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Saturday, November 22, 2014

 

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The Doctrine of the Trinity:
P White


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The most obvious fact in the Old Testament histories and prophecies probably is the monotheistic conception of the Jews. All historians agree that it was the leading belief of this people, and Dean Farrar among them testifies that--

"It was the proud boast of the Jew, who among all the nations of antiquity gloried in being a monotheist." -Early Days of Christianity, p. 336.

 

Professor Max Muller has also written an extremely interesting article upon this question of Semitic monotheism. The following is an extract from this article which appeared in The Times so long ago as April the 14th and 15th, 1860, and preserved by Dean Stanley in his work on the Jewish Church. Professor Max Muller writes:

"How is the fact to be explained that the three great religions of the world in which the Unity of the Deity forms the key-note, are of Semitic origin? Mohammedanism, no doubt, is a Semitic religion; and its very core is Monotheism. But did Mohammed invent Monotheism? Did he even invent a new name of God? Not at all. . . . And how is it with Christianity? Did Christ come to preach faith in a new God? Did He or His disciples invent a new name of God? No. Christ came not to destroy, but to fulfil, and the God whom He preached was the God of Abraham. And who is the God of Jeremiah, of Elijah, and of Moses? We answer again, 'the God of Abraham.' Thus the faith in the One Living God, which seemed to require the admission of a monotheistic instinct, grafted in every member of the Semitic family, is traced back to one man, to him, 'in whom all the families of the earth shall be blessed.'" -Professor Max Muller, Semitic Monotheism, The Times, April 14th and 15th, 1860, quoted by Dean Stanley, Jewish Church, p. 16.

 

While the Very Rev. J. S. Howson, D.D., Dean of Chester, writes in The Life and Epistles of Paul, p. 8:

"The chosen people presented to the world the example of a pure Monotheism. And in the active times which preceded and followed the birth of Christ, those Greeks or Romans who visited the Jews in their own land where they still lingered at the portals of the East, and those vast numbers of proselytes whom the dispersed Jews had gathered around them in various countries, were made familiar with the worship of one God and Father of all."

 

Here, therefore, is noticed the beliefs of the people among whom Jesus had gone preaching and teaching, believing still in the "One God and Father of all;" that is in "a pure monotheism," after the mission of Christ had closed. It is obvious, therefore, that Jesus did not gainsay nor dispute their conception of their God and King; to the Jews God had ever been a supreme Unity, and nowhere in the Scriptures are they reproached for this simple yet exalted belief.

Probably an almost equally important factor of the Gospel records is their silence -- if silence can be prominent -- upon any correction of the Jews in this their coveted doctrine, by Jesus. Upon many a point, some in comparison with this doctrine of very small importance, does Christ continually correct and warn these people, but never does He hint at any misconception of their God.

When at the word of Christ to the man afflicted with palsy, "the man arose and departed to his house," the multitudes being overjoyed attributed the cure to man being endowed with the Spirit of God, Jesus neither corrects them nor rebukes them. Surely such an opportunity would not have been lost to instruct God's own nation of the nature of the One who had been their Guide through so many ages!

The Jews from the first when God revealed Himself to them in the words:

"I am the Lord thy God " (Exodus xx. 2)

 

have conceived Him to be a Unity; and Israel can be shown from history to have been the sole and grand exception in this belief, for all other nations bowed their heads to idols of wood and stone wherein there is no help, but Israel's cry through all ages had been (when they went not after those false gods) as the cry of the Zealot was in the days of Christ:

"No Lord but Jehovah."

 

Their failing in the past had been that they had it gone awhoring after other gods,"and God had testified in that grand and pathetic language through the prophet Isaiah:

"The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib: but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider. They have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger" (Isaiah i. 3, 4).

 

Under the Apostles the Jews did not alter. Seeking the greatest charge against the Apostle Paul, they omit all mention of God, and frame their grievance against him in the cry:

"Men of Israel, help: This is the man, that teacheth all men every where against the people, and the law, and this place: and further brought Greeks also into the Temple, and hath polluted this holy place" (Acts xxi. 28).

It would be absurd to believe that the Jews would have urged their weak case before the Sanhedrim, the chief captain, the several governors, and finally before Caesar at Rome, failing in each stage in their accusation, without mentioning such a marked contrast as the Trinity in Unity with the Jewish Oneness of God. The ordinary laws for the skilled production of evidence deny the omission, if the material for such a charge existed. Indeed, the inclusion of such a charge must have weighed heavily with any governor, who, not interested in the Jews' religion, but as a means of peacefully controlling a fanatical nation, sought only to agree with the party, whose tenets would prove to be of the greatest assistance to him as governor.

So noted were the Jews by their religion of the One God, that for Paul to have sought to have introduced a Trinity in Unity as modern teachers affirm he did, would have caused such a revolution of thought, with its attendant noises and movements, that the governor would have been well advised, for peaceful control, to restrain Paul to the great satisfaction of this unruly people. The very fact of no such measure having been taken is the testimony that the doctrine was not promulgated by Paul; while to believe, in the light of the zealous affirmations of this peculiar people, that the doctrine was mutually understood, is to seriously and unwarrantably violate the testimony of history.

There can be no doubt that upon this doctrine the Apostles did not differ from the Jews. Hagen back in his History of Doctrines emphasises, vol. i., p. 124:

"Concerning this doctrine, as well as the doctrine of God in general, the early Christians adopted the monotheistic views of the Jews, and in the simple exercise of faith received the Mosaic account of the Creation as Divine revelation."

 

While Lardner also adds his quota of evidence to this fact when he writes:

"The ancient heretics believed in one God only." -Works, vol. viii. p. 320.

 

The heretic of modem times is not the heretic of the early church. The Monotheist is the heretic to the Trinitarian, but the Trinitarian was the heretic to the Monotheist. The Monotheist was first, and therefore true in the words of Tertullian (who originated in Christian literature the word "Trinity"):

"That is the true faith which is the most ancient, and that a corruption which is modem" (Introduction).

 


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