Years ago, when
I was a family therapist in the counseling ministry of the local megachurch, a
young couple recounted a hurtful, destructive argument that occurred when the
young bride asked to put a “chair” in her husband’s office so she could be near
him when he worked at home. Because his office was quite small, the young
husband was irate and annoyed because there simply was not enough room for
another “chair.” The young wife felt hurt and rejected because she thought her
husband did not want her near when he was working. As the couple disclosed their
feelings in counseling, the wife revealed that she had merely wanted to put a
small straight-back chair in a tiny corner of the room, where she could read as
her husband worked. With some embarrassment, the young husband admitted that he
thought she wanted to bring in a large “easy ‘chair’” from the living room, one
that would take up far too much space in an already overcrowded room. Even
though they were using the same word, the couple had argued because they
attached very different meanings to the word “chair.”
Language
matters; words are important. Moreover, the meaning attached to words is
crucial if confusion and misunderstanding are to be avoided. Perhaps nowhere is
language more problematic and the meaning of words more subject to
misunderstanding than in the doctrine of the Trinity—the belief that the One
God of the Christian faith eternally exists as three persons: Father, Son and
Holy Spirit.
Recently, as I
quickly flipped through the surplus of “Christian” channels invading my home
via satellite, I stopped at an Australian broadcast when I heard the word
“Trinity.” The host was asking her guest, an “expert” on the doctrine,” “How
can God be one and three? How can one
‘equal’ three? she asked. “The ‘math’ just doesn’t add up,” she said. Her
questions betray the common misunderstanding of the doctrine of the Trinity as
a “mathematical” puzzle.
A few years ago,
a survey was taken among a group of church members in London, who were asked,
“How can God be three persons in one?” Showing their misunderstanding of the
“oneness” of God, about one-third of the respondents replied that God was “one”
in the sense of being “one person.” As one respondent typically affirmed, “The
three are one person; they’ re all one person.”[1]
To be sure,
much confusion exists regarding the doctrine of the Trinity. The confusion is exacerbated
by preachers who describe the doctrine of the Trinity as a mind-boggling
mystery or an incomprehensible enigma far beyond the limits of human
understanding. While it is true that we finite humans are incapable of fully comprehending
the infinite God, it is not true, however, that the doctrine of the Trinity is
beyond our understanding. A “doctrine” is simply an attempt to put into words what
we do know about God based upon God’s self-revelation of himself in the history
of salvation. The “doctrine of the Trinity” is an attempt to make sense of the
fact that the “one God” of the Christian faith has revealed himself in the Holy
Bible in “three persons”—Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The biblical narrative of
the Father’s reconciliation of the world in Jesus Christ, as well as his bringing
that work to fruition by the Spirit, implies a Trinitarian understanding of God
(see 2Cor 5:18-20; Rom 5:1-5; Eph
1:3-14).
The early
Church was composed, at least initially, of Jews. In distinction to the
cultures around them who worshipped many gods, the Jews worshipped one God. At
the same time, the early Jewish Christians believed that God had come in the
flesh and dwelt among them in the person of Jesus Christ (John 1:1, 14). They
believed that Jesus is “Immanuel”: God with us (Matt 1:23). Moreover, the early Christians believed that
the crucified Christ remained present among them through the Holy Spirit (2Cor
3:17, 18).
The believers
of the early Church, many of whom were slaves who could neither read nor write,
did not concern themselves with abstract speculation about the nature of God;
yet, their worship and practice was distinctly Trinitarian in character. Following
the commandment of Jesus Christ (Matt 28:19), the early Church baptized in the
name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, even as they declared the love of
God, the grace of Jesus Christ and the communion of the Holy Spirit (2Cor
13:14). Early second-century writings—including the 1) Didache, an early writing on Church order and practice; 2) Hippolytus’
Holy Communion prayer and baptismal formula, and 3) Justin Martyr’s early
description of a Christian worship service and baptism—portray Christians
baptizing and celebrating Holy Communion (or the Lord’s Supper) in the name of
the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Development of the Doctrine of the Trinity
From the “raw
material” provided in the worship and practice of the early Church, Christian theologians
began their construction of the “doctrine” of the Trinity. The starting point
for Christian reflection on the nature of God is the relationship between God
and Jesus Christ. The problem faced by
early Christian theologians, as they pondered the New Testament witness to
Jesus Christ, [2] was not whether Jesus was God,
but how, within the boundaries of their inherited monotheism, could they
maintain the unity of God while confessing the deity of one who is distinct
from God the Father. That is, how could the early Church claim that Jesus is
one with God while maintaining there is only one God?
