There Is Only One God. Are There Three Persons in Tpie One God?
The general subject of this chapter is the same as that of the two preceding chapters, The God of the Bible: The God of the Bible as distinguished from the god of ‘Theosophy,” the god of “Christian Science,” the god of “New Thought,” the god of “Spiritualism,” the God of “Unitarianism,” the God of the “New Theology,” the god of “Modern Philosophy” and the god of “Modernism” in general. The particular subject of the first chapter was, The God of the Bible: A Personal God. The particular subject of the last chapter was The God of the Bible: God is Spirit. The particular subject of this chapter is, “The God of the Bible: There is only one God. Are there three persons in this one God?” I have nine texts. Listen to them very carefully, for my whole thought is contained in these nine texts, and they prove beyond a question that the first part of my subject is true, namely, that, according to the Bible there is only one God; and they also contain a definite and clear answer to the question contained in the last part of my subject, ‘Are there three persons in this one God?”
My first text is Jno. 17:3:
“And this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ.’’
My second text is I Jno. 5:20, 21:
“And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is, the true God, and eternal life. My little children, guard yourselves from idols.”
My third text is Deut. 6:4, 5:
“Hear, O Israel; Jehovah our God is one Jehovah: And thou shalt love Jehovah thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.”
My fourth text is Mark 12:29, 30:
“Jesus answered. The first is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God, the Lord is one; and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.”
My fifth text is Gen. 1:26:
“And God said. Let us make man in our
image, after our likeness.”
My sixth text is Jno. 20:28:
“Thomas answered and said unto him, My
Lord and my God.”
My seventh text is Jno. i: 1-3, 14:
“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 through him; and without him was not anything made that hath been made..., And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father), full of grace and truth.^’
My eighth text is Rom. 9:5:
“Of whom is the Christ as concerning the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.”
My ninth text is H Cor. 13: 14:
“And the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ,
and the love of God, and the communion of
the Holy Spirit, be with you all.”
1. There Is Only One God.
The first fact about God that our texts teach is that, There is only one God. This is the great foundation truth of the Bible from the very first verse in it, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” to the close of the last book in it. Intelligent Israelites have always considered Deut. 6:4, 5, “Hear, O Israel; Jehovah our God is one Jehovah: And thou shalt love Jehovah thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might,” as the very heart of the revelation made by God to them through Moses and the Prophets of the Old Dispensation, and our Lord Jesus Himself endorsed this view by saying in answer to a question asked him by one of the scribes, “What commandment is first of all?” “The first is. Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God, the Lord is one: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength’’ (Mark 12:29, 30). The Religion of the Bible has no toleration for Polytheism in any form. It is Monotheistic from start to finish.
In this respect the God of the Bible differs from the god of “Theosophy.” Theosophy is simply Bud- dhism in a new dress, and not a very new dress at that. Buddhism is Polytheism gone mad. It has literally millions of gods. And when you get to the heart of Theosophy you find it has a multitude of what are really gods. Indeed when you get to the very heart of Theosophy we are all gods (except when Theosophy assumes a pantheistic form, in which case we are all God, and there is no God except us and everything else).
The same thing is true of “Christian Science.” “Christian Science” is always essentially pantheistic or polytheistic or a combination of both Pantheism and Polytheism. At the heart of “Christian Science” is the thought that we are all gods. According to “Christian Science” not only “God is Spirit,” but “Spirit is God” (“Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures,” 69th edition, p. 65), and we are all essentially and only spirit, and to think that we have bodies is “illusion” or “mortal thought,” therefore, we are all gods. According to “Christian Science,” think that you are God and you are God. Mrs. Eddy says in “Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures,” edition 1903, page 467, in a section entitled, “Questions and Answers”: ‘Question. — What is God? Answer. — God is Divine principle, Supreme, Incorporeal Be¬ ing, Mind, Spirit, Soul, Life, Truth, Love. Question.
