Greetings to one and all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ,the Holy Son, through the power of the Holy Spirit and to the glory of God the Father eternal, amen. Well, friends, this writing is already generating quite a little buzz and I am deeming it necessary to possibly redouble my efforts to get more information out sooner. I maintain my promise to be thorough and to provide answers to seekers and critics alike. This topic may be the single most crucial to adopting appropriate faith and pracrtice because it speak to centrality not periphery. I am presenting what is probably the main instruction of the Bible itself, the personhood and character of Almighty God and His relationship to humanity. I do not entertain for even a moment that anything I write here can create faith or make Trinity reasonable to all persons. What I hope to accomplish is two-fold. First, I would like to prevent the dubious and the recent convert from being convinced by persons and forces, that are either mistaken or outright diabolical, that there is no logical, biblical evdience for the truth of Holy Trinity. Second, I would like to begin a dialogue with persons who are not already steeped in false doctrine as taught by various groups that claim "Christianity" with no historical or theological underpinning to support the claim. The church, from its foundations shortly after the resurrection of Christ, has always held Trinity as essential Christian doctrine as evidenced by the Christian creeds that came out of various eccumenical councils, which were themselves based upon writings of important Christian teachers of the first and second century including the Didache, Polycarp, Irenaeus, Ignatius, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Justin Martyr who had themselves been taught by the Twelve (excluding the deceased Judas iscariot of course)original apostles of Christ, which were themselves based upon the truth revealed in the canon of Holy Scripture.
In that vein, I will soldier on. Today I will answer one of the most serious, and mistaken, challenges used by critics to confuse the minds and hearts of the vulnerable who have not been long or seriously steeped in the study of Holy Scripture with qualified, Spirit-filled teachers. I believe today's writing will be challenging, stimulating and eye-opening. So kick your shoes off, take your place in your favorite chair with a steaming cup of coffee and let's continue our exploration together with God's blessing.
Question 2: If "Trinity" is true and essential doctrine why doesn't it appear in Scripture? Isn't "Trinity" just a made-up human concept promoting polytheism (the belief in many gods) that the Scripture itself condemns?
Answer: Let me take the second question before the first. Christianity does not claim a "separate" existence of the father , the Son and the Holy Spirit, we teach that these are three separate, equal and harmonious Persons within the same God. As I stipulated in the original post, John declares that God IS love and, by definition of love, a solitary person cannot be love. John's teaching in his epistles, if we are to accept the New Testament (Greek canon) as fully authoritative Scripture precludes the understanding of God as a solitary being. The Trinity is somewhat demonstrated in teach human person. every human consists of three primary dimensions that all construct the same person. Each human has a body, a soul (psyche, seat of emotion, existential life, consciousness, describer the soul as you will) and a spirit (the unique eternal portion breathed into man at creation [Genesis 2:7] that determined every human being would exist forever, the greatest passage that refutes the notion of both "soul-sleep" and annihilationism [the belief that the wicked will simply cease to exist and that there is no eternal Hell]). Yet, if we acknowledge this construct of the human teaching to be correct we must also realize that only someone being either genuinely or unitintentionally ignorant would claim that the proponent of the three-form human person is suggesting three different persons. The teacher is obviously discussing the make-up of a single person. Obviously this is an analogy, but I stipulate it as a good one as it describes what makes a complete human. Each part may be described in detail and yet the fullness of the human creature can only be understood as all three parts in unison.
Taking this concept into the eternal realm of God it can quickly be grasped what Chrsitian Orthodoxy means when God is described as simultaneously Father, Son and Holy Spirit. These are not three different beings that are discussed but a relational whole that comprises the complete revelation of the Divine nature. Each person may be discussed in detail but can only be fully understood as three parts or Persons in harmonious unity which make up the whole of the One. each person is relationally integrated and would be the palest shadow of reality understood apart from the whole.
What the Bible condemns as idolatry is the worship of false gods which have no basis in reality and seek to distract people from the work of the One True God. They are as wholly "different" from God as one human is from another. They do not have the same substance, essence, reality or purpose. Therefore, do not entertain any nonsense about Trinitarians being polytheists regardless of how eloquent or well-indoctrinated the accusation appears. it is "smoke and mirrors."
Now as to the first question I will provide both a short and a long answer. The short answer is that Holy Scripture is drenched with Trinity and anyone who claims otherwise is either ignorant of the nature of biblical teaching or less than fully truthful. The short answer, of course, leads to the longer explanation which follows.
What the person who claims that Trinity does not appear in Scripture alludes to is that there is no explicit Trinity. They tell you that you can scour the Scripture and you will never find the word "Trinity" in the Bible and that much is true. "Therefore," they claim, "there is no Trinity, case closed!" However, I will demonstrate that in their eagerness they have slammed the door too quickly!
