God, its adaptation tQ general use is to be attributed. A truth often lies in the mind of the Church as an object of faith, long before it is wrought out in its doctrinal form ; that is, before it is analyzed, its contents clearly ascertained, and its elements stated in due rela- tion to each otlier. When a doctrine so complex as that of the Trinity is presented as an object of faith, the mind is forced to re- flect upon it, to endeavour to ascertain what it includes, and how its several parts are to be stated, so as to avoid confusion or contradic- tion. Besides this internal necessity for a definite statement of the doctrine, such statement was forced upon the Church from without. Even among those who honestly intended to receive what the Scriptures taught upon the subject, it was inevitable that there should arise diversity in the mode of statement, and confu- sion and contradiction in the use of terms. As the Church is one, not externally merely, but really and inwardly, this diversity and confusion are as much an evil, a pain, and an embarrassment, troub- ling its inward peace, as the like inconsistency and confusion would be in an individual mind. There w^as, therefore, an inward and outward necessity, in the Church itself, for a clear, comprehensive, and consistent statement of the various elements of this complex doctrine of Christian faith.
B. Conflict ivith Error. Besides this necessity for such a statement of the doctrine as would satisfy the minds of those who received it, there was a fur- ther necessity of guarding the truth from the evil influence of false or erroneous exhibitions of it. The conviction was deeply settled in the minds of all Christians that Christ is a divine person. The glory which He displayed, the authority which He assumed, the power which He exhibited, the benefits which He conferred, neces- sitated the recognition of Him as the true God. No less strong, however, was the conviction that there is only one God. The dif- ficulty was, to reconcile these two fundamental articles of the Christian faith. The mode of solving this difficulty, by rejecting one of these articles to save the other, was repudiated by common consent. Thei-e were those who denied the divinity of Christ, and endeavoured to satisfy the minds of believers by representing Him as the best of men ; as filled with the Spirit of God ; as tlie Son of God, because miraculously begotten ; or as animated and con- trolled by the power of God ; but, nevertheless, merely a man. This view of the person of Christ was so universally rejected in the early Church, as hardly to occasion controversy. Tlie errors
450 PART I. - THEOLOGY. [Ch. VI. — The Trinity.
with which the advocates of the doctrine of the Trinity had to contend were of a higher order. It was of course unavoidable that both parties, the advocates and the opponents of the doctrine, availed themselves of the current philosophies of the age. Con- sciously or unconsciously, all men are more or less controlled in their modes of thinking on divine subjects by the metaphysical opinions which prevail around them, and in which they have been educated. We accordingly find that Gnosticism and Platonism coloured the views of both the advocates and the opponents of the doctrine of the Trinity during the Ante-Nicene period.
The G-nostics. The Gnostics held that there was a series of emanations from the primal Being, of different orders or ranks. It was natural that those addicted to this system, and who professed to be Christians, should represent Christ as one of the highest of these emanations, or Eons. This view of his person admitted of his being regarded as consubstantial with God, as divine, as the creator of the world, as a distinct person, and of his having at least an apparent or do- cetic union with humanity. It therefore suited some of the condi- tions of the complicated problem to be solved. It, however, rep- resented Christ as one of a series of emanations, and reduced Him to the category of dependent beings, exalted above others of the same class in rank, but not in nature. It moreover involved the denial of his true humanity, which was as essential to the faith of the Church, and as dear to his people as his divinity. All expla- nations of the Trinity, therefore, founded on the Gnostic philosophy were rejected as unsatisfactory and heretical.
The Platonizers. The Platonic system as modified by Philo, and applied by him to the philosophical explanation of the theology of the Old Testa- ment, had far more influence on the speculations of the early Fa- thers than Gnosticism. According to Plato, God formed, or had in the divine reason, the ideas, types, or models of all things, which ideas became the living, formative principles of all actual exist- ences. The divine reason, with its contents, was the Logos. Philo, therefore, in explaining creation, represents the Logos as the sum of all these types or ideas, which make up the koo-mos I'or/Tos, or ideal world. In this view the Logos was designated as ivBidOeTo<; (mente conceptus). In creation, or the self-manifestation of God in nature, this divine reason or Logos is born, sent forth, or pro- jected, becoming the Adyos tt/do^o/jikos, giving life and form to all