DR. DENNY’S article on the Holy Spirit, in Hastings’ new Dictionary of the Gospels, is, notwithstanding all the talent it evinces, sad reading. As for lax views of inspiration, it is only what one expects of a U.F. Professor of Divinity. It is now nearly fifteen years since Dr. Denny was heard on the floor of the General Assembly disowning belief in the infallibility of the Scriptures, save, as he put it, in the sense that they infallibly save the person who commits himself to their teaching. He has, evidently, been all the time since then on the down-grade, as this, his latest contribution to theology, shews.
The irreverence of his attitude towards the Scriptures manifests itself in the article under consideration in many forms. Because Matthew (xii. 31) and Luke (xii. 10) report that Christ contrasted sins against the Son of Man with the sin against the Holy Ghost, while as Mark (iii. 20, 35) relates Christ’s reference to the sin against the Holy Ghost without making mention of sins against the Son of Man, the former evangelists must be suspected of importing into the narrative something for which, not Christ, but themselves are responsible (see p. 733). When Matthew (vii. 22) quotes Christ as saying, in the Sermon on the Mount, “Many will say unto me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name?” Dr. Denny thinks that Christ could not at that time have thus spoken concerning prophesying, because, forsooth, it was only after Pentecost that men began to “prophecy” in the name of Jesus (see p. 734)! The disciples, we are told (p. 737), did not on the day of Pentecost (Acts ii. 42) speak in foreign languages, although our critic practically admits that that was what the writer of Acts meant. Such a miracle to the modern mind is incredible! It is from the same standpoint of disbelief in the divine authorship of the Scriptures that Dr. Denny allows himself to say (p. 734) that Christ’s quotation of Ps. cx., as “by David and in the Spirit” “merely represents the Jewish belief in the divine inspiration of the Scriptures,” and he seems to regard Old Testament quotations in the Epistle to the Hebrews, which are introduced as sayings of the Holy Ghost, as not bringing us in this regard much nearer to reality. John, if we are to believe Dr. Denny (p. 744), never meant to give us Christ’s very words in the discourses of Christ recorded by him.
So far of inspiration. The article brings us to lower depths than these. Dr. Hugh Martin, in a letter which was written on 19th November, 1879, and which appeared in this magazine some years ago, anticipated that the falling away from the belief of the divine authorship of Holy Scripture, which was then the Church’s trouble, was the precursor of a falling away from the faith which had been once for all delivered to the saints concerning the doctrine of the Trinity. The article on the Holy Spirit under review is a proof of the correctness of Dr. Martin’s forecast. The New Testament doctrine of the Holy Spirit could not be discussed without a reference to the doctrine of the Trinity, and, doubtless, Dr. Denny acknowledges a Trinity of some kind, as did all the most noted ancient heretics, e.g., Sabellians and Arians, not to speak of Nestorians and Eutychiaus, and as, indeed, I suppose all must do who profess to base their theology on the New Testament Scripture at all. But we venture to say that Dr. Denny’s doctrine of the Trinity is not that of Athanasius, nor of Augustine, nor of Calvin, nor of the Westminster Standards; what is more serious, it is not that of Peter, or Paul, or John.
I have not the slightest wish to misrepresent Dr. Denny or any other man, I simply record my conviction, after a careful perusal of this article, when I say that, in Dr. Denny’s view, Jesus Christ is but a mere creature. To an orthodox believer it but adds insult to injury to be told in addition that neither Matthew, Luke, nor John held any other view of Him. “It is,” says Dr. Denny, “the origination of the personality of Jesus with which the chapters in Matthew and Luke, which tell the story of His birth, are concerned.” Neither evangelist, says our critic, betrays any idea that the Son of God existed before His incarnation. It is, we are told, because Jesus owed His being to the power of God only that He is called the Son of God and the Only-Begotten. I admit that I am not able to distinguish such sentiments from bare-faced Unitarianism, but I am not careful to enter here and now on a refutation of them, for I hold that to one tolerably acquainted with the Scripture proofs of the divinity of Christ, whose faith stands not in the wisdom of men but in the power of God, the mere stating of those positions carries their refutation with them. One would have thought that audacity itself could not summon courage to call in question the doctrine of the pre-existence of Christ in the Gospel of John. The Unitarian, Dr. Martineau, would not do so. But we have lived to see and hear unimaginably strange things. Dr. Denny is trying to meet the criticism which some unbelievers pass on the account given of Christ in the Gospel of John, as if there were some inconsistency in One of whom John speaks (i. 1) as God, being, according to John i. 33, One on whom the Spirit descended. What need say they of the Holy Spirit if He was himself a divine person? Dr. Denny observes in reply “that John’s idea may rather be that it is the measureless gift of the Spirit, in virtue of which Jesus is the Word incarnate.” It is certain, one would say, that if Christ’s eternal pre-existence as a distinct person of the Godhead is not taught in the prologue to John’s Gospel it is not taught in the New Testament.
