When the biological idea of the unity of all life gets working in theology, it plays considerable havoc not only with Augustinian and Calvinistic theology, but in the interest of unity destroys an idea even more vital in some ways than the doctrine of the Trinity. It wipes out the idea of God as creator. Biology as a basis for theology has no room for the conception of a created world. The mind taking its clue from the natural world halts in the idea of an eternal procession of all through the Divine life immanent in all. There can be no gap sufficient to establish a moral relationship. The doctrine of God's fatherhood is true up to the point where it encroaches upon man's sonship. And the idea of fatherhood does encroach and nullify sonship unless the relationship be conceived in terms of ethics rather than terms of biology. The basis of ethics must rest in some conception which defines the nature of the being with ethical relationships and that conception must be in metaphysical terms. So the basis of theology as an interpretation of the relationship of God to Man, or, as Dr. Whiton says, the spiritual life, that, likewise, must be in metaphysical terms. These must be in metaphysical terms because by metaphysics we get the tools. with which to do our thinking. Only in metaphysics can the true domain of Fatherhood and Sonship be defined for thought. And it must be so defined for our complete satisfaction.

It was this problem of sonship which precipitated the theological problem of the Trinity. There was in the writings of the Apostles and St. Paul the Apostolic Benediction, but as Dr. Whiton truly observes, and so touches the nerve of the whole matter under discussion, "The doctrine of the Trinity was formulated to justify the adoration of Christ and to ground man's salvation in the eternal reality of God." A new quality of life resulted from this attitude toward

Christ, and it was the earnest effort of the men of the 4th and 5th centuries to state for thought the ground of this "spiritual life" that resulted in the traditional doctrine of the Trinity. Dr. Whiton says this doctrine "as then conceived fell short of reality." It may well have done so. But not on the ground that these men were out of touch with the spiritual and moral life of their time. Their intellectual and speculative activities were the direct expression of a life lived not in the cloister but in the dust and heat of the concrete problems of their time. When the populace of Alexandria marched through the streets of that city singing the Trinitarian Creed it was an expression of their political as well as their religious faith. The political conflict was between the empire and the nation, and when the Nicene Fathers contended that the Son was of the same essence and equal with the Father, they were laying the foundation for nationality. And they were laying it in metaphysics because there is where it must be laid for those who think.

And so it happens that the concrete problem by the Fathers of the 4th and 5th centuries is the problem of their sons in this 20th century. As then, so now, the problem is to clear a place for and defend the life of nations against an empire. Fundamentally it is a conflict of ideas. The Empire of Germany, inspired by the idea of God as pictured in the Old Testament, is in conflict with nations inspired by the idea of God as a Divine society of equals and expressed in the doctrine of the Trinity.

The conceptoin of the Trinity as outlined by Dr. Whiton, is as old as the 4th century. In its most modern form it is called the "economic" idea of the Trinity. It has its uses in teaching, but time after time it has been rejected because it failed to do the thing Dr. Whiton claims for it. It has been rejected as a

final statement of the Trinity because it does not lay in the nature of God the deepest realities of man's moral and spiritual life. Words are lame symbols of truth, but they are the best things we have for the communication of our thoughts. To say God is both one and three has a mathematical sound, but that Daniel Webster should pass the Trinity by as "heavenly arithmetic" which nobody should be expected to understand, and that the Mohammendans should also find the problem difficult, only indicates a lack of capacity on their part to rise above arithmetic into some of the higher realms of human thought. And if this same difficulty of accepting the traditional doctrine is felt by various theologians, mentioned by Dr. Whiton, who belong to what are called orthodox branches of the Christian Church, it is evidence of what has long been apparent to those of us who listen to the rank and file of the clergy, that the whole garment of Christian theology is today a motheaten fabric. We need a renewal of thinking. We need to come under the sway of ideas. We need to renew our acquaintance with metaphysics. We need to recuperate from the "shell shock" of the "practical" and get back some of our theological nerve.

