The peculiarity of the belief consists in the re- markable way in which a group of spiritual bless- ings, such as man is accustomed to look for di- rectly from God, is not referred to the Godhead conceived singly as a Mon.ad, but distributivuly as Three, and yet Three so bracketed together as to be at the same time One. No graduated interpre- tation of the Three Names is possible. If it were, we should have Beings who were not Man and yet not wholly God. In the Arian Controversy an attempt was made to establish this interpretation ; but it utterly and hopelessly failed.
The other alternative remains, that St. Paul and the Church of his day thought of the Supreme Source of spiritual blessing as not single but threefold— threefold in essence, and not merely in a manner of speecli. How did he come to think thus? How was it that a Church so far from the centre of things and at so ejirly a date was pre- pared to receive without question an assumption which to us seems to make such large demands upon the intellect ?
It was certainly not a matter of course. We have seen that there was a certain tendency to hypostatize the Word of God, the Wisdom of God, the Spirit of God, even the Glory of God. The Messiah was thought of as more than human if less than in the full sense divine. But all these conceptions were fluid and tentative. ,Jewish theologj" had no fixed and settled belief in regard to them. Even if we add to OT the other writings current at this period, Apocrypha and Pseudepi- grapha, the .Jewish Apocalypses and the Sayings traditionally handed down of the oldest Kabbis, still we should not find anything to suggest a combination of the three terms handled with the precision with which St. Paul handled them.
One pa.ssage there is whicli would abundantly account for St. Paul's language if we could acce|>t it as historical. That is the command to the apostles at the end of the first Gospel to "o and baptize all nations 'into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost' (Mt2S'»). This belongs to a comparatively late and suspected part of thetiospcl. But one tradition may be later than anotlier and more limited in circulation, and yet not be any less authentic. Now, the Didachi shows us that we no sooner cross the frontier of the ai>ostolic age than we finit baptism into the Threefold Name in full possession of the field (I>id. vii. 1, 3). The tradition is continuous. It is taken up by Justin {Apol. i. 61), and Tertullian expressly tells us that the person ImptiziHi was ilippod t^iree times in recognition of the Threefold Name {Pmx. 26). The practice, then, is at least
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very old. And it is no slight confirmation of the statement in the first Oospel that if it were true it would supply just the explanation that we want at once of the established rite and of St. Paul's language. In any case we seem compelled to assume that there was some foundation for both in the teaching of our Lord Himself. If there was not, at what point in the six-and-twenty years can the usage (doctrinal or liturgical) have been introduced in a manner so autlioritative as to impose it upon St. Paul and the Churches of his founding ? We may ^eatly doubt if any satis- factory answer can be given to this question.
On the other hand, the moment we assume that our Lord did really give this alleged command, and that He really did prepare for it by some corre- sponding teaching, a number of otiier facts are accounted for. We find the very teaching of which we are in search in many places of tlie Last Discourse as recorded by St. John (Jn 14"' ^ 15™ 16'- '"• "• "). And with such teaching in the back- ground a variety of phenomena in St. Paul's Kpp. fall into their place which would otherwise be very intractable.
(i.) The Father and the Son. — The Epistle (2 Co) ends with a triple benediction, and it begins \rith a double benediction. ' Grace and peace ' are invoked upon the Corinthian Christians ' from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.' We observe here the same sort of bracketing of the two Divine Names as in the case of the Three. Although there is a distinction of names, and although there may bo a certain distinction and special distribution of function, the source of spiritual blessing is in its essence One.
The fact that there is this alternation within ;he same Epistle of the Two names and tlie Three, sliows that the one expression is in no way incon- sistent with the other. A like alternation is 'ound side by side in several other of St. Paul's Epistles. For instance, in 1 Co 12*-" we have the Triad : Lord, God, Spirit ; in 1 Co 1" and 8' we nave (in the latter passage very expressly) the Duad : God [the (our) Father] and Lord [Jesus Christ]. In like manner, in Ro g"'"- ^•*' we have the Triad, though not formally drawn out, just as clearly presupposed as in vv.*''^' (cf. 1' etc.) we have tlie Duad ; and a like relation appears in Eph 2'» S^-"- "-" 4*-« 5'8-»' compared with !»• «■ "