—Are these terms synonymous? Answer, — They are; they refer to one absolute God and nothing else. They are also intended to express the nature, essence, and holiness of Deity.” On page 466 she says, ^’Question. — What are spirits and souls?” Answer. — To human belief they are personalities constituted of Mind and matter. Life and death, Truth and error. Good and evil; but these contrasting pairs of terms represent opposites, as Christian Science reveals, — neither dwell¬ ing together nor assimilating.” A little further on on the same page she says, ^‘The term souls or spirits is as improper as the term gods. Soul, or Spirit, signifies Deity and nothing else. There is no finite soul or spirit. These terms mean only one Mind, and cannot be rendered in the plural. Heathen mythology and Jewish theology have perpetuated the fallacy that intelligence, soul, and life can be in matter; and idolatry and ritualism are the outcome of these man-made beliefs. The Science of Christianity comes with fan in hand, to separate the chaff from the wheat.” On page 467 she says, ‘’Question. — What is the science of soul? Answer. — The first demand of this science is, Thou shall have no other gods before me.’ This me is spirit.” A few lines further on in the same page she says, “It should be well understood that all men have one Mind, one God and Father, one Life, Truth, and Love.” Two lines further on she says, “Having no other gods, turning to no other mind but the one perfect Intelligence to guide him, man is the likeness of God, pure and eternal, having that mind which was also in Christ Jesus.” On page 469 she says, “We lose the high significance of omnipotence, when admitting that God, or good, is omnipresent, and has all-power, yet ( that there is another power named evil. This belief, that there is more than one mind, is as pernicious to divine theology as our ancient mythology and pagan idolatry,” Further on in the same paragraph she says, “The existence of more than one mind was the basic error of idolatry.” To quote once more from Mrs. Eddy; she says in “Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures,” 69th edition, page 65, “Spirit cannot believe in God. Spirit is God.” The necessary corollary of this is, that in so far as you and I are spirit, you and I are God. And it is the constant teaching of Mrs. Eddy that in pure Science you and I are only spirit, and it is only to “mortal thought” or “error” that we have bodies at all. Therefore, every one of us, in the highest thought of “Christian Science,” is God.
The same thing that we have said of “Theosophy” and of “Christian Science,” namely, that they are essentially polytheistic or pantheistic, is also true of much of the so-called “New Theology,” and of a very large share of “Modern Philosophy.” Prof. Geo. Albert Coe, Professor in Union Theological Seminary, New York, writes, “I worship the God, who breathing himself everywhere into the human clod, makes it a spirit, a social craving, even the spirit of humanity, yes, the spirit of a possible world society.” Now listen carefully. Professor Coe says, “/ how my spirit before the spirit of the world democracy that is to be.” (“Religious Education,” October, 1916, page 379), — Rev.
R. J. Campbell, the erstwhile leader and high priest of “the New Theology,” said in a sermon,”Sin is a quest
6o for God — a blundering quest, but a quest for all that. Th-e man who got dead drunk last night did so because of the impulse within him to break through the barriers of his limitations, to express himself, and to realize the more abundant life. His self-indulgence just came to that; he wanted, if only for a brief hour, to live the larger life, to expand the soul, to enter untrodden regions, and gather to himself new experiences. That drunken debauch was a quest for light, a quest for God. Men who in their sinful follies to¬ day, their trampling upon things that are beautiful and good, are engaged in this dim, blundering quest for God, whom to know is life eternal.” The unescapable inference from these shocking words is that everything in us, even our sinful propensities, is divine. It would not be fair to attribute such a conception of the essential divinity of man at his worst to all New Theology men. R. J. Campbell’s statement represents New Theology on a drunk, or The New Theology gone stark crazy; but, after all, this is really the logical outcome of the fundamental principles of Modernistic thinking, and of the thinking of much that passes for “‘‘Modern Scholarship” and “Modern Philosophy.” We need Paul’s warning to-day as much as the saints in Colosse needed it, “Beware lest any man spoil you (or make spoil of you) through his philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments (elements) of the world, and not after Christ” (Col. 2:8).
But in the Bible, the thought that there is a Personal God, separate and distinct from all the things and persons which He has created, and that there is but one God, dominates the whole Book, both the Old Testament and the New.
In Deut. 4:35 we read:
“Unto thee it was showed, that thou mightest know that Jehovah he is God; there is none else beside him.^’
In Isa. 43: 10, II, we read:
“Ye are my witnesses, saith Jehovah, and my servant whom I have chosen: that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there he after me. I, even am Jehovah; and beside me there is no saviour.”
