For Further Reading: Smith

While some have so stressed the deity of Christ as to teach what almost amounts to a "uni­tarianism of the Son," the Church has always taught that the Father holds a place of priority in the Trinity. All three are of equal eternity, all are fully divine, and all have infinite attributes. Yet, eternally, the Son has been generated from the Father's nature (as light comes from the sun), and not from His will. This is suggested by the mono-genes passages as in John 1:18 where Christ is said to be the "only begotten" or the "only born" one. The world was made, created, out of noth­ing; but the Son was eternally begotten, from the Father's nature.

Somewhat similarly, the Holy Spirit has eter­nally proceeded. In Eastern Orthodoxy it is un­derstood that the Holy Spirit proceeded eternally only from the Father. They feel that this is sup­ported in John 15:26 where we read, "But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father."

In the Roman Catholic and Anglican and Prot­estant West, however, we have followed the Ath-anasian Creed, which declares, "The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son; neither made, nor created, nor begotten; but proceeding." This dou­ble procession of the Holy Spirit (from both the Father and the Son) is probably the teaching of certain NT passages. One is Rom. 8:9, where we read of both "the Spirit of God" and "the Spirit of Christ"—which probably means "who proceeds from God," and "who proceeds from Christ." The Western view is also suggested in 1 Pet. 1:10-11, where "the Spirit of Christ," that is, who pro­ceeds from Christ, is quite evidently a reference to the Holy Spirit and not to Christ, because through the prophets He "testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ."

Opposers of the doctrine of the Trinity have appeared, as the centuries have passed. Sabel-lius, of the early third century, taught that the three are successive ways in which the uni-personal God has revealed himself. The fourth-century Arius taught that Christ is neither divine nor human (instead of both of these); and that the Holy Spirit is still farther from deity than Christ is. Faustus Socinus (1539-1604) was of course anti-Trinitarian and fathered the Unitari­ans—who, now amalgamated with the Univer-salists, are among the impugners of this doctrine. Protestant modernists in general have denied the Trinity as not suiting their rationalism, opposing the deity of Christ and the personality of the Holy Spirit. One of the rather recent oppositions to the Trinity came from Union (NY.) Seminary's Cyril Richardson, who preferred to say that the three are "symbols" and not persons (see his Doc­trine of the Trinity, 14-15, 98, 111).

This doctrine, taught clearly by implication in Scripture, and spelled out in so many Christian creeds and confessions, which means that God is not an eternal solitary but an Eternal Society, might be the one most basic of all the Christian beliefs. Charles Lowry calls it "at once the ulti­mate and the supreme glory of the Christian faith" (The Trinity and Christian Devotion, xl).

See GOD, CHRIST, HOLY SPIRIT, ECONOMIC TRINITY ESSENTIAL TRINITY, ETERNAL GENERATION, ETERNALLY BEGOTTEN, SABELLIANISM, UNITARIANISM.

For Further Reading: Grider, "The Trinity," Basic Christian Doctrines, ed. Henry; Lowry, The Trinity and Christian Devotion; Wiley, CT, 1:394-440.

J. Kenneth Grider

TRITHEISM. See trinity, the holy.

TRUST. See faith.

TRUTH. The primary meaning of the Greek word aletheia (truth) is openness. It thus refers to what is not concealed. In Hebrew the primary idea is that which sustains. Truth implies steadfastness. It is that which does not fail or disappoint one's expectations.

Truth or "the true" is therefore (1) what is real as opposed to what is fictitious or imaginary; (2) what completely comes up to its idea or what it purports to be; (3) what in reality corresponds to the manifestation; (4) what can be depended upon, which does not fail or change or disap­point (Hodge, Systematic Theology, 1:436).

The quest for truth is universal. Philosophy,



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science, and religion are all committed to the search. Philosophy seeks the truth about being, science the truth about phenomena, religion the truth about God and ultimate meanings. Each science brings to the quest its own methods and tools.

The truth of discrete parts is partial; to be com­plete it must be seen in relation to every other part. Science, therefore, without philosophy and religion, can never arrive at truth, for science alone can never get beyond facts.

Furthermore, truth of necessity must be har­monious. The truths in one branch of knowledge cannot be in ultimate contradiction to the truths in other branches of knowledge.

This is the case because absolute truth is God, and truth apprehended is the knowledge of God. He is both the Key and the Core of truth, and all lesser truths relate to Him and flow from Him. In scriptural terms Christ is the Revelation of the truth in God (John 14:6-9). Jesus Christ, being God incarnate, is not only the true Way to God but also the true Representative, Image, char­acter, and quality of God. Likewise the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth, who communicates truth, who maintains the truth in believers, who guides believers in the truth, and who hates and punishes lies and falsehoods. This plainly im­plies that in God there is no fallacy, deception, or perverseness 0ohn 16:12-13).

