NOTES.
A.
On Impossibility, Physical and Logical.
In order to break the force of all reasonings respecting the inherent incredibility of the Trinitarian doctrine, the principle has been frequently advanced, that a statement which would be contradictory, if made respecting an object within reach of our knowledge, cannot be affirmed to be so, if applied to an object beyond our knowledge; since in the one case we have, in the other we have not, some experience to guide our judgment, and serve as a criterion of truth. Thus, it is said, to affirm of man, that his nature comprises more than one personality, might, without presumption, be pronounced a contradiction; because we are familiar with his constitution; but knowing nothing of the mode of God’s existence, except what he is pleased to reveal, we cannot prove the same statement to be contradictory, when made respecting his essence.
This rule, like all the Trinitarian reasonings on this subject, derives its plausibility from an ambiguous use of terms. It has one sense in which it is true, but inapplicable to this subject; and another, in which it is applicable, but false. The rule is sound or unsound, according to the meaning which we assign to the word contradiction; a word which, in other arguments besides this, has made dupes of men’s understandings. There are obviously two kinds of contradiction:—one relating to questions of fact, as when we say, it is contradictory to experience that ice should continue solid in the fire; the other, relating to questions of mere thought, as when we say, it is contradictory to affirm that force is inert, or that the diameters of a circle are unequal. The former of these suggests something at variance with the established order of causes and effects, and constitutes a natural or physical impossibility; the latter suggests a combination of irreconcileable ideas, constituting a logical or metaphysical impossibility, or more properly, a self-contradiction.
It is almost self-evident that, in order to pronounce upon a physical impossibility, we must possess experience, and have a knowledge of the properties of objects and successions of events external to us; and that to pronounce on a metaphysical impossibility, we require only to have the ideas to which it refers; of the coincidence or incompatibility of which with each other, our own consciousness is the sole judge. When I deny that ice will remain frozen in the fire, I do so after frequent observation of the effect of heat in reducing bodies, especially water, from the solid to the liquid form; and in reliance on the intuitive expectation which all men entertain, of like results from like causes. Experience is the only justification of this denial; and à priori, no belief could be held on the subject; a person introduced for the first time to a piece of ice and to fire, could form no conjecture about the changes which would follow on their juxtaposition. And as our judgment in such cases has its origin, so does it find its limits, in experience; and should it be affirmed that, in a distant planet, ice did not melt on the application of fire, the right of denial would not extend to this statement, because, our knowledge does not extend to the world to which the phenomenon is referred. The natural state of mind, on hearing such an announcement, might be expressed as follows; “If what you affirm be true, either some new cause must be called into operation, counteracting the result which else would follow; or, some of the causes existing here are withheld: the sequence, I am compelled to believe, would be the same, unless the antecedents were somehow different. Were the fact even a miracle, this would still be true; for the introduction of a new or different divine volition would be in itself a change in the previous causes. But I am not authorized to pronounce the alleged fact impossible; its variance from all the analogies of experience, justifies me in demanding extraordinary evidence in its favour; but I do not say that, in the infinite receptacle of causes unknown to the human understanding, there cannot exist any from which such an effect might arise.”
There is then, I conceive, no physical impossibility, which might not be rendered credible by adequate evidence; there is nothing, in the constitution of our minds, to forbid its reception under certain conditions of proof sufficiently cogent. It simply violates an expectation which, though necessary and intuitive before the fact, is not incapable of correction by the fact; it presents two successive phenomena, dissimilar instead of similar; and between two occurrences, allocated on different points of time, however much analogy may fail, there can be no proper contradiction. The improbability that both should be true, may attain a force almost, but never altogether infinite; a force, therefore, surmountable by a greater. The thoughts can at least entertain the conception of them both; nor is it more difficult to form the mental image of a piece of ice unmelted on the fire, than of the same substance melting away.
It is quite otherwise with a metaphysical impossibility or proper contradiction. The variance is, in this case, not between successive phenomena, but between synchronous ideas. We deny that the diameters of a circle are unequal, without experience, without measurement, and just as confidently respecting a circle in the remotest space, as respecting one before our eyes. As soon as we have the ideas of “circle,” “diameter,” “equality,” this judgment necessarily follows. Our own consciousness makes us aware of the incompatibility between the idea expressed by the word “circle,” and that expressed by the phrase “unequal diameters;” the former word being simply the name of a curve having equal diameters. The variance, in this case, is not between two external occurrences, but between two notions within our own minds; and simply to have the notions is to perceive their disagreement. It would be vain to urge upon us that, possibly, in regions of knowledge beyond our reach, circles with unequal diameters might exist: we should reply, that the words employed were merely the symbols of ideas in our consciousness, between which we felt agreement to be out of the question; that so long as the words meant what they now mean, this must continue to be the case; and that if there were any one, to whom the same sound of speech suggested a truth instead of a falsehood, this would only show, that the terms did not stand for the same things with him as with us. It will be observed that, in this case, we cannot even attain any conception of the thing affirmed; no mental image can be formed of a circle with unequal diameters; make the diameters unequal, and it is a circle no more.
