What is the Trinity?

This is perhaps the hardest concept related to the study of God to quickly describe.  In fact, it is so complicated, that it took the church 325 years to arrive at a solid, scriptural description of this doctrine that all orthodox Christians could agree on.   That doesn't mean that they took that long to believe that God is triune; it means that the topic was so important that the church fathers took that long to get it right!

 

Here is the nutshell version: "There is one God who has eternally existed as three Persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit."  

 

Here is the first orthodox description of the trinity, produced by the Council of Nicea in 325. This confession has stood as the foundation of all true Christian churches since then. 

The Nicene Creed

I believe in one God,
the Father almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
 of all things visible and invisible.

I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
 the Only Begotten Son of God,
 born of the Father before all ages.
 God from God, Light from Light,
 true God from true God,
 begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;
 through him all things were made.
 For us men and for our salvation
 he came down from heaven,
 and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,
 and became man.
 For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate,
 he suffered death and was buried,
 and rose again on the third day
 in accordance with the Scriptures.
 He ascended into heaven
 and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
 He will come again in glory
 to judge the living and the dead
 and his kingdom will have no end.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
 who proceeds from the Father and the Son,
 who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified,
 who has spoken through the prophets.

I believe in one, holy, catholic* and apostolic Church.
 I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins
 and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead
 and the life of the world to come.

Amen.

*Catholic here is taken in the sense of "universal," not uniquely that church whose head is the Roman Pope. 

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The Struggle Against Error

From the very beginning of Christianity, there have been people who have gotten the theology of God's Triune nature wrong.  These wrong theologies, these heresies, are dangerous.  There are some doctrines over which we can agree to disagree.  There are some theologies where a spectrum of belief is not only okay but expected because the Bible is less than clear in that area.  This is not one of those areas.  The language of the Nicene Creed is as exact as it is because the early church fathers all agreed that we had to get this right. Any variation on this question leads to serious error.  

Rather than focusing on the historical heresies around the doctrine of the trinity, we will focus on the contemporary groups that get this doctrine wrong.  You are not likely to get a knock on the door by Nestorians, but you will likely run into the following groups.  Be forewarned.  They get this very important doctrine wrong, and it makes shipwreck of everything else they do. 

  • The Unitarians are wrong. Unitarianism comes in several varieties today.  Whether it's Oneness Pentecostalism, the Unitarian Congregationalists, or Unitarian Universalists, they all focus on taking the three persons of the Godhead and smashing them into one person.  Orthodox trinitarianism states that One God has eternally existed as three Persons.  Unitarians say that there is only One Person of the Godhead.  The common way of stating this is that this one God has manifested himself differently throughout the different ages of religious history (The Jews knew him as Father; he was called Jesus when he came to live and die for us, and now he indwells us as the Holy Spirit).  This view runs ashore on the rocks of scripture, however, as numerous places in the Bible distinguish the three persons of the Godhead as acting simultaneously as distinct persons at the same moment in time (Isa 48:16; Mat 3:16-17). 

  • The Mormons are wrong.  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints teaches that the three persons of the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three distinct persons.  The problem is that they do not teach that they are all of one divine substance.  Mormonism is not a monotheistic religion, maintaining that there are three distinct gods cooperating in the maintenance and operation of our solar system.  In fact, if pressed, Mormons will need to concede that there are multitudes of gods out there, since any man (living on any planet) may ascend to godhood.  God the Father is simply a glorified man.  They will clarify that there is only one god "with whom we have to deal," but he is not unique in his godhood or status.  Their god is not sufficient, not eternal, not omnipotent, and not anything like the God of the Bible.  This doctrine fails on every passage in the Bible that declares that there is only one God (Deut 4:35, 39; 6:4; John 17:3; Jas 2:19). 

  • Jehovah's Witnesses are wrong. They believe that there is One God, but they do not believe that there are three divine persons.  They identify only God the Father as a divine person.  The Son is seen as the first created being, the greatest of all angelic entities, but he is not God.  The Holy Spirit is seen as a personification of the power of the Father when He works, not as a person at all. This has roots in an ancient heresy called Arianism.  This heresy is the reason that the Nicene Creed was written! Even though this system of belief was soundly and thoroughly rejected by the early church, the idea persists with a different face in Jehovah's Witnesses.  This doctrine is shipwrecked by the many passages which explicitly teach the divinity of Jesus Christ (Psa 2:7, 11-12; John 1:1-3, 14; Col 1:15-20; Heb 1:1-4). 

