Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors

by James Freeman Clarke

God, in himself, he declares, we cannot know at all. We know him only, in his revelation. “Out of that ineffable and veiled Godhead—the groundwork, if we may say so, of all divine manifestation; a theocracy—there emerge to us, in revelation, the three whom we rightly call persons—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”

We can only conceive of God, he says, in action; and in action we behold him as three. But action and revelation take place in time. The Trinity, therefore, according to Dr. Huntington, is only known to us in temporal manifestation: whether it exists in eternity or not, we cannot tell. And yet, in the next sentence, he goes on to say that “the Son is eternally begotten of the Father,” and “the Holy Ghost proceeds out of the Father, not in time;” which is the very thing he had a moment before professed to know nothing about. It is very difficult, therefore, to tell precisely what his view is. With regard to the incarnation of the Son, he is still more obscure. He says that “Christ comes forth out of the Godhead [pg 502] as the Son;” that he “leaves the glory he had with the Father;” that, while he is on earth, the Father alone represents the unseen personality of the Godhead, and that therefore the Son appears to be dependent on him, and submissive; that temporarily, while the Son is in the world, he remains ignorant of what the Father knows, and says that his Father is greater than he. “He lessens himself to dependency for the sake of mediation.” “All this we might expect.” This he calls an “instrumental inequality between Son and Father:” it “is wrought into the biblical language, remains in all our devotional habit, and ought to remain there.”

In other words, Dr. Huntington believes that the Infinite God became less than infinite in the incarnation. The common explanation of those passages, where Christ says, for example, “My Father is greater than I,” does not satisfy him. He is not satisfied that Jesus said it “in his human nature.” No. It was the divine nature which said it; and it was really God the Son, who did not know the day nor the hour of his own coming. He lost a part of his omniscience. He ceased to be perfect in all his attributes. We should say, then, that he ceased to be God; but Dr. Huntington maintains that he was God, nevertheless; but God less than omnipotent,—God less than omniscient; God the Son, so distinct from the Father as to be ignorant of what the Father knew, and unable to perform what the Father could do.

Dr. Huntington (p. 366) ascribes it to “condescension” in Christ, to say that “of that day and hour knoweth not the Son.” “It is condescension indeed!” says he. But this word “condescension” does not well apply here. One does not condescend to be ignorant of what he knows: still less does a truthful person condescend to say he is ignorant of what he knows. We may wisely condescend to help the feeble, and sympathize with the lowly, but hardly to be ignorant with them, or to pretend to be ignorant. It is a badly chosen word, and seems to show the vacillation of the writer's thought.

IV. The arguments against the doctrine of the Trinity are unanswerable.

We infer that they are unanswerable from the fact that they are not answered. It is to be presumed that Dr. Huntington, having been for so many years a preacher of Unitarian doctrine, is acquainted with our arguments. It is a remarkable fact that, in this sermon, he has nowhere attempted to reply to them. He has [pg 503] passed them wholly by. You would not know, from reading the discourse, that he had ever been a Unitarian, or had ever heard of the Unitarian objections to the Trinity; still less that he had himself preached against it. Unitarians, for instance, have said, that if the Trinity be true, and if it be so important to the welfare of the soul as is contended, it would be somewhere plainly taught in the New Testament. Does Dr. Huntington answer this argument? No; he answers the argument from the word “Trinity” not being in the Bible, and his answer is sufficient; but he does not answer the argument from the fact, that the doctrine itself is not anywhere distinctly taught, and that none of the terms which have been found essential to any Orthodox statement of the doctrine are to be met with in the New Testament.[93]

Nor does Dr. Huntington anywhere fairly meet the Unitarian argument from the impossibility of stating the doctrine in intelligible language. He tells us, with his usual eloquence, what we have often enough been taught before, that there are many things which we do not understand, and that we must believe many facts the mode of which is unintelligible. But when we say, “Can we believe a doctrine or proposition which cannot be distinctly stated?” He has no answer. The Trinity is a doctrine, and must therefore be distinctly stated in order to be believed. It has not been distinctly stated,[94] and therefore cannot be believed. To this objection Dr. Huntington has no reply; and we may conclude that it is an unanswerable objection.

Dr. Huntington uses an unnecessary phrase about those who object to mystery. He calls the objection “shallow self-illusion,” and proceeds with the usual declaration, that all of life is mysterious. Can he have been a Unitarian preacher for twenty years, and not have known that Unitarians object to mystery only when it is used by Trinitarians as a cover for obscurity and vagueness of statement?

You ask us to believe a precise statement, viz., that “there are three persons in the Godhead.” We say, “What do you mean by ‘person’?” The Trinitarian answers, “It is a mystery.” We say, “We cannot believe it, then.” The Trinitarian replies, “Why, all is a mystery. How the grass grows is a mystery; yet you believe it.” “No,” we say, “we do not believe it. When the mystery begins, our belief ends; we believe up to that point, and no farther.” The statement, “the grass grows,” is not a mystery; the fact, “the grass grows,” is not a mystery. We believe the fact and the statement. The way in which it grows is mysterious; and we do not believe anything about it. “You cannot understand how the grass grows.” No; and, accordingly, we do not believe anything about how the grass grows. But the whole purpose of the Trinity is to show how the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit exist. You are not satisfied that we receive what the Scripture teaches; you try to show us the how, and then leave it in obscurity at last.

Nor does Dr. Huntington reply to the Unitarian explanation of the Trinitarian proof-texts. Trinitarians have often quoted the texts—“I and my Father are one;” “He who has seen me has seen the Father”—in proof of the Deity of Christ. Unitarians have often replied to both of them: to the first passage, that since Jesus has also said that his disciples were to be one with him, as he is one with God, it either proves that the disciples are also to be God, or does not prove that Christ is God. To the second passage, Unitarians have replied by reading the next clause, in which Christ says, “Believest thou not that I am in the Father?” showing how it is that he reveals the Father. He is in the Father, and his disciples are in him. Those who see him, see the Father; those who see his true disciples, see the face and image of Christ. These answers are so obvious, and Dr. Huntington must have heard them so often, that he should, as a controversialist, have taken some notice of them. He has not done so.