A further analysis might, I believe, reduce more nearly under the same class a physical and a metaphysical impossibility; and might show that some of the language in which I have endeavoured to contrast them, is not strictly correct. But the main difference, which the present argument requires, (viz., that no experience can reconcile the terms of a logical contradiction,) would only be brought out more clearly than ever. I am aware, for instance, that the distinction which I have drawn between my two examples,—that the latter deals with ideas within us, the former with facts without us,—does not penetrate to the roots of the question; that external phenomena are nothing to us, till they become internal; nothing, except through the perceptions and notions we form of them; and that the variance therefore, even in the case of a physical impossibility, must lie between our own ideas. I may accordingly be reminded, that the notion of “melting with fire” is as essentially a part of our idea of “ice,” as the notion of “equal diameters” is of our idea of a “circle;” so that the final appeal might, with as much reason, be made to our own consciousness in the one case as in the other. Might it not be said, “so long as the word ice retains its meaning, the proposition in question is a self-contradiction; for that word signifies a certain substance that will melt on the application of heat?” This is true; and resolves the distinction which I have endeavoured to explain into this form; the word “ice” may be kept open to modifications of meaning, the word “circle” cannot. And the reason is obvious. The idea of the material substance is a highly complex idea, comprising the notion of many independent properties, introduced to us through several of our senses: such as solidity, crystalline form, transparency, coldness, smoothness, whiteness, &c.; the quality of fusion by heat is only one among many of the ingredients composing the conception; and should this even be found to be accidental, and be withdrawn, the idea would still retain so vast a majority of its elements, that its identity would not be lost, nor its name undergo dismissal. But the notion of the circle is perfectly simple; being wholly made up of the idea of equal diameters, and of other properties dependent on this; so that if this be removed, the whole conception disappears, and nothing remains to be denoted by the word. Hence, a physical contradiction proposes to exclude from our notion of an object or event one out of many of its constituents,—an alteration perfectly akin to that which further experience itself often makes; a metaphysical contradiction denies of a term all, or the essential part, of the ideas attached to it. The materials for some sort of conception remain in the one case, vanish in the other.
Now the terms employed in the statement of the doctrine of the Trinity are abstract words; “person,” “substance,” “being:” and the numerical words “One” and “Three,” are all names for very simple ideas; not indeed (except the two last) having the precision of quantitative and mathematical terms; but having none of that complexity which would allow them to lose any meaning, and yet keep any; to change their sense without forfeiting their identity. The ideas which we have of these words are as much within ourselves, and as capable of comparison by our own consciousness, as the ideas belonging to the words angle and triangle; and when, on hearing the assertion that there are three persons in one mind or being, I proceed to compare them, I find the word “person” so far synonymous with the word “mind” or “being,” that the self-contradiction would not be greater, were it affirmed that there are three angles in one γωνία—the mere form of speech being varied to hide the absurdity from eye and ear. To say that our ideas of the words are wrong, is vain; for the words were invented on purpose to denote these ideas: and if they are used to denote other ideas, which we have not, they are vacant sounds. To assert that higher beings perceive this proposition to be true, really amounts to this; that higher beings speak English, (or at all events not Hebrew, or Hellenistic Greek,) but have recast the meaning of these terms; and to say that we shall hereafter find them to be true, is to say that our vocabulary will undergo a revolution; and words used now to express one set of ideas, will hereafter express some other. Meanwhile, to our present minds all these future notions are nonentities; and using the words in question in the only sense they have, they declare a plain logical contradiction. Hence, every attempt to give consistency to the statement of the Trinity, has broken out into a heresy; and the Indwelling and the Swedenborgian schemes, the model Trinity of Wallis and Whately, the tritheistic doctrine of Dr. W. Sherlock, are so many results of the rash propensity to seek for clear ideas in a form of unintelligible or contradictory speech. Σαφὴς ἔλεγχος ἀπιστίας τὸ πῶς περὶ Θεοῦ λέγειν.
B.
On the Hebrew Plural Elohim.
The perseverance with which this argument from the Hebrew plural is repeated, only proves the extent to which learning may be degraded into the service of a system. The use of a noun, plural in form, but singular in sense, and the subject of a singular verb, to denote the dignity of the person named by the noun, is known to be an idiom common to all the Semitic languages. Every one who can read a Hebrew Bible is aware that this peculiarity is not confined to the name of God; and that it occurs in many passages, which render absurd the inference deduced from it. For instance, from Ezek. xxix. 3, it would follow that there is a plurality of natures or “distinctions” in the crocodile, the name of which is there found in the plural, with a singular adjective and singular verb;—התנים הגדול הרבץ בתוך יאריו, “The great crocodile that lieth in the midst of his rivers.” So in Gen. xxiv. 51, the plural form אדונים, Lord, so constantly used of a human individual, is applied to Abraham: ותחי אשה לבו אדוניך, “And she shall be a wife to the son of thy masters,” i.e., thy master Abraham. It is unnecessary to multiply instances, which any Hebrew Concordance will supply in abundance. I subjoin one or two additional authorities from eminent Hebraists, whose theological impartiality is above suspicion.