In Isa. 44:6 we read:
“Thus saith Jehovah, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, Jehovah of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God.”
And in Isa. 45: 5 we read:
“I am Jehovah, there is none else; beside
me there is no God.”
In I Tim. 2: 5 we read:
“For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, himself man, Christ Jesus.’’
And our Lord Jesus Himself said to the rich young man who came to him kneeling and calling Him “good,” but not understanding the deeper meaning that there was in his own words, which were profoundly true but the truth of which he did not grasp, and which our Lord desired that he should grasp, Why callest thou me good? none is good save one, even God” (Mark lo: 18).
That there is one God and only one God is the great foundation rock of all truly Bible thought, New Testament thought as well as Old Testament thought.
11. ‘Are There Three Persons in the One God?
We come now to the second division of our subject and a tremendously important division it is, Are there three persons in the one Godf Many conclude, because it is so plainly and so constantly taught in the Bible that there is only one God, that therefore God the Father is the whole that there is of that one God; and that, therefore, Jesus Christ cannot be God, and the Holy Spirit cannot be God. That is the fundamental contention of Unitarianism, and of both Orthodox and Liberal Jewish Theology. It was this thought that gave rise to Modern Unitarianism.
Does it follow, because there is only one God, that Jesus Christ cannot be God and that the Holy Spirit cannot be God? No. We shall see directly by the teachings of the whole Bible, by the teachings of the Old Testament as clearly as by the teachings of the New Testament, that there are three Divine Persons in the One Godhead.
I. In the first place, The Hebrew zuord translated ‘’one” in these various passages from the Old Testament which I have quoted as conclusively proving that there is only one God, denotes a compound unity and not a simple unity. Let me illustrate. In Gen. 2: 24 we read, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” Now the Hebrew word translated “one” in this passage is the same word that is translated “one” in all these various passages that declare that there is only ^‘one God,” and it can be plainly seen in this passage that not a simple unity but a compound unity is intended; two, man and wife, being ‘’one,” Turn now to Gen. 11:6 and you will read, “Jehovah said. Behold, they are one people.” The same Hebrew word for “one” is used here. Here we are told that a large number of people are one people; they are at the same time many and one. We find a similar usage for the Greek word for “one” in the New Testament. Read e. g., I Cor. 3: 6-8, “I planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. So then neither is he that planteth anything, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase. Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one.” Here we are distinctly told that two different persons are “one.” Turn to I Cor. 12: 13, “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free; and were all made to drink of one Spirit.” Here we are distinctly told that all who have become members of the living church by the baptism in the Holy Spirit are all together “one.” In the same way we read in Gal. 3: 28, “There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free, there can be no male and female: for ye all are one man in Christ Jesus.” Here we find a large number of persons constituting one man.
2. In the second place, The Old Testament Hebrew words most frequently used as the name {or title) of God, the word translated ‘’God’’ many hundreds of times in the Old T estament, is plural in its form. Literally translated the word would read “Gods/^ For example, in the very passage which I have chosen for one of my texts, and which is the passage the Unitarians and non-Christian Jews so emphasize and insist upon, namely Deut. 6: 4, literally translated would read, “Hear, O Israel, Jehovah our Gods is one Jehovah.” Why is it that the Jews with their intense monotheism had a plural name for God? That was the difficult problem that puzzled the Old Hebrew lexicographers and grammarians. The best answer that they could give was that the plural form used for the name (or title) of God was the “pluralis majestatis,” that is the plural of majesty. That is to say, that a plural name was used for God because of the majesty of His Person. Now, to say nothing of the fact that it is not at all certain that the “pluralis majestatis” is ever found in the Old Testament, there is an explanation much nearer at hand and much simpler, and that is, that a plural name was used for the one God, in spite of the intense monotheism of the Jews, be¬ cause there is a plurality of persons in the one God¬ head. This is a rational explanation of this indubitable fact, and no other explanation is as rational.
