We find, then, that the teaching of our Lord and of the Gospels concerning God is the union of a true and uuAvavering monotheism Avith a great doctrine of mediation, according to Avhich God and man enter into A^ery close relationship in the Person of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
(ii.) The Son.—(\) The Son is a distinct Person
\
762
TRINITY
TRINITY
from the Father. — It is easy to complicate this question by a discussion of the meaning of the word ' personality.' The Latin word persona was chosen to represent the Greek v-KoaTcais, but neither the original nor its translation was adequate. To endeavour to minimize the difficulty of the tradi- tional doctrine by recalling the primitive meaning of persona is surely vain. The truth is that the conception of personality, as we now understand it, did not enter into the thoughts of the ancients at all. They used the language which attached itself most easily to the new distinctions which the rise of Christian theology forced upon their atten- tion, and, in doing so, laid the foundations of our modern philosophical and theological terminology. But the true force of their technical terms may be more accurately gauged by considering the mean- ings to which they tended, than by going back to meanings which they forsook. It is much better to interpret the Trinitarian doctrine with the help of the modern conception of personality than by means of the Latin word persona ; for if the con- notation of the term has altered, its denotation is, in this case, the same, and the change of meaning was simply the inevitable development.
The truth of this will become evident when we turn from abstract doctrines and a priori argu- ments to the facts of the life of Christ as we have them in the Gosjiels. If any result has emerged from our examination it is this : the Personality of our Lord is the most distinct and the most concrete of which we have any knowledge. If His consciousness included elements which are outside the range of our experience, if His character com- bined qualities which do not coexist under ordinary human conditions, if there was an unexampled completeness about His moral and spiritual being, then all these great sjiiritual possessions belonged to His Ego, and therefore that Ego had a distinct- ness and concreteness surpassing any other human being who ever lived. To confuse the boundaries which give the Ego its distinctness, for the sake of making an abstract doctrine appear more intellig- ible, is surely a dangerous error. Our Lord was very man, and His Ego had all the self-possession and self-consciousness which give to every human soul its personal distinctness. While we find, in His self-revelation, that He constantly entered into a communion with God which is quite without parallel in human experience, and that He knew the heart of God from within, we also find Him ever distinguishing Himself as a Person from the Father. There is no trace anywhere of the break- ing down of the boundaries of personal life. The Hebrew prophet was frequently impelled to speak as the mouthpiece of Jehovah, his personality seemed to dissolve, and the voice of Deity seemed to speak through his lips. So with the mystic, the individual being seems to vanish in the moment of insight, the human drop seems to blend with the ocean of Divinity. In the records of the inner life of our Lord will be found no sign of such experi- ences. His utterances reveal no displacement of the centre of personal life. He is always self- contained, even in Gethsemane.
This personal distinctness may be seen clearly in the following passages. They are among our Lord's greatest utterances : ' All things have been delivered unto me of my Father, and no one knoweth the Son save the Father,' etc. (Mt 1127, Lk 1022) ; ' The Son of Man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels ' (Mt 1627) ; ' Whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man also shall be ashamed of him, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels ' (Mk 838) ; ' Not what I will, but what thou wilt ' (Mk 14:^6) -, ' Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit ' (Lk 23^6) ; ' My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ? ' (Mk 1534) ; ' My Father worketh hitherto and I work ' (Jn 517) ; ' I and the Father are one ' (1030) ; ' i am the way, and the truth, and the life : no one cometh unto the Father but by me ' (146), etc. These examples are selected out of a great number. The Fourth Gospel is especially rich in such passages, and this
fact is the more remarkable because it is the Gospel of Christian mysticism. In it we are taught to think of the great unities which are realized in Christ : ' Thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that thej' also may be one in is"; ' I in them and thou in me, that they may be perfected intc one ' (1721- 23), etc. Yet St. John is very clear as to the distinc tness of the Persons : ' The Logos was with God,' ' The same was. in the beginning with God ' (11- 2). The phrase is remarkable, rr o? tov biov. It signifies per- sonal distinctness with active relationship. (Cf. 1 Jn 12 ipk rot TXTipa.). We have already seen how emphatic this Evangelist is as to the humanity of our Lord. We now find him equally emphatic as to the true Personality. Yet he is our clearest teacher about the Divinity. Surely we must recognize, as the source of this extraordinary combination, the reality of the life and consciousness to which he testifies, the fact of Christ.