By W. H. Griffith Thomas
THE SPIRIT OF GOD.The teaching of the Nicene Creed concerning the relation of the Holy Spirit to the Godhead is found in the words: ' I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Life-Giver, Who proceedeth from the Father and the Son, Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified.' It is believed that this statement is the explicit expression of what is found implicitly in Scripture. Two questions arise: the Personality and the Deity of the Holy Spirit. The use of the term ' Person ' in relation to the Godhead calls for special attention. Its theological history is somewhat involved, but on the whole it has been helpfully summarised by various writers.
Personality with us to-day expresses the fact of a separate individual human being who is rationally self-conscious and distinct from all others. But Personality in God is intended to convey the idea of an inner distinction which exists within the unity of the Divine nature.
The facts of Scripture demand from us the acknowledgment of the unity of the Godhead, and also of those interior distinctions between Father, Son, and Spirit which we can only express by our word ' Person.'
Beyschlag is of opinion that the idea of the Holy Spirit as a third Divine Person is ' one of the most disastrous importations into Holy Scripture.'6 And the Dean of St. Paul's, Dr. Inge, in a sermon preached at St. Paul's Cathedral, on Whitsunday, June 4, 1911, said that
It is, of course, perfectly true that the term ' person ' is used to-day in connection with human life in a way that is quite different from its use in connection with the Godhead. But it is also true that no other term has yet been found adequate to express the essential distinctions in the Godhead.
The Holy Spirit is a Person, because He works by personal activities on persons, and with proper safeguards the use of the term is abundantly warranted as that which alone expresses the idea required. This justification is twofold. The facts of Scripture demand it, for, while it is true that many passages suggest the impersonality of the Spirit,9 there are others that cannot possibly be interpreted in this way. The teaching of Christ about the Paraclete, and the personal references to the Holy Spirit in the Acts and the Epistles necessitate the predication of Personality.
The consciousness of the Church bears witness in the same direction. Sabellianism both ancient and modern has always proved impossible in the long run. Modalism even without Successionalism is wholly inadequate to the Scripture testimony.11 There is scarcely anything more significant in the history of the Church than the recurrence and also the rejection of Sabellianism, for it is at once apparently easy, and soon seen to be utterly impossible to consider the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as mere aspects or manifestations of one God.
Personal working needs continuity of action, and it has been the experience of the individual Christian and of the Church in all ages that the spiritual renewal needed by the believer and the community requires constant and continuous action, and not a permanent endowment. And so we hold that
The Deity of the Spirit is a necessary consequence of His Personality, for that which is attributed to His Personality involves His Deity. This belief is based on the facts of Scripture, especially on the revelation of Christ. The allusions to the Holy Spirit are such as cannot possibly be predicated of anyone else than God Himself.
Yet this view is always found in close connection with the unity of the Godhead, and is never associated in the slightest degree with anything polytheistic. None can question the fact that New Testament Theism is inextricably bound up with the Old Testament doctrine of the unity of God. This is fundamental throughout.15 The bearing of this on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is clear and important. It is impossible to question the fact that the New Testament affords clear proofs of distinctions within the Unity.
