(c) The Father of believers. — Side by side with the doctrine of universal fatherhood is the special relationship of God to believers, not only as Saviour (1 Ti 41") but as Father. Here the apostolic writers ascribe to Christians the prerogatives of the chosen people in the old covenant. This special fatherhood is brought out in the passages where St. Paul applies the metaphor of adoption to Chris- tians (Ro 8i^-"-23, Gal 4^'-, Eph P ; see ADOPTION ; cf. also 1 P 1", 1 Jn 3i'-, Jn P^, etc.).
(d) ' The Father' in general. — In many passages we find the absolute expression 'the Father,' com- prehending any or all of the above meanings, as, e.g., 1 Co 8«, Gal P, Eph 5-» ('give thanks in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father '), Col P^, Ja S" RV (' the Lord and Father '), 1 Jn 2'^-'5'- ; and 2 P 1", 1 Jn P, where there is a special reference to our Lord.
The word 'Father' stands at the head of most Christian creeds, but it is probable that it was not originally in that of Rome. The Creed of Jlarcellus of Ancyra, an early Western specimen, though coining from an Eastern bishop, begins : ' I believe in Almighty {itavTOKpaTopa.) God ' (Epiphanius, Uaer. Ixxii. 3). The language of TertuUian (de Virg. vel. 1 — one of his later works) leads us to suppose that the creed used by him began similarly ; he speaks of ' the rule of believing in one only God omnipotent, the Creator of the universe, and His Son Jesus Christ.' But thenceforward it appears in the Western creeds (see Swete, Apostles' Creed, p. 19 f .).
5. The Holy Trinity.— (a) The technical terms by which the Christian Church has expressed the faith that it derived from the Scriptures were not in-
vented for a considerable time after the apostolic period. Thus no one would expect to find the terms ' Trinity ' and ' Person ' in the NT. It is usually said that the word 'Trinity,' referred to God, was first used by Theophilus of Antioch (ad Antol. ii. 15; c, A.D. ISO), as far as extant Christian literature is concerned. This is true, but tlie con- text shows that it was not then an accepted techni- cal term. The first three days of creation are said to be ' types of the trinity (rpids), God, and His Word, and His Wisdom.' Theophilus goes on to say that the fourth day finds its antitype in man, who is in need of light, so that we get the series : God, the Word, Wisdom, Man. Swete justly re- marks that an author Avho could thus ' convert the Divine trinity into a quaternion in which Man is the fourth term, must have been still far from thinking of the Trinity as later writers thought' {Holy Spirit in the Ancient Church, p. 47). Or we should perhaps rather put it that TheophUus did not use the icorcl ' Trinity ' in the technical sense which immediately afterwards is found ; as when TertuUian speaks of ' the Trinity of the one God- head, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit ' (de Pudic. 21 ; cf. adv. Prax. 2), and as when Hippolytus s.'iys : ' Through this Trinity the Father is glorified, for the Father willed, the Son did, the Spirit mani- fested ' (c. Noet. 14).
The words which we render ' Person ' [vTrbcTTaffis, ■n-poawTTov, jjcrsona) are of a still later date, and at first exhibited a remarkable fluidity of signification. Thus viroaraais was used at one time to denote what is common to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, what we should call the Divine 'substance,' at another it was used to distinguish between the Three ; so that in one sense there is one virdaraai^ in the Holy Trinity, in the other there are three. With regard to the word ' Person,' the student must necessarily be always on his guard against the supposition that ' Person ' means ' individual,' as when we say that three different men are three 'persons' ; or that ' Trinity' involves tritheism, or three Gods. These technical expressions are but methods of denoting the teaching found in the NT that there are distinctions in the Godhead, and that, while God is One, yet He is not a mere Monad. These technical terms are not found in the apostolic or sub-apostolic writers ; with regai'd to the second of them, it may be remembered that the idea of personality was hardly formulated in any sense till shortly before the Christian era ; and its application to theology came in a good deal later.
(6) The name 'God' used absolutely. — In con- sidering the distinctions in the Godhead taught by the NT, it must be borne in mind that, when the name 'God' is used absolutely, without pronoun or epithet, it is never, with one possible exception, api:)lied explicitly to the Son as such or to the Spirit as such. It is, indeed, most frequently used with- out any special reference to the Person. But it is often, when standing absolutely, used in contrast to the Son or to the Spirit, and then the Father is intended. Instances of this are too numerous to mention ; but we may take as examples Ac 2'^'^ ('Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God . . . by mighty works . . . which God did by him'), 1330 ( ' God raised him from the dead '), Ro 2'^ ( ' God sliall judge the secrets of men ... by Jesus Christ"'), Eph 4=«' (' the Holy Spirit of God '). This is sometimes the case also when ' God ' is not used absolutely, as in Ac 3^=* ('the God of our fathers hath glorified his Servant [iralba] Jesus'), 5=*" ('the God of our fathers raised up Jesus'), 22'*, Ro 1* (' I tiiank my God through Jesus Clirist'). In Rev 32- 1- our Lord calls the Father ' my Gud ' ; compare the similar Pauline phrases quoted above, 4 (a). See below, 8.