Section II A

The Proper Modern Doctrine of the Trinity Contradictory in Terms of the Unity of God

Andrews Norton

The proper modern doctrine of the Trinity, as it appears in the creeds of latter times, is that there are three persons in the Divinity, who equally possess all divine attributes; and the doctrine is connected with an explicit statement that there is but one God. Now, this doctrine is to be rejected, because, taken in connection with that of the unity of God, it is essentially incredible, one which no man, who has compared the two doctrines together with right conceptions of both, ever did or ever could believe. Three persons, each equally possessing divine attributes, are three Gods. A person is a being. No one who has any correct notion of the meaning of words will deny this. And the being who possesses divine attributes must be God or a God. The doctrine of the Trinity, then, affirms that there are three Gods. It is affirmed at the same time, that there is but one God. But no one can believe that there are three Gods, and that there is but one God.

This statement is as plain and obvious as any which can be made. But it is not the less forcible because it is perfectly plain and obvious. Some Trinitarians have indeed remonstrated against charging those who hold the doctrine with the "absurdities consequent upon the language of their creed,"[1] and have asserted that in this creed the word person is not used in its proper sense. I do not answer to this that, if men will talk absurdity and insist that they are teaching truths of infinite importance, it is unreasonable for them to expect to be understood as meaning something wholly different from what their words express. The true answer is that these complaints are unfounded and that the proper doctrine of the Trinity, as it has existed in latter times, is that which is expressed by the language used taken in its obvious sense. By person, says Waterland, than whom no writer in defense of the Trinity has a higher reputation, "I certainly mean a real Person, an Hypostasis, no Mode, Attribute, or Property…. Each divine Person is an individual, intelligent Agent; but as subsisting in one undivided substance, they are all together in that respect, but one undivided intelligent Agent..... The church never professed three Hypostases in any other sense, but as they mean three Persons."[2] There is, indeed, no reasonable pretense for saying that the great body of Trinitarians, when they have used the word person, have not meant to express proper personality. He who asserts the contrary, asserts a mere extravagance. He closes his eyes upon an obvious fact and then affirms what he may fancy ought to have been, instead of what there is no doubt really has been maintained. But on this subject there is something more to be said, and I shall remark particularly, not only upon this, but upon the other evasions which have been resorted to, in order to escape the force of the statement which has just been urged.

I wish, however, first to observe that the ancient opinions concerning the Trinity, before the Council of Nicea (A.D. 325), were very different from the modern doctrine, and had this great advantage over it: that, when viewed simply in connection with the unity of God, they were not essentially incredible. According to that form of faith which approached nearest to the modern Orthodox doctrine, the Father alone was the Supreme God, and the Son and Spirit were beings deriving their existence from him, and far inferior, to whom the title of God could be properly applied only in an inferior sense. The subject has been so thoroughly examined that the correctness of this statement will not, I think, be questioned, at the present day, by any respectable writer. The theological student, who wishes to see in a small compass the authorities on which it is founded, may consult one or more of the works mentioned in the note below.[3] I have stated that form of the doctrine which approached nearest to modern Orthodoxy. But the subject of the personality and divinity of the Holy Spirit, it may be observed, was in a very unsettled state before the Council of Constantinople (A.D. 381). Gregory Nazianzen, in his Eulogy of Athanasius, has the following passage, respecting that great father of Trinitarian Orthodoxy: "For when all others who held our doctrine were divided into three classes, the faith of many being unsound respecting the Son, that of still more concerning the Holy Spirit (on which subject to be least impious was thought to be piety), and a small number being sound in both respects, he first and alone, or with a very few, had the courage to profess in writing, clearly and explicitly, the true doctrine of the one Godhead and nature of the three persons. Thus that truth, a knowledge of which, as far as regards the Son, had been vouchsafed to most of the Fathers before, he was fully inspired to maintain in respect to the Holy Spirit."[4]

So much for the original doctrine of the Trinity. I shall now proceed to state the different forms which the modern doctrine has been made to assume, and in which its language has been explained, by those who have attempted to conceal or remove the direct opposition between this and the doctrine of the unity of God.

