Trinity in unity is a transcendental doctrine. It began to be revealed when God created; it was further unfolded when the Spirit moved on the face of the deep; it was proclaimed in the counsel-words, "Let us make man;" it was formulated in the triplicate mention, "God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him, male and female created He them." Trinity of name and person-Father, Son, and Holy Ghost: the trinity of work-Creation, Redemption, Regeneration. " The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity rescues us from what Spinoza says "To define God is to deny Him, Determinatio negatio est; rescues us from the error that thought and volition, as known to us, are the very nature and essence of the Infinite; and enables us to see that the personality is not a limitation, but an ineffable reality raising us from the error of regarding the Eternal as mere infinitude; and giving knowledge of Him as the all-pervading and all-sustaining Power. It meets, so far as possible, the difficulties of men like Goethe "Since the great Being, whom we name the Deity, manifests Himself not only in man, but in a rich and powerful nature, and in mighty world events; a representation of Him, framed from human qualities, cannot be adequate; and the thoughtful observer will soon come to imperfections and contradictions, which will drive him to doubt-nay, even to despair; unless he be little enough to let himself be soothed by an artful evasion, or be great enough to rise to a higher point of view." Thus, though we cannot by searching find out God, we may know all that concerns us, as intelligent and responsible beings, to know. We have revelation of Him, in a symbolic way, as the Source of all things, as the Power who is disclosed in every throb of the mighty rhythmic life of the universe, as the One from whom proceeds that moral law, obedience to which is our only guarantee of incorruptible happiness. The going forth of creative energy is revealed under the symbol of a Word. The Word of God must have the highest power and meaning attributed to it of which our thoughts are capable, as representing an effluence of Divine will and energy Eckermann," vol. ii., p. 357. 1 66 Mediative Element in Divine Action. 113 to fashion the universe out of chaos. Science represents this operation as an evolution "in accordance with discernible physical laws," but Scripture reveals that laws exist and act by a "Divine power immanent in the cosmos." The Word, or that which it represents, entered chaos, gave capacity to assume beauty of form, and energy of life. That the Word was not a sound, nor a voice of articulate words, is evident from the fact of our Lord being called this Word (Jno. i. 1-3). Word is the expression of thought, that by which our ideas become known to others: hence, doubtless, "Word" and "Said" are used for the creative acts which gave outward expression in matter to the types in the Infinite Mind. God's Words are the potential seeds from which spring into actuality that which Divine wisdom had eternally prefigured, even as our own thoughts and will are the ground-plan of our conduct, and the essence of our character. Word ', means or represents the mediative element or outward expression of Divine action, as wisdom is the mediative element of Divine presence, vivifying and uniting all things. The Word, as understood in Palestine, was the complement to wisdom-the Divine thought. The Greek λóyos (sermo, ratio) mingled the two ideas. "According to the later distinction of Philo, wisdom corresponds to the immanent word λóyos évdiáberos; while the Word, strictly speaking, was defined as enunciative λόγος προφορικός. The one prepared man for the revelation of the Son of God; the other for the revelation of the Holy Spirit." The correctness of this distinction may be called in question-λoyos évoiάberos, I is the immanent reason, in the Holy Trinity, viewed ontologically; but viewed deontologically (as here, Gen. i.) the λóyos πpopopinós is the mediative principle (person) by which God expresses Himself in creation. .The heavens and the earth הַשְׁמִים וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ YTT How long The heavens were created before the earth. before no man knows. The heavens mean, doubtless, heavenly bodies and the angels. Much stress cannot be laid on the words spoken to Job (xxxviii. 7), as to angels presid 1 Smith's "Dictionary of the Bible,”—Wisdom. H ing at the creation of the earth; the former half is obviously figurative, the latter may be also. There is an analogue of relation in creation to the Creator; creation is the Divine mirror-and the life of God, complete and hidden in Himself, is that internal source whence all things have sprung. We may count the external glory of the heavenlies, manifested in time, as a symbol of the inner and eternal glory. The creation of heaven and earth, recorded in the first verse of the inspired account, is possibly separated by an interval too vast for human measurement, from the wasteness and emptiness described in the second verse; nevertheless, to regard the first verse as stating a fact-God created the heavens and the earth, and then to take the remainder as a narrative of the order in which the earth was framed, seems simpler and agrees with the Fourth Commandment. We obtain, moreover, a natural and consistent meaning by taking any, thus, "Now, as for the earth, it was wasteness and emptiness," as the initial state, or condition precedent to the moving of