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The Doctrine of the Trinity:
P White


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In modern times, too, it is frequently, almost generally, admitted that the Trinity is not to be discovered as a clearly defined doctrine in either the Old or the New Testament.

The following extracts will be sufficient indication of the persuasion of the exponents of this doctrine:

CARDINAL NEWMAN, the most remarkable English ecclesiastic of the 19th century:

"It may startle those who are but acquainted with the popular writing of this day, yet, I believe, the most accurate consideration of the subject will lead us to acquiesce in the statement as a general truth, that the doctrines in question (viz., the Trinity and the Incarnation) have never been learned merely from Scripture. Surely the sacred volume was never intended, and is not adapted to teach us our creed; however certain it is that we can prove our creed from it, when it has once been taught us. . . . From the very first, the rule has been, as a matter of fact, for the Church to teach the truth, and then appeal to Scripture in vindication of its own teaching." -Arians of the Fourth Century, pp. 55-56.

 

DR. SOUTH, one of the disputants in the controversy on the Trinity in the later middle ages, in which the king interposed:

"It must be allowed that there is no such proposition as this, That one and the same God is three different persons, formally and in terms, to be found in the Sacred Writings, either of the Old or New Testaments; neither is it pretended that there is any word of the same signification or importance with the word Trinity, used in Scripture with relation to God." -Consideration on the Trinity, p. 38.

 

Again, in his Sermons, vol. iv., pp. 296, 301, this Doctor of Divinity writes:

"I think that the doctrine of the Trinity was not only locked up from the researches of reason amongst those that were led only by reason, -- I mean the Gentiles, -- but that it was also concealed from, or at best but obscurely known by, the Jewish Church. . . . That God did so conceal it, the Old Testament, which is the great ark and repository of the Jewish religion, seems sufficiently to declare; there being no text in it that plainly and expressly holds forth a Trinity of persons in the Godhead. Several texts are, indeed, urged for that purpose; though, whatever they may allude to, they seem not yet to be of that force and evidence as to infer what some undertake to prove by them; such as Gen. i. 26; Isa. vi. 3. . . . I conclude that it is very probable, that the discovery of this mystery was a privilege reserved to bless the times of Christianity withal, and that the Jews had either none, or but a very weak and confused knowledge of it."

 

RICHARD HOOKER, the celebrated Author of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity:

"Our belief in the Trinity, the co-eternity of the Son of God with His Father, the proceeding of the Spirit from the Father and the Son, these with such other principal points are in Scripture nowhere to be found by express literal mention; only deduced they are out of Scripture by collection." -Ecclesiastical Polity, book i., sect. xiv.

 

BISHOP BURNETT:

"Take the Old Testament in itself without the New, and it must be confessed that it would not be easy to prove this article ('Faith in the Holy Trinity') from it." -Thirty-nine Articles, p. 43.

Although Bishop Burnett contends that the doctrine of the Trinity is undoubtedly taught in the New Testament, acknowledging that no trace of it may be discovered from a study of the Old, yet it is interesting to note his remarks on the first article of Religion, in view of the very dogmatic statement of other Trinitarians here quoted, that the doctrine is not derived from Scripture:

"The last branch of this article is the assertion of that great doctrine of the Christian religion concerning the Trinity, or three persons in one divine essence. It is a vain attempt to go about to prove this by reason: for it must be confessed, that we should have had no cause to have thought of any such thing, if the Scriptures had not revealed it to us." -Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles, p. 42.

 

REV. T. MOZELEY, brother-in-law to Cardinal Newman:

"I ask with all humbleness where the idea of Threeness is expressed in the New Testament with a doctrinal sense and force? Where is the Triune God held up to be worshipped, loved, and obeyed? Where is He preached and proclaimed in that threefold character? We read 'God is one,' as too, 'I and the Father are one;' but nowhere do we read that Three are one, unless it be in a text long since known to be interpolated. . . . To me the whole matter is most painful and perplexing, and I should not even speak as I now do, did I not feel on the threshold of the grave, soon to appear before the Throne of all truth. . . . . Certainly not in Scripture do we find the expression 'God the Son,' or 'God the Holy Ghost.' Whenever I pronounce the name of God, simply, and first, I mean God the Father, and I cannot help meaning that, if I am meaning anything." -Quoted Stannus, Origin of Doctrine of Trinity, p. 21.