Schroeder says, “Hebræi sermonis proprietas, quâ Pluralis, tam masculinus, quam femininus, usurpari potest de unâ re, quæ in suo genere magna est et quodammodo excellens; ut ימים, maria, pro mari magno; תנים, dracones, pro dracone prægrandi; אדונים, domini, pro domino magno et potente; אלהים, numina, pro numine admodum colendo; קדשׁים, sancti, pro deo sanctissimo; בהמות, bestiæ, pro bestiâ grandi, qualis est elephas; מכות plagæ, pro plagâ gravi; נחרותּ, flumina, pro flumine magno.” N. G. Schroederi Institutiones ad fundamm. ling. Hebr. Reg. 100. not. i.
Simonis. “Plur. adhibetur de Deo vero; ad insinuandam, ut multis visum est, personarum divinarum pluralitatem; quod etiam alii, maxime Judæi rectè negant: quoniam vel ibi in plurali ponitur, ubi ex mente Theologorum de unâ modo triadis sacræ personâ sermo est, velut Ps. xlv. 7, adeoque gentium unus aliquis deus pluraliter אלהים dicitur, ut Astarte 1 Reg. xi. 33; Baal muscarum et quidem is, qui Ekronæ colebatur 2, Reg. i. 2, 3. Denique sanctam triadem si אלהים significasset, multo notior usuque adeo linguæ quotidiano tritior sub prisco fœdere hæc doctrina fuisset, quam sub novo. Ex nostrâ sententiâ hic plur. indicio est, linguam Hebræam sub Polytheismo adolevisse; eo vero profligato plur. hic in sensum abiit majestatis et dignitatis.” Eichhorn’s Joh. Simonis’ Lexicon Hebr. in verb. אלה, p. 120.
Buxtorf. אלהים, plurale pro singulari: Lex Chaldaicum, Talmudicum et Rabbinicum; in verb.
Gesenius. אלהים pluralis excellentiæ: Gott, von der Einheit; wie בעלים, אדנים. Hebr. und Chald. Handwörterbuch: in verb.
Even Lewis Capel, in his defence of this verbal indication of the Trinity, admits the absurdity of using the argument with Anti-trinitarians: “Siquis ergo vellet adversus Judæos, Samosatenianos, aliosque sanctissimæ Trinitatis præfractos hostes, urgere hoc argumentum, eoque uno et nudo uti, frustra omnino esset: ni prius demonstraret falsam esse quam illi causantur phraseos istius rationem, evinceretque eam in voce istâ אלהים locum habere non posse: quod forte non usque adeo facile demonstrari posset. Atque eatenus tantùm jure possunt suggillari Theologi, si argumento illo nudo, et solo, non aliâ ratione fulto, utantur ad Judæos et Samosatenianos coarguendos et convincendos; non vero si eo utantur ad piorum fidem jam ante aliunde stabilitam, porro augendam atque fovendam.” Lud. Cappelli Critica Sacra. De nom. אלהים Diatriba. c. vii. Ed. 1650, p. 676.
May we ask of our learned opponents, how long the mysterious contents of this plural have been ascertained? Who was the discoverer, forgotten now by the ingratitude of Learning, but doubtless living still in the more faithful memory of Orthodoxy? And why those of the Christian Fathers, who devoted themselves to Hebrew literature, were not permitted to discern the Trinitarianism of the Israelitish syntax? They had not usually so dull an eye for verbal wonders.
The celebrated Brahmin, Rammohun Roy, whose knowledge of oriental languages can be as little disputed, I presume, as the singular greatness and simplicity of his mind, says: “It could scarcely be believed, if the fact were not too notorious, that such eminent scholars ... could be liable to such a mistake, as to rely on this verse (Gen. i. 26. And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness,) as a ground of argument in support of the Trinity. It shows how easily prejudice, in favour of an already acquired opinion, gets the better of learning.” And he proceeds to argue on “the idiom of the Hebrew, Arabic, and of almost all Asiatic languages, in which the plural number is often used for the singular to express the respect due to the person denoted by the noun.” Rammohun Roy was, I believe, the first to call attention to the fact, obvious to any one who will read a few pages of the Koran, that Mohammed, whose belief in the strict personal Unity of the Divine Nature gave the leading feature to his religion, constantly represents God as speaking in these plural forms. I extract a few instances from Sale’s Koran. Lond. 1734:
“God said; when we said unto the angels, worship Adam,” &c.
“God said; and we said, O Adam, dwell thou,” &c.—Ch. ii. p. 31.
“We formerly created man of a finer sort of clay; ... and we have created over you seven heavens; and we are not negligent of what we have created: and we send down rain from heaven by measure; and we cause it to remain on the earth,” &c. “And we revealed our orders unto him, saying; ... speak not unto me in behalf of those who have been unjust.” “God will say, did ye think that we had created you in sport,” &c.—Ch. xxiv. pp. 281, 282, 287.
In the very passages in which Mohammed condemns the doctrine of the Trinity, the same form abounds: “We have prepared for such of them as are unbelievers a painful punishment.” “We have revealed our will unto thee.” “We have given thee the Koran, as we gave the psalms to David.” “O ye who have received the Scriptures, exceed not the just bounds in your religion; neither say of God any other than the truth. Verily Christ Jesus, the Son of Mary, is the apostle of God, and his Word, which he conveyed into Mary, and a spirit proceeding from him. Believe therefore in God and his apostles, and say not, There are three Gods: forbear this; it will be better for you. God is but one God. Far be it from him that he should have a Son! Unto him belongeth whatsoever is in heaven and on earth.”—Ch. iv. pp. 80, 81.