Yet there is an entire absence of any consciousness of a new revelation, or of any surprise or opposition from the Jews. There is no embarrassment, no difficulty, no hesitation.18 The New Testament was written by Monotheists who were evidently unconscious of any incongruity or contradiction between their cherished view of the unity of the Godhead and the distinctions which they were teaching and recording. This fact remains one of the most striking problems of New Testament Theism. The Trinity in the New Testament is primarily revealed in connection with the historic manifestation of Christ.19 It arises out of the Incarnation: ' if the Incarnation be real the Trinity is true.' Redemption comes from the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit. It is only thus that the facts are explicable. There is no speculation, no argument, only a statement of what is inextricably bound up in Christian experience. Christ is the Divine Saviour, the Spirit is the Spirit of Christ, and so we have a number of passages expressive of the new life of believers (Matt, xxviii. 19; Rom. viii. 9-1 1; 1 Cor. ii. 1-5; xii. 4-6; 2 Cor. xiii. 14; Eph. ii. 18). In this association we have the spiritual and experimental foundations of the Trinity, A recent writer has said that ' if Christ did not use the Trinitarian formula, yet the revelation is already present in His teaching.'20 In support of this, Matthew xi. 25-27 and Luke x. 21, 22 are adduced, which are said to reveal the self-consciousness of Christ, and thus ' demand for its explication the later doctrine.' Further, the ministry of our Lord and the Fourth Gospel are added in support of His doctrine of the Spirit, and in regard to the latter point, the writer remarks: ' I find it impossible to believe that we have here only reflexions of the evangelist, without any basis whatever in his reminiscences of Jesus' teaching.'21 And thus we come again to the conclusion that ' the doctrine of the Trinity as it is presented in the New Testament is rooted in Christian experience.'22
This doctrine of a Trinity of manifestation in Christ is necessarily based on the doctrine of a Trinity of essence. It is impossible to account otherwise for the facts of revelation, and equally impossible with these facts to stop short of contemplating the relation of this revelation to the essential nature of God.
It was impossible to avoid or prevent reflection on the facts of revelation. Theology, as arising out of the facts, was inevitable. The first distinction in the Godhead is that of the Father and of the Son, and implies duality. No one can question the clearness of this in the New Testament. Then comes the more difficult question of the uniqueness and distinctness of the Spirit, which is based on the two grounds of (a) Christ's own testimony to the Spirit; (b) the works attributed to the Spirit in the New Testament. From the one distinction in the Godhead the mind is naturally led on to the next, because Christ and the Spirit are seen to be parallel manifestations of God and closely related in redemption. And if Christ is within the Godhead, it is impossible for the Spirit to be without, for this would imply an inferiority of the Spirit which is contradicted by the facts of Scripture and experience.
It is, of course, true that we have not the same clearness and fulness of revelation in the New Testament in reference to the Deity of the Spirit. It has been suggested that gradualness was necessary, that, as Christ said. His disciples could not ' carry ' at once everything He had to say. The unity of the Godhead and the Divine redemption naturally came first; then followed the personal application of redemption and the full revelation to the individual and the community. This would take time, but whether early or late of realisation, it could not be otherwise than a Divine work, so that whatever development we find after New Testament times, is all implicit in the New Testament itself.
We must assuredly keep the doctrine as close as possible to the facts of religious experience. The Theism of the New Testament is in constant and inevitable connection with the need and provision of redemption. But as reason will continue to play upon experience, we must not be checked by the fear of speculation from attempting to express in thought what is implied in experience.
This is the answer to those who decry and denounce all attempts, whether past or present, to express in the best available categories the doctrine of the Trinity.
As we have already seen, it is not at all difficult to criticise the use of the word ' person,' but it is exceedingly difficult to suggest any better word. We are compelled to start with the thought of God as personal, for the very idea of human fellowship with God necessitates the conception of personality. When through prayer and trust we meet with God, there is true intercourse and genuine communion, and it is inconceivable that this can come from any but a Personal Being. But the difficulty arising at this point has been well stated.
Dr. Garvie admits that he has felt the difficulty so acutely, that until quite recently he preferred to use the terms ' mode ' and ' principle ' instead of ' person,' though he makes the significant admission that in using this language he has always insisted that ' the mode of perfect personality cannot be described as impersonal, but must be conceived as personal.'30 This is the latest, and in some respects the frankest, admission of the impossibility of finding any better term than ' Person.' The difficulty is, of course, in conceiving of personality as infinite, since our human conception of a person is of someone always finite. But modern thought has been tending more and more towards the view that, while personality is finite in man, this is no necessary proof of finiteness of personality in God. In other words, that personality in the human sense is not the highest of all conceivable realities. Garvie uses the illustration of the modern conception of society as organic for the purpose of modifying the conception of personality, and urges us to think of personality ' in the measure of its perfection as transcending individuality in the sense of exclusiveness.'31 He argues that human personality is only real as it is social, and that the more advanced a society, the more distinct is its corporate consciousness.