 

REV. JAMES HUGHES, Roman Catholic Priest:

"My belief in the Trinity is based on the authority of the Church: no other authority is sufficient. I will now show from reason, that the Athanasian Creed and the Scripture are opposed to one another. The doctrine of the Trinity is this: --There is one God in three persons; Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The Father is God, the Son is God: and the Holy Ghost is God. Mind, the Father is one person, the Son is another person, and the Holy Ghost is another person. Now, according to every principle of mathematics, arithmetic, human wisdom, and policy, there must be three Gods; for no one could say that there are three persons and three Gods, and yet only one God. . . . The Athanasian Creed gives the universal opinion of the Church, that the Father is uncreated, the Son uncreated: and the Holy Ghost uncreated -- that they existed from all eternity. Now, the Son was born of the Father; and, if born, must have been created. The Holy Ghost must also have been created, as he came from the Father and the Son. And, if so, there must have been a time when they did not exist. If they did not exist, they must have been created; and therefore to assert that they are eternal is absurd, and bangs nonsense. Each has his distinct personality: each has his own essence. How, then, can they be one Eternal? How can they all be God? Absurd. The Athanasian Creed says, that they are three persons, and still only one God. Absurd; extravagant! This is rejected by Arians, Socinians, Presbyterians, and every man following human reason. The Creed further says, that our Lord Jesus Christ is the Son of God and of man, 'not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of the manhood into God.' Now, I ask you, Did the Divinity absorb the manhood? He could not be at the same time one person and two persons. I have now proved the Trinity opposed to human reason." -Bible Christian.

 

JOHANNES COCHLAEUS, a Lutheran divine:

"We ought to believe, that there are three persons and one essence in the Deity; God the Father unbegotten, God the Son consubstantial with the Father; and God the Holy Spirit proceeding from both. But, though you attentively peruse the whole of Scripture, you will never find these sublime and remarkable words, 'three persons,' 'one essence,' 'unbegotten,' 'consubstantial,' 'proceeding from both.'" -According to Sandius, pp. 4, 5.

 

BISHOP SMALRIDGE:

"It must be owned, that the doctrine of the Trinity as it is proposed in our Articles, our Liturgy, our Creeds, is not in so many words taught us in the Holy Scriptures. What we profess in our prayers we nowhere read in Scripture, that the one God, the one Lord, is not one only person, but three persons in one substance. There is no such text in Scripture as this, 'That the Unity in Trinity, and the Trinity in Unity is to be worshipped.' No one of the inspired writers hath expressly affirmed, that in the Trinity none is afore or after other, none is greater or less than another." -Sermons, No. 33, p. 348.

 

THE OXFORD DOCTORS:

"What shall we say when we consider, that a case of doctrine -- necessary doctrine, the very highest and most sacred -- may be produced where the argument lies as little on the surface of Scripture -- where the proof, though most conclusive is as indirect and circuitous as that for episcopacy, viz., the doctrine of the Trinity? Where is this solemn and comfortable mystery formally stated in Scripture, as we find it in the Creeds? Why is it not? Let a man consider whether all the objections which he urges against Scripture argument for episcopacy may not be turned against his own belief in the Trinity. . . . A person who denies the apostolical succession of the ministry because it is not clearly taught in Scripture, ought, I conceive, if consistent, to deny the Godhead of the Holy Ghost, which is nowhere literally, taught , in Scripture." -Tracts for the Times, vol. i., No. 45; vol. v., No. 85.

"All that mention the term God, intend to convey by it the idea of the first, most exalted, necessarily existent, and infinitely perfect Being: and it is plain there can be but one Being endued with all these perfections." -Archbishop Leighton, Works, p. 571.

 

What a mass of evidence against the truth of the doctrine of the Trinity! It could be multiplied tenfold. What a monument in testimony of the sanity and simplicity of the Scriptures!

"Surely the sacred volume was never intended and was not adapted to teach our creed," writes a high dignitary of the Romish Church. Truly, it never was. Neither also did the church receive such a doctrine at the hands of divine inspiration. The same writer contends that when once this doctrine has been taught by the church, then support for it may be discovered in Holy Writ. It remains to be shown that it is far otherwise; the doctrine of the Trinity will never receive support from the Divine records.

Again, if it be agreed that the only source of origin has been the church, what were their credentials for infallibility? Upon this point, as has been shown in an earlier part of this work, their own writers are at variance. Ponder, too, whether infallibility could be built upon a basis of corruption and un-Christlike methods as is revealed in the conditions of the churches of the second, third, and following centuries, and from men of such character as entered the holy orders of their churches!

