The threefold grace of the Holy Trinity

Preface

The sole ambition of this book is to restate in the simplest manner, and with such illustration and reasoning as may show their systematic coherence, those practical truths relating to Divine grace which the author believes the Holy Scriptures teach and the Church has always held. Ever since he became familiar with theological studies he has felt that the two extremes of thought allowed in the communion to which he belongs have, in a manner, divided these truths between them, and that the antagonism developed by their divergence arises from overlooking the fact that the principles of the opposite schools are but the other halves, respectively, of the doctrine which each holds. The one side insists, not a whit too strongly, upon the practical bearings of the Incarnation, and its relation to the Christian Sacraments ; but it does seem to give too little place in its system to the extra-sacramental grace of the Holy Spirit, and so to obscure " the witness of the Spirit with our spirit that we are the children of God." The other

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iv Preface.

side, dwelling with equal truth on the extra-sacramental grace of the Holy Spirit, given to every man and indwelling in the true believer, does not sufficiently insist upon the grace of the Incarnate Son, and His personal presence with His Redeemed; and so learns to depreciate the Sacraments, which are the Divinely-appointed instruments of sealing and exhibiting that presence to the faithful soul ; and so, further, overlooks the blessedness of the Church as a body separate from the world, in sacramental communion with its Divine, incarnate Head.

The author does not flatter himself that his effort will be immediately successful in reconciling the differences which have sprung up from these one-sided views ; but he believes that the system of the Church Catholic not only includes the positive teaching of both parties, but combines them in the unity of Truth ; and he has endeavored to point the way in which abler minds than his will labor successfully to bring harmony out of the apparent discord.

Another object which he has had in view, has been to show the relation of the doctrine of the Trinity not only to speculative belief, but to the Christian life. He has felt that the argument for the doctrine, however powerfully and logically put, has failed in energetic influence upon many minds, because it has not been carried forward so as to unfold the experimental

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communion of the faithful soul with the Divine Persons of the Holy Trinity. Many sincerely religious people do not feel the necessity of faith in Christ as the eternal Son of God, because their apprehension of Christian doctrine does not assign Him a part in the work of grace commensurate with His Divinity. The view given them is something like this : that the Father, being angry with the human race on account of sin, the Son came to earth and made an atonement by dying on the cross ; after which He went to heaven, and the Holy Spirit was sent to exert a Divine influence upon their hearts for their conversion. True as every word of this statement is, it does not impress them with an adequate sense of the magnitude of Christ's work, because it is only partial truth. They are able to persuade themselves that God, being a loving Father, can forgive sin without an atonement ; and in this way, having eliminated the work of the Son from the scheme of Redemption, they can remove His Person from the Trinity, and then, assuming Divine grace to be the Father's influence upon the hearts of His children, the result is either avowed Unitarianism, or the feeling that the doctrine of the Trinity is only of speculative importance, and not at all of practical value, and therefore not a necessary article of Christian faith.

The remedy for this error consists in demonvi Preface.

strating the personal presence of our Lord with His people, bringing, by sacramental union, the saving virtue of the Atonement into personal contact with their experience, — the Holy Spirit, as the agent of the union, first preparing the heart by conversion and sanctification, and then grafting the Christian into Christ, as the branch into the vine. If Christian doctrine is presented in this way, the omnipresence, and therefore the Divinity of our blessed Lord, is brought home to the apprehension of Christian faith; the Atonement is given its true value, as a propitiation offered to the Father ; the three Persons are shown in intimate relation to the soul ; and the doctrine of the Trinity is demonstrated as it never can be by mere argument upon texts of Holy Scripture.

This book is but a mere outline of the great subject of which it treats. It is sent forth with the earnest prayer that the Head of the Church will bless it to the furtherance of the Truth.

St. Peter's Church,

Pittsburg, Whitsuntide, 1870.

Chapter I. The Mystery Of The Holy Trinity

"\ 1[ 7"E are baptized, by the command of our Lord, "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost ;" a and therefore every one who is admitted by baptism into the Church of Christ is bound to belief in the Most Holy Trinity. For a minister to baptize a reflecting convert upon any other understanding — to act in the name — that is, by the power and authority — of a Being in whom that convert was not understood to profess belief, would be to sap his authority at the foundation, and to degrade the most solemn function of his office to be considered a fiction. For the convert to be met, at his entrance into the Church, with a ceremony which he is at liberty to con-

* Matt, xxviii. 19.