I. Many Trinitarian writers have maintained a modification of the doctrine, in some respects similar to what has just been stated to be its most ancient form. They have considered the Father as the "fountain of divinity," whose existence alone is underived, and have regarded the Son and Spirit as deriving their existence from him and subordinate to him, but, at the same time, as equally with the Father possessing all divine attributes. Every well-informed Trinitarian has at least heard of the Orthodoxy and learning of Bishop Bull. His Defence of the Nicene Creed is the standard work as regards the argument in support of the doctrine of the Trinity from Ecclesiastical History. But one whole division of this famous book is employed in maintaining the subordination of the Son. "No one can doubt," he says, "that the Fathers who lived before the Nicene Council acknowledged this subordination. It remains to show that the Fathers who wrote after this Council taught the same doctrine."[5] Having given various quotations from different writers to this effect, he proceeds: "The ancients, as they regarded the Father as the beginning, cause, author, fountain, of the Son, have not feared to call Him the one and only God. For thus the Nicene Fathers themselves begin their creed: We believe in one God, the Father omnipotent; afterwards subjoining: and in one [Lord] Jesus Christ, …God of God. And the great Athanasius himself concedes, that the Father is justly called the only God, because he alone is without origin, and is alone the fountain of divinity."[6] Bishop Bull next proceeds to maintain as the catholic doctrine that, though the Son is equal to the Father in nature and every essential perfection, yet the Father is greater than the Son even as regards his divinity, because the Father is the origin of the Son, the Son being from the Father, and not the Father from the Son. Upon this foundation, he appears to think that the doctrine of the divine unity may be preserved inviolate, though at the same time he contends that the Son, as a real person, distinct from the Father, is equally God, possessing equally all divine perfections, the only difference being that the perfections as they exist in the Son are derived, and as they exist in the Father are underived. The same likewise, according to him, is true of the Spirit.[7]

But in regard to all such accounts of the doctrine, it is an obvious remark that the existence of the Son, and of the Spirit, is either necessary, or it is not. If their existence be necessary, we have then three beings necessarily existing, each possessing divine attributes, and consequently we have three Gods. If it be not necessary, but dependent on the will of the Father, then we say that the distance is infinite between underived and independent existence, and derived and dependent, between the supremacy of God, the Father, and the subordination of beings who exist only through his will. In the latter view of the doctrine, therefore, we clearly have but one God, but at the same time the modern doctrine of the Trinity disappears. The form of statement too, just mentioned, must be abandoned, for it can hardly be pretended that these derived and dependent beings possess an equality in divine attributes, or are equal in nature to the Father. Beings whose existence is dependent on the will of another cannot be equal in power to the being on whom they depend. The doctrine, therefore, however disguised by the mode of statement which we are considering, must, in fact, resolve itself into an assertion of three Gods, or must, on the other hand, amount to nothing more than a form of Unitarianism. In the latter case, however objectionable and unfounded I may think it, it is not my present purpose to argue directly against it, and in the former case, it is pressed with all the difficulties which bear upon the doctrine as commonly stated, and at the same time with new difficulties, which affect this particular form of statement. That the Son and the Spirit should exist necessarily, as well as the Father, and possess equally with the Father all divine attributes, and yet be subordinate and inferior to the Father—or, in other words, that there should be two beings or persons, each of whom is properly and in the highest sense God, and yet that these two beings or persons should be subordinate and inferior to another being or person, who is God—is as incredible a proposition as the doctrine can involve.

II. Others again, who have chosen to call themselves Trinitarians, profess to understand by the word person something very different from what it commonly expresses and regard it as denoting neither any proper personality, nor any real distinction, in the divine nature. They use the word in a sense equivalent to that which the Latin word persona commonly has in classic writers, and which we may express by the word character. According to them, the Deity considered as existing in three different persons is the Deity considered as sustaining three different characters. Thus some of them regard the three persons as denoting the three relations which he bears to men, as their Creator (the Father), their Redeemer (the Son), and their Sanctifier (the Holy Spirit). Others found the distinction maintained in the doctrine on three attributes of God, as his goodness, wisdom, and power. Those who explain the Trinity in this manner are called modal or nominal Trinitarians. Their doctrine, as everyone must perceive, is nothing more than simple Unitarianism disguised, if it may be said to be disguised, by a very improper use of language. Yet this doctrine, or rather a heterogeneous mixture of opinions in which this doctrine is conspicuous, has been, at times, considerably prevalent, and has almost come in competition with the proper doctrine.

