But even his disciples did not at first understand his meaning. “Philip saith unto him, Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” That is, I act officially, exercising the power of the Deity, which is delegated to me by the Father. He who sees in my works a demonstration of my personality and divinity, sees at the same time in those works the only outward and visible demonstration that can be made to men of the personality and divinity of the Father. The power which I exercise is possessed by me in common with the Father, though personally and officially exercised by me. That power is a divine attribute, and in respect to it as an attribute, I and the Father are one.
To confirm this instruction, he promises to do for his disciples what they should ask of the Father in his name; and informs them that he should leave them, as to his visible presence, and go the Father, and that he would manifest himself to them by the official personal agency of the Holy Spirit, whom the Father would send in his name, to dwell with them, be in them, show them the things which respected himself, teach them all things, and bring all things to their remembrance. John xiv.
Continuing to instruct them on this subject, in the two next chapters, he says, “When He, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth. He shall glorify me, for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you. At that day ye shall ask in my name: and I say not that I will pray the Father for you; for the Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God. I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world and go to the Father. A little while, and ye shall not see me; and again a little while, and ye shall see me.” Such was his mode of teaching the distinction of Persons in the Godhead—the doctrine of the Trinity.
The apostles were slow to learn these truths concerning the divine Persons respectively, and their offices and relations. They expected in the Messiah a temporal deliverer, who should assume the government of their nation, and continue personally and visibly among them. In certain respects they appear not to have understood his character till after his ascension, nor till after the Spirit had enlightened and convinced them that the Christ who had been crucified was indeed the Lord of glory, Jehovah, the Elohe of Abraham, in whom Abraham and David believed unto justification. Being at length fully satisfied of this, they testified it to the Jews on the day of Pentecost, and subsequently, with overwhelming effect; for the people being also convinced and cut to the heart, cried, Men and brethren, what shall we do? In their testimony to this end they declared to the Jews that Jesus whom they had crucified was both the Lord (Jehovah) and the Christ; and quoted David as saying concerning him, “I foresaw Jehovah always before me.”
Subsequently the apostles, more fully instructed in “the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of the Christ,” Col. ii., more clearly distinguished the Persons of the Trinity in all that concerned their relations to the work of redemption; though, conformably to the Hebrew usage, they often, as the context shows, designated the Mediator under the name of God, while they also by that name referred to the Father and to the one invisible Deity. Thus, speaking of the Christ, Paul says, “Who is over all, God blessed for ever.” Rom. ix. 5. Again: “There is one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” 1 Tim. ii. 5. And, treating of the economy of grace, and the gifts bestowed on the Church by the Redeemer, he says: “There is one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all.” Eph. iv. 4-6. See also the doxologies, and the formulas of grace and peace introductory to the Epistles.
These observations and references may, perhaps, sufficiently show the occasion there was for the reiterated statements, at the opening of the New Dispensation, that no man had seen the Father, and that he was declared and made known only by the Son. The Jews, to whom these things were said, were familiar with the Scriptures which record the visible appearances of Jehovah, the Elohe of Abraham. The first thing, as has been observed, that was necessary, on his appearance in human nature, was to convince those who had seen and heard him that he was the same personally and officially as He who appeared to and conversed and covenanted with the patriarchs, and dwelt with the Church in the wilderness and in the first temple. He was accordingly from the first, by inspired direction, designated by names of the same import as the Jehovah and Immanuel of the earlier dispensation; and he himself appealed to the ancient Scriptures, as testifying of him. The apostles referred to him as the Jehovah of the Old Testament; and Stephen says, that Moses “was in the Church in the wilderness, with The Messenger who spoke to him in mount Sinai.” Acts vii.
The Shekina, and all visible Divine appearances, having long been discontinued, the Jews seem not to have expected any recurrence of the like, or of analogous interpositions. Their religion consisted in a formal observance of rites and traditions, and a blind reliance on their being descendants of Abraham; and in the Messiah, whom they desired and expected, they looked only for a human chieftain, a temporal deliverer from the Roman yoke. Their notions of the Divine Being, the invisible Deity, do not appear to have differed essentially from those common to their descendants ever since. They appear, indeed, to have degenerated so far from the ancients, as to have retained no ideas of a distinction of Persons in the Godhead. When they spoke of God as their Father, they had reference only to the invisible Deity as their Creator. They were alike destitute of the faith of Abraham and of all correct knowledge of Jehovah, the promised Seed, the Messenger, the personal Word. The common people were as sheep without a shepherd, and their teachers as blind leaders of the blind. “We all, says Trypho, expect a Messiah to be born, that will be man of man.” Brown’s Justin Martyr, section 49.
Evidences to almost any extent might be easily adduced to show that the Jews of our Saviour’s time had generally, as a people, lost or perverted by their traditions the knowledge which their ancient predecessors possessed, were blind to the meaning of their own Scriptures, and were plunged in gross and inveterate errors.
Their errors soon began to be widely propagated by Judaizing teachers of Christianity, and by Gentile heretics; and with respect to the teachings of the Old Testament concerning the Creator, the Messiah, mediation, the Unity, Trinity, and other subjects, became at an early period extensively prevalent. The Gnosticism which, under Cerinthus and others, assailed the Jewish converts in the apostles’ days, and was propagated during that and several succeeding ages, under many leaders, and with various modifications, was a compound of Oriental philosophy and Judaizing infidelity. To that, in its original form, succeeded, in the second century, the modifications of the Asiatic and Egyptian sects, and the heresies of the Monarchins, or Patripassians; the sects of Theodotus, Artemon, Hermogenes and others; in the third, the Manichæans, the Sabellians, and the followers of Paul of Samosata; and in the fourth, the Arians, Semiarians, Pelagians, and others, which, with an occasional change of name, have come down to the present day, and constitute, in relation to the leading doctrines and object of the Holy Scriptures, one comprehensive heresy, of which the cardinal feature is a denial or derogation of what belongs to the official Person, character, and works of the Mediator. In the controversies to which those heresies gave occasion, owing to the nature of the questions which were discussed, the character and objects of the parties brought into conflict, the want of familiarity with the theology of the Hebrew Scriptures on the part of the orthodox, Gentile controvertists; owing to these and the like causes, the ascription, common in the patriarchal, Mosaic, and prophetic history, and in the first period of Christianity, of all the works of creation and providence to the official mediatorial Person, was gradually discontinued, and at length wholly dropped, even by those who believed in his divinity.