As the early
Church began to proclaim the deity of Christ, they encountered opposition from
those who distorted the New Testament witness to the Triune nature of God. In
the second century, some incorrectly argued that the terms “Father,” Son” and
“Holy Spirit” are merely different “names” for God, each designating a
different “role” played by a “one-person” God, like a single individual who
plays the roles of spouse, employee and soccer coach on a given day. Others
wrongly argued that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are distinct “individuals,”
like the coach, quarterback and wide receiver on a football team. The first error,
known historically as modalism, preserves
the one “being” of God but loses the specific identity of the three persons of
the Godhead by reducing the Father, Son and Spirit to one person. The second
error, tritheism (or “pluralism”),
stresses the “distinction” of the three persons of the Godhead at the expense
of the “unity” of God and results in “three gods,” rather than “one God in
three persons.” Quite importantly, both errors fail to express the essential
Trinitarian element of relationship
among the three persons of the Godhead. The first precludes relationship by
reducing the Father, Son and Holy Spirit to “one person.” Less obviously, the
second error precludes relationship, for though the three persons may function
together in a limited way, they are not “one” in terms of sharing a common
“being.”
In the face of
these distortions of the New Testament witness to the nature of God, early
Christian thinkers struggled to accurately express God’s triadic
self-revelation in salvation history as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, while
stringently maintaining the unity of the one God of the Judeo-Christian heritage.
Justin Martyr,
the great “apologist” who defended the early second-century Church against
false charges brought against Christians, invoked the image of light to capture
the eternal relation between the Father and the Son. Justin captured both the equality and the distinction of the Father-Son relation by arguing that the Son is
indivisible from the Father in the same way that light emitted by the sun is
indivisible from its source. His metaphor became a favorite among the Church
fathers and was later enshrined in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, where
one of several phrases used to describe Jesus Christ is “Light from Light.”
Irenaeus, an
important theologian of the second-century, developed his Trinitarian insights
in contention with the Gnostics, who erroneously thought of God as utterly
transcendent and completely separate from the taint of the “evil” material
world. To the contrary, Irenaeus argued that God the Father interacts with
creation through his “two hands,” that is, the Son and the Spirit. For Irenaeus,
the Son and Spirit belong intrinsically and eternally to the being of God, as
the hands of a sculptor belong intrinsically to the artist and are the means of
his or her creative expression.
In the third
century, the North African lawyer Tertullian coined the word “Trinity” (Latin: trinitas) and argued that Christians
worship “one God in three persons.” For Tertullian, “being” or “nature” is the
unifying principle of the Godhead, that is, what the three persons of the
Trinity have in “common.” “Person” is the principle of “distinction” or
“otherness”; that is, the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Father, and
the Father and Son are not the Holy Spirit. Rather, each person of the Triune
God is “distinct” from the other.
The fourth
century was a time of great conflict among the theologians of the early Church.
Since the time of Tertullian, confusion had existed between the Greek-speaking theologians
of the eastern Mediterranean and the Latin-speaking theologians of the west regarding
the proper translation of important Trinitarian terms such as “being” and
“person.” To add to the confusion, these terms were often used interchangeably,
much as today when a single individual may be described both as a “person” and
as a human “being.” Prior to the fourth century, the universal Church simply
lacked the conceptual and linguistic resources to express how God is both one
and three.
This confusion
in terminology climaxed in one of the greatest theological conflicts in the
history of the Church. Arius, a deacon from Alexandria, argued that the “one
being” of God cannot be “divided,” for such would result in more than one God
and compromise the inviolate principle of monotheism. For Arius, therefore,
Jesus Christ cannot participate in the “being” of God; that is, he is not fully
divine; rather, he is “subordinate” in being to God. Much like modern-day
Jehovah’s Witnesses, Arius argued that Jesus is a created being, that is, an exalted “creature,” like an archangel,
who is less than fully God. The great Athanasius, one of the most important
theologians in the history of the Church, stalwartly defended the deity of Jesus
Christ against the subordinationism
of Arius. As Athanasius understood, if Jesus is a “created” being, he cannot be
the “eternal” Word of God “incarnate,” that is, God in human flesh (John 1:1,
14). For Athanasius, this was no mere academic theological squabble; to be
sure, nothing less than human salvation was at stake, for if Jesus Christ is
not fully God, then we are still in our sins, for only God can save.
