. No agreement can be reached but through
the larger conceptions of the Eternal Sonship and
the Divine Incarnation which you showed me, and
of the essential oneness of all spiritual nature,
through which even our humanity partakes of what
is infinite and divine.
" What seems to me the thing now to be in-
sisted on, as of supreme importance to all who look
beyond controversy to agreement in the truth, is
EPILOGUE. 159
this : The dividing line to be drawn to-day is not
a horizontal one, but a vertical. We need less
regard to the superficial distinction between denom-
mational names, and more regard to the profounder
distinction between spiritual men and unspiritual,
both of which classes are found in varying pro-
portions in all the denominations. The time is
ripe for making a better distinction than has yet
been made between those who hold and those who
do not hold, in the central place, the truth, so
vital to spiritual life, of a Divine Incarnation
which is in reality the manifestation in very man
of very God.
" Now as to this, so competent a witness as Dr.
A. P. Peabody says, that very many Unitarians
regard the Incarnation, in the most obvious sense
of the term, as the central truth of Christianity.
Yet among Trinitarians many do not so regard it.
They put in the central place the Divine Sov-
ereignty, or the Atonement. Then, consistently
enough, they tell us that Christianity is essentially
not a life, but a dogma. And of these a very
large number, nominally beheving in the Incarna-
tion, really believe in something else than what the
Scriptures present as the fact. God in flesh is
their notion of it, rather than God in man. What
they see in Chri«t is a divinity so superior to hu-
160 EPILOGUE.
man limits of knowledge and power, that He re-
tains little more than the form and semblance of
hmnanity, instead of the real and thorough man-
hood which is indispensable to the moral need we
have of Him.
" You see I have been doing some thinking on
the line you marked out. I have discovered this
at least, that * Unitarian ' is as ambiguous a term
as ' Protestant,' and I might say the same of
* Trinitarian.' These names, often used as mere
party cries, serve as a mischievous blind to a just
and helpful discrimination. Speaking now of
Unitarians, candid observers cannot fail to see that
there are two very unlike sorts. The practical in-
terest of the one sort is the same as ours — to lift
men up to Christ's divine level. The other sort
seem more intent on letting Christ do^vn to re-
duced human measures. With these I do not see
what we can have in common. The vital question
now at issue really, as it always has been at least
nominally, is whether we recognize in Jesus man
only, or God in man, nor this merely, but the ut-
most of God that can be manifested in man.
" Dr. Peabody tells us that this last is the view
actually held by the majority of Unitarians. If
this be so, as doubtless it is, why should any, who
agree with them in this essential point, shut them
EPILOGUE. 161
out on points of speculation as to how God came
to be thus manifest in man, or as to whether it is
the second or the third Person in the Trinity, the
Eternal Word or the Eternal Spirit, which consti-
tutes the God in Christ, or as to whether it is the
Divine Essence, or the Divine Power, which is in-
carnate in Him, or on the nice distinction which
Mr. Cook finds between God incarnate and God
indwelling ? The medieval schoolmen, who took
time to dispute on such subjects as the excrements
of angels, might here see a field for intellectual
finesse and division. But for Christians facing
the gigantic antichrist of modern secularism to
waste their force by division on such points seems
to me sheer treason to the practical interests of
Christ.
" Must we not conclude that the best service to
the truth, and to the charity apart from whidi
truth is dead, is that all spiritual men, all earnest
believers in a redemptive Incarnation, however
they explain it, should seek to close with each
other as nearly as they can ? We need not doubt
that in the warmth of spiritual afiinities dogmatic
oppositions will melt into their proper dimensions.
The more men pray and work together for the
kingdom of God, the sooner will they come to
think together in a good mutual understanding.
162 EPILOGUE.
The pressing need to-day is to cast out the devils
which infest Christendom, and to get the will
of God better done on earth. Christ took into
His fellowship, and we ought not to exclude from
oure, all who were ready to co-operate with Him
in this. ^ Whosoeve)^ shall do the will of God, the
same is My br^other, and sister, and mother,^
" When Christians are ready to ^ come to
Christ ^ in this, and to substitute His spiritual con-
ditions of brotherhood for the dogmatic conditions
which they have set up, it will be the beginning of
the end of their doing the work of antichrist by
wasteful division of Christian forces. Just as the
opposite sides of an arch impart stability and
strength to each other when united at the top, so
when spiritual men of divers ways of thinking
draw together in their common loyalty to the law
of Christ, the various elements of truth they have
severally held apart in exclusiveness will become
their common heritage for their augmented power.
