New England Trinitarianism

(Adapted from “A Critical History of the Evolution of Trinitarianism and Its Outcome in the New Christology," by Levi Leonard Paine, (Oct. 10, 1832 — May 10, 1902)  Waldo Professor of Eccleslastical History in Bangor Theological Seminary)

Iassc Watts, (July 17, 1674 –  November 25, 1748) was an

English Christian minister (Congregational), hymn writer, theologian, and logician. He was a prolific and popular hymn writer and is credited with some 750 hymns. He is recognized as the "Godfather of English Hymnody"; many of his hymns remain in use today and have been translated into numerous languages. A good illustration of this is how his hymns have influenced the molding of English as well as American religious thought and devotion. 

The trinitarianism of Watts was a curious amalgamation of Sabellianism and Arianism. "Person," in his view, "as applied to the Trinity is not to be taken in the full common and literal sense of it." "The Father, the Word, and the Spirit are so far distinct as to lay a foundation for the scripture to speak of them in a personal manner, as "I", "Thou," and "He," and upon this account they are called three persons, but they are not so distinct as to have three distinct consciousnesses.” 

Nathanael Emmons, (April 20, 1745 - September 23, 1840)

was an American congregational minister and influential theologian of the New Divinity school. It was as a theologian that Emmons was best known, and for half a century probably no clergyman in New England exerted so wide an influence. He developed an original system of divinity, somewhat on the structural plan of that of Samuel Hopkins, and, in Emmons' own believe which was contained in and involved in Hopkinsainism. While by no means abandoning the tenants of the old Calvinistic faith, he came to be looked upon as the chief representative of what was then known as the New Divinity; also he is known as the father of New England Trinitarianism.

Emmons gave prominence to the theory of "official subordination." "The name Father is taken from the particular office which he sustains in the economy of redemption. The second person assumes the name of Son and Word by virtue of his incarnation." In this way this very statement is the Sabellianizing leaven which one day will leaven the whole lump. Father and Son are "names" "assumed" to set forth certain activities of the one Absolute God. This is essential Sabellianism at the start. But Emmons goes further. He casts aside the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son, then he suggests that the names Son and Word had no existence before the incarnation. "They were probably unknown in heaven until the purposes of grace were revealed." But if the names Word and Son were unknown before the incarnation, how about the real personality of the second person of the Trinity? Did the Son exist personally before the incarnation without a name, or does the want of the name imply the non-existence of the reality? Emmons halts at this point, but his followers, Stuart and others, will take up the pregnant suggestion that he had dropped so providentially.

Moses B. Stuart (March 26, 1780 - January 4, 1852, age 71),

an American Bible scholar, was born in Wilton Connecticut. Graduating with highest honors at Yale in 1799; in 1802 he was admitted to the Connecticut bar and was appointed as a tutor at Yale, where he remain for two years. In 1806 Stuart became the pastor of the Center (congregational) Church of New Haven, being appointed professor of sacred literature in the Andover Theological Seminary in 1809. In 1848 Stuart resigned his chair at Andover. He died in Andover on January 4, 1852.

Stewart has been called the father of exegetical studies in America. He contributed largely by his teaching to the renewal of foreign missionary zeal - of his 1500 students more than 100 became foreign missionaries, among them such skilled translators as Adoniram Judson, Elias Riggs and William G. Schauffler.

In 1819 and Arian minister named William Ellery Channing preached a sermon challenging the Trinitarian dogma of the day. He was forthwith joined in a running debate by Moses Stewart that lasted over 30 years and greatly influenced how the Trinity came to be viewed in American to this very day.