C.
On the Prophecy of an “Immanuel.”
For the Interpretation which identifies “the Virgin” with the city of Jerusalem, I am indebted to Rammohun Roy, who has justified it by reasons which appear to me satisfactory. See his Second Appeal to the Christian Public. Appendix II. Calcutta, 1821, p. 128 seqq. The use of the definite article with the word (העלמה) points out the Virgin as some known object, who would be recognized by King Ahaz, without further description. It will hardly be maintained that this prince was so familiar with evangelical futurities, as to understand the phrase of Mary of Nazareth. Nor does it seem at all likely that either the prophet’s wife, or any other person not previously the subject of discourse, should be thus obscurely and abruptly described. But if “the Virgin” was a well-understood mode of speaking of Jerusalem, Ahaz would be at no loss to interpret the allusion. And that this metaphor was one of the common-places of Hebrew speech, in the time of the prophets, might be shown from every part of their writings. “Thou shalt be built, O virgin of Israel; thou shalt again be adorned with thy tabrets, and shalt go forth in the dances of them that make merry.”[[264]] “Then shall the Virgin rejoice in the dance.”[[265]] “The Lord hath trodden the Virgin, the daughter of Judah, as in a wine-press.”[[266]] And Isaiah himself uses this expression respecting a foreign city: “Thou shalt no more rejoice, O thou oppressed Virgin, daughter of Sidon.”[[267]] And expressing to the invader Sennacherib, the contempt which God authorized Jerusalem to entertain for his threats, he says, “The Virgin, the daughter of Zion, hath despised thee and laughed thee to scorn.”[[268]]
It should he remembered, however, that the establishment of this interpretation is by no means necessary to the proof of invalidity in the Trinitarian application of the prophecy. The reasons which I have adduced, together with the use in a neighbouring passage, of the phrase “over the breadth of thy land, O Immanuel,”[[269]] appear to me to point out some prince as the Virgin’s Son. But many eminent interpreters consider him as only one of the Prophet’s own children, “whom the Lord had given him, for signs and for wonders in Israel.”[[270]] And the first four verses of the next chapter certainly speak of Isaiah’s son in a manner so strikingly similar, as to give a strong support to this interpretation. But whatever obscurity there may be in the passage, the one clear certainty in it is this: that it does not refer to any person to be born seven or eight hundred years after the delivery of the prediction. And it is surely unworthy of any educated Theologian, possessing a full knowledge of the embarrassments attending the Trinitarian appeal to such texts, still to reiterate that appeal, without any specification of the mode in which he proposes to sustain it. Is it maintained that Jesus of Nazareth was the primary object of the prophecy? Or will any one be found deliberately to defend the hypothesis of a double sense? Or must we fear, that a lax and unscrupulous use is often made of allusions which sound well in the popular ear, without any distinct estimate of their real argumentative value?
It is no doubt convenient to cut the knot of every difficulty by the appeal to inspiration; to say, e.g., that Matthew applies the word Emmanuel to Christ, and with a correctness which his infallibility forbids us to impeach. But are our opponents prepared to abide by this rule, to prove its truth, to apply it, without qualification, to the New Testament citations from the Hebrew Scriptures? Will they, for instance, find and expound, for the benefit of the church, the prophecy stated by Matthew to have been fulfilled in Jesus, “He shall be called a Nazarene?”[[271]] The words are declared to have been “spoken by the prophets.” But they are not discoverable in any of the canonical prophecies: so that either the Evangelist took them from some inspired work now lost,—in which case the canon is imperfect, and Christianity is deprived of the benefit of certain predictions intended for its support; or, he has cited them so incorrectly from our existing Scriptures, that the quotation cannot be identified. I cannot refrain from expressing my amazement, that those, whose constant duty it is to expound the New Testament writings should be conscious of no danger to their authority, when it is strained so far as to include an infallible interpretation of the Older Scriptures.
D.
On Isaiah ix. 6.
The translation of this passage is not unattended with difficulties: and many of the versions which learned men have proposed leave nothing on which the Trinitarian argument can rest. It is clear that divines ought to establish the meaning of the verse, before they reason from its theology. I subjoin a few of the most remarkable translations.
The Septuagint; “And his name shall be called ‘Messenger of a great counsel;’ for I will bring peace upon the rulers, and health to him.”
The Targum of Jonathan; “And by the Wonderful in counsel, by the Mighty God who endureth for ever, his name shall be called the Messiah (the anointed), in whose days peace shall be multiplied upon us.” The following allusion to the titles in this passage from Talmud Sanhedrim, 11 ch., will show to whom they were applied by Jewish commentators: “God said, let Hezekiah, who has five names, take vengeance on the king of Assyria, who has taken on himself five names also.”
Grotius; “Wonderful; Counsellor of the Mighty God; Father of the future age; Prince of Peace.”
Editor of Calmet; “Admirable, Counsellor, Divine Interpreter, Mighty, Father of Future time, Prince of Peace.”
Bishop Lowth; “Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Father of the everlasting age, the Prince of Peace.”
Many other translations might be added: and even if the prophecy were not obviously spoken of Hezekiah, we might reasonably ask, what doctrinal certainty can be found in so uncertain an announcement? And how is the fact accounted for that, important as it was to the apostles’ success to make the largest possible use of their ancient scriptures, not one of them ever alludes to this prediction?
E.
On the Proem of John.
The objection which is most commonly entertained to the foregoing interpretation of the Proem of St. John’s Gospel, arises from the strength and vividness of the personification of the Logos. A real personality, it is said, must be assumed, in order to satisfy the terms of the description, which could never have been applied by the apostle to a mere mental creation.
I am by no means insensible to the force of this objection: though I think it of less weight than the difficulties which beset every other explanation. And it appears to be greatly relieved by two considerations; first, that a considerable part of the difficulty arises from a want of correspondence between the Greek and the English usage of language; secondly, that this personification did not originate with the apostle, but had become, by slow and definable gradations, an established formula of speech.
1. The first of these considerations I will introduce to my readers in the words of Archbishop Whately: “Our language possesses one remarkable advantage, with a view to this kind of Energy, in the constitution of its genders. All nouns in English, which express objects that are really neuter, are considered as strictly of the neuter gender; the Greek and Latin, though possessing the advantage (which is wanting in the languages derived from them) of having a neuter gender, yet lose the benefit of it, by fixing the masculine or feminine genders upon many nouns denoting things inanimate; whereas in English, when we speak of any such object in the masculine or feminine gender, that form of expression at once confers personality upon it. When ‘Virtue,’ e.g. or our ‘Country’ are spoken of as females, or ‘Ocean’ as a male, &c., they are, by that very circumstance, personified; and a stimulus is thus given to the imagination, from the very circumstance that in calm discussion or description, all of these would be neuter; whereas in Greek or Latin, as in French or Italian, no such distinction could be made. The employment of ‘Virtus,’ and Ἀρετὴ in the feminine gender, can contribute, accordingly, no animation to the style, when they could not, without a solecism, be employed otherwise.”[[272]]
Now let any one read the English Proem of John, and ask himself, how much of the appearance of personality is due to the occurrence, again and again, of the pronouns “he,” “him,” “his,” applied to the Logos; let him remember that this much is a mere imposition practised unavoidably upon him by the idiom of our language, and “gives no animation to the style” in the original; and I am persuaded that the violence of the personification will be tamed down to the apprehension of a very moderate imagination. It is true that the Logos does not, by this allowance, become impersonal; other parts of the personal conception remain, in the acts of creation and of illumination, attributed to this Divine Power: and hence the substitution of the neuter pronouns “it” and “its;” for the masculines “he,” “him,” “his,” though useful, provisionally, for shaking off the English illusion to which I have referred, cannot be allowed to represent the sentiment of the passage faithfully.
There appears to be another peculiarity of our language and modes of thought, as contrasted with the Greek, which exaggerates, in the Common Translation, the force of the personification. The English language leaves to an author a free choice of either gender for his personifications: and the practical effect of this has been, that the feminine prosopopeia has been selected as most appropriate to abstract qualities and attributes of the mind; and although instances are not wanting of masculine representations of several of the human passions, the figure is felt, in such cases, to be much more vehement and more entirely beyond the limits of prose, than the employment of the other gender. What imagination would naturally think of Pity, of Fear, of Joy, of Genius, of Hope, as male beings? It may be doubted whether our most imaginative prose writers present any example of a male personification of an attribute: I can call to mind instances in the writings of Milton and Jeremy Taylor, of this figure so applied to certain material objects, as the Sun, the Ocean, but not to abstract qualities or modes, unless when a conception is borrowed (as of “Old Time”) from the ancient mythology. And accordingly, to an English reader, such a style of representation must always appear forced and strange. But a writer in a language like the Greek cannot choose the sex of his personifications; it is decided for him, by the gender already assigned to the abstraction, about which he is occupied; and both he and his readers must accommodate their conceptions to this idiomatic necessity. In the German, the Moon is masculine; the Sun feminine; and every reader of that language knows the strange incongruities which, to English perceptions, this peculiarity introduces into its poetical imagery. For example, there is a German translation of Mrs. Barbauld’s Hymns in prose; a passage of which, rendered literally into English would read thus: “I will show you what is glorious. The Sun is glorious. When She shineth in the clear sky, when She sitteth on the bright throne in the heavens, and looketh abroad over all the earth, She is the most excellent and glorious creature the eye can behold. The Sun is glorious; but He that made the Sun is more glorious than She.” Again; “There is the Moon, bending His bright horns, like a silver bow, and shedding His mild light, like liquid silver, over the blue firmament.” In the Greek literature, accordingly, the masculine personification of abstractions is as easy and common as the feminine; and the former occurs in many instances in which an English author, having free choice, would prefer the latter: thus in Homer, Fear is a son of Mars:
Οἷος δὲ βροτολοιγὸς Ἄρης πόλεμόνδε μέτεισι,
Τῷ δὲ Φόβος, φίλος υἱὸς, ἅμα κρατερὸς καὶ ἀταρβὴς,
Ἕσπετο.[[273]]
But in Collins, a nymph:
“O Fear! ...
