The word ‘Trinity’ is not found in the Bible. Some dismiss it for that reason alone. To others it is a mysterious, even dubious concept, a stumbling block to sceptical minds, illogical and irrational. It’s widely thought to stem from mixing Biblical theology with Greek philosophy, and coming up with nonsense! Even if true, it’s considered to be impossible to explain or prove.

Anyway, what’s the point? Don’t Muslims hate the concept, insisting it distorts the truth about one God? Christian cults like Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christadelphians and Mormons, along with ‘Oneness’ (Jesus Only) Pentecostals deny it. And many Liberals, Unitarians, Deists and Quakers agree with them. Doesn’t it lead to some form of polytheism? Isn’t it just ‘gobble-de-gook’ designed to keep ‘armchair theologians’ busy but irrelevant to the real world?

God the Three-in-One

‘Trinity’ is a combination of two numbers – three and one. The word may not be in the Bible, but the theological concept definitely is. God is not a pure monad – undifferentiated one-ness, like Allah. Failure to understand this leads to something less than the God of the Bible. Manufacturing vague notions or popular ideas about God that don’t tally with what the Bible says about Him can become wishful thinking or even idolatry. If we really want to know God we have to listen to what He says about Himself. We find this in the Bible. If the Trinity isn’t scriptural, let’s forget all about it. It would have been easier for the Apostles and the Early Church Fathers if they had. They wouldn’t have suffered so much! But the data of their new spiritual experiences, the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, and the challenge posed by heretical opponents – Jewish and Gentile – forced them to articulate the truth about God as Trinity with deepening accuracy and insight over many centuries. How do we explain this concept?

Some use pictures, symbols and illustrations e.g. the family with its father, mother and child. Clover has three leaves and one stem. Water subsists as ice, liquid and steam. An actor changes costumes to play different roles in the play. Light behaves like particles, waves and observable rays. But all of these images are faulty, for none are truly trinitarian. They suggest successive roles or ‘modes’ of an undifferentiated singular Deity’s operations through time, or they indicate completely separate parts in God. But God is three-in-one, eternally three Persons in one God.

Defining the Trinity

There are five components to this idea of Trinity that find abundant support in Scripture:
1. There is only one essential being within God.
2. God eternally subsists in the form of three Persons or centres of
consciousness (Gen. 1:26, Elohim – ‘God’, is a plural noun. ‘Let us
make man…‘)
3. Each of these Persons is fully divine.
4. Each of these Persons is distinct from the other two, yet one with
them.
5. The three Persons have eternally co-existed as one God – Father,
Son and Holy Spirit.

The Bible contains this data and the Holy Spirit testifies to its truth in the hearts of genuine believers. Both witnesses tell us that there are three forms through whom God is revealed, each having total divinity. The Father is wholly God, the Son is wholly God and the Holy Spirit is wholly God – three Persons yet only one God.

Jesus the Son is distinct from the Father, yet he is as much God as the Father is.
The Holy Spirit is distinct from the Father and Son, yet truly personal and equally divine with the Father and the Son.

Yet there is only one God, not three distinct Gods, nor three chronologically successive modes of God’s existence, each cancelling out the previous one.

A mystery? Yes. But not an absurdity. We are talking about God here!

Can we ever fully understand Him? No. Tragically, the post-modern church is drifting away from Trinitarianism! It shows up in our approach to worship. We concentrate on Jesus. We neglect the Old Testament because its God seems contradictory to popular conceptions of Jesus. We even substitute other trinitarian ideas. A parody? Certainly, but with more than a grain of truth in it! Robin Parry suggests, ‘For many Christians the Trinity has become something of an appendix: it’s there, but they are not sure what its function is, they get by in life without it doing very much, and if they have it removed they wouldn’t be too distressed’ (Robin Parry, Worshipping Trinity, Paternoster, 2000). It seems utterly irrelevant for life today.

What do the Scriptures say?

