§ 4. The Trinity of Manifestations founded in the Truth of Things.
We repeat, that this view is an Orthodox view of the Trinity, according to the teaching of the greatest fathers of the Church. If we suppose that the Deity has made, and is evermore making, three distinct and independent revelations of himself,—each revelation giving a different view of the divine Being, each revelation showing God to man under [pg 433] a different aspect,—then each of these is a personal manifestation. Each reveals God as a Person. If we see God, for example, in nature, we see him not merely as a power, a supreme cause, but also a living Person, who creates evermore out of a fulness of divine wisdom and love. God in nature is, then, a Person. Again: if God reveals himself in Christ, it is not as abstract truth or as doctrinal statement. But we see God himself, the personal God, the Father and Friend, the redeeming grace, the God who loved us before the foundation of the world, approaching us in Christ to reconcile us and save us. It is a God who “so loved the world” that we see in Christ, therefore, a Person. And so the Spirit, which speaks in the human conscience and human heart, is not a mere influence, or rapture, or movement, but is one who communes with us; one who talks with us; one who comforts us; one who hears and answers us; therefore a Person.
If, then, there is no antecedent objection to this form of the Trinity as a threefold manifestation of the divine Being, we have only to ask, Is it true as a matter of fact? Has such a threefold manifestation of God actually taken place? We reply, that it is so. According to Scripture, observation, and experience, we find such to be the fact. Scripture shows us God, the Father, as the source of all being, the fountain and end of all things; from whom all things have come, and to whom all things tend. As the Creator, he reveals himself in nature and providence (as the apostle Paul declares), “being understood by the things that are made,” and “not leaving himself without a witness.”
Supreme power, wisdom, and goodness are manifested in nature as unchanging law, as perfect order. But God is seen in Christ again as Redeemer, as meeting the exigencies arising from the freedom of the creature by what we call miracle; not contrary to nature, but different from nature, showing himself as the Friend and Helper of the soul. As [pg 434] the essence of the first revelation of God is the sight of his goodness, and wisdom, and power, displayed in law, so the essence of the second revelation is of the same essential Being displaying himself as love. In the first revelation, he is the universal Parent; in the second, he is the personal Friend. But there is a third revelation which God makes of himself,—within the soul as life. The same power, wisdom, and goodness which we see displayed externally in outward nature, we find manifested internally in the soul itself, as its natural and its spiritual life. That which is displayed outwardly as power is manifested within the soul as cause; that which is manifested outwardly as wisdom is revealed inwardly as reason; and that which is manifested outwardly as goodness is manifested inwardly as conscience, or the law of right.