The doctrine, then, is primarily religious; and if we define God—as in practice religion does—as "That which has an absolute claim upon our obedience" or as "the Supreme Object of our reverence," the paradoxical element in the doctrine is at least diminished. The ultimate Object of the Christian's reverence is— as reflection will show—the Christian ideal of holiness. A being who fell short of this standard, however omnipotent or self-exist ent he might be, would not receive the Christian's worship. Con versely, this standard would have an equal claim upon our rever ence—since its claim to our obedience is conceived as being ab solute—whether or not it were embodied in a person. Jesus is wor shipped because the Christian "identifies" Him with His Call—His Law. Reverence and subjection to Him are reverence and subjec tion to it (John xiv. 21, etc.). Is there, then, any insuperable difficulty in the notion of a threefold personal embodiment of the one Divine Will and Character, an embodiment so complete in each case that contact with the Divine Person is contact with God? Claims of Unity.—The answer to the foregoing question turns upon the claims of unity. The unity of the world is sometimes rep resented as based upon its presence to, and its existence in, a single Divine Mind. Religion, however, is interested primarily in the unity of the moral ideal, of the ideal of perfection generally. "The Monotheism of Israel," it has been well said, "was prima rily moral seriousness." Religion is concerned also with a faith— which is the basis of its trust and hope—in the necessity of the complete realization of the good in the universe as seen in God; with a faith in that "perfection of the Universe" which St. Thomas regarded as God's chief purpose in creation (i. 5o, 3). A Universe which has unity as the complete realization of this single ideal, has the unity which chiefly concerns religion. This ultimate unity of subordination to a single principle is not necessarily identical with the unity which comes from being included within the mind of a single Divine Being. Nor is it obviously identical with the theologian's "numerical unity of substance" (see e.g., Tanqueray, Syn. Theol. Dog., ii. 575-576). The Unity, then, of the Object of our supreme reverence and trust is not plainly inconsistent with the existence of personal distinctions (in the modern sense of the word) within the Godhead. It was probabjy an afterthought to regard the doctrine of the Trinity as providing a more satisfactory conception of "personality in God" than could grow up under a "unipersonal" theology. Yet Trinitarianism has some points of
superiority over a theory which may compel us to conceive God as waking up at the Creation from "an eternity of idleness" (Shelley, Queen Mab, vii. cf. Journal of Theol. Studies, iv. 376). Love—it may be argued—can only be at its highest perfection in the "love of God for God"—in a love in which He that loves and He that is loved are wholly adequate to one another. A faith in God's perfection would thus tend to a )elief in the "plurality of persons in the Godhead." Amplifying Conceptions.—It has been similarly argued that in conceiving the "not-self with which God contrasts Himself" as "wholly internal to His essence" while the unity (the Holy Spirit) "within which the relation of the two falls is not, as in us, a dark mystery at the back of our life but something which 'pro ceeds from both' " we have "the best notion that we can frame of Being at its highest" (Webb, J.T.S., Oct. 1900). Such an argu ment leads not merely to a plurality but to a trinity of Divine persons, and supports the Western doctrine of the procession of the Spirit from the Father and the Son, tanquam ab uno principle et unica spiratione (Council of 1274). It agrees also with the con ception of the mutual indwelling of the Three Persons (Tanqueray, S.T.D., ii., 664-665). Again, the argument—if joined with the belief that "whatever we conceive the Divine life to be, our life cannot be outside it"—is in accordance with the Scriptural con ception that mankind is within the Eternal Son, that the Church is His "body" or His "fulness." Such a conception would lead us beyond any mere "trinity of manifestation"; since it implies that, though in knowing each Person of the Trinity we are know ing God, yet to know God as Trinity is a real addition to our knowledge, and further, that the personal relations within the Trinity are necessary to His full glory, since they make possible to God something better than mere self-contemplation.
The doctrine, then, we may conclude, arose primarily from the conviction that worship of Jesus is consistent with Monotheism. But if, secondarily, the doctrine when formed is defended as offering the best attainable conception of the Divine perfection, it follows that our sense of what is good and fitting, our aesthetic and religious instinct for perfection, and likewise those qualities in the doctrine which moved Dante (Parad., x. 1-6) to give it poetic expression, are all relevant to its discussion. (See PANTHE