This doctrine, or some notions of a similar kind, tended strongly to produce a perversion of' the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, when the Plato nizing philosophers began to embrace the Chris tian faith, and the errors arising from this source have continued to infect the faith of many profess ing Christians down to the present day. To give an enumeration of the heresies and conceits which have been entertained on this subject would only be to exhibit the weakness or the presumption of the human mind. All that is proposed is to give the history of the doctrine of the Christian Trini ty; and to state the arguments from Scripture by which it is supported.
There is one thing connected with this subject which cannot but strike every person as remarka ble. The Trinity is no where announced in the New Testament as a new doctrine, neither is it any where formally taught: it is taken for granted, or stated as a matter of course, and referred to rather as a thing that was well known, than as a doctrine which had been unheard of before.
\Vas this doctrine, then, known to the Jews under the Old Testament dispensation? It certainly is not expressly taught in the sacred writings, an terior to the Christian revelation; but it is pretty evident that the Jews must have had some notion of plurality as connected with the Divine nature. This is implied in the phraseology of Scripture, as when the Creator says, " Let u.? make man," and " the man is become as one of us." It ought also to be observed that the word Mein/ or Elohini, which is translated God, is a plural noun, but is nevertheless generally joined by Moses, in his ac count of the creation, with a verb in the singular, to indicate, as is supposed, his knowledge of the mysterious nature of the Godhead.
The influence of the Spirit of God is often men tioned in the Old Testament Scriptures, and per sonal qualities are ascribed to it. The Spirit of God rested on the seventy elders and they prophe sied, Num. xi. 26. Isaiah says, " The Lord God and his Spirit bath sent me." xlviii. 16. Number less passages might be quoted to the same purpose, in which qualities and operations are distinctly ascribed to the Spirit of God as a person, and not as an energy of the Divine nature. And, in what ever way they came by their belief, it is no less certain that the Jews, previously to the time of our Saviour, ascribed a distinct personality to the Word of God. Thus in the apocryphal book of Wisdom, which is unquestionably ancient, and supposed to be the production of some Hellenistic Jew, who lived before the time of our Saviour, we find the following passage: " Thine Almighty Word leaped down from heaven, out of the royal throne, as a fierce man of war into the midst of a land of de struction." xviii. 15.
But the most decided evidence on this subject is to be found in the Targums of Jonathan and Onke los; the one being a commentary on the prophets; the other on the books of Moses. They are both written in Chaldce; that of Jonathan was written, ac cording to Calmet, about thirty years before Christ: that of Onkelos not long after it, and they are both, till this day, held in the highest estimation among the Jews. From these commentaries, then, on the
Old Testament Scriptures, we learn in what sense particular passages were understood by the Jews. Onkelos says on Exodus six. 3, that Moses " went up to meet the Word of the Lord," and again, in the 17th verse, he says, " Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet the Word of the Lord." The Targum of Jonathan is equally explicit: on Deut. v. 5, he says, " Moses stood between them and the Trord of the Lord:" and in the 23d verse, he says, "After ye had heard the voice of the fiord out of the midst of the darkness," &c. which shows that the Word is to be understood in a personal sense, as distinguished from the voice of God.1 The same phraseology prevails throughout the work of Philo Judxus, De Ulundi Opificio, in which he almost everywhere speaks of the Word of God as a person, and ascribes to him the creation of the world.
From these facts, then, we may reasonably con clude that St. John was stating nothing but the re ceived doctrine among his countrymen, when he said, " In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; the same was in the beginning with God: all things were made by him, and without him was not any thing made that was made." No Jew of those times could possibly object to this doctrine. Nay more, the Jews positively expected the visible manifestation of this 'Word in the person of their Messiah. They would not have been offended at the doctrine that " the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us," had not Jesus of Nazareth, of whom this was predicted, appeared in a character, and in circumstances so very different from what they expected. This is apparent from the gospel history. When our Lord was accused before the Jewish council, the high priest said to him, " I ad jure thee by the living God, that thou tell us, whe ther thou be the Christ, the Son of God." From this it is evident, that they expected the manifesta tion of " the Christ the Son of God." Our Lord answered the question indirectly by saying, " here after shall ye see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." This is an evident allusion to Dan. vii. 13, 14, where it is said, " And, behold, one like the Son of Man, came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of Days, and there was given him dominion and glory and a kingdom," &c. On hearing our Lord apply these words to himself, "the high priest rent his clothes, saying, he bath spoken blasphemy, what farther need have we of witnesses?" Matt. xxvi. 64, 65. This incident proves two things; first, that the Jews considered the passage in Daniel, which our Lord applied to himself, as applicable to the Messiah; and, second ly, that though he is there called the " Son of Man," they nevertheless admitted that he was to be, in reality, " the Son of God," and to have a king dom which should never be destroyed. This was the character which they recognised as belonging to the Messiah; and our Lord was judged guilty of blasphemy because he asserted that the words of the prophet were fulfilled in him.