Having shown how much the doctrine of the Trinity has to do with Ecclesiastical History, I have now to show how little it has to do with Scripture.
II. It is admitted by all, Trinitarian and Unitarian alike, that a belief in One God is the first principle of a pure religion. The slightest departure from this truth involves polytheism and idolatry. One Creator, one Father, one object for our worship and our love, is the plain and broad distinction between an idolatrous religion, and the Supreme Veneration of that spiritual God who claims an undivided empire throughout the vastness of creation. A perception of this truth does not require an advanced state of Society or Mind: nor can it be proved that even in the thickness of pagan darkness it was ever doubted. Heathen Philosophy, though it might associate with the One Spirit, too pure and immoveably serene to come in contact with matter, subordinate agents of creation (which does not differ much from the Trinitarian conception[[510]]), yet could read the glory of one Mind upon the outward universe, and see one Intelligence, one Power, one Will of love diffused through Nature: Judaism had this idea for its soul: and the Gospel has republished it in such distinct and resplendent light, that it is the universal faith of Christendom. So overpowering is the evidence, so clear is Nature’s testimony to the existence of one God, so conspicuously has Revelation set it forth in the centre of her splendours, that Trinitarianism, with what consistency we shall presently inquire, claims to be received as a believer in the Unity of Deity. It is a most triumphant acknowledgment of the brightness with which the great truth, that God is One, shines out from his Works[[511]] and from his Word, that even the Trinitarian perceives the necessity of reconciling his views with this fundamental principle; and rather than depart from it, he prefers to maintain that three may be one, and one may be three;—though the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, have each separately all that constitute an infinite and all-perfect God, and have distinct offices, and appear in distinct, if not directly opposed characters, yet that there may be a mysterious unity in the essence of a tri-personal Deity.
I am relieved then from the necessity of proving that God is One. It is a truth which no one explicitly denies; which the Trinitarian professes to hold as firmly as the Unitarian; and therefore as the undisputed doctrine of the Bible we take it as the admitted groundwork of our argument. We might call upon Nature to multiply proofs of the Unity of the designing Mind, which the universe reveals; we might appeal to the regularity of her silent movements and to the sublime order that reigns throughout her gliding worlds, to attest the Oneness of that Intelligence whose volitions she obeys: we might ask Philosophy whether one infinite Cause was not sufficient for the finite or infinite wonders of creation; whether in all her discoveries she has ever perceived a single evidence of a divided government; and whether eternal Laws holding immutable dominion throughout all worlds that Science has explored, are not sublimest proofs of the fidelity of the one presiding Spirit who trifles not with the feeble intellect of man, but reveals himself consistently to the seeking minds of His children: we might go to our own hearts, and feel the pressure of one divine hand upon its tumultuous affections, and ask whether in our sorrows or our joys, our wants or our aspirations, we resorted to more than one God, or needed other shelter than that of one all-sufficing Father and Friend; and, finally, we might open the volume of Revelation, and read to you the testimony of Prophets from Moses to Christ, that the Lord our God is one Lord, and there is none other but He:—but it appears it would be a needless task to prove a doctrine which no one doubts, or to treat as a question of controversy the universal faith of the Christian world.
We stand at once then upon the undisputed truth of the Oneness of Deity, and taking this as our uncontested vantage ground, we proceed to inquire how much is involved in the admission. What are we to understand by this sublime and unquestioned, and apparently simple truth, that God is One? There are two answers to this question, and the statement of each of them will introduce us to the Controversy. The Unitarian answers, that the words are human words, and of course used in a human sense; that the revelation was to man, and that no caution was given to him that he was not to attach human ideas to the language in which it is conveyed; that God is too tender and too faithful to sport with the understandings of His children, to involve their frail intelligence in inextricable perplexities; and that, therefore, when He publishes to the World, without explanation, the Unity of his own nature, he intends men to affix to the words the ideas always associated with them; he does not use language to mislead, but asserts the simplest and most intelligible of truths, that God is one Mind, one Person, one undivided and indivisible Spirit, to whom alone belong underived existence, and infinite perfections, and unshared dominion. These are the only ideas our minds ordinarily attach to such language,—this is the only experience we have of Unity; and if the words, when applied to God, bear a different meaning, and so have a tendency to deceive us, some caution, we think, would have been given by a God who was delivering a Revelation to his Children. The Unitarian believes that a revelation from God is a revelation of light; and without any temptation to pervert the meaning of words, he receives, in the simple and ordinary import of the language, the plain and reiterated announcement that “God is one.” If God used human words, he surely used them for the purpose of conveying ideas to human minds; for language is not necessary to Him, much less would human language be the vehicle of His infinite thought. If, then, He used the words in a sense not human, and therefore unknown to us, instead of instructing, it would betray and mislead.
The Trinitarian answers, that though he believes in the Unity of God, yet that Unity is totally different from the unity of all other beings. He believes that in the One God there are three distinct and infinite persons, presenting themselves to human contemplation in different characters, and as the objects of different affections; the first reigning in Heaven, the second in intimate and inseparable connection with a dying man upon the Earth; the first immutable in his immensity, the other coming down from his eternal throne to wrap his infinite essence in a covering of human flesh; the Father sending the Son, and the Son satisfying the demands of the Father; the Father the cause and origin of all things, but holding himself loftily apart, whilst the Holy Spirit takes the office of communion with men, and becomes the Comforter, Teacher, and spiritual Friend of the human souls, whom the Father’s creative energies, acting through the Son, have called into existence. This, then, is the doctrine of the Trinity: three equal Persons, each Supreme, each a perfect and infinite Deity, and yet so united as to constitute but one undivided God.
