This vision of the Advent, with all the magnificent ideas which gathered round it, seems to me to have given rise to the glorious “rapture” of this passage; to have thrown in, at first, its light and darkness, and when applied now to its interpretation, to disclose the dim outline of its plan. And though, in form, the anticipation itself was at least premature, in spirit it receives, in the providence of the Gospel, one prolonged fulfilment; and many of its accompanying conceptions realize themselves perpetually. Though as yet Christ comes not back to us, yet do the faithful go to him, and there, not here, are for ever with the Lord. Though with no visible sway he dwells on earth, he more and more rules it from afar; wins and blesses the hearts of its people, bends their wills, sends his image to be their conscience; and long has he had a might and name among us, far above our principalities and powers, and made the cross superior to the crown. And who can deny that he hath united in one the family in heaven and earth, compelled death to fasten innumerable ties of love between the kindred spheres, and trained our rejoicing sympathies to see in creation but one society of the good, whether they toil in service and exile here, or have joined the colony above of the emancipated sons of God.
What then is the result of our inquiry into the scriptural use of the word God? That it is once applied, by way of transference, to Christ, in a passage of whose honours Solomon was the first proprietor. The views of the writer, and the purpose of his letter, might make this secondary application of the Hebrew poem right and useful. But now, how miserably barren must be that religion, how unspeakably poor that appreciation of Christ, which thinks to glorify him, by throwing around him the cast-off dignities of a Jewish prince! All these convulsive efforts to lift up the rank of Jesus, do but turn men from that greatness in him which is truly divine. And after all they utterly fail—except in turning into caricature the image of perfect holiness, and into a riddle the statement of the grandest truths: for the scanty evidence will not bear the strain that is put upon it. Nothing short of centuries of indoctrination could empower so small a testimony to sustain so enormous a scheme, and enable ecclesiastics, by sleight of words, to metamorphose the simplicity of the Bible into the contradictions of the Athanasian creed.
Our remaining criteria may be very briefly applied.
(3.) Our next demand from a Trinitarian Bible is this; that as there are three persons equally entitled to the name of God, that word must never be limited to One of these, to the exclusion of the other two.
Yet do the Scriptures repeatedly restrict this title to the Father so positively, that no more emphatic language remains, by which it would be possible to exclude all other persons from the Godhead. If the texts we shall adduce of this class do not teach the personal unity of God, let it be stated what terms would teach it; or whether we are to consider it as a doctrine incapable of being revealed at all, however true in itself. Meanwhile, I would ask, whether the most skilful logician could propose a form of speech, closing the Godhead against all but the Father, more absolutely than these passages; “There is but One God, the Father.”[[240]] “Father! ... this is life eternal, to know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.”[[241]] “The true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth; the Father seeketh such to worship him; God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.”[[242]] “There is one God and Father of all.”[[243]]
If such passages as these do not deny the Deity of all persons but One, it must be because the word “Father” is used in them to denote the whole Trinity; and if this be so, then this name ceases to be distinctive of the first person in the Godhead; no discriminative title of that person remains; it becomes impossible for language to characterize him; and the whole mechanism of speech, by which alone a verbal revelation could disclose the distinctions in the divine nature, vanishes away. You must either confess absence of the distinctions themselves, or show the presence of distinctive names.
(4.) Our next demand from a Trinitarian Bible would be this; that when the persons are named, by their distinctive Divine titles, their equality will be recognized, nor any one of them be represented as subordinate to another.
