SECTION XIV.
THE PRINCIPAL WITNESS ON THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.
The author of "Supernatural Religion" asserts:—
"The Fourth Gospel proclaims the doctrine of an hypostatic Trinity in a more advanced form than any other writing of the New Testament." [85:1]
This is hardly true if we consider what is meant by the proclamation of the doctrine of a Trinity.
Such a doctrine can be set forth by inference, or it can be distinctly and broadly stated, as it is, for instance, in the First Article of the Church of England, or in the Creed of St. Athanasius.
The doctrine of the Trinity is set forth by implication in every place in Scripture where the attributes or works of God are ascribed to two other Persons besides The Father. But it is still more directly set forth in those places where the Three Persons are mentioned together as acting conjointly in some Divine Work, or receiving conjointly some divine honour. In this sense the most explicit declarations of the doctrine of the Trinity are the Baptismal formula at the end of St. Matthew's Gospel, and the "grace," as it is called, at the end of St. Paul's Second Epistle to the Corinthians.
St. John, by asserting in different places the Godhead of the Word, and the Divine Works of the Holy Ghost, implicitly proves the doctrine of the Trinity, but, as far as I can remember, he but twice mentions the Three adorable Persons together: Once in the words, "I will pray the Father and He shall give you another Comforter." And again, "But the Paraclete, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father shall send in My name, He shall teach you all things."
Now, in respect of the explicit declaration of the doctrine of the
Trinity, the statements of Justin are the necessary [86:1] developments
not only of St. John's statements, but of those of the rest of the New
Testament writers.
I have given two passages in page 10.
One of these is in the First Apology, and reads thus:—
"Our teacher of these things is Jesus Christ, Who also was born for this purpose, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate, Procurator of Judea in the times of Tiberius Caesar; and that we reasonably worship Him, having learned that He is the Son of the true God Himself, and holding Him in the Second place, and the Prophetic Spirit in the Third, we will prove." (Apol. I. ch. xiii.)
Again, he endeavours to show that Plato held the doctrine of a Trinity.
He is proving that Plato had read the books of Moses:—
"And, as to his speaking of a third, he did this because he read, as we said above, that which was spoken by Moses, 'that the Spirit of God moved over the waters.' For he gives the second place to the Logos which is with God, who he (Plato) said, was placed crosswise in the universe; and the third place to the Spirit who was said to be borne upon the water, saying, 'and the third around the third.'" (Apol. I. ch. lx.)
Now unquestionably, so far as expression of doctrine is concerned, these passages from Justin are the developments of the Johannean statements. The statements in St. John contain, in germ, the whole of what Justin develops; but it is absurd to assert that, after Justin had written the above, it was necessary, in order to bolster up a later, and consequently, in the eyes of Rationalists, a mere human development, to forge a now Gospel, containing nothing like so explicit a declaration of the Trinity as we find in writings which are supposed to precede it, and weighting its doctrinal statements with a large amount of historical matter very difficult, in many cases, to reconcile perfectly with the history in the older Synoptics.