Question by Tony Kemavor:
My Lord, I have been researching on the topic ‘The Nature of God’. In the course of this, I stumbled by this piece by the United Church of God Bible school.
Contact is as below:
The write-up was largely on the Trinity. At the end of it, there was this caveat that suggests the concept of the Trinity is not Biblical. Your assistance in clarifying the Nature of God in the underlying principle of the Trinity is kindly sought.
Answer by Bishop Joseph Osei-Bonsu:
The teaching of the United Church of God Bible School, as expounded in the link above, makes two affirmations: (1) The term “God” in the Bible is used of only God the Father and of Jesus Christ. It is not used of the Holy Spirit. (2) There is no such thing as Trinity, which is unbiblical. We shall examine the doctrine of the Trinity in the light of these claims.
The Doctrine of the Trinity
The doctrine of the Trinity sums up the Christian understanding of the mystery of God. The distinctive thing about Christianity is its understanding of God as tri-personal. The confession of three persons in one God is the outcome of extended reflection on the full implications of the mystery of Christ: the God revealed in the life of Jesus is Father, Son, and Spirit. The seeds of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity are to be found in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the post-Easter experience of the Spirit, and the worship of early Christian communities. However, it was not until the fourth century that these seeds were to flower into a full-blown coherent doctrine.
The doctrine of the Trinity is rooted in the fact that God came to meet Christians in a threefold figure: (1) as Creator, Lord of the history of salvation, Father, and Judge, as revealed in the Old Testament; (2) as the Lord who, in the incarnated figure of Jesus Christ, lived among human beings and was present in their midst as the “Resurrected One”; and (3) as the Holy Spirit, whom they experienced as the helper or intercessor in the power of the new life. The term “Trinity” was first used by Tertullian (born about AD 145 in Carthage) at the close of the 2nd century, but received wide currency and formal clarification only in the 4th and 5th centuries. Three affirmations are central to the historic doctrine of the Trinity: 1. there is but one God; 2. the Father, the Son and the Spirit is each fully and eternally God; 3. the Father, the Son, and the Spirit is each a distinct person. Nowhere does the Bible explicitly teach this combination of assertions. It may, nevertheless, be claimed that the doctrine of the Trinity is a profoundly appropriate interpretation of the biblical witness to God in the light of the ministry, death and resurrection exaltation of Jesus – the “Christ event”.
The Biblical Basis For Belief In The Doctrine Of The Trinity
The Old Testament witnesses to a belief in one God. In their daily prayer, Jews repeated the Shema of Dt. 6:4, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one”. In this they confessed the God of Israel to be the transcendent creator, without peer or rival. Without the disclosure of the Christ event, no one would have understood the Old Testament to be saying anything other than that there is only one God, a belief that is the hallmark of Judaism. It was New Testament writers, exploring the implications of the revelation of God in the Son, who first provided the basis for interpreting this monotheism inclusively, i.e. as involving more persons than one.
- In The Old Testament
Because the Old Testament was strongly monotheistic, it contains only a few hints of plurality within the One God. Principal among these are: (1) the enigmatic plurals in God’s own speech in Gn. 1:26; 3:22; 11:7; Is. 6:8; (2) occasions where two separate figures appear to be addressed as “God” or “the Lord” (Pss. 45:6-7; 110:1); (3) the “divine” angelic trio who come to Abraham in Gn. 18:1-22; (4) the “word” of God active in creation (Gn. 1:3; Ps. 33:6) and redemption (Is. 55:11); (5) the creative “wisdom” figure of Pr. 8:22-31; (6) the Spirit of God, regularly portrayed as bringing God’s revelation, wisdom and empowering to his people.
It is unlikely that any of these was understood by the Old Testament authors or their contemporary readers to refer to eternal personal distinctions within Israel’s one God. They would take (4) as poetic reference to God’s powerful command, and (5) as literary personification for God’s own wisdom. (2) and (3) would naturally be taken as instances of the common phenomenon of divine agency (an exalted creature indwelt by and representing God). The Spirit, (6), was considered the extension of God’s own “life”, “vitality” and “person” (after the analogy of the human spirit: cf. 1 Cor. 2:10-11!). The deliberative plurals (1) would be seen as plurals of divine council. Only developments reflected in the New Testament make it appropriate to read a deeper (Trinitarian) sense into these passages.
