 |  |
This is monstrous, but is the only conclusion that the creed reaches, however it be
ringed around with verbal safeguards. Throughout the battle of the creeds, it is assumed
by contestants of both sides that `The Father' is the title of God in His essence and from
all Eternity, that before creation, before time, God was `The Father'. In later times, this
has been most dogmatically stressed by such writers as Dr. Cudworth, who died in 1688.
He said:
"The three persons of the Trinity are three distinct spiritual substances, but the Father
alone is truly and properly God, that He alone in the proper sense is supreme, and that
absolute honour is due to Him only, and that He absolutely speaking, is the only God of
the universe, the Son and the Spirit being God, but only by the Father's concurrence with
them and their subordination or subjection to Him" (R. Nelson).
Here is the logical consequence of projecting the title `Father' back to the beginning,
making it a title of Essence, instead of one of the assumptions of Ineffable Deity, yet we
believe that 999 out of every 1,000 that have recited the Creed, have, and do conjure up
in their minds some such Trinity as Dr. Cudworth has so frankly yet so dreadfully
admitted. Here are some of the arguments of Athanasius, all marred by the same fatal
mistake:
"Tell us then, you blasphemers, what was it which had a being before the Son had any?"
"He has always been what He is now, the Father of the Son."
"And to the same purpose and effect is that other proposition of yours, `the Son was
not before He was begotten'."
"The Scriptures declare our Saviour to have existed from all eternity in union with the
Father."
"The generation of the Son is not like that of a man, which requires an existence after
that of the Father, but the Son of God must, as such, have been begotten from all
eternity."
"If the Word did not exist from all eternity with the Father, then there was not a trinity
from all eternity."
"We detest and abominate the wild blasphemies of the Arians, and we know and
confess that the Son existed from everlasting."
"There is nothing in which the Son is more expressly and evidently the character and
image of the Father, than in that absolute and unvariable state of being which He derives
from the Father."
Is the writer, or the reader, a blasphemer, when he answers Athanasius' question
"What was it which had a beginning before the Son had any?" by quoting the Scripture
"In the beginning was the Word" for "The Word was made flesh". He was "The Word"
before He became "The Son". Can we not perceive that where the Scriptures speak of
the Word, the Form and the Image, Athanasius persists in speaking of the Son? He
maintains that the Scriptures declare the Son to have existed from all eternity in union
with the Father, but quotes no Scripture in proof. Where he does quote proof texts they
speak not of the `Saviour' nor `The Son' nor of `The Father', and inasmuch as the
Scripture emphasizes that God is one, his regret that `then there was not a Trinity from all
eternity' may have been actually expressing a sublime and solemn truth!
Bishop Pearson, a recognized authority on the Creed says: