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Introducing the Trinity
In our last paper - Revealed in Jesus - we noted Matthew 11:27 along with
Colossians 1:15 and John 1:18 – there is no image, no impression, no
doctrine of God available to us other than in Christ. We meet the Father
and the Spirit only in the Son.
Given that this is our Way into God,
we are immediately confronted with the kind of God Jesus reveals – i.e.
that He is multi-Personal. The Spirit of Christ opens our eyes to see the
Son of the Father and in Him we know the One Who sent Him. Revelation is
a Trinitarian activity and the receiver of revelation is immediately
caught up in the Triune ways of the Living God. We cannot know Jesus
other than as the One Sent by the Father, we cannot know the Father other
than in the Son and none of this revelation is possible without the
Spirit of God!
Our conversion was not a turning to
some kind of impersonal divine essence. Our life as a Christian is not
fellowship with a solitary deity or a set of attributes. It is therefore
absurd to begin a doctrine of God without immediately addressing His
Triune life. There is nothing more basic or more primary to be said of
God than that He is a relationship of Persons. Therefore we must speak of
God by speaking of the Persons in
relationship. In this way
we can ensure that our doctrine of God is shaped by the Triune ways of
the Living God and not simply by philosophical speculations.
The Living God is not the god of the philosophers
The god of philosophy is explicitly
defined in the absence of revelation. He/she/it is established by
reasoning what God must be like. He/she/it is not the God of the Bible.
Our natural minds are at war with the Living God (see for e.g. Col 1:21)
and therefore knowledge of God can only be a gift given to us. It is not
something to be attained by us. You will notice again how the revelation
of God is exactly like the righteousness of God. Just as we have no
righteousness of our own and must be given it as a gift by God, so
knowledge of God is given to us as we have no capacity for producing it
ourselves. Since our knowledge of God is purely a gift of God given by
the Spirit in Jesus, we must simply be listeners to the revelation of
God.
Philosophy, on the other hand, is not
into listening! It is an attempt to speak over the revelation of God.
This assumes that humanity has some vantage point from which to speak
about the things of God and some capacity for a true assessment of these
things. Colossians 1 says that the vantage point which the philosopher is
working from is the kingdom of darkness (v13) and all their assessments
are from a mind in enmity against God (v21).
No wonder that the philosopher’s god
does not look like the God we worship. Our God is not the First
Principle, or the Prime Mover Who is Unmoved, or That Which None Greater
Can Be Conceived. Our God is a deeply personal Being who introduces
Himself personally – in fact only in the Person of His Son can He ever be
known. Anyone who speaks of god simply as “The First Cause” shows that
they do not know God at all and have not been properly introduced. We can
learn nothing about God from a person who does not know God therefore we
must steer well clear of all philosophical ideas about God.
The Bible never bothers with a
philosophical proof of God but rather begins assuming "In the
beginning Elohim…" Only the fool says in his heart 'there is no
God" (Psalm 14). The Bible never engages with a such a fool in order
to build a reasonable picture of deity. Rather, Scripture simply
proclaims through His words and actions the God who is Father, Son and
Holy Spirit.
The Living God is not the god of the monotheists
If our God cannot be placed alongside
the god of philosophy, perhaps He can be assessed alongside the religions
of the world. This is commonly done when people claim that Christianity
belongs in the category of monotheistic religions. Often people say that
Christianity stands alongside modern Judaism and Islam in its profession
of one God. There is thought to be enough common ground between the three
religions that, while these religions may advocate different ways of
approaching the one God, they are at least agreed about the kind of God
they are approaching.
What can be said to this? Well, if
Christ is THE image of an otherwise invisible God then clearly He is the
foundation for our theology. Our bedrock truth is not: “there is one
God.” Our foundation is the Rock of Christ. If a Muslim were to share our
common foundation, we would rejoice since such a person has come to trust
Jesus as LORD! But since Muslims and Jews do not trust Jesus as a rule,
there is no common foundation which would warrant a common title:
“monotheist”. Allah is no closer to the Living God than any of the many
gods worshipped by pagans. They are all equally worshipped in opposition
to Jesus Christ.
Which basket does Christianity belong
in? Perhaps we should rank it alongside polytheistic Hinduism for our
common belief in a plurality of divinity? Isn’t that a shared foundation
warranting a shared title??
Well clearly the Christian faith must
belong by itself. Christianity does not proclaim a road to God which, at
points, is criss-crossed by other religions heading in roughly the same
direction. We proclaim a rescue mission which crashed into planet earth
from above in the Person of Christ. This is not a journey which other
religions can share since it is a path entirely created and exclusively
travelled by Christ Himself. Anyone travelling this path is either Christ
Himself, or they are in Christ – that is, they are a Christian! It is not
as though Christians agree with Muslims and modern Jews in the existence
of the One God and only thereafter do we differ. It is not as though the
first few steps in our religious journey are shared by a number of
different faiths but then, once Jesus is mentioned, we diverge. Our first
and our only steps towards the One True Living God are taken in Christ.
This path can only be shared by those who share in Jesus.
The One God
What the Christian means by declaring
that ‘God is One’ is an entirely different proposition to what the Muslim
or the philosopher means. When the Bible says “God is One” it never
suggests that God is One Person as though His Oneness was to be thought
of as a mathematical singularity. There are words both in Hebrew and in
Greek which the Bible could have used if it was trying to intimate that
God was alone. However the words used for “one” are words which encompass
compound unity.
In Deuteronomy 6:4: “Hear, O Israel:
The LORD our God, the LORD is one.”, the word for ‘one’ is echad.
The same word is used in Genesis 2:24: “For this reason a man will leave his
father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one (echad)
flesh.” Clearly there are two persons – but in relationship these two
become one – the same kind of oneness found in God Himself!
In John 17:11, Jesus shows us the way
in which we are to consider God’s oneness. Jesus prays to the Father
about the church, He says: “Holy Father, protect them [the church] by the
power of your name --the name you gave me --so that they may be one as we
are one.” God is one in the unified relationships which constitute Him
just as the church is to be known as one – i.e. a unified relationship.
Again in John 17:21 and 22, Jesus prays fervently that the church would
know the kind of oneness which exists within the Godhead.
What is the way in which God is one?
It is not that He is a single solitary Person – but that He is a lively
united relationship.
The Plural God
In fact, this is how He introduces
Himself in the Bible. The Hebrew word for God – Elohim – is not a
singular noun! Nouns in Hebrew can be singular, dual (for two) or plural
(i.e. three or more). Elohim is plural. And yet, Elohim, when it refers
to the Living God, always takes a singular verb. Grammatically this is
very odd. Nouns and verbs ought to agree in Hebrew, yet on every occasion
where Elohim refers to God it is a plural noun yet it is attached to a
singular verb. For anyone opening up the Hebrew Scriptures they are
immediately introduced to: “In the beginning Elohim …” Our very first
encounter with God is with God as a community who acts as a unity.
In the very second verse of the Bible
we are introduced to a Person called the Spirit of Elohim whose brooding
power hovers over the waters waiting for direction. In verse 3, direction
is given – the Word of Elohim is revealed and light and life is brought
to the creation. By the time we get to verse 26 of Genesis 1 we are not
surprised that there is a community consultation going on within God:
“Then
Elohim said, "Let Us make man in Our image, in Our likeness, and let
them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the
livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along
the ground.” So Elohim created man in his own image, in the image of
Elohim He created him; male and female He created them.”
Elohim discusses within Himself the
next stage of the creation. Yet here the multiple Persons of Elohim call
a committee as they decide to make something unique in the creation –
creatures who image Them – who are like Them. And so mankind is made to
be like Elohim. Interestingly mankind is explicitly determined to be
“male and female” in its reflection of the divine image. A whole creation
full of blokes would not, it seems, image the kind of community within
Elohim. Yet creatures who are different, carrying different
responsibilities, enjoying different personalities, made with different
physiologies – and yet called to relational unity (Gen 2:24) – this is
the kind of life which images Elohim.
Scripture does not begin with a
single-Person God and later complicate matters by speaking of the
Trinity. The God of all eternity IS Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The God
who creates is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The God of the Old Testament
is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is not a New Testament projection back
onto the Hebrew Scriptures, it is the simple and plain teaching of Moses
and the Prophets. See The God who is proclaimed by Moses for
more on the Trinitarian Old Testament.
The Old Testament’s teaching on the
unity and plurality of God can be summarised thus:
There are Three Persons who have the
name YAHWEH (i.e. LORD). Together they are known as Elohim. Besides this
divine unity there is no other LORD. (see Isaiah 44:6)
The Trinity - its simplicity
So often people think of the Trinity
as an added complication to the ‘common sense’ idea of one God. Yet, we
have constantly warned ourselves away from the world’s notion of common
sense. No-one’s common sense idea of god has any purchase on the Truth. Why
should we expect the Living God to be just as we had always thought? If
we have in our minds a god who has no capacity to surprise or challenge
us then we’re sure to be harbouring a god of our own imagination!
This is not to say that the Trinity is
a difficult concept. It is not in the advanced section of Christian
theology, reserved only for academics and the super-keen. If we follow
the way God has revealed Himself in His Word then the fact that God is
Three Persons united is a very simple truth indeed.
