§ 130. THE NICENE DOCTRINE OF THE TEINITY. 873
2. In tills one divine essence there are threG persons * oi , to ase a better term, hypostases!^ that is, three diflerent modes of
which is known to us only in fragments, comp. especially Baur, Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit, etc., vol. ii. pp. 13-32. In the English Church the error of tritheism was revived by Dean Sherlock in his " Vindication of the Doctrine of the Holy and ever Blessed Trinity," 1690. He maintained that, with the exception of a mutual consciousness of each other, which no created spirits can have, the throe divine persons are "three distinct infinite minds" or "three intelligent beings." He was Apposed by South, Wallis, and others. See Patrick Fairbairn's Appendix to the Euglish translation of Dorner's History of Chnstology, vol. iii. p. 354 ff. (Edinburgh, 1863).
' npoVcoira, persmue. This term occurs very often in the New Testament, noir in the sense o{ person, now of face or cwmfenance, again of form or external appearance. EtjTnologically (from Trpo? and y) ii\f/, the eye, face), it means strictly face; then in general, /ro^ii / also mash, visor, character (of a drama) ; and finally, person, in the grammatical sense. In like manner the Latin word persona (from sonvs, sound) signifies the mask of the Roman actor, through which he made himself audible {per so7iuit); then the actor himself ; then any assumed or real character; and finally an individual, a reasonable being. Sabellianism used the word in the sense of face or character ; tritheism, in the grammatical sense. Owing to this ambiguity of the word, the term hypostasis is to be preferred, though this too is somewhat inadequate. Comp. the Lexicons, and especially Petavius, De trinit., lib. iv. Dr. Shedd also prefers hypostasis, and observes, vol. i. p. 371: "This term (persona), it \f> obvious to remark, though tlie more common one in English, and perhaps in Protestant trinitarianism generally, is not so well adapted to express the conception intended, as the Greek vTroaraan. It has a Sabellian leaning, because it does not with sufficient plainness indicate the subsistence in the Essence. The Father, Son, and Spirit are more than mere aspects or appearances of the Essence. The Latin persona was the mask worn by the actor in the play, and was representative of hi? particular character for the particular time. Now, although those who employed these terms undoubtedly gave them as full and solid a meaning as they could, and were undoubtedly true trinitarians, yet the representation of the eternal and necessary hypostatical distinctions in the Godhead, by terms derived from transitory scenical exhibitions, was not the best for purposes of science, even though the poverty of human language should justify their emplojTnent for popular and illustrative statements."
* 'Xno(rraL(TetT, subsisfenti^. Comp. Heb. t 3. (The other passages of the New Testament where the word is used, Heb. iii. 14; xL 1 ; 2 Cor. ix. 4; xi. 17, do not belong here.) 'TTrdo-Tatrts, and the corresponding Latin substantia, strictly foundation, then essence, substance, is originally pretty much synonymous with ovaia, esseniia, and is in fact, as we have already said, frequently interchanged with it, even by Athanasius, and in the anathema at the close of the original Nicene Creed, But gradually (according to Petavius, after the council at Alexandria in 362) a di& dnction established itself in the church terminology, in which Gregory of Nyssa. particularly in his work : De differentia essentiae et hypostaseos (torn. iii. p. 32 sqq. bad an important influence. Comp. Petavius, 1. c. p. 314 sqq.
676 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
Bubsisteiice ' of tbe one same undivided and indivisible whole, which in the Scriptures are called the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.' These distinctions are not merely diflercnt attributes, poTers, or activities of the Godhead, still less merely subjective aspects under which it presents itself to the human •nind ; but each person expresses the whole fulness of the divine being with all its attributes, and the three persons stand in a relation of mutual knowledge and love. The Father communicates his very life to the Son, and the Spirit is tlie bond of union and communion between the two. The Son speaks, and as the God-3fan, even prays, to the Father, thus standing over against him as a first person towards a second ; and calls the Holy Ghost " another Comforter " whom he will send from the Father, thus speaking of him as of a third person."
Here the orthodox doctrine forsook Sabellianism or modalism, which, it is true, made Father, Son, and Spirit strictly coordinate, but only as different denominations aiid forms of manifestation of the one God.
But, on the other hand, as we have already intimated, the term ^e?'^^^* must not be taken here in tlie sense current among men, as if the three persons were three different individuals, or three self-conscious and separately acting beings. The trinitarian idea of personality lies midway between tliat of a mere
' Tp6iroi virdp^fui, an expression, however, capable of a Sabellian sense.
^ This question of the <»'i-personality of God must not be confounded with the modem question of the personality of God in general. The tii-personality was asserted by the Niccne fathers in opposition to abstract monarchianism and Sabellianism ; the personaUty is asserted by Christian theism against pantheism, which makes a personal relation of the spirit of man to God impossible. Scbleiermacher, who as a philosopher lenned decidedly to pantheism, admitted (in a note to hia Reden iiber die Religion) that devotion and prayer always presume and require the personality of God. The philosophical objection, that personality necessarily includes Umitation by other personalities, and so contradicts the notion of the absoluteness of God, is untenable ; for we can as well conceive an absolute personality, as an absolute intelligence and an absolute will, to which, however, the power of self-limitation must be ascribed, not as a weakness, but as a perfection. The orthodox tri-personaUty does not conflict with this total personality, but gives it full organic life.
• John xiv. 16: "AWov irapdKK-rjTof, COmp. V. 26; C. XV. 26: 'O TapawAjjrot, h* iyi) nfuipu! vuiv iraph narpSsy — a clcar distinction of Spirit, Son, and Father.