One of the most distinctive doctrines of orthodox Christianity is that God is a Trinity: one Being who exists as three distinct Persons. Early church writers such as Ignatius, who was alive during the time of the apostles, spoke of Jesus as God yet regarded Him as somehow distinct from the Father. The church as a whole recognized from the beginning the basic idea of God as Triune, and when this view was opposed by Arius in the fourth century, a council met at Nicea to draw up a creed that affirmed Trinitarian theology. Later councils refined the various formulas to rule out errors of understanding. (See this page for the relevant creeds.) From that time forward, the doctrine of the Trinity as such was unchallenged within the church until the last couple centuries. Since that time, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, and a few Pentecostal groups have rejected the Trinity for some other model. Today, a clear affirmation of the Trinity serves as a key test of a church's or denomination's orthodoxy, and is one of the few requirements for membership in the National Association of Evangelicals and in the Evangelical Theological Society.
In its simplest form, the doctrine of the Trinity may be summed up as follows:
A theology that denies any of these statements is called sub-Trinitarian. Denying the first statement would be Oneness Pentecostals, and ancient groups known as modalists or Sabellians, who hold that God is one Person who simply manifests Himself as Father, Son, or Spirit depending on His activity or purpose. Most cults deny the second statement and hold that Jesus is not fully God, and that the Spirit is an impersonal force. The late Bible teacher Finis Jennings Dake denied the third statement and held that there are three Gods, even going so far as to call them three Jehovahs.
How can God be both one and three? From biblical teaching we gather that there is only one God whose name is Yahweh (Deut. 6:4; Isa. 45:5), and so the Triune God is one being. Together they have one name (Matt. 28:19). Statements in the New Testament indicate that the Father, Son, and Spirit share the same nature, essence, and attributes (John 10:30; Col. 1:13-20; Heb. 1:3). There is such an equality among the three that the Father, Son, and Spirit may all be described with the Greek word for God, theos (e.g., John 1:1; 20:28; Acts 5:3-4; 2 Pet. 1:1), although the word is generally used in the New Testament to specify the Father (2 Pet. 1:2). Likewise, they are all said to be eternal, having always existed and transcending this universe. There was not a moment when the Father, Son, or Spirit came into being (John 17:24; Heb. 1:8-10; 9:14).
But we would also say that the Father, Son, and Spirit are eternally separate (distinct) Persons. We know this because the Father and the Son spoke to each other (Matt. 3:17; John 17), and especially because of the interaction among them in verses such as John 14:16: "I [Jesus] will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate, so that He may be with you forever." (Verse 26 identifies the Advocate as the Holy Spirit.) The Spirit is not an impersonal force, because He speaks (Acts 13:2), gives orders (Acts 1:2), interecedes (Rom. 8:26), has a will (Acts 15:28), knows things (1 Cor. 2:11), and can be grieved (Eph. 4:30).
Why is the Trinity so hard to understand for many people? I believe it is because we often use illustrations and analogies to explain concepts, and analogies fail here. Any comparisons we make do more to show what the Trinity is not, than what the Trinity is. The Persons of the Trinity are not parts of God, as the shell, white, and yolk are parts of an egg, or as a person might be considered to be body, soul, and spirit. They do not become one another, as water becomes steam or ice. They are not a set of separate beings with the same title, as the Senate is a body of so many senators. Nor are they simply three ways God can manifest Himself, as a cone might appear as a circle or triangle, depending on its angle.
The doctrine of the Trinity is, first of all, extremely important to what we think of Jesus. We cannot understand Jesus' mission without recognizing Him both as the Spirit-anointed Son of Man, and as the fully divine Son of God. Jesus perfectly revealed God because He was God. His claims to equality with God (John 5:18) and the authority with which He spoke are not models for us to follow; He was speaking by virtue of His deity. We notice, for example, that even the archangel Michael could not rebuke Satan but could only appeal to God (Jude 8), but Jesus did not hesitate to issue rebukes on His own authority (Matt. 16:23). He was careful to distinguish His relationship with the Father from ours (John 20:17). Much of what Jesus said and did, and much of how He is described in both Testaments, makes sense only when we recognize Jesus as God.
And yet, Jesus often spoke of Himself as distinct from the Father (John 5:19) and from the Spirit (John 16:13-14). If they were all one in every sense, how then could Jesus worship and pray to the Father, be filled with the Spirit, be forsaken by God, or be raised from the dead by the power of the Spirit? The Bible does not explain how the three Persons exist as one being, but only then can we understand that when Jesus, whom we worship as God, suffered and died, God the Trinity did not cease to exist for three days. Nor did the universe fly apart, when it is the Son who holds it all together (Col. 1:17).
Jesus Christ indeed suffered in His human nature and as such was limited in all the ways we humans are (yet without sin), but this is not to say He gave up His deity or the attributes that make Him God. In His divine nature, Jesus is and always has been unchanging, immortal, and unlimited (Heb. 13:8), even during His earthly ministry. Death is not the end of existence for Jesus or for us–it is a departure from this body and from our earthly life, until the body and soul are reunited in resurrection. Working out the nature or natures, will or wills, mind or minds, etc.–what it must have been like for Jesus during His incarnation–is a complicated task, but what is important is that we recognize the Incarnated Jesus as fully human, empowered by the Spirit, and yet fully and eternally God, although a Person distinct from God the Father.
