"There is this distinction which attaches to us, that the sense which we put upon important passages is the very sense given to them by Orthodox writers".—Madge.
An array of texts, such as we have presented, may appear like special pleading or an ex parte statement on the side of the absolute unity of God; for it is sometimes said that the advocates of every different theory or church system can find texts in the Bible for their views. To this we are able to reply, that learned defenders of the doctrine of the Trinity acknowledge the deficiency of Scriptural evidence for their views. Bishop Smalridge says truly, "It must be owned that the doctrine of the Trinity, as it is proposed in our Articles, our Liturgy, our Creeds, is not in so many words taught us in the Holy Scriptures. What we profess in our prayers we nowhere read in Scripture, 'that the one 'God, the one Lord, is in person not one only, but three 'persons in one substance.' There is no such text in "Scripture as this, that 'the Unity in Trinity, and the 'Trinity in Unity, is to be worshipped'. No one of the inspired writers hath expressly affirmed that in the Trinity none is afore or after other, none is greater or less than "another." [Sixty Sermons; Sermon. xxxiii. p. 348] And Neander, in his Church History, says, "This doctrine [the Trinity] does not, it appears to me, belong strictly to the fundamental articles of the Christian Faith; as appears from the fact that it is explicitly set forth in no particular passage of the New Testament; for the only one in which this is done, the passage relating to the three that bear record (1 John v. 7), is undoubtedly spurious, and by its ungenuine shape testifies to the fact how foreign such a collocation is from the style of the New Testament writings. We find in the New Testament no other fundamental article, besides that of which the Apostle says, that other foundation can no man lay than that is laid—the preaching of Jesus as the"Messiah; and the foundation of his religion is designated by Christ himself as the faith in 'the only true God, and "'in Jesus Christ whom he hath sent'". [History of the Church, Bonn's Edition, Vol. II. p. 286.]
Luther, as we have seen, admits "The word Trinity is never found in the Divine Records, but is only of human invention. Far better would it be to say God than Trinity".
["Trias is first found in the writings of Theophilus. Trinitas, in "the writings of Tertullian".—Schaff. "If Theophilus was the first who employed the word Triad, Trinity, that abstract term, which was already familiar in the schools of philosophy, must have been introduced into the theology of the Christians after the middle of the second century".—Gibbon's Roman History, vol. iii., chap. 21.]
Calvin says:—"I dislike this vulgar prayer, 'Holy Trinity, one 'God, have mercy on us', as altogether savouring of "barbarism". [Tractat. Theol., p. 796.] Dr. South goes further than Luther and Calvin, and says:—"It must be allowed that there is no such proposition as this, that one and the same God is three different persons, formally and in terms to be found in the Sacred Writings, either of the Old or New Testament; neither is it pretended that there is any word of the same significance or importance with the word Trinity, used in Scripture with relation to God ". [Consid. on the Trinity, p. 38.] It would be easy to multiply concessions such as the following:— "We ought to believe that there are three persons in one essence in the Deity, God the Father, God the Son, and Gcd the Holy Ghost, though you never find in Scripture these sublime and remarkable words". So that when Cardinal Wiseman asked the question, "Where is the term Trinity to be discovered in Scripture"? he asked a question which is capable of only one answer, not as a matter of opinion but as, a matter of fact, that not only the term Trinity, but no statement or definition of the doctrine, is to be found in the Bible. The Rev. James Carlile says:—"I have ever disliked the use of the word Trinity in prayer to God, as not being a name whereby God reveals Himself to us, and as savouring of scholastic theology". We would once more remind our readers that the above are all concessions of Trinitarian divines, who most justly observe that none of the terms used in speaking of the Trinity are to be found in the Sacred Volume.
When we are told that texts may be produced from the Bible to uphold any theory, we can meet the assertion by the simple truth, that there is no text in the Bible in which there occurs the phrase "Trinity", or "Three persons in one God", or "Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are one God", or any other equivalent of the doctrine taught in the creeds of the churches. This important fact is conceded by many scholarly divines who profess the Trinitarian faith. In a very recent work, a Rural Dean, the Rev. T. Mozley, brother-in-law to Cardinal Newman, writes as follows:—"I ask with all humbleness where the idea of Threeness is expressed in the New Testament with a doctrinal sense and force? Where is the Triune God held up to be worshipped, loved, and obeyed? "Where is He preached and proclaimed in that threefold character? We read 'God is one', as too, 'I and the Father 'are one'; but nowhere do we read that Three are one, unless it be in a text long since known to be interpolated.". . . . To me the whole matter is most painful and perplexing, and I should not even speak as I now do, did I not feel on the threshold of the grave, soon to appear before the Throne of all truth. . . . Certainly not in Scripture do we find the expression 'God the Son', or "'God the Holy Ghost'. Whenever I pronounce the name of God, simply and first, I mean God the Father, and I cannot help meaning that, if I am meaning anything".!
No comments:
Post a Comment