I väntan på Jesus

III. The doctrine of the Trinity and Scripture.
(Continued)

The other evidences for the ecclesiastical doctrine of the trinity: the trinity hinted at in baptismal words, the creation story, the seraphim, etc.; the trinity in the land of Mamre. – Conclusion of the preceding.

Since the insmuggled words in 1 Joh. 5 are removed from the Holy Scriptures, there is not a single verse, which immediately attests to the truth of the Athanasian doctrine of the trinity. In his desire to find another immediate support one has resorted to the so-called words of institution for baptism: »baptizing them into the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit". This is not the place to develop the deep and glorious things, which are contained in these words, when they namely are perceived in the New Testament's own spirit and not considered through the fog of the anti-logic that is regarded as St. Athanasius' symbolum; but one must have a feeble notion of what evidence means, if one assumes, that the existence of three persons in the Godhead, community of essence, equality and unity are proved, simply because the words father, son and holy spirit are mentioned after each other. If that was enough, we also would have another trinity, namely, the father, the son, and the host of angels. In fact, the New Testament mentions the angels more often than the holy spirit after the father and the son and always on the most solemn occasions. Paul e.g. urges Timothy (1 Tim. 5: 21) by God, the Lord Jesus Christ and the chosen angels to perform his duties with fairness. Jesus says (Luk. 9: 26): »Whoever is ashamed of me and my words, of him too the son of man will be ashamed, when he comes in his glory and the glory of his father and the holy angels.” (Compare Mark. 8: 38.) And on another occasion Jesus says of the last day, that neither the angels nor the son will know when it occurs, but the father alone (Mark 13:32). That Jesus and Paul in such places with silence pass over the holy spirit is quite remarkable. Except in the baptismal words (Matt. 28: 19) he is mentioned only once in the New Testament together with the father and the son, namely in 2 Cor. 13:13: »The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the holy spirit be with you all. »On the other hand, there are more passages in the gospels of such a nature that their authors could not possibly have expressed themselves like that, if they under "holy spirit" understood an independent person in the godhead. So e.g. it says in Matt. 3: 11: »he will baptize you in the holy spirit and fire»; in Acts 10: 38: »God has anointed him (Jesus of Nazareth) with the holy spirit and power. » In 2 Cor. 6 the holy spirit is mentioned in the midst of other impersonal powers and qualities: purity in lifestyle, knowledge, long-suffering, kindness, unfeigned love, etc*.

* It was only the second ecumenical council in Constantinople in the year 381, which announced and ordered that the holy spirit is a person of the same essence as the father and the son, and therefore should be worshipped as these. Before the time of Athanasius the Christian church was generally unfamiliar with this dogma, which is not surprising, since neither the writings of the evangelists nor the apostles nor the oral tradition had anything to declare about it. Until then, the large number of Christians imagined the Holy Spirit as a divine power active in the interior of man for sanctification, as personal or impersonal as God's love and other characteristics and modes of behaviour. The Christian Cicero himself, as the church father Lactantius was called, had no other conception of the holy spirit than that. In his work "Institutiones divinae'" - the first Christian dogmatics ever written in the West - the words trinity or triplicity does not even appear. He only talks about two persons in the godhead. "The father and the son," he says one place, "are one God, for both are each as two and the two are as well as one. Because the one's mind and will is in the other or rather one in both, the one God can rightly be called the twofold." - However, there were quite early within the Christian church individuals, which under the effort to reconcile Christianity with their worldview based on Platonic philosophy - personified the holy spirit and gave him a place in the Christian triad, which they according to Platonic fashion set up. One of the first, who, according to what we know, trod this path, was Justinus the martyr (died 167), formerly Platonic philosopher. He imagined the holy spirit as a created being, related to the angels. Origen also personified him, and gave him, as the last part of the divine triad, a place elevated above the angelic world but was far from thinking of him as God in the absolute sense. For as such he did not recognize the son either. "Just as the son of God and the holy spirit are incomparably exalted above everything else, even above the highest degrees of the spirit world; as much or even more is the father exalted above the son himself"; this the most biblically educated, and most admired of all ecclesiastical writers, utters in his commentaries to John. Moreover, among Greek church fathers is Theophilus Antiochenus, among Latin Tertullian, the first who introduced into Christian dogmatics the word trinity or triplicity, borrowed from pagan philosophy (in Greek: trias; in Latin: trinitas). The prevailing views in the Christian church before the Nicene council in this issue, can be briefly characterized as follows. They split into two main groups: the monarchian and the logistical. The Monarchians (with the exception of the aforementioned Noetus and other so-called Patripassians) taught, that Jesus was a man like all other men, but considered him chosen by God to be the highest of all prophets, to a founder of a Kingdom of God on earth and for this purpose specifically inspired and guided by the divine wisdom. The holy spirit was for them an activity of God in man. The logists, who - insofar as they included the holy spirit in their speculations and personified him - also were a kind of trinitarians, they all had in common that they regarded the son as subordinate to the father. We already have with Origen's own words stated his thought about it. Another logist and trinitarian, Tertullian, pronounces, at the same time as he sharply emphasizes the son's unity with the father, that the son is one in time emerged created being. He says e.g. in his writing against Hermogenes: "Because God has always been God, he has not, however, always been father and judge. There has been a time when neither the sins nor the son were: the son, who alone makes God a father; the sins, which alone make God a judge.» The doctrine that the son is subordinate to the father, a lower being than he, was the prevailing one in the first two centuries of Christianity.