No worries, ACB. I understand where you are coming from. I just wanted, in line with the OP, to point out how I think your comments (along with BWs) are helpful but where we should be careful to not draw on them for areas they don't provide help on . . .
ANYWAY,
I want to expand some on the OP if I may. First, Hana asked, appropriately enough, for some Bible verses. So let me provide them, but first, let me say something about the place of the Bible in all of this (again, from a classical perspective).
The Trinity is a mystery. That means several things. First, it means that it cannot be known to be true or discovered apart from revelation (that is, apart from the Bible). No amount of philosophical reasoning that starts with creation will get you to the Trinity. You need premises that you get from Scripture to get to a God who is Three in One. Of course, the Bible does give us those premises (as I'll point out below), but I would quickly point out that those ideas come from the New Testament. There may well be hints of the plurality of Persons in the Godhead in the OT, but those hints are only meaningful in the light of Christ. That is,
it is Jesus Christ, the God-man, who has revealed that there are three Persons in God.
Second, it means that it (the Trinity Itself, which is nothing less than God Himself) cannot be fully fathomed by the human mind. This is, of course, not because of the popular notions like "God's ways are above yours ways." It is rather simply a recognition of the fact that God is unlimited and we are limited; moreover, everything in our experience is limited, and our reasoning process itself is a limited process. As such, we are no more equipped to grasp the infinite than the blind man is to grasp the beauty of a sunset.
These two ideas, however, do not mean that we cannot reason about the Trinity, that the doctrine cannot be comprehended, that we cannot explain "how" God can be Three in One, or that it is somehow wrong or impious or demeaning to subject our understanding of God to the deepest scrutiny we can. We must remember, again, that there is an important sense in which the Trinity is not a mystery, but rather it is a set of theological statements that explain how the five propositions mentioned in the OP are all true and coherent. That explanation--the Doctrine of the Trinity--
must be distinguished from what it explains--the Reality of the Trinity. As such, when we say we can explain and understand the Trinity, we know we are speaking of the doctrine, that is, our attempt to explain in a coherent fashion the five biblical principles already mentioned; moreover, when we say we cannot fully understand the Trinity, this distinction allows us to remember that we are speaking then only of the Divine Nature itself, which cannot be fathomed by the human mind. So with those qualifications, I want to turn attention again to the
doctrine of the Trinity. In saying I understand this and that I hope I can explain it, I am not, given the distinction above, claiming that I grasp the Divine Nature itself in its Infinity! That's something that we'll have to wait for eternity on.
Let's begin, then, with revisiting the original five propositions I laid out. Here they are with the relevant biblical support:
- 1. There is one God (Deut 4:35; Isa 44:6)
2. There is a Person called the Father who is God (Matt 23:9; 1 Cor 8:6)
3. There is a Person called the Son who is God (John 1:1, 14; 8:58; Phil 2:5-11)
4. There is a Person called the Holy Spirit who is God (Acts 5:3-4; 1 Cor 2:10)
5. These three Persons are distinct; that is, the Father is not identical to the Son or Spirit, nor is the Son identical to the Spirit. (Matt 27:46; Heb 9:14)
So let me briefly comment on each of these.
There is one God
This must be considered the central message of the Old Testament, that there is one God, that He alone created the heavens and the earth, that He is absolutely sovereign, that all men are accountable to Him, and that He has chosen to reveal Himself to man and through man, in particular, through the nation of Israel. Thus, Israel from her earliest history had to be broken of the polytheism they learned in Egypt. "To you it was shown, that you might know that the Lord Himself is God; there is none other besides Him." If they were to be a "kingdom of priests" (Exod 19:6), they needed to understand that there is only one God and that they represent Him. In light of this, Isaiah would later say, "‘I am the First and I am the Last; besides Me there is no God." Not only is Israel's God the true God, He is the only God. All other gods, and thus all other obligations, are false and even destructive. Given all this, whatever we say about God and the Trinity, we must be sure to ensure that all of it is consistent with strict monotheism.
The Father is God
God is called "father" in both the Old and New Testaments. He is not an impersonal force, but a Person in the highest sense of the word. He cares for His people. He
begets them, not merely creates them. People are God's children (or at least they are invited to be, depending on your theology), not merely His creations. Therefore, we come to God not just as our King, though He is that, but as our Beloved, as the object of our affections. Devotion to God isn't a matter of religious obligation, but rather of being
invited to be
with the Infinite Himself. The honor is deep and one we should live in light of every day.
The Son is God
The OT may give hints at the deity of the Messiah, but it is not until Jesus arrives that we understand that there is a person called the Son who really is God in the strict sense of the word. "The Word was God . . . and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us" John says. Jesus is not merely
like God. He
is God. Yes, Jesus was fully a man, and as such, He was born and grew and suffered pains and weakness and hunger. He learned and feared and felt joy and love and anger and frustration. He was located in a particular time and place. And yet, being God, He was also omnipresent (not located in any particular time and place), omniscient (not lacking any knowledge), absolutely perfect and thus lacking nothing, etc. This is only possible and must be because Christ had
two natures, not just one. He had a human nature (and all that entails) and ALSO a divine nature (and all that entails). He had two wills. Two intellects. But He was one Person. That Person was human because of His human nature, but divine because of His divine nature.
The Holy Spirit is God
The OT speaks of a "Spirit of God," but it is in Christ and the New Testament that we understand that He is a distinct Person, fully God. In Acts 5, Peter tells Ananias and Sapphira that they lied to the Holy Spirit, to God Himself. Paul tells us that the Holy Spirit searches the infinite mind of God and teaches us His thoughts. He can be grieved. He comforts. Yet He creates. He saves. His coming was more advantageous than God's presence in the flesh. All of this requires that we recognize His full deity. He is exactly what God is--the Creator of heaven and earth, absolutely perfect, lacking nothing, loving us and guiding us, etc. He is, then, a Person in and of Himself.
The three Persons are distinct
It is tempting say, and some say it, that the three Persons are, in fact, one Person, that "they" are just the same Person in this or that mode. But that position is clearly against Scripture. For instance, in Matt 27:46, on the Cross, Jesus calls out to the Father and asks why He--God--had forsaken Him--Jesus. Even after all the discussion about Him quoting the psalms is passed, the fact remains that Jesus seems to say that the Father has forsaken the Son. That is only possible if the two Persons are distinct, for a Person cannot forsake Himself. The alternative suggestion is that Jesus wasn't forsaking Himself, that He was just being cryptic or poetic. I don't think that takes the text seriously. A related argument is found in Heb 9:14. There, Paul asks, "how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? " Notice tat the blood of Christ was offered
to God (the Father, clearly). If the Father and the Son were the same person, Jesus would be shedding His blood and offering it to Himself . . . a strange proposition, to put it charitably. Further, He sheds that blood
through the Eternal Spirit. He doesn't offer the blood through Himself or through the Father, but through someone else. Once again, it seems to me that if we are going to take Scripture seriously, we have to recognize that the three Persons really are distinct. That is, that they are not the same Person.
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In future posts, I'll further elaborate on how these Three can be One, on the definition of "person" and what we mean by "procession" and the relations between them. But I hope that this is a bit clearer than some of the material I ran through very briefly before . . .
God bless!
I don`t understand it at all! BUT I shall keep reading your post and let it sink in on a spiritual kind of level, I don`t understand it yet but there is something in your post that is reaching me somewhere.