What these folks have failed to realize is that there are two forms of revealed truth in Scripture explicit and implicit. For instance, if I am writing an article and I state that Mr. James Anybody (made up name) is married to Judy Anybody, on June 23rd, 1976 that would be an explicit teaching. However, if I was to say that Mr. James Anybody's wife gave an important speech on Monday, there is an obvious implication that My Anybody was at some point married even though I have not explicitly stated that a marriage took place. It would be nonsensical to suggest that Mr. Anybody must be single in light of the second statement because I never provided my reader with a wedding anouncement. The teaching of Trinity in Scripture is just such a teaching; it is implicit or implied throughout the biblical record.
Right at creation itself in Genesis 1 we have an implicit teaching of Trinity, particularly when it is taken in conjunction with the creation stories contained in the book of proverbs and in the prologue of John's gospel. In Genesis 1 God speaks all things into being and the Spirit (Ruach in Hebrew) of God sweeps over the waters. In Proverbs we are presented with the Word (Wisdom) that God spoke. In Proverbs 3:19 we are told that Wisdom was the agency of God's creation. That is to say that all things were created by the Word spoken. The fact that God operates through the Word clearly implies that the word is a part of God then same way that if I say that you are reading this writing through your eyes it would be ridiulous for you to assume that your eyes are something other than a part of you.
In Proverbs 8:2-36 Wisdom is presented as a sapient being. She calls to the people and instructs in truth. She gives kings powerand advice. She was the first "created." The Hebrew verb for "created" is heavily nuanced. It is clear from the verb that Wisdom is NOT a part of creation because everything made uses a different verb entirely that means "manufactured." The Hebrew word chosen for wisdom's creation is used amost exclusively for human beings and it has a procreative understanding. Wisdom is "fathered" by God when there is no manufactured thing existing, through His Spirit as His agency, the third part of God.
So, Let's recount where we are now. We have God who has eternally fathered Wisdom, Wisdom the eternally begotten God and the Holy Spirit by whom God the Father sired Wisdom. Okay, but where does Jesus fit in? This is where John fills in. In John 1:1 John stipulates that the Word, Wisdom (Sophia in the the Greek), was in the beginning, that he was with God and that he was God. There is one prominent group that has claimed that the last portion should be translated as "a god" but that is grammatically unsupportable in the Greek. The phrase is something called a predicate nominative clause and the definite article "the," while appearing before "Word" and not "God" nonetheless applies to both. "God" in Greek often appears without a definite article even though it is clear that it is the God of the covenant that is being referenced as I can indicate to any interested persons in Scriptures from the same book translated in this group's Bible where "God," appearing without a definite article, has been translated to be the God of the covenant. The standards of translation for this group are inconsistent at best. Every notable translation has translated that the "Word was God." I promised to stay away from grammar as much as possible but this case had to be made because it is one that this group regularly uses to confuse those unschooled in biblical language.
John then makes it crystal clear in verse 14 that in the course of time the eternal Word became flesh and dwelled among us. In verse 14 he stipulates that he is the only Son who is "full" of grace and truth, sharing God's glory. Jesus, according to John, is not an angel, a prophet or a good man, but the Incarnate Word (Wisdom) of God; eternally Son eternally sired by eternal Father. The implication again is that the agency or means of this procreative act is the Holy Spirit.
At Jesus baptism, see Matthew3:13-17, Mark 1:9-11, Luke 3:21-22 and John 1:29-34, There is the voice of the Father from heaven who declares the Son and the Spirit who descends on him like a dove. This is an implicit teaching from all four gospels of the Trinity being present at the event even though the word Trinity is never used.
Note Paul's teaching in Romans 1-7. Particularly, the fomulaic use of God and Jesus in verse 7 as dual bestowers of grace and peace. In verse 8, Paul thanks God through (agency) Jesus Christ. In John 14:8-13 when Philip asks to see the Father, Jesus declares that anyone who has seen him (the Son) has seen the Father. He claims exclusive mutual relationship with the Father, that they dwell in each other, and (verse 13) that the Father receives glory through the Son. In verses 25-31 Jesus declares that God will be sending to believers the Holy Spirit (person, note "he" pronoun) in the name of the Son, to uinstruct concerning the Divine Trinity and remind them of Jesus' teachings. Jesus himself is the agency of this promised deliverance in John 20: 21-22. In an act of divine power, he breathes on the apostles (Holy Spirit, Ruach in Hebrew, is "wind, breath and Spirit" simultaneously) and he told them earlier that the Holy Spirit would derive from God alone.
This smattering of Scripture is by no means exhaustive, but hopefully it shows you how to read Scripture for implicit evidence of Holy Trinity, which is no less truthful or reliable than explicit evidence. Until my next posting, May our Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy eternally-begotten Son of God, fillyou with His peace, through the power of the Holy Spirit and in accordance with the will of the Father Almighty, One God in Three Persons, now and forever, amen.
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