I pass on to notice briefly Dr. Denny’s teaching concerning the Holy Spirit, the immediate subject of his article. Dr. Denny, for most part, interprets allusions to the Holy Spirit which occur in the synoptic Gospels, as signifying little more than divine power, with an ethical import, no doubt. He appears, as against the best grammarians, to adopt the view that when the words pneuma hagion (Holy Spirit) occur without the article, not a divine Person but a divine influence merely is intended. That, however, is a view which cannot be consistently carried through, neither does Dr. Denny write consistently in this connection. Personality in some sense Dr. Denny does not deny to the Holy Spirit, but it does not seem to be his view that the personality of the Spirit is distinguishable, as personality, from that of the Father. “It must,” he says (page 742), “be in the last resort meaningless to speak of the spirit of a personal God as itself impersonal.” At other times he writes as if he thought that the Spirit or Power of God became personal in Jesus Christ, which Jesus Christ, according to him, owes all to the Spirit. These being his sentiments it is no wonder that he is unable to find in the New Testament scriptures the doctrine either of the eternal generation of the Son, or of the eternal procession of the Spirit (see page 744). Dr. Denny maintains that to the men who wrote the New Testament, and to those for whom they did write, the Spirit was not a doctrine but an experience. But the truth is that it was both.
On the proof of that last assertion I am not now to enter, but possibly seeing I have taken our readers through such a sickening array of heretical tenets, I may not unprofitably close this article by indicating afresh how the doctrine of the Trinity, in the Athanasian sense, is an inevitable conclusion from New Testament data.
The primary truth is the divine unity. “Hear, O Israel, Jehovah, our God, is one Jehovah” (Deut. vi. 6). This, it may be said, is the creed of the Jews. It is not less the leading article in the creed of Christians. “The first of all the commandments,” according to Jesus—(Mark xii. 29)—”is, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.” “There is,” says Paul (1 Tim. ii. 5), “one God.” The unity of God is with equal plainness and emphasis taught in the Old and in the New Testaments. It is a truth which is impressed on the face of nature itself. It enters into the etymology of the word “Trinity”—one in three—and is the basal fact in the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.
Yet along with the doctrine of the unity of God, the Scriptures reveal a plurality of persons, a tri-personality in the Godhead. This is the key to an understanding of many passages in the Old Testament itself. “The Spirit (third person) of the Lord God (first person) is upon me (second person).” “The Lord (first person) hath sent me (second person) and his Spirit (third person).” And many other passages. But in the New Testament the doctrine comes into clearer light. I produce some instances. The baptismal formula (Matt. xxviii. 19) is “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.” The words of the benediction make us all familiar with 2 Cor. xiii. 14—”The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all.” John’s prayer (Rev. i. 4-5) for “grace from him which is, and which was, and which is to come; and from the seven Spirits which are before his throne; and from Jesus Christ,” is of like import. “God, our Saviour”—(Titus iii. 4-6)—”shed the Holy Ghost on us abundantly through Jesus Christ.” “Through Christ Jesus”—(Eph. ii. 18)—”we have access by one Spirit unto the Father.” Instances might thus be multiplied in which it appears that the object of Christian worship is a Trinity.
