§ 8.
The mystery of the Trinity is the mystery of participated, social life—the mystery of I and thou. “Unum Deum esse confitemur. Non sic unum Deum, quasi solitarium, nec eundem, qui ipse sibi pater, sit ipse filius, sed patrem verum, qui genuit filium verum, i.e. Deum ex Deo ... non creatum, sed genitum.”—Concil. Chalced. (Carranza Summa, 1559. p. 139). “Si quis quod scriptum est: Faciamus hominem, non patrem ad filium dicere, sed ipsum ad semetipsum asserit dixisse Deum, anathema sit.”—Concil. Syrmiense (ibid. p. 68). “Jubet autem his verbis: Faciamus hominem, prodeat herba. Ex quibus apparet, Deum cum aliquo sibi proximo sermones his de rebus conserere. Necesse est igitur aliquem ei adfuisse, cum quo universa condens, colloquium miscebat.”—Athanasius (Contra Gentes Orat. Ath. Opp. Parisiis, 1627, Th. i. p. 51). “Professio enim consortii sustulit intelligentiam singularitatis, quod consortium aliquid nec potest esse sibi ipsi solitario, neque rursum solitudo solitarii recipit: faciamus.... Non solitario convenit dicere: faciamus et nostram.”—Petrus Lomb. (l. i. dist. 2, c. 3, e.). The Protestants explain the passage in the same way. “Quod profecto aliter intelligi nequit, quam inter ipsas trinitatis personas quandam de creando homine institutam fuisse consultationem.”—Buddeus (comp. Inst. Theol. dog. cur. J. G. Walch. l. ii. c. i. § 45). “‘Let us make’ is the word of a deliberative council. And from these words it necessarily follows again, that in the Godhead there must be more than one person.... For the little word ‘us’ indicates that he who there speaks is not alone, though the Jews make the text ridiculous by saying that there is a way of speaking thus, even where there is only one person.”—Luther (Th. i. p. 19). Not only consultations, but compacts take place between the chief persons in the Trinity, precisely as in human society. “Nihil aliud superest, quam ut consensum quemdam patris ac filii adeoque quoddam velut pactum (in relation, namely, to the redemption of men) inde concludamus.”—Buddeus (Comp. l. iv. c. i. § 4, note 2). And as the essential bond of the Divine Persons is love, the Trinity is the heavenly type of the closest bond of love—marriage. “Nunc Filium Dei ... precemur, ut spiritu sancto suo, qui nexus est et vinculum mutui amoris inter aeternum patrem ac filium, sponsi et sponsæ pectora conglutinet.”—Or. de Conjugio (Declam. Melancth. Th. iii. p. 453).
The distinctions in the Divine essence of the Trinity are natural, physical distinctions. “Jam de proprietatibus personarum videamus.... Et est proprium solius patris, non quod non est natus ipse, sed quod unum filium genuerit, propriumque solius filii, non quod ipse non genuit, sed quod de patris essentia natus est.”—Hylarius in l. iii. de Trinitate. “Nos filii Dei sumus, sed non talis hic filius. Hic enim verus et proprius est filius origine, non adoptione, veritate, non nuncupatione, nativitate, non creatione.”—Petrus L. (l. i. dist. 26, cc. 2, 4). “Quodsi dum eum aeternum confitemur, profitemur ipsum Filium ex Patre, quomodo is, qui genitus est, genitoris frater esse poterit?... Non enim ex aliquo principio praeexistente Pater et Filius procreati sunt, ut fratres existimari queant, sed Pater principium Filii et genitor est: et Pater Pater est neque ullius Filius fuit, et Filius Filius est et non frater.”—Athanasius (Contra Arianos. Orat. II. Ed. c. T. i. p. 320). “Qui (Deus) cum in rebus quae nascuntur in tempore, sua bonitate effecerit, ut suae substantiae prolem quaelibet res gignat, sicut homo gignit hominem, non alterius naturae, sed ejus cujus ipse est, vide quam impie dicatur ipse non gennisse id quod ipse est.”—Augustinus (Ep. 170, § 6. ed. Antwp. 1700). “Ut igitur in natura hominum filium dicimus genitum de substantia patris, similem patri: ita secunda persona Filius dicitur, quia de substantia Patris natus est et ejus est imago.”—Melancthon (Loci praecipui Theol. Witebergae, 1595, p. 30). “As a corporeal son has his flesh and blood and nature from his father, so also the Son of God, born of the Father, has his divine nature from the Father of Eternity.”—Luther (Th. ix. p. 408). H. A. Roel, a theologian of the school of Descartes and Coccejus, had advanced this thesis: “Filium Dei, Secundam Deitatis personam improprie dici genitam.” This was immediately opposed by his colleague, Camp. Vitringa, who declared it an unheard-of thesis, and maintained: “Generationem Filii Dei ab aeterno propriissime enunciari.” Other theologians also contended against Roel, and declared: “Generationem in Deo esse maxime veram et propriam.”—(Acta Erudit. Supplem. T. i. S. vii. p. 377, etc.). That in the Bible also the Filius Dei signifies a real son is unequivocally implied in this passage: “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son.” If the love of God, which this passage insists upon, is to be regarded as a truth, then the Son also must be a truth, and, in plain language, a physical truth. On this lies the emphasis that God gave his own Son for us—in this alone the proof of his great love. Hence the Herrnhut hymn-book correctly apprehends the sense of the Bible when it says of “the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is also our Father:” “His Son is not too dear. No! he gives him up for me, that he may save me from the eternal fire by his dear blood. Thou hast so loved the world that thy heart consents to give up the Son, thy joy and life, to suffering and death.”
God is a threefold being, a trinity of persons, means: God is not only a metaphysical, abstract, spiritual, but a physical being. The central point of the Trinity is the Son, for the Father is Father only through the Son; but the mystery of the generation of the Son is the mystery of physical nature. The Son is the need of sensuousness, or of the heart, satisfied in God; for all wishes of the heart, even the wish for a personal God and for heavenly felicity, are sensuous wishes;—the heart is essentially materialistic, it contents itself only with an object which is seen and felt. This is especially evident in the conception that the Son, even in the midst of the Divine Trinity, has the human body as an essential, permanent attribute. Ambrosius: “Scriptum est Ephes. i.: Secundum carnem igitur omnia ipsi subjecta traduntur.” Chrysostomus: “Christum secundum carnem pater jussit a cunctis angelis adorari.” Theodoretus: “Corpus Dominicum surrexit quidem a mortuis, divina glorificata gloria ... corpus tamen est et habet, quam prius habuit, circumscriptionem.” (See Concordienbuchs-anhang. “Zeugnisse der h. Schrift und Altväter von Christo,” and Petrus L. l. iii. dist. 10, cc. 1, 2. See also on this subject Luther, Th. xix. pp. 464–468.) In accordance with this the United Brethren say: “I will ever embrace thee in love and faith, until, when at length my lips are pale in death, I shall see thee bodily.” “Thy eyes, thy mouth, the body wounded for us, on which we so firmly rely,—all that I shall behold.”
Hence the Son of God is the darling of the human heart, the bridegroom of the soul, the object of a formal, personal love. “O Domine Jesu, si adeo sunt dulces istae lachrymae, quae ex memoria et desiderio tui excitantur, quam dulce erit gaudium, quod ex manifesta tui visione capietur? Si adeo dulce est flere pro te, quam dulce erit gaudere de te. Sed quid hujusmodi secreta colloquia proferimus in publicum? Cur ineffabiles et innarrabiles affectus communibus verbis conamur exprimere? Inexperti talia non intelligunt. Zelotypus est sponsus iste.... Delicatus est sponsus iste.”—Scala Claustralium (sive de modo orandi. Among the spurious writings of St. Bernard). “Luge propter amorem Jesu Christi, sponsi tui, quosque eum videre possis.”—(De modo bene vivendi. Sermo x. id.) “Adspectum Christi, qui adhuc inadspectabilis et absens amorem nostrum meruit et exercuit, frequentius scripturae commemorant. [Joh. xiv. 3;] [1 Joh. iii. 1]; [1 Pet. i. 8]; [1 Thess. iv. 17]. Ac quis non jucundum credat videre corpus illud, cujus velut instrumento usus est filius Dei ad expianda peccata, et absentem tandem amicum salutare?”—Doederlein (Inst. Theol. Chr. l. ii. P. ii. C. ii. Sect. ii. § 302. Obs. 3). “Quod oculis corporis Christum visuri simus, dubio caret.”—J. Fr. Buddeus (Comp. Inst. Theol. Dogm. l. ii. c. iii. § 10).
