It is to be remembered, in considering this, as well as other classes of passages previously cited, that no Jewish writer before Christ's coming had succeeded in constructing from them a doctrine of the Trinity. Only to those who bring to them the light of New Testament revelation do they show their real meaning.
Our general conclusion with regard to the Old Testament intimations must therefore be that, while they do not by themselves furnish a sufficient basis for the doctrine of the Trinity, they contain the germ of it, and may be used in confirmation of it when its truth is substantially proved from the New Testament.
That the doctrine of the Trinity is not plainly taught in the Hebrew Scriptures is evident from the fact that Jews unite with Mohammedans in accusing trinitarians of polytheism. It should not surprise us that the Old Testament teaching on this subject is undeveloped and obscure. The first necessity was that the Unity of God should be insisted on. Until the danger of idolatry was past, a clear revelation of the Trinity might have been a hindrance to religious progress. The child now, like the race then, must learn the unity of God before it can profitably be taught the Trinity,—else it will fall into tritheism; see Gardiner, O. T. and N. T., 49. We should not therefore begin our proof of the Trinity with a reference to passages in the Old Testament. We should speak of these passages, indeed, as furnishing intimations of the doctrine rather than proof of it. Yet, after having found proof of the doctrine in the New Testament, we may expect to find traces of it in the Old which will corroborate our conclusions. As a matter of fact, we shall see that traces of the idea of a Trinity are found not only in the Hebrew Scriptures but in some of the heathen religions as well. E. G. Robinson: “The doctrine of the Trinity underlay the O. T., unperceived by its writers, was first recognized in the economic revelation of Christianity, and was first clearly enunciated in the necessary evolution of Christian doctrine.”
II. These Three are so described in Scripture that we are compelled to conceive of them as distinct Persons.
1. The Father and the Son are persons distinct from each other.
(a) Christ distinguishes the Father from himself as “another”; (b) the Father and the Son are distinguished as the begetter and the begotten; (c) the Father and the Son are distinguished as the sender and the sent.
(a) John 5:32, 37—“It is another that beareth witness of me ... the Father that sent me, he hath borne witness of me.” (b) Ps. 2:7—“Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee”; John 1:14—“the only begotten from the Father”; 18—“the only begotten Son”; 3:16—“gave his only begotten Son.” (c) John 10:36—“say ye of him, whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?”; Gal 4:4—“when the fulness of the time came, God sent forth his Son.” In these passages the Father is represented as objective to the Son, the Son to the Father, and both the Father and Son to the Spirit.