3. In the third place. In the Old Testament God uses plural pronouns in speaking of Himself. He does this in the very first chapter of the Bible in Gen. i: 26 where it is written, “And God said. Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” It is often said that the doctrine of there being three persons in the Godhead is found in the New Testament, but not in the Old Testament, but here it is in the first chapter of the Old Testament. Indeed the three persons of the Trinity are found in the first three verses of the Old Testament, “In the beginning God (here we have God the Father) created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God (here you have the Holy Spirit) moved upon the face of the waters. And God said (here you have the Word of God, the Word Who became incarnate in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, Jno. i: 1-3), Let there be light: and there was light.” It is an interesting and suggestive fact, though I do not know that there is really anything in it, that the first three letters in the Hebrew Bible are the initials of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The first letter in the Hebrew Bible is the Hebrew equivalent of “B” which is the initial of the Hebrew word “Ben,” which signifies Son. The second letter of the Hebrew Bible is the Hebrew equivalent of “R,” which is the initial of “Ruach,” which means Spirit. And the third letter of the Hebrew Bible is the Hebrew equivalent of our “A,” which is the initial of Ab, which means Father. Whether there is any significance in that fact or not, it is certainly true that the three persons of the Trinity are in the first three verses of the Old Testament, and that in the 26th verse of the first chapter of the Old Testament the plurality of persons in the Godhead is distinctly taught. We see this same thing again in the vision of God that Jehovah gave to Isaiah in the sixth chapter of Isaiah, where we read in verse 8, “I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” These are not the only instances in which Jehovah is represented in the Old Testament as using plural pronouns in speaking of Himself, but these are sufficient to prove the point.
There is another suggestion of the Tri-personality of God in the same sixth chapter of Isaiah in verses one to three:
‘Tn the year that king Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim; each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said. Holy, holy, holy is Jehovah of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.”
Is there not in this threefold ‘’Holy,” and especially when taken in connection with verse eight, a suggestion of the Tri-personality of “Jehovah of Hosts”? Furthermore, in the New Testament this vision is referred to, and it is said in one place where it is referred to, Jno. 12:37-41, that Isaiah spoke the words that he is recorded as speaking in Isa. 6, when he saw the glory of the Lord Jesus and spoke of Him, whereas in the passage in Isaiah we are distinctly told that it was Jehovah’s glory that Isaiah saw. In another place in the New Testament where this same vision of Isaiah is referred to we are distinctly told that it was the Holy Spirit who said on this occasion what Jehovah is recorded to have said (Acts 28:25-27).
4. In the fourth place, in Zech. 2:10, ii, Jehovah speaks of Himself as sent by Jehovah thus clearly implying at least two distinct persons in the one God Jehovah. Let me read the passage:
“Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion: for, lo, I come, and I will dwell in the midst of thee, saith Jehovah. And many nations shall join themselves to Jehovah in that day, and shall be my people; and I will dwell in the midst of thee, and thou shalt know that Jehovah of hosts hath sent me unto thee.”
Here we have Jehovah as both the one sending and the one sent (cf. Jno. 8:29; 14: 24).
5. In the fifth place. We saw in the preceding chapter that ‘”The Angel of Jehovah’’ was at the same time identified with Jehovah and distinguished from Him, and we saw by a comparison of Judges 13:8 (R. V.) with Isaiah 9:6, 7, that beyond a question ‘The Angel of Jehovah” was that Person of the God¬ head who afterwards became incarnate in the Messiah.
6. In the sixth place, We are distinctly told in Jno.
1:1-3, ^4 eternal Word of God who after¬
ward became incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth ‘’zvas zvith God” and ‘’Was (Himself) God.” You are perfectly familiar with the words, but let me quote them to you:
“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 through him; and without him was not anything made that hath been made.... And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father), full of grace and truth.”
7. In the seventh place, Both Jesus Christy the Son of God, and the Holy Spirit, are clearly set forth in the New T estanient as Divine Persons. I could show you that, if it were necessary, in many ways and by a multiplicity of passages that it would take hours to read and adequately expound. Let three of my texts and one other passage suffice. Rom. 9:5:
“Of whom is Christ as concerning the flesh, who is over all, God blessed for ever.”
Jno. 20: 28, 29:
“Thomas answered and said unto him (that is, unto Jesus), My Lord and my God. Jesus saith unto him. Because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”
H Cor. 13: 14:
“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.”
And Acts 5:3,4:
“But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thy heart to lie to the Holy Spirit, and to keep back part of the price of the land? Whiles it remained, did it not remain thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thy power? How is it that thou hast conceived this thing in thy heart? thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God.”
