What is the Trinity?

Here in this very majestic declaration of the Oneness of the Godhead, care is taken to state it consistently with the truth afterwards revealed concerning the Three Persons of the Godhead—Father, Son and Spirit. These Three Persons, of one Substance, completely united in thought, will, purpose, counsel, are not three Gods, but One God, not a tritheism, but a Holy Trinity. We cannot understand the mystery of all this, but this truth lies at the very foundation of the Christian faith.

So we must be careful in using the terms, first, second and third Persons in the Trinity, not to think there is any difference in importance. The Father is God; the Son is God; the Spirit is God—the Spirit equal in nature and substance to the Father and the Son. If the three Persons of the Godhead are each of them God, it does not follow that there are three Gods. That were impossible. There can be only one God, supreme and unique. Orthodox Christendom believes in three Persons in the Godhead, yet one God, indivisible and unique—the three Persons in the Godhead with one will, one purpose, each sharing to the full every thought and desire and purpose in the minds of the others. We may not, nay cannot, comprehend this. It is a mystery hidden in the Godhead, yet the Godhead is pleased to reveal Itself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Thus we see that there could be no full revelation of God, but through the Son by the Spirit, and thereby of the Father. The full revelation of the one God is only thus - Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. This, this only, is what the one God is, one identity of will and being, so that they are essentially one and one only, yet distinct in willing and acting (and we can distinguish them in willing and acting: hence we commonly speak of persons), yet never willing or acting but in the common will and unity of nature.

It will be seen from these extracts that a distinction is drawn between Essence and Person; but as some of my readers may feel a difficulty in gathering up the distinction between the two, I submit the following idea as an illustration, but, be it remembered, only as an illustration. Human nature is distinct, or at least distinguishable, from the individual men and women who in common possess that nature. Thus we may say that, human nature is common to alt men and women, and yet that men and women are distinct from one another as individuals. So, in a high and mysterious sense, the Essence of Deity, which is self-existent, may be distinguished from the Persons in the Deity, who sustain to each other a peculiar and eternal relationship. In Their Essence They are One, in Their Personality They are Three; in Their Essence They are self-existent, in Their Personality They subsist, the Father as Father to the Son, the Son as Son to the Father, the Holy Spirit to both as proceeding from the Father and the Son. Thus we establish a Trinity in Unity. “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.” There is the unity of the divine Essence. “There are Three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit.” There we have the Trinity of Persons in the divine Essence, “for these Three are One” (1 John 5:7).

Sabellianism, which holds that there is but one God under three different names.

Each of these errors destroys the Trinity in Unity, the first by denying the Unity of the Essence, the second by denying the Trinity of the Persons. The true and scriptural doctrine of the Trinity steers between these two erroneous extremes, and holds a Trinity of Persons in a Unity of Essence. Now, the Lord Jesus, as the eternal Son of the Father, is distinct from Him as His Son, and yet necessarily one with Him as partaking of the same Essence; and the Holy Spirit, as proceeding from the Father and the Son, is distinct also from those Persons of the Trinity, and yet, as eternally proceeding from both, partakes of their Essence likewise. Thus we have a Trinity of Persons, but a Unity of Essence—One God, but eternally subsisting as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Eternal Sonship gives to the Son a Unity of Essence with the Father, and yet a distinctness of Person; thus, as the Son He is one with the Father (John 10:30), and yet as the Son He is distinct from the Father. So eternal procession from the Father and the Son gives to the Holy Spirit Unity of Essence with the Father and the Son, and yet a distinct Personality. Upon this firm basis the Trinity stands. But if you remove the eternal Sonship of Christ, you also must take away the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit; and by so doing you destroy the Unity of Essence and inter-communion of Nature of Israel’s Triune God. If the denial of the eternal Sonship of Jesus involve such consequences, well may we tremble at such an error as removes the very foundations of revealed truth. All other views of the Sonship of Christ lower His essential and eternal dignity and, however craftily disguised, tend to, and usually end in, Arianism. If His Sonship be not His eternal mode of subsistence, it must, in some way or other, be created Sonship, and what is this but Arian doctrine in its very root and essence? How the Son can be eternally begotten, and how the Holy Spirit can eternally proceed, is a mystery which we cannot understand, much less explain; but we receive it by faith, in the same way as we receive the “great mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh.” If once we begin to reason on these matters, we are lost at the very threshold of our inquiry. To believe, not to speculate; to receive the testimony that God has given of His Son; not to doubt, argue and cavil, is the only sure path, as well as the peculiar blessedness of a child of God.

