"There is scarcely one text alleged by the Trinitarians which is not otherwise expounded by their own writers".—John Locke (Common Place Book)
In quoting the language of eminent Trinitarian divines who say that the word Trinity is never found in the Divine Records", that "you never find in the Sacred Scriptures 'three persons in one God'"—that "the phrase Holy Trinity is dangerous and improper"—that "there is no such proposition as that one and the same God is three persons"—"where in the Scriptures is the Triune God held up to be worshipped, loved, and obeyed"?—we do not wish to convey the idea that our Trinitarian neighbours do not produce any texts from the Bible as indirect support of their views. We know they do advance Scriptural proofs; but the fewness of such texts is notable. In Wesley's "Sermon on the Trinity", one text alone, 1 John v. 7, is relied on. This is now removed from the New Testament as spurious. In the "Complete Analysis of the Bible," by the Rev. Nath. West, D.D., a most extensive work, four texts are relied oh; one of these, as we have already said, is removed. In this work there are probably five hundred texts on the person of Christ, and only four texts as Scriptural proofs of the Trinity. In Dr. Eadie's "Classified Texts of the Bible", a most elaborate work, like Dr. West's, founded on Talbot's "Analysis of the Bible", while there are twenty-eight pages of texts devoted to the person of Jesus Christ, there are only six texts adduced as Bible proofs of the Trinity. Let us examine these, and we shall find that what John Locke said of the concessions of Trinitarians is verified.
(1) Isa. 48:16- "The Lord God and His spirit hath sent", &c We have before us over a dozen concessions on this text, but let the words of Luther and Calvin suffice. Luther says, "This passage has been amazingly darkened. The Jews understood it of the prophet; and this opinion I adopt. ... It will not validly support the mystery of the Trinity". Calvin says, "Many apply it to Christ, but they are not supported by the language of the prophet. We should beware of violent and forced interpretations". ["Eminent theologians, as Jerome, Vatablus, Calvin, our own Dutch divines, and others, will have these to be the words of Isaiah to himself —Witsius on the Creed, Diss. vii. 15.]
(2) Matt. 3:16, 17: "The spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him; and lo a voice from heaven, saying,'This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased'". There is nothing said here of three co-equal and co-eternal persons in the Godhead. We agree with the words of a Calvinistic commentator on this text, that "the spirit of God is said to come upon men when they are eminently qualified to undertake any great office"—Rosenmuller. "The epithet beloved, given to the Son on this occasion, marks the Father's greatness of affection for him"^-Macknight. "This is my Son whom I have sent on purpose to reveal my will by him; and whatsoever he teaches comes from me, and is perfectly my will or law"—Hammond. When Dr. Adam Clarke says, "This passage affords no mean proof of the doctrine of the Trinity", we reply there is no proof here of three persons in the Godhead. All Christian Unitarians, as well as Trinitarians, believe in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It would be a great mistake to infer from this that all believe that these three are one God.
(3) Matt. 28:19, "Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit". On this text Michaelis remarks, "We know how frequently this passage is quoted as a proof of the doctrine of the Trinity. ... I must confess I cannot see it in this point of view. The eternal Divinity of the Son which is so clearly taught in other passages is not here once mentioned, and it is impossible to understand from this passage, whether the Holy Ghost is a person. The meaning of Jesus may have been this: Those who were baptised should, upon their baptism, confess that they believed in the Father, and in the Son, and in all doctrines inculcated by the Holy Spirit". [The Burial, &c, of Jesus Christ, pp. 325—327.] We are at one with the view of this divine, and also with Rosenmuller, who says, "We are baptised into the Father, as the Author of a new religion; into the Son, as the Lord of a new Church; and into the Holy Spirit, as the guardian and assistant of this Church". We have before usother testimonies, such as "Though the three persons are indeed named, no mention is made of a unity of essence and of a real distinction of persons".—Nihusius.