It is only when we try to fit a
philosophical, solitary god to the Bible’s teaching that things become
tricky. For so many people the issue of the Trinity is: “How do we fit
our pre-conceived notion of God as a solitary Person to the Bible’s
teaching of God as multi-Personal?” The Trinity then is a problem to be
solved. But, of course, this is to begin from entirely the wrong end. As
receivers of divine revelation we are people who simply accept the
multi-Personal unified God who has presented Himself to us and we resolve
to uproot and demolish all our own concepts of God which are opposed to
the Trinity.
A friend of mine once asked the
question – ‘What was God doing before He created?” I replied “They were
enjoying One Another.” He thought for a second and then said “Oh! You
mean the Trinity.” And I thought “What god were you thinking of??” The
God of all eternity is Father, Son and Holy Spirit – this is not a mask
He wears, it is the fundamental truth of who He is.
The Trinity is not a logical oddity to
be solved but the bed-rock truth of the Christian God. There can be no
problem about the Trinity since that is simply who God is: a loving
relationship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The problems which the
Trinity throws up are not for the Christian God to solve – all other
concepts of God are judged by this definition and we must be vigilant
against them.
The Trinity - its centrality
It is because the Trinity is so basic
to our understanding of God that it has been at the heart of the Church's
fiercest battles. The historic church has been right to guard so
vigilantly its definition of our Triune Saviour since knowing the Father
and the Son by the Spirit is eternal life. (John 17:3).
The Athanasian creed, penned in the
4th century begins in these uncompromising terms:
1. Whosoever will be saved, before all
things it is necessary that he hold the universal faith.
2. Which faith unless every one keeps whole and undefiled, he will
without doubt perish everlastingly.
3. And this is the universal faith: That we worship one God in Trinity,
and Trinity in Unity;
This reminds us that when we lay out
the truth about our Triune God – we are not simply nit-picking but
declaring the truth by which we must be saved. Believing what God has
said in His Word about Himself is of eternal significance. And sorting
out exactly Who is the Living God in Whom we must believe is of the first
importance.
Often people say “I know that the
Trinity is there, but I don’t concern myself with thinking about it too
much.” We would never dare to say this about our spouse or our family –
“I know they are there, I just can’t really be bothered with learning
their names”! For the people we love we want to get to know them as fully
as possible – how much more the Persons we love the most!
We cannot postpone discussion of the
Three Persons of God while we talk simply about the one God. If we’re not
speaking of the Three Persons then we’re not speaking about the real God.
It is absurd to think that we can have a Christian discussion about God without
it explicitly being a discussion about a particular Person of God or all
Three together. Our God simply is a loving community of Father, Son and
Holy Spirit. All discussion about something or someone who is not
fundamentally this relationship is discussion about something else – not
the Living God.
The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit – INDIVISIBLE
If that is what we can say about the
Three Persons united. What can we say about the Father, Son and Holy
Spirit individually?
Well there are many things to be said,
but first let’s highlight two dangers in ‘dividing up’ God:
Firstly – the distinct personality of
each Person of the Godhead is not an individualistic personality. The
Three are utterly inter-dependent. The Father is the Father because He
eternally begets His Son. The Son is the Son because He has always had
that relationship to His eternal Father. The Son is dependent upon the
Father to be the Son and the Father is dependent on the Son to be the
Father. And the Spirit is dependent on the Father and the Son as both the
Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ.
The Persons cannot go off and try a
solo career without changing fundamentally who they are. If the Son left
the Band then He’d no longer be the Son because Who He is by nature is
the eternal Son of the Father. If He went solo He would cease to be who
He is! Each Person does not have Person-hood in abstraction from the
other Two. Each One’s (distinct) personality is mutually constituted by
the other Members of the Community.
The second danger of speaking about
the distinct Persons is to attribute certain of the works of God to only
One of the Persons. We must remember that all the works of God are the
works of all three Persons. Elohim always works as a team! (see for e.g.
John 5:16-23)
Sometimes we talk of the Three Persons
as Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier. But creation was a Trinitarian work, so
was redemption, so is sanctification. They all take all three Persons. So
Elohim does not divide up His resources according to the job required. It
is not as though the Father says: “Son, you take on providence, Spirit,
you go to work on salvation, I’ll meet you all on judgement day!” Rather
all the Persons are involved in all the work of God but they take on
distinctive roles within that same work.
So in creation it is the Father who
creates through the Son in the power of the Spirit. At the cross it is
the Spirit who offers the Son to the Father. They are all concerned with
the same work but the Three take on different roles in that work.
The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit - DISTINCT
This gives us a good basis from which
to speak of the distinct Personhood of each Member of the Godhead. The
roles which they take on flow out of their being. The Father is the
initiator for He is the One who begets His Son. His Son is the One who is
sent into the world to accomplish the work His Father gives Him. He is
therefore the agent. The Holy Spirit is the power by which Jesus
accomplishes all He does and the applier of Christ’s finished work to the
whole of creation.