Scripture is most plain, whatever unbelief may say, that there are three distinct persons in the Godhead, equal in power, majesty, and glory, each taking His own part in all that is done, whether in creation or redemption, yet ever acting in perfect unity and communion.

The Holy Trinity—Three in One, and One in Three—is in its essence a mystery beyond human comprehension, even when the comprehension is that of the renewed mind of the believer. In the very nature of things this must be so. How can the creature comprehend the Creator; the finite, the Infinite; the relative, the Absolute.

Taught myself exclusively by scripture, a multitude of expressions which are never found there appear strange to me, while they are at the base of the habits of thought of those whose views I have here to consider. Thus, "the moral law," "Christ's righteousness," and the like, which lie at the heart of the subject, are never found in scripture. But we must make allowance for these theological habits and expressions, see how far they are scriptural in substance, and hold fast the substance, while preferring, as surely clearer and more excellent, scriptural forms of expression. I have no doubt that unscriptural expressions are the fruit of, and lead to, unscriptural habits of mind; on the other hand it is not good to jeopardize substantial truths by making war on words which express them. The word "Trinity" is not found in scripture; the expression "justified by faith only" is not found in scripture; yet I need not justify them to you as human expressions of essentially fundamental truths. I have no better words, and I use what I find commonly used to express what I believe in my inmost soul; and I would not shake the faith of those who hold fast the truth expressed in these words to quarrel with the words by which thousands of saints have expressed it before me. So with the word "Person" applied to the Godhead. It is not scriptural; but I have no better word for One who sends, is sent, comes, goes away, wills, distributes, and does distinctive acts. The Father sends the Son, the Son does not send the Father. I doubt that any one will give me a better word than that which has clothed the deep divinely given convictions of faith in saints for ages. If a person quarrels with the word always used to express a truth without having a better, I dread a little his quarrelling with the truth it conveys. I say this that you may be assured that I do not seek to unsettle any simple soul by captious difficulties about words, or by resistance to expressions formed in the schools.

"Hear, O Israel ! The LORD our God is one LORD." Much has been made of this verse by orthodox Jews, who reverence it greatly. They call it the "Shema" after the first word "Hear." It is often used by Jews and Unitarians to deny the three persons of the Godhead. The Hebrew word "echod" (one), however, excludes forever such a denial, for it means a compound unity. The Hebrew has another word which expresses exactly what Jews and Unitarians, who reject the three persons in the Godhead, believe. It is the word "yochid"; this has the meaning of a single one.

Those who propagate such views have been accused of what is known as Sabellianism. This is a mistake. Sabellius of N. Africa (200 A.D.) taught that God is essentially Uni-personal, and that what we speak of as three Personal Subsistencies in the Unity of the Godhead, were really only threefold in manifestation; that the same Person, as Father, purposed to save; as Son, accomplished redemption, and, as Holy Spirit, came to lead sinners to Christ. Popular illustrations of the "Three in One"—from the nature of light or the mode of existence of certain substances are essentially Sabellian and should be avoided. Such teaching is of course fundamentally unsound. But the special denials combated here lend themselves more to tritheism. Instead of a past eternity and an Old and a New Testament, full of the relations of three Divine Persons in the Unity of the Godhead in intimate relation one to another, as Father, Son and Spirit (and no other possible relation is suggested), we are told to think of three Divine Beings, how related is not revealed, in a cold, colourless, blank eternity as far as Divine affections are concerned. Beings all the replica one of another, and of course without any subordination for mutual purposes, which in their shallow way these errorists declare to be incompatible, "if words mean anything," a favourite phrase of their school, with the equality of the Divine Persons, as they understand the phrase.