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io Threefold Graee of the Holy Trinity.

sider unmeaning, would be fatal to the strength of any of his religious convictions, and would lead him to disregard all his religious obligations. Neither the minister nor the convert could thus tamper with the Sacrament. So long, therefore, as baptism is administered according to the form prescribed by our Lord Jesus Christ, it will pledge the administrator to require and the convert to hold the faith in the divine name then pronounced, whether in the baptismal office the Apostles' creed have been formally recited or not. The bowing of the head to receive the water administered in that name is full and sufficient confession.

It cannot be otherwise than that such an initiation into the Church was prescribed in order to make the confession of faith in the Holy Trinity essential to her existence, and necessary to the salvation of her members. The truth contained in the baptismal formula is, by the appointment of that formula, separated from other truths which are not contained therein; it is laid at the foundation, and declared to be the chief truth of all. The formula itself, by being pronounced at the beginning of the professedly Christian life, must be recognized as intended by the founder of the Church to assert that faith in the Holy Trinity lies at the foundation of all our religious beliefs. The following pages are written to show that this faith is also the foundation of all practical knowledge of the Gospel; for the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, of whom it teaches, are each personally in the closest relation with us, if we be true Christians, each operative in the work of our salvation through the threefold grace of the Triune God.

The mystery of the Being of God, to faith in which

Mystery of the Holy Trinity. n

we are thus pledged, is revealed in the Holy Scriptures. Their authority is the ground of its reception. Their doctrine is clearly, that the Lord our God is One ; but that in the Divine Unity there are three Persons — the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. The mystery of this doctrine consists in this, that God is not only essentially, but numerically, One, and yet the Persons in the Godhead are three. In the language of the Athanasian Creed, " The Father is God ; and the Son, God ; and the Holy Ghost, God ; and yet there are not three Gods, but one God." Nevertheless, the Father is not the Son ; nor the Son, the Father ; neither the Father, nor the Son, is the Holy Ghost. That this Triune existence is incomprehensible to our understandings, there is no need to confess; but it would be easy to show that it is no more incomprehensible than some proposition in any possible doctrine of the Infinite and Eternal ; and therefore it is not to be objected to on this ground.

The connection of the doctrine of the Trinity with our religious duty and experience is that which originates the necessity of our receiving it. The Father enters into relation with us, through the Gospel, as God the Father; the Son, in like manner, enters into relation with us as God the Son; the Holy Ghost the same, as God the Holy Ghost. We must know this relation and act according to it, to do our duty aright, and to have a well-grounded hope of salvation.

Our first labor, then, is a collation of those passages of Scripture in which the truth of the Holy Trinity is taught.

i. God is One. There would be little need to offer v scriptural proof of the Unity of God, since all who believe in the existence of a God acknowledge a supreme unity, were there not a possible misconception of the doctrine of the Trinity which would degrade it into Tritheism. a Indeed, there would be no need at all of this chapter, were it not that this book will fall into the hands of some who have not access to the theological treasures of past ages of the Church, nor leisure to read more voluminous writers. For their sakes are here presented the outlines of the arguments by which the Catholic faith is proved to be the truth of the Divine Revelation.

The first commandment of the Decalogue, proclaimed amidst the clouds and thunderings of Mount Sinai, is so peremptory as to shut out all thoughts that there are other Gods than One, were there no other passage of the same tenor in Scripture: "I am the Lord thy God ; thou shalt have none other Gods but me." b The Decalogue is of universal authority; its mandates are as binding upon all mankind as upon the Israelites.

At the second giving of the Law, Moses relates as follows, the reason for all the wonders which God had displayed before His people, during their forty years in the wilderness : "Unto thee it was showed, that thou mightest know that the Lord He is God ; there is none else beside Him." c For which reason he counsels the a This is a misconception which even so learned a man as Adam Clarke fell into — a proof of the uselessness of learning without judgment, in theology.

b Exodus, xx. 2, 3. • Dent. iv. 35.

people thus: "Know therefore this day, and consider it in thy heart, that the Lord He is God in Heaven above, and upon the earth beneath : there is none else."* In another place his language is: "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord ; and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. " b And in the close of that sublime song which he sang under divine inspiration, just before he went into Mount Nebo to die, the mortal instrument disappears, and the Divine Inspirer, in His own person, utters the words: "See, now, that I, even I, am He, and there is no God with me : I kill and I make alive ; I wound and I heal ; neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand."

