Can you explain your understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity?” A member of a deacon ordination council posed this question to a candidate for the diaconate of a local Baptist church. The candidate had a strong record of faithful attendance, served the saints tirelessly, and had gained a reputation for godliness in life. Council members asked strong questions about the authority of Scripture, justification by faith, marriage, and a whole range of ethical issues facing Christians today. The candidate answered ably and faithfully. But when someone asked about the Trinity, the silence was palpable. The candidate froze, eyes wide. He finally said, “I think that mystery is a little too deep for me.”
That sentiment is all too familiar in evangelical churches. Even when the commitment to other matters of sound doctrine is strong and clear, Christians get nervous and uncertain in their commitment to the doctrine of the Trinity as revealed in Scripture and confessed by the church for many centuries. Beyond a timid affirmation that the doctrine is true, few have the interest or ability to articulate a Trinitarian confession clearly and faithfully.
Perhaps part of the reluctance is owing to the gravity of the subject matter. We are talking about God after all—the infinite, invisible, eternal, unchangeable, and omnipotent Creator of the entire universe. Surely finite creatures cannot fully understand the infinite God! Another factor may be the complexity of the doctrine. One must think and speak carefully to affirm that there is only one true and living God who eternally exists as three persons. It is all too easy to speak or think of the Trinity in a misguided way. Learning to speak faithfully, it seems, is a laborious task.
These concerns are not entirely illegitimate, but they do not constitute a reason for Christians to shy away from the doctrine of the Trinity. Augustine of Hippo acknowledged these concerns many centuries ago. Rather than shy away from the doctrine, however, he went on to write an extensive treatise on the subject, one that continues to serve Christians more than a millennium and a half later. Near the beginning of his treatise, he implores his readers,
“Dear reader, whenever you are as certain about something as I am go forward with me; whenever you stick equally fast, seek with me; whenever you notice that you have gone wrong come back to me; or that I have, call me back to you. In this way let us set out along Charity Street together, making for him of whom it is said, “Seek his face always” (Ps 105:4). . . . For nowhere else is a mistake more dangerous, or the search more laborious, or discovery more advantageous.” [1]
In that same spirit, I invite you to follow along with me as we consider the doctrine of the Trinity and why it matters for Christians. Let us not be silent about the Trinity for fear of danger or dread of laborious complexity. Rather, let us seek the face of the triune God that we may discover the everlasting advantage of knowing him according to his revelation of himself. In the few pages that follow, I first describe the doctrine theologically in an effort to state the basic affirmations that Christians make when they confess that God is a Trinity. Then, I defend the doctrine biblically, demonstrating that the doctrine of the Trinity is not the invention of men but the articulation of truth revealed in God’s very Word. Finally, I commend the doctrine of the Trinity as basic to the Christian faith and precious to all Christians.
THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY DESCRIBED THEOLOGICALLY
The doctrine of the Trinity is the unwavering Christian belief that there is only one true and living God who eternally exists as three distinct persons—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The three persons are really distinguished by their eternal relations to one another. The persons are united as one God in the indivisible unity of one essence.
Several things are worth noting about this description. First, it affirms that God is one and that God is three. Some people misunderstand the doctrine at precisely this point and so misrepresent it. Accusations of logical nonsense are often leveled against Christians who supposedly think that 1 + 1 + 1 = 3, a logical absurdity. But this kind of mathematical folly in no way represents what Christians believe. Instead, we recognize that the Bible speaks with equal clarity about God in two different ways: (1) there is only one true and living God, and (2) there are three distinct figures, each of whom is the one God. In order to speak consistently about God while affirming all that the Bible says about him, Christians have developed a set of conceptual terms to articulate the truth claims of the Bible itself. One such term is “essence” (or being), which Christians have used historically to speak about the oneness of God. To say that there is one divine essence is exactly the same thing as saying that there is one God. Another conceptual term that has developed over time is “person.” To speak of the divine persons is to speak of the real eternal relations between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So, God is one, and God is three. But he is not one and three in the same way, as the absurd math problem suggests. Rather, he is one in essence and three in persons.