- In The Life and Teaching of Jesus
The gospels clearly present Jesus as the supreme agent of God’s messianic redemption and revelation. As the “Son of God” (a Messianic title, rather than an ascription of divinity, in the Synoptic Gospels, though filial uniqueness of some kind is indicated in Mt. 11:27; Mk. 12:6; 13:32; Lk. 1:35), and as the Isaianic liberator empowered by the Spirit (cf. Lk. 4:18-21), Jesus brings God’s eschatological reign into the present. He does this through miracles of deliverance and healing (Mt. 12:15-21, 28; Lk. 7:18-23; Acts 10:38, etc.), through the extension of divine forgiveness and sonship to the marginalized (cf. Mk. 2:3-12; Lk. 7:36-50; 14:15-24; 15:1-32, etc.), and through transformative teaching which fulfils and surpasses the law of Moses in authority (Mt. 5:17-20; 12:5-6; Mk. 2:23-28; 7:14-23, etc.). In the Gospel of John, Jesus claims to be: the true Bethel (1:51-i.e. the place where heaven comes down to earth); the true temple (2:19-21); the source of the water of life and salvation (4:10, 14; 7:37-39); the true bread from heaven (6:25-59); the light of the world (8:12), and the life of the world to come (11:25). He preexists Abraham (8:58), he descends from the Father (3:13, 31-36), and he is so much one with the Father that to see and hear him is to see and hear the Father revealed (10:30, 38; 14:6-11; cf. 1:18). According to all four gospels, Jesus also anticipated ascension to the Father, and (in the Synoptics) that he would sit at his right hand (Mk. 14:62 par.).
These claims are entirely consistent with Trinitarian (or, at least, binitarian) thinking. But, taken on their own, they stop somewhat short of an outright claim to eternal, divine Sonship. The claims above are thus overpressed when taken (with the resurrection) as hard “proofs” of Jesus’ divinity. It needs to be remembered that the disciples too worked miracles, were given the authority to forgive sins (cf. Jn. 20:23), and were called to share in the sort of unity with the Father and the Son, that the Son himself had shown (so Jn. 17:21-22). Even Jesus’ claim to preexist Abraham does not itself “prove” eternal divinity, for the angels and other heavenly creatures were considered to preexist the world. In short, the claims above could all be accounted for, for example, on the understanding that Jesus thought of himself as a preexistent Messiah, i.e. an exalted divine agent of great glory, endowed with extraordinary powers and prerogatives, but a creature, nevertheless, in whom God dwelt uniquely-rather than God the Son.
However, in one line of affirmation, Jesus makes a claim that goes beyond anything that could be considered possible of any creature, however exalted. In Jn. 15:26, 16:7 and Lk. 24:49, Jesus promises he will send/commission the Spirit to the disciples from heaven, and in Jn. 14:16-23 he teaches that the Spirit will mediate to them the presence of the Father and the Son (i.e. it is through the promised Spirit that Jesus and the Father are to make their self-revealing dwelling with the disciples). As the phrase “Spirit of God” was understood as referring to God himself in action (speaking, revealing, empowering, etc.), Jesus’ implicit claim to be Lord of the Spirit goes beyond the bounds of creaturely possibility. The same claim also pushes the teaching about the Spirit in a Trinitarian direction. It is not surprising that in the very context in which the Spirit is revealed as the One who will come as the Spirit of Jesus (i.e. in the Paraclete discourses of Jn. 14-16), the Spirit also emerges as a divine person, distinguishable from both the Father and the Son. Thus, (1) he comes from the Father and the Son as a full personal replacement for Jesus (“another Paraclete of the same kind”: Jn 14:16), (2) he is so united with them that he mediates their presence and activity (as Jesus had mediated the Father’s), and (3) he glorifies the Son in his teaching, just as the Son had glorified the Father (Jn. 16:14; cf. 17:4). A similar perspective is perhaps contained in the great commission of Mt. 28:19, where disciples are instructed to baptize in the one name (not “names”) of the Father and of the Son and of the Spirit.
- In The New Testament Church And Its Writings
Peter’s Pentecost speech chimes well with the teaching in the Johannine Farewell Discourses. The apostle affirms, “This Jesus … being … exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this which you see and hear” (Acts 2:32-33). Jesus is hereby declared to fulfil the promise of Joel 2:28-32 that God would pour out his Spirit (cf. 2:17). Accordingly, in 2:36, 38, Peter concludes that Jesus has become one with “the Lord” of Joel 2:32 (cf. Acts 2:21) on whose name people should call for salvation.
