Ministerial Reflections

The Rev. Jeffrey D. Lang, minister at the First Presbyterian Church of Glendale, Ohio

Christians are Trinitarian monotheists. They believe in one God (Deuteronomy 6:4; Isaiah 45:5; 1 Corinthians 8:4-6) who eternally exists as three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19; 2 Corinthians 13:14). Each person is fully God. There are not three gods (Isaiah 44:6), nor is God one person wearing three masks (Matthew 3:16-17; John 14:16-17). That is the doctrine of the Trinity in sum. It is written across the pages of Scripture (Matthew 28:19; 1 Peter 1:2) and explained in the historic creeds of the church.

The church didn’t invent the Trinity in committee, nor did any council or king impose the doctrine. Church councils did refine the concepts and language involving the Trinity, like substance and persons, as they responded to a variety of heresies. But those councils articulated the faith that the church already held. Scripture painted a picture of God that the first Christians couldn’t ignore. It is particularly compelling to consider that the earliest Christians were Jews who had daily recited the Shema: ‘The Lord is one’ (Deuteronomy 6:4). Yet, after they encountered a man who forgave sins (Mark 2:5-7), healed the sick (Matthew 4:23), raised the dead (Luke 7:14-15; John 11:43-44), received worship (Matthew 14:33; 28:9; John 20:28), and spoke about sharing the Father’s glory before the world began (John 17:5), things changed. After the resurrection and ascension of Jesus (Acts 1:9), those first believers experienced the Spirit as a personal presence who could be grieved (Ephesians 4:30), who spoke (Acts 13:2), and who empowered Christians for life and witness (Acts 1:8). Holding those varied experiences together in a consistent and coherent picture of God is what the doctrine of the Trinity does.

The Bible says that Yahweh, or the Father, is God (Isaiah 63:16; John 6:27; 1 Corinthians 8:6). The Bible says that Jesus is God (John 1:1, 14; John 20:28; Titus 2:13; Hebrews 1:8). The Bible also says that the Holy Spirit is God (Acts 5:3-4; 1 Corinthians 3:16; 2 Corinthians 3:17). Again, while the Bible affirms the oneness of God (Deuteronomy 6:4; James 2:19), it also names Father, Son, and Holy Spirit together under one divine name (Matthew 28:19) and in ways that place all three within the identity of that one God (1 Corinthians 12:4-6; Ephesians 4:4-6). Christians, based on the Scriptures, explain that God is one substance or essence in three persons. The testimony of the Scriptures compel that language.

Some might object and say that the word Trinity never appears in the Bible. Muslims, who affirm a unitarian monotheism, often level that argument at Christians. Muslims speak of tawhid, or the absolute oneness of God. However, the term tawhid itself doesn’t appear once in the Quran. Yet that term fairly describes how the Quran presents God. Just so, while the word Trinity isn’t in the Bible, the concept is, and Trinity is the term Christians have come to use as a simple tag for the Bible’s conception of God.

Most of the analogies folks use to try to describe the Trinity, well-meaning as they are, fall short of what the Bible says. Water as ice, liquid, and steam suggests one substance changing forms or modes, which isn’t an illustration of the biblical Trinity but the ancient error of modalism. Others point to an egg with its shell, white, and yolk as suggestive of three parts, none of which constitute the whole egg. That illustration falls into a different error, partialism. The real answer is that God is wholly unique. Nothing in creation is like God (Exodus 15:11; Isaiah 40:18, 25; Isaiah 46:9). However, Augustine of Hippo offered one idea that is especially suggestive and might more closely approximate the biblical conception of God than others: love. Love isn’t an object or thing like water or an egg. Love is something God is. Love requires a lover, the one loved, and the bond of love between them. If the very nature of God is love (1 John 4:8, 16), a love from all eternity, before anything created (John 17:24), then love was always present in God as lover, beloved, and the shared love between them. However, even this analogy stretches and strains, and begins to fall apart, since the Spirit is a person and not merely a bond between two others.

A unitarian deity would need a world in order to love. The Triune God of Scripture did not need to create (Acts 17:24-25). God created out of His fullness of His being, not out of necessity (Revelation 4:11). God in the Bible created not to find or discover love, but to share a love that already existed.

The biblical conception of God as Triune informs how we live. We humans seem made for relationship (Genesis 2:18). That inclination to relationship is no aimless accident. Rather, it reflects the God in whose image we were created (Genesis 1:26-27). Salvation, on Christian terms, includes God’s declaration that we are righteous because of Christ’s imputed righteousness (Romans 4:5-6; 2 Corinthians 5:21; Philippians 3:9), but it cannot be reduced to a bare legal transaction. Salvation is also an invitation into a relationship, into a fellowship and community (John 17:21-23; 1 Corinthians 1:9; 1 John 1:3) that existed before time began (John 17:5, 24).

The New Testament leaves no choice to the Christian but to describe God as Triune because salvation is Trinitarian from start to finish (Ephesians 1:3-14; Titus 3:4-6; 1 Peter 1:2). The Father sends the Son (John 3:16-17; Galatians 4:4). The Son gives His life to redeem (Mark 10:45; 1 Peter 1:18-19). The Spirit gives faith to turn to God and trust in the Son (John 16:8; 1 Corinthians 12:3), and indwells the believer (John 14:17; Romans 8:9-11). So understood, the Trinity is less a puzzle to solve than a message of assurance and comfort (Romans 8:15-17, 38-39). We are invited into an eternal relationship with the one God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (John 14:23; John 17:21).