What, however, are the credentials for infallibility? Did the Pope of himself decree this attribute If so, it was a mere statement, without support or witness, to be received or rejected according to one's own inclination; for no action of the Pope or the Papacy has been manifested of such a character as to carry persuasion or to warrant the decree; indeed, the very reverse has been the case. Look at the unholy deeds of the Dark Ages which stayed progress for a thousand years! Remember the edicts and bulls which put to death those who did by originality and force of character ascend a few rungs of the ladder of civilization! We must also not let the unhappy decisions which so frequently had to be rescinded, be forgotten. Truly, the acts of the Pope deny his infallibility.

It may be objected that he did not decree his own infallibility, but that it was the authorised pronouncement of the Council. Let it be so. Who were the constituents of the Council? Were they infallible?; for Christ had long since withdrawn His aid, as Bishop Burnett, a Trinitarian of repute, contends.* The members of the Council were men, and therefore in their decree of Papal infallibility, then may have erred, as they did in many other decrees; and as history has demonstrated, they undoubtedly did err in this primary decree, and that, too, very grievously.

 

*"Those words of our Saviour, with which St. Matthew concludes his Gospel, 'Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world,' infer no infallibility, but only a promise of assistance and protection. . . God's 'being with any,' 'His walking with them,' 'His being in the midst of them,' 'His never leaving nor forsaking them,' are expressions often used in the Scripture, which signify no more but God's watchful providence, guiding, supporting, and protecting His people: all this is far from infallibility." -- Bishop Burnet, Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles, p. 281.

Anglicans and Catholics alike agree that this doctrine of a Three-phase-God may not be discovered in the Scriptures. Numerous Trinitarian writers could be quoted -- a few have been in this chapter -- to show that if the Scriptures do not teach it, then nothing outside of them does. Truly is this confusion worse confounded. No portion of Holy Writ teaches it, and it may not be discovered in nature nor by reason; and yet it is the "very highest and most sacred doctrine"!

To overcome, what to most systems of thought would not only be an overwhelming obstacle, but a difficulty fatal to its promulgation as a truth, two reasons have been urged to account for such an omission from the book which its Author expressly states is a revelation of Himself to man.

The first is that Jesus fearing the primitive condition of the people's mind, veiled what was the main object of His mission -- the revelation of the "only true God" -- and that the apostles agreeing to this secrecy likewise only first instructed the Jews in the things concerning our Saviour's humanity; leaving the main object of His work for some three centuries until the minds of the people had been sufficiently educated to receive it, and, of necessity, to be educated and to receive the supreme doctrine of the Christian religion at the hands of men whom the apostle Paul described as "grievous wolves" and "men of corrupt minds."

Two extracts agreeing to this proposition are by none other than the celebrated Athanasius himself, the reputed author of the Creed which bears his name:

"The Jews at the time being in error and thinking that the expected Messiah would be a mere man of the seed of David, for that reason the blessed apostles in great wisdom first instructed the Jews in the things concerning our Saviour's humanity." -Lardner's Works, vol. x., p. 103.

 

Further, as:

"All the Jews were so firmly persuaded that their Messiah was to be nothing more than a man like themselves, the apostles were obliged to use great caution in divulging the doctrine of the proper divinity of Christ.

 

Another extract is from CARDINAL NEWMAN (himself, of course, a Trinitarian). He adds his testimony to this contention in his Arians of the Fourth Century, pp. 159, 160:

"The systematic doctrine of the Trinity may be considered as the shadow, projected for the contemplation of the intellect, of the Object of scripturally-informed piety; a representation, economical; necessarily imperfect, as being exhibited in a foreign medium, and therefore involving apparent inconsistencies or mysteries; given to the Church by tradition contemporaneously with those apostolic writings, which are addressed more directly to the heart; kept in the background in the infancy of Christianity, when faith and obedience were vigorous, and brought forward at a time when, reason being disproportionally developed, and aiming at sovereignty in the province of religion, its presence became necessary to expel an usurping idol from the house of God."

And still another by DR. LONGLEY, Bishop of Ripon:

"It was our blessed Lord's Divinity which, we have seen, he studiously concealed, but wished all men to come to the knowledge of." -Tracts for the Times, vol. iv., No. 80, p. 38.