Second, notice that the distinction between the persons is a distinction constituted by their relations to one another and by nothing else. Each person— Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—just is the one God. They are not different beings (essences) who happen to be of the same kind. Rather, there is only one being (essence), one God. Each of the three is the one God in a truly distinct way. The names of the persons tell us what we need to know about how they are distinct from one another. The names “Father” and “Son” name the first two persons in relation to each other. The Father is Father of the Son. The Son is Son of the Father. The word “spirit” in Scripture can be translated as “breath,” and so the name “Holy Spirit” names the third person of the Trinity in relation to the other two. He is the breath of the Father and the Son. The relations are between the persons eternally, such that, in the words of the Athanasian Creed, “neither is before or after another.” The Son is begotten of the Father eternally, but he is not a creature. The Holy Spirit proceeds eternally as breath from the Father and the Son, but he also is not a creature.
In other words, the relations between the divine persons of the Trinity are constitutive of the very being of God. Apart from these eternal relations between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, there would be no God.
THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY DEFENDED BIBLICALLY
Because many of the terms used to articulate this doctrine are not explicitly found in the Bible (e.g., Trinity, essence, person), it would be easy to conclude that the doctrine of the Trinity is the product of man-made philosophy rather than the revealed truth of Holy Scripture. Nothing could be further from the truth!
The doctrine of the Trinity is called a distributed doctrine, meaning that its truths are taught throughout Scripture rather than being contained in any single text. One way to demonstrate the scriptural teaching about the Trinity is by identifying five truth claims that Scripture makes about God and considering how these claims can all be true.
Statement 1: The Bible clearly teaches that there is only one true and living God.
Deuteronomy 6:4 says, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God. The Lord is one.” This statement—called the Shema from the Hebrew word for “hear”—identifies the most profound distinctive of the faith of Israel when compared with the other nations. Israel’s ancient neighbors all believed in the existence of many deities, many individual beings who belong to a class of beings called gods. Israel’s claim was radical. The Lord is not one among many of the same kind. He is altogether unique. There is none like him. The Lord says through the prophet Isaiah,
“I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me” (Isa 46:9). Scripture acknowledges the existence of supernatural, spiritual beings whom the nations worship as gods, but they do not belong in a category with the one true God. They are all creatures. The one true God is Creator of heaven and earth. The Psalmist declares, “For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; he is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the Lord made the heavens” (Ps 96:4–5; cf. Gen 1:1). The Bible clearly teaches that there is only one true and living God.
Statement 2: The Bible clearly teaches that the Father of Jesus Christ is the one true God.
God is named Father in relation to his covenant people in many places, in both the Old and New Testaments. However, there is an entirely unique Father-Son relationship between God and Jesus. John the apostle captures the uniqueness of this relationship when he calls Jesus the “only begotten” Son of God (John 3:16).2 Throughout the Four Gospels, Jesus refers to God as his Father in a unique and special way. Jesus refers to his Father as the one who is greater than all (John 10:29) and as the one who sent him into the world (John 5:37). The Jewish leaders in Jesus’s own day recognized that the one whom Jesus calls his own Father is the one true and living God who created heaven and earth. In fact, on one occasion when Jesus referred to God as his Father, the Jews “were seeking . . . to kill him” because “he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God” (John 5:18). The Bible clearly teaches that the Father of Jesus Christ is the one true God.
Statement 3: The Bible clearly teaches that the Son of God, Jesus Christ, is the one true God.
The apostle Paul reminds the Christians in Philippi that the Lord Jesus “emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant” (Phil 2:7). Further, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross (v. 8). He rose from the dead and is now exalted (v. 9). Prior to all this talk about what the Son became for us, Paul makes a profound statement about what Jesus was before taking the form of a servant. Paul says he “was in the form of God” (v. 6). As such, “equality with God” was not
something he had to strive for or reach out to seize. Rather, equality with God is something that is his by nature. In another passage, John informs us that in the beginning, the Son of God—whom John calls the Word—was “with God” and “was God” (John 1:1–2). Furthermore, the Word is the Creator of all things (v. 3). The Word is the same one who eventually became flesh and dwelt among us, whom we know as Jesus Christ (vv. 14, 17). Both Paul and John (along with the other writers of the New Testament) are teaching us that the man Christ Jesus, the Son of God, is himself the one true God.
Statement 4: The Bible clearly teaches that the Holy Spirit of God is the one true God.
