So, in Gen. 1: 5, "the evening and the morning" are yom echad, "day one". In

Gen. 2: 24, the husband is to cleave unto his wife and they shall be basar echad, "one

flesh". And, again, in Ezekiel we read of the "two" sticks becoming "one", aitz echad

(Ezek. 37: 16-19).

Because certain expressions in the creeds of the Church are almost unintelligible, or

because some have attempted to prove the doctrine of the Trinity by triangles or by

cloverleaves, this is no reason for denying or questioning the evidence of the Scriptures

to the fact that the Unity of the Godhead is a compound unity (echad), and not an

absolute unity (yachad). It is not our responsibility to demonstrate or to prove; it is our

joy as well as our responsibility simply to believe what God has been pleased to reveal.

We must defer further comment on Gen. 1: 26 for another article. This paper has

served its purpose if it has established a link between the doctrine set forth in the

preceding article--that the Creator is the Lord, Who in fullness of time became man--

and this initial act of creating the first man in the image and likeness of his Lord.

Before developing the underlying idea of this article, it will perhaps be helpful to say

something about the necessity for certain laws of thought, and, in particular, about the

question of "axioms". Even the revealed truth of the Bible would become a mere

sequence of curiously shaped strokes, or varied sounds, apart from grammar, and

grammar presupposes intelligence and the laws of thought. Revelation and reason must,

therefore, go hand in hand, even though we may have to confess that what passes for

human reason may be very far from the truth. A sinless rational being would be obliged

to acknowledge the truth of revelation.

At the foundation of all thought are the first principles that we call "axioms". In

mathematics, for example, an axiom is a self-evident proposition--such as "A straight

line is the shortest distance between two points", or "Things that are equal to the same

thing are equal to one another". Even if an angel from heaven should appear and tells us

that these things were not so, and that, for instance, a curved line was shorter than a

straight one, we should have to deny the very fundamentals of our being to give them up.

Just as there are certain self-evident truths in mathematics, so also in other departments of

thought, there are axioms that are self-evident and need no proof. We leave this point for

the time, but shall return to it later.

The question that we have before us arises out of the opening verse of Scripture: