Part 29

It is self-evident, that a _verbal revelation_ can make known _distinctions_ only by _distinctive words_; that if two or more objects of thought receive interchangeable names, and the term which had seemed to be appropriated to the one is transferred to the other, those objects are not discriminated, but confounded. We require, then, separate words in scripture to denote the following notions; of the One Divine Substance, or Triune Being; of the First, of the Second, of the Third person, in this infinite existence;—of the Divine Nature and of the Human Nature of Christ. For the Trinity, it is acknowledged, there is no scripture name; unless, indeed, the plural form of the word God in the Hebrew language is to be claimed for this purpose; and thus an attempt be still made to confirm our faith by argument which an orthodox commentator calls “weak and vain, not to say silly and absurd.”[175] “From the plural sense of the word Elohim,” says the great Calvin, “it is usual to infer that there are three persons in the Godhead. But as this proof of so important a point appears to me by no means solid, I will not insist upon the word. Let me then warn my readers against such VIOLENT INTERPRETATIONS.”[176] “I must be allowed,” says Dr. Lee, Arabic Professor in the University of Cambridge, “to object to such methods of supporting an article of faith, which stands in need of no such support.”[177] Of the first person in the Trinity, the word “_Father_,” it is to be presumed, may be considered as the distinctive name; of the Second person, the terms _Son_, _Son of God_, and _the Word_ or _Logos_; of the Third person, the phrase _Holy Ghost_, _Spirit_, _Paraclete_; and of the human nature of Christ, as distinguished from the Second distinction in the Trinity, the names _Jesus of Nazareth_, _Son of Man_, the _Man Christ Jesus_. If these names be _not_ distinctive, there certainly are no others; and if there be none at all, then the _distinctions themselves_ are not impressed upon the record; they are altogether destitute of signs and expressions, and must be pronounced purely imaginary. Meanwhile we will assume the titles, which I have just enumerated, to be appropriated to the purposes which have been assigned. To the use of the words _Father_ and _Son_ I shall have particular occasion to revert.

The usage of the word _God_, in the New Testament, presents us with some remarkable phenomena. The Athanasian doctrine offers to our belief four objects of thought, to which this word is equally and indifferently applicable; the Triune Divine Being; and each of the three Persons; and its advocates profess to have learned from Scripture the well-adjusted equipoise of these claims upon the great and sacred name. We are hardly then prepared by its instructions, distinct and emphatic as they are, for the following fact; allowing every one of the Trinitarian interpretations to be correct, the word God is used in the New Testament TEN times of Christ; and of some other object, upwards of THIRTEEN HUNDRED times.[178] Whence this astonishing disproportion? _Some cause_,—something corresponding to it in the minds of the writers, it must have had; nor is it easy to understand, how an equal disposition of the Divine Persons in the habitual conceptions of the Authors, could lead to so unequal an award of the grand expression of Divinity.

Even the few instances, which for the moment I have allowed, will disappear on a nearer examination. This appears to be the proper place to pass under review the most remarkable passages, which, under Trinitarian exposition, _appear_ to sanction the doctrine of the proper Deity of Christ.

(a.) The evangelist Matthew applies to Christ[179] the following words of the prophet Isaiah, which, in order to give the truest impression of the original, I will quote from the translation of Bishop Lowth: “Behold the Virgin conceiveth, and beareth a son; and she shall call his name Emmanuel.”[180] As this name is significant, and means “God with us,” it is argued, that it could not be assigned to any one who was not properly God.

Now even if this name were really assigned by the prophet to Christ, the most superficial Hebraist must be aware that it teaches us nothing respecting the nature and person of our Lord. “The fact is unquestionable,” says Dr. Pye Smith, “that the gratitude or hope of individuals, in the ancient scriptural times, was often expressed by the imposition of significant appellations on persons or other objects, in the composition of which Divine names and titles were frequently employed; these are, therefore, nothing but short sentences, declarative of some blessing possessed or expected.”[181] Thus the name _Lemuel_ means _God with them_; _Elijah_, _God the Lord_; _Elihu_, _God is he_. So that to use the words of one of the ablest of living Trinitarian writers, “to maintain that the name Immanuel proves the doctrine in question is a fallacious argument.”[182]

