Weekly Update |   March 5, 2024

The Doctrine of the Trinity

By Maksim Nedorezov

The atheist, the fool, says there is no God (Ps. 14:1; 53:1). The Muslim says that the unitary, monadic god named Allah is the only God.^[i] The Jehovah’s Witness believes in Jehovah but rejects the deity of the Son as unbiblical.^[ii] The Mormon acknowledges the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but says that they are three separate beings albeit with one purpose.^[iii] Now, the true Christian calls all these heretics as Scripture is clear that God is one at the same time as God is three—“though there is numerical distinction, there is no division in the substance.”^[iv] There are many ways to approach arguing for the Trinity as revealed in Scripture. One can first look at the oneness of God and then the threeness, or vice versa. One can start by first refuting heresies such as modalism and subordinationism, positively stating what is revealed in Scripture about each person of the Trinity, or even approaching the doctrine apophatically. This paper argues that the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is coherent, logical, and demanded by Scripture by looking at how Scripture develops this doctrine from the Old Testament into the New Testament via a graded revelation of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The Old Testament stresses that God is one but hints at and lays the groundwork for a fuller revelation of the Trinity in the New Testament. Twice in Deuteronomy God asserts to the Israelites a foundational truth in juxtaposition to the polytheistic nations of the day that “the Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deut. 6:4, ESV) and “I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me” (Deut. 32:39. Cf. Is. 44:6-8). The many problems of the Israelites were due to their stepping away from this “rigorous monotheism”^[v] of worshipping the only true God who “is one and only one in essence.”^[vi]  But the Old Testament also contains enough hints that there is more revelation to come. Starting in the creation account, God reasons within himself in the plural, “Let us make man in our image” (Gen. 1:26), then later in Genesis 18 the Lord appears to Abraham in a theophany as three men. Further, there are over four hundred mentions of the Spirit of God in the Old Testament^[vii] and references to a coming Messiah—Immanuel who is “God with us” (Is. 7:14; Matt. 1:23). Along with the plural name of God, “Elohim,” and threefold repetition of “Holy, holy, holy”^[viii] in Isaiah 6, one cannot conclude or prove the Trinity, but all these things pave the way for the New Testament Christian revelation.

If in the Old Testament, God is mainly known as Yahweh,^[ix] in the New Testament he takes on a relational name—Father, as revealed by his Son, Jesus. Everything changed at the coming of the Messiah—the Savior of the world had come (Matt. 1:21; Luke 2:11; John 4:42). Except, the Savior could only be God because as Psalm 3:8 makes clear, “Salvation belongs to the Lord” (Cf. Jon. 2:9; Ps. 62:1; Is. 43:11). Throughout his ministry on earth, Jesus equated himself with God multiple times, none more tense than when he said that “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30) which led the Jews to subsequently pick up stones in order to stone him for blasphemy because although he was a man, he was making himself out to be God (John 10:30-39. Cf. John 8:58-59; Mark 14:61-64). The issue was that they could not conceive of Jesus claiming to be God in their monotheistic upbringing, even though, as Jesus testified, the Scriptures spoke of him (Luke 24:25-27). Even though Scripture clearly states and reveals the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, it took decades and centuries to systematize this doctrine and protect it from heresy. The early church fathers—Athanasius,^[x] Gregory of Nazianzus,^[xi] and Basil the Great,^[xii] among others—worked hard to understand and explain this issue of the Father, Son, and Spirit each being God yet there being only one God. They wrote to refute their critics^[xiii] and proved from Scripture that the Son is the only-begotten from the Father who is co-equal and co-eternal with the Father^[xiv] yet subsists as a separate person. This is no simple matter to wrap one’s head around, as Gregory of Nazianzus said, “But mentally to grasp so great a matter [as God] is utterly beyond real possibility even so far as the very elevated and devout are concerned, never mind slack and sinking souls.”^[xv] Once the divinity of the Son was established, it became easier to also argue for the divinity of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is also revealed to be a person of the Godhead and one in union with the Father and the Son. When Jesus was with his disciples, he made clear that the coming Helper, “the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father,”^[xvi] (John 15:26) was coming after him to be with his disciples. This Spirit would not just do his own thing but would follow the Father’s will and glorify the Son (John 16:13-15). The Spirit is most clearly referred to as God in Acts 5:3-4 when Peter rebukes Ananias, “Why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit…You have not lied to man but to God.” Lastly, Jesus in the Great Commission groups the three persons under one name to show their equality when he says, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”^[xvii] (Matt. 28:19). The Holy Spirit is not a separate God but is one in essence with the Father and the Son.

Scripture is replete with references to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and has progressively revealed them from the Old Testament to the New Testament. This graded revelation is impossible to miss, and God did it purposely so as not to overwhelm the human race.^[xviii] The difficulty with the doctrine of the Trinity is not a lack of Scriptural data to support the Trinity being defined as one God who eternally subsists in three distinct persons who are equally divine in essence and attributes, rather it is in thinking God’s thoughts about God instead of human thoughts about God. “The church did not formulate the doctrine of the Trinity in order to resolve the mystery of God’s self-revelation, but rather to preserve that mystery,”^[xix] which was accomplished with the Nicene Creed and Athanasian Creed. When attempting to understand the Trinity, Gregory of Nazianzus beautifully concedes the following:

No sooner do I conceive of the one than I am illumined by the splendor of the three; no sooner do I distinguish them than I am carried back to the one. When I think of any one of the three I think of him as the whole, and my eyes are filled, and the greater part of what I am thinking escapes me. I cannot grasp the greatness of that one so as to attribute a greater greatness to the rest. When I contemplate the three together, I see but one torch, and cannot divide or measure out the undivided light.^[xx] Humility ought to be the attitude of any person attempting to reason about God, for human thoughts are not capable of grasping the divine.^[xxi] Thus, faith “is what gives fullness to our reasoning”^[xxii] and is the only way to accept this doctrine as logical and coherent as it is revealed in and demanded by Scripture.