In Solomon's prayer, at the dedication of the Temple, he ascribes to the one God alone the Divine attribute of Omniscience: "Thou only knowest the hearts of the children of men."

The writer of the eighteenth Psalm, in the fervor of his inspired song, throws his denial of any other Deity besides the Lord into that form which, above all others, gives it force and energy — an interrogation : "Who is God, but the Lord? or who is a rock [i.e. of safety], save our God?" d And in the sixty-second Psalm the Psalmist confesses his trust in one only God : " He only is my Rock and my salvation." 6

The evangelical prophet, Isaiah, rises to the most sublime heights, when he is brought into contact with heathen idolatry and Persian dualism, in emphatic re-

a Deut. iv. 39. b Deut. vi. 4, 5. c Deut. xxxii. 39.

d Ps. xviii. 31. e Ps. lxii. 6.

pudiation of all partners in God's glory. Between the fortieth and fiftieth chapters, especially, the passages are very numerous, as thus :

"I am the Lord, that is my name, and my glory will I not give to another. " a "Thus saith the Lord, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, the Lord of Hosts, I am the first, and I am the last, and beside Me there is no God." b " Is there a God beside Me? yea, there is no God, I know not any." c "lam the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside Me, that they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the West, that there is none beside Me. I am the Lord, and there is none else." d " Thus saith the Lord that created the Heavens; God Himself that formed the earth and made it. He hath established it, He hath created it not in vain, He formed it to be inhabited; I am the Lord, and there is none else." " Tell ye, and bring them near; yea, let them [i.e. idolaters] take counsel together. Who hath declared this from ancient times? Who hath told it from that time? Have not I, the Lord ? and there is no God else beside Me ; a just God and a Saviour ; there is none beside Me. Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is none else." f " Hearken unto Me, O Jacob and Israel, my called ; I am He, I am the first, I also am the last." g

The New Testament, of course, has the same doctrine. When the devil tempted the Saviour, and

Is. xJii. 8. c Ch. xliv. 8. ■ Ch. xlv. 18.

Ch. xliv. 6. d Ch. xlv. 5, 6. f Ch. xlv. 21, 22.

« Ch. xlviii. 12.

sought to allure Him to sin against the first commandment, the Lord rebuked him by a quotation from the Old Testament: "It is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve. " a In His sacrificial prayer, the Saviour thus worships the Father: "This is life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only True God." b "We know," says St. Paul, "that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God but one." c And, "To us there is but one God, the Father. " d

These passages abundantly declare that no teaching supposed to be derived from Holy Scripture may be accepted as militating against the truth of the absolute and simple unity of the Divine Being. They show that the doctrine of the Trinity cannot be that of "three persons in one Godhead," as if the three were one merely in council and association \ but that it is the doctrine of the Litany: "Holy, blessed, and glorious Trinity, three persons and one God."

The last text cited introduces the second point in the Christian knowledge of God — that He is a Father. The one God, of whom alone the Scriptures speak as the true and living God, and whom alone we worship, is everlastingly a Father. It is the assertion of our faith that God's relation as a Father is coeternal with His existence as God. He cannot be God and not be a Father. The name does not spring from a merely temporal relationship; it was not assumed by God simply because He has created a universe over which

a Matt. iv. 10. c I. Cor. viii. 4.

b John, xvii. 3. d I. Cor. viii. 6.

