One of the greatest mysteries in connection with the orthodox creeds is that of the Trinity. Upon this subject there has no doubt been an honest purpose to arrive at the distinction between demonstrable truth and mere human opinion on the part of Bible scholars, but this effort has nevertheless been fraught with much controversy.
Respecting creeds, an eminent church authority says: "The great creeds, as they rise in succession, and mark the climax of successive controversial epochs in the church, are nothing else than varying expressions of the Christian consciousness and reason, in the efforts of men more completely to realize, comprehend, and express the originally simple elements of truth as they are recorded in the Scriptures. Accordingly the creeds of Christendom grow in complexity, in elaborate analysis and inventiveness of doctrinal statement, as they succeed one another. The Apostles', the Nicene, the Athanasian, may be said to form the three great creeds of the church. After the time of the last-mentioned formula, there is no general symbol of faith that claims our attention till the period of the Reformation, when new confessions began to spring up; these are treated as Confessions of Faith."
The above applies with special significance to the doctrine of the Trinity. Perhaps no formula of faith has been more diversely discussed than this one. The word Trinity is a term of Christian theology, denoting the coexistence in the Godhead of three persons, distinguished from each other as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. While this word is not to be found in the Bible, and while no passage can be adduced from the Old Testament in which the doctrine of the Trinity or its equivalent is distinctly formulated, many texts have been quoted, even by the earliest Christian writers, which point to the existence of some form of plurality in the Godhead. These texts, however, being susceptible of various interpretations, are not produced by Trinitarians as unequivocally proving their doctrine, but as foreshadowing the revelation believed to have been made in the New Testament. Two classes of texts are quoted as arguments for establishing the doctrine, —those in which the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are mentioned in connection, and those in which these three subjects are mentioned separately, and in which their nature and mutual relation are more particularly described.