While Trinitarian theology could have taken off from such proclamation, it is perhaps not surprising that the early church devoted more time to expounding its doctrine of Christ than its doctrine of the Holy Spirit. This was the appropriate response to the Christ-event, which was a scandal to unbelievers, but was perceived as the definitive revelation of God’s saving love by Christians. In seeking to demonstrate the proclamation about Jesus as the fulfilment of Israel’s faith and hopes, much attention naturally focused on Jesus as the resurrected Messiah, exalted to the throne at God’s right hand (e.g. Acts 2:25–36), and as the “Son of Man” in the Book of Daniel who would come again in glory at the Parousia to exercise God’s judgment. But some of these attempts to integrate the unity of the new faith with that of the Old Testament pushed more towards a divine Christology. As early as 1 Cor. 8:6, the Father and Jesus are identified as the one God and one Lord of Dt. 6:4, and both are portrayed as the wisdom that brought creation into being and sustains it. (cf. also Col. 1:15-20; Heb. 1:2-3; Jn. 1:1-18).
Similarly, the assertion of Phil. 2:6, that Jesus was “in the form of God” but “did not count equality with God as something to be exploited” provides another early hymnic confession of Jesus’ pre-existent divinity. That this is the intent of the language is confirmed in Phil. 2:9-10, where the exalted Jesus is revealed as the Lord of Is. 45:21-24—as fiercely monotheistic a passage as can be found anywhere in the Old Testament! Despite their conservative tendency to keep the title ho theos (“God”) for the Father, on seven or eight occasions New Testament writers specifically apply the title “God” to Jesus (Heb. 1:8—citing Ps. 45:6-7; Jn. 1:1, 18, in some manuscripts; 20:28; 1 Jn. 5:20; Rom. 9:5; Tit. 2:13 and 2 Pet. 1:1). Beyond these lie many less direct affirmations of divinity. Among them we may make special mention of two striking phenomena. 1. The opening salutations of Paul’s letters (Rom. 1:7; 1 Cor. 1:3, etc.) invoke divine grace from both God and the Lord Jesus (no Jew thought of any human or heavenly creature as the source of divine grace!). 2. Even more significantly, Jesus is offered the community’s prayer and worship (cf. Mt. 28:17; Jn. 20:28; Acts 7:59; 1 Cor. 16:22b (Maranatha!); Rev. 5:11-14; 22:1-5, 17, 20, etc., not to mention the hymnic confessions mentioned earlier). It was widely considered unthinkable and blasphemous to worship any but God alone within the Judaism from which Christianity sprang, yet worship here is directed to Jesus.
Scholars have not found it easy to explain how Christians came to this startling conviction that the crucified and resurrected Messiah was somehow one God with the Father, and that it was appropriate to offer him worship. But the readiest explanation is the church’s continuing experience of the risen Lord as presented to them through the Spirit. By the Spirit they had visions of him (cf. Acts 7:55-56; 9:10-16; 18:9-10; 22:17-21; 2 Cor. 12:1-7, etc.), including the telling visions in the Book of Revelation which saw the Lamb on God’s throne, receiving the worship of the heavenly congregation (Rev. 5, etc.). Also, they themselves received words and guidance from the risen Lord (cf. Acts 16:17; 2 Cor. 12:8-9, etc.). More important, they experienced the Spirit of God as bearing the character of Jesus and impressing this on their own lives (cf. Rom. 8:9-10, 15; Gal. 4:6). If the Spirit of God had become the ‘Spirit of Jesus Christ’ too (cf. Acts 16:7; Gal. 4:6; Rom. 8:9-10; Phil. 1:19), the means of the presence of Jesus’ grace and gifts (cf. Acts 2:33; 1 Cor. 12:4–6), then this could hardly mean anything less than that he shared in the divinity of the Father and the Spirit. Indeed, the presence of this Spirit-of-God-and-of-Jesus would probably have been understood to evoke the response of confession, prayer and worship in question (cf. 1 Cor. 12:3; 14:14-16; Rom. 8:26-27). In conclusion, we can say that while no New Testament writer fully articulates a “doctrine of the trinity”, the implicitly Trinitarian thought-forms of the teaching of Paul and John (especially) provide much of the basis for that later formulation.