(4) 2 Cor. 8:14- "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost". In this passage, as in all others which mention the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, nothing is said of their being one God. We all believe in the Father as the only true God. We believe in the Son as the messenger of God; and in the Holy Spirit as a gift from God. We use most freely the New Testament language touching the Father. Son. and Holy Spirit, while we hold that there is not the least suggestion in it of a tri-personal Deity. "These and the like words", says Hammond, "are a form of greeting which includes in it all good wishes, but not a solemn prayer to those persons named in the form".
(5) It must be noted as a very remarkable thing that the only passage in which Father, Word, and Holy Spirit are spoken of as One (1 John v. 7) is excluded from the Revised New Testament as spurious.
(6) Another text quoted by Dr. Eadie is, "For through him we both have access by one spirit unto the Father". It must puzzle the most ingenious person to discover how this proves that there are three persons in the Godhead.
We will now quote, without comment, certain other texts which we have known produced as Scriptural evidence of the Trinity, which show how hard pressed the defenders of the doctrine must have been to have had recourse to them:—Ps. 33:6, "By the word of Jehovah were the heavens made, and all the hosts of them by the breath of his mouth". Numb. 6:24, "Jehovah bless thee and keep thee: Jehovah make his face to shine upon thee: Jehovah lift up his countenance upon thee". Isa. 6:3, "And one cried unto another and said, Holy, holy, holy is Jehovah of hosts". Isa. 34:16, "Seek ye out of the book of Jehovah and read: ... his mouth it hath commanded, and his spirit it hath gathered them". 1 Cor. 12:4-6, "There are diversities of gifts but the same spirit, and there are diversities of administration but the same Lord; and there are diversities of operations but it is the same God who worketh all in all". Rev. 1:4-5, "Grace be unto you and peace from Him who is, and who was, and who is to come, and from the seven spirits that are before the throne, and from Jesus Christ". On these texts learned Trinitarians have wisely said that the triple use here and there of words like "Jehovah," or the word "Holy" is a very unsubstantial proof of so important a doctrine. Grotius remarks, "Surely such repetitions are void of mystery; and imply nothing but the unparalleled excellence of the thing spoken of, or some extraordinary emotions of the speaker". ["The threefold repetition is thought to have so little of an argument in it as to scarcely merit any answer".—Dr. South.] Calvin says, "Plainer texts ought to be adduced, lest in proving the chief article of our faith we should become the ridicule of heretics". But where are those plainer texts? We are not aware of any texts, except the above, which have been used as Bible proofs of the Trinity. Again we challenge anyone to find us one passage in the whole compass of the Bible where the doctrine of three persons in one God is stated or even hinted at. It is only "by inference" says one, "by collection" says another, "by the authority of the Church," says another, that we derive the doctrine of the Trinity.
The first teachers of Christianity were never charged by the Jews (who unquestionably believed in the strict unity of God), with introducing any new theory of the Godhead. ["Monotheism was the proud boast of the Jew".—Canon Farrar, "Early Days of Christianity", vol. i., p. 55.] Many foolish and false charges were made against Christ; but this was never alleged against him or any of his disciples. When this doctrine of three persons in one God was introduced into the Church, by new converts to Christianity, it caused immense excitement for many years. ["In the Fourth Century", says Jortin, vol. ii., p. 60, "were held thirteen Councils against Arius, fifteen for him, and seventeen for the semi-Arians,—in all, forty-five".] Referring to this, Mosheim writes, under the fourth century, "The subject of this fatal controversy, which kindled such deplorable divisions throughout the Christian world, was the doctrine of Three Persons in the Godhead; a doctrine which in the three preceding centuries had happily escaped the vain curiosity of human researches, and had been left undefined and undetermined by any particular set of ideas".
Would there not have been some similar commotion among the Jewish people in the time of Christ, if such a view of the Godhead had been offered to their notice, and if they had been told that without belief in this they "would perish everlastingly"?
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"When we say God hath revealed anything, we must be ready to prove it, or else we say nothing. . . . Some men seem to think that they oblige God by believing plain contradictions, but the matter is quite otherwise".—Archbishop Tillotson.
