“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matt 28.19-20).The doctrine of the Trinity is one of the distinctive doctrines of Christianity and so is a primary issue, a non-negotiable. The word “trinity” never appears in the Bible. The term was coined to explain the facts we see in scripture:
- There is one God. (eg, Is 45:5)
- The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God.*
- The Father, the Son, and the Spirit are three distinct individuals. (eg, 2Cor 13:14)
Is it contradictory to say that we have one God and three Gods? Yes — that’s why we don’t say that. We have one God eternally existing in three persons. As Sproul explains, “The historic formula is that God is one in essence and three in person; He is one in one way and three in another way.”1 God is one “what” and three “whos”. This is a paradox, but it is not a contradiction. If we said God is one “what” and three “whats” or one “who” and three “whos,” that would be contradictory. So we have to be precise about our language, but if a Christian misspeaks, that does not make the doctrine wrong &mash; just the Christian.
People frequently ask why we have to insist on such a confusing doctrine. First and foremost, it is the truth God has revealed. If we teach something else, we’re lying about God. Second, it’s a solution, not a problem. It solves at least two problems.
1. God is eternal and unchanging, and God is love. How can God be love if he has no one to love? He would either have to change, to become loving once he had creatures to love, or he would have had to create in order to fulfill his nature to love. But the doctrine of the Trinity tells us that God existed eternally as three persons who loved each other and were completely fulfilled in that love.
And in that love, the members of the Trinity seek to glorify each other. The Father glorifies the Son, the Son glorifies the Father, the Spirit glorifies both of them and they him. There is no jealousy, self-promotion, or fear of being diminished, only “look at how wonderful this one that I love is.”
2. The whole doctrine of the atonement falls apart without the Trinity. If God creates a being to sacrifice in the place of another being, how is that just? People sometimes use an analogy for the atonement of a judge who finds a defendant guilty then pays the fine for him. That’s justice and mercy. But if he finds the defendant guilty and then makes the bailiff pay his fine, that’s not just.
Many people today level the charge of “cosmic child abuse” at the atonement because they don’t understand what it means that the Son is God. The Father did not single out another creature to pay for our sins. The God who was offended voluntarily gave himself as the sacrifice to appease his own justice. It was not “child abuse” but self-sacrifice.
The third reason we must insist on this doctrine is that the alternatives are not just mistakes but heresies, “damnable errors” — meaning these are things that cost people their souls — because once the trinity is lost, the gospel breaks down. The early church fought against modalism (which says that God is one person who reveals himself in different ways at different points in history), Arianism (which says that the Son is not God but a lesser, created being), and adoptionism (which says that Jesus was a human who became the Christ) because those battles were worth fighting. We have to stand strong for the truths they fought so hard for.
What does the doctrine of the Trinity mean to us?
First, it means that God the Father always was and will be Father. “Since God is, before all things, a Father, and not primarily Creator or Ruler, all his ways are beautifully fatherly. It is not that this God ‘does’ being Father as a day job, only to kick back in the evenings as plain old ‘God.’ It is not that he has a nice blob of fatherly icing on top. He is Father. All the way down. Thus all that he does he does as Father. That is who he is. He creates as a Father and he rules as a Father; and that means the way he rules over creation is most unlike the way any other God would rule over creation.”2
Second, it is a model for us. “Because God in himself has both unity and diversity, it is not surprising that unity and diversity are also reflected in the human relationships he has established.”(Grudem) This applies to marriage, the family, and the Church. We should look to the Trinity as a model of humble love that seeks to elevate those with whom we are in relationship and value our unity in diversity.
Finally, it seals for us the truth that God did not need us, but he does want us. His love was complete, and yet he chose to create us and love us. “This is what the doctrine of the Trinity helps us learn with greater precision: that God is love. The triune God is a love that is infinitely high above you, eternally preceding you, and welcoming you in.”3
To go deeper on this topic, I recommend The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything by Fred Sanders.
1 RC Sproul, Everyone's a Theologian: An Introduction to Systematic Theology
2 Michael Reeves, Delighting in the Trinity: An Introduction to the Christian Faith
3 Fred Sanders, The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything
* The deity of the Son and the Holy Spirit will be addressed later.
+ See, for example, Irenaeus, Against Heresies I:X:1; Athenagoras, A Plea for the Christians X; The Epistle to Diognetus VII
Part of Christianity 101
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