This may not be the place to exhibit this recovered nerve by any detailed elucidation of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. This much, however, can be said: The traditional doctrine of the Trinity is that God is triune in operation because triune in nature. The ontological Trinity, call it based on metaphysics if you will, has for its aim that most uplifting idea that God operates as triune because it is His nature to do so. And that when we as human beings commit ourselves to God as Holy Spirit, and so gain through the redemptive work of the Son, access to the Father, we then know a God who is in Himself a Living God in the deepest sense in which

that word can be used. This is to ground man's salvation as a social being in the eternal reality of God as a Divine Society.

There is no need to repeat the excessive metaphysical hair-splitting of much of the theological activity of the early centuries of the Church, but on the other hand, it is not well for us to look on dogma as an ecclesiastical old man of the sea. Dr. Whiton refers to the Articles of Religion in the Book of Common Prayer as using these words about the Trinity: "In the unity of the Godhead there be three persons, of one substance, power and eternity; the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost." This may be called the metaphysical statement of the Trinity. But in another part of the Prayer Book is a statement which interprets this statement in terms of life. In the catechism the child is asked to repeat the Apostles' Creed as a preliminary to Confirmation. This question then follows: "What dost thou chiefly learn by these articles of thy belief?" And the child is expected to make this answer: "First, I have to believe in God the Father, who made me and all the world. Secondly, in God the Son, who hath redeemed me and all mankind. Thirdly, in God the Holy Ghost, who sanctifieth me and all the people of God." This is alive with vitality. God in nature as creator-God in history as redeemerGod in individual life as sanctifier-fills all life as we know it with spiritual dynamic. And yet Dr. Whiton contends that the Trinity in its traditional form has but one visible point of contact with the life of the world in the person of Jesus Christ.

With one part of Dr. Whiton's essay the writer finds himself in hearty agreement. It is the point about the undeveloped use the Church makes of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. God as power available for use by the individual. Christian has been neglected in Christian

history and plays too small a part in present-day teaching. The prevalent and persistent over-playing of unity as the regulative and formative idea of God points to the human need for conceiving somewhere in God of a less personal element than is available either in the idea of God as Father or God as Son and elder brother. It is helpful to conceive our own lives as somehow rooted in and springing in varied activity out of a divine life which is formless but without energy. And because of the vital connection between soul and body this this divine energy is sought as a source of power for the whole man. The persistence of the theosophical and mystical elements in religious life and practice must be accounted for and interpreted. The life of mere feeling is important, and the history of the Church will show a frequent breaking away of sects which found insufficient room for this type of religious life within the Church's borders. God as Holy Spirit-the felt, tangible, experimental reality of the life of God in the individual working as power for the real accomplishment of goodsupplies this need.

And we would have in this rediscovery and utilization of God as power all that Dr. Whiton desires to get out of a new interpretation of the doctrine of the Trinity. The old form will still seem to many of us the richer and more vital conception even though some continue to use the formula as a kind of ecclesiastical "salute firing." Such salutes have their value. Many of us decry the

dearth of ideas in present day religious life. But men like Dr. Whiton underestimate the value of this "solemn sort of salute-firing" in liturgical Churches. Nothing of a religious character should degenerate into a mere outward habit which has no bearing on the inner life of thought and feeling; but if the power of the Holy Ghost be real it may well be that at these "thoughtless" moments when the conscious self is submerged in a social act no broader than a salute, the Holy Ghost-God as power-makes Himself felt.

As an earnest plea for a more vital realization of religion based on the apprehension of God as Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and particularly as a plea for a better understanding of the place and power of the Holy Spirit in the Christian economy, we welcome Dr. Whiton's essay. But he has yet to convince us that biological science is as good a basis for the interpretation of the doctrine of the Trinity as the metaphysics of the Greek Fathers of the early Church. Their method was an attempt to interpret certain facts of history from above; his from below. His result may be more clearly comprehendable by some minds, but inasmuch as ease of comprehension is not the final test of truth, it would seem better to leave the Trinity even a blinding theological mystery than to see it only through the smoked glass of biology, and, by so seeing it, destroy its glory and its power.

Henry King Hannah.