(Audio version; Music: "We Believe" by: Newsboys and "This I Believe (The Creed)" by: Hillsong)
Introduction
Last week, in Part Two of our lesson
on Defending The Trinity, I attempted to identify some tools that might be
useful in the defense of the doctrine of the Trinity. We looked at how Jesus’
divinity could be defended against claims that He lacked the essential
qualities of God because He didn’t always appear to be omnipotent, omnipresent,
or omniscient by showing that those qualities could have been an act of
self-limitation in order to accomplish the Father’s will of insuring humanity’s
redemption.
We dispelled the notion that the Trinity was a pagan belief
system by remembering that the Trinity existed before every other belief
system. Furthermore, pagan belief systems employed tri-theistic (three gods)
belief systems.
We provided some assurance that just because something is
unknown, it’s not unknowable. And just because something is unknown doesn’t
make it untrue. Finally, confessing that some things are a mystery isn’t
necessarily surrendering to ignorance as much as it is confessing that
humanity, in its limited capacity, will never be able to understand everything
about God. If you think about it, isn’t that the way it should be? If you can
know absolutely everything about God, that wouldn’t be much of a God now would
it?
Finally, we shed some light on the
confusion over God’s three-in-oneness by understanding the Trinity not as
persons quantified mathematically but as illuminated grammatically by
clarifying the use of the word “is.” Consequently, when we say the Father is God, and the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is
God, we are using the “is” of predication as opposed to the “is” of identity.
There are, of course, countless other arguments against the
Trinity and equally sound defenses to counter those arguments. However, the
most important defense for any orthodox Christian doctrine or belief is the
revelation God gave us in the Scriptures. Therefore, we will now turn our
attention to that very important revelation of God.
What The Bible Says
For the Christian, God’s revelation of Himself in Scripture
is a crucial element of faith. So it is essential to investigate the Scriptures
to determine its teaching relative to the Trinity. It is often argued by those
that would oppose the doctrine of the Trinity that it is merely a man-made
invention since it is never identified formally or informally in Scripture. The
word “Trinity” never appears in either the Old or New Testaments. However, “many
technical terms familiar to Christian teaching, like eschatology, anthropology,
pneumatology, hamartiology, and cosmology,
are not found expressly in Scripture but derive explicitly from scriptural
teaching. So it is with trinity.”[1]
Old
Testament Support
Like many things about God’s revelation, it becomes clearer
with the passage of time and perhaps with expanded revelation. This is the case
with Old Testament support for the Trinity. For example, “Elohim, the divine
term used of God at the beginning of the Bible (Genesis1:1), is a plural noun
used some 500 times by Moses…accompanied continually by a verb in the singular.
This is a term revealing the oneness of Deity and the plurality of Persons in
the Godhead.”[2]
God uses the plural pronoun “us” and “our” during the creative process recorded
in Genesis when He says, “Let us make
man in our image, in our likeness... (Genesis 1:26).” “This
evidence attests that the God of revelation was conceived from the very
beginning as a composite rather than a solitary unity.”[3]
What shall we make of the physical appearances of God, also known as
theophanies, in the Old Testament? (Gen. 18, Jos. 5 and Dan. 3) Since the
Father is spirit and has no physical body per se, these theophanies are largely
held to be the preincarnate Jesus Christ himself. Furthermore, there are
occasions when God speaks of the actions of His Spirit among Israel in terms
that beg the question: What Spirit is God referring to when God the Father is
spirit (Joel 2:28)? It seems clear that there is a distinction between God the
Father, God the Son and God the Spirit. However, it isn’t until the New
Testament that we begin to see an expanded revelation of God and a much clearer
view of the Trinity.
New
Testament Support
“Any doctrine latent
in the Old Testament is patent in the
New Testament.”[4]
The unfolding of the Trinity becomes increasingly clearer in the New Testament
where there are countless examples that clearly identify both the unity and the
plurality of God. One of the clearest examples of God’s plurality is
demonstrated at Jesus’ baptism where Mark records the event beautifully saying,
“As Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the
Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: ‘You are my
Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.’” (Mk. 1:10-11) With similar
clarity, the unity of God is demonstrated through the words of Jesus himself.
