Both the Godhead and the subordination of our Lord are expressed by the phrases ' God of (iK) God,' ' Very God of very God ' of the Nicene Creed. The Father is the fount or source of Godhead, and there is none other.
The subordination of the Spirit is implied in much that has been quoted above. The very title ' the Spirit of God ' denotes that He is subordinate to the Father and derives from Him. Note also Jn 16'^*- : ' He shall not speak from himself, but what things soever he shall hear, [these] shall he speak ... he shall take of mine and shall declare it unto you,' with which we must compare 15'^ : ' all things that I heard from my Father I have made known unto you.' This refers to the tem- poral mission of the Holy Ghost, and so, probably (at least in its primary aspect), does the saying that He ' proceedeth from the Father ' (15=^). The procession of the Holy Ghost has been much dis- cussed, and the controversy has been complicated by the addition of a word (FUioque) to the Nicene Creed by the Western Church ; but most of those who have engaged in this theological warfare might probably agree in the statement that He who is ' the Spirit of Christ ' proceeds, in eternity as well as in time, from the Father through the Son. In any case, procession involves what is meant by ' subordination.'
9. The Divine unity.— Although the apostolic writers emphasize the distinctions in the Godhead, they at the same time reiterate the OT doctrine tliat God is One. They show no consciousness of teaching anything but the unity of God. The saying of Dt 6* (cf. Is 44^) that ' The Lord our God is one Lord' is repeated by the Master in Mk 1229. 'There is no God but one,' says St. Paul (1 Co S* ; so v.«) ; 'Tliere is one God,' ' the only God' (1 Ti 2* 1"). St. James makes the unity of God a
common ground between his opponents and him- self ; even the demons believe [this] (Ja 2'^). As a matter of fact, Christianity was never seriously accused of polytheism. Aubrey Moore remarks (Lux Mundi^, 1890, p. 59) that at the present day polytheism has ceased to exist in the civilized world; every theist is by a rational necessity a monotheist. And this tendency had begun at the commencement of the Christian era. But the Jews of that day made the Divine unity to be self- absorbed. The Divine attribute of love implies relations within the Divine Being ; and hence the Jewish idea of God was a barren one, as is the Muhammadan idea to-day. The world needed a re-statement of the doctrine of God, and this was given by Christianity. The Christian doctrine steers its way between Tritheism, which postu- lates three Persons like three individuals, and Sabellianism, which teaches that Father, Son, and Spirit are but three aspects of God. It does not profess to be ' easy " ; it was the desire for ' easi- ness ' that led to Arianism and its cognates, which taught that the Son and the Spirit were inferior and created Divine beings ; and, indeed, it was the same desire that led to all the old Christian heresies. But we need not expect that the ' deep things of God' (1 Co 2^"), which cannot adequately be expressed in human language, will be readily comprehensible to our limited human intelligence. To whom is this re-statement of the doctrine of God due ? Was it made in sub-apostolic times, or by the apostles, or by our Lord Himself ? Those who deny that St. Paul wrote any Epistles, or at least any that have survived, and who make the Fourth Gospel, and perhaps the First, to be 2nd cent, writings, may take the first view. Only it is difficult to imagine what unknown genius in the sub-apostolic age could have made such a revolu- tion in thought. This view, however, may safely be passed over, as involving a thoroughly false criticism of the NT books. More attention must be paid to the view that the re-statement of doc- trine is due to St. Paul ; that he was, in reality, the founder of Christian doctrine, and that the 'original Christianity is better represented by Ebionism.' It has been well pointed out by Gore (Bampton Lectures, 1891, Appended Note 26, p. 254 ff.) that this view is contrary to all the evi- dence. Those books of the NT which are most independent of St. Paul, such as the Second Gospel, the Epistle of St. James, and the Apoca- lypse, give the same doctrine that the Apostle of the Gentiles gives. There was no opposition on the subject of the Person of Christ between St. Paul and his judaizing opponents, as would certainly have been the case had Ebionism been the original Christianity. The re-statement of the doctrine of God was fully received at least within a genera- tion of the Ascension. For example, Sanday points out (HDB iv. 573=^) that the use of 'the Father' and ' the Son ' as theological terms goes back to a date which is not more than 23 years from that event (1 Th I'*'*). It is impossible to account for such a rapid growth unless the re-statement came from Him whose bond-servants the apostles loved to profess themselves. The concurrence of so many independent writers can only be due to the fact that ' grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. No man hath seen God at any time ; God only be- gotten [or the only begotten Son], which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him' (Jn 1"'-).