And how is it with the ante-Nicene fathers, whom Dr. Huntington also considers to be Trinitarian? else certainly his rule of “always, everywhere, and by all,” does not hold. If, for the first three hundred years after Christ, there were no Trinitarians, it cannot be said that the Trinity has “always” been held in the Church. Listen, again, to Prof. Stuart, whose learning no one can question.
“We find that all the Fathers before, at, and after the Council of Nice, who harmonize with the sentiments there avowed, declare the Father only to be the self-existent God.” (See the whole paragraph in Wilson, Trin. Test., p. 267.)
“To be the author of the proper substance of the Son and Spirit, according to the Patristical creed; or to be the author of the modus existendi of the Son and Spirit, according to the modern creed,—both seem to involve the idea of power and glory in the Father, immeasurably above that of the Son and Spirit.” (Moses Stuart, Bib. Repos., 1835.)
So Coleridge asserts that “both Scripture and the Nicene Creed teach a subordination of the Son to the Father, independent of the incarnation of the Son.... Christ, speaking of himself as the coeternal Son, says, ‘My Father is greater than I.’ ” (Wilson, Trin. Test., p. 270.)
According to the Trinitarian doctrine, then, we do not find God—the Supreme God, our heavenly Father—in Christ; but a [pg 512] derived, subordinate, and inferior Deity. Not the one universal Parent do we approach, but some mysterious, derived, inscrutable Deity, less than the Father, and distinct from him. Do we not, then, lose the benefit and blessing of the divinity of Jesus? Can we believe him when be says, “He who has seen me has seen the Father?” No; we do not believe that, if we are Trinitarians; but rather, that, having seen him, we have seen “the Son;” whom Coleridge declares to be an inferior Deity; over whom Bishop Pearson, in his “Exposition of the Creed,” says, the Father holds “preeminence,”—the Father being “the Origin, the Cause, the Author, the Root, the Fountain, the Head, of the Son.” The doctrine of the Trinity is therefore opposed, as Swedenborg ably contends, to the real divinity of Christ.[96]
But it is equally opposed to his real humanity. It constantly drives out of the Church the human element in Christ. Dr. Huntington is astonished at Unitarians not perceiving that the humanity of Christ is as dear to Trinitarians as his Deity; yet it cannot be denied, that the mysterious dogma of deity has quite overshadowed the simple human life of our dear Lord, so that the Church has failed to see the Son of man. All his highest human traits become unreal in the light of this doctrine of his deity. He is tempted; but that is unreal, for God cannot be tempted. He prays, “Our Father;” but this also is no real prayer, for he is omnipotent, and can need nothing. He encounters opposition, hatred, contumely, and bears it with sweetest composure; but what of that? since, as God, he looked down from an infinite height upon the puny opposition. He agonizes in the garden; but it is imaginary suffering: how can God feel any real agony, like man? Jesus ceases to be example, ceases to be our best beloved companion and brother, and becomes a mysterious personage, inscrutable to our thought, and far removed from our sympathy.