But, in truth, this name is not given to the Messiah by the prophet; and the citation of it in this connection by the evangelist is an example of those loose accommodations, or even misapplications, of passages in the Old Testament by writers in the New, which the most resolute orthodoxy is unable to deny; and which (though utterly destructive of the theory of verbal inspiration) the real dignity of the Gospel in no way requires us to deny. Turning to the original prophecy, and not neglecting the context and historical facts which illustrate it, we find that Jerusalem was threatened with instant destruction by the confederated kings of Syria and Samaria; that, to the terrified Jewish monarch Ahaz, the prophet is commissioned to promise the deliverance of his metropolis and ruin to his enemies; that he even fixes the date of this happy reverse; and that he does this, not in a direct way, by telling the number of months or years that shall elapse, but by stating that ere a certain child, either already born, or about to be born within a year, shall be old enough to distinguish between good and evil, the foe shall be overthrown; and that this same child, whose infancy is thus chronologically used, shall eat the honey of a land peaceful and fertile once more. Nor is this interpretation any piece of mere heretical ingenuity. Dr. Pye Smith observes: “It seems to be as clear as words can make it, that the Son promised was born within a year after the giving of the prediction; that his being so born at the assigned period, was the sign or pledge that the political deliverance announced to Ahaz should certainly take place.”[183] Without assenting to the latter part of this remark, I quote it simply to show that, in the opinion of this excellent and learned Divine, the Emmanuel could not have been born _later_ than a year after the delivery of the prophecy. It will immediately appear that there is nothing to preclude the supposition of his being already born, at the very time when it was uttered.

Who this child, and who his mother, really were, are questions wholly unconnected with the present argument. As the _date_, and not the _person_, was the chief subject of the Prophet’s declaration, any son of Jerusalem, arriving at years of discretion within the stated time, would fulfil the main conditions of the announcement; and as a sign of Divine deliverance, might receive the name Emmanuel. In fact, however, the child, in the view of Isaiah, seems to have been no other than the King’s own son, Hezekiah; and the Virgin Mother to have been, in conformity with a phraseology familiar to every careful reader of the Old Testament, the royal and holy city of Jerusalem. Amos, speaking of the city, says, “The virgin of Israel is fallen,”[184] Jeremiah, lamenting over its desolation, exclaims, “Let mine eyes run down with tears night and day, and let them not cease; for the virgin daughter of my people is broken, with a great breach, with a very grievous blow.”[185] Micah, apostrophizing the citadel, bursts out, “O tower,”—“stronghold of the daughter of Zion,”—“is there no king in thee? Is thy counsellor perished? For pangs have taken thee, as a woman in travail.”[186] The fact that Hezekiah was already born, seems to confirm rather than to invalidate this interpretation. A living child to his parents, he was yet the city’s embryo king. What sign more fitted to reassure the terrified and faithless monarch than this; that, ere his own first-born should reach the years of judgment, his twofold enemy should be cast down? What language, indeed, could be more natural respecting an heir to the throne, of whom great expectations were excited in grievous times? The royal city dreamt of his promised life with gladness; he was the child of Jerusalem, in the hour of her anguish given to her hopes; in after years of peace fulfilling them.[187]

(b.) This prince appears evidently to have been the person described also in another passage, from which, though never cited in the New Testament as applicable to Christ at all, modern theologians are accustomed to infer his Deity. It is as follows: “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and his name shall be called wonderful; counsellor; the mighty God; the everlasting Father; the Prince of Peace.”[188] We have only to look at the terms in which this great one’s dominion is described, and the characters that are to mark his reign, in order to assure ourselves that he is some person very different from Christ; the Northern district of Palestine is to be delivered by him from the sufferings of an Assyrian invasion; he is to break the yoke which Tiglath-Pileser had imposed on the land of Gennesareth; to destroy the rod of the oppressor; to make a conflagration of the spoils of the battle-field, and burn the greaves and blood-stained garments of his country’s enemies.[189] It seems to me impossible to imagine a more violent distortion of Scripture than the application of this passage to Christ. But, be it even otherwise, there are only two of these titles which can be thought of any avail in this argument. One is, the “everlasting Father;” which if it proves anything, establishes that the second person in the Trinity is the first person, or else that the word _Father_ must be given up as a distinctive name, a concession destructive of the whole doctrine. The other is the phrase, “the mighty God,” or by inversion, “God the mighty;” on which I presume no stress would have been laid if, instead of being presented to us in a translation, it had been given in the original, and called GABRIEL. For the word _God_, Martin Luther substitutes (Held) _hero_, as the juster rendering.[190] But, in truth, it is sad trifling thus to crumble Hebrew names to pieces, in order to yield a few scarce visible atoms of argument to replenish the precarious pile of church orthodoxy, wasted by the attrition of reason, the healthful dews of nature, and the sunshine and the air of God.[191]