Since man is the creation of God, all valid knowledge of truth and right must come from Him. Whether knowledge comes from God immediately or ultimately is of secondary im­portance (Burrows, An Outline of Biblical Theol­ogy, 40-42).

Truth as one of the moral attributes of God may be resolved into veracity and fidelity. Thus the truth of God refers also to His perfect and undeviating truthfulness in all His communica­tions to mankind, whether in words or in deeds or mode. His communications are in exact accord with the real nature of things (John 17:17). There is utmost sincerity in all His declarations. Fidelity in God especially respects His promises and is the guarantee of their fulfillment.

Since God is the Source of all truth, it follows that He is true in His revelation and true in His promises. He keeps His promises and is ever faithful to His covenant people. God has made available to finite minds such truth about himself as is needed for redemption, although finite minds approach the truth and the perfections of God only by degrees. Man's incomplete systems of thought, thus, can never pass beyond proba­bilities.

God is perfect truth because His nature is pure love and forms the character of God. Men become true as their character becomes good, for truth in the heart is a quality of personal character which coincides with the law of love (Carnell, A Philosophy of the Christian Religion, 450-53).

See GOD, METAPHYSICS, PROPOSITIONAL THEOLOGY, HEART PURITY REALITY THERAPY, THEISTIC PROOFS, FI­DELITY, INTEGRITY.

For Further Reading: Carnell, The Case for Orthodox Theology, 27,87-88; Henry, Basic Christian Doctrines, 31; Purkiser, ed., Exploring Our Christian Faith, 34-36; Wiley and Culbertson, Introduction to Christian Theology, 108.

Wayne E. Caldwell

TYPE, TYPOLOGY. A type is a person, event, or institution in the OT which foreshadows a corre­sponding person, event, or institution in the NT. Typology is the hermeneutical principle which recognizes the presence of types and antitypes in the Bible and establishes guidelines for identi­fying them and for understanding the rela­tionship of the type in its original historical context to its more complete fulfillment in the development of God's eternal purposes.

The use of typology in the study of the Bible assumes the unity of the Old and New Testa­ments which makes typology possible: viz., that "the New is in the Old concealed; the Old is in the New revealed." It likewise assumes the pres­ence of predictive prophecy in Scripture and the progression of revelation. This necessitates a lin­ear view of history and a supernaturalism which allows for divine irruptions into the historical or­der of human experience.

Typology differs from allegory in that allegory attempts to exegete a spiritual meaning from a historical account, often without due regard for historical meaning or even historicity. Typology finds in the historical account that which pre­figures a later historical development. The rela­tionship between type and antitype is that of pattern and reality, promise and fulfillment, an­ticipation and completion.

There are certain restrictions to the use of ty­pology. Some scholars would go as far as to disal­low any typology other than that which is indicated in the NT. While this establishes safe­guards against abuse, it wrongly insists that the NT has exhausted all correspondences between the Testaments. Types should be restricted to those instances where there is historical corre­spondence or, as Bernard Ramm insists, there is "a genuine resemblance in form or idea" (Protes-tant Biblical Interpretation, 228). Furthermore, the

There are several dangers in the use of ty­pological interpretation. First, the history of the church verifies the problem of unrestrained imagination. Doctrinal heresies and aberrant the­ories have resulted from "supposed" OT types. Second, the OT may cease to be valued as the objective revelation which God gave to Israel and be spiritualized into a religious book of signs and symbols. Even though the OT is incomplete in itself, it remains as the historical record of God's progressive preparation of His people for the fullness of times when the Word would be­come flesh. Third, the historicity of scriptural ac­counts is undercut when there is little concern for the historical context as though that were sec­ondary or unimportant. Bultmann's demy­thologization of the NT exemplifies such an un­concern for history.

The value of a typological interpretation of the OT is that it recognizes the historical continuity of revelation and God's redemptive program. It immeasurably enriches and vivifies our under­standing of basic biblical motifs. It takes seri­ously Jesus' declaration that the OT bears witness to Him (John 5:39) and finds an embryonic Christology in the Hebrew Scriptures that antici­pates the birth of the Babe of Bethlehem.

See allegory, allegorical interpretation, her­meneutics, parables, progressive revelation, bible: old and new testaments.

As is true of most of his key concepts, Tillich gives ultimate concern differing but consistent shades of meaning, depending on whether he is speaking specifically to the Christian community for whom the word "God" already has a markedly Christological content, or whether he is speaking as a Christian apologist to those of other religions, or to a secular philosophy or po­litical ideology for which the term "God" may not play a significant role.

