Sunday, October 17, 2021

J. Sidlow Baxter: The Jews of Jesus' Time were Unitarian, not (Proto-)Trinitarian

  

Most or all of these Pharisees and scribes could have said about the ten commandments just what the rich young ruler said to our Lord Jesus, in Mark x. 20, “All these have I observed from my youth.” So far as outward morality was concerned, they each wore the “white flower of a blameless life.” Yet these were the men whom Jesus warned as being almost, if not actually guilty of committing the unpardonable sin!

 

The next thing that strikes us is that the unpardonable sin is clearly some form of sin against the Holy Spirit. “Whosoever speaketh against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this age, neither in the age to come.” Probably none of those who heard these words fall from the lips of Jesus would think of the Holy Spirit as a Person in the Godhead, distinct from the Father, any more than they recognized in Jesus Christ the incarnate second Person of the divine Triunity. They would think of the Holy Spirit as an influence exercised by God upon men. Their monotheism was unitarian, not trinitarian. The full revelation of God as a Triunity only breaks upon us as the pages of the New Testament proceed. (J. Sidlow Baxter, Studies in Problem Texts [London: Marshall, Morgan and Scott, Ltd., 1949], 119, emphasis in bold added)