We can summarize by saying:
All the works of God are from the Father,
through the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Is
there a hierarchy?
While speaking of these roles it is
possible to speak of an order (i.e. 1st Person, 2nd Person, 3rd Person of
the Trinity). The Father is greater than the Son in respect to His role
since the Father sends the Son (John 14:28). The Son is the obedient Son,
He does not order around the Father! But in His Person the Father is not
more divine than the Son! To illustrate: in respect to our roles my boss
is greater than I am. His role is to be the boss of me – he tells me what
to do and it’s my job to do it. But my boss is not more of a human being
than I am. In his being, he is not greater than me – but in our
respective roles I am to be obedient to him and not the other way around.
In terms of roles, there is difference – we can
speak of hierarchy
In terms of being, there is only equality – all
are worshipped equally
A model for community?
While we’re speaking of difference and
equality – what can we learn about relationships and community from The
Relationship? In gender relations, in multi-ethnic society, in equal
opportunities policies, in the church, in our families – we are
constantly confronted by people who have real and important differences
and yet people who ought to be treated with equal respect and dignity.
How do we appreciate the differences and uphold the equality? If we treat
all in exactly the same way, are we not ignoring the valuable
distinctives? This ‘melting pot’ approach falls foul of
oppression-by-assimilation. The incumbent majority always wins out at the
cost of the minorities – they either become like the majority or they
die. Do we, therefore, treat specific parties differently in an attempt
to give them a leg-up? When this happens stereo-types can be re-enforced
by ‘special treatment’ and work against the value of equality.
Furthermore: who defines the appropriate yard-stick of “success” in a
culture? Perhaps it is better to abandon the idea of community altogether
and accept along with Margaret Thatcher that there is “no such thing as
society.”
Well what can the Trinity teach us? At
the heart of reality lies a Community of different but equal Persons who
have their own identities constituted by their mutual interdependence.
They work together as One. There definitely is such a thing as society.
Person-hood can never be considered individualistically but is made up of
relationships on which we depend. Within The Community, the Persons
freely submit to one another in roles of subordination while never losing
their equal status. They do submit to differences in treatment and in
function – but they maintain a definite equality of being and uphold one
another in bonds of unconditional love. Here is a Community on which to
model our own.
Conclusion
When we begin with Jesus Christ as the
revelation of God then the doctrine of the Trinity is not a logical
oddity to be explained away. The Trinity is not a problem to be solved –
as though it was our job to make the plural-yet-united God fit with the
god of philosophy or monotheism. The Christian is free to simply receive
the wonderful truth that at the heart of reality is a Loving Community who
invites us in to share in their love.
The Puritans of the 17th and 18th
centuries had a special concern for coming to know the Persons of God
intimately. John Owen, for instance, wrote a great book – “Communion with
God”, which takes as its premise the fact that relationship with God
cannot truly occur without appreciation of the Persons. We cannot commune
with God unless we are communing with the Three Persons who are God.
Therefore getting to know the Persons in their distinct roles and
personalities is very important. Owen notes for instance the grace at the
end of 2 Corinthians as a window onto the personality of the Persons:
“May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God [the Father]
and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” (2 Cor 13:14)
Here we are encouraged to meditate on
the love of the Father. In the Father’s initiation of the works of God,
it is His love which is time and again highlighted. We need to
contemplate the love which springs from the Father (e.g. John 3:16; 1
John 3:1).
Then there is the grace of our Lord
Jesus Christ. Christ is grace personified. He is the gift of His Father
(John 3:16). In Him (and Him crucified) we see both the horror of the
penalty for our sin and the merciful forgiveness available to us. In
Christ we see grace (e.g. 2 Cor 8:9; Rom 5:15ff).
Finally there is the fellowship of the
Holy Spirit. As the indwelling Presence of God in us we ought to have
fellowship with Him! We are to keep in step with Him (Gal 5:5); receive
His joy (1 Thes 1:6); not to grieve Him (Eph 4:30); to learn from Him
(Luke 12:12; John 14:26) and to relate personally to Him (Phil 2:1). He
is a Person in our lives – a Divine Person no less – we ought therefore
to cultivate a decent relationship with Him! After all He is with us
forever! (John 14:16)
We became a Christian when the Holy
Spirit opened our eyes to see Christ – and in Christ we saw the Glory of
God the Father. As we trust in Jesus, the Father promises to love us with
all the Divine Omnipotent Love He has for His Son (John 17:26) and to
come and make His home in us by the Holy Spirit (John 14:23). Our
Christian lives are lived in the Divine Community of Father, Son and Holy
Spirit. For the Christian – the Trinity ought not to be a baffling
conundrum but a glorious truth in which to revel.
Click here for a sermon on the Trinity
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