CHAPTER IV. FOOTPRINTS OF THE THIRD PERSON FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE WORLD.
"the Holy Ghost," in the sense in which these words were at one time or another used in the Old Testament and frequently in the New, means the Third Person," says the Church. (Catech. Trent. Page 66.)
It is a dogma of christian revelation that there is a Trinity of Persons. Plurality of persons was, if not forcibly set forth, at least whispered in the Old Testament if we consider it in the light of the New Testament. It is safe to say that the "Trinity" is an essentially christian dogma, being explicitly revealed and breathed by Our Lord into all His followers. And it is, with us, an article of faith, whereas, before, it was a knowledge private unto patriarchs and holy souls and, for the rest, locked up and sealed in the holy books. The full and open manifestation was to be, 'when the Son of God should have had taken on our flesh and the Holy Ghost been communicated to us with His manifold gifts that should be for the uplifting, enlarging, and purifying of our visions and hearts. The Hebrews were not a strong people, spiritually; their vision was unrefined. Truths of a mystic character might, easily, have led them into misapprehensions, considering their very human character and an environment of a deep-dyed idolatrousness. It would have been difficult in the extreme to reconcile them to the idea of three persons or individuals and only one nature, so that polytheism would have seized upon them and this the more readily because it was a world-error. When Jehovah appeared on Sinai, he only revealed unity. The lightning and thunder-roll show us the character of the Hebrews.
They were rude and could only be impressed by elements of terror, as it were. The nobler and serener, moral guidance of a perfect human creature would not apply to them. When the Holy Ghost descended on Pentecost, there was a touch of this terror displayed, for the reason that the apostles had lingering Hebrew traits, but, the dominant note of the new economy is love and peace, and, our Lord's intercourse with the apostles had reproached their rudeness, and attuned them to the new regime of the Holy Ghost and its characteristic tranquillity, sweetness and joy.
The "number" of persons can scarcely be said to be foreshadowed. (Hurter Theol. Dogmatic, page 312.) Two persons are accounted for when Moses at the very outset said: "In the beginning God created heaven and earth." (Gen. i, 1.) That is to say, God created heaven and earth by the Son. What strengthens this interpretation is what our Lord Himself said, and St. John records: "They said therefore to Him, Who art Thou ?" Jesus said to them, "The beginning Who also spoke unto you." (viii, 25.)
St. Jerome and St. Augustine confirm this reading by making it refer to Genesis, where the apostle makes our Lord say, "In the head of the book, it is written of Me." (Hebrews x, 7.) Plurality is insinuated again in Genesis—"Let us make men to our image and likeness." (i, 8). "It is not good for man to be alone, let us make man a helpmate unto himself." (ii, 18.) And He said, "Behold Adam is become as one of us." (iii, 22); "Let us go down and there confound their tongues." (xi, 22.) We read in Isaiah, "And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, and Who shall go for us?" (vi, 8.) The Hebrew text, God created, reads Bar a Mohim. The subject in the plural and the verb in the singular indicate plurality of persons and unity of nature.
