"We are like a tree, planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not whither.  Whatever we do will prosper." (Psalm 1:3)
  
 
Trinity Discussion PDF Print E-mail
Summary Statement:  The God whom Jesus came to reveal is relational in nature; at the heart of the Gospel message is a relationship that pulses with life; this life is rooted in the love that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit have enjoyed from eternity past.  The Bible indicates that the life of God is a life of everlasting love, joy unspeakable and peace that passes all understanding.  God is so abounding in this life that it is His passionate determination is to share it with us.  To this end He sent His Son into the world for the purpose of taking on our humanity in His incarnation, cleansing us from all alienation in His crucifixion, giving us new life in His resurrection, and, through His ascension, lifting us up into the loving fellowship of the triune God.
                                                    
To say that God is triune is to say that:
 
1. The life of God is now, and has always been, about relationship;
2. There is no God except the God who eternally exists as Father, Son and Holy Spirit: three persons in a community of love, unity and common purpose.
3. He has enjoyed this communion of love throughout all eternity.  Even before time began, it has always been His passion to include the human race in His fellowship;  
4. In order to fulfill this passion, God sent his son to become incarnate among us as a man, to die for our sins on the cross, and be raised up triumphant over death. (II Cor. 5:19)
5. On account of Christ’s triumph, God summons us to faith and repentance; that is to say we are called to give up our anxious thoughts and find freedom and repose in the truth that we have been engrafted in the glorious risen Son who now reigns at the right hand of God the Father almighty ever living to make intercession for us by the Holy Spirit;
6. In the gospel hear the voice of the Father saying to us by the Spirit, “I’ve always wanted a child just like you!”; we become so “caught up” with this revelation of the Son that we now say by the Holy Spirit, “Abba, Father in heaven, holy is your name!”
7. We believe in one God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Discussion:  In the historic creeds of the Church it is affirmed that God exists as “One God in three persons”.  We believe the creeds BOTH for what they affirm AND for what they deny.  To affirm that God is triune is to deny the unorthodox views of: unitarianism (Orthodox Christians believe in one God but we are not unitarians), subordinationism, modalism and tritheism.  Each of these technical sounding words suggests (in the word itself) the nature of the problem it represents. 
For example, a unitarian view of God usually denies the Trinity for one of (at least) three reasons.  First, classical unitarian monotheism such as orthodox Judaism or Islam usually reject the Trinity on the basis of the mistaken notion that Christians worship three gods.  Second, abstract or new age unitarianism sees God as an undifferentiated monad (E.g. “the Force” in Star Wars, or generic New Age pantheism – where everything is God). People who adhere to this kind of unitarianism usually object to the exclusivity of the message that Jesus is the only Son of God and Savior of the world.  While they may truly believe that there is a God (of some sort), they do not want to confess that Jesus is Lord.  And third, we see a form of unitarianism that poses as a quasi-biblical religion that has the God of the Bible unfolding who he is sequentially (in different time periods); in this view we see God coming out as the Father, for example, in one dispensation, the Son in another age and the Holy Spirit in our day.  People who hold to any of these unitarian views usually reject Trinitarian theology (knowingly or unknowingly) on the basis of ideas that stem from the concept of “the ONE” in Greek philosophy.  Both subbordinationism and modalism represent somewhat different forms of this same philosophical worldview – but, for our purposes, we will deal with them under separate headings.
The creators of unitarianism might say that, their “god” is love, but students of the Bible would want to inquire, “How can there be “love” without an object of love?  How can love, properly understood, exist without both giving and receiving?  We affirm that love between equals is a higher form of love than love between higher and lower beings and that the love of God is the highest form of love.  It is love between equals.  The love that the Father has for the Son declares His Fatherhood.  He would cease to be the Father apart from the Son.  Similarly, the eternal Son could have no life apart from the Father.   Nor would the Father or the Son have any existence at all apart from the Holy Spirit.  How can the triune God we see revealed in Christ as self-giving, other-affirming, community-building love even exist - except in community?”  In the light of this, we affirm that it is consistent with the Biblical revelation to say, God does not, can not, will not (never has – never will) exist except as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Subordinationism, as the word implies, is the idea that there is a hierarchy of gods in the Trinity.  This notion is rooted, broadly speaking, in the “triad” of Greek metaphysics and philosophy – a three-tiered God that mediates himself to humanity through a kind of descending stages of knowledge, understanding and power.  Subordinationism would say that the names, Father, Son and Holy Spirit describe different levels or ranks of deity – that there is a single great ONE (the eternal Father) – with two successively lower ranking divinities or processions (the Son and the Spirit).  Such a view, however, conflicts with the New Testament and the historic creeds of the church which affirm (of the Son) that “the fullness of the Godhead bodily dwells in Christ” and (of the Spirit) that “we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, who with the Father and Son together is worshiped and glorified”. 