If an Athanasian received a divine commission to prepare a Gospel,—a statement of the essentials of Christianity,—for the use of some unevangelized nation, he would not, we may presume, habitually represent the Son, in his very highest offices, as inferior to the Father, as destitute of independent power, as without underived knowledge, and possessed only of a secondary and awarded glory. At all events, these representations would not be made without instant explanation; and the writer would accuse himself of rashly periling the mysteries of God, if he committed himself to such statements without guard or qualification, in broad unlimited propositions. Yet these are precisely the phenomena of Scripture. It is perpetually maintained by Trinitarians, that the miracles of Christ were acts of power, inexplicable except by proper Deity, united with his humanity; and that his superhuman wisdom was an expression of that Divine Nature which blended itself with his mortal constitution. If so, his miracles were wrought and his teachings dictated by that element of his personality which was God,—that is, by GOD THE SON;[[244]] but this, our Lord unequivocally denies; “The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do;” “I can of mine own self do nothing.”[[245]] “The words which I speak unto you, I speak not of myself; but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works;”[[246]] “As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father;”[[247]] “The works which the Father hath given me to perform.”[[248]] These passages declare, with all the precision of which language admits, that the wisdom and the might which dwelt in Christ, were not those of the Son, but those of the Father; the incarnate God had no concern with them, for they are ascribed exclusively to him who never became incarnate. Indeed we ask, and we ask in vain, for any one divine act or inspiration ascribed by our Lord to this humanized Deity with whom his mortal nature was united: his teachings are one prolonged declaration that the divinity that dwelleth within him was THE FATHER. If he felt within him a co-equal Godhead, how could he make the unqualified affirmation, “My Father is greater than all?”[[249]] Or can a more specific disclaimer of Omniscience be framed than this; “Of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels who are in Heaven, NEITHER THE SON, but the Father?”[[250]] Dr. Adam Clarke, unable to resist this overpowering text, expresses his suspicion that it is not altogether genuine, and that the words, “neither the Son,” should be expunged. It would appear that the temptations to “mutilation” are felt by other parties than the Editors of the Improved Version. If it be said, that in the passages which have been cited, the subordination alleged of Christ, refers to his human nature, and his mediatorial office, then it follows that his highest title may become the name of what is called his lowest capacity; and if this be so, no medium of verbal proof remains by which to establish any higher nature.[[251]] But can any supposition be more monstrous than this; that whenever our Lord used the familiar language of personality, and discoursed with the peasants of Galilee, and the populace of Jerusalem, he was perpetually performing a metaphysical resolution of himself into natures, characters, and offices, and putting forth, now a phrase from the divine, now another from the human capacity; here a sentence from the pre-existent, and there another from the mediatorial compartment of his individuality? And the absurdity is crowned, when writings, crowded thus with mental reservations, are handed over to us as a Revelation.
(5.) Our last expectation from a Trinitarian Bible is this; that, since with the incarnation began and ended the peculiar office of Christ’s humanity, he will not be spoken of as man, in relation to the events before or after this period.
The glory which our Lord is thought to have possessed before his entrance into this world, was the essential, underived, inalienable glory, which belonged to his Divinity; nor was his highest nature yet blended with the suffering elements, or capable of being described by the inferior titles, of his mediatorial office, or his mortal existence. Yet is it under the designation of SON OF MAN that he is described, according to the prevalent interpretation, as pre-existent; it is the SON OF MAN who “was before,” in that state, whither he was to “ascend up again;”[[252]] it was, “He that came down from Heaven,—even the SON OF MAN, who is in Heaven.”[[253]] Whatever doubt there may be respecting the precise import of this title, it certainly cannot be thought to denote the separate divine nature of Christ, as it existed before the incarnation. In perfect consistency with this language, it appears that for the restoration of this original glory, Jesus declares himself wholly dependent on the Father; “And now, O Father, glorify me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.”[[254]] Here, if there be truth in the Trinitarian hypothesis, it was the man that prayed for a re-bestowal of that which the man never possessed, and which the God never lost or could receive from another. It must be admitted that no expression of dependence can be more solemn and absolute, than that which pours itself forth in prayer; and if our Lord was able to resume his former state, by the energy of his own Omnipotence, this act of supplication loses all semblance of sincerity. Yet, if here his dependence on the Father is acknowledged to be implied, with what consistency can another passage, relating also to his departure from earth to Heaven, be seized upon to prove that he raised himself from the dead, by that inextinguishable and glorious power, which, nevertheless, he entreats the Father to restore? If his proper Deity brought back to life the crucified humanity, it was a mockery for his manhood to concern itself in prayer, for the restoration of the proper Deity. That his resurrection is not ascribed to inherent power of his own, is evident, not merely from the habitual language of the preachers of this great miracle, who declare without reserve that “this Jesus hath God raised up;”[[255]] nor from the words of Paul, who calls himself “an Apostle by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead;”[[256]] but even from the very text (when read without curtailment) which is adduced to prove the contrary; “No man taketh it (my life) from me, but I lay it down of myself; I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again; this commandment have I received of my Father.”[[257]] “The Messiah is privileged to be immortal; and my seeming fall by hostile hands will neither disprove my claim to the office, nor deprive it of this peculiar feature; my mission gives me a right to live, which will not be forfeited, though I exercise the right to die. Let no one think that my life is forced from me without consent of my own will; you can no more take it from me, than you can restore it to me. It is by the arrangement of the Father, whose will is also mine, that I take my Messianic immortality, not at once, but through a process of suffering and death.”