< The Paraclete

Lecture I.

THE HOLY GHOST OF VERY GOD

Man's need of God. God may be known. God one and three. 1. The Doctrine of the Trinity gradually revealed. II. Divinity and Personality of the Holy Spirit. 1. Divinity.—(1) Name of God given; (2) Divine attributes and actions ascribed; (3) Worker of Miracles. 2. Personality.—(1)Testimony of Gospels, specially words of Christ. (2) Acts of Apostles; (3) Epistles. III. History of the Doctrine; Council of Constantinople. IV. Procession of Holy Spirit. Double Procession. Importance of the docrine.

All history testifies to the existence, in the human race, of an inextinguishable longing for a knowledge of God. Oftentimes the enquiry may seem to be abandoned in despair. Men have been ready to confess that the mystery of the Godhead was unsearchable, and to cry out: "Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?"[1] And the answer has come back: "We cannot find Him out unto perfection. This mystery is 'higher than heaven' and 'deeper than hell:' how then can we know it?" In the grand language of Hooker:[2] "Dangerous it were for the feeble brain of man to wade far into the doings of the Most High; whom although to know be life, and joy to make mention of His name; yet our soundest knowledge is to know that we know Him not as indeed He is, neither can know Him. . . . . . . . .He is above, and we upon earth; therefore it behoveth our words to be wary and few.

Such thoughts should ever be with us when we take in hand to explore the mysteries of the Godhead. Yet they should never be suffered to press so heavily upon us as to paralyse our spiritual energies and drive us to hopelessness. Man is himself divine, although finite, and therefore he may know something of the Divine. Although no man hath seen God at any time, yet the only begotten Son hath declared Him; and that Son has said: "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father."[3] To refuse the revelation which God has given, therefore, is no proof of humility, but of arrogance. The agnostic is merely interposing his own wilfulness in order to shut out the light which descends from heaven. God has truly revealed Himself; and, although our knowledge of Him can never be complete, yet, as far as it goes, it may be true and adequate.

Now, the revelation of God which we have received is a revelation at once of Unity and Trinity. "Our God," says the same great writer, "is One, or rather very Oneness, and mere unity, having nothing but itself in itself, and not consisting (as all things do besides God) of many things. In which essential Unity of God, a Trinity personal nevertheless subsisteth, after a manner far exceeding the possibility of man's conceit."

Here, then, is our starting point: the unity of God, the central truth of Holy Scripture and of the Christian Church, and the principle of all true religious worship. That there is one Being above all others, in whom all things subsist, uncreated, self-existent, eternal, infinite, is not only the faith which is consciously held by all who worship the living and true God, but it is a belief which has always been shared, although dimly and indistinctly, even by polytheists and idolaters. It has been remarked that men who professed to believe in "gods many and lords many," have yet in their hours of danger invoked the one God and Lord of all; and one of the greatest minds of the Church of Christ has told us that the heathen had never fallen so utterly under the belief of false gods as to have lost the idea of the one God from whom all things proceed.[4]

If, however, we accept the testimony of the Christian Scriptures, we shall conclude that God is not only Unity, but Trinity in Unity. They tell us of a Father who reveals Himself through the Son and by the Holy Spirit. The writers of the New Testament employ language concerning the Son and the Holy Spirit which is intelligible only on the supposition that each of these Persons is, equally with the Father, Very and Eternal God. The Holy Scriptures set before us the history of those events in the development of the human race, and in the dealings of Almighty God with His creatures, in which He has revealed and declared His own Name and Nature and Attributes. The revelation of the Holy Ghost was, so to speak, the last word in the series of disclosures. It completed the revelation of the doctine of the Holy Trinity.

For many years there has been a wide–spread feeling in the Church that the doctrine of the Holy Ghost does not hold its due place either in the teaching of the Church of in the life of its members. During the last few years a good deal has been done to wipe away this reproach. The deepening of the study of theology has brought conviction that the ignoring of the work of the Spririt is the mutilating of the doctrine of Christ; and treatises not a few have been put forth giving the evidence of deep meditation and enlightened thought on this great subject. Nevertheless, there is still much to be done. There are still many religious and devout minds who are unable to rise above the conception of the Divine Spirit as an influence or energy; and this undeniable fact is an evidence of the need of more careful instruction on the subject. On the importance of the doctrine it is not necessary to insist. Either the Holy Ghost is very God, of one substance with the Father and the Son, or the Church Universal has been in error for many centuries. It is sufficient merely to state such an alternative in order to point out the greatness of the question now before us.

The Holy Ghost is very God—we have deemed it best to take this fundamental doctrine as our starting point; and, before proceeding to deal directly with the doctrine itself, it may helpful first to say something on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, which is inseparably connected with it. Indeed it is obvious that the demonstration of the doctrine of the Trinity necessarily involves the proof of the Godhead of the Holy Ghost; and, on the other hand, we cannot completely satisfy ourselves on the doctrine of the third Person in the Holy Trinity without having regard to the relations of the Three Persons. As, however, our principal concern here is with the truth of the Divine Spirit, the general doctrine will receive somewhat brief consideration.

i. Now, in considering a doctrine so mysterious and so awful as that of the Holy Trinity in the Unity of the Godhead, we must bear in mind that we are dealing not with mathematical truth which is the subject of demonstration, nor with observed fact which can be definitely proved by testimony, but with spiritual truth which needs a certain moral and spiritual preparedness for its reception, and with a particular truth which, after being obscurely intimated, was gradually made known as men were prepared for its reception.

