A Rather pretentious title hides more modest aims. It has been chosen because no other seemed to cover adequately the subjects whose examination is proposed, but it needs some explanation. What follows will not be an exhaustive survey of the Bible’s teaching about God. It will not (except very loosely) be systematic even in its own limited field. It will treat of certain controversial matters which closely concern our relationship to God, avoiding polemics, nevertheless, as much as it may. Though its theme is one which is often treated philosophically, and the views which it opposes are more often defended thus than scripturally, it will not itself venture more than timidly into philosophy.
The writer holds, indeed—and surely he must here be right—that a priori reasonings about the First Cause Himself are doomed to failure from the start. For our very powers of reasoning, if we are theists at all, are the creature of God, and may know Him only so far as He has made Himself known to them. This may only be another way of saying, what the history of thought establishes, that our philosophy must wait on our facts: and in such a problem as this, the facts must be the facts of Scripture, in which “God, Who at sundry times and in divers manners spake unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son.”1
The investigation will begin in theoretical fashion, by considering the Godhead in relation to the widely accepted Doctrine of the Trinity. Arising from that, the Doctrine of the Pre-existence of Christ will be discussed and will lead us aside for a while, to think of Pre-existence in its wider sense. Theory will end with a consideration of the relationship of the Holy Spirit with the Godhead, and we shall be led thence to think more closely of the relationship of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit to ourselves and so to some opinions on the Doctrine of the Atonement.
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Author: A. D. Norris
Keywords: Trinity, Trinitarian, Trinitarianism, Modalism, Modalism heresy, Arianism, Arian, Arian heresy, Trinitarian heresy, Trinitarian heresies, Jesus is not God, Jesus created the world, Jesus as creator, Three gods in one, Three gods, Athanasian, Athanasian Creed, Athanasian trinity, Triplural, Triplurality, Tri-plural, Tri plurality, Three in one, Triunity, Tri unity, Johannine comma, Johanine comma, Johanine coma, Comma Johanneum, Johannine coma, John's coma, John's comma, Three witnesses, Father Son and Holy Spirit, Father Son and Holy Ghost, Blood and water, Water and spirit, Nicene Creed, Nicene, Nicean Creed, Nicean, one god in three persons, Homoousion, Homoousian, homoousios
Bible reference(s): Genesis 1:26-27, Genesis 3:22, Isa 9:6, Mat 1:23, Mat 28:19, John 1:1-3, John 3:13, John 5:23, John 6:38, John 6:38, John 6:62, John 8:23, John 8:58, John 10:30, Joh 10:33, John 14:9, John 17:5, John 17:24, John 20:28, Rom 9:5, 1 Corinthians 8:6, Philippians 2:6-7, Col 1:15-16, Heb 1:2, Heb 1:8, Heb 7:3, 1 John 4:3, 1 John 5:7, 1 John 5:20, 1Ti 2:5
Source: “The Scriptural Doctrine of God,” The Testimony, Vol. 16, Nos. 183-7, March-July 1946, pp. 67-70, 95-8, 123-6, 156-9, 178-81.
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