EVOLUTION AND THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY,t
" C'EST rue d'un philosophe erudit et vertigineux ; mais l'histoire n'existe guere pour lui." This judgment of a French
critic on Mr. McDowell's suggestive treatise is less a criticism of the writer, who does not profess to approach his subject on historical lines, than of his method. "I suppose Dorians may be allowed to speak Doric," says Gorge in Theocritns ;—and the ologiana to talk theology; indeed, if they all did so as well as Mr. McDowell, that science would be in better repute than it is :—
"There is, unquestionably, full room at present for a re- statement of the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity in terms that are consonant with modern thought. It is not too much to say that there is urgent need of suoh a restatement. A vague Pantheism is the characteristic) product of the Tel*, ions speculation of to-day . . . and Pantheism, with ite emphasis on ultimate Unity, is not impressed by the tritheistic expression of Christian belief which paasee popularly for Trinitarian dootaine."
This is so ; and the reference to Lotse's doctrine of pernomelity is opportune ; of the bulk of Trinitarian speculation it Isar • Judith : a Play in Three Acts. By Arnold Bennett. London : blestee end Windt's. Die. 64. meta t ifeautioe reed Dootrino of ge Trinity. By Stewart. A. Atal:kortall. Cambridge: at the mac/malty pram
be said that it multiplies words without increasing sense. That is why we are apt to ask with regard to its formulas not so much, Are they true fits, What did their framers understand by them ? How did people come to think—and to cease to think—in this way ? Here the appeal is to history and psychology; speculation, as such, takes us but a little way. The doctrine of the Trinity, by associating the notion of plurality with the absolute unity of Monotheism, breathes into it the breath of life, and brings God into contact with the world. It gives us the necessary theological content, of which Gentile religion is destitute, and which it was the mission of the Hebrews to retain ; but it
gives us also that in which Hebrew religion was lacking—
movement, life, positive significance, kinship with mankind. If Christianity has in it a principle of life ; if it enters into, and develops with, the development of our race ; if it has a breadth which can take in all human interests, a tenderness which can embrace all human passion, a fullness which can suffuse all human experience with a superhuman glow—it is because it is preached to us not merely, like Judaism or Islam, in the name of God One and Indivisible, but in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
Where this plurality is excluded, power becomes the distinctive attribute cf Deity ; and though the conception unfolds itself as time goes on, it retains throughout a certain rigidity. If not inhuman, it is at least unhuman ; it stands in no vital contact with the world and men. The notion of life, indeed, as we understand it, seems excluded by its changeless self- identity. God is a Rock, a Tower, a Consuming Fire; but not akin to us, not human ; the antithesis rather of human kind. Something of this has passed into the Calvinism which still underlies English religion ; a theology based rather on the Old than on the New Testament. To the Frenchman God is the " good " God ; to the German, better still, the " dear " God : to the Englishman, He is the Almighty, "the Great Taskmaster," an embodied law.
The history of' the religious consciousness of mankind is a record of a persistent attempt to solve the One and Many problem in the Divine. Mr. McDowall points out its trustworthiness :—
" To lay stress on freakishness alone shows hopeless want of grasp. . . . The fact that in duality primitive man found satisfaction of an instinct, however vague, is what really matters. I believe that a true instinct also underlies his search for a unifying principle in an all-pervading spiritual essence. He feels the need of unity, of duality, and of personality in the Godhead ; and in his simple way he offers the best solution he can."
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