Moses Stewart, in his defense of traditional trinitarianism, refused to accept the term "person" as a proper term to define the distinctions in the Trinity. He wishes the word "had never come into the symbols of the church." "I believe in a threefold distinction in the Godhead, and do not venture to make any attempt at explanation." Stewart goes back to the position of Augustine, who said "three somewhats," and Anselm, who said "three I know not whats." The term "distinction" which Stuart substituted for "person" is of Sabellian origin. John Calvin saw its real character and pierced it with one of the keenest shafts of his wit. It came into use in New England apparently through Watts; but Stuart made it current coin, and from his day to the present it has largely replaced "person" in the Trinitarian language. "A threefold distinction in the Godhead," which is all that Stuart dared to say, is a fit legend to be placed at the head of the latest chapter in the history of New England Trinitarianism. The Sabellian leaven of Emmons and Stuart did its work thoroughly, and New England Trinitarianism through all its veins became inoculated with its precepts. Some years later, Stewart translated, with extensive notes, an essay of Friedrich Schleiermacher in which Schleiermacher had defended Sabellius from the charge of patripassianism and interpreted the Sabellian view as essentially Trinitarian, though distinguishing a Trinity developed in time from the Trinity eternally immanent in the divine being, Schleiermacher opposed the Nicene doctrine of eternal generation, holding that the Son is self-existent and independent, that he is absolute God, and that the Trinity is a manifestation of the one God in different modes of creating and redeeming activity. Schleiermacher's essay only fructified in Stuart's mind the seed that Emmons had already sown.

Although Stuart's doctrine was thoroughly Sabellian, a modification was introduced which, it was claimed, changed the whole character. Sabellianism holds to the eternally immanent uni-personality of God, but introduces a trinity of developments of God in time for purposes of divine manifestation in creation and redemption. These developments are in personal modes, but not such as constitute three personal beings. This is the doctrine also of Stuart and his disciple Bushnell. But Stuart laid hold of the idea of Watts and Emmons that there is "laid a foundation in the divine nature" for three distinctions. Bushnell was at first agnostic on this point, that later he tentatively accepted. But this qualification did not affect the essential Sabellianism of the whole doctrine. Sturat and Buchnell both, following Schleiermacher, declared that God is not eternally tri-personal, but uni-personal. The Trinity is not fully developed until the incarnation. Here, Stuart takes up the suggestion of Emmons that the names "Word" and "Son" were not known in heaven before the birth of Christ, which implies that the Trinity came into real existence at this event. Stuart seems at times to hold a developed Trinity of real rational persons, and seems to want to hide his Sabellianism under this cover. But in fact his persons are not rational anymore than the Sabellain persons are - they are modes of the personal existence of the One Divine Being. He talks about the Son's personality, but he frankly confesses that he uses person "to designate a distinction which cannot be comprehended or defined, and would not employ it if it had never been used." Personality as related to God is, for Stuart, the great enigma, as it was for Augustine. He accepted "a numerical unity of substance" in the Godhead, but he declares that "this excludes such personality as exist among men." He even suggests that personality cannot be essential to divinity. Stuarts doctrine was modalistic and he frankly allows it, quoting and appropriating Turretin's phrase "modal distinctions." In Stuart's extreme caution to avoid the pitfalls of tritheism – the Sabellain denial of three real and rational persons was the only refuge remaining to him – as it is to all Trinitarians who wish to avoid the heresy that is tritheism.

Henry Boynton Smith, (November 21, 1815 - February 7,

1877), American theologian, was born in Portland Maine. He is best known for introducing many Americans to avant-gard  German historical scholarship, especially in his history of the Church of Christ. In Chronological Tables: A Synchronistic View of the Events, Characteristics, and Culture of Each Period, Including the History of Polity, Worship, Literature, and Doctrines: Together with Two Supplementary Tables upon the Church in America; And an Appendix Containing the Series of Councils, popes, Patriarchs, and Other Bishops, and a Full Index (1860).

Concerning our topic of review (New England Trinitarianism) H. B. Smith is known to be a proponent of the Sabellian position, especially as demonstrated by his quote:  "The one Supreme Personality exists in three personal modes of being, but it's not three distinct persons."