John records an encounter between Jesus and one of his disciples, Philip, with
respect to Jesus’ anticipated death, and return to the Father. Jesus is trying
to give his disciples a glimpse of blessings that await them in the presence of
the Father. “Philip said, ‘Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for
us.’ Jesus answered: ‘Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among
you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father (Jn. 14:8-9).’”
Certainly Jesus is not saying that He and the Father are the same person. We
know this because Jesus is often shown praying to the Father (cf. Matt.
26:39-42). It seems beyond reason to insist that He was praying to himself.
Instead, it is far more reasonable to see in Jesus’ words and actions throughout
Scripture that He and the Father are the same in essence while at the same time
distinct in their individual personhood.
So What! What Difference Does It Make?
Some of you might be thinking that I
have droned on about this long enough and are wondering, why or if, belief in
the Trinity is really such a big deal. I suppose that’s a fair question but
consider for a moment how many false religions that are out there who, in some
form or another, have hijacked the name of Jesus as a tool to build and expand
their false religious claims. However, they all reject the Trinity, in large
part because they refuse to confess Jesus’ full divinity and full, sinless
humanity. For example, Christian Scientists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Mormons
all include some form or another of Jesus in their belief system. However, Christian
Scientists (founded by Mary Baker Eddy in the latter half of the 19th
century) do not believe Jesus is God. Furthermore, they believe the spiritual
Jesus was without sin but the human Jesus was sinful. Jehovah’s Witnesses (founded
by Charles Taze Russell in the latter half of the 19th century) believe
Jesus was created (very similar to Arianism). Mormons (founded by Joseph Smith
in the first half of the 19th century) believe that Jesus is Lucifer’s
spiritual brother because they are both God the Father’s offspring. They also
believe that Jesus was conceived through normal conception by a mortal mother
and an immortal Elohim (a Hebrew name for God) who was once a man and became a God
like Jesus was a man and became a God like all Mormons who will eventually
become gods. (Good luck trying to sift through that mess and let me know if you
ever get to the place where someone along the way was God from the beginning!
Who created the first man if God was first a man like us?) So to answer the
question: What difference does it make? It makes a difference between believing
the truth and believing a lie. The Trinity is only part of orthodox
Christianity. Belief systems that reject the Trinity, whatever they may or may
not say about Jesus, are not Christian. But it goes even deeper. It’s a matter
of being in relationship with God—the real God, not some god made up by some
religious charlatans looking to make a buck off of people’s biblical ignorance;
the God of the Bible; the God who revealed Himself to us as Father, Son, and
Spirit.
When you enter into an intimate
relationship with someone, the depth of that relationship is, to a large
degree, dependent on getting to know that person. And it’s no different for our
relationship with God. We tend to gravitate toward Jesus for obvious
reasons—because He sacrificed His life for us. However, there are other,
perhaps less obvious reasons as well that we gravitate toward Jesus—we can
relate to Him because He was one of us. He occupied time and space with us so
we are able to relate to Him better. However, this is just one way God has
revealed Himself to us in order to be in relationship with us. If we get stuck
on relating to God only in the person of Jesus, we wind up with a truncated
relationship with God. It would be like being in relationship with your husband
or wife only on the basis of your shared interest in hiking, biking, traveling,
or reading. But God has revealed Himself to us in many other ways so that we
can have a well-rounded understanding of who He is and how He loves us.
We walk
along a sandy beach or stand at the foot of a towering mountain and get a sense
for how awesome the Creator, God the Father is that could create something so
beautiful and breath-taking. And we are even more in awe when we realize that
He created all things for us to enjoy. All of creation is, in part, God the
Father’s revelation of Himself to us. Look up into the night sky at all the
stars and listen to God the Father tell you that there are more ways that He
loves you than there are stars in the sky.