He exercises providential care. It has a deeper ground than the creation or preservation of temporal things. God was the Father before the existence of the universe, or anything it contains; as always God, so always Father. Everlastingly existing, He never was when He was not a Father ; because he is from everlasting to everlasting the Father of the Son, into whose name we are baptized. The Son of God, by begetting whom He takes to Himself His name of Father, is an eternal Son ; and therefore He is an eternal Father. From this paternal relation spring all the acts of God to the temporal creation, as the Father of created ' beings. Hence we shall best reach the Scripture declarations of the greater truth, through the door and vestibule of the less — tracing, after the manner of our masters in theology, the lower relations of God's temporal paternity, and so ascending, step by step, to the eternal.*

The first sense in which God is called the Father arises from His relation to all things as their Creator, through that figurative mode of expression by which the creation of inanimate and irrational matter is called a generation. "These," said Moses, "are the generations of the heavens and the earth, when they were created in the day that the Lord God made the heavens and the earth. " b Hence the book of Job represents God as asking Job, among other questions,

a The learned reader will see that these pages are but an epitome of Bishop Pearson's statements in his " Exposition of the Creed."

h Gen. ii. I.

"Hath the rain a Father? or who hath begotten the drops of dew?" a So St. James calls God "the Father of lights. " b And St. Paul, though implying the eternal as well as the temporal relation, "To us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things."

A nearer approach to a realization of true paternity, and a higher sense in which the name Father is used, is when it is employed to denote God's relation to intelligent and moral beings, who, as possessed of freedom and intelligence, are said to be "made in the image of God." d For it is the true notion of paternity that it produces an offspring like the parent. Hence St. Luke, tracing back the genealogy of our Lord, carries it up to "Adam, who was the Son of God." e This was a truth of which the heathen were conscious, as St. Paul argued at Athens, quoting, from the Greek poet, the line, "For we are also His offspring." Hence, with the greatest propriety, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, God is called "The Father of Spirits ;" f for He is a Spirit, and in creating finite Spirits, He has produced an offspring like Himself. So, by the prophet Malachi, we are taught just dealing one towards another, on the motive of a common brotherhood, enforced by this argument : " Have we not all one Father? Hath not one God created us?" g

God is also called a Father, because of His paternal care in the preservation of the beings He has created : "A Father of the fatherless, and a Judge of the widows,

a Job, xxxviii. 28. c I. Cor. viii. 6. e Luke, iii. 38.

b James, i. 17. d Gen. i. 27. f Heb. xii. 9.

z Mai. ii. 10.

is God in His holy habitation, " a says the Psalmist. " Behold the fowls of the air," says the Saviour, " your heavenly Father feedeth them." b "Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or wherewithal shall we be clothed? for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things." "Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of before ye ask Him." d And on this ground of likeness to God, in His care for our preservation, notwithstanding ingratitude, our Lord inculcates the return of good for evil, thus: "Love your enemies, . . . that ye may be the children of your Father which is in Heaven; for He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. " e

The mercy of Redemption, again, is allowed to be a part of the paternal relation ; hence Isaiah, in the person of the captives of Israel, addresses God thus : " Doubtless Thou art our Father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not ; Thou, O Lord, art our Father, our Redeemer, from everlasting is thy name." And the same may be our language ; for though the Son be the agent of Redemption, and therefore is called more commonly the Redeemer, yet it was the Fatherly love of God which planned the redemption of the world ; for " God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

a Ps. lxviii. 5. lj Matt. vi. 26. c Matt. vi. 31, J2.

d Matt. vi. 8. c Matt. v. 45.

We have a new claim to the title of Sons, and are enabled to call God our Father, by our Regeneration, — the return back, by new birth, into that state of Sonship, the title to which man had lost through sin. " Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God," a is the word of our Saviour, which He reiterates more solemnly: ''Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God." Being regenerate, we are children and offspring of God, by partaking of the Sonship of Christ, who only is the true and eternal Son of God. For, "as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the Sons of God, even to them that believe on His name. Which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God ;" b and therefore God is their Father.

Our regeneration is called also by the name of adoption, and therefore our teachers in the faith have observed that God is our Father also, if we be regenerate, by the way of adoption. "Behold," says St. John, "what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God." c That love was shown in this way : " When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. " d "For ye have not received the

a John, iii. 3. c I. John, Hi. I.