the Spirit. Whether space was furnished at once by the fiat of Omnipotence with burning orbs and glorious spirits, "the man of science, if he confine himself within his own limits, will have no answer." Nevertheless, we may regard the time-world as the historical realisation of God's eternal design. This realisation was everlastingly decreed, but did not begin until the moment of living effectual interference: indeed, there was no time until creation, when the finite began to be; but after that were stages, intervals and processes of Divine effectuation. Angels preceded the earth, and rejoiced at its foundation. Wasteness and emptiness were moved upon by the Spirit, light shone, the firmamental tenuity was stretched out, there was a progression from the formless to the formed, from the inorganic to the organic, from animal instinct to human intellect and will. "There is nothing incompatible with the belief that all exercises of God's power, whether ordinary or extraordinary, are effected through the instrumentality of means-that is to say, by the 1 "The Constitution of Nature :" Professor Tyndall. Work of the Spirit. 115 instrumentality of natural laws brought out, as it were, and used for a Divine purpose." The seer beheld the earth, w, in wasteness and emptiness, shut up in gloom. Matter was there, but as the Germans say, "öden-wüst und wüsten-öd," shapeless, formless, unconditioned. Over the earth - materials, mingled with waters of the deep, which as yet were not waters, moved or brooded the Spirit of God. Whether we take the orthodox view, that the Holy Ghost was the agent, or a depraved interpretation, "the air or wind flutters while all is involved in darkness," we are assured that means were used, and the means were that energy which effectuated the Divine will. The work upon dead matter, ascribed to the Holy Ghost, illustrates the enlightening, vivifying, ordering, elevating influence of the Spirit of God in our own nature. It is not a mere coincidence, that the long and varied operations of Creation, Providence, Redemption, Regeneration, are full of peculiar and striking resemblances. The culminating point in Christianity, the loftiest and most mysterious height of revealed truth, had its due place assigned at the very beginning. This is just what we ought to expect. The Divine and Spiritual are not unnatural, but the very soul of nature. We have wheels within wheels, and rhythm within rhythm; of the inner quality working the wheels and producing the rhythm, enabling matter to attract matter, we know nothing: it may exist in the form of motion, that is dynamic energy; or in the form of energy, with distance to act through, that is potential energy. The convertibility of these energies consists solely, so far as science is aware, of transformations of dynamic into potential and of potential into dynamic energy. "The law which moulds a tear rounds a planet," in the application of law to Nature there is no such thing as small or great, for the soft wind gliding over an Italian mountain is firmly ruled as the earth in its orbitual revolution round the sun, and the gathering or dispersion of the slightest mist is by that energy underlying all things of which we know nothing, 1 "The Reign of Law:" Duke of Argyle. except that it is not matter. Notwithstanding, it is asserted -"Matter is the origin of all existence, in it all natural and mental forces are inherent;" a statement which is at once disproved by the fact that energy is not matter, nor can we attribute it to matter as an essential part or property. One of the hypotheses of science, it is but hypothesis, regards the primal matter as diffused stuff without structure, properties, parts, or indeed anything whatever; in which was no spirit, no life, no matter-such as we are acquainted with; and that out of this stuff matter was formed, or gathered, or contracted, by energy acting in a straight line, "push;" the "push" not being mechanical power, nor chemical, nor vital, but conveying them all, and furnishing infinite space with blazing suns and worlds of life. We can have no objection to this as a reverent attempt to explain God's way of doing things; but if stuff, push, space, are regarded as cause, continuance and end of all things-three idols; we must maintain that science knows no such idolatry, but endeavours to understand and explain-so far as human powers allow-in what manner God created the heavens and the earth, and what physical effects were consequent on that interference of Divine Energy recorded in the symbol"The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." .Let light be, and light was יְהִי אוֹר וַיְהִי אוֹר An example of brevity with comprehensiveness: a volume in a sentence. Not the creation of light, nor the first call into existence, is recorded; but the coming of light in place of that darkness which was upon the face of the deep. Light is not a substance, but, like heat and magnetism, a mode of energy: energy, giving that peculiar shivering brilliant motion to the ultimate particles of matter whereby the world is clothed with beauty energy, causing and transmitting the molecular tremors of stars countless millions of miles distant, and translating them into that human consciousness which we call "Light." Moses, speaking of light as existing without the sun, anticipated on a large scale what Professor Tyndall beautifully performs on a small scale-the extraction of light from total darkness. 1 "Kraft und Stoff," p. 32, Dr Büchner. |