When the time was right, God
revealed Himself to us in the person of Jesus Christ as God the Son. God wanted
us to know that He is not a far-off Creator that can’t be seen or touched.
Instead, He is close to us; He is Immanuel—God with us. Jesus revealed God to
us in a real and tangible way. He was a friend, a teacher, a healer, and
finally our Savior. When it came time for God to reveal His love for us in a
way other than through creation, He allowed Himself to be nailed to a cross in
our place. Look at the cross and listen to God the Son tell you that He loves
you so much that He wants to make it possible for you to spend eternity with
Him.
When Jesus told His disciples that
He would be going away, they were understandably distraught. God was finally
there with them; close enough to touch; they could talk with Him and eat with
Him, they didn’t want to give that up. However, God was preparing to reveal
Himself to humanity in yet another way. Jesus said that He would send us a
Comforter; an Advocate. In place of God the Son’s bodily presence with us, God
would go one step farther, God the Spirit would come to dwell within our lives
to encourage us, to guide us, and to remind us of all the things Jesus taught.
God, in the person of Jesus, as we have seen, limited Himself in order to
accomplish the primary task of providing for our salvation. However, God needed
to be available to everyone, at all times, and in all places who put their
faith in the saving work of God the Son. And that could only be done by God the
Spirit. In those quiet and desperate times of your life, when you sense that
God is right there standing beside you or holding your hand or carrying you,
you are sensing that God the Spirit is with you saying I won’t leave you, let
me guide you, let me comfort you, let me encourage you. God the Spirit, every
day in every way, is saying I love you.
Conclusion
It goes without saying that there is no perfect argument in defense of the Trinity that would convince all doubters. However, to say that there is clear evidence against belief in the Trinity is far from accurate as well. The historical development of the doctrine was methodical and intentional. Biblical support, although not explicitly identifying the “Trinity,” nonetheless contains the building blocks necessary for the sound development of the doctrine. While these all may be fine sounding arguments in defense of the Trinity, there are some essential elements that must be considered in closing. John records an event before Jesus is crucified where Jesus says, “I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth.” (Jn. 16:12-13) Christians are at times criticized for being unscientific in their biblical theology and instead relying on their faith as opposed to reason in matters such as the Trinity. However, while we may be called to give a defense of our beliefs, it is unreasonable to expect that we can somehow always present a compelling argument to someone lacking the illumination of truth provided by the Spirit. “One lesson to be learned from this is that there is no sledgehammer apologetics. There are no arguments for the truth of Christianity which force the atheist or non-Christian to their intellectual knees. The unbeliever can always backtrack and give up some other belief instead.”[5] Additionally, one of the operative words in Christianity is “faith.” Faith, by definition, is belief in something that is not entirely certain. There are so many things about Christianity that are built upon the foundation of faith in something uncertain. We don’t understand nor can we explain how God exists outside of creation yet we believe it by faith. We don’t understand how God created something out of nothing yet we believe it by faith. We don’t understand how God became a man in the person of Jesus yet we believe it by faith. We don’t understand how Jesus died on a cross and then rose from the dead three days later yet we believe it by faith. We can’t explain how the Spirit lives within us when we accept Christ yet we believe it by faith. We believe these things by faith yet skeptics decry that it is unreasonable to believe that God exists as one essence in three persons because we don’t fully understand it and can’t fully explain it. It would seem that this is unbelief for unbelief’s sake. Instead, although the doctrine of the Trinity is built on a strong foundation of biblical support and sound scholarship, its ultimate acceptance is still a matter of faith.
[1] Thomas C.
Oden, The Living God,
(HarperSanFrancisco, New York, NY, 1987) p. 186.
[2] Herbert
Lockyer, All the Doctrines of the Bible,
(Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI, 1964) p. 123.
[3] Donald
G. Bloesch, God the Almighty,
(InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL, 1995) p. 168.
[4] Lockyer,
All the Doctrines of the Bible, p.
124
[5] Michael
J. Murray, ed., Reason for the Hope
Within, (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, MI, 1999) p. 13.
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