In what has
been called the most important theological statement since the New Testament,
Athanasius argued that the incarnate Son of God, Jesus Christ, is “of one being
with the Father.” That is, Jesus Christ is fully God, just as the Father is
God. Athanasius’ defense of the full deity of Jesus Christ was enshrined in the
Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (381 A.D.), where, in accordance with the
apostolic witness recorded in the New Testament, the Church fathers declared that
Jesus Christ is “God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, Begotten,
not made, Of one being with the Father.” At the same time, the fathers asserted
the full deity of the Holy Spirit. [3]
With the
assertion of the full deity of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit against distortions
of the New Testament witness to the triadic nature of God, the way was cleared
in the late fourth century for the classic, orthodox statement of the Christian
doctrine of the Trinity, formulated by a trio of theologians—Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa and
Gregory Nazianzus—known collectively in Church history as the “Cappadocian
Fathers.” By precisely defining important Trinitarian terms such as “being” and
“person,” these Greek-speaking theologians were able to conceptually express the
unity (“one-ness”) and diversity (“three-ness”) of the Triune
Godhead in a way similar to that of the Latin theologian Tertullian of a
century earlier. In view of the triadic pattern
of God’s self-revelation in salvation history as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the
Cappadocians argued that God exists as “one being” (i.e., “nature,” “essence”) in “three persons,” where “being” is the principle of unity and “person” is the principle of
distinction or diversity. As the
Cappadocians argued, the divine persons of the Trinity share a common “being”; at
the same time, they are three distinct “persons.” In other words, “what”
Father, Son and Spirit are is the same; “who” each is is distinct and unique.[4]
It is important to
note that the terms “being” and “person,” as used by the Cappadocian fathers,
are not interchangeable. If we say
God is “three beings,” we commit the error of “tri-theism.” If we say God is
“one person,” we commit the error of “modalism.” The Cappadocian formula—“one being, three persons”—preserves both the “unity”
(one-ness) and the “diversity” (three-ness) of the Godhead, while articulating the
Trinitarian grammar that would allow the Church to speak of God as “one being
in three persons”—One in Three, Three in
One.
In addition, it is
essential to note that the Father, Son and Spirit cannot be thought of as
independent, autonomous “selves,” as the modern use of the term “person”
suggests. For Athanasius and the Cappadocian fathers, the term “person”
inherently includes relationship, for
the terms “Father” and “Son” are necessarily relational. There can be no
“Father” apart from the “Son”; there can be no “Son” apart from the “Father.” Thus,
the divine persons in relationship
constitute the “being” of God. At the same time, each divine person is unique
in terms of “origin.” In Trinitarian
language, the Father is “un-begotten,” the Son is “begotten” and the Spirit
“proceeds.” The language of relationship captures the “unity” of the persons of
the Holy Trinity, while the language of origin captures the distinctiveness or
“diversity” of the divine persons.
Finally, at the
heart of the Holy Trinity, the Cappadocians saw an interpersonal communion (koinonia) or “fellowship,” where each
divine person is intimately related to the other two in reciprocal joy and
delight. The internal relatedness of the divine persons is expressed in the
Trinitarian concept, perichoresis (Latin:
“coinherence”), where the divine persons are said to mutually “indwell” and
permeate one another in a divine “dance” of intimate fellowship and communion.
Putting all this
together, we can say that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, mutually indwelling
one another in an intimate communion of love, is the “one God” of the Christian faith. As the Cappadocian father
Gregory Nazianzus put it, “When I say ‘God’, I mean the Father, the Son and the
Holy Spirit.” The Cappadocian formula—“one being, three persons—with its regard
for the importance of “relationship” as an integral aspect of the “being” of
the one God, is enjoying renewed appreciation today among leading contemporary
Trinitarian theologians.
God is Love
In light of what may appear to be theological hair-splitting about the
nature of God, does the doctrine of the Trinity really matter? Does it make any
difference whether God is “one being in three persons,” as the doctrine of the
Trinity asserts, or simply one person who plays three roles (i.e., “modalism”) or even three
different gods pursuing their own ends (i.e.,
“tritheism”)? In regard to the last point, if Christians are really
polytheists who worship three “gods,” rather than “three persons in one God,” then we can never be certain
that God is like Jesus. The Church fathers’ assertion that Jesus is “of one
being with the Father” concisely expresses the biblical truth that the loving
heart of Jesus is a window into the inner heart of the Holy Trinity. The unity of
“being,” as well as the unity of will and purpose between the Father and the
incarnate Son (John 5:30) assure us that there is no dark, inscrutable god
hidden behind the back of Jesus Christ,[5] but only the God who has
loved us to the uttermost in sending his Son to be our Savior. Thus, it matters
whether the Holy Trinity is three “gods,” each independently seeking his own
ends, or “one God in three persons,” who enjoy unity of being, harmony of will
and singleness of purpose in creating humanity to share in the life and love of
the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Moreover, if God is only “one person” who plays three different “roles,
then the apostolic witness to the nature of God is called into question. According
to the apostle John, “God is love” (1John 4:8, 16). For John, love is not one
characteristic among many that we “attribute” to God; rather, God is love. Yet, what is godly love like? In
his memorable treatise on love (see 1Cor
13), the apostle Paul writes that love is patient and kind. It does not envy or
dishonor others. Love is not self-seeking. It keeps no record of wrongs. Note
that Paul describes love in interpersonal terms; that is, he describes
love in terms of relationship. To be
sure, godly love is relational, for
by its very nature, love requires another.