In the third verse Peter distinctly says that Ananias lied “to the Holy Spirit,” and in the fourth verse he as distinctly says that he lied ‘’unto God,” thus clearly teaching that the Holy Spirit was God,
8. In the eighth place, The Old Testament clearly declares the predicted Messiah to he a Divine Person, just as clearly as the New Testament declares the historic Christ, Christ Jesus, to he a Divine Person. Let me give you a few passages. First of all Micah 5:2:
“But thou, Bethlehem Ephrathah, which art little to be among the thousands of Judah, out of thee shall one come forth unto me that is to he rider in Israel; whose coming forth was from of old, from everlasting,”
Here the coming Messiah is distinctly predicted as a Person who has existed eternally. Turn now to Isa. 9:6, 7:
“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to establish it with justice and with righteousness from hence forth even forever.”
There are at least three unmistakably Divine Names attributed to the coming Messiah in this wonderful prediction, one of those Divine Names being, “Mighty God.” Isaac Leeser, the crafty Jew, in his translation into English of the Hebrew Bible, has inserted four words in this verse for which there are no equivalent words whatever in the Hebrew text, and he inserts them for the specific purpose of obscuring the significance of the passage’s clear declaration that the Messiah was to be a Divine Person. He puts the preposition “of” and the definite article “the” before “Mighty God,” so as to make it read, “Counsellor of the Mighty God,” and he inserts the same two words before, “it everlasting Father.” As I say, there are no equivalent words whatever for these four words in the Hebrew text. Leeser knows this; for he himself has not inserted “of” before the “Prince of Peace,” and there is just as much reason for inserting it there as before “Mighty God” or “Everlasting Father.” In the re¬ cent ecclesiastically authorized translation of the He¬ brew Bible into English, authorized by the Jewish authorities, it is sought to conceal the meaning that is so plainly in this verse, by not translating the names at all but transliterating the Hebrew. But there can be no doubt about it to any honest student of the Hebrew Bible, that at least three distinctly Divine Names are ascribed to the Messiah in this passage. Turn now to Jer. 23:5, 6:
“Behold, the days come, saith Jehovah, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as King, and deal wisely, and execute judgment and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely: and this is his name whereby he shall be called, Jehovah our righteousness.’’
In one of the unquestionably Messianic Psalms, Ps. 45: 6, we read these words addressed to the coming Messiah:
‘‘Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever: a sceptre of equity is the sceptre of thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness and hated wickedness: therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.”
Here we have the coming Messiah distinctly named as a Divine Person. He is called “God,” yet at the same time He is distinguished from “God,” who anointed Him with the Holy Spirit to qualify Him for His work. It is clear then that the Messiah of the Old Testament was to be a Divine Person, “God’’ manifested in a human person, God incarnate, just as clearly as it is asserted that when the Messiah Jesus of Nazareth was born and lived and died and rose again and ascended to the right hand of the Father, He was a Divine Person, God in human form, God incarnate.
Six of these eight reasons just given would prove that in the teaching of the Old Testament as well as in the teaching of the New Testament there are three Divine Persons in the one Godhead, but taking the eight reasons together there is no possibility of doubt on the part of any one who is really trying to find out what the Bible, both Old and New Testament, teaches, that in the only One God of the Bible there are three persons.
A heretical sect arose in the early history of the Church, called Sabellians after Sabellius, their leader, that tried to explain the ascription of Deity to the Lord Jesus and to the Holy Spirit and to reconcile this fact with the Bible doctrine that there was but one God, by saying that, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were not three distinct persons but three different ways in zvhich the one Person, God, manifested Himself at different times, sometimes as Father, sometimes as Son and sometimes as Holy Spirit. At a later day, Swedenborg adopted this explanation, and it is the doctrine of the Swedenborgian church and of some other heretical churches to-day. But it will not bear careful examination. For the Bible, while clearly ascribing Deity to the Lord Jesus and to the Holy Spirit, just as clearly distinguishes Father, Son, and Holy Spirit from one another, e. g., in Matt. 3:16, 17:
“And Jesus, when he was baptised, went up straightway from the water: and lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove, and coming upon him; and lo, a voice out of the heavens, saying. This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
Here it is distinctly set before us that Jesus, one Person, was standing in the Jordan, that the Father, another Person, spoke to Him out of heaven, and that the Spirit of God, a third Person, was descending from the Father through the air to the Son. Again, read Matt. 28:19:
“Go ye, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptising them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit Here the clearest possible distinction is drawn between the three Persons who are named separately. Our Lord Jesus did not say “baptising them into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” as it would be necessary to say if they were simply three manifestations of the one God, but He said, “baptising them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Let me read you one other passage that makes this same distinction perfectly clear, H Cor. 13:14:
“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and
the love of God, and the communion of the
Holy Spirit, be with you all.”
