"The cabinet of the mysterious Trinity": reserve and moderation in Trinitarian claims as a matter of revelation

And what can more ennoble our nature, than that by the means of his holy humanity it was taken up into the cabinet of the mysterious Trinity? - The Great Exemplar I.I.ad1 on the Annunciation and Conception of the Lord.

In the midst of two thieves, three long hours the holy Jesus hung clothed with pain, agony, and dishonour; all of them so eminent and vast, that he who could not but hope, whose soul was encased with divinity, and dwelt in the bosom of God, and in the cabinet of the mysterious Trinity - The Great Exemplar III.XX.9 on the Passion of the Lord.

In his meditations on the beginning and the ending of the Lord's earthly life, Taylor employs the phrase "the cabinet [i.e. the private inner room] of the mysterious Trinity". It is suggestive of what is not revealed to humanity: the inner life of the Godhead is closed to us. Similar wording is used in The Great Exemplar (III.XVI.2) when Taylor discusses God's "secret counsel" of predestination:

But his peremptory, final, unalterable decree, he keeps in the cabinets of the eternal ages, never to be unlocked till the angel of the covenant shall declare the unalterable universal sentence.

The cabinet - whether of the Holy Trinity or of predestination - is not open to humanity's gaze.

Except, that is, for one event when the cabinet of the Trinity was, in a manner, opened before humanity:

this was the greatest meeting that ever was upon earth, where the whole cabinet of the mysterious Trinity was opened and shown, as much as the capacities of our present imperfections will permit; the second person in the veil of humanity; the third in the shape, or with the motion of a dove; but the first kept his primitive state: and as to the Israelites he gave notice, by way of caution, ' Ye saw no shape, but ye heard a voice'; now also God the Father gave testimony to his Holy Son, and appeared only in a voice, without any visible representment.

Notice the need for reserve and moderation even here: the cabinet is open "as much as the capacities of our present imperfections will permit"; the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity is revealed "in the veil" of incarnate humanity, the Third "in the shape" of the dove; the First Person is heard, not seen, in continuity with the revelation to Israel. This one event when "the cabinet of the mysterious Trinity" is opened before humanity does not reveal the inner life of the Godhead.

What is more, the cabinet is not opened again. This is the only event which Taylor describes as an opening of the cabinet, the clearest and fullest revelation of the Holy Trinity. Our confession of the Holy Trinity, then, should not exceed what is revealed at the theophany that is the Baptism of Our Lord (hence Taylor's view - more of much tomorrow - that the Apostles' Creed is the normative and authoritative statement of Trinitarian doctrine). This emphasises the extent to which Taylor's insistence on moderation and reserve in Trinitarian claims flows from nothing akin to the rationalist scepticism of the Socinians but from the order of revelation itself and a reverence for what is revealed.

That we need no more than this is also hinted at in Holy Living, when Taylor uses the same phrase to describe the mystery of our indwelling by the Trinity:

The temple itself is the heart of man; Christ is the high-priest, who from thence sends up the incense of prayers, and joins them to his own intercession, and presents all together to his Father; and the Holy Ghost, by his dwelling there, hath also consecrated it into a temple; and God dwells in our hearts by faith and Christ by his Spirit, and the Spirit by his purities: so that we are also cabinets of the mysterious Trinity; and what is this short of heaven itself, but as infancy is short of manhood, and letters of words? The same state of life it is, but not the same age. It is heaven in a looking-glass, dark, but yet true, representing the beauties of the soul, and the graces of God, and the images of his eternal glory, by the reality of a special presence.

To go beyond the bounds of revelation, to speculate about the inner life of the Blessed and mysterious Trinity, is to demonstrate an irreverent presumption, for we have been given "heaven in a looking-glass, dark, but yet true".

Why I support the ordination of women: a High Church reflection

A number of commenters on this blog have asked about my occasional expressions of support for the ordination of women to all three orders. With some hesitation, I have decided to post a summary of my own views on this matter. The hesitation is because I have sought on this blog to focus on issues and themes which can unify those who identify with or have respect (grudging or otherwise!) for what we might term 'classical' Anglicanism (the Anglicanism of the Formularies and - yes - of the Old High Church tradition). Some oppose the ordination of women (and I have friends and colleagues who do so, Anglo-Catholic, High Church, and Reformed Evangelical). Some of us support it (again, friends and colleagues covering a wide range of theological traditions). Below, I have organised my thinking around 5 points (needless to say, no reference to Dort is implied). 1. The Declaration for Subscription required of clergy in the Church of Ireland states: (6) I promise to submit ...

How the Old High tradition continued

Charles Gore's 1914 letter to the clergy of his diocese, ' The Basis of Anglican Fellowship ', can be regarded as a classical expression of the Prayer Book Catholic tradition. A key part of the letter - entitled 'Romanizing in the Church of England' - addressed the "Catholic movement", questioning beliefs and practices within it which tended to "a position which makes it very difficult for its extremer representatives to give an intelligible reason why they are not Roman Catholics". Gore provides the outlines of an alternative account and experience of catholicity within Anglicanism, defined by three characteristics. What is particularly interesting about these characteristics is their continuity with the older High Church tradition. Indeed, the central characteristic as set out by Gore was integral to High Church claims over centuries: To accept the Anglican position as valid, in any sense, is to appeal behind the Pope and the authority of t...

'Whether the Lutheran Churches have right Ordinations and perfect succession of Bishops': Jeremy Taylor, 'Episcopacy Asserted', and Lutheran orders

Amidst the bitter controversies over episcopacy in the Three Kingdoms during the early 1640s, controversies which had become war in Scotland in 1637 and then in England in 1642, Jeremy Taylor wrote his Laudian defence of episcopal order, The Sacred Order and Offices of Episcopacy Asserted and Maintained . He proposed in this work that the non-episcopal Reformed churches could have had episcopally-ordered clergy: Those good people might have had order from the bishops of England or the Lutheran churches, if at least they thought our churches catholic and Christian. Leaving aside the reality that, for example, French Protestants would have been placed in an invidious political position if they had done as Taylor proposed, it is the reference to "the Lutheran churches" which is significant. To begin with, a large portion of the Lutheran churches - those in the German lands - were governed by a system of superintendency. It is almost inconceivable that Taylor was not aware of th...

laudable Practice

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