Trinity

In this blog we are going to look at the Trinity. This is a concept that is easily discarded—and only with great foolishness, I believe. Note however that I said “concept.” This will prove important as we seek to understand what Christians believe about that nature and character of God, and how that is applied in their conduct in the church and in the world.

Christians believe Scripture teaches that there is one God in three Persons.

Not three gods in competition with each other.

Not one God operating in three modes. 

But rather, Christians believe that there are three Persons who coexist eternally in unending, loving relationship with one another—glorifying each other, edifying each other, working with and through each other.

Yet we need to recognize that what we know about God and what we assert about this “Trinity of Persons in one God” is deduced from what is revealed to us in Scripture. That is, nowhere in either the Old or New Testament do we find an explicit statement that the nature of God is “three Persons in one God,” nor that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are of one substance—also a part of the normative definition of Trinity in Christian theology.

Both Testaments are replete with references to God that reflect enormous complexity and diversity and numerous assertions and implications of activities and of living beings present in the Godhead, beyond only one—yet affirming one God. Christians assert that the correct number within the one God is three: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Even if we are exactly right about that number, the actual content of the Godhead is still above our pay grade, beyond our understanding, outside of our ability to comprehend. We cannot know what is beyond a human mind’s ability to know.

Much serious scholarship has gone into defining and defending the Trinity over the course of many centuries, and that scholarship has been valuable in encouraging us to conceive of God as three Persons in unending, loving relationship with one another. It has helped to remind us that it is in this image we are made (and hence we should treat each other this way). But the inescapable reality is that to our human minds, Trinity is a concept. That is, Trinity is a philosophical proposition used to help us conceive of God, affirm the authority and divinity of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, and guide us in our worship and behavior.

I am not saying that the concept of Trinity is wrong, nor that it is “just” a concept. As deeply real as the Trinity is within the Godhead, there is still an issue here that needs to be seen and understood.

However excellent a job is done in constructing this proposition, this concept of Trinity is not God, and it cannot contain (or even well describe) God’s actual nature. In fact, what God reveals about Himself in Scripture, if anything, upends every human attempt to capture or really understand Him. God says, “I am that I am.” (Exodus 3:14) He confuses those at Babel who want to climb up to see Him. He says quite explicitly, “My thoughts are not your thoughts and my ways are not your ways.”(Isaiah 55:8)  He even says that if we were to look at His face we would die. (Exodus 33:20)

Whatever it is that He is, He does not play by our rules and will not be confined to our concepts about Him, however bright, competent, accurate, and scholarly they might be.

So, we have to kneel and recognize that by God’s grace He has revealed the image in which we are made—that is, to be in loving submission and loving care for one another, with a Father, a Redeemer-Lord-Messiah-Son, and a Holy Spirit—all revealed in Scripture—in both Testaments, however we describe these to coexist, relate, proceed or be numbered. I’m not trying to be cute or heterodox here, but rather acutely aware of our own human limitations, and therefore humble in our assertions.

Christians deduce and conceive Trinity from the revelation of Scripture, and we should, by God’s power, do our best to live out its implications and imperatives. But we should not confuse a concept, however well-formed, with the reality of God.

Many great minds have worked for many centuries to spell out exactly what our precise concept is of the Trinity, what the characteristics are of each of the persons: Father, Son, Spirit. What their relative roles and responsibilities are, how they relate and proceed to and from one another, and on and on and on.

But we cannot have a relationship with a concept—that’s all inside our own heads! We can only have a relationship with God. We must get out of our own heads and have an actual relationship with our Creator.

Knowing God is not the same as having well-defined and defendable concepts about God.

For Christians, the ultimate example of knowing God is contained in the life and willing sacrifice of Jesus. Jesus didn’t simply have a better set of concepts about God or Trinity. He had relationship with the Father! And out of this relationship, Jesus says, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father.”(John 14:9b)  Jesus also says that He and the Father are one. (John 17:11, 21)

We can spend much ink and heat in deducing and debating philosophical propositions from this assertion—whether the Two are actually a Single One, of the same or similar substance, whether this is just metaphor, or if it describes reality, whether One is lesser than or equal to the Other, whether One is begotten or created and what exactly that means, whether Both existed before time, whether the Spirit is separate from the Two, and whether He proceeds from One or Both, and on and on. But when we do so, we have often trapped ourselves in concept, and missed relationship.

We live like intellectual Deists, asserting there is a God, but often having nothing actually to do with Him.

Some claim that the whole Christian faith is based upon the concept of the Trinity, and insist that good Christians must subscribe to it to truly be counted as Christian. But the danger is that this then has become our foundation: not God, but our well-defined and defended concept about God. However accurate the concept is, it is not God. Knowing the concept is not the same as knowing God. Knowing a concept is not a relationship.

Maybe some solid, thoughtful Trinitarians will say, “Yes, of course. What’s important is the Trinity Itself, not our explanations of it. This is obvious. Of course that’s what is important. Of course that’s what we mean and defend.”

But I don’t believe that is what we have actually seen through history.

Instead, we fell in love with concepts in a Greek philosophical system, worked out structures and appurtenances to the nth degree, and gave religious and biblical labels to the parts. We fought over which was the most beautiful, refined and true, yet they often became idols made by our own hands and minds—and we spoke bitterly of, shunned and even killed those who made and embraced other ones.

We have made idols of our concepts, and fought over them.

In so doing we neglected relationship with the One true God.

Trinity is a valuable, useful concept to help us understand the nature of the Godhead, but no matter how true or accurate a concept it is, it is not God, and it is not relationship with God.

Relationship is in covenant, not concepts.

In Christ,

Pastor George