Bibliography

Athanasius, “Letters to Serapion,” in The Letters of Saint Athanasius Concerning the Holy Spirit, trans. C. R. B. Shapland. London: Epworth Press, 1951.

Basil, On the Holy Spirit, trans. Stephen Hildebrand. Yonkers, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011.

Gregory of Nazianzus, “Orations,” in On God and Christ: The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius, trans. Lionel Wickham and Frederick Williams. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002.

Gregory of Nazianzus, “Orations,” in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 7, trans. Charles Gordon Browne and James Edward Swallow, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1894.

Jehovah’s Witnesses, “Should You Believe in the Trinity?,” accessed February 27, 2024, https://www.jw.org/en/library/magazines/g201308/trinity/.

Letham, Robert. The Holy Trinity: In Scripture, History, Theology, and Worship. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2004.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, “Do Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Believe in the Trinity?,” accessed February 27, 2024, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/comeuntochrist/article/do-latter-day-saints-believe-in-the-trinity.

^[i] Robert Letham, The Holy Trinity: In Scripture, History, Theology, and Worship (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2004), 444.

^[ii] Jehovah’s Witnesses, “Should You Believe in the Trinity?,” accessed February 27, 2024, https://www.jw.org/en/library/magazines/g201308/trinity/.

^[iii] The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, “Do Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Believe in the Trinity?,” accessed February 27, 2024, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/comeuntochrist/article/do-latter-day-saints-believe-in-the-trinity. This is social trinitarianism and basically tritheism.

^[iv] Gregory of Nazianzus, Orations, trans. Lionel Wickham (Crestwood: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002), 70, (PG 29:2).

^[v] Letham, The Holy Trinity, 24-26. Cf. Ex. 20:2-5.

^[vi] Frank Griffith, unpublished Theology Proper class notes, The Cornerstone Seminary, 2004.

^[vii] Letham, The Holy Trinity, 28-29. These references are mostly to the Spirit as a divine attribute than a separate person of the Trinity, which could not have been understood in light of Israel’s monotheism.

^[viii] Basil, On the Holy Spirit, trans. Stephen Hildebrand (Yonkers: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011), 73, (PG 16:38). “How could the Seraphim say, “Holy, holy, holy” (Is 6.3) unless they were taught by the Spirit how many times it is pious to proclaim this doxology?”

^[ix] Letham, The Holy Trinity, 27. God calls himself “Father” just over twenty times.

^[x] See Athanasius, Against the Arians.

^[xi] See Gregory of Nazianzus, Orations (PG 27-31).

^[xii] See Basil, On the Holy Spirit.

^[xiii] Such as the Arians who claimed there was a time when the Son was not and the Eunomians who attempted to understand the begottenness of the Son, among other things, in human terms versus accepting the divine language as given in Scripture.

^[xiv] Add also the Holy Spirit.

^[xv] Gregory of Nazianzus, Orations, 39-40, (PG 28:4).

^[xvi] The Spirit “proceeds” or “spirates.” Cf. Gal. 4:6 on the Spirit of the Son. See also the filioque controversy for debate on the Spirit proceeding from the Son.

^[xvii] Athanasius, Letters to Serapion, trans. C. R. B. Shapland (London: Epworth Press, 1951), 176, (PG 3:6).

^[xviii] See Gregory of Nazianzus, Orations, 137, (PG 31:26). “In this way, the old covenant made clear proclamation of the Father, a less definite one of the Son. The new covenant made the Son manifest and gave us a glimpse of the Spirit’s Godhead. At the present time, the Spirit resides amongst us, giving us a clearer manifestation of himself than before. It was dangerous for the Son to be preached openly when the Godhead of the Father was still unacknowledged. It was dangerous, too, for the Holy Spirit to be made (and here I use a rather rash expression) an extra burden, when the Son had not been received. It could mean men jeopardizing what did lie within their powers, as happens to those encumbered with a diet too strong for them or who gaze at sunlight with eyes as yet too feeble for it. No, God meant it to be by piecemeal additions, ‘ascents’ as David called them, by progress and advance from glory to glory, that the light of the Trinity should shine upon more illustrious souls.”

^[xix] Ryan Rippee, unpublished Theology Proper class notes, The Cornerstone Seminary, 2024.

^[xx] Gregory of Nazianzus, Orations, trans. Charles Gordon Browne and James Edward Swallow (Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1894), (PG 40:41).

^[xxi] See Athanasius, Letters to Serapion, 215, (PG 1:15). “God is not as a human being (Num 23:19), so that anyone should dare to ask human questions about him.”

^[xxii] Gregory of Nazianzus, Orations, 89, (PG 29:21).

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• Thursday (6:30 PM) – Kid’s Bible School (open to all but required for parents), followed by Bible Study (Proverbs) for the whole church at 7:30 PM
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