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The chief theological value of the doctrine of the trinity, as maintained by the New England Calvinistic teachers, had been to furnish the dramatis personæ for the doctrine of the atonement. In the speculation as to the negotiation of this substitutionary transaction, the language of the theologians had degenerated into stark tritheism.
I may help you to think yourself into a theoretical Tritheism, or a theoretical Sabellianism; I cannot make you think yourself into practical and living Catholicism. As you of anthropology, so I say of theology, Solvitur ambulando. Don't believe Catholic doctrine unless you like; faith is free. But see if you can reclaim either society or yourself without it; see if He will let you reclaim them.
Waterland could not digest your exposition, or acquit it of Tritheism, little hope is there of finding the Unitarians more persuadable. Ib. p. 154.
Gregory Nyssen, Cyril of Alexandria, Maximus and Damascen were charged with "a kind of Tritheism" by Petavius and Dr. Cudworth, who, according to Sherlock, have "mistaken their meaning." See pp. 106-9, of this "Vindication." Ib. p. 117. Is not God conscious to all my thoughts, though I am not conscious of God's?
He affirmed, among other things, that the Persons of the Godhead were distinct in the same way as the persons of Peter, James, and John, or any other men. Such assertions were not unnaturally suspected of verging perilously near upon Tritheism, and his book was publicly censured by the Convocation of the University of Oxford. On the other hand, Dr. Wallis, Professor of Geometry, and the famous Dr.
Here, while repudiating the tritheism of his master, he practically reproduced the old heresy of Sabellius which reduced the Trinity to three aspects or attributes of the Divine Being power, wisdom, and love. "A doctrine is to be believed," he held, "not because God has said it, but because we are convinced by reason that it is so." His whole attitude was that of the free, if reverent, enquirer.
Here again! This contradiction of Waterland to his own principles is continually recurring; yea, and in one place he involves the very Tritheism, of which he was so victorious an antagonist, namely, that the Father is Jehovah, the Son Jehovah, and the Spirit Jehovah; thus making Jehovah either a mere synonyme of God whereas he himself rightly renders it [Greek: Ho Ôn], which St. John every where, and St. Paul no less, makes the peculiar name of the Son, [Greek: monogen
'Victoria'!" And what is this but to say: These Fathers did indeed involve Tritheism in their mode of defending the Tri-personality; but they were not Tritheists: though it would be far more accurate to say, that they were Tritheists, but not so as to make any practical breach of the Unity; as if, for instance, Peter, James, and John had three silver tickets, by shewing one of which either or all three would have the same thing as if they had shewn all three tickets, and 'vice versa', all three tickets could produce no more than each one; each corresponding to the whole.
Properly understood, that doctrine is the vindication of the complete fulness of the personal life of the One God. Too often it is so held, and so preached and represented, as in this case, that monotheism is tacitly abandoned in favour of ditheism or tritheism. It needs to be plainly said, that the transaction theory is inconsistent with the trinitarian doctrine.
If we may judge from the accounts of his opponents, Anselm and Abailard, he took up a position of extreme individualism and denied reality alike to a whole and to the parts of which any whole is commonly said to be composed. The application of this principle to the doctrine of the Trinity landed him in tritheism, and he did not shrink from the reproach.
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