Literature.— Schiirer, II J P l. i. 65, ii. 107 f., ii. i. 250 flf., ii. 162, and the authorities there cited.
James Patrick. TRINITY.— Our subject is the doctrine of the Holy Trinity in relation to Christ and the Gospels.
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TRINITY
TRINITY
We have to consider how far that great conception of God's being and nature is revealed or implied in the fact of Christ as presented in the Gospels and in the teaching of our Lord Himself.
I. The witness of our Lord's consciousness as revealed in the Gospels.— (i.) As regards Bui- self. — It was not our Lord's custom to take to Himself the names and titles to which He knew He had a right. The passage which exhibits this fact most clearly is that in which we tind Him questioning His disciples, first as to the popular opinion, and then as to their own belief (]Mt IG^^*"^-, Mk S^'ff-, Lk 9i«ff). After St. Peter had made his great confession, our Lord charged the disciples to keep the truth which had just emerged, to them- selves. No doubt He desired to avoid the mistakes arising from the popular conceptions of the Messiah. He wished also to train the minds of the disciples, to lead them gently from truth to truth, so that spiritual experience might keep pace with know- ledge. And yet our Lord's thoughts about Himself were loftier far than could be imagined from the mere names and titles which He acknowledged. When the passages which contain His statements about His own relation to God and man are col- lected and viewed as a whole, they are found to imply claims which are far in advance of the first and more obvious meanings of the titles.
It is being more and more fully recognized by critical students of the life of Jesus that He certainly regarded Himself as the Messiah, and that the names and titles by which He described Himself and permitted others to describe Him are Messianic in their significance. But when this has been granted to the full, there remains a very large proportion of His self-revelation unaccounted for. Bousset considers that the reserve of our Lord on the subject of His Messiahship was due to His deep sense of the inadequacy of the Messianic title for that which He felt Himself to be (Jesus, p. 175 flf., Eng. tr.). And certain it is that, among all the conceptions which clustered round the Jewish anticipation of the Messiah, none is great enough, none deep enough, to correspond with the revelation of Himself which our Lord makes in the Gospels. (See art. ' Development of Doctrine ' in Hastings' DB, Ext. Vol. ; Charles, ' Enoch ' and ' Eschatology ' in vol. i. ; also Briggs, The Messiah of the Gospels). True, we have the great OT conceptions of the later Isaiah and of the Book of Daniel, and we have the latter repeated, and in some respects enlarged, in the Similitudes of Enoch. In this probably pre-Christian work there is a wonderful picture of the Son of Man, which corresponds remarkably with certain passages in the Gospels. He is, as it seems, regarded as pre-existent, was named in the presence of God before creation, and takes part in judgment. But there is no anticipation of that extraordinary union of earthly humiliation with transcendent relationship to God the Father which is the principal deliverance of our Lord's consciousness concerning Himsel/. The truth is that the diffi- culty of representing that consciousness by means of the under- stood and recognized terms of the religion and theology of the day was almost inconceivably great.
It was this very inadequacy of all existing con- ceptions to convey the truth of our Lord's Person in His relation to God and man which rendered necessary that careful and patient handling of the faith of the disciples which we find everywhere in His dealing with them. A spiritual experience of a new kind had to be created before the new language could be learned. The new Avine needed new bottles. The first danger to be guarded against was a premature precision, a hasty definition. The one title which our Lord constantly used of Himself, ' the Son of Man,' most skilfully avoided anything of the nature of definition. Messianic in its associa- tions, it was yet not so distinctively Messianic as to constitute a claim, and it was capable of infinite suggestion, according to its application and context. It was a continual challenge to reflexion. See art. Son of Man above and in Hastings' DB.
These reflexions will help us to discern the true nature of the problem which is presented by our Lord's revelation of Himself. The facts of that problem maybe summarized as follows, the Synoptic evidence and that of the Fourth Gospel being ex- hibited separately.
(1) Direct stnfemenf.i or claims to a position or authority mure than human. — The strongest pass-
age in the Synoptics is the solemn declaration recorded by Mt. (11-^) and Lk. (lO^^), 'All things have been delivered unto me of my Father : and no one knoweth who the Son is, save the Father ; and who the Father is, save the Son, and he to whom- soever the Son willeth to reveal him.'
These words form the most striking connecting link between the Christology of the Synoptics and that of the Fourth Gospel. But they do not, as some critics would have us believe, stand alone. On the contrary, thej' but sum up teaching which may be found everywhere, expressed or implied. In many places our Lord speaks of His mission from God in a manner which sets Him above and apart from men (Mt 2028, Mk 9S7 lO-to, Lk 9^8, Mt 2818 etc.). He is King in a superhuman sense of the term (Mt 2430ff. 25S4. 40, Mk 152, Lk 1938-4i5 2229 232- 3). He is Judge of all and Lord of the future (Mt 2531H'- l&^ 1928 2664, Mk 8^8 13-6. 27 1462, Lk 926 i28.9.40ff. i325fr. 1730 2136 2269 etc.). He is David's Lord (Mt 2243-45, Mk 1235ff., Lk 2044). He is higher than the angels (Mk 1332). He demands the most complete devotion as His right, and the most extreme self-sacrifice ( JIt 822 io32. 33. 37-39 1129 1624-26 26l0ff-, Mk 834ff. 1029, Lk923ff. 1426ff. 21l2ff. etc.). These jjassages express the Divine claim upon the lojalt.y of mankind in terms which could not be surpassed. So it is that our Lord declares Himself greater than the Temple (Mt 126), Lord of the Sabbath (Mt 128, Mk 228), greater than Solomon (Mt 1242).