While there is no mention in the sacred Scriptures of a Trinity of persons in the Godhead, it is equally certain that in the field of nature no hints or suggestions of it are to be seen. "Where is the people to be found", asks Robert Hall, "who learned the doctrine of the Trinity from the works of nature"? It is true that by the light of nature many of our race have been led to believe in the existence and the providence of God; but the mystery of the Trinity has in no instance been shadowed forth in the glory of the heavens, in the beauty of the earth, or in any of the forms or combinations of matter. Many divines who have had an interest in finding all the support they can for this view of God, declare, like Dr. John Owen, that "Nature recoils from the doctrine"; or, like Hackspan, that "From the principles of nature the Trinity cannot be made known to us".
It is not only admitted by learned Trinitarians that there is no mention of a Triune Deity in the Bible, and no suggestion of that doctrine in the phenomena of nature, but, in addition, it is stated that this view of the Godhead is hostile to reason. Cardinal Wiseman asks, "Who will pretend to say that he can, by any stretch of his imagination, or of his reason, see it possible how three persons in one God can be but one Godhead"? Dr. Hey, a Cambridge Divinity Professor, also confirms this statement in the following passage:—"When it is proposed to me to affirm, that in the unity of the Godhead there be three persons, .... I profess and proclaim my confusion in the most unequivocal manner". Dr. South has pronounced the result which this doctrine involves, "so very strange and unaccountable, that were it not adored as a mystery it would be exploded as a contradiction". "That three Beings should be one Being," says Soame Jenyns, "is a proposition which certainly contradicts reason—that is, our reason " The language of Bishop Beveridge sets the matter in the clearest light, as an inconceivable mystery: "That God the Father should be one perfect God of himself, God the Son one perfect God of himself, and God the Holy Ghost one perfect God of himself; and yet that these three should be one perfect God of himself, so that one should be perfectly three and three perfectly one; that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost should be three and yet be one, but one and yet three! O heart-amazing, thought-devouring, unconceivable mystery!" In view of this doctrine, and its relation to the scheme of redemption, Bishop Hurd confesses that at it "reason stands aghast, and faith herself is half confounded"!
Now, if it be true that the Christian religion is a simple, natural, and rational religion, and if it be impossible so to describe the doctrine of "three persons in one God" the question may well arise, whether this doctrine forms any part of the Christian system. The strict and absolute unity of God is the doctrine of the Bible, and accords with the works of nature and the intelligence and reason of man. All the forms of prayer which we find in the Bible are invariably addressed to one God, one Mind, one Person. There are no appeals in the sacred volume to a "holy, blessed, and glorious Trinity, three persons in one God"; the idea of God is everywhere strictly Monotheistic. This truth of the Unity of God appears clear, and the proofs of it are as abundant as blades of grass on the landscape, or as leaves in the forest. The language of the Bible, about God, endorses the plain language of nature, reason, and common sense. Why, then, do so many of our brethren fall back on inconceivable mysteries and palpable contradictions? Why does the great body of the Christian Church suffer itself to be trammelled by the jargon of a scholastic theology, and by notions about our heavenly Father which have completely obscured the "simplicity of Christ", and introduced creeds and forms of worship not only unknown to the pages of the New Testament, but opposed to both its letter and spirit.
While the source of the doctrine of a tri-personal God is not to be found in the Bible, it can be traced to pagan notions and scholastic subtleties, which the writer of the following pages-—the Prize Essay-—has laid open. We are not without hope that the intelligence of the present age, aided by the wide diffusion of the Scriptures, will speedily lead the great body of thinking Christians to the re-discovery of (what Sir Isaac Newton once called) "that long-lost truth of the Gospel, the Unity of God". The philosopher is not alone in his wish for Church reform. Neander, the historian and theologian, gives utterance to a similar hope in the words of Wickliffe. "I look forward to the time when some brethren, whom God shall condescend to teach, will be thoroughly converted to the primitive religion of Christ, and that such persons, after they have gained their liberty from AntiChrist, will return freely to the original doctrines of Jesus; and then they will edify the Church, as did Paul".
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