Man is finite, contingent, and he is deeply aware of this. He is concerned about his finitude and expresses this concern by his efforts to guar­antee his finitude against the threats to it that appear in many forms, death being the ultimate threat. Man's natural efforts to keep from losing himself to these threats result in the creation of and participation in political, national, cultural, domestic, moral, and personal forms. But all of these are preliminary concerns, for they are also finite. They too are subject to erosion.

It is precisely the preliminary nature of these concerns which shows that they cannot finally be of ultimate significance to man. Man's prin­cipal error, which Tillich calls sin, is that he tends to treat preliminary concerns as though they were ultimate, unconditional, nonfinite. He tends to elevate them to a place of ultimacy. But time and the events of history have a way of "shaking these foundations" and exposing them for what they are. Shaken, man is driven beyond preliminary concerns to what concerns him ulti­mately, to the truly Unconditioned. As pre­liminary concerns reveal their finitude, he is driven toward the God who is not one thing among others, but the Creator God, the Giver of all life. God is Being itself. He does not exist as things exist; rather, He is.

Tillich believed that Jesus' summary of the law in Matt. 22:37-39 is the principal biblical state­ment of the central meaning of ultimate concern. He believed that Heb. 12:25-29 accurately de­scribes the way we are led to the unshakable foundation (Christ) as preliminary concerns re­veal their finitude.

Tillich believes that all people are concerned

All people give some form of expression to the belief that reality is ultimately meaningful, that finite being is anchored in some ultimate, non-contingent reality. This state of being ultimately concerned, Tillich says, is faith, the fulfillment of which is faith in God's Christ, the bringer of the New Reality.

See RELIGION, RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE, FAITH, IDOL (IDOLATRY), COSMOLOGY, CHRISTIANITY

For Further Reading: Magee, Religion and Modern Man, 22 ff, 25-26; Hughes, ed., Creative Minds in Con­temporary Theology, 451-79; McKelway, The Systematic Theology of Paul Tillich.

Albert L. Truesdale, Jr.

UNBELIEF. This is the moral resistance to, and lack of confidence in, the commands and promises of God, which arises from an evil heart (Heb. 3:12). It is a refusal to trust that God's commands are valid and that what He has promised He is able to perform. So unbelief is beyond mere doubt and questioning as to the how and why of divine ordinances. The refusal to believe or trust ren­ders one culpable in the eyes of biblical writers.

Unbelief is thus both an intellectual and moral attitude toward God, truth, and reality. It is a re­fusal of the volitional action which faith calls for.

In the NT the two common terms for unbelief are apeitheia, "disobedience, and unpersuaded-ness" (Rom. 11:30, 32; Heb. 4:6, 11), and apistia, "distrust, or absence of faith." The noun, apei­theia, really indicates "obstinate opposition to the divine will." The verb, apeithed, specifies "the re­fusal or withholding of belief" (John 3:36; Heb. 3:18; 1 Pet. 2:7-8; 4:17). The adjective, apeitheis, describes one who is "unpersuasible, uncom­pliant, and contumacious" (Rom. 1:30; 2 Tim. 3:2; Titus 3:3). The verb, apisted, means "to be­tray a trust, to entertain no belief" (Rom. 3:3; Luke 24:11, 41; Mark 16:11, 16; 2 Tim. 2:13). Its noun, apistia, means the "lack of faith and trust" (Mark 6:6; Rom. 4:20; 11:20, 23; Heb. 3:19). And its adjective, apistos, describes one who is "with­out faith or trust in God, and is thus unbelieving and incredulous" (Matt. 17:17; [cf. Mark 9:19; Luke 9:41]; Luke 12:46; John 20:27; 1 Cor. 6:6; 7:12-14; 2 Cor. 4:4; Rev. 21:8).

Since unbelief is an absence of the will to be­lieve, it exerts a determinative influence on con­duct. He who refuses the implications of faith likewise denies the contents of faith. To trust or put confidence in a person or a proposition in­volves and calls for a commitment thereto. This the unbeliever is unwilling to do. Hence unbelief is the attitude of the irreligious person.

It was William James who contended for man's right to adopt a believing attitude in religious matters in spite of the fact that his merely logical intellect may not have been compelled. He de­fended to his students the lawfulness of volun­tarily adopted faith. He insisted that "the question of having moral beliefs at all or not hav­ing them is decided by our will." He said, "If your heart does not want a world of moral reality, your head will assuredly never make you believe in one." Furthermore, he declares, "We have the right to believe at our own risk any hypothesis that is live enough to tempt our will." In the final analysis he is sure that "belief is measured by ac­tion," hence the one who believes is unlike the person he would be in unbelief.

It has been rightly said: A man has the right to believe as he must in order to live as he ought. Hence faith is a proper and scriptural attitude to­ward God, and unbelief is its opposite.

See FAITH, BELIEF, OBEDIENCE, SKEPTICISM.