Subordinationists sometimes ask, “If the fullness of the triune Godhead is revealed in Christ, what do we say about those passages where Christ is shown submitting to the will of the Father?”  We answer with two observations:  First, submission does not mean inequality.  Second, the Son’s submission to the Father reveals something about God: namely that, incredible as it may sound, one of God’s attributes is humility.
According to most forms of modalism, the names, Father, Son and Spirit are merely “facets”, as it were, of a single “gemstone”.  In this view, God is usually seen as an inscrutable force.  The manifestations of god as father, son or spirit are seen as “ripples on the surface” of god’s “deeper” existence.  The three “persons” of the Godhead are seen as mere “modes” or “temporary “stages” shining forth from God’s essential oneness.  These “modes” or “facets” do not ultimately reveal who God is in His inmost self.  There is thus an inconsistency between who modalists think God is at a deeper level and who they think He has revealed Himself to be on the surface as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.   That is to say, modalism does not believe that the names, Father, Son and Holy Spirit are meant to reveal the fact that, at the very core of His being, God is triune – that he is who he is in loving relation and that he has his being (foundational identity) in communion as one God in three persons. 
Modalists seem to miss the point that the relationship that exists between the Father and the Son in the Spirit is not just a “fling” - some passing phase in the life of God.  Our Father does not just have a relationship with the Son (as though that relationship were something other than God); “God is love”; the Love that produces, defines and sustains this relationship IS the one true God we worship as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  The love of the triune God is at one and the same time the source the mediator and the power of the Salvation revealed to us in Jesus Christ.
One particularly pernicious form of modalistic unitarianism comes to us today in the form of various anti-trinitaran “oneness” groups.  While their doctrine of God takes on various forms, they generally believe that: 1. There are not three persons in the Godhead but only one.  2. It was a single monad called “the Father” that entered the human life of Jesus.  3.  The “two natures” in Jesus are not human and divine (as the Church has taught for centuries) but the Father (God) and the Son (human nature).  4. The name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is: “The Lord Jesus Christ”.  5. When the Bible says that the fullness of the Godhead bodily dwelt in Christ (Col. 2:9) they do not believe the corollary truth - that the Son of God dwelt in the Father as well. 
We believe that both are true.  From all eternity the Father, Son and Holy Spirit mutually indwelt one another – one God in three persons.   We are careful, however, not to use the word “person” to refer to an “isolated individual”; we want to say here that scripture leads us to redefine “person” as someone who has their being in a loving relation (of mutual indwelling) with another person.  To affirm three “rugged individuals” on the throne would not be Christianity but tri-theism; we believe that there is only one God. 
When the scripture says that the Father loved the Son and the Son loved the Father it does NOT mean that one “nature” loved another “nature”; natures cannot love natures; only persons can love persons.  Further, when Jesus prayed, he prayed to another person - the Father; he assuredly did not merely engage in a soliloquy with his own higher “divine nature”.  Moreover, it was the Son of God in particular who became incarnate and not the Father or the Holy Spirit.  The unitarian heresy of the various oneness or so-called “Jesus only” movements pose a dangerous deception that usually manifests itself in pride (of their special “revelation knowledge” – a form of gnosticism) and legalism; for example, they (generally) believe in baptismal regeneration – and that too, only under the aegis of their certain particular formula. 
Tritheism (or the worship of three gods) is only very rarely, if ever, embraced.  It is more of a concept than a reality.  The only reason we mention it is that people who do not understand or believe in the Trinity erroneously think Christians actually believe in three gods.  Tritheism flies in the face of Biblical revelation that God is one.  “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is ONE.”  According to tritheism, Father, Son and Holy Spirit represent three separate individual deities who collectively (like some Greek pantheon) represent the object of Christian faith.  The idea that Christians could ever hold such a view appears to be rooted in an unbiblical view of “persons”.  A Biblical view of personhood will be discussed below.
Q -1:  What are we to make of the term - “person” when speaking of God? 
Some think that when speaking of God, we must either abandon the word person altogether or else re-craft it according to what persons are revealed to be in the Trinity.  Without a Biblical view of the divine persons in the Godhead, it would be possible to look at human persons and then, by virtue of projection, vainly imagine the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are as ruggedly individualistic as we are.  Such a limited idea of personhood may well lead one to believe that the persons of the Trinity are as isolated and self-absorbed as we are.  Unitarians would be right to reject such belief as tritheism.  It is only our darkened understanding that cannot fathom a relationship of three persons existing as one God in perfect love and holiness.
