Can I Ask That? – Part Three – What is the Trinity and Why Does It Matter?
Head/Mind – Helpful Information
“The Trinity is the belief that makes Christianity Christianity. If we do not have the Trinity, then we don’t have the Christian God, and thus, we don’t have Christianity.” Nature and reason can tell us what God is, but only from God’s self-disclosure, his revelation, his Word can we know who God is.”
Now, you may be saying to yourself, the word “Trinity” is not in the Bible. And, you’re right. And, you do not have to use the word “Trinity” to be a Christian. However, if you look at everything the Bible has to say about the relationship between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, all of that, is what we mean by the word Trinity. And if you understand and believe what the Bible says about how these three person are related, then you believe what church teaches about the Trinity, even if you do not use the same words. So, what does the Bible teach us? What does it reveal?
First, God has one nature. One’s nature is what makes something what it is. To say that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all God is to say that each has everything that makes God God. They are each all knowing, all powerful, ever present, and are each eternal. Yet, each is a distinct person. A person is not a thing. A person is only defined in relationship to other persons. Before God created us, before anything other than God existed, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were a part of a distinct relationship to one another.
But how do we know this? Well, the Bible reveals it to us. We see the first glimpse of this in Genesis One, where we discover that the Creator God speaks his word into existence and that his Spirit hovers over creation like a fluttering dove. That is not the full doctrine of the Trinity, but is an important hint about the nature of God. Yet, the Bible teaches that there is only One God. We do not have multiple gods competing with each other over the control of the universe. Yet, the Bible reveals that the Father is God, Jesus is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. And yet, this is not just three forms of the same person, for we see them interacting with each other. In Matthew 3, the Father declares Jesus to be his Son and sends the Holy Spirit to anoint Jesus for his work as the Messiah. In Isaiah 48:16, the Father sends the Son along with the Holy Spirit. In Zechariah 2:11, the Messiah is identified as the the coming Lord, while also being sent by the Lord. This is not schizophrenia, but the complex inward reality of God.
Let’s talk about some misunderstandings of the Trinity. Some people think that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are just modes of God, which is a heresy called Modalism. Modalism is the idea that God sometimes acts like a Father, while at other times he acts like a Son, or a Spirit. But the Bible shows us that the three persons of the Trinity interact with each other, which could not happen if they were just forms or roles of the same person. So, for example, Jesus prays to the Father and yields himself to the direction of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is sent by the Father and comes to highlight and remind the church of what Jesus taught us.
Some people think that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are each just a part of God, as if God could be divided up into divisions, like a big mega-corporation. But that also is not true. That is a heresy called partialism. Each person of the Trinity is fully God. So, for example, Colossians 2 says that in Jesus, the fullness of the Godhead/that is, the fullness of his nature was pleased to dwell. The full nature of God is in Jesus. And 2 Corinthians says, that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty, because, God alone can make us free. Each person of the Trinity is fully God.
Some people just think that the Three persons are three spiritual beings that just happen to cooperate, but that is a heresy called Tritheism. That turns Christianity into a polytheistic faith, which it is not. Like Judaism and Islam, we are monotheistic. The others two faiths have never chosen to reflect on the relationship of God’s word and spirit to himself. We respect that, but Christianity has chosen to reflect on that because in the Messiah we see an embodiment of God’s word, and in the life of community, we experience the Spirit as the indwelling of God. That is why Christianity is not like a math problem where we increase our total by addition. In that case, 1 + 1 + 1 = three gods. No, the trinity is more like a multiplication problem, where 1 x 1 x 1 = equals one God. We know that there is one God. We see his will perfectly lived out in the human life of Jesus, and we experience the life transforming power of the Holy Spirit, as he directs our lives toward the One True God.
Some think that Jesus is a lesser being because they see him submitting to the Father. The mistake here is forgetting that while Jesus is fully God, he is also fully human. And as a human, he stands in our place, representing us, and submitting himself to the Father, as a representative of the human race. Jesus came to be the perfect example of a human, so, in order to do so, we see him in his human nature, as he submits to the Father. This also explains how Jesus can worship God and be God. Remember, Jesus came to be the perfect human and all humans were created to worship God. But what does it mean for Jesus to worship God? It means the same thing that means for us. It means the focus of Jesus’ love is God. It means that God is his highest aim. Why should God’s focus of love and highest aim be something less than himself? Saying Jesus is God also means Jesus is not younger than the Father. Nor does he have less authority. Matthew 28 says that the Father has given the Son all authority over heaven and earth. Further, the Holy Spirit is not Jesus’ sibling. Nor is the Holy Spirit Jesus’ mom. The Holy Spirit, who is a person, is the shared loved between the Father and the Son.
