GOD
GOD
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ond'ir His other name, the Holy Spirit. Here as in the Fourtli Gosj)el we have a historical retro- spect of facts and impressions recalled after a considerable lapse of time, but in the Epp. of St. Paul we are in tlie midst of the events, and we are allowed to see into the inner mind of one of the leading actors in them. From the langua^'e of St. Paul we may learn what is meant by being 'taught all things and haWng all things brought to remembrance," or ratlier as he had not been an immediate disciple of Christ we are enabled to understand the irXripoipopia with whicli he sjioke. He certainly felt that the Gospel which he preached had its source outside himself. Nowhere, perhaps, does tills come out more clearly than in the first of all his Epistles. Writing to the Thessalonians he says, ' For this cause we also thank God without ceasing, that when ye received from us the word of the message, even the word of God, ye accepted it not as the word of men, but, as it is i» truth, the word of God, which also worketh in you that believe ' (1 Th 2"). This is the central prmciple of the apostolic preaching. It is the ' demonstration of the Spirit and of power 'of which he speaks else- where (1 Co 2^). And the substance of the preach- ing is just the new revelation about God and Christ and the Holy Spirit, and their united work for the salvation of men. ' Things wliich ej'e saw not and ear hearil not . . . unto us God revealed them through the Spirit : for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God ' (1 Co 2"- '"). Thus the method of divine revelation in the NT is very similar to that in 0 T. It is brought about through the action of the Holy Spirit upon certain selected instruments, with just the dillerence on which stress is laid in Ep. to Hebrews, that whereas, under the Old Covenant, God had spoken in and through the prophets, under the New He spoke ' in ' and through the Son, and those expressly chosen and trained by the Son.
LtTRRATiTRB. — On the training of the apostles to he the vehicles of the new revelation, see Latham, Pastor Pastonnn (Conihrid^re, 1890). Reference may also be made to the Bainfttitn Lfcturet for 1893 on ' Inspiration,' and other works on the sunie subject.
3. Distinctions in tdb Godhead.— la the previous sections of this article we have had gra<lually to discriminate between the operation and functions of wli.-it we now call the diilerent ' Persons' in the Godhead. At the time of which we are speaking (the period covered by NT) there was no su('h conception in the general mind as that of ' person;ility. The term ' person ' was just coming into use through the delining influence of Roman Law acting upon popular language (the distinction of persona and res appears to liave come in during the 1st cent. B.C., shortly before the time of Cicero). But a long process had to be gone through before the idea of personality ac- quired an exact connotation ; and that process was to a largo e.\tent involved in the theological con- troversies on the subject of the Trinity, the result of which was the formulated doctrine of Three Persons in One God, as we have it in what is commonly known as the Athanasian Creed.
It would be an anachronism to expect a defini- tion of the doctrine in NT. And yet the doctrine is really a working out of data contained in NT. It is a rendering of these data intelligible to the consciousness as part of a reasoned and formulated whole. The Christian theolo'nan is well aware that the only expression i)o.ssilile toliim is approxi- mate: he applies to the whole construction the dirtum of St. Augustine ; he says what he .says, nnn ut illud diceretur sed ne taceretur (Ih Trin. v. 9). Hut he is almost compelled to say .something, and the deJilicrate judgment of the Church has been that he is warranted in saying so much as he does.
In any critical study of that which we call by anticipation the doctrine of the Trinity in the NT, the starting-p<jint must undoubtedly be the t>ene- diction in 2 Co 13" 'The gnice of the Lord Jesua Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all." In this verse we have an utterance of the mind of tlie apostle, which he knows will lind an echo in the minds of his readers at a fixed point in time and place, probably about twenty-six and in any case not more than twenty-eight years after the Ascen- sion. We are left to draw our conclusions as to the belief of the Church at this time. It is, of course, true that the object of the passage is not dogmatic. If it had been, its significance would have been less. It is not the expounding of any new doctrine. It is not even the expounding of doctrine at all. It is only an invocation of blessing. But the peculiar form which this invocation takes, points to much previous preparation in thought and teaching ; it points to a settled, and we are obliged to think, uncontested belief, common alike to the writer and his readers.