All this tends to show that finiteness is not only not essential to personality, but is rather a limitation or imperfection, since human beings only really become conscious of their own personality through contact with others. Dr. Garvie thereupon draws the obvious conclusion:
To the same effect is the able discussion of the Bishop of Down:
We return, therefore, to the view that in some way or other we are compelled to contemplate God as a Person, and that in spite of all the difficulties this conception is much nearer the truth than anything else. Such ideas as the love of God, and the Fatherhood of God can only be conceived of in terms of Personality, and we may even go as far as to suggest with Garvie that perhaps this ideal of society as organic, this conception of personality as requiring other personalities for their full revelation and realisation, ' is the earthly shadow of the heavenly substance of the triune God.'35 it is therefore impossible to avoid coming to the conclusion of a modern theologian, that
We are thus led still more definitely than ever to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity as that which expresses what God is in Himself quite apart from creation. It means that God is not a solitary individual, abstract and detached from all society. He is rich and full in His nature, manifold in His essential Being, and, as such, the Pattern and Archetype of all society. This is the profound truth that underlies the error of Polytheism, which was the crude and impossible demand of man for society in the Deity. On the other hand, Deism with its solitary God represents another essential requirement of the human mind, and the question that faces all Christian theists is whether the essential truth of Polytheism, society in God, and the essential truth of Deism, unity in God, can be reconciled. If, with a modern writer, we may conceive of God as a ' social whole,' we may perhaps regard the word ' social ' as expressive of the essential truth of polytheism, and the word ' whole ' as the essential truth of deism. The threefold distinction in God, which is expressed by the word ' Trinity,' is the attempt of man to conceive and express the meaning of the Infinite God in the terms of Jesus Christ, and we believe that the use of the phrase, ' The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,' is the very best rendering of the mystery that can be given.
The true meaning of Trinitarian doctrine, therefore, is not separate spheres of Divine operation in connection with each Person, but the united and inclusive operations of three Persons in one God. While each Person is (as the pronouns would suggest) self-conscious and self-determining, yet they themselves are never separated from one another. There are three centres of self-consciousness in the one self-consciousness of God.38 The full statement of truth is, ' From and unto the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit. The transcendence in the Deity is expressed by the Father; the expression of the Deity is represented by the Son; while the truth of the immanence of the Deity for man's moral and spiritual life is that for which the Holy Spirit stands. And thus the Holy Spirit is at once the personal, energetic life of God and the ' Executive of the Godhead ' in relation to man. The most serious danger to-day lies in the prevalence of what may be called a practical ' Binitarianism ' by the omission of the Holy Spirit from thought and life. But however difficult may be the conception of the Holy Spirit as within the Godhead, it can never be disregarded without spiritual loss. At all costs we must be true to the full New Testament idea of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In view, therefore, of all the facts of the case, we are compelled to face the alternatives: the Deity of the Holy Spirit or its denial, for no other standing-ground is possible.39 But this is in no sense prejudicial to the supreme and final thought of the Divine unity; rather is it the necessary consequence and expression of the unity. We are compelled by the very nature of the case to insist upon those distinctions in the Godhead which are represented by the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, for they are the application of the essential nature of man as social in his comprehension of the Being of God as social. This conception is our highest and best idea, and receives its supreme expression in the words, The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
And so, while we emphasise and maintain this distinctness, we also emphasise and maintain the oneness as the fundamental and vital conception of Deity.
It is sometimes said that as religion consists in communion with God, God and man are therefore akin, and that human nature is a reflection of the Divine. So that as humanity has three phases: Fatherhood, Motherhood, and Brotherhood, these must have their counterparts in the Godhead. Two are clear: Fatherhood in connection with the Father, and Brotherhood in connection with the Son; and the attempt is consequently made to associate the Holy Spirit with the remaining one. Motherhood. It is argued that this tendency of all religions would not be lacking in Christianity, and in support of it reference is made to the ' brooding ' of the Spirit in Gen. i. 2; the ' birth ' of the Spirit in John iii., and the wording of the original in James i. 18. It may be questioned, however, whether this is a satisfactory basis on which to rest such a conception of the Spirit of God. Nowhere in Scripture is any teaching found which associates the Holy Spirit with Motherhood, and the idea of Motherhood in the Deity (if regarded as necessary to theological thought) can be conceived of and realised without any such definite distinctions as are necessitated by this theory.