 

And lastly, a quotation from the OXFORD DOCTORS, in their Historical Tracts for the Times:

"It would be unreasonable to expect that this doctrine (of the Trinity in Unity) should have been fully revealed till the day of Pentecost." Brother's Controversy, p. 54.

 

One would have thought that the period most rich in faith and obedience would have been chosen as the most suitable time to deliver so mystical a doctrine; that the various incongruities therein may then have been authoritatively sealed as truth to the believing and obedient church, and not to wait until an extremely factious governing body was in existence to endeavour to persuade men that this conception of the Godhead had the approval of heaven itself. The seeking to deliver this equivocal definition in such turbulent times must appear extremely suspicious to all fair-minded students: that the philosophical protagonists of this doctrine had chosen their time to surreptitiously foist a pagan conception upon the beliefs of their credulous lay members, and then impertinently to declare that the doctrine had obtained from the very first, but had not shone forth until their own weak and dissensious times!

Can, however, a more feeble excuse be urged? Jesus Christ, the great Apostle of Truth, the most fearless opponent of error that the world has ever known, is accused of keeping in the background His main and essential doctrine; while one of their own writers pens the following encomium to the great Teacher:

"Individuals not of common mould and not dishonest have quailed before the alternative: truth or life. It is the tremendous power within a man which can brave the fiercest assaults of intolerance; a power which must have sent its roots deep into the soul, and must have taken hold of the entire spiritual nature. A human will unconquered by powers, by curses, and by all the terrors of death, is clothed in surpassing grandeur, with the truest moral sublimity. The force of character is immense, which when hostility is gathering, and deepening, and maddening for its last brutal outburst, preserves a man undaunted, prepared to perish, but determined not to cower." -Dr. Young, Christ of History, p. 28.

 

Above and beyond this, too, is the ever obvious fact that until God was known salvation could not be obtained:

"This is life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent " (John xvii. 3).

 

This fact was preached by Jesus only a few hours before the time when He not only was prepared to stand for truth against the priest-prompted accusations of His countrymen and was determined not to cower, but when He yielded His life's blood that the truth which for three years and a half He had sought to deliver to the people, might prevail.

Jesus Christ came upon a mission, and before He succumbed to the clammerings of the unholy mob before Pilate, that work had been truly fulfilled. He was able to say even while on His way to that dread Garden of Gethsemane, where He sweated great drops of blood through the firm determination to execute to the full His Father's work:

"I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do" (John xvii. 4).

 

And in the culminating moment of His life, as He hung on the cross, He, as a faithful servant of the Most High, said with His expiring and tortured breath, in reference to all things of His mission and of Salvation:

"It is finished" (John xix. 30).

 

Of the apostles the same may be said. A party of zealous missionaries, few (if any) of whom died a natural death, by reason of their courage in the defence of the doctrines deposited with them, were not characters to feebly withhold their convictions, for fear of the people they were sent to convert; for the doctrine is supposed to have been secretly revealed to them that they might secretly include it in their writings for the instruction of after ages.

The apostles were as uncompromising as their Master, in the denunciation of the errors of the Elders, and they like Him, all may rest assured, did not withhold the first and most important doctrine of all.

The second proposition which Trinitarian writers urge as the reason for the omission of the doctrine from the revelations of God, is of the tenor reproduced in the following extract from Bishop Beveridge:

"There are many things, which, although they are not read expressly and definitely in the Holy Scripture, yet, by the common consent of all Christians, are attained from it. For instance, that in the ever blessed Trinity three distinct persons are to be worshipped, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and that each of these is very God, and yet that there is only one God; that Christ is very God and very man in one and the same person." -Tracts for the Times, vol. viii., p. 30, No. 77.

 

Without expending time to disprove the presumptuous statement that "by the common consent of all Christians" the doctrine of the Trinity is derived from the Scriptures, it will be sufficient to remind the reader that the salvation of the Scriptures is predicated upon a knowledge of, and intelligent belief in, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent; and therefore to affirm that the book which seeks to reveal to man the means of salvation, while on the other hand so entirely and successfully omitting the foundation doctrine -- as many Trinitarians admit in accordance with the extracts in this book -- then it must be obvious, in spite of the Bishop of Ripon's statement that it is unreasonable, how unsatisfying that revelation is, and what a prodigious failure the whole scheme of salvation would prove to be.

God, however, has not so inconsistently worked. The ground of salvation is truly in Himself and in His Son, and no doctrine is more prominently revealed in the Scriptures than the doctrine of the Godhead. So prominent indeed is the revelation that it makes one stand aghast at the presumption of men who contend that the paganised superstructure of the Christendom of to-day has been erected upon the revelation of God in Christ, as contained in holy Scripture.