When Ananias and Sapphira sold a plot of land, they gave some of the proceeds to the church in Jerusalem. In itself, this would be seen as a good thing to do. But the couple lied about how much money they gave. In their sinful pride, they desired to be recognized for a great act of selfless giving, which prompted them to tell this dreadful lie. When Peter confronted Ananias about his sin, he said, “Why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit?” (Acts 5:3). A few lines later, Peter concludes by saying, “You have not lied to man but to God” (v. 4). Peter equates the Holy Spirit with God. The apostle Paul also teaches that the Holy Spirit is God when he says to the Corinthians, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you” (1 Cor 3:16). Throughout Scripture, the temple is identified as God’s house. Paul refers to the Corinthian Christians as God’s temple because the Holy Spirit lives in them. Clearly, Paul and Peter are teaching that the Holy Spirit of God is the one true God.
Statement 5: The Bible clearly teaches that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are relationally distinct from one another.
The heresy of modalism teaches that God is only one person. Modalists believe the names Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are merely three names for the same person who manifests himself in different ways. Scripture, however, does not talk about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit this way. God the Father is not merely a father. He is the eternal Father of the Son and the one who sends the Son into the world (John
5:27). Clearly, the Father and the Son are not the same person. Furthermore, the Holy Spirit is said to proceed from the Father and to be sent into the world from the Father and the Son (John 14:26; 15:26). The Bible clearly teaches that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are relationally distinct from one another, not the same person.
Affirming All Five Statements
The few sentences offered above in support of each statement barely scratch the surface of the manifold ways the Bible overwhelmingly supports each claim. If each of these five statements is true, then the only coherent way to affirm all of them without contradiction is to affirm the orthodox Christian doctrine of the Trinity. In other words, if the five statements defended here are truly taught in Scripture, then the doctrine of the Trinity is truly taught in Scripture.
THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY COMMENDED AS BASIC CHRISTIAN TEACHING
Fear of theological mistakes and dread of laborious learning keep many Christians from gaining a sense of confidence in understanding and articulating the doctrine of the Trinity with clarity. The doctrine of the Trinity is too often relegated to the special study of highly qualified Christians, such as formally trained pastors and theologians. But this is an unspeakable tragedy! The doctrine of the Trinity is not the specialty of experts—it is the faith of all Christians. It is the fount from which all Christian truth flows. According to Scripture, knowing God is synonymous with belonging to the redeemed people of God. It is the only cause for legitimate boasting (Jer 9:23–24) and the only means to eternal life (John 17:3). It is the great hope and promise of the new covenant that all the people of God will know him (Jer 31:34), and it is the great task of the Christian life in the present age to seek to know him more (Phil 3:8–10). But one cannot know God without knowing the Trinity. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity claims that the one true God is the Trinity. Thus, knowing the Trinity is knowing God. No Christian can afford not to understand the doctrine of the Trinity.
It is true that Trinitarian theology can take Christians into some pretty deep waters. And navigating some of those waters requires some preparation, study, and guidance. But the doctrine of the Trinity is like an ocean. The child wading in the shallows and the explorer diving into the depths are in the same ocean. So, Christians, don’t be afraid—be excited! Wade into the shallows of the basic Christian conviction that the one true and living God eternally exists as three distinct persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. From there, move out ever deeper, exploring the depths as far as divine revelation, the capacity of your mind, and the opportunities you have for worshipful study and reflection will let you go. With the prophet Hosea, I implore you, “Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord” (Hos 6:3). Nowhere else is the discovery more advantageous.
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[1] Augustine of Hippo, The Trinity (De Trinitate), trans. Edmund Hill, ed. John E. Rotelle, vol. 5 of The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, pt. 1, Books, 2nd ed. (Brooklyn: New City Press, 2015), 1.1.5 (p. 67; emphasis added).
[2] For “only begotten Son,” see the NASB. The ESV reads, “only Son,” and the CSB reads, “one and only Son.” However, the Greek word monogenes is better translated as “only begotten.” For a strong argument to this effect, see Charles Lee Irons, “A Lexical Defense of the Johannine ‘Only Begotten,’” in Retrieving Eternal Generation, ed. Fred Sanders and Scott R. Swain (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2017), 98–116.
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