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The Historic Doctrine of the Trinity: Difference between revisions
The Historic Doctrine of the Trinity (view source)
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As the Son, Christ existed as “the Father’s Word and Radiance and Wisdom.” In the incarnation the Son willingly and lovingly took on the human flesh derived from “a Virgin, Mary, Bearer of God, and was made man.” The Word was “not external” to the humanity he had assumed. Rather, when the incarnate Son lived and ministered on earth, humanity and deity were both at work in an incomprehensible union. When Jesus healed the mother-in-law of Simon Peter, “He stretched forth His hand humanly, but He stopped the illness divinely.” When he healed the man born blind from birth, “human was the spittle which He gave forth from the flesh, but divinely did He open the eyes through the clay.” At the raising of Lazarus, “he gave forth a human voice, as man; but divinely, as God, did He raise Lazarus from the dead.”49 Athanasius sees the Son’s incarnate actions as manifesting the genuine union existing in his person between his humanity and his deity. If he grieved or expressed other human emotions, such was only proper. For “it became the Lord, in putting on human flesh, to put it on whole with the affections proper to it,” though Athanasius is uncomfortable with the idea that Christ’s human “affections” touched his deity.<ref>Roger E. Olson and Christopher A. Hall, The Trinity, Guides to Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 2002), 32-33.</ref> | As the Son, Christ existed as “the Father’s Word and Radiance and Wisdom.” In the incarnation the Son willingly and lovingly took on the human flesh derived from “a Virgin, Mary, Bearer of God, and was made man.” The Word was “not external” to the humanity he had assumed. Rather, when the incarnate Son lived and ministered on earth, humanity and deity were both at work in an incomprehensible union. When Jesus healed the mother-in-law of Simon Peter, “He stretched forth His hand humanly, but He stopped the illness divinely.” When he healed the man born blind from birth, “human was the spittle which He gave forth from the flesh, but divinely did He open the eyes through the clay.” At the raising of Lazarus, “he gave forth a human voice, as man; but divinely, as God, did He raise Lazarus from the dead.”49 Athanasius sees the Son’s incarnate actions as manifesting the genuine union existing in his person between his humanity and his deity. If he grieved or expressed other human emotions, such was only proper. For “it became the Lord, in putting on human flesh, to put it on whole with the affections proper to it,” though Athanasius is uncomfortable with the idea that Christ’s human “affections” touched his deity.<ref>Roger E. Olson and Christopher A. Hall, The Trinity, Guides to Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 2002), 32-33.</ref> | ||
=The Limitations of the Doctrine= | |||
The doctrine of the Trinity is the summary expression of what Christians have to say in answer to the question who God is and what God is in the divine life and in relation to what is not God.<ref>Colin E. Gunton, The Doctrine of Creation : Essays in Dogmatics, History and Philosophy (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2004), 155.</ref>However, William Branham felt that he could reject almost 2000 years of thought and study out of hand: | |||
:''So they say... He said, "Well, Mr. Branham, you know, even the--the theologians can't explain it." | |||
:''I said, "That's exactly right. The Word don't come to a theologian." Uh-huh. I said, "The Bible is all tied into the Revelation, 'Upon this rock I'll build My Church, and the gates of hell can't prevail against It.'" See? Amen, there you are. See? But then when it comes to those things... Oh, my!<ref>WHO.DO.YOU.SAY.THIS.IS_ PHOENIX.AZ V-6 N-9 SUNDAY_ 64-1227</ref> | |||
However, it is important to understand that theologians believe that the doctrine of the Trinity is a very difficult issue: | |||
:''We do not think it open to full explication in human thought. It is not wise to attempt more than is attainable. Yet the manifest prudence of this law has often been violated in strivings after an unattainable solution of this doctrine. We shall not repeat the error. Still, the divine Trinity is so manifestly a truth of Scripture, and so cardinal in Christian theology, that the question cannot be omitted. If a full solution cannot be attained, the facts may be so presented as not to appear in contradictory opposition. With this attainment, nothing hinders the credibility of the doctrine on the ground of Scripture.'' <ref>John Miley, Systematic Theology, Volume 1, 223 (New York: Hunt & Eaton, 1892)</ref> | |||
:''How is it that the Father is God, that the Son is God, and that the Holy Ghost is God, and yet that there are not three Gods, but one God? I cannot tell you. I know it is so, for so it is revealed; but how it is so it is not for us to guess, because it is not revealed or explained. Our understanding can adventure as far as the testimony, and no farther. Many attempts have been made by divines to find parallels in Nature to the Unity and the Trinity of God, but they all seem to me to fail. | |||
:''Perhaps the very best one is that of St. Patrick, who, when preaching to the Irish, and wishing to explain this matter, plucked a shamrock and showed them its three leaves all in one—three, yet one. Yet there are flaws and faults even in that illustration. It does not meet the case. It is a doctrine to be emphatically asserted as it is expounded in that Athanasian Creed; the soundness of whose teaching I do not question, for I believe it all, though I shrink with horror from the abominable anathema which assert that a man who hesitates to endorse it will “without doubt perish everlastingly.” It is a matter to be reverently accepted as it stands in the Word of God, and to be faithfully studied as it has been understood by the most scrupulous and intelligent Christians of succeeding generations. | |||
:''We are not to think of the Father as though anything could detract from the homage due to him as originally and essentially divine, nor of the only begotten Son of the Father as though he were not “God over all, blessed for ever,” nor of the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son, as though he had not all the attributes of Deity. We must abide by this, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one Jehovah”; but we must still hold to it that in three Persons he is to be worshipped, though he be but one in his essence.<ref>C. H. Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, Vol. LXII, 315-16 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1916).</ref> | |||
=What does "person" mean= | =What does "person" mean= | ||