The Bible is clear in its teaching on the being of God. It witnesses powerfully to our innermost instincts concerning our experiences of God, even if we cannot fully explain them yet. We have encountered His three-in-one-ness. We know the Father, Son and Holy Spirit – all three. Yet we remain staunch monotheists and not idolaters. To us there is only one God and we jealously guard that fact. God brooks no competitors, no rivals and no successors. He alone is worthy of our worship (Deut. 6:4; Exod. 20:3).

Yet, in Jesus Christ we also see One who eternally existed before the beginning of time and who was ‘face-to-face’ (Gk. pros) with God, and was God (John 1:1; 8:58). He so fully represented God, creating all things alongside God, that we can affirm him as God (John 14:9-10; Col. 1:15-16; 2:9; Heb. 1:1-4). It is therefore right to worship him as God (Matt. 2:2; John 20:28), for he does all of the things only God can do, like forgiving sin (Matt. 9:2), raising the dead (John 5:21), judging the world (Matt. 25:31ff; John 5:22-23) and claiming equality with God as His Son (John 10:33-39; Ps. 2:7; Rom. 1:4; Heb. 1:2-3). Tom Wright provocatively affirms, ‘To say that Jesus is in some sense God is of course to make a startling statement about Jesus. It is also to make a startling statement about God’ (N T Wright, Who Was Jesus?, SPCK, 1992, p5). There was no time when Jesus was not God. There will be no time when Jesus will not be God. There was a time he was not man but there will be no time he ceases to be man.

Similarly, the Holy Spirit was sent by the Father and the Son, and thus proceeds from them both (John 14:16). He was at work in creation also (Gen. 1:2). He is fully personal and divine like Jesus (John 14:16; 15:26; 16:7-8 – note the personal pronoun, Gk. ekeinos – ‘he’, when ‘Spirit’ is neuter). He is also eternal (Heb. 9:14). He intercedes for us, implying his omnipresence, omnipotence and omniscience (Rom. 8:26-27). He can be lied to, blasphemed and grieved (Acts 5:3-4, Eph. 4:30). He indwells us as God Himself living in His ‘temple’ (1 Cor. 3:16).

God-as-God-is-in-Himself (‘Immanent Trinty’) is revealed in the way He works in His world as God-as-God-is-towards-us (‘Economic Trinity’). There is no contradiction. Though there is more mystery than there is understanding on this matter, the facts underline a strict monotheism (there is only one God), pointing away from any hint of polytheism (many gods) or tri-theism (three Gods), towards Trinitarianism (belief in God as Three-in-One). It’s taken centuries to clearly interpret and articulate the evidence for this. More light may yet break forth.

What difference does it make?

Are there any important practical and world-changing implications to all this? Here’s a selection:

CREATION – Genesis 1 is essentially a polemic against the theology of ancient Egypt and all idolatrous worldviews. It kicks out all other gods except Yahweh. It rubbishes purely mechanistic and naturalistic explanations for the existence and maintenance of space, time, matter, particles, planets and people. The Triune God created them all ex-nihilo, in six diurnal days, through His Word and Spirit, declaring everything to be ‘very good’, ie perfect and not in the ‘experimental stage’! All creation reflects God’s nature and power as Trinity (Gen. 1:1-2; Isa. 6:3; Rom. 1:20; Col. 1:15-20). Each element in it has a separate integrity but is also inter-related as one – a universe not a multi-verse. God alone is to be praised for everything that exists.

SALVATION – The Bible affirms salvation as exclusively God’s work. Rituals, saints, good works, sacraments, relics or pilgrimages cannot save us. If the Father had not devised a plan for our salvation by placating His holy wrath against our sin, and rescuing us through His Son’s perfect life and atoning death on the cross, then recovering us by the invasive power of the Holy Spirit who re-created and washed us, we would all be lost. We need to believe on Jesus, be justified and adopted by God, and baptised in the Holy Spirit. Salvation involves the whole Trinity.

