Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 15.djvu/77

 TRINITY

49

TRINITY

texts in which St. Paul affirms that in Christ dwells the plenitude of the Godhead (Col., ii, 9), that before His Incarnation He possessed the essential nature of God (Phil., ii, 6), that He "is over all things, God blessed for ever" (Rom., ix, 5), teU us nothing that is not implied in many other passages of his Epistles.

The doctrine as to the Holy Spirit is equally clear. That His distinct personaUty was fuUy recognized is shown bj' many passages. Thus He reveals His commands to the Church's ministers: "As they were ministering to the Ixird and fasting, the Holy Ghost said to them: Separate me Saul and Barnabas . . ." (Acts, xiii, 2). He directs the missionary journey of the .\postles: "They attempted to go into Bith>'nia, and the Spirit of Jesus suffered them not" {Acts, xvi, 7; cf. Acts, v, 3; x\', 28; Rom., x\-, 30). Divine attributes are affirmed of Him. He possesses omniscience and reveals to the Church mysteries known only to God (I Cor., ii, 10); it is He who dis- tributes charismata (I Cor., xii, 11); He is the giver of supernatural Ufe (II Cor., iii, 6); He dwells in the Church and in the souls of individual men as in His temple (Rom., viii, 9-11; I Cor., iii, 16, vi, 19). The work of justification and sanctification is attributed to Him (I Cor., vi, 11; Rom., xv, 16), just as in other passages the same operations are attributed to Christ (I Cor., i, 2; Gal., ii, 17).

To sum up: the various elements of the Trinitarian doctrine are all exTpressly taught in the New Testa- ment. The Divinity of the Three Persons is asserted or implied in passages too numerous to count. The imity of e.ssence is not merely postulated by the strict monotheism of men nurtured in the religion of Israel, to whom ".subordinate deities" would have been unthinkable; but it is, as we have seen, involved in the baptismal commission of Matt., x.xviii, 19, and, in regard to the Father and the Son, expressly asserted in John, x, 38. That the Persons are co- eternal and coequal is a mere corollary from this. In regard to the Divine processions, the doctrine of the first procession is contained in the very terms Father and Son: the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and Son is taught in the discourse of the Lord reported by St. John (.xiv-xvii) (see Holy Ghost).

B. Old Testament. — The early Fathers were per- suaded that indications of the doctrine of the Trinity must exist in the Old Testament and they found such indications in not a few passages. Many of them not merely believed that the Prophets had testified of it, they held that it had been made known even to the Patriarchs. They regarded it as certain that the Divine messenger of Gen., xvi, 7, x\-iii, x.xi, 17, xxxi, 11; Ex., iii, 2, was God the Son; for reasons to be mentioned below (III. B.) they considered it evident that God the Father could not have thus manifested Himself (cf. Justin, "Dial.", 60; Ire- naeus, "Adv. haer.", IV, xx, 7-11; TertuUian, "Adv. Prax.", 1.5-16; Theoph., "Ad Autol.", ii, 22; Novat., "De Trin.", 18, 2.5, etc.). They held that, when the inspired writers speak of "the Spirit of the Lord", the reference was to the Third Penson of the Trinity: and one or two (Irenaeus, "Adv. hser.", II, XXX, 9; Theophilus, "Ad. Aut.", II, 15; Hippolytus, "Con. Noet.", 10) interpret the hyix)- static VVisdom of the Sapiential books, not, with St. Paul, of the Son (Hebr., i, 3; cf. Wisdom, vii, 25, 26), but of the Holy Spirit. But in others of the Fathers is found what would appear to be the sounder view, viz., that no distinct intimation of the doctrine was given under the Old Covenant. (Cf. Greg. Naz., "Or. theol.", v, 26; Epiphanius, " Ancor.", 73, "Hicr.", 74; Ba«il, "Adv. Eunom.", II, 22; C>Ti] Alex., "In Joan.", .xii, 20.)

Some of these, however, admitted that a knowledge of the mystery was granted to the Prophets and saints of the Old Dispensation (Epiph., "Hser.", viii, XV.— 4

5; Cyril Alex., "Con. Julian.", I, P. G., LXXVI, 532-40). It may be readily conceded that the way is prepared for the revelation in some of the prophe- cies. The names Emmanuel (Isa., vii, 14) and God the Mighty (Isa., ix, 6) affirmed of the Messias make mention of the Di\-ine Nature of the promised deliv- erer. Yet it seems that the Gospel revelation was needed to render the full meaning of the passages clear. Even these exalted titles did not lead the Jews to recognize that the Saviour to come was to be none other than God Himself. The Septuagint translators do not even venture to render the words God the Mighty Hterally, but give us, in their place, "the angel of great counsel". A still higher stage of preparation is found in the doctrine of the Sapien- tial books regarding the Divine Wisdom. In Prov., viii. Wisdom appears personified, and in a manner which suggests that the sacred author was not em- ploying a mere metaphor, but had before his mind a real jierson (cf. verses 22, 23). Similar teaching occurs in Ecclus., xxiv, in a discourse which Wisdom is declared to utter in "the assembly of the Most High", i. e. in the presence of the angels. This phrase certainly supposes Wisdom to be conceived as a person. The nature of the personality is left obscure; but we are told that the whole earth is Wis- dom's kingdom, that she finds her delight in all the works of God, but that Israel is in a special manner her portion and her inheritance (Ecclus., xxiv, 8-13).

In the Book of the Wisdom of Solomon we find a still further advance. Here Wisdom is clearly dis- tinguished from Jehovah: "She is ... a certain pure emanation of the glory of the almighty God . . . the brightness of eternal light, and the unspotted mirror of God's majestv, and the image of his good- ness" (Wis., vii, 25, 26". Cf. Hebrews, i, 3). She is, moreover, described as "the worker of all things" (ndvToiv rex"''"'!, '^'ii, 21), an expression indicating that the creation is in some manner attributable to her. Yet in later Judaism this exalted doctrine suffered echpse, and seems to have passed into obUvion. Nor indeed can it be said that the passage, even though it manifests some knowledge of a second personality in the Godhead, constitutes a revelation of the Trinity. For nowhere in the Old Testament do we find any clear indication of a Third Person. Mention is often made of the Spirit of the Lord, but there is nothing to show that the Spirit was \'iewed as distinct from Jahwoh Himself. The term is always employed to signify God considered in His working, whether in the univer.se or in the .soul of man. The matter seems to be correctly summed up by Epipha- nius, when he says: "The One Godhead is above all declared by Moses, and the twofold personality (of Father and Son) is strenuously asserted by the Prophets. The Trinity is made known by the Gos- pel" ("Hsr.", bcxiv., P. G., XLII, 493).

III. Proof of the Doctrine fro.v Tradition. — A. In this section we shall show that the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity has from the earliest times been taught by the Catholic Church and professed by her members. As none deny this for any period subsequent to the Arian and Macedonian controver- sies, it will be sufficient if we here consider the faith of the first four centuries only. An argument of very great weight is pro\-ided in the liturgical forms of the Church. The highest probative force must necessarily attach to these, since they express not the private opinion of a single individual, but the public belief of the whole body of the faithful. Nor can it be objected that the notions of Christians on the subject were vague and confused, and that their liturgical forms reflect this fr.ame of mind. On .such a point vagueness was impossible. . . . Any Christian might be called on to seal with his blood his belief that there is but One God. The