III. There are others who maintain, with those last mentioned, that, in the terms employed in stating the doctrine of the Trinity, the word person is not to be taken in its usual sense, but who differ from them in maintaining that those terms ought to be understood as affirming a real threefold distinction in the Godhead. But this is nothing more than a mere evasion, introduced into the general statement of the doctrine for the purpose of rescuing it from the charge of absurdity, to which those who thus explain it allow that it would be liable, if the language in which it is usually expressed were to be understood in its common acceptation. They themselves, however, after giving this general statement, immediately relapse into the common belief. When they speak particularly of the Father, the Son, or the Spirit, they speak of each unequivocally as a person in the proper sense of the word. They ascribe to them personal attributes. They speak of each as sustaining personal relations peculiar to himself, and performing personal actions distinct from those of either of the others. It was the Son who was sanctified and sent into the world, and the Father by whom he was sanctified and sent. It was the Son who became incarnate, and not the Father. It was the Son who made atonement for the sins of men, and the Father by whom the atonement was received. The Son was in the bosom of the Father, but the Father was not in the bosom of the Son. The Son was the Logos who was with God, but it would sound harsh to say that the Father was with God. The Son was the firstborn of every creature, the image of the Invisible God, and did not desire to retain his equality with God. There is no one who would not be shocked at the thought of applying this language to the Father. Again, it was the Holy Spirit who was sent as the "Comforter" to our Lord's Apostles, after his ascension, and not the Father nor the Son. All this those, who assert the doctrine of three distinctions but not of three persons in the divine nature, must and do say and allow, and therefore they do in fact maintain, with other Trinitarians, that there are three divine persons, in the proper sense of the word, distinguished from each other. They have adopted their mode of stating the doctrine merely with a view of avoiding those obvious objections which overwhelm it as commonly expressed, without any regard to its consistency with their real opinions, or with indisputable and acknowledged truths. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is an intelligent being, a person. There may seem something like irreverence in the very statement of this truth; but in reasoning respecting the doctrine of the Trinity, we are obliged to state even such truths as this. The Son of God is an intelligent being, a person. And no Christian, one would think, who reflects a moment upon his own belief, can doubt that these two persons are not the same. Neither of them, therefore, is a mere distinction of the divine nature, nor the same intelligent being regarded under different distinctions. Let us consider for a moment what sort of meaning would be forced upon the language of Scripture if, where the Father and the Son of God are mentioned, we were to substitute the terms, "the first distinction in the Trinity," and "the second distinction in the Trinity," or, "God considered in the first distinction of his nature," and "God considered in the second distinction of his nature." I will not produce examples, because it would appear to me like turning the Scriptures into burlesque.

If you prove that the person who is called the Son of God possesses divine attributes, you prove that there is another divine person beside the Father. In order to complete the Trinity, you must proceed to prove, first, the personality, and then the divinity, of the Holy Spirit. This is the only way in which the doctrine can be established. No one can pretend that there is any passage in the Scriptures in which it is expressly taught that there is a threefold distinction of any sort in the divine nature. He who proves the doctrine of the Trinity from the Scriptures must do it by showing that there are three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who are respectively mentioned in the Scriptures as each possessing divine attributes. There is no other medium of proof. There is no other way in which the doctrine can be established. Of course, it is the very method of proof to which, in common with other Trinitarians, those resort, who maintain that form of stating the doctrine which we are considering. It follows from this that their real opinions must be in fact the same with those of other Trinitarians. Indeed, the whole statement appears to be little more than a mere oversight, a mistake, into which some have fallen in their haste to escape from the objections which they have perceived might be urged against the common form of the doctrine.

The remarks that have been made appear to me plain, and such as may be easily understood by every reader. I have doubted, therefore, whether to add another, the force of which may not be at once perceived, except by those who are a little familiar with metaphysical studies. But as it seems to show decisively that the statement which we are considering is untenable by any proper Trinitarian, I have thought, on the whole, that it might be worthwhile to subjoin it.

In regard to the personality of the divine nature, the only question is whether there are three persons, or but one person. Those with whom we are arguing deny that there are three persons. Consequently they must maintain that there is but one person. They affirm, however, that there is a threefold distinction in the divine nature, that is, in the nature of this one person. But of the nature of any being, we can know nothing but by the attributes or properties of that being. Abstract all the attributes or properties of any being, and nothing remains of which you can form even an imagination. These are all that is cognizable by the human mind. When you say, therefore, that there is a threefold distinction in the nature of any being, the only meaning which the words will admit (in relation to the present subject) is that the attributes or properties of this being may be divided into three distinct classes, which may be considered separately from each other. All, therefore, which is affirmed by the statement of those whom we are opposing is that the attributes of that one person who is God may be divided into three distinct classes, or, in other words, that God may be viewed in three different aspects in relation to his attributes. But this is nothing more than a modal or nominal Trinity, as we have before explained these terms. Those, therefore, whose opinions we are now considering, are, in fact, nominal Trinitarians in their statement of the doctrine, and real Trinitarians in their belief. They hold the proper doctrine with an implicit acknowledgment in the very statement which they have adopted that the proper doctrine is untenable, and have involved themselves, therefore, in new difficulties, without having effected an escape from those with which they were pressed before.