The distinction between God with the Son, or the sensuous God, and God without the Son, or God divested of sensuousness, is nothing further than the distinction between the mystical and the rational man. The rational man lives and thinks; with him life is the complement of thought, and thought the complement of life, both theoretically, inasmuch as he convinces himself of the reality of sensuousness through the reason itself, and practically, inasmuch as he combines activity of life with activity of thought. That which I have in life, I do not need to posit beyond life, in spirit, in metaphysical existence, in God; love, friendship, perception, the world in general, give me what thought does not, cannot give me, nor ought to give me. Therefore I dismiss the needs of the heart from the sphere of thought, that reason may not be clouded by desires;—in the demarcation of activities consists the wisdom of life and thought;—I do not need a God who supplies by a mystical, imaginary physicalness or sensuousness the absence of the real. My heart is satisfied before I enter into intellectual activity; hence my thought is cold, indifferent, abstract, i.e., free, in relation to the heart, which oversteps its limits, and improperly mixes itself with the affairs of the reason. Thus I do not think in order to satisfy my heart, but to satisfy my reason, which is not satisfied by the heart; I think only in the interest of reason, from pure desire of knowledge, I seek in God only the contentment of the pure, unmixed intelligence. Necessarily, therefore, the God of the rational thinker is another than the God of the heart, which in thought, in reason, only seeks its own satisfaction. And this is the aim of the mystic, who cannot endure the luminous fire of discriminating and limiting criticism; for his mind is always beclouded by the vapours which rise from the unextinguished ardour of his feelings. He never attains to abstract, i.e., disinterested, free thought, and for that reason he never attains to the perception of things in their naturalness, truth, and reality.
One more remark concerning the Trinity. The older theologians said that the essential attributes of God as God were made manifest by the light of natural reason. But how is it that reason can know the Divine Being, unless it be because the Divine Being is nothing else than the objective nature of the intelligence itself? Of the Trinity, on the other hand, they said that it could only be known through revelation. Why not through reason; because it contradicts reason, i.e., because it does not express a want of the reason, but a sensuous, emotional want. In general, the proposition that an idea springs from revelation means no more than that it has come to us by the way of tradition. The dogmas of religion have arisen at certain times out of definite wants, under definite relations and conceptions; for this reason, to the men of a later time, in which these relations, wants, conceptions, have disappeared, they are something unintelligible, incomprehensible, only traditional, i.e., revealed. The antithesis of revelation and reason reduces itself only to the antithesis of history and reason, only to this, that mankind at a given time is no longer capable of that which at another time it was quite capable of; just as the individual man does not unfold his powers at all times indifferently, but only in moments of special appeal from without or incitement from within. Thus the works of genius arise only under altogether special inward and outward conditions which cannot thus coincide more than once; they are ἄπαξ λεγόμενα. “Einmal ist alles wahre nur.” The true is born but once. Hence a man’s own works often appear to him in later years quite strange and incomprehensible. He no longer knows how he produced them or could produce them, i.e., he can no longer explain them out of himself, still less reproduce them. And just as it would be folly if, in riper years, because the productions of our youth have become strange and inexplicable to us in their tenor and origin, we were to refer them to a special inspiration from above; so it is folly, because the doctrines and ideas of a past age are no longer recognised by the reason of a subsequent age, to claim for them a supra- and extra-human, i.e., an imaginary, illusory origin.