Who will say that the Trinitarian doctrine of Christ is a rational and consistent doctrine?—a doctrine that any thoughtful person can intelligently believe? I know how sensitive those who believe it are to any reflections to its disadvantage; but if I am speaking to any such, they must excuse me for pressing this question upon them: Is this Trinitarian doctrine a rational and consistent doctrine to you? Is there one present who can say that it is so? or who can say that he or she knows any body to whom it is so? The doctrine of the Trinity has been pronounced “an outrage against our rational nature.” Certainly, it is an offence to all our ideas of what is reasonable or probable. “Its three persons, constituting its one God, must either be frittered away into three unnecessary distinctions, into sounds signifying nothing, or they are three conscious agents, who cannot be made one being, with one consciousness and one will.” [Channing's Works, vol. III., p. 201.] To say, then, that Christ is one of these three, and yet that with his two associates he is but one, is to contradict the very first principles of common-sense, and to assert what, as was said in Our last discourse, is a mathematical impossibility.
Nor is this all. Even if this difficulty were out of the way, the prevalent theory as to the person of Christ himself would make it impossible that any understanding should intelligently accept it. Look at it. He is God—and man, we are told, at the same time;— God-man;—the Infinite-finite;—two distinct persons, one of whom can suffer, while the other cannot,—one of whom can pray, while the other is the Being to whom the prayer is addressed,—one of whom is ignorant of many things, while the other knows all things,—one of whom can think and speak and act, while the other is passive, doing neither:—two persons, necessarily, according to this representation, with two distinct wills and two distinct consciousnesses,—yet but one person! Will any body dare to say that this is reasonable--consistent--or what any one can believe without doing violence to every rational instinct of our nature?”
The Trinitarian doctrine concerning Christ is thus, you perceive, a double-headed—what shall I call it? I might wound some one if I should call it an absurdity; and yet, considering that absurdity means something contrary to manifest truth, or to the dictates of common-sense, would this be too strong a word? But even you who believe the doctrine will not deny that it is a contradiction in terms; and so, lest I might wound you by calling it an absurdity, I will call it a contradiction. And what I was about to say was, that this Trinitarian doctrine of Christ is a double-headed contradiction:—a contradiction, first, because it says that he is one of three persons, which three persons are but one Being;—and a contradiction, second, because it says that, in his own special personality, he is two persons, God and man,—the Infinite and the finite, and yet that, being thus two, he is but one. These are contradictions that nobody can fail to see, and that no thoughtful person can fail to feel as an insurmountable bar in the way of an intelligent faith. They are contradictions, therefore, with which no thinking person was ever satisfied, and that nobody was ever able to believe, except under the protest of his or her understanding—as unjust demands are sometimes paid.
And even if there is a kind of faith in what is thus alleged, it will be entertained in a confusion of mind concerning Christ, that will necessarily impair his influence as our example. An instructive incident is related on the authority of the orthodox Dr. Adams, from whom I quoted last Sabbath afternoon, which well illustrates the perplexity and confusion of mind, in which many a believer is thus involved in regard to Christ. Dr. Adams says that an excellent old lady, a member of an orthodox church, who professed to believe in the Trinity, was suspected of not paying divine honor to Christ. When told of the suspicions, she was not a little troubled, and said with much sorrowful feeling, “Why, my dear sir, I do really believe that Christ is e'en a'most God:”—a remark which at once reveals how indistinct were her impressions concerning Christ; how little she understood the character in which he is to be accepted and followed; and how little, therefore, she could have appreciated the meaning of that character, for her, or the effect it was designed to produce upon her. The story is told, like so many others, of “an old lady;” but it is a story that might be told, doubtless, of hundreds and thousands who are not old ladies, as well as of some who are:-—and could we see the multitudes of sincere souls, who have tried to believe these contradictions of this Trinitarian doctrine of Christ, only to find that, on account of the remonstrances of their reason and common-sense, they were unable to do so,and who, because they have thought them a part of Christianity, have been driven into unbelief and irreligion,— or, could we see the still larger multitude, who have thought they believed these contradictions, and have found themselves thus perplexed and confused, or hindered, stumbling, and dissatisfied in their faith, attaining, on account of the weakness and poverty of their faith, only a weak and poor religious life, we should need no other argument to satisfy us, either that they mischievously interfere with the practical power of the Gospel, or that they are untrue.
The Church father Tertullian of Carthage answered Eldridge Gerry Brooks early in the third century A.D. when he wrote: "The simple, indeed, (I will not call them unwise and unlearned,) who always constitute the majority of believers, are startled at the dispensation (of the Three in One), on the ground that their very rule of faith withdraws them from the world's plurality of gods to the one only true God; not understanding that, although He is the one only God, He must yet be believed in with His own economy. The numerical order and distribution of the Trinity they assume to be a division of the Unity; whereas the Unity which derives the Trinity out of its own self is so far from being destroyed, that it is actually supported by it. They are constantly throwing out against us that we are preachers of two gods and three gods, while they take to themselves pre-eminently the credit of being worshippers of the One God; just as if the Unity itself with irrational deductions did not produce heresy, and the Trinity rationally considered constitute the truth....Do you really suppose that Those, who are naturally members of the Father's own substance, pledges of His love, instruments of His might, nay, His power itself and the entire system of His monarchy, are the overthrow and destruction thereof? You are not right in so thinking." (Against Praxeus, 215 A.D.).
ReplyDeleteThere is an interesting reply to this at https://restitutio.org/2019/04/12/the-trinity-before-nicea/
Delete"This tantalizing statement provides evidence that the majority of believers found Tertullian’s beliefs startling and accused him of believing in two or three gods like the pagan idol worshipers, while they retained the simpler one God theology. This give us two important insights into early third century North African Christianity: (1) most believers were unitarian and (2) they considered Tertullian’s ideas to be unacceptable innovations."