Our fractional Christianity sadly needs to be in-
tegrated. We must rise above dogma into spirit
and life. We can come together only at the top."
GLORIA PATRIj
OB,
OUR TALKS ON THE TRINITY.
BY
JAMES MORRIS WHITON, Ph.D.
12mo, cloth binding. Price, $1.00.
Notice* of " Gloria ratri,"
THE FIRST EDITION.
"We have found In this volume, small as It is, more to set us
thinking than we have met with in many a month. . . . While we
do not helieve that our author has succeeded In explaining the mystery
of the Trinity, we find in his book such richness of thought and utter-
ance, such sweetness of spirit and character, as to win our admiration
and praise."— 2%< St. Lauit Observer.
"If the doctrine of the Trinity is to have any rital Interest for the
thoughtful of this age, it is likely to be in some such form as that in
which it is here presented."— 2%« Scotsman (Edinburgh).
" It is suggestive and stimulating, as well as spiritually reverent and
uplifting."— 2%« Congregationalist.
"I believe that the importance of the view you take cannot be over-
estimated."—rrofessor Joseph Lb Contk,. University of California,
Berkeley, Cal.
"It is impossible that an intelligent layman could fail to be inter-
ested in the conversations recorded in this yfOTk."—The JSxpository
Times, England.
"It IB a winning *nd convincing explanation of the doctrine it
expounds."— TAe Scottish Leader.
"In this volume the subject of the Trinity in relation to the thought
of the age, scientific, philosophic and religious, is treated in a fresh and
interesting way. "—2%e Glasgow Herald.
"This is a book for laymen which thinking clergymen will richly
enjoy with their brethren of the pew. ... Its fragrance of fine
scholarship, of philosophy and devoutness, is very destructive of the
moth-like pettiness of word-catching controversies, which have, for so
many, ruined the robe of a resplendent and royal truth."— 7%* iii<rary
World.
"It is a welcome contribution to modem theological thought, and
carefully read, will do much to make the doctrine of the Church con-
cerning God not only intelligible, but practically fruitful in Christian
experience."— TA€ Christian Union.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR,
" Dr. Whiton has given us a series of volumes, mainly of discourses
addressed to what he has playfully called his English parish, which
in spiritual suggestiveness and thoughtful interest have had few equals
since Robertson and BuBhnelV—The Church Union.
BEYOND THE SHADOW; or, The Resurrection
OP Life. Third Thousand. 12mo, cloth, $1.25.
"The substance of a conception which in the course of thirty years
is likely to transform Christian thinking upon the subject."— 5. W.
Dale, D. D.
THE LAW OF LIBERTY AND OTHER DIS-
COURSES. Sermons preached in London, 1888.
12mo, cloth, $1.25.
" Strong, fresh and brilliant."— T'Ac Independent.
"Profoundly thoughtful, distinctly original, eminently practical, and
elegant in diction. They are attractive to fascination."— Caz/ifiridge
Magazine.
NEW POINTS TO OLD TEXTS. Sermons
preached in Glasgow, Edinburgh, and London, 1889.
12mo, cloth, $1.25.
" We have seldom read a more interesting, and upon the whole,
we may say, excellent voltime of sermons."— 7'A< Saturday Review ^
London.
" Both spiritual and rational, critical and constructive."— 2%« Chrit-
tian Union.
EARLY PUPILS OF THE SPIRIT, AND WHAT
OF SAMUEL? The Ethical Development of the
Prophets of Israel. 12nio, cloth, 80 cents.
The perplexed question of the inspiration of the Old
Testament is here discussed in an evolutionary line of
thought, and in a reverential, but vigorous and helpful
way.
"Very ctrikingly interesting and inetructive."— TAe Christian
World, London. ■■
"MoFPi in touch than Canon Rawlinson with recent scholarghip."
—The Literary World.
THE DIVINE SATISFACTION. Third Edition. A
Review of What Should and What Should Not Be
Thought About the Atonement. 12mo, paper, 40 cents.
"A. mnch more valuable contribution to the subject than Bome much
more pretentious treatises."— T'A* Christian Union.
RECONSIDERATIONS AND REINFORCE-
MENTS.
•» The thirteen studies which comprise the collection are thoughtful
considerations of vital practical truths brought out in attractive
literary form, meaty, epigrammatic sentences, with plenty of good,
h«lpf nl points in them, all in the direct line of the common Ghrifltian
faith and lite.'"— The Independent.
THOMAS WHITTAKER,
2 and 3 Bible House, New York.
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