We are tauntingly told of the vague statements of Unitarian Doctrine. Now nothing can be more unjust than this, or farther from the facts. “Controversially described,” Unitarianism is the most definite thing imaginable. It simply says, No, to every one of the allegations of Trinitarianism. There are, at the very least, five different forms in which the doctrine of the Trinity has been explained and defended; and to every one of these five shifting modifications, we repeat our definite negative. There is the widest difference among Trinitarian Theologians as to their method of stating and explaining the influence of Atonement and of Original Sin; and to every one of these varieties we equally repeat our simple negative. Where, then, is the superior definiteness of Trinitarian statements? We affirm, of all its characteristic doctrines, that they are untenable in any form whatever. This, surely, is definite enough.
I am not aware that I have stated the doctrine of the Trinity in a way which any Trinitarian could disown; and the first observation I make upon it is this, that in this view of the oneness of God, in connecting the deity of the Father, and the deity of the Son, and the deity of the Holy Spirit, with a strict unity in the godhead, the Trinitarian has at least departed from the ordinary acceptation of language. We will not assert the absolute impossibility of his retaining a belief in the Unity of God, because we have no right to question his own solemn assertion of the fact, or to set limits to the powers of another’s faith; but he will not deny that he believes God to be one, in a sense totally different from that in which he believes himself to be one; that it is a unity of three minds, each a perfect God, and capable of acting separately,—in so much that it is a warning of the Creeds,—not to confound the Persons. It is not a unity of Mind, nor a unity of Will, nor a unity of Agency, nor a unity of Person, which the Trinitarian regards as constituting the Unity of God, but three Minds, three Wills, three Agents, three Persons, mysteriously making one Deity. I ask, were it not for the overpowering brightness with which the Bible reveals the doctrine of one God, would the Trinitarian encumber himself with the difficulty of combining it with his other views; would he not rather simply confess that three persons made three beings, and not one being; and represent the world as under the threefold, but harmonious, government of a Creator, a Saviour, and a sanctifying Spirit?
We have thus, then, two admissions on the part of the Trinitarian, which I ask you distinctly to bear in mind. He admits the Unity of God; and he admits that when he attempts to combine that Unity with a Trinity, he uses the word in an unintelligible sense, and understands, or rather marks, by it something entirely different from the oneness of any other being,—a oneness in short of which he himself is capable of forming no conception. That is, he retains the form of words that God is one; but these words convey to him no distinct idea,—and yet words are the signs of human ideas;—he confesses that God is not one in any sense of that word that he can comprehend; and that, therefore, when he professes his faith in the Unity of God, he is using language which is unintelligible even to himself. This he must acknowledge, for he calls the Trinity a mystery; but the mystery he will admit is in the Unity, not in the Trinity: the mystery (that is, the no-meaningness to man, for this is the only meaning the word will here bear, the difficulty being not in the vastness or spirituality of the Conceptions, but in their irreconcilableness,) is not that there are three Persons, but that the three are one. Now this is the confession of every Trinitarian: he can form very distinct notions of the Trinity, but he admits that he cannot reconcile these notions with any human idea of unity; it is unintelligible, it is inconceivable, it is an apparent contradiction to all other men, to him only a paradox; it is an unfathomable mystery (a sad desecration of that solemn word); but still he professes to believe it,—he maintains that he can hold “the form of sound words;” and as to thoughts, it is his duty to have none upon the subject. He knows that it is revealed that God is One; and he thinks it is revealed that God is in Three; and without any attempt to harmonize these two statements, he professes to believe them both.
Now taking our stand on the conceded truth that God is revealed to be one, we ask for equal evidence that He is revealed to be Three Persons. We ask throughout the Bible for one plain assertion of this doctrine. We shall be satisfied with even one, and we think it is not asking much. We ask but for a single text in which it is declared that there are three infinite Minds in the Unity of but one infinite God.
It is admitted that there is no distinct statement of this doctrine in any part of the Scriptures; and here again we rest upon another confession of all instructed Trinitarians,[[512]] that this mystery is nowhere found in express terms; that if taught at all it is taught by implication; that it is no part of the direct revelation, but merely an inference which may be collected from certain appearances, certain verbal phenomena. Now I ask if this doctrine was intended to be revealed, could it have been so left? If the Trinity is as strictly true as the Unity, could the one have had the witness of Prophets and Apostles, and shine forth as the clearest light on the revealed page, whilst the other was left to be gathered from some obscure and incidental intimations which the most gifted minds have not been able to perceive? Is it credible that if the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, were three Persons in one God, there should be nowhere in the Bible a single statement of that truth;[[513]] and ought not this extraordinary fact make us very cautious to try the soundness of the inferences, human and erring modes of reasoning, upon which, as upon its foundation, this stupendous doctrine is laid?