The

The idea, first developed by Origen, of the eternal generation of the Son, namely, that it inheres eternally in the nature of

God to pour forth his fullness in a subject that is the absolute image of himself, that the Son is an immanent Self-importation, was a great advance in the construction of the dogma. Three cardinal points were now established: sameness of essence, personal distinction, eternal generation. What was yet wanting was an approximately adequate expression combining these points. The predicate hovioousios was adopted by the Council of Nice as embracing both the idea of unity and that of distinction, and the whole Christian Church has ever since united in declaring its faith in “the Only Son of God, Begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of very God, Begotten, not made, Being of one substance with the Father.”

The same premises which resulted in this settlement of the relation of the Son to the Father eventually and of necessity brought about a similar conclusion concerning the Holy Ghost; the Symbol of the Church being expanded at the Council of Constantinople, a. d. 381, by the addition to the third article: “the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceedeth from the Father, who with the Father and Son together is worshipped and glorified,” the Church thus affirming the absolute divinity alike of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, ascribing to each the attributes and perfections of deity, while always, on the other hand, maintaining that there is one God only, that the divinity of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost is an absolute unit. It cannot be claimed that all difficulties were surmounted. Long struggles ensued, even after the Church had, in successive Councils, defined the doctrine; but the formulation in the Athanasian Creed of the Catholic Faith, “That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the substance,” presents this mystery in such a way that, as Hagenbach says, “all further endeavors of human ingenuity to solve its apparent contradictions in a dialectic way must break against this bulwark of faith, as the waves break upon an inflexible rock.”

Misapprehensions have arisen, not only from the transcendent range of the subject, and the poverty of human language, but also from the failure to observe the specific terms which differentiate the constituent parts of the doctrine. Unity, for instance, is affirmed of the nature of God. He is one in essence. Trinity relates to the mode of existence, the distinctions which subsist in the divine essence; Unity and Trinity are not predicated of the same thing and do not therefore contradict each

other. The Godhead is one and three, not in the same sense, but in different senses. By Person, again, a term which may easily mislead, is meant the peculiarity or property by which each is not the other, nor a part or quality of another, but a subject subsisting of itself. Unlike the essence which is common and communicable, the personal subsistence cannot be communicated from the one to, another. Each “person” possesses its own ultimate form of subsistence. The Father differs from the Son, the Holy Ghost differs from both. The Father is unbegotten, the Son is begotten, the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and (according to the Western Church) from the Son. Yet neither is God without the other; neither works inare: Dorner: The Person of Christ; Bull: Defence of the Nicene Creed; Waterland: The Trinity; Shedd: History of Christian Doctrine; Hodge: Systematic Theology.

E. J. Wolf.