UNIQUENESS – The Trinity offers but one way of salvation to all mankind. God is distinguishable from all pagan deities and even the Gods of monotheistic religions like Judaism and Islam, because He is now revealed in Christ and the coming of the Spirit as Trinity. The gospel excludes alternative routes to salvation for mankind. The gospel’s exclusive so it can be inclusive. If we believe all roads lead to God, there’s no incentive to invite others to change direction. But God will not abandon people to religious lies or damning error. He says, ‘You shall have no other gods besides me’ (Exod. 20:3). We can’t opt to worship Him under different names or alien identities. God has rights too. He has revealed Himself as Trinity – Father, Son and Spirit – for us and our salvation. Other routes are only blind alleys. Our God is unique.

RELATIONSHIPS – The Trinity is the origin of human relationships. This is the essence of our being made in God’s image. ‘God is love’ because He has always had someone to love – the Persons of the Godhead. He did not need us, but He wanted a bigger family to share His happiness with. The loving inter-action and inter-dependence of Father, Son and Spirit from all eternity, means that society and fellowship began before angels or men existed. We reflect the perfect matrix of the Trinity in our relating well together. Churches can show the world how to do this. At the root of all present-day oppressive dictatorships, divided or monochrome societies, devaluation of certain individuals and the inability to cultivate loving community, is a denial of the Trinity.

HUMANITY, AUTHORITY AND SUBMISSION – The Trinity is surprisingly ‘human’, not because God is like us but because we are like Him, singular yet plural. God is an ordered, loving, equal and generous society of Persons, each free to be themselves. There is no contradiction between freedom and submission to authority in human relationships, because it’s there in the Godhead. The Son obeys the Father and the Spirit executes their will in submission to both. Yet all are equally God and possess equal dignity and honour. Marriage reflects this supremely (Eph. 5:22-25; 1 Cor. 11:2-16, 1 Tim. 2:11-15). It should model God’s order so that both church and society can also do so.

PHILOSOPHY – The ultimate questions in philosophy concern worldview issues: Who are we? Where did we come from? How do things ‘fit’? Where are we going? This is the problem of ‘The One and the Many’ – how does amazing diversity in the cosmos find its ultimate unity? The answer is that God Himself is the original ‘One and Many’. He loves diversity but He anchors it in total unity. God is therefore more glorified by heterogeneity than homogeneity. There’s no beauty without variety, only boredom. The regimentation of societies, churches, tastes and preferences is ugly. God set the whole creation free to be itself yet ordered and unified it in Himself, its Creator. This belief made science possible.

TRIADIC SPEECH – The Bible is full of this. God is plural (Ps. 135:5-6; Isa. 6:3; 48:16; 63:9-10; Ps. 33:6; Hag. 2:5-7). John the Baptist’s call to conversion involved God, Christ and Spirit (Matt. 3:1-11). All three Persons were present at Christ’s baptism (Matt. 3:16-17). The baptismal ‘naming’ formula of Jesus is trinitarian (Matt. 28:19). Note Paul’s triune blessing of believers (2 Cor. 13:14), his three-fold praise for our salvation, his trinitarian prayers
(Eph. 1:3-14; 3:14-17), the way spiritual gifts are attributed to all three, how successful church life flows from them too (1 Thess. 1:3-4), and the fact that Christian unity is anchored in triune diversity-in-unity (1 Cor. 12:4-6; Eph. 4:1-7). We need to become more Trinity-aware and consciously vocal about this in our God-talk with others!

WORSHIP – True worship is trinitarian or it is not Christian at all. It is a journey to the Father, through the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit. All three Persons of the Godhead are to be acknowledged, honoured, praised and intimately encountered in worship activities that aim to please God. We can have fellowship with Father, Son and Holy Spirit, all three, and enjoy their manifest presence among us. Each person is fully alive in and through the other because of their mutual indwelling in the Godhead (Gk. perichoresis – ‘interpenetration’). When we encounter one, we also encounter all three – God above us; God beside us; God inside us. Amazing! It makes you want to worship!

Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty!
All Thy works shall praise Thy Name,
in earth and sky and sea;
Holy, holy, holy! Merciful and mighty,
God in Three Persons, blessed Trinity!

(Last stanza of the hymn, Holy, Holy, Holy by Reginald Heber, 1783-1826)

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GOD IN THREE PERSONS

by Greg Haslam

Westminster Chapel, London, UK