Page:The Moslem World - Volume 02.djvu/164



This is a grave mistake; we also wear a modern dress, although Christianity is old. We believe in progress on the right and safe tracks, but modern Unitarianism is an advance along a wrong road; it is a descent and not an ascent; it does not represent progress but rather retrogression. I also prefer the term anti-Trinitarianism to that of Unitarianism, because Christians are, as far as their relation to polytheism is concerned, Unitarians, Monotheists in the true sense of the word. It may be that the unity of God has been placed now and then in the background, but as a rule the Christian Church has always upheld the unity of God. But we protest on behalf of God's unity against an abstract uniformity in God's essence. We adore, as true Theists, the mystery of the Holy Trinity, as revealed to us in the Holy Scriptures, and we also admire the work of the Church in building up the doctrine of the Trinity.

Let men criticize as they will the formulation of this doctrine in the works of Systematic Theology, but let them have reverence for the mystery of the triune God. We cannot comprehend this mystery in its height and depth, its length and breadth; we apprehend it, however, by faith, and see so much glory and beauty in it that we rejoice and are glad. Our faith in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the only true and living God, seems to us so reasonable that no rationalistic attacks upon it can really alarm us. The rationalistic pseudo-Trinity, viz.: God, freedom and immortality, shows the barrenness of any monotheistic view, that is not based upon the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.

We are rich in our Christian faith, we become poor if we enter into a compromise with anti-Trinitarianism in any form. F. C. Baur, the father of the Tubingen School, who cannot be accused of being a friend of traditional orthodoxy, was correct in his statement that Christianity would have lost its character as the universal religion of mankind if Arianism had been triumphant at Nicea.

Let us with boldness proclaim it everywhere in the face of anti -Trinitarians of every description, that Theism and faith in the triune God are intimately joined together. We have real communion with God, because in Jesus