Isaak August Dorner: (June 20, 1809 - July 8, 1884) was a

German Lutheran church leader. One of the most noteworthy of the "mediating" theologians, he has been ranked with Friedrich Schleiermacher, August Neander, Julius Muller and Richard Rothe.

Dorner is referenced in the context of New England Trinitarianism because he represents a German element of influence which profoundly affected this whole school, and also because his writings have been widely read in New England.

Dorner call the Godhead the "Absolute Personality".

"The absolute personality is present in each of the divine distinctions in such a way that though they are not of them selves simply personal, they have a share in the one divine personality, in their own manner.""The eternal result of the Trinitarian process is the eternal presence of the divine personality in different modes of being."

Here is Modalism and Sabellianism taught clearly under the name of Trinitarianism.

Joseph Flavius Cook:  (1838-1901) Born in Ticonderoga, New

York, attended Phillips Academy, and then entered Yale College. Later transferring to Harvard College, from which he graduated in 1865.

Boston had installed him "in Moses' seat." The orthodox elite of Massachusetts sat at his feet and hung upon his every word. When he announced his theme there was a universal hush of expectation and sympathy. Truly the opportunity was great. Mr. Cook's aim in his addresses were to defend Trinitarian orthodoxy as he understood it. He especially proposed to exorcise the "paganism," as he called it, of "three gods." After giving a definition of the Trinity, which Sabellius would have not found a fault with, He introduces an illustration which had been used by both Orthodox and Arians in the early church, but with opposite application. – That of the sun and it's rays.

"Sunlight, rainbow, heat, one solar radiance; Father, Son, Holy Ghost, one God. As the rainbow shows what light is when unfolded, so Christ reveals the nature of God." "As at the same instant the sunlight is it self and also the rainbow in heat, so at the same moment Christ is both himself and the Father. And both the Father and the Holy Ghost." "As the solar rainbow flees from sight, and it's light continues to exist, so Christ ceases to be manifest and yet is present.""As the rainbow is unraveled light, so Christ is unraveled God." "When the rainbow faded from the east I did not think it had ceased to be. It had not been annihilated; it had been revealed for a while, and, disappeared, it was received back into the bosom of the general radiance, and yet continues to fall upon the earth. In every beam of white light there is potentially all the color which we find unraveled in the rainbow; and so in all the pulsations of the will of God the Father in His works exist the pulsations of the heart of him who wept over Jerusalem," "for there is that one God." "So the Holy Ghost figured by heat is Christ's continued life.”

Conclusion

The doctrine of the Trinity has long been cast in the Sabellian mold of Modalistic Monarchianism. Here we have looked at the leading Trinitarian theological heads of New England during the 18th and19th centuries and have witnessed the influence of Sabellian modalism upon their trinitarian thought. As the Church moved into the 20th-century the circumstance did not change. With the writings of men like Karl Barth (1886-1968), Protestant, and Karl Rahner (1904-1984), Roman Catholic, the triumph of Sabellianism in trinitarian theology is declared, not just over America, but over Europe, and, indeed, the whole of the world. This is testified to by the flowering of Oneness Pentecostalism within the 20th-century, which maintains a vibrant following of over 16.8 million adherents throughout the earth in 2020 (See author's essay: "Proto-Trinitarian" ; http://bishopjerrylhayes.blogspot.com/2020/09/proto-trinitarian.html). Added to this witness are some of the top theologians of both Protestant and Catholic schools of thought who cast their trinitarianism in Sebellian and Modalistic terms, who, with one voice are calling for the rejection of the word "person" from the explanation of the distinctions within the Godhead.

As the Lord's church marches on into the 21st-century let us continue applying the pressure of the Scriptural truth of the Mighty God in Christ until the Societal Tritheistic Trinity is no more considered any ways orthodoxy.

Apostolically Speaking,

☩ Jerry L Hayes

If you enjoyed this essay, you would also like to read another essay by Bishop Hayes entitled "Proto-Trinitarian"
http://bishopjerrylhayes.blogspot.com/2020/09/proto-trinitarian.html