Therefore, rather than assume that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are like human persons, we are called to renew our minds in order to see that the differentiations in the Trinity reveal what real personhood (even at the human level) is meant to be.  Real personhood is to have one’s being or identity as a person in loving relation with someone other than one’s self.  To discover this is to find that the real meaning of our being human is to find our (human) being in relation – first of all with God and then with one another.  Only in the light of this revelation will we find rest as human beings rather than human doings. 
 
Q – 2:  If the triune God has His being (foundational identity) in unity, diversity and fruitfulness and we are created in his image, how is that image reflected in creation and, correspondingly, how can the loss of that image (in the fall) and the restoration of that image (in salvation) be described?  (I.e., what is your theological anthropology?) 
First of all, our theological anthropology must begin with God.  The revelation of we have of God in creation indicates that, while we have been created in His image, the image we bear is so disproportional that we cannot assume that He exists as a reflection of who we are – except in a secondary sense.  Like the reflection we see in a mirror, in creation we see both the object and the reflected image.  The object being reflected is always prior to and more substantial than the image.  So, while we can come to some understanding of the object by gazing at it’s reflection, an in depth understanding of the reflected image can only be arrived at by giving priority to “reflecting” upon the object itself.  When God said, “Let us make man in our image”, “He created him (humankind) male and female”.  This is not to say God is male or female but it is to say that humanity as male and female reflects something of who God is.  It is to say that we have been created to participate in a kind of love and community that, prior to creation, existed only in God.  Furthermore, it implies that real unity born of love can only be found in the face of diversity or “otherness”.  Moreover, this marriage of unity and diversity manifests itself (in both the natural and the spiritual) in a kind of “fecundity” - or fruitfulness - that would have been impossible apart from a “union that differentiates” – unity and diversity thus go together. 
The loss of this image in the “fall” can be described therefore as the fall from unity into isolation, from diversity into absorption, and from fruitfulness into barrenness.  This plunge into the abyss could only be arrested by the Son of God coming as one of us to restore the image of God in humanity.  Far from being isolated from God (and others), the salvation we have in Christ restores us to community.  Similarly, our identity is no longer swallowed up in someone else’s (nor do we try to find our identity by absorbing others); rather our identity is defined and differentiated in union with Christ (and others).  No longer barren, our lives begin to yield fruit that is pleasing to all.  The revelation we have of God in creation indicates that, while we may have been created in His image, it is in such a disproportional sense that we cannot assume that we can hope to understand Him in terms of His being a reflection of who we are – except in a secondary sense.  In other words, we are a reflection of His nature; He is not a reflection of ours.  We will ever be creatures, never God.    
Q – 3:  In the light of all this, practically speaking, what is the most faithful way to speak of our personal involvement in say, for example: the knowledge of God, prayer, worship, evangelism, the gifts and fruit of the Spirit or the sacraments? 
We believe that all of “our” knowledge of God is merely a participation in the Son’s knowledge of the Father in the Spirit (Luke. 10:22); similarly our prayers could be described as our participation by the Spirit in the Son’s union and communion with the Father; correspondingly, worship (which might otherwise be described as something we do) may more appropriately be defined as being “caught up” by the Sprit in the Son’s one perfect oblation of Himself before the face of the Father; likewise, all of “our” ministry, whether it be preaching, teaching and evangelism or moving in the gifts of prophecy or healing, should be thought of rather as participating in the life and ministry of Christ; our joy and peace are a participation in the eternal happiness and Sabbath rest God has always known in Himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit; in like manner we should think of our baptism as a participation in Christ’s baptism etc.  In other words, the center point of our relation with God is not found in ourselves - but in Christ.  How could it be otherwise?
Q – 4:  The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is so inexorably linked to the Incarnation that we must inquire further, “If Jesus Christ is a real human being, how can we say that He is also God?”
First of all, we must understand that the Bible teaches that it was God the Son who became a human being.  The Son of God, who had shared life throughout all eternity with the Holy Spirit and the Father, entered the stream of human history in the particular human life of a first century Palestinian Jew from Nazareth named Jesus.  He did not undertake this mission on His own; it was a part of the Triune God’s will for the Son to became what we are in order for us to be included by the Spirit in the Son’s life of union and communion with the Father.  There is no other “will of the God” for humanity except that which we see in Christ.  God’s will was to take on our humanity and then (through death and resurrection) lift it to heaven.  Since the Son of God, after having assumed human flesh, remained (and will remain eternally) a man, humanity is now irrevocably linked with the life of God.  In other words, He has taken hold of our humanity and He will never let it go.  He has taken human life into the Godhead.  While He will eternally remain the creator and we will remain eternally creatures - fashioned in His image - we have nonetheless been truly united with God in Christ.  God’s gift of Himself in Christ is not ours by “right” or “entitlement” but by grace.  The grace of God is God’s gift of himself in Christ.  By grace we have been adopted into the life of the Triune God.  By grace we call Him, “Father”. 