In regard to the doctrine of the Trinity, “Father” and “Son” are terms
of relationship. God is not an “in-itself,”
apart from others, but is “the epitome of love in relation.”[6] God is not alone, in
isolation from relationships, but is eternally related within the Holy Trinity as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The
one God of the Christian faith eternally exists in a Triune communion of
relationship whose nature is “love”: the Father loves the Son in the Holy
Spirit; the Son loves the Father in the Holy Spirit.
On the other hand, if God is unitarian rather than trinitarian, that is,
“one” divine person who plays three different “roles,” then God cannot be eternally
love; rather, God becomes love when he creates another. In that case, we
cannot be certain of God’s purpose in creation, for a one-person god isolated
in eternal “alone-ness” may create from a need for fellowship. If so, then creation
is not God's free and gracious act for us but is, rather, a self-fulfilling act designed to fill the
one-person-god’s need for community.
Happily, because scripture reveals that God is a divine communion of
love, eternally existing as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we can be certain that
there is no lack or necessity in God. God did not create us to fill a void or
need in the Godhead; rather, God created us as an act of overflowing love, for by
its nature godly love cannot be contained; it reaches out in self-giving for us. God created the world in order
to share his divine life and love with all humanity. That is why we were born:
to be included in the divine life and love of the Holy Trinity, to participate
in and enjoy the eternal communion of fellowship shared by the Father, Son and
Holy Spirit.
Eternally Father, Son and Holy Spirit
The doctrine of the Trinity is the Church’s attempt to express within
the limitations of human thought and speech the biblical witness to the eternal
nature of God whom the New Testament describes as “love.” God’s self-revelation
in the history of salvation as Father, Son and Holy Spirit is finally God’s
self-witness to his eternal, loving purpose for the whole world. Most
importantly, the doctrine of the Trinity is the Christian assertion that God is
antecedently and eternally the same God who has revealed himself in the history
of human salvation as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In short, we know who God is
from what he does. There is no other God than the loving Father who has loved us
to the uttermost in the sending of his Son and the gift of the Spirit—all for us and for our salvation. “May the
grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the
Holy Spirit be with you all” (2Cor 13:14).
[1] In Fiddes, P.S. Participating in God: A Pastoral Doctrine of the Trinity.
(Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2000), pp. 4-5.
[2] See,
for example, John 1:1, 14; 10:30; 14:9; Col 1:16, 17; 2:9; Heb 1:3
[3] Regarding the divinity of the third person of the Godhead, Scripture
describes the Holy Spirit as one who is a “personal, encountering, interacting
Thou” clearly distinguishable from the Father and Son. The Spirit speaks in the
first person (Acts 10:20; 13:12), teaches (Jn 14:26), stands as witness (Rom
8:16; 1Cor 1:22; 5:5; Eph 1:13, 14), sends (Acts 13:2), grieves (Eph 4:3),
struggles with other persons (Gen 6:3; Isa 63:10) and gives gifts (1Cor
12:4-11; Eph 6). Moreover, the names (Acts 1:8; Jn 4:24; 14:21; 15:26; Rom
8:14), attributes (Heb 9:14; 1Cor 2:10-12; Lk 11:20; Rom 15:18-19) and works
(1Cor 2:10; Acts 5:30-32; 28:25; Titus 3:5; 1Cor 6:19) of God are ascribed to
the Spirit. See Oden, T.C. Systematic Theology, Volume One: The Living God. (Peabody,
MA: Hendrickson, 2006), p. 199.
[4] As an
aid to memory, we might say that, in the Holy Trinity, there is one “what”
(“being”) and three “who’s” (“persons”).
[5] This
phrase was commonly used by the great 20th century Scottish
theologian, T.F. Torrance.
[6] Sanders, J. The
God Who Risks: A Theology of Divine Providence. (Downers Grove: IVP, 2007),
p. 148.