Dr. Neander, the historian, has made some very applicable comments in his History of Christian Religion and Church, vol. ii., p. 286, where he says that:

"This doctrine does not, it appears to me, belong strictly to the fundamental articles of the Christian faith; as appears from the fact that it is explicitly set forth in no one particular passage of the New Testament; for the only one in which this is done, the passage relating to the three that bear record (1 John v.), is undoubtedly spurious, and in its ungenuine shape testifies to the fact, how foreign such a collection is from the style of the New Testament writings. We find in the New Testament no other fundamental article besides that of which the apostle Paul says that other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, the preaching of Jesus Christ as the Messiah; and the foundation of His religion is designated by Christ Himself as the faith in the only true God and in Jesus Christ whom he hath sent." -History of Christian Religion and Church, vol. ii., p. 286.

 

This doctrine is either a fundamental, and that fundamental is then clearly taught in the Scriptures; or if it be not taught in the Scriptures, then it is not a fundamental belief; and if it be not a fundamental belief, then Salvation is not predicated upon it. The truth will prove to be that the doctrine which Bishop Beveridge seeks to uphold, has nothing in common with the "true God and Jesus Christ," and is nowhere to be discovered either by positive and direct teaching, or by inference in the Scriptures; but is indeed, as Dr. Neander truly writes, quite foreign to the style of the New Testament writings.

This contention as put forth by Bishop Beveridge and others is perhaps even more absurd than the suggestion of the suppression of the knowledge, though revealed, of the true God, as argued by Athanasius, and as supported by the eminent Dr. Newman and the Oxford Doctors.

Let those disagreeing with the writers of these extracts, and who argue that the doctrine is an undoubted truth, and has been adequately revealed by Jesus Christ, give lucid, logical arguments in the language of Scripture, to demonstrate it.

A DOCTRINE OF CONFUSION TO ITS ADVOCATES.

 

It is no small matter either that those who most diligently support this doctrine candidly admit that it involves them in the meshes of contradiction and absurdity. While many continue to illogically hide behind the cry that the whole doctrine is a mystery, there are those who admit the inconsistency of grafting this incomprehensible doctrine on to the
simple and reasonable system of religion -- pre-eminent among religions for its clarity -- originally revealed by God Himself and in latter times effectually confirmed in Jesus Christ.

Four writers upon theological matters are here quoted to confess that while endorsing this doctrine by reason of its existence in the Creeds and the Articles of the Church of England, yet they reserve to themselves the right to emphasise how inconsistent is the idea with the word of God, and how conflicting it is with the very laws of nature, which God at first established:

DR. JOHN OWEN:

"What is there in the whole Book of God, that nature at first sight doth more recoil at, than the doctrine of the Trinity? How many do yet stumble and fall at it?" -Divine Origin of the Scriptures, p. 132.

 

BISHOP HURD:

"In this awfully stupendous manner (the scheme of redemption by the sacrifice of a person of the Godhead as maintained by Trinitarians) at which Reason stands aghast, and Faith herself is half confounded, was the grace of God to man at length manifested." -Sermons at Lincolns Inn, vol, ii., No. 17.

 

DR. NEWMAN, speaking of the Trinity

"It is a contradiction, indeed, and not merely a verbal contradiction, but an incompatibility in the human ideas conveyed. We can scarcely make a nearer approach to an exact enunciation of it, than that of saying that one thing is two things." -Sadler's Gloria Patri, p. 39.

 

DR. HEY:

"It might tend to promote moderation, and, in the end, agreement, if we were industrious on all occasions to represent our own doctrine (the Trinity) as wholly unintelligible." -Lectures in Divinity, vol. ii., p. 253.

 

How these extracts bring to mind the words of God to apostate Israel, through their prophet Ezekiel:

"Yet, saith the house of Israel, The way of the Lord is not equal. O house of Israel, are not my ways equal? Are not your ways unequal? (Ezek. xviii. 29).

 

God positively states that He requires men to believe in Himself as the sole means of attaining salvation; and yet not only does the definition -- necessary to salvation -- appear in incomprehensible forms, but it openly violates the grand laws of thought in man and the grander laws of nature. Truly, these ways are not equal, but shall the Almighty be accused?

CHAPTER VI: What The Bible Must State to Prove The Trinity

 


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