Q – 5:  How are the two natures of God and Man united in the one person of Jesus of Nazareth? 
We affirm that Christ is fully human, fully divine and fully united as God and man in one person.  If, as we believe, “the unassumed is the unredeemed”, Christ had to “take on” everything that is human (e.g. temptation, sin, death etc.) in order for humanity to be fully redeemed.  Further, Christ had to be fully God; for ultimately, only God can be said to have the resources necessary to redeem humanity.  Moreover, the union of divine and human in Christ had to be such that we as human beings could actually participate in it.  In trying to explain the union of natures in Christ, some theologians have found it helpful to consider the similarity of the union of the human and divine natures in Jesus of Nazareth to the union of persons in the Trinity.  As the persons of Father, Son and Spirit are joined in unity and diversity, so too the union of human and divine natures in the person of Jesus Christ is at once a unity, a diversity and boundlessly fruitful union.  If we stop to think about it, this radically re-defines BOTH what it means to be God; AND what it means to be a human being AND what it means to be a human being in intimate union with God. 
The older creeds say that this unique union of God and man in Christ is without: Confusion, Change, Division or Separation.[1]  These terms were used to hedge out certain specific heretical views.[2]  To the 4th or 5th century person on the street who had been steeped in the cosmology of Greek mythology (or the 21st century teenager who reads comic books), the term “not confused” would exclude the idea of the union of God and Man in Christ being like the union of gods and mortals in Greek (or graphic novel) mythology - yielding in a kind of half-breed species of god and man like the Sons of Hercules.  Similarly, the idea that there was no change in either the human or divine nature of Christ quelled the myth that gods could transmute themselves into human beings nor could humans could become gods by “morphing” or “transforming” as it were from humans into supermen or demi-gods.  In Christ, moreover, we see that there is no division between the divine and human natures.  That is to say, in the incarnation it is not as if Jesus was a man (on the surface) but under the skin (or in his mind) he possessed or was possessed by the Logos of God.  No, Christ’s “way of knowing” both the things in the world and the things in heaven, was with a fully human way of knowing and with a divine way of knowing – in perfect union.  As a man he knew God and as God he knew man.  He had in his one person both the nature and passion of a man reaching out to God AND the nature and passion of God reaching out to man – so much so that we might say that in the person of Christ the two passions actually intertwined and mutually indwelt one another as God living in man and man living in God.  Furthermore and finally, there was no separation between God and man in Christ.  In other words, he did not just “appear” to be a man, while he had his “real (but separate) being” as a god, nor was he such a good man that he gradually became set apart from the rest of humanity by adoption as it were into the Godhead.  We see in Christ therefore the perfect union of God and man in one person – the shape of what human being is meant to be before the face of God.
If this discussion of the humanity and divinity of our Lord seems too abstract to have any practical value, consider this: if the kind of the union between God and man which we see in Christ Jesus is, in a manner of speaking, like, the kind of the union we see in the Trinity, and if the nature of the union of God and man in Christ is, in a manner of speaking, like the nature of our union with God (but in a disproportional sense), then it stands to reason that the form our spirituality takes will in some way reflect how we perceive human nature to be linked to the divine nature in Christ. 
For example, if we really think that the union of the divine and human in Christ is confused – like in the Greek myth spoken of above – does it not stand to reason that we might try to become something other than human (e.g. a “son or daughter of Hercules”) in order to please God and worm our way into a place of union and communion with him (by superhuman or hyper spiritual or legalistic effort)?  Look around, this actually happens more often than you think.  And, in the process, people burn out; they give up because we are not meant to co-mingle with God in such a way that we become something other than human.  Make no mistake about it – don’t be confused, this is not the Way of Salvation that God provided in Christ.  The tragic irony of this is that the union of the human and divine that  people vainly hope to achieve by laboring under this and other misconceptions has already been given to us in Christ.  Thus, “burn-out” (and a host of other spiritual diseases) may not be caused so much by overbearing parents as it is by theological anemia. 