As regards the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, it is beyond question that it was not clearly revealed to mankind for a long period of time, whilst it is hardly possible to deny that there were certain anticipations of the doctrine in the beliefs of earlier ages. It is not difficult in some degree to understand what we may call the reticence of Divine Revelation on this subject. It is not merely that all the nations of antiquity were afflicted with polytheism, and that the chosen people themselves were frequently falling into the superstitions and idolatries of the nations round about them. For these reasons alone it might have been judged expedient to keep back, for a season, a doctrine which might have fostered such errors among a people whose spiritual education was necessarily imperfect. But there were other reasons. If the truth concerning the Divine Nature had been made known in earlier times, it must have been revealed nakedly, and apart from those facts which alone could give it significance and power, and apart from that prolonged religious discipline and education by which it was actually introduced to the knowledge of men. Almighty God makes truth known to his creatures as they are able to receive it, to turn it to practical account, to profit by it, and so it was in the revelation of the Holy Trinity.

On these principles we can understand what is the kind of evidence which may reasonably be expected in support of this mysterious doctrine. It would obviously be quite unreasonable to expect, in the earlier periods of Divine Revelation, such clear intimations of the doctrine as we find in the fully developed teaching of the apostles of Christ. Those who call in question the truth of the doctrine because it was unknown to patriarchs and Hebrews, can hardly have apprehended the principle of Divine Revelation or even of the natural and providential government of the world. In all spheres the Divine processes are gradual, and it would not be reasonable to expect that the Most High should flash upon the eyes His creatures the full blaze of a complete revelation of Himself without a previous prolonged and careful preparation.

At the same time, if these doctrines are true, we might certainly expect some dim traces or obscure intimations of them in the earlier records of Divine Revelation, and at least we should be sure that in the earlier stages there would be nothing inconsistent with the fuller revelation afterwards to be afforded. We should be sure that these earlier teachings, although themselves incomplete, would yet adapt themselves to the later and fuller disclosures of Divine truth. Like an outline map, they might teach us but little, but that little would be accurate as far as it went, and it would prepare the mind for the more complete revelation afterwards to be given. We might also expect that we should find the revelation brightening onwards from its first dim twilight to the perfect day of full truth and knowledge. We may say that these expectations have not been disappointed. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity, although it is not clearly revealed until the descent of the Holy Ghost of the Day of Pentecost, may yet be traced in the very earliest records of the sacred collections and even in the beliefs of the heathen. To some it appears to be reflected in the constitution of the nature of man, and even in the structure of the material world.

It has been well said that we must not quarrel with the evidences of the Being of God which have brought satisfaction to other minds, nor lay too much stress upon those which approve themselves to our own judgment. In the same way, we may not deny that there may be validity in the illustrations of the Holy Trinity which pious and thoughtful men say they have discovered; at the same time that we must beware of laying too great stress upon proofs which are of doubtful value. It may be that the Creator of all things intended us to see in the sun, with its central fire and the light and heat proceeding from it, a material image of that spiritual Reality by which all things subsist. The tree with its root, its trunk, and its branches, may to many minds a striking symbol of the same truth.[5] If we are to see God in everything, we must not quarrel with those who believe that in these works of His hands they behold the manifestations of His Being. Yet it may be safer to employ such analogies as illustrations of the doctrine and not to depend upon them as arguments for its truth. When, again, some of the deepest thinkers of the Church have seen in the powers of the human mind a reflection of the Holy Trinity, they not unreasonably assume that, inasmuch as God has made man in His own image, these essential distinctions in the Godhead may be expected to be in some manner and to some extent reproduced in that created being who was made in His likeness. For example, S. Augustine finds a Trinity in the mind—memory, understanding, and love—and in this trinity beholds the image of God.[6] So Leibnitz discovers in man power, knowledge, and goodness, which in us are partial, but in God are complete;[7] whilst more modern writers[8] discover a correspondence between man's will, thought, and feeling and the three Persons in the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Interesting, however, as the pursuit of such analogies must be considered, and helpful as they may be to devout meditation, it



Notes

  1. ↑ Job xi, 7.
  2. ↑ "Eccles. Pol.," i. 2, 2.
  3. ↑ St. John, xiv, 9.
  4. ↑ "Gentes non usque adeo ad falsos deos esse delapsas, ut opinonem amitterent unius veri Dei, ex quo est omnis qualiscunque natura." S. August. C. Faust. 1. 20, n. 19, Cf. Hooker, 1. c.
  5. ↑ Tertullian, Adv. Praxeam, viii.
  6. ↑ De Trin. x 14, 1--12.
  7. ↑ Théodicée, Preface.
  8. ↑ Delitzsch, Bibl. Psychol. Sec. iv.
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