§ 130, THE ^SriCENE DOCTKINE OF THE TKINrrY, 677
form of manifestation, or a personation, which would lead to Sabellianism, and the idea of an independent, limited human personality, which would result in tritheism. In other words, it avoids the monoousia/n or unitarian trinity of a threefold 3onception and aspect of one and the same being, and the triousian or tritheistic trinity of three distinct and separate beings.' In each person there is the same inseparable divine Bubstance, united with the individual property and relation which distinguishes that person from the others. The word person is in reality only a make-shift, in the absence of a more adequate term. Our idea of God is more true and deep than our terminology, and the essence and character of God far transcends our highest ideas.*
The Nicene fathers and Augustine endeavored, as Tertullian and Dionysius of Alexandria had already done, to illustrate the Trinity by analogies from created existence. Their figures were sun, ray. and light ; fountain, stream, and flow ; root,
• Comp. Petavius, 1. c, who discusses very fully the trinitarian terminology of the Nicene fathers. Also J. H. Newman, The Arians, etc. p. 208 : *' The word person, which we venture to use in speaking of those three distinct manifestations of Himself, which it has pleased Almighty God to give us, is in its philosophical sense too wide for our meaning. Its essential signification, as applied to ourselves, is that of an individual intelligent agent, answering to the Greek vitSarram's, or reali ty. On the other hand, if we restrict it to its etymological sense ol persona or TrpjJoj>Trov, i. e., character, it evidently means less than Scripture doctrine, which we wish to ascertain by it ; denoting merely certain outward expressions of the Supreme Being relatively to ourselves, which are of an accidental and variable nature. The statements of Revelation then lie between this internal and external view of the Divine Essence, between Tritheism, and wliat is popularly called TJnitarianism." Dr. Shedd, History of Christian Doctrine, vol. i. p. 365 : " The doctrine of a sub sistence in the substance of the Godhead brings to view a species of existence thai is so anomalous and unique, that the human mind derives little or no aid from those analogies which assist it in all other cases. The hypostasis is a real subsistence, — a polid essential form of existence, and not a mere emanation, or energy, or manifesta tion, — but it is intermediate between substance and attributes. It is not identical fvith the substance, for there are not three substances. It is not identical with attributes, for the three Persons each and equally possess all the divine attributes. . . . Hence the human mind is called upon to grasp the notion of a species of existence ihat is totally sui generis, and not capable of illustration by any of the ordinary comparisons and analogies."
• Ab Augustine says, De trinitate, lib. vii. cap. 4 (§ 7, ed. Bened. Venet. torn riii. fol. 858): " Veiius cogitatur Deus quam dicitur, et verius est quam cogitatur."
678 THEKD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
stem, and fruit ; the colors of tlie rainbow ; ' soul, tlioughl, and spirit;' memory, intelligence, and will ;' and the idea of kve, •which affords the best illustration, for God is love.* Such figures are indeed confessedly insufficient as proofs, and, if })ressed, might easily lead to utterly erroneous conceptions. For example : sun, ray, and light are not co-ordinate, but the two latter are merely qualities or emanations of the first. "Omne simile claudicat.'" Analogies, however, here do the negative service of repelling the charge of uni-easonableness from a doctrine whicli is in fact the liighest reason, and which has been acknowledged in various forms by the greatest philosophers, from Plato to Schelling and Hegel, though often in an entirely unscriptural sense. A certain trinity undeniably runs through all created life, and is especially reflected in manifold ways in man, wdio is created after the image of God; in the relation of body, soul, and spirit ; in the faculties of thought, feeling, and will ; in the nature of self-consciousness ; * and in the nature of love.'
' Used by Basil and Gregory of Nyssa.
' ^vxh, ivdun-nais, Trvtv/na, ill Gregory Nazianzen.
* Augustiue, De trinit. x. c. 11 (g 18), torn. viii. fol. 898 : " Haec tria, memoria, intelligentia, voluntas, quoniam non sunt tres vitae, sed una vita, ncc tres nientes, sed una mens : consequenter utique non tres substantiai sunt, sed una substantia."
* Augustine, ib. viii. 8 (f. 875): "Immo vero vides trinitatem, si caritat(!ia Tides;" ix. 2 (f. 879): "Tria sunt, amans, et quod amatur, et amor." And iu another place : " Tres sunt, amans, amatua, et mutuus amor."
' This was clearly felt and confessed by the fathers themselves, who used these illustrations merely as helps to their understanding. Joh. Damascenus (De fide orthod. 1. i. c. 8 ; Opera, toni. i. p. 137) says : " It is impossible for any image to be found in created things, representmg in itself the nature of the Iloly Trinity without any point of dissimiUtude. For can a thing created, and compound, and changeable, and circumscribed, and corruptible, clearly exjjress the superessential divine essence, which is exempt from all tiiesc defects V " Comp. Mosheun's notea to Cudwortli, vol. ii. 422 f. (Lond. ed. of 1845).
* The trinity of self-consciousness consist^s in a process of becoming objective to one's self, and knowing one's self in tliis objectivity, according to the logical law of thesis, antithesis, and spithesis, or in the unity of the subject thinking and the subject thought. This speculative argument has been developed by Leibnitz, Ilegel, and other German philosophers, and is adopted also by Dr. Shedd, Hist, of (Jhris. tian Doct. i. p. 306 If., note. But this analogy properly leads at best only to a Sabellian tri-j)ersonality, not to the orthodox.
' Tl e ethical induction of the Trinity from the idea of love was first attempted