(3.) That as, in consistency with the Unity, the term God will always be restricted to one only being or substance; so, in consistency with the Trinity, it will never be limited to ONE PERSON to the exclusion of the OTHER TWO.
(4.) That when the PERSONS are named by their distinctive divine titles, their equality will be observed, nor any one of them be represented as subordinate to any other.
(5.) That since the MANHOOD of Christ commenced, and its peculiar functions ceased, with his incarnation, it will never be found ascribed to him in relation to events, before or after this period.
All these phenomena, I submit, are essential to make scripture consistent with Athanasianism; and not one of these phenomena does scripture contain. This it is now my business to show.
III. (1.) Is then our expectation realized, of finding somewhere within the limits of the Bible, a plain, unequivocal statement of these doctrines? Confessedly not; and notions which, in one breath, are pronounced to be indispensable to salvation, are in another admitted to be no matters of revelation at all, but rather left to be gathered by human deduction from the sacred writings. “The doctrine of the Trinity,” says a respectable Calvinistic writer, Mr. Carlile of Dublin, “is rather a doctrine of inference and of indirect intimation, deduced from what is revealed respecting the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and intimated in the notices of a plurality of persons in the Godhead, than a doctrine directly and explicitly declared.” And elsewhere the same author says, “A doctrine of inference ought never to be placed on a footing of equality with a doctrine of direct and explicit revelation.”[[173]] If this be so (and the method of successive steps by which it is attempted, in this very controversy, to establish the doctrine of the Trinity, proves Mr. Carlile to be right), then to deny this mere inference is not to deny a revelation. But why, we may be permitted to enquire, this shyness and hesitancy in the scriptures in communicating such cardinal truths? Whence this reserve in the Holy Spirit about matters so momentous?[[174]] What is the source of this strange contrast between the formularies of the Church of England, and those of the primitive Church of Christ? The Prayer-book would seem to have greatly the advantage over the Bible; for it removes all doubts at once, and makes the essentials most satisfactorily plain; compensating, shall we say, by “frequent repetitions,” for the defects and ambiguities of Holy Writ? Nay, it is a singular fact, that in the original languages of the Old and New Testaments, no phraseology exists in which it is possible to express the creeds of the Church. We give to the most learned of our opponents the whole vocabulary of the Hebrew and the Greek Scriptures, and we say, “with these materials translate for us into either language, or any mixture of both, your own Athanasian Creed,” They well know, that it cannot be done: and ought not then this question to be well weighed? if the terms indispensable for the expression of certain ideas are absent from the Bible, how can the ideas themselves be present? Scarcely can men have any important notions without the corresponding words,—which the mind coins as fast as it feels the need; and most assuredly they cannot reveal them. Let us hear no more the rash assertion that these tenets may be proved from any page of scripture; we frankly offer every page, with unrestricted liberty to rewrite the whole; and we say, with all this, they cannot be expressed.
(2.) Let us proceed to apply our second criterion, and ascertain whether the divine persons, whom it is essential to distinguish, are so distinguished by characteristic titles in scripture; and share among them, with any approach to equality, the name of God.
It is self-evident, that a verbal revelation can make known distinctions only by distinctive words; that if two or more objects of thought receive interchangeable names, and the term which had seemed to be appropriated to the one is transferred to the other, those objects are not discriminated, but confounded. We require, then, separate words in scripture to denote the following notions; of the One Divine Substance, or Triune Being; of the First, of the Second, of the Third person, in this infinite existence;—of the Divine Nature and of the Human Nature of Christ. For the Trinity, it is acknowledged, there is no scripture name; unless, indeed, the plural form of the word God in the Hebrew language is to be claimed for this purpose; and thus an attempt be still made to confirm our faith by argument which an orthodox commentator calls “weak and vain, not to say silly and absurd.”[[175]] “From the plural sense of the word Elohim,” says the great Calvin, “it is usual to infer that there are three persons in the Godhead. But as this proof of so important a point appears to me by no means solid, I will not insist upon the word. Let me then warn my readers against such VIOLENT INTERPRETATIONS.”[[176]] “I must be allowed,” says Dr. Lee, Arabic Professor in the University of Cambridge, “to object to such methods of supporting an article of faith, which stands in need of no such support.”[[177]] Of the first person in the Trinity, the word “Father,” it is to be presumed, may be considered as the distinctive name; of the Second person, the terms Son, Son of God, and the Word or Logos; of the Third person, the phrase Holy Ghost, Spirit, Paraclete; and of the human nature of Christ, as distinguished from the Second distinction in the Trinity, the names Jesus of Nazareth, Son of Man, the Man Christ Jesus. If these names be not distinctive, there certainly are no others; and if there be none at all, then the distinctions themselves are not impressed upon the record; they are altogether destitute of signs and expressions, and must be pronounced purely imaginary. Meanwhile we will assume the titles, which I have just enumerated, to be appropriated to the purposes which have been assigned. To the use of the words Father and Son I shall have particular occasion to revert.
The usage of the word God, in the New Testament, presents us with some remarkable phenomena. The Athanasian doctrine offers to our belief four objects of thought, to which this word is equally and indifferently applicable; the Triune Divine Being; and each of the three Persons; and its advocates profess to have learned from Scripture the well-adjusted equipoise of these claims upon the great and sacred name. We are hardly then prepared by its instructions, distinct and emphatic as they are, for the following fact; allowing every one of the Trinitarian interpretations to be correct, the word God is used in the New Testament TEN times of Christ; and of some other object, upwards of THIRTEEN HUNDRED times.[[178]] Whence this astonishing disproportion? Some cause,—something corresponding to it in the minds of the writers, it must have had; nor is it easy to understand, how an equal disposition of the Divine Persons in the habitual conceptions of the Authors, could lead to so unequal an award of the grand expression of Divinity.
Even the few instances, which for the moment I have allowed, will disappear on a nearer examination. This appears to be the proper place to pass under review the most remarkable passages, which, under Trinitarian exposition, appear to sanction the doctrine of the proper Deity of Christ.
(a.) The evangelist Matthew applies to Christ[[179]] the following words of the prophet Isaiah, which, in order to give the truest impression of the original, I will quote from the translation of Bishop Lowth: “Behold the Virgin conceiveth, and beareth a son; and she shall call his name Emmanuel.”[[180]] As this name is significant, and means “God with us,” it is argued, that it could not be assigned to any one who was not properly God.