Thou who such weary lengths hast past,
Where wilt thou rest, mad nymph! at last?”[[274]]
And so in Coleridge:
“Black Horror screamed, and all her goblin rout
Diminish’d shrunk from the more withering scene.”[[275]]
Pindar must make Envy a masculine power:
“Μὴ βαλέτω με λίθῳ τραχεῖ φθόνος.”[[276]]
Coleridge thus describes the same feeling, giving itself speech:
“... Shall Slander squatting near,
Spit her cold venom in a dead man’s ear?”[[277]]
And common as it is for English writers to give a feminine personification to Wisdom and Genius, Philo expressly says they are of the masculine gender (τῆς ἄῤῥενος γενεᾶς νοῦς καὶ λογισμὸς);[[278]] and the husband of the other faculties of the soul.
The divine attributes are, I think, uniformly represented by the pronoun she, in imaginative religious writers, like Bishop Taylor; mercy, justice, goodness, thus assume, in the works of that great man, the same form as Wisdom in the book of Proverbs; and it may be doubted whether, if the apostle John had written in the English language and with English feelings, the personification in his proem might not have presented itself in the same shape. Any one who will read over the passage, with this idea, will find, I think, that the figure, thus modified, appears by no means inconceivable. Have we not, in the peculiarity of our language to which I have alluded, one reason why English theologians appear to have felt more difficulty than foreign divines in seizing the true idea of the Logos; and why the disposition to consider it as an objective and absolute Person has been much more prevalent among all parties here, than on the Continent?
2. But a more important consideration, for the understanding of this Proem, is this: that the Apostle is not the originator of the conception respecting the Logos, but simply adopted it in the shape, towards which it had been organizing itself for centuries. Three successive states of the idea can be traced; in the Old Testament, it appears (in Prov. viii.) as a mere transient personification of Divine Wisdom; in the Apocryphal Books of Ecclesiasticus and of Wisdom, it presents itself in a more permanent and mythical character; and, in the writings of Philo, it assumes so embodied and hypostatized a form, as to perplex the simplicity of his Monotheism. From his writings, the whole Proem of his contemporary John (except where the Baptist and Jesus are mentioned by name) might be constructed. This coincidence in phraseology so remarkable, cannot be considered as accidental. Is it thought impossible that John should say of an attribute of God, that it was with him from the first? We reply, Philo does say so; calling Goodness the most ancient of God’s qualities; Wisdom older than the universe; Logos, the Assessor (πάρεδρος and ὀπαδὸς) of God prior to all creations, a needful companion of Deity, as the joint originator with him of all things.[[279]] And the Son of Sirach says, in his personification of Wisdom: “I am come out of the mouth of the most High, first-born before all creatures:” “He created me from the beginning, and before the world.”[[280]] Is it said that such a statement is unworthy of Revelation? We reply, it occurs in the writings of Solomon: “The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old;” “then I was by him as one brought up with him:”[[281]] where the feminine form (vv. 2, 3) totally excludes the idea of Wisdom being anything more than a personification. Is it thought impossible that an attribute of God should be called the only-begotten Son of God? We turn to Philo, and find this same Logos entitled the most Ancient Son of God (ὁ πρεσβύτατος υἱὸς θεοῦ), the First-begotten (ὁ πρωτόγονος). Is it inconceivable that, through this transforming energy of God, those who received it should be said to become Sons of God? Philo says, “If you are not yet worthy to be denominated a Son of God, be earnest to put on the graces of his First-begotten Logos,—the most ancient angel, and, we may say, an archangel of various titles:” “for if we are not prepared to be esteemed children of God, we may at all events be thus related to the most Holy Logos, his eternal Image; for the most Ancient Logos is the Image of God.”[[282]]
As all Theological considerations, suggested by heretics, are apt to be dismissed with mere expressions of surprise and contempt, I am happy to refer, in confirmation of the foregoing views, in the most essential particulars, to an Orthodox Writer, whose accurate and various learning, and sound and grave judgment, have given him a merited pre-eminence among the Commentators on the Gospel of John. I allude to Professor Lücke, whose “Commentar über das Evangelium des Johannes” I have had the opportunity, since the delivery of this Lecture, of consulting. I wish that I could lay before my readers the whole of his admirable history of the rise and progress of the idea of the Logos; but I must content myself with translating a few brief extracts.[[283]]
“The origin and germ,” he says, “of the theological Formula of the Logos, are furnished in the Canonical Hebrew Books (alluding to certain passages, especially Prov. viii. which he has been showing to be mere poetical personifications of Divine Attributes). It obtained its full development in the Jewish Theology, in the writings of the Alexandrine Philo. And, in an intermediate state of formation, we find it in the Greek Apocryphal books of the Old Testament.”