Following this line of reasoning, imagine what shape our spirituality would take if we assumed the nature of the union of God and man in Christ was a matter of change or division or separation.  The logic of a heretical Christology that says, the union of divine and human changes human nature into divine, leads people to believe that they can somehow work some magic (like Wonder-woman or the Power Rangers) to transform themselves into the children of God.  But if our adoption has already taken place in Christ, we do not have to transmute into demi-gods in order to find God’s favor.  In Christ we see, for the first time, the shape of what real human being is meant to be. 
The heresy that says that there is division or separation between the divine and human natures in Christ would logically incline to a world view where the believers might  tend to think that they are called to appear human on the surface but under the skin or in her mind s/he would have the divine Logos.  (Note: When the scripture urges us to have the “mind of Christ” it is talking about taking on the attitude of a humble servant not taking on some kind of cosmic consciousness.)  Clearly, it is imperative that we affirm the full humanity and divinity of Christ – irrevocably (a man now sits forevermore at the Father’s right hand in the person of the Son of God) and eternally united in one person without confusion, change, division or separation!
Our Goal:  Our goal is not, to get people to parrot “orthodox” formulas; we want believers who know the Triune God by intimate personal experience of the revelation that He has made Himself known in Christ.  We would say that while, yes, we do want solid believers who, by knowing the truth, are set free from the bondage of heresy, it is also crucial for them to share in the life of God by participating by Spirit in the Son’s union and communion with the Father to the extent that their life in the Spirit actually overflows to others (John 7:37-39).  In the process of thus knowing God and making Him known we trust that we will both find our identity in Christ and come into the “unity of the faith”.  Amen
Conclusion:  Practically speaking, what are the results of a person holding on to heresy concerning the nature of the Godhead?  I.e., what is at stake when someone denies that God is Triune?  First of all, they misrepresent God.  Second, in failing to submit to God’s word and the wisdom of the Church and her councils throughout the ages, they are in danger of becoming unteachable.  An unteachable spirit (not heterodox beliefs) is the root of all heresy.  Whenever philosophy, logic, and human knowledge replace revelation, people are on a perilous path.  While it may be true that many of us have at one time or other (accidentally or on purpose) held unorthodox beliefs, we would like to think that as we grow in grace we are being led by the Spirit of wisdom and revelation into all truth.[3] 
Recommended Reading: Mere Christianity – the section called “beyond personality” is very helpful; Church History – any of a variety – especially as they deal with heresy; Latourette is good.  Athanasius, On the Incarnation, is excellent.  One brief article that is worth getting hold of is, “The Vicarious Humanity of Christ” by James Torrance.  This article may be found in The Incarnation: Ecumenical Studies in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, edited by T.F. Torrance (Edinburgh: The Handsel Press, 1981.

[1] Sometimes it is helpful say what something is by saying what it isn’t.

[2]E.g. Apollinarianism, Docetism, Arianism, Nestorianism and Monophysitism – to mention a few.   It is beyond the scope of this article to deal with all of these heresies in depth; suffice it to say that Apollinarianism says that the mind or spirit of the man, Jesus, was replaced with the Logos of God; Docetism says that Christ was fully God but only “appeared” to be a man; Arianism (primarily a Trinitarian heresy) erred in its Christology by saying that, “there once was a time when the Son was not.”  In other words, Christ was not fully God.  Nestorianism would say, in so many words, that the union of divine and human occurred in such a way that a new level of being came about where God and man were united in such a way that they had only one will; it was a theology that emphasized the man, Christ Jesus, becoming God by being “joined to God” rather than the Son of God becoming man.  Monophysitism said that there was only “one incarnate nature of God the word”.  I.e. the two natures blended into one so they became one nature – fully divine.  Jesus was thought to be of “one substance” with the Father but not truly one with humanity.

[3] Our goal is to find the truth and remain in it by submission to the Word of God and the renewal of our minds.  To refuse to yield to this process is to remain unteachable and to fall sooner or later into heresy.  When such false perceptions are held onto long enough, a person may actually become deceived.  Tragically, by the very nature of deception, a heretic might never even know s/he is deceived.  It would be bad enough if this heretical path only led one into greater and greater error, but there are other hazards as well.  Worse by far than heresy is the tendency for the unteachable person to remain so enamored of his or her own opinion that s/he begins to promulgate their viewpoint and thus lead others astray. 
If it is true that we become like the God we worship, It may stand to reason that adherents of unitarianism could very well end up lacking in some vital dimension of community; Pantheists, on the other hand might prove to be lacking in individuality; modalists may well tend be disappointed in relationships where what is shown and what is seen is only a façade; subordinationism has been proven to produce legalistic hierarchies where one “lords it” over another.  And if there was such a thing as tritheism, we could speculate that it might show up either in the form of a multiple personality disorder in the individual or as individualistic and/or conflicted roles in the context of a community.
 
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