The Trinity is also vital to our understanding of the gospel. A sinless, even fully righteous, human being would perhaps, maybe, based on a great deal of speculation, be a suitable substitute for one person, if he could endure infinite wrath in a moment's time. But Jesus incurred the wrath of God as a "ransom for many". God laid on His account "the iniquity of us all" (Isa. 53:6; Matt. 20:28). Hebrews 7 (in fact, the whole book of Hebrews) goes into detail about how Jesus' deity uniquely qualified Him as a once-for-all-time sacrifice for all who would believe in Him. Only as a man could Jesus suffer and die, but only as God could He make an appeal to the Father. Only as both could He be a Mediator (1 Tim. 2:5).
One of the key texts that teaches us what is involved in the salvation experience is Romans 10:8-10: "But what does it say? 'The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart,'–that is, the word of faith which we are preaching, that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved, for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation." Confessing that Jesus is Lord (Greek kyrios) is more than simply "making Him Lord of my life." This was the very word used to translate Yahweh, the name of God in the Old Testament. As a result, this use of Lord is an ascription of deity to Jesus. We can compare this to Thomas's confession when He first believes in Jesus' resurrection: "My Lord and my God!" (John 20:30). Likewise, we must believe not just that Jesus was a man who lived, but that He was sent from God and "has come in the flesh" (1 John 4:2-3, 14-15)–which means He must have existed before He was ever a man.
Knowing God as Father is indispensable to salvation (1 John 2:13). So, as we have seen, is acknowledging that Jesus is God the Son, who, being sent from the Father, came in the flesh and was raised from the dead. One basis for living ethically as a Christian is the fact that we are a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19). Temples are for God, not forces or non-divine spirits; the Spirit must be God to dwell in a temple. It is therefore clear that belief in God as Triune is an essential part of any meaningful Christian life.
All three Persons of the Trinity are "equal in every divine perfection": in deity, Lordship, ability, knowledge, and authority over us. How is it, then, that Jesus could say, "The Father is greater than I" (John 14:28), or that the Holy Spirit is repeatedly called the "Spirit of God" or even the "Spirit of Jesus" (Acts 16:7; Rom. 8:9)? How is the Father the head of Christ, just as the husband is head of the wife (1 Cor. 11:3)? Why do we always say, "Father, Son, and Spirit" in that order and not another? There are some who would consider the Son and Spirit to be by nature on a lower plane than the Father–a position called subordinationism. But this cannot be, since they share the same nature. What we see in the Bible, however, is an eternal, voluntary harmony of operation, in which the Father gives orders to the Son and sends the Spirit, the Son obeys, reveals, and intercedes to the Father, and the Spirit speaks of and exalts Christ. And during His earthly ministry, Jesus was empowered and led by the Spirit. Again, none of this is to suggest superiority or inferiority, but a complementarian relationship within the Godhead. (On a side note, it is interesting to see how debates about whether the Persons of the Trinity can be equal yet have different roles parallels the debate about equal status and roles in the human family. It is equally interesting that Kevin Giles and other egalitarians believe traditional family roles are associated with a subordinationist view of the Trinity.)
According to the Athanasian creed, the Father is "neither created: nor begotten," the Son "not made, nor created: but begotten," and the Spirit "neither made, nor created, nor begotten: but proceeding." This language does not communicate well outside theological circles but is an attempt to explain the relationships among the Trinity. The language comes from references to Jesus as begotten of the Father (e.g., Acts 13:33) and from the description of the Holy Spirit as "proceeding from the Father" (John 15:26).
Drawing from Greek theology, church scholars supposed that the Father had in Himself the ground of being for the other two Persons of the Trinity. The Son was eternally begotten–His existence always being generated from the Father. So likewise with the Spirit, but not as the Son–thus the word "proceeding." Otherwise it might be said that the Father has two Sons (Jesus and the Spirit). Later considerations in the Western church led scholars to say the Spirit also proceeded from the Son (the filioque controversy), so as to account for His being called the Spirit of Jesus or the Spirit of Christ. But the East rejected procession from the Son, believing it made the Spirit too distant from the Father.
There is nothing in the Bible about eternal generation, eternal begetting, or eternal procession. A careful look reveals that all the references to Jesus' being "begotten" refer to His incarnation and birth as a human for His ministry. This was a one-time begetting that occurred when Jesus became an embryo in Nazareth, to be born in Bethlehem and ultimately to die outside Jerusalem. Likewise, in context, the Spirit's "proceeding" is simply His going out from the Father to be with the disciples, which was accomplished once for all time at Pentecost in Jerusalem, and (by extension) His impartation to all who will believe, as the gospel reaches them.
When we understand the Trinity as having the same essence or nature, that essence is not situated in one Person and flowing out to the others, but is shared equally among them. Each Person of the Trinity is self-existent and needs no source or origin. Speaking of the Son and Spirit as if they are eternally coming into being merely adds a level of complication that is unnecessary to the doctrine of the Trinity.
I encourage all Christians to study their Bibles to learn what it says about the Father, Son, and Spirit, especially in the New Testament, which makes clear what was implicit or unrevealed prior to Jesus' ministry. A basic understanding of God as Trinity is nothing less than necessary to salvation. Moreover, as a Christian, you may find your worship and prayer life enhanced as you learn how to properly honor, worship, glorify, address, and thank each Person of the Trinity for their particular works, helps, and comforts on our behalf.
For a concise statement of my beliefs about God, see my Declaration of Faith.
