Why the Old Scheme Is Preferable

Article 11 of 13 in the series “The Old Paths of Trinitarian Doctrine: Reading Edmund Calamy’s Thirteen Sermons.”

Calamy’s eleventh sermon remains in Jeremiah 6:16. Travellers who meet diverging roads should stop, examine the paths, and ask which one reaches the proper destination. The same prudence is necessary in doctrine.

The previous sermon argued that Nicene Trinitarianism is the older public path. This sermon asks the more important question: which is the good way? Antiquity matters, but truth, coherence, worship, and saving consequences matter more.

Define the Two Schemes Fairly

The “old scheme” confesses one God in three personally distinct, coequal persons. The Son is eternally God and truly becomes man; the Holy Ghost is a divine person; Father, Son, and Spirit possess the same indivisible essence and receive divine worship.

The “new scheme” is not identical in every writer. Its recurring structure places the Father alone at the summit as underived and supreme God, with the Son and often the Spirit possessing derived, communicated, or inferior divinity.

Calamy knows that individual advocates differ. A comparison should therefore address representative propositions rather than pretending every person holds every consequence. This is particularly important because one of his arguments is that the new scheme itself lacks stable agreement.

Compare the Scriptural Proof

The old scheme receives the Bible’s descriptions of Father, Son, and Spirit in their full force while retaining its repeated declaration that God is one. The new scheme often treats the texts of divine equality as figurative, official, relative, or hyperbolic while treating texts of mission and humiliation as statements of essential rank.

Calamy regards that imbalance as methodologically revealing. A sound account must explain both classes of texts. Christ’s obedience cannot be denied, but neither can his creation of all things, knowledge of hearts, reception of worship, or possession of the divine name. The Spirit’s mission cannot cancel his omniscience, sovereign will, temple, and work of sanctification.

The old scheme has a place for both: equality according to divine nature and order according to personal relation and saving office. The new scheme purchases apparent simplicity by making large parts of Scripture say less than they naturally say.

Compare the Doctrine of Redemption

Calamy’s strongest practical comparison concerns the gospel itself. The old scheme provides a redeemer who is truly God and man. The person who obeys and suffers in the human nature possesses infinite dignity. The incarnation is genuine divine condescension, and the atonement is the act of the God-man.

The new scheme weakens that structure. If the Son is a created or inferior deity, the incarnation is no longer God assuming our nature. The language of being purchased with God’s own blood and of the Lord of glory being crucified must be reduced to loose attribution.

The problem extends to satisfaction. No mere creature can render an obedience equal in dignity to the dishonour sin directs against God. Calamy’s argument does not mean deity suffers as deity. It means the person who suffers in the assumed humanity is divine, giving his obedient sacrifice its unique worth.

The same applies to intercession and preservation. The mediator represents believers universally, knows every heart, hears every prayer, and saves to the uttermost. A finite mediator cannot sustain the office Scripture gives Christ.

Compare the Doctrine of Worship

The new scheme faces an unavoidable dilemma. It first reduces the Son to a creature or dependent god and then gives that being worship Scripture reserves for God.

Calamy summarizes the inconsistency sharply: it “first turns God into a creature, and then gives the creature the worship that belongs only to God.” The exact formulations of his opponents vary, but the structural problem remains. If Christ is not the true God, Christian invocation, baptism, the Lord’s Supper, doxology, and heavenly worship become difficult to distinguish from idolatry.

The old scheme preserves the Creator-creature boundary. Christ is worshipped not because a creature has received permission to share God’s throne, but because the incarnate Son eternally possesses the divine nature. The Holy Ghost is invoked not as an exalted angel but as the Lord and giver of life.

Compare Internal Coherence

Advocates of the new scheme sometimes charged Nicene theologians with disagreement over technical explanations. Calamy answers that the new writers are no more united. Some make the Son eternal; others place a beginning before creation. Some call him God properly; others only by office. Some permit prayer to Christ; others restrict it. Some affirm the Spirit’s worship while denying direct invocation.

Variation alone does not prove error. The argument is defensive: diversity cannot be used as a decisive objection when it characterizes both sides.

The more serious coherence test concerns categories. A “created God,” “subordinate omnipotence,” or “dependent necessary being” joins predicates that cancel one another. Calamy’s old scheme is mysterious, but its mystery is not created by attaching incompatible definitions to the same term.

Compare the Aim without Pretending to Read Hearts

Those defending the new scheme often claimed a noble aim: to protect the Father’s glory and the unity or supremacy of God. Calamy acknowledges that aim rather than attributing malice.

He answers that an intended honour can become an objective dishonour. The Father commands the honour of the Son, sends the Spirit, and reveals himself through both. Diminishing them cannot glorify him. A person may be sincerely zealous and still mistaken about what gives God glory.

The same charity must govern judgment in the other direction. Nicene language is not automatically faithful merely because it is traditional. People can repeat orthodox formulas with pride, bitterness, or hypocrisy. Calamy consistently distinguishes the truth of a proposition from the spiritual state of the person speaking it.

Compare the Method

Calamy prefers the method that begins with the whole canon, allows clear passages to interpret difficult ones, distinguishes nature from office, and refuses to let a theory dictate what Scripture must have said.

The new scheme often presents itself as the triumph of plain biblical language over scholastic terms. Yet it depends upon its own philosophical assumptions: that derivation entails inferior essence, that a personal order must be a scale of being, or that whatever cannot be imagined cannot be true.

No interpretation is free of conceptual judgment. The question is whether those judgments minister to the text or master it.

This is where Calamy’s approach has lasting importance for Confessional Bibliology. Historical and linguistic work is necessary, but the final standard remains the self-consistent Word of God. Neither patristic prestige nor modern novelty may occupy a magisterial seat over revelation.

The Good Way Gives Rest

“Rest for your souls” does not mean relief from every intellectual difficulty. Nicene doctrine openly confesses that the manner of triune existence is incomprehensible. Its rest is the stability of receiving what God has revealed without being driven between polytheism and a creaturely saviour.

The believer can pray without calculating ranks of deity, trust Christ without reservation, depend upon the Spirit without idolatry, and worship the Father without diminishing the Son. Salvation belongs to the one God and is administered personally by Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Calamy ends by urging sincere and impartial inquiry. The warning of Jeremiah applies not only to ignorance but to stubborn refusal: “We will not walk therein.” More light increases responsibility.

Yet even here, correct doctrine must become life. The person who holds the truth without holiness may be in a worse state than someone confused in understanding but humbly seeking God. The old path is not merely a conclusion to defend. It is a way to walk.

Previous: Article 10, “Ask for the Old Paths.”
Next: Article 12, “How Can These Things Be?”