The Development Of The Doctrine Of The Trinity
Trinitarian speculation began in the 2nd century with Athenagoras (fl. c. 177), who defended the doctrine as an essential part of the church’s faith. Other Church Fathers who spoke of and defended the doctrine of the Trinity include Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr and Origen of Alexandria. It was expounded at length by Tertullian, who was largely responsible for the method and vocabulary which the Western tradition now uses. Tertullian argued that there was one God, in whom could be found three persons. His thought was influenced by what is known as “economic Trinitarianism”, the belief that God the Father brought forth his two hands, the Son and the Holy Spirit, to serve as mediators in creating the world. This approach related to the three successive phases of God’s dealing with the world from creation onwards. The economy (Gk. oikonomia; cf. Eph. 1:10; 3:9) was this ordered plan of God. Human history could be divided into three periods, each of which belonged to a different person of the Godhead. The Old Testament was the age of the Father, the gospel period the age of the Son and the time since Pentecost the age of the Holy Spirit. This view was unsatisfactory because it tied the Trinity to the time and space framework, and because it lent itself to modalism, the belief that the one God appeared to man in three different modes. As creator he appeared as the Father, as redeemer he appeared as the Son and as sanctifier he appeared as the Holy Spirit.
The first major attempt to explain the doctrine of the Trinity was that of Sabellius who was a theologian and priest from the 3rd century. He proposed that while God is Father, Son and Spirit, he is not eternally and intrinsically so but only in relation to creation and salvation. In addition, God is only ever one of the three at any given time. This teaching was rejected on the grounds that it undermined both the biblical witness and the eternal identity of God.
If Sabellius raised the problem of God’s plurality, Arius raised the problem of monotheism. In his interpretation of the idea of God, Arius sought to maintain a formal understanding of the oneness of God. In defence of that oneness, he was obliged to deny that the Son and the Holy Spirit had the same essence as the Father. For Arius, Jesus, though very close to God the Father, ends up as second in importance to God the Father and therefore never fully equal to the Father. In order to defend God’s radical oneness, Arius argued that the Son was created. Thus, he and his followers insisted that “there was a time when he (Christ) was not”. In effect, Arius was unable to accept that the eternal God had personally entered into the historical condition of humanity in Jesus of Nazareth.
To deal with these problems the Church Fathers met in 325 at the Council of Nicaea to set out an orthodox biblical definition concerning the divine identity. Arius’ view was rejected on the grounds that it undermined the eternal identity of God as Father: if there was a time when the Son was not, then God’s real identity cannot be that of Father. Ultimately, on Arius’s view, we do not know God’s real identity. It was established at the Council that the Son is homoousios (of the same substance) with the Father, and not simply of similar substance (homoiousios) with God the Father. God, it was affirmed, is definitely Father and Son. Nicaea affirmed explicitly the absolute unity between God and Jesus. In doing so the Council of Nicaea upheld clearly the divinity of Jesus and the full mystery of the incarnation of God in Jesus.
Over the next half century, Athanasius defended and refined the Nicene formula, and, by the end of the 4th century, under the leadership of Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus (the Cappadocian Fathers), the doctrine of the Trinity took substantially the form it has maintained ever since. During this period there was also controversy about the biblical evidence for the Spirit’s divinity. Many assumed that because he did not have a “personal” name, like the Father and the Son, he must be an inferior being. This was countered first by Athanasius and then by Basil of Caesarea, who argued at great length that the Holy Spirit was God because Scripture called him the Lord and life-giver, said that he proceeded from the Father (Jn. 15:26), and gave him the honour of being worshipped alongside the Father and Son. Basil’s theology was declared orthodox at the Second Ecumenical Council (Constantinople, 381), since which time it has been the basis of Trinitarian theology in the Eastern Church. At this Council, the divinity of the Spirit was affirmed with equal explicitness. At this point in the history of Christian faith, believers were given words in which to affirm their belief in God as one, because the Father, the Son and the Spirit have the same nature, as partakers of the single reality of divine being; they are fully but only distinct in the sense that each is a different hypostasis (person-in-relation) within that unitary nature. Thus, when talking about God’s unity Christians have used essence (=being, or traditionally substance) and nature language. When referring to that which makes God three, however, we refer to the relations or personal identities of Father, Son and Spirit.
In conclusion, we can say that the
doctrine of the Trinity is an attempt to draw out the implications of the
biblical revelation of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The doctrine is not
contained formally in Scripture but is both an inference and a construct from
the Bible, as we have tried to demonstrate in this answer.