Lücke examines the conception in all these stages; and, from his analysis of Philo’s mode of thought, I extract the following:
“According to Philo, God, in his interior Essence, is inconceivable, occult, solitary (das absolute), self-comprised, and without relations to any other existence.... Although the absolute cause of all that is, God cannot, in his own essence, and immediately, operate on the universe, either in the way of creation, preservation, or government. Concealed in his absolute separation, God is manifest and an object of knowledge in the world, only through his Powers (δυνάμεις): these, external forces of God in the universe, apart from his absolute essence, are the necessary media of his presence in the universe.... These divine δυνάμεις Philo calls sometimes Ideas, sometimes Angels, sometimes Logoi. This identification of notions, powers, ideas, angels, logoi, which is frequent in the writings of Philo, is of great importance for the right apprehension of his doctrine of the Divine Logos. This Logos he considers in a twofold relation. Sometimes he regards it as inherent (immanent), and refers it to him as a capacity (facultativ); when it is the Divine νοῦς, analogous to the human. But this attributive conception gives way to that of the λόγος ἐνδιάθετος, as a living, energetic δύναμις, which tends to external action. Of this, Philo, in the spirit of Platonism, conceives as ἰδέα ἰδεῶν, the Ideal of things, the archetypal Idea, the pattern World, the νοητὸς κόσμος, which is extant in God as a reality, before all outward creations of the actual universe. In this sense the λόγος is the primary energy of God,—the ἐννόησις, the λογισμὸς θεοῦ λογιζομένου.
But, at the same time, the λόγος is also προφορικός; and, as a forming activity, goes forth out of God. But as this is only another relation of the Divine Logos, viz., relation to the world, so is it the product of the former; yet essentially one with it, like the οἶκος of the inherent Logos,—as human speech is the resident point of the idea, its form of manifestation. All living, active relations of God to the world, all his objective manifestations, are comprised in this emanated Logos. He forms the world or creates it, imprinting himself on matter as a Divine seal (σφραγὶς). And as he has created the world (or otherwise, God through him, δι’ αὐτοῦ,) so he preserves it; he is the indwelling and sustaining power, full of light and life, and filling everything with Divine light and life. So in the human world, he is both the natural divine power of every soul, the pure intellect, the conscience; and the bestower of wisdom, and the watch of virtue. He is the same with the Wisdom of God, the Holy Spirit of God in his objective manifestation in the world; partly because animating and inspiring men, particularly in the capacity of Prophetic Spirit.
“Hence the Logos is the eldest Creation of God, the Eternal Father’s eldest Son, God’s Image, Mediator between God and the World, the Highest Angel, the Second God, the High-priest, the Reconciler, Intercessor for the World and Men, whose manifestation is especially visible in the history of the Jewish people.”[[284]]
It ought to be added, that some able writers, as Grossman and Gfrörer, conceive that Philo invested his Logos with a real personality. The reasons for this opinion do not appear to me to be satisfactory. Even those who adopt it assign to this hypostasis a rank wholly subordinate, in Philo’s estimation, to the Supreme God: and Lücke strenuously maintains that both the Alexandrine philosopher and the apostle John apply the name God to the Logos only in a figurative sense (ἐν καταχρήσει). He considers the clause “the Word was God,” merely incidental, and unimportant compared with the preceding clause, “the Word was with God.” “John,” he observes, “sums up the purpose of the first verse in the words of the second; οὗτος ἦν ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν θεὸν. From his not taking up again the idea θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος, we must conclude, that he considered this position only an accessory. Thus the πρὸς τὸν θεὸν is evidently to be the more prominently marked assertion.” “John would say, the primeval Logos is πρὸς τὸν θεὸν; that is, is in such communion with God, stands in such relation to him, that he may be called θεός. Looking at the historical connection between the mode of expression in Philo and in John, there is no room for doubt, that θεὸς is to be taken in the sense in which Philo applies the name θεός to the ποιητικὴ δύναμις τοῦ θεοῦ,—and explicitly calls the λόγος God—ὁ δεύτερος θεός ; but to prevent misunderstanding, expressly subjoins that this is only ἐν καταχρήσει. Though John, as we have seen, understands by the Logos, a real Divine Person, he yet, as a Christian Apostle, held the monotheistic conception of God in a still higher degree, and an incomparably purer form (xvii. 3; 1 John v. 20) than Philo: and are we then at liberty to suppose, that by him, less than by Philo, the position θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος is meant simply ἐν καταχρήσει? It is true that the substitution for θεὸς of the adjective θεῖος is at variance with the analogy of New Testament diction: but must we not, with the Alexandrine Fathers, especially Origen, conclude that θεὸς without the article, is to be taken as marking the difference between the indefinite sense of ‘Divine nature,’ and the definite, absolute, conception of God, expressed by ὁ θεὸς? Thus would John’s θεὸς correspond with Paul’s εἰκὼν τοῦ θεοῦ. Such an accordance between the manner of Paul and of John is an advantage which must appear an equally desirable result of exegesis, whether we consider it in its dogmatical or its historical relations.”[[285]]
From this extract it appears, that if the author does not approve of the old Socinian interpretation, which considers the Logos as synonymous from the first with Jesus Christ; it is not because he knows, that θεὸς in the predicate cannot signify a god; or slights Origen’s opinion on the usage of N. T. and Hellenistic Greek. We have here an authority, than which no higher can be produced from among the living or the dead, in favour of a meaning which, to the fastidious scholarship of Liverpool theologians, is absolutely intolerable. Lücke of course admits the general rule, respecting the omission of the article with the predicative noun; but he conceives (greatly to the horror, no doubt, of those whose soul resides in syntax) that the good old Apostle would even have committed a solecism in respect of a Greek article, for the sake of clearing a great truth in respect of God. “If there had been any intention to express the substantial unity of the Logos and God, we should have expected the Apostle to write ὁ θεός. On account of the equivocal meaning of θεὸς without the article, the article could not possibly have been absent.”[[286]] It is vain to say that such corrupt Greek as this cannot be ascribed to the Apostles. Here are examples from John; ἡ ἁμαρτία ἐστὶν ἡ ἀνομία; [[287]] Τὸ πνεῦμά ἐστιν ἡ ἀλήθεια: [[288]] and here are others from Paul; ὁ κύριος τὸ πνεῦμά ἐστιν: [[289]] Παντὸς ἀνδρὸς ἡ κεφαλὴ ὁ Χριστός ἐστιν. [[290]] Nay, we have an example in the following text, of a total inversion of the rule, the article being attached to the predicate, and not to the subject; εἰ ἔστι Κύριος (יהוה) ὁ Θεὸς.[[291]]
It will be perceived by the text of this Lecture that I do not adopt the rendering of the Alexandrine Fathers; but I am anxious, in rejecting it, to pass no slight on the learning of those who maintain it; and to show that, out of England, orthodoxy can afford to be wise and just.