III. How Can God Be Three and One at the Same time?
We come then face to face with the great question that has rent the Church from the earliest centuries, and that also caused the great Unitarian controversy that shook all New England in the days of William Ellery Channing, a great thinker, but who went astray in his thinking and led a large section of the New England churches astray, just as “Modernists” are leading large sections of the church astray to-day. But Channing and his associates towered far above all “Modernists” in the clearness and depth of their think¬ ing and in the earnestness and honesty of their purpose.
What is the answer to the question, How can God he Three and One at the same time? The answer is this, God cannot be and is not three and one in the same sense. The Unitarians constantly charge that those who believe in the doctrine of the Trinity, make three equal one, but in so asserting they either do not understand the Evangelical doctrine of the Trinity or else they deliberately misrepresent it. We do not think that God is three and one in the same sense. In what sense then can He be three and one at the same time? A perfectly satisfactory answer to this question is from the very nature of the case manifestly impossible. First, because, as we saw in our last chapter, “God is Spirit,” and numbers apply primarily to the physical or material world, and difficulty must always arise when we attempt to conceive Spiritual Being in the forms of material thought. Second, because God is Infinite and we are finite. He dwelleth in the light that no man can approach unto (I Tim. 6: 16), and therefore our attempt at a philosophical explanation of the triunity of God is an attempt to put the facts of Infinite Being into the forms of finite thought, an attempt to put the ocean of truth into the pint cup of the human understanding, an attempt which of necessity could at the very best be only partially successful.
Furthermore, number has significance only in the realm of the finite. It is a well known mathematical fact that when you get into the realm of the Infinite finite numbers lose their significance and value. Any one who has any considerable knowledge of mathematics knows that one divided by Infinity equals nothing, and also that three divided by Infinity equals nothing. Well then, as things equal to the same thing are equal to one another, one as the numerator with Infinity as the denominator equals three as the numerator with Infinity as the denominator, cancel the common de¬ nominator, Infinity, and you have, one equals three. Now one does not equal three, but it shows that, when you get into the realm of the Infinite, finite numbers lose their significance and value.
It does not bother me at all that there is something in the Bible conception of God, the Infinite One, which it is not possible for us to completely grasp with our finite minds. Indeed if I could completely and thoroughly grasp the thought of God given me in the Bible, I should be bound to doubt that the Bible was a full revelation from the Infinite Mind. The very simplicity of the Unitarian conception of God condemns it. God’s Being as well as God’s “judgments” and God’s “ways,” must be beyond complete “finding out” by the finite mind (Rom. ii: 13). All the illustrations that men attempt of the Triune Personality of God as, e. g., the illustrations from the three-leaved shamrock or from the tripartite nature of man, spirit, soul and body, are of no value because they are illustrations taken from the finite with which to illustrate the Infinite.
This much we know, that God is essentially One and at the same time He is also Three. There is but One God: but this one God makes Himself known to men as Father, and Son and Holy Spirit, and these Three are separate Personalities. How clearly that appears in Jno. 14: 16 where Jesus says:
“I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth.”
Here we distinctly see one Person, the Son, praying to another Person, the Father, and the Father in answer to the prayer of the Son sending a third Person, ‘’another Comforter, even the Spirit of truth”
To sum up the Bible conception of the Unity of God: There is only one God, Eternally existing and manifesting Himself in three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So we can say to the Father, “Thou art God,’’ and worship Him; and we can say to the Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, as Thomas said to Him, “My Lord and my God’^ and worship Him, and we can also address the Holy Spirit as God and worship Him. And they are altogether not three Gods but one God, “Holy, holy, holy, is Jehovah of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory.’’ And we can sing “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be world without end. Amen.”