Spirit of bondage again to fear ; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father." 4

To crown all, God will make Himself our Father in yet another way, by bringing us again from the dead. " They which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the Resurrection from the dead, are equal unto the angels, and are the children of God, being the children of the Resurrection." 1 '

We thus see that Holy Scripture attributes the title of Father to God, as being our Creator and Preserver in the Kingdom of Nature, the author of our Redemption and Regeneration in the Kingdom of His grace, and the worker of our Resurrection into the Kingdom of His glory. The notion of a Father, therefore, belongs essentially to our knowledge of God ; we cannot think of Him truly, except under that notion. This truth appears so clearly from the relation of ourselves as created and dependent beings to the Supreme Governor and Creator, that those who impugn the doctrine of the Trinity produce these grounds of the title as sufficient to justify it in its whole extent ; trusting that those who listen to them will accept them without inquiring for a sense beyond ; thinking that if they can content the mind with a plausible explanation, it will be apt to rest short of a true one. It is necessary, therefore, to disarm them by enumerating all the grounds for the title acknowledged by Holy Scripture, arising out of temporal relations, and then to show that there is still another and infinitely higher reason for the acknowl-

a Rom. viii. 15. h Luke, xx. 35, 36.

edgment of God the Father in His begetting His eternal Son. We are brought thus to the consideration of the truth that the being a Father is eternally and essentially an attribute of Deity, because He is the eternal Father of His only-begotten Son. He is the Father of the created, because He is the Father of the uncreated ; the earthly sonship is the shadow of the heavenly. He is the Father, because of Himself, not because of us.

I have arranged the argument thus, advisedly. In considering Truth, which is objectively indivisible, we are compelled, by the subjective conditions of thought, to separate one notion from another, and thus make logical, when there are no real divisions. I began for this reason, with the conception of the unity of God — that there is one, self-existent, Supreme Being, the first cause and controller of all things. But the mental notion, "one self-existent Supreme Being," does not necessarily contain the conception of Personality, which we must add to it, to reach the true idea of God. Now the Scripture helps us to the conception of God's Personality, by pronouncing His name, " The Father," in connection with the exercise of all these acts of creation, preservation, and redemption above enumerated. He might be a "first cause," and be impersonal; but not so a "Father." To be a Father He must be a person ; for all paternal attributes are personal attributes. And conversely, to be a person He must be a Father; for were God not a Father, He would be inert, without offspring, without affection, without any personal attributes ; and therefore impersonal. But God never was nor could have been impersonal. He is, therefore, ever the Father. The Divine essence or Being is ever personal as God the Father. This is what we have next to prove from Holy Scripture, — that God is eternally the Father. We shall show also, with equal conclusiveness from Holy Scripture, that the same Divine Nature is also personal in the persons of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.

To guard, however, against every mistake, the reader is requested to fix in his mind the truth that the Divine Nature is simple and indivisible, and as well as infinite and eternal. When we say, therefore, that God is the Father, we mean that the whole Divine Nature, which is eternally self-existent in simple unity of essence, is ever personal in the person of the Father. The proposition is the precise logical equivalent of its converse, the Father is God. The same is true when we say that God is the Son, or the Son is God. We do not by this assert that there is no other person who is God except the Son ; but we do assert that there is naught of the Divine nature which the Son does not pose that the whole Divine Nature is in the Son, as in the Father. The same nature a is in the Son and in the Father; in the Father, originally, in the Son, by eternaP derivation from the Father. The Divine Being subsists originally, therefore, and absolutely, as

a i.e. the self-same — numerically identical.

b Those who accept Locke's absurd definition of eternity, cannot, of course, accept the doctrine of the Trinity. Hence the rise of Socinianism in England, together with the " philosophy" of Locke.

God the Father ; derivatively, as God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. That old scholastic realism which held that the Divine Nature was (as it were) a fountain whence were derived, or a matrix in which inhered, the three Personalities of the Trinity, is altogether to be shunned. The Father is the fountain of the Divinity, whence is derived the Son and the Holy Spirit. Hence, in the Holy Scripture, when the name of God is spoken without any adjunct determining it to another person of the Trinity, — it is generally 1 intended to refer to the Father — not to the Divine Nature, or to the threefold personality. The Holy Scripture, dealing with realities, and not with logical conceptions, does not distinguish between the Divine Nature and the Divine Person. In our thought, only, do we thus separate conceptions ; in the reality all is one. God is always self-existent, and always personal, that is, always a Father. But to be always a Father, He has always a Son, who, being ever-existent, is God, since there is nothing eternal but God, and who, therefore, is the self-same God with the Father, though not the same Person.