I think it right to add, that to the view which has been given of the Proem, an objection of some weight occurs in the twelfth verse. The clause ‘to them that believe on his name’ presents the question, ‘who is denoted by the pronoun his,—the Logos or Jesus Christ personally?’ According to the interpretation which I have recommended, it should mean the former; according to the analogy of Scriptural diction, certainly the latter. Feeling the force of the difficulty, I yet think it less serious than those which attend every other hypothesis: and incline to think, that the clause is an anticipation of the personal introduction of the Incarnate Logos which immediately follows; a point of transition from the personification to the history.
In conclusion, may I take occasion to correct an erroneous statement in Mr. Byrth’s Lecture;—that Samuel Crell was a convert to Trinitarianism before his death. “He died,” we are told, “a believer in the Supreme Divinity of Christ, and the efficacy of his atoning sacrifice.”[[292]] I have before me the most authentic collection of Socinian Memoirs which has been published, by Dr. F. S. Bock, Greek Professor, and Royal Librarian at Königsberg. The work is principally from original sources; and the testimony of the following passage will probably be received as unimpeachable. It appears that a vague statement in the Hamburgh Literary News gave rise to the report of Crell’s conversion: “Obiit Crellius Amstelodami, a. 1747. d. 12. Maii, anno æt. 87. In novis litterariis Hamburg. 1747, p. 703, narratur, quod circa vitæ finem errorum suorum ipsum pœnituerit, hujusque pœnitentiæ non simulatæ haud obscura dederit documenta, quod Paulo Burgero, Archidiacono Herspruccensi in iisdem novis publicis Hamb. 1748, p. 345, eam ob caussam veri haud absimile videtur, quia sibi Amstelodami degenti Crellius, a. 1731, oretenus testatus fuerit, in colloquiis cum Celeb. Schaffio Lugdunensi institutis, quædam placita, jam sibi dubia reddita esse, adeo ut jam anceps circa eadem hæreat. Sed in iisdem novis 1749, p. 92, et p. 480, certiores reddimur: Crellium ad ultimum vitæ suæ halitum perstitisse Unitarium, quod etiam frater ipsius, Paulus, mihi coram pluribus vicibus testatus est.”[[293]]
F.
In the rendering which I have given to this passage the word ἁρπαγμὸς is considered as equivalent to ἅρπαγμα. The interpretation, however, in no way requires this; and if it should be thought necessary to maintain the distinction between them, to which the analogy of Greek formation, in the case of verbal nouns, undoubtedly points, and to limit the former to the active sense of the “operation of seizing,” the latter to the passive sense of “the object seized;” the general meaning will remain wholly unaffected. The only difference will be this; that the whole of the sixth verse must, in that case, be considered as descriptive of the rightful glory of Christ; and the transition to his voluntary afflictions will not commence till the 7th. The signification of this doubtful word simply determines, whether the clause in which it stands shall be the last in the account of our Lord’s dignity, or the first in the notice of his humiliation. The rendering, however, which I have adopted, is confirmed by the use made of this passage in the most ancient citation from this epistle. In the letter of the churches of Vienne and Lyons, the 6th verse is quoted, without the sequel, and the fact that Christ thought it not ἁρπαγμὸν to be equal with God, is adduced as an example of humility; “who showed themselves so far emulators and imitators of Christ; who being in the form of God thought not his equality with God, a thing to be eagerly seized.”—Euseb. Eccl. Hist. Lib. V. § 2. Heinichen, vol. ii. p. 36.
With considerable variation of expression, the same idea occurs in the (1st) Epistle of Clement of Rome to the Corinthians. “Christ is theirs who are humble. Our Lord Jesus Christ, the sceptre of the majesty of God, came not in the show of pride and pre-eminence, though he could have done so; but in humility. Ye see, beloved, what is the model which has been given us.” C. xvi. If the Trinitarian view of the mediatorial office of Christ be correct, it is not easy to perceive how he could have come in the show of pride and pre-eminence; had he not laid aside the glories of his Deity, and clothed himself with a suffering humanity, his mission, as commonly conceived, could have had no existence, nor any one purpose of it have been answered. But he might have been the great Hebrew Messiah, had he not chosen rather, by a process of suffering and death, to put himself into universal and spiritual relations to all men.