Now, along with the truth of the unity of God and of the plurality of persons within the Godhead, let it be observed further that of the first person, or Father, the Scriptures say that He is God; that of the second person, or Son, they say that He is God; and that of the third person, or Holy Ghost, they say that He is God. As to the first of these it is scarcely necessary to produce proof. Every reader of the New Testament will recall how frequently mention is made of God, our Father. But the Son also is called God. He is the Word that was in the beginning, that was with God, and that was God (John i. 1). “He is over all, God blessed for ever” (Romans ix. 4). He is, according to Rev. i. viii., “the Almighty.” The Holy Spirit also is God. “To lie to the Holy Spirit” (Acts v. 3), is “to lie to God” (Acts v. 4). “The bodies of believers are the temple of God,” because “the Spirit of God dwells in them” (1 Cor. iii. 16). There is, thus, but one God. The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God. These three must be one. Yet the Son, although not divided or separate from the Father or from the Spirit, is distinct from either; and similarly the Holy Spirit, although not divided or separate from the Father or from the Son, is distinct from either.
Let us begin a brief demonstration of these last assertions by taking up the question of the distinct personality of the Spirit first. Not only are personal actions, as teaching, witnessing, searching the deep things of God ascribed to the Spirit (John xiv. 15, John xv. 26, 1 Cor. ii. 10), but He is spoken of as “Another Comforter,” whom both the Father and the Son send. And although He may be spoken of as the power of God, yet is the Spirit as a person distinguished from the power which is from Him. “Ye shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit cometh upon you” (Acts i. 8). (See Turretine, L.T. xxx.) That the Son is distinct from the Father who sent Him, and from the Spirit whom He sends is a statement too patent to require elaboration. The same divine revelation by which we learn that there is one God, and that the object of Christian worship is a Trinity, and that each subsistence or person in that Trinity is Almighty God, teaches us further that there is a certain order or relation which these persons sustain to one another. The Son is begotten of the Father. The Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son. The Spirit proceeds from the Son, and there is revealed besides an order of operation in works terminating on the creature. All things are from the Father, all things are through the Son, all things are in or by the Spirit (Gen. i. 2, Job xxix. 13).
Now, we have adhered closely to facts revealed in Scripture. They show that there is but one God, who is the object of worship; they show that the object of Christian worship is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; they show that the Father is God, that the Son is God, that the Holy Spirit is God; they show that the Son is, in regard of personal properties, distinguished from the Father, and that the Spirit is distinguished from the Father and the Son. Is there anything added to these facts when, in the words of the Westminster Confession, we confess: “In the unity of the Godhead there are three Persons, of one substance, power, and eternity: God the Father, and God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. The Father is of none neither begotten nor proceeding; the Son is eternally begotten of the Father; the Holy Ghost eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son.” I trow not. Truly this knowledge is too high for us, and it is with reverence and godly fear that we should at all times contemplate the Trinity. Yet there is at the same time a characteristic simplicity attaching to this great fundamental truth which makes it possible for even a right-minded child to apprehend it. “The mystery of the Trinity,” says Thomas Boston, “is so interwoven with the whole of religion, that there can neither be any true faith, right worship, or obedience without it. For, take away this doctrine, and the object of faith, worship and obedience is changed; seeing the object of these declared in the Scriptures, is the three persons in the Godhead; and the Scriptures know no other God.”
Dr. Denny cannot be said to represent the whole United Free Church, but there are few in it whom she delights more to honour than he, and he is the representative of a very considerable portion of her clergy. Starting on the down-grade, it is hard to say whence, she is, thus far, descending, step by step, from lax views of inspiration, through a doctrine of Kenosis, to what is undistinguishable from gilded Socinianism. And thus—fit subject for tears of blood!—dear old Scotland has come largely to worship gods whom our fathers knew not.
J. R. M.
France and the Vatican.
The Times Paris correspondent telegraphing on the 9th December, says that grave news comes from Rome, the Pope forbidding French Roman Catholics to comply with the provisions of the Act of 1881, governing public meetings to which the Church in France will be subject after the 11th December. The Times correspondent thinks it clear that the Vatican is bent on doing its utmost to foment acute religious strife, but he holds that the French Government has never been more determined to yield nothing in matters of principle to the exigencies of the Vatican.