+The moral basis of the doctrine.+--But it may be contended that these
bare bones of the doctrine of the Trinity are not the doctrine as it
enters into spiritual experience. I admit the fact while asserting
strongly that but for this framework of intellectual necessity the
doctrine would be unknown to faith and morals. It is sometimes stated
that the doctrine of the Trinity was formulated in order to account for
Jesus, but that is only incidentally true. Its framers took the
materials for it over from Greek thought, and even Greek thought
probably inherited it from an older civilisation still, if indeed there
were any necessity to inherit it. I contend that if we had never heard
of the doctrine in connection with Jesus, we should have to invent it
now in order to account for ourselves and the wondrous universe in
which we live.
Unquestionably, however, it is from the point of view of religion and
morals that the doctrine has most significance, and therefore has
become indissolubly associated with the personality of Jesus; and it is
easy to see how this has come about. Thinkers have always been
compelled to construe the universe in terms of the highest known to
man, namely, his own moral nature. It was natural, therefore, that
while they thought of the universe as an expression of God, they should
think of it as the expression of that side of His being which can only
be described as the ideal or archetypal manhood. The infinite being of
God is utterly incomprehensible to a finite mind, and in regard to it
the most devout saint is as much an agnostic as the most convinced
materialist. But we are justified in holding that whatever else He may
be God is essentially man, that is, He is the fount of humanity. There
must be one side, so to speak, of the infinitely complex being of God
in which humanity is eternally contained and which finds expression in
the finite universe. Humanity is not a vague term; we have already
seen something of what it is. We ought not to interpret it in terms of
the primeval savage, or even of average human nature to-day, but in
terms of what we have come to feel is its highest expression, and that
is Jesus. If we think therefore of the archetypal eternal divine Man,
the source and sustenance of the universe, and yet transcending the
universe, we cannot do better than think of Him in terms of Jesus;
Jesus is the fullest expression of that eternal divine Man on the field
of human history. Here, then, we have the first and second factors in
the doctrine of the Trinity morally and spiritually construed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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