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Literature. — Swete, The Holy Spirit in the New Testament, p. 283; Smeaton, The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, p. 95; Moberly, Atonement and Personality, chs. viii., ix.; Denio, The Supreme Leader, p. 196; Walker, The Holy Spirit, ch. iii.; Garvie, The Christian Certainty Amid the Modern Perplexity, ch. x.; Martensen, Christian Dogmatics, Sections 52-58, 181-184; Parker, The Paraclete, ch. i.; Moule, Veni Creator, p. 5; Downer, The Mission and Ministration of the Holy Spirit, ch. i.; Masterman, ' I believe in the Holy Ghost,' ch. vi.; Elder Gumming, After the Spirit, ch. i.; Bushnell, The Vicarious Sacrifice, p. 38; J. M. Campbell, After Pentecost, What? ch. iii. 1 Litton, Introduction to Dogmatic Theology, p. 125. See also Bethune-Baker, An Introduction to the Early History of Christian Doctrine, p. 233. 2 Winstanley, Spirit in the New Testament, p. 160. 3 Moberly, Atonement and Personality, p. 155. 4 Mackintosh, The Person of Jesus Christ, p. 339. 5 Mackintosh, op. cit. p. 524. 6 New Testament Theology, Eng. Trans., ii. p. 279. 7 The Times, June 5, 191 1. So to the same effect, Garvie, Expositor, VIII. 5, p. 46 (January, 1913). 8 Moberly, op. cit. p. 160. 9 Moberly, op. cit. p. 180. 10 Mackintosh, op. cit. p. 510. 11 E. H. Johnson, The Holy Spirit, p. 86 if, criticising W. L. Walker. 12 Moberly, op. cit. p. 165. 13 Davison, ' The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit,' London Quarterly Review, April, 1905, p. 208. 14 Johnson, The Holy Spirit, p. 43. 15 Moberly, op. cit. p. 154. 16 Denney, Article, ' Holy Spirit,' Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels, p. 744. 17 Mackintosh, op. cit. pp. 508, 509. 18 Moberly, op. cit. p. 155. 19 Moberly, op. cit. pp. 181-185. 20 Garvie, Expositor, ut supra, p. 37. 21 Garvie, Expositor, ut supra, p. 38. 22 Garvie, Expositor, ut supra, p. 43. 23 Stearns, Present Day Theology, p. 191. 24 Mackintosh, op. cit. p. 522; see also p. 513; Moberly, op. cit. p. 185; Denio, The Supreme Leader, p. 196. 25 Curtis, The Christian Faith, p. 337. 26 Curtis, op. cii. p. 339. 27 Carvie, Expositor, ut supra, p. 48. 28 W. Adams Brown, Christian Theology in Outline, p. 158. 29 Garvie, Expositor, ut supra, p. 50. 30 Garvie, Expositor, ut supra, p. 51. 31 Garvie, Expositor, ut supra, p. 51. 32 Garvie, Expositor, ut supra, p. 51. 33 Garvie, Expositor, ut supra, pp. 51, 52. 34 D'Arcy, Article ' Trinity,' Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels p. 766. 35 Garvie, Expositor, ut supra, p. 52. See also Moberly op cit p. 161. 36 Davison, ut supra, pp. 209, 210. 37 D'Arcy, ut supra, p. 765. 38 Moberly, op. cit. pp. 157-169. 39 Kuyper, The Work of the Holy Spirit, p. xi. 40 Garvie, Expositor, ut supra, pp. 49, 50. 41 Mackintosh, op. cit. p. 526. |