Exposition of the Apostles' Creed. James Dodds
to retain God in their knowledge, and so the idea of the Divine became perverted, and in its first simplicity was lost, and the multitude followed numberless shadows all illusory and vain. Still, there lingered remnants and traditions of belief in a Divine Creator and Governor which must have originated in such a primeval revelation as the book of Genesis records. We find there the statement that God revealed Himself to our first parents by direct intercourse. They heard and saw and talked with God. They therefore knew of the existence of God by personal perception, and the ideas they held regarding Him were founded on His own manifestation of Himself.
Closely connected with this consciousness is the sense of responsibility universally prevalent. There is a law written on the heart of every rational human being, under the guidance of which he recognises a distinction between good and evil, right and wrong. He possesses a faculty to which the name of conscience has been given, that convicts him of sin when he violates, and approves his conduct when he conforms to, its dictates. However much different peoples and different ages may be at variance in their particular ideas of what is right and what is wrong, the conception itself has place in all of them. There are certain fundamental notions as to what is just and what is unjust, what is virtuous and what is vicious, that find universal or all but universal acceptance. This power of distinguishing between right and wrong constitutes man a moral being, and separates him by infinite distance from the lower animals. To the beasts that perish there is nothing right or wrong. They live altogether according to nature, and have no responsibility. Man stands in a different relation to the Lawgiver who bestowed on him the faculty of conscience and impressed on his soul a conviction that he will have to give account for all his actions. The Being to whom he must give account is God.
(b) (Order) Another ground of this belief is the order manifest in the universe. There is a symmetry that pervades all material things of which we have knowledge. Part is adapted to part; objects are accurately adjusted to each other; "wheels within wheels" move smoothly; every portion fits into and works in harmony with every other portion without discord or jarring. It is unthinkable that these effects should be due to chance or to a cause that is without intelligence. The perfect arrangement of parts that work together must have been planned by a living Being of infinite wisdom, knowledge, and power. This Being, whose creatures they are, must exist. Behind the pervading order there must be personality, purpose, and action. The fool may say in his heart, "There is no God," but, as nature bears testimony to the existence of an omniscient and omnipotent Creator, reason calls for another conclusion.
(c) (Scripture) There is a limit to the knowledge of God which the consciousness of man and the order and design in the universe impart. These serve to establish the truth that God is, but they do not convey the intimation that He is a moral Governor and the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. They declare little of His character, and are silent as to many of the duties which He requires. To make God known, the teaching of conscience and of reason must be supplemented by revelation. It is in the Bible that the believer finds the strongest proofs of the existence of the Divine Being, and from the Bible he obtains also the most comprehensive and satisfying view of the Deity and of man's relation to Him. He there finds that what he has to believe concerning God is, that He is Jehovah—the Being infinitely and eternally perfect, self-existent, and self-sufficient; the only living and true God, there being none beside Him. The heathen believed in and worshipped many gods. The untutored savage peopled the groves with them, and the pagan philosopher built innumerable temples in their honour. The Pantheons of Greece and Rome were crowded with the statues of favourite deities. The doctrine of one living and true God was prominent in the revelation given to Israel. God's message by Moses had its foundation—truth in the proclamation: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord."[018] His glory and His work are shared by no other being. He is the absolute Sovereign and Lord of all creatures. In the Bible, too, man learns that God is his own personal God who cares for him, and to whom he owes love, allegiance, and obedience. All who refuse to believe in the existence of God reject the testimony of Scripture regarding Him, but to such as acknowledge its claim to be the Word of God, the evidence it supplies is convincing and all-sufficient.
Examination of ancient heathen religions and of the views they set forth regarding God shows clearly the distance at which they stand from the revelation of Scripture. The gods of the heathen were of like passions with their worshippers—selfish, cruel, vindictive, and without regard for equity or justice in their treatment of men. The God of the Bible, on the other hand, is a righteous God, merciful to His creatures, and desirous of their temporal and eternal wellbeing, and when He inflicts suffering it is not as a passionate Judge, but as a Father who chastens His children for their profit.
The doctrine of the Trinity of Persons in the God-head, though not expressly stared in the Creed, is implied in the clauses which refer to each of the Persons who compose it. There is one God, but in the Godhead there are three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, whose names indicate the relation in which each stands to the others.
Each of the Persons is complete and perfect God. While there are three Persons in the Godhead, the same in substance, equal in power and glory, these three are one. The doctrine thus stated is termed the doctrine of the Trinity. This word is not found in Scripture, but the truth which it expresses is set forth there, dimly in the Old Testament, distinctly in the New. In the first chapter of Genesis the word "God" is in the Hebrew a plural noun, and yet it is used with a singular verb, thus early seeming to intimate what afterwards is clearly made known, that there is a plurality of Persons, who yet constitute the one living and true God. The same indication of plurality in unity appears in the account of man's creation: "Let us make man."[019] This doctrine of the Trinity is essentially one of revelation. Natural religion testifies to the existence, the personality, and the unity of God, but fails to make known that the unity of God is a unity of three Persons. The doctrine does not contradict reason, it is above reason.
It is sometimes said that the doctrine of the Trinity involves a contradiction in affirming that three Persons are one Person. This charge misrepresents the doctrine. Trinitarians do not say that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are three Persons in the sense in which three men are three individuals. They believe that there is one God, and that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are yet so distinct that the Father can address the Son, the Son can address the Father, and the Father can address and send the Spirit. God's ways are not as our ways. He is not a man that He should be limited by the conditions of human relationships. When we say there are three Persons in the Godhead, we use a word applicable to men, which, though the most fitting one at our disposal, must come far short of fully describing the relations of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost to each other. Possessing no celestial language, we cannot fully describe or understand heavenly things.
SECTION 3.—THE FATHER
The first Person in the Godhead is the Father. This name may be viewed (a) with reference to the second Person, Jesus Christ His only Son, or (b) as descriptive of His relation to believers in Christ Jesus, or (c) as indicating His universal Fatherhood as the Author and the Preserver of all intelligent creatures. The relation in which the Father stands to the Son, that He is His Father and has begotten Him, is one that we cannot explain. Any attempt to do so must be arrogant and misleading, for who "by searching can find out God"?[020] Secret things belong unto God, but revealed things unto us and our children.[021] The term "Father" is a relative one and involves the idea of sonship. No one who accepts the teaching of Scripture can doubt that the Father is God. The statements as to His attributes and universal government are so many and so strong that, but for other affirmations regarding Deity, we should naturally conclude that the Father alone is God. But the very name "Father" corrects such a view, and when we search the Scriptures we find it untenable. God is our Father, but He was "the Father" before He called man into being. From all eternity He was Father. As from everlasting to everlasting He is God, so from everlasting to everlasting He is Father. He did not become Father when His Son assumed human nature, but is such in virtue of His eternal relation to the Word as the Son of God. It is the Son's existence that constitutes Him Father; and that existence was in eternity. "I and my Father are one,"[022] is the Son's testimony to His eternal Sonship; and when He prays His Father to glorify Him, He asks to be glorified with the glory which He had with Him before the world was.[023]