Analogies are not helpful here. Some say that the Trinity is like water, steam, and ice, which is not correct, unless they are all three at once. Otherwise, we are describing Modalism. Some say the Trinity is like three leafs on a shamrock, but that is Partialism. Some say the Trinity is like an egg, but that is also Partialism.
Bottom line: we believe in the Trinity, not because of human made analogies, but because the Father sends the Son. He does not send a substitute, someone else because he cannot be bothered. The sending of the Son is God reaching out to us. In the same way, the Holy Spirit comes in the name of Jesus, meaning that we are not abandoned by Jesus when he ascends to heaven. Jesus was God with us. The Holy Spirit is God within us. The Trinity is a summary of all that the Bible teaches about who God is and what God has done. It is a summary of the Gospel.
Now, some people think that Trinity is something that was created by the emperor at the church council of Nicaea. I am going to give you two pieces of evidence that suggest that the Trinity was a far more ancient idea.
Ignatius of Antioch was a second generation Christian who was a student of the Apostle John, who was martyred in 107 A.D. In his letter to Ephesus Ignatius says “By the will of the Father, and Jesus Christ, our God, abundant happiness and undefiled grace come to us.” He makes two points. One, that Jesus is God, but also that Jesus is distinct from the Father. Ignatius also speaks of Jesus as the “The Son of God, who was begotten before time began.” He also says that Jesus is “God being manifested as a man.”
https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0104.htm
A third generation Christian, Ireneaus Lyon, who was a student of Polycarp, who was a student of the Apostle John speaks of the Holy Spirit as God, calling the Holy Spirit of the Wisdom and hand of God who fashioned creation.
https://academic.oup.com/book/5502/chapter-abstract/148420673?redirectedFrom=fulltext#
The point being, is that the ideas that lead the Church to articulate the Trinity in the Fourth Century are there from the beginning. They emerge from the Bible itself and are found in the earliest days of the Christian faith.
This portion of the sermon relies on the following video: https://youtu.be/9f4BJgaOStI?si=msFEL70XR9n45DXu
Heart – How does this doctrine impact our faith?
If the Trinity is not Biblical, then what we do in Christian worship is idolatry. Take the Doxology, which is the oldest song we sing. In it, we say, “Praise God, from who all blessings flow. Praise him all creatures here below. Praise him all ye heavenly hosts. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.” If the Son and the Holy Spirit are not equally God, then directing our worship toward them is to direct worship away from God unto someone or something that is not God. So, is the Doxology is Biblical or unbiblical? We believe it is Biblical.
Also, this is how we know who God is. We know about the heart of God because the Father sends the Son and the Son sends the Holy Spirit. The Trinity is at the heart of the Gospel, because it is the way we explain how we know God. It is about God’s self-disclosure.
The Trinity also helps us to understand God’s love for us. God did not create the world because he was lonely or incomplete without the world. Instead, God creates out of an abundance of love. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, after perfectly loving each other for all of eternity, still had so much love to spare, that it just seemed a shame not to give that love away to someone else. So, God creates, not because he needs us, but because he desires to share his love beyond himself.
https://youtu.be/4iJifwhHYX4?si=IUjttyzh6o5YcB86
Hands – Why Spend Time On This? What Good Does this Doctrine Do?
The Trinity helps us to understand why all of creation is a network of relationships. Take for example the ecology. The health of our planet is built upon a vast series of complex relationships. For example, we may not like mosquitos and other flying pests, but get rid of them and the amphibians die off. Kill off the amphibians and the fish die off, and it is not long before no life can be sustained.
Earth worms and honeybees are necessary to plant life, upon which all mammals, including humans depend. Pull one piece of this tapestry apart and the whole thing unravels. Why? Because it is all relational. Nature and the ecology are nothing but a series of relationships.
Even physics shows that those parts of creation which we think of as inanimate are tied together in a series of relationships. For example the butterfly effect shows how even the smallest of changes in one location can change what is happening somewhere else.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect
The universe reflects something about its creator. At the heart of what we call God is an eternal relationship between three eternal Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. That is reflected in every thing God has created.
To take but another example, think of human community. One cannot understand a human being in isolation from their human community. Even a hermit or recluse must start somewhere, and must occasional wander back to town for supplies. Even a homesteader must buy the nails to construct their place apart from the rest of the world. What would a human be without human community? One cannot even imagine, for no such a thing can logically be.
The Trinity helps us to reflect on and appreciate all of these networks or relationships which support us and give our live meaning, and to which we can contribute to or damage by our interactions with them. Networks might be a way of thinking about how inanimate things relate to each other, just as fractals show us how abstract realities such as math and physic inter-relate.
The Trinity also helps us to understand our relationship to God. We can know God because he has sent his Son and the Son has sent the Spirit. We can approach God, because the Son has given us access to the Father. And we can navigate that relationship because the Spirit guides us in our relationship to God. Thus, even our prayer lives and worship take shape around the Trinity.