  • Christian Science is wrong. This pseudo-Christian group claims that Jesus was a man who was filled with a divine being, the Christ.  Jesus, when he was born, was simply a man.  Then, a divine person called the Christ principle, or Christ consciousness, filled him at his baptism.  From that point until moments before his crucifixion, he was controlled by this divine being.  The divine person left Jesus on the Cross so that he died as a man, not as God. This fails every test of orthodoxy, denying both the divinity of Jesus and the unity of the Godhead.  In fact, it is also a modern manifestation of an ancient heresy, Gnosticism.  This heresy is so old that the apostle John specifically wrote his gospel and epistles to address its early formulations (John 1:1-3, 14; 1 John 1:1; 4:2; 5:6).  Also, the Chalcedonian council in AD 451 dealt specifically with the intersection of Christ's human and divine natures in the one incarnate God-man and soundly defeated the underlying theology of Christian Science. 

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Additional Scriptures To Consider

God is Triune. He has eternally existed in three persons: 

    1. God, the Father: 

      1. Isa 63:16    

      2. Deu 32:6   

      3. Isa 44:6  

    2. God, the Son: 

      1. Psa 2:7, 11-12   

      2. Isa 7:14   

      3. Jhn 1:1-3, 14   

      4. Col 1:15-20   

      5. Heb 1:1-4   

    3. God, the Holy Spirit

      1. Act 5:3-4   

      2. 2Co 3:17-18   

      3. Heb 9:14   

      4. The words of the Holy Spirit are the words of God: 

        1. 2Ti 3:16   

        2. 2Pe 1:21   

      5. When the Holy Spirit Fills us, we are filled by God: 

        1. 1Co 6:19   

    4. These three persons are distinct and not modal or functional exhibitions of one person.  This is seen clearly in moments when multiple persons of the Godhead are seen to exist distinctly from one another simultaneously. 

      1. Isa 48:16   

      2. Mat 3:16-17   

      3. Mat 12:28   

      4. Mat 28:19-20   

      5. Jhn 15:26   

    5. These three persons are of one nature and substance, co-equal in glory and power. 

      1. Jhn 10:30   

      2. Phl 2:5-7  

      3. Heb 9:14   

      4. The Father glorifies the Son

        1. Psa 2:7-8   

        2. Psa 110:1   

        3. Jhn 8:54  

        4. Phl 2:9-10   

      5. The Son Glorifies the Father: 

        1. Jhn 17:1, 4-5   

        2. Phl 2:9-11   

      6. The Spirit glorifies the Son (Jhn 16:13-15)

      7. The Son honors the Spirit in special judgments for those who sin against the Spirit (Mar 3:28-30) 

    6. There is neither ontological nor substantial hierarchy within the Godhead.  This is attested to, in part, by the fact that in the listings of the persons of the Godhead in scripture, no one person is always listed first.  In fact, every possible arrangement of the three persons can be found in scripture: 

      1. Father, Son, Spirit (Matthew 28:19)

      2. Father, Spirit, Son (1 Peter 1:2)

      3. Son, Father, Spirit (John 14:16; 2 Cor 13:14)

      4. Son, Spirit, Father (Ephesians 2:18)

      5. Spirit, Father, Son (John 14:26)

      6. Spirit, Son, Father (John 15:26; 1 Cor 12:4-6)

    7. The subordination within the Godhead of one person to another has to do with submission rather than subjugation.  Christ, being equal to the Father in nature and essence was not forced to submit His will to the Father out of fear of retribution or domination.  Neither is the Holy Spirit Coerced into glorifying the Son.  Rather, such submission is willful and voluntary, out of love and unity of purpose. 

      1. Jhn 5:19-20, 30 

      2. Phil 2:5-7

    8.  The three persons of the Godhead are all involved in all the works of God, although they play different roles in those processes. 

      1. The Father is Creator (Gen 1:1) 

      2. The Spirit is Creator (Gen 1:2) 

      3. The Son is Creator (Jhn 1:3) 

      4. The Father is Savior (Isa 43:10-11) 

      5. The Son is Savior (1Jo 4:14) 

      6. The Spirit Saves:

        1. Jhn 3:5 

        2. Eph 1:13-14 

      7. The Father Judges (1Pe 1:17)   

      8. The Son Judges (Jhn 5:22) 

      9. The Holy Spirit Judges (Jhn 16:8-11)