(c.) Let us turn to the Proem of St. John’s Gospel; that most venerable and beautiful of all the delineations which Scripture furnishes, of the twofold relation of Christ’s spirit, to the Father who gave it its illumination, and to the brethren who were blessed by its light. To our cold understandings, indeed, this passage must inevitably be obscure; for it deals with some of the characteristic conceptions of that lofty speculative reason, which, blending the refinements of Platonism with the imaginative license of the oriental schools, assumed in early times the intellectual empire of the church, and has kept the world ever since in deliberation on its creations. I do not mean that the Apostle was a Platonist, or a disciple of any philosophical system. But he wrote in Asia Minor, where he was surrounded by the _influences_, in constant familiarity with the _terms_, and accustomed to the _modes of thought_, peculiar to the sects of speculative religionists most prevalent in his time. At all events, it is _a fact_ that he uses language nowhere employed by the other Evangelists or Apostles; and that this language is the very same which is the common stock, and technical vocabulary of Philo, the Platonizing Jew, and several Christian writers of the same or a kindred school. Before, however, endeavouring to suggest the idea which the Apostle did mean to convey, let me call your attention to that which he did not.

There cannot be a more misplaced confidence, than that with which the introductory verses of St. John’s Gospel are appealed to by the holders of the Athanasian doctrine. Whatever explanation is adopted, which does not throw contempt upon the composition of the Evangelist, is at all events subversive of their system: and I do not hesitate to say, that _this_ is the only thing which I can regard as certain respecting this passage; that _it never could have been written by an Athanasian_. In order to test this assertion, it is not necessary to look beyond the first verse; and before we read it, let us allow the Trinitarian to choose any sense he pleases of the word God, which is its leading term. Let us suppose that he accepts it as meaning here “THE FATHER,” and that the Word or Logos means GOD THE SON. With these substitutions the verse reads thus:—

In the beginning was the Son; and the Son was with the Father; and the Son was the Father. This surely is to “confound the persons.”

Let us then suppose the meaning different, and the whole Godhead or TRINITY to be denoted by the word GOD. The verse would then read thus:—

In the beginning was the Son; and the Son was with the Trinity, and the Son was the Trinity.

We are no nearer to consistency than before: and it is evident that before the Trinitarian can find in the passage any distinct enunciation, the term GOD must be conceived to bear two different meanings in this short verse,—a verse so symmetrical in its construction as to put the reader altogether off his guard against such a change. He must read it thus:—

In the beginning was the second person in the Trinity; and the second person was with the first; and the second person was possessed of divine attributes as such.

We might surely ask, without unreasonableness, why, when the _society_ or personal affinity of the Son in the Godhead, is mentioned in the middle clause, the companionship of the _Father only_ is noticed, and silence observed respecting the _Holy Spirit_; who at that moment could not possibly have been absent from the conceptions of any Athanasian writer. But independently of this, the awkwardness of the construction, the violence of the leading transition of meaning, render the interpretation altogether untenable. If it be true, never surely was there a form of speech worse devised for the conveyance of the intended ideas.

In order to give the passage its true force, there is no occasion to assign to the word GOD any but its usual signification; as the name of the One infinite Person or Being who created and rules the universe. But it is less easy to embrace and exhibit with any distinctness, the notion implied in the phrase WORD or LOGOS. The ancient speculative schools, seeing that the Deity had existed from eternity, and therefore in a long solitude before the origin of creation, distinguished between his intrinsic nature,—deep, remote, primeval, unfathomable,[192]—and that portion of his mind which put itself forth, or expressed itself by works, so as to come into voluntary and intelligible relations to men.[193] This section of the Divine Mind, to which was attributable the authorship of the divine works, they called the LOGOS, or the IMAGE of God; both terms denoting the _expression_ or _power which outwardly reveals_ internal qualities; the one taking its metaphor from the _ear_, through which we make known our sentiments by speech; the other from the _eye_, to which is addressed the natural language of feature and lineament. If I might venture on an illustration which may sound strangely to modern hearers, I should say that the Logos was conceived of in relation to God, much as with us _Genius_ is, in relation to the soul of its possessor; to denote that peculiar combination of intellectual and moral attributes, which produces great, original, creative works,—works which let you into the spirit and affections, as well as the understanding, of the Author. Any one who can so possess himself with the speculative temper of Christian antiquity, as to use with reverence the phrase _genius of God_, would find it, I am persuaded, a useful English substitute (though I am well aware, not a perfect equivalent) for the word Logos. Dwelling within the blank immensity of God, was this illuminated region of Divine ideas; in which, as in the fancy and the studio of an artist, the formative conceptions, the original sketches and designs, the inventive projects of beauty and good, shaped and perfected themselves; and from which they issued forth, to imprint themselves upon matter and life, and pass into executed and visible realities. From the energy of this creative spirit, or blessed genius of God, two very different orders of results were conceived to flow:—the forms and symmetrical arrangements of the material universe, by which, as by the engraving of a seal, Deity stamped his perfections into _vision_: and the intuitions of pure reason and conscience in the human soul, by which, as by a heavenly tone or vibration, Deity thrilled himself into _consciousness_. And when I say _Deity_, I mean the _Logos of Deity_; for this alone, it was conceived, stood in any relation to us; the rest was an unexpressed and unfathomable Essence.

