“The fundamental formula for the doctrine of the Trinity, as defined by the Church,” says Twesten,[72] “is, that in one divine essence or nature there are three persons, distinguished from each other by certain characteristics, and indivisibly participating in that one nature.” The “Augsburg Confession,” says, in like manner, “three persons in one essence.”[73] So the “Gallic Confession,” and other Church Confessions, which say almost the same thing in the same words.[74]
The explanations given to these phrases vary indefinitely. Nitzsch (System d. Christ. Lehre, § 80) says, “We stand related in such a way, with all our Christian experience (Gewerdensein und Werden), to the one, eternal, divine essence, who is love, that in the Son we adore love as mediating and speaking, in the spirit as fellowship and life, in the Father as source and origin.” Schleiermacher considers this doctrine as not any immediate expression of the Christian consciousness, and declares that “our communion with Christ might be just the same if we knew nothing at all of this transcendent mystery.” Hase says,[75] “This Church dogma always has floated between Unitarianism, Tritheism, [pg 424] and Sabellianism, asserting the premises of all three, and denying their conclusions only by maintaining the opposite.”
All sorts of illustrations have been used from the earliest times—such as fountain, brook, river; root, stalk, branch; memory, understanding, will;[76] soul, reason, sense;[77] three persons in grammar, the teacher, the person spoken to, and that spoken of.[78] Some mystics argued the necessity of three persons in the Deity for the sake of a divine society and mutual love.[79] Lessing argues that “God from eternity must have contemplated that which is most perfect, but that is himself; but to contemplate with God, is to create; God's thought of himself, therefore, must be a being, but a divine being, that is, God, the Son God; but these two, God the thinker and God the thought, are in perfect divine harmony, and this harmony is the Spirit.”[80] Leibnitz also considers the Trinity as illustrated best by the process of reflection in the human mind. Strauss objects to this class of definitions, that they are two elements united in a third, while the Church doctrine requires three united in a fourth.
The Church doctrine concerning the Trinity appears most fully developed in its Orthodox form in what is called the Creed of St. Athanasius. It was not written by him, but by some one in the fifth or sixth century.
1. Whosoever will be saved, before all things must take care to keep the Catholic faith:
2. Which except one keeps it entire and inviolate, he shall without doubt perish everlastingly.
3. But the Catholic faith is this: that we adore one God in Trinity, and the Trinity in Unity;
4. Neither confounding the persons, nor dividing the substance.
5. For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Spirit.
6. But the divinity of the Father, Son, and Spirit, is one, the glory equal, the majesty equal.