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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 August 2011
“The most ancient of the philosophers,” wrote Clement of Alexandria, “were not carried away to disputing and doubting, and much less are we who are attached to the really true philosophy, and on whom the Scripture enjoins examination and investigation…. The point proposed for inquiry and answer knocks at the door of truth…. To those who thus ask questions in the Scriptures is granted that at which they aim, the gift of God-given knowledge, by way of comprehension, through the true illumination of their intellectual search…. It becomes him who is at once a lover and a disciple of truth to be pacific even in investigation, advancing by intellectual demonstration, without love of self but with love of truth, to the knowledge of comprehension.”
1 Misc., VIII, 1.
2 III, Pref.; II, Pref.
3 De Trin. XV, 45 and 51; II, 1; XV, 49.
4 V, 2.
5 Mt. xxviii, 19; Gal. iv, 4; Jn. ii, 17; xiv, 26, xv, 26. (De Trin. xv, 51.)
6 II, 15.
7 Hist. Eccl. V, 12.
8 Luke i, 79, 68; Gal. ii, 20; Rom. viii, 2; II Cor. iii, 17.
9 Cf. I Thess. v, 28 and I Cor. xvi, 23. Cf. also Baptism in the Name of Jesus only; e.g. Acts xix, 5.
10 Cf. II Cor. xiii, 14; Ephes. ii, 18.
11 Matt. xxviii, 19. Cf. Harnack, The Constitution and Law of the Church, App. II. Such expressions as “The Son of Man shall come in the glory of His Father with his Angels” (Matt. xvi, 27), and “Grace from Him which was and is and is to come … and from the seven spirits … and from Jesus Christ” (Rev. i, 4) represent other, not strictly Trinitarian lines of thought. They correspond with such threefold Jewish ideas as Yahweh, Yahweh's Work and Yahweh's People; or those of God and His Law given through Angels. In the Old Testament, so far as the Being of God is concerned, we never get beyond the stage of binitarianism, e.g. Yahweh and the Angel of His Presence; Yahweh and Messiah; Yahweh and His Spirit, or His Word, or His Wisdom.
12 Jn. xvii, 18, 21, 23 f.
13 Cf. p. 124 of this paper.
14 Col. i, 15 f.
15 Cf. Prov. viii; Wisdom, vi–ix.
16 Homily I.
17 Ch. I.
18 Trypho, 121.
19 Apol. I, 46 and II, 13.
20 Cf. Soph. 246.
21 Apol. II, 10; Dial. 127, 128, etc. Athenagoras, Apol. 10. Even later Christian thought never quite eradicated this.
22 Cf. Justin Apol. I, 13: “We reasonably worship Him, having learned that He is the Son of the true God Himself, and holding Him in the second place.”
23 Cf. De Princ. I, i, 6, 8; ii; iii; IV, i, 36; etc.
24 De Bapt. 8.
25 The doctrine of the Spirit was not developed forthwith because of the excesses of the Montanists, due to their claims to special inspiration. Tertullian arrived at the idea of one substance in diversity in the Godhead; but his thought on the Spirit was not consistent. He spoke of it sometimes as a Person, sometimes as a Power within the Deity. No doubt it was because the doctrine of the Spirit had not yet become a living issue that Clement of Alexandria never dealt with the doctrine of the Trinity.
26 Quoted by Athanasius, De Syn. 15.
27 Orat. I, 12, 21.
28 Athanasius was as much a Sabellian as an Apollinarian, but he saved Monotheism.
29 Cf. C. Gentes, 42; 44; De Incar. Verbi, 8; 18; Orat. c. Arianos, III, 22–25.
30 With the Creeds compare also the Chalcedonian Definition.
31 In Hebrew thought, man was a body animated by a semi-physical spirit. In Greek thought, man's spirit was caged in the body like a bird.
32 Cf. The Second Creed of Antioch.
33 Orat. de Spir. Sanct. xxvi.
34 The Philosophy of Plotinus, Vol. II, p. 38.
35 Cf. Henry Suso's beautiful meditation on the Sursum Corda.
36 A. S. Pringle-Pattison, The Idea of God, p. 314.
37 History of Dogma, Vol. IV, p. 268.
38 Cf. v. Hügel, Essays and Addresses, Vol. II, pp. 149 ff.
39 They were really excluded by Nicene Trinitarianism, built as it was upon the thought of Christ as the Incarnate Logos of transcendent Deity, as Risen also, and Glorified.
40 S. Theol., xlvi, Second Argument.
41 God and Man, p. 72.
42 Op. cit., p. 313.
43 Barth, Karl, Gifford Lectures, 1937–38, pp. 31 fGoogle Scholar.
44 These are the kind of difficulties which Aquinas had in mind when he said: “By natural reason we can know what belongs to the unity of the Essence, but not what belongs to the distinction of the Persons. Whoever, then, tries to prove the Trinity of Persons by natural reason derogates from faith….” (S. Theol., xxxii, 1). It is worth stressing, however, that it is the mystery of the Divine Being, not the doctrine of the Trinity, that cannot be grasped by the intellect. The doctrine itself was indeed framed by the intellect.
45 De An. et Res. (Argument).
46 Cf. pp. 124–125 of this essay.
47 See Paradiso, xxxiii, 108 to end. (Translation by G. L. Bickersteth.)
48 The presence of these is revealed in the idea of the Son “begotten” and “the Holy Ghost proceeding”; and again, more clearly, in the doctrine of the angels, who come next in the series of emanations. To the same category of thought belongs a system of a hierarchical priesthood in which inhere gifts, or deposits, of truth, grace and authority by virtue of an “Apostolic Succession”; which raises priests to the position of “mediators.”
49 “Let the images and the shadows go,” said Gregory Nazianzen, “as being deceitful and very far short of the truth.” (Orat. V, xxxiii.)
50 Athanasius Ad Serap. Orat. g. 28; and Ep. Eusebii, appended to De Decr.
51 Might not the long period of intellectual squalor which we call the Dark Ages perchance have been avoided, had the intellectual passion of inquiry which brought it to an end not been cast out with the Nestorian heretics? It was in obedience to insistence on correct thinking about these mysteries, rather than on the primary importance of discipleship, that they were expelled from the Roman Empire. They took with them to Nisibis the books of Aristotle, and through these, by devious routes, the study of Aristotelianism (modified by Platonism) returned, to work the revolution that gave the Church the two Summae of Aquinas in the 13th century — to which we owe, for Trinitarianism, the finally unequivocal teaching that God is one Mind: Power, Wisdom and Love. (S. Theol. xxvii, 4, 5; xxxvi, 2; xxxvii, 1; xlv, 7.) Thus did the Nestorians return blessing for reviling.
52 Revelations of Divine Love, liv, lv.
53 Harborne Liturgy, Proper Preface for Trinity Sunday.