This portion of the Divine Infinitude was incessantly and vividly personified; so as to assume, even in the writings of the Jew and undoubted Monotheist Philo, the frequent aspect of a second God: though scarcely have you taken up this idea from one series of passages, before you are recalled and corrected by others, clearly showing that this is a false impression, too hastily derived from the intensity of the imagery and language. Indeed the distinction between a mere personification and a positive mythological personage is very faint. When a writer personifies an abstraction, _for the moment_ he conceives of this object of thought as a person; and were this state of mind perpetuated, he would _believe_ it to be a person. But his mental attitude changes; and in a less excited hour, that which had constructed and painted itself almost into a being, fades away again into an attribute. Hence the fluctuation of writers, at once imaginative and speculative, like Philo and some of the early Christian Fathers, between the logical and the mythical method of speaking of the properties of the Divine nature. And it may be remarked, that the Apostle John partook, though in a very slight degree, of the same tendency. He was fond of abstract words: calling our Saviour the _way_, rather than the _guide_; the _truth_, rather than the _teacher_; the _light_, rather than the _illuminator_; and so I conceive, in the commencement of his Gospel, the _inspiration_, rather than the _inspired_ of God. And then, as if to remedy the indistinctness of this mode of representation, he resorts to personification: thus, at the dictation of his reverence, first reducing the living person to an abstraction; and afterwards, at the bidding of his imagination, recreating the abstraction into a person. The extent to which this personification may be carried, by an author who certainly had no notion but of One personal God, may be estimated from a few sentences, referring to this very conception of the Logos, from the Jewish Philo. The invisible and intellectual Logos, he says, is the image of God, by whom the world was fashioned; his first-born son, his vicegerent in the government of the world; the mediator between God and his creatures; the healer of ills; God’s divine Son, whose mother is wisdom. In another place, the Logos is the very same with the wisdom of God; the most ancient angel, the first-born of God; to the resemblance of whom every one, who would be a son of God, must fashion himself. He is even the “second God,” “To the Archangel, and most ancient Logos,” says this writer, “God granted this distinguished office, that he should stand on the confines of creation, and separate between it and its Creator. With the incorruptible being he is the suppliant for perishable mortality. He is the ambassador of the Supreme to the subject creation. He announces the will of the Ruler to his subjects. And he delights in the office, and boasts of it, saying; I had stood between you and the Lord as mediator; being neither unbegotten as God, nor begotten as you, but between the two extremes, and acting as hostage to both,”[194] All this sounds very mysterious; the important thing to bear in mind is, that the writer is certainly speaking not of any separate divine person, but of the impersonated attributes of One Sole Supreme.

St. John then, I conceive, does the very same; only he carefully warns us against thinking of his personification as otherwise than identical with the Supreme, by saying outright, that the Logos is God; and therefore that whatever he may say about the former, is really to be understood as spoken of the latter. The whole proem divides itself into two ideas: that from the Genius or Logos of God have proceeded two sets of divine works; the material world; and the soul and inspiration of heaven shed upon the world through Christ. His object, I believe, is to link together these two effects as successive and analogous results, physical in one case, spiritual in the other, of the same divine and holy energy. Having warned us, as I have said, in the very first verse, that this energy is not really a person distinct from the Supreme, he abandons himself without reserve to the beautiful personification which follows; assuring us that thereby were all things made at first, and thereby were all men being enlightened now; that our very world, which felt that forming hand of old, had not discerned the blessed influence which again descended to regenerate it: ungrateful treatment! as of one who came unto his own, and his own received him not. Yet were there some of more perceptive conscience and better hearts; and they, be they Jew or Gentile, whose spirits sprung to the divine embrace, were permitted to become, by reflected similitude, the Sons of God.

Thus far, that is, to the end of the thirteenth verse, there is no mention of Jesus Christ as an individual; there is only the unembodied personification of the abstract energy of God in the original design, and the newer regeneration of the world. Nor should there be any difficulty in this separation of the Divine Spirit from its positive and personal results. Of the _Creative_ Mind of God we can easily think, as not only prior to the act of creation, but still apart from the forms of matter; and so can we of the _illuminating or regenerative_ Mind of God, as not only prior to its manifestation in Christ, but apart from its embodiment in his person. In the next verse, however, the heavenly personification is dropped upon the man Jesus; the mystic divine light is permitted to sink into the deeps of his humanity; it vanishes from separate sight: and there comes before us, and henceforth lives within our view throughout the Gospel, the Man of Sorrows, the Child of God, with the tears and infirmities of our mortal nature, and the moral perfection of the Divine. “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth.”[195]