Nor is this alternation confined to the Pauline Epistles. It is seen again in 1 P p-'-" 4'^-'* by the side of I"-2^ 2» .3i»-i8.2o-a gtc. ; and it is as con- spicuous in 1 Jn 5*'^ compared with the general :enor of the Ep., which is constantly setting ' the Father' and 'the (His) Son' over-against each other. We may also compare Jude^"-*" with :. 4. M. a> . jjev l*-« 2^-" 3'- »■ »=• "■ "• ^ with 5«-" 7'-" etc. And we are further reminded that in the DidacM baptism in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is spoken of almost in the same oreath with baptism in the name of Christ {Did. vii. 1, 3 and ix. 5).
There is thus an easy transition from the one way of speaking to the other. There is really a threefold usage. The apostles and early Christians generally speak of God, of God the Father, and God the Son, of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, according to the context and the particular purpose with which they are writing ; but the three modes of expression, so far from being mutually exclusive, are, in fact, closely connected and correlated. And it is noticeable, that whUe there is this free and natural interchange of the three terms, no fourth term is ever added to the three as at all upon the same footing. The mental bracketing of which we have spoken appears to subsist throughout. The usage, although it is in
some respects wide and varied, is yet in others strictly circumscriljed, and is regulated by fixed laws. Wlien we look into it more closelj' we seem to become aware of a gradual development and expansion, if not in the original presentation of the doctrine, yet in the order in which the diHerent parts of it — so to speak — become consciously and definitely realized by the apostles and linst dis- ciples. If (as we have seen reason to think) they had received fuller teacliing on the subject directly from the Lord Himself than is contained in our extant Gospels, this did not prevent tliom from grasping the truth only by degrees, and the very gradualness witli wliich it was grasped would account for some of the first statements being lost to us. It is the later teaching of events calling tlie earlier teaching to remembrance (Jn 14-") which lias preserved for us so much of this as we have. It is a matter of common experience that there are lessons latent in the minil which only become vividly realized when something occurs to bring them home, or when the logic of thought naturally reaches them.
In tlie case of the apostles the logic of thought started from Christ, the Incarnate Christ, wliom they had seen with their eyes, and their liands had handled in the days of His ilesh. If Christ was God, tlien it was certain that there must be in the Godhead some such di.stinction as that which we call personal ; the attributes of personality at- tached to Him as unmistakably as to the apo.stlcs themselves. And if beneath these there lay a substratum of unity with the Power which ruled the heavens, that unity must still be such as admitted of personal distinction.
The language which the apostles use is thor- oughly accounted for by the evidence of their own senses, taken >vith the utterances of Jesus Himself. The keyword which is constantly upon His lips is the name 'Father' with its correlative 'Son.' These terms established themselves from the very first in the Christian consciousness as the true expression of the mutual relation. That they must have done so appears from the fundamental place which they had in the theology of St. Paul, in spite of all the independence which he claims for its origin. No better argument exists for the view that at the time when he WTote his extant Epistles he had already some form of evangelic document before him. In any case he must have been familiar with an extremely solid and unani- mous tradition. To that tradition it is not loo much to say that all Christian speculation on the wider relations of the Godhead goes back. The central point in aU subsequent argument is the relation of ' Father ' and ' Son.' And the difierence which in all ages has marked oft' a loyal from a disloyal interpretation of the data of Christianity has been this, that the one insisted upon a real Fatherhood and a real Sonship, which the other has attempted to explain away. This was the principle at issue in tlie Arian Controversy. And there has probably never been a controversy argued out more thoroughly or with a more abund- ant expenditure of both intellectual and moral force. The outcome of it was the definite and triumphant aflirmation of the position that tlie Father is essentially Father and the Son essentially Son. The most abstruse clauses in the Athanasian Creed are nothing but the emphatic assertion and the systematic safeguarding of this.
(ii.) The Eoly Spirit. — In framing their doc- trine of the Holy Spirit, as in framing their doc- trine of the Son, the apostles had before their minds a definite series of facts. There was a certain group of phenomena which they consist- ently referred to the action of the Spirit. The phenomena of what we call 'inspiration,' tha