IV. But a very considerable portion of Trinitarians, and some of them among the most eminent, have not shrunk from understanding the doctrine as affirming the existence of three equal divine minds, and consequently, to all common apprehension, of three Gods, and from decidedly rejecting the doctrine of the unity of God in that sense which is at once the popular and the philosophical sense of the term. All the unity for which they contend is only such as may result from those three divinities being inseparably conjoined, and having a mutual consciousness, or a mutual inbeing, which last mode of existence is again expressed in the language of technical theology by the terms perichoresis and circumincession. "To say," says Dr. William Sherlock, "they are three divine persons, and not three distinct infinite minds, is both heresy and nonsense."[8] "The distinction of persons cannot be more truly and aptly represented than by the distinction between three men; for Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are as really distinct persons as Peter, James, and John."[9] "We must allow the Divine persons to be real, substantial beings."[10] There are few names of higher authority among Calvinists than that of Howe. The mode of explaining the doctrine to which he was inclined is well known. He was disposed to regard the three divine persons as "three distinct, individual, necessarily existent, spiritual beings," who formed together "the most delicious society."[11] Those who give such accounts of the doctrine may at least claim the merit of having rendered their opinions in some degree consistent with each other. They have succeeded, at a dear purchase to be sure, in freeing their creed from intrinsic absurdity, and have produced a doctrine to which there is no decisive objection, except that it contradicts the most explicit declarations of the Scriptures and the first principles of natural religion, and is, therefore, irreconcilable with all that God has in any way taught us of himself.

After the Council of Nice, that which we have last considered became gradually the prevailing form of the doctrine, except that it was not very clearly settled in what the divine unity consisted. The comparison of the three persons in the Trinity to three different men was borrowed by Sherlock from the Fathers of the fourth century. Gregory Nazianzen, who himself maintained zealously this form of Orthodoxy, says that "those who were too Orthodox fell into polytheism,"[12] i.e. tritheism. It might have been difficult to determine the precise distance from tritheism of those who were not too Orthodox.

This, then, is the state of the case. The proper modern doctrine of the Trinity is, when viewed in connection with that of the unity of God, a doctrine essentially incredible. In endeavoring to present it in a form in which it may be defended, one class of Trinitarians insist strongly upon the supremacy of the Father, and the subordination of the Son and the Spirit. These, on the one hand, must either affirm this distinction in such a manner as really to maintain only a very untenable form of Unitarianism, or, on the other hand, must in fact retain the common doctrine, encumbered with the new and peculiar difficulty which results from declaring that the Son and Spirit are each properly God, but that each is a subordinate God. Another class, the nominal Trinitarians, explain away the doctrine entirely, and leave us nothing in their general account of it with which to contend, but a very unjustifiable use of language. A third class, those who maintain three distinctions, and deny three persons, have merely put a forced meaning upon the terms used in its statement; and have then gone on to reason and to write in a manner which necessarily supposes that those terms are used correctly, and that the common form of the doctrine, which they profess to reject, is really that in which they themselves receive it. And a fourth class have fallen into plain and bald tritheism, maintaining the unity of God only by maintaining that the three Gods of whom they speak are inseparably and most intimately united. To these we may add, as a fifth class, those who receive, or profess to receive, the common doctrine, without any attempt to modify, explain, or understand it. All the sects of Trinitarians fall into one or other of the five classes just mentioned. Now we may put the nominal Trinitarians out of the question. They have nothing to do with the present controversy. And if there be any who, calling themselves Trinitarians, do in fact hold such a subordination of the Son and Spirit to the Father, that their doctrine amounts only to one form of Unitarianism, we may put these out of the question likewise. After having done this, it will appear from the preceding remarks that the whole body of real Trinitarians may be separated into two great divisions, namely, those who, in connection with the divine unity, hold the proper doctrine, either with or without certain modifications—which modifications, though intended to lessen, would really, if possible, add to its incredibility—and those who, maintaining the unity only in name, are in fact proper believers in three Gods. Now we cannot adopt the doctrine of those first mentioned, because we cannot believe what appears to us a contradiction in terms, nor the doctrine of those last mentioned, because neither revelation nor reason teaches us that there are three Gods. If there be anyone who does not acquiesce in the conclusion to which we have arrived, I beg him to read over again what precedes and to satisfy himself, either that there is, or that there is not, some error in the statements and reasonings. The subject is not one with which we are at liberty to trifle and arbitrarily assume opinions without reason. It behooves everyone to attend well to the subject, and to be sure that he holds the doctrine with no ambiguous or unsteady faith, before he undertakes to maintain, or professes to believe it, or in any way gives countenance to its reception among Christians.