Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 11 Critical Writings.djvu/120

62 According to the popular theology there are three acknowledged persons in the Godhead.

First, there is "God the Father," the Creator of the universe, and all that is therein; the great Being of the world, made to appear remarkable for three things,—first for great power to will and do; second for great selfishness; and third for great destructiveness. In the popular theology God the Father is the grimmest object in the universe; not loving and not lovely. In the New Testament, in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, there are some dreadful qualities ascribed to God, which belonged to the Hebrew conception of Jehovah: but a great many exceeding kind and beautiful qualities are also assigned to Him;—witness the Parable of the Prodigal Son; witness many things put into the mouth of Jesus. The book of Revelation attributes to the Deity dark and malignant conduct which it is dreadful to think of. But the popular theology in the dreadful qualities assigned to God has gone a great ways beyond the first three Gospels, and the book of Revelation. It has taken the dark things and made them blacker with notions derived from other sources.

Then there is "God the Son," who is the Father in the flesh, but with more humanity in him, and with very much less selfishness and destructiveness than is attributed to the Father. Still in the popular theology the love which the Son bears towards man is always limited; first limited to Believers, and next to the Elect. It is no doctrine of the popular theology that Christ actually loves transgressors, and as little that God loves them.

Then, thirdly, there is "God the Holy Ghost," the least important person in the Trinity, who continually "spreads undivided and operates unspent," but does not spread far or operate much, and is easily grieved away. The Holy Ghost is not represented as loving wicked men, that is, men who lack conventional faith, or who are deficient in conventional righteousness. No one of these three persons of the Godhead has any love for the souls of the damned.

All this is acknowledged and writ down in the creeds of Catholic and Protestant, and in this they do not differ. A few heretical Unitarians have differed from the main