What is being represented by the Holy Trinity?

I learn from the scriptures that there is one living God,1 fully revealed to us in Christ,2 and known through Him as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,3 in the unity of the Godhead, but revealed as distinctively willing,5 acting,6 sending, sent,7 coming,8 distributing,9 and other actings; or, as habitually expressed amongst Christians, three persons in one God, or Trinity in Unity. God is the Creator of all things; but the act of creating is personally attributed to the Word and the Son, and the operation of the Spirit of God.10

Thus we see that there could be no full revelation of God, but through the Son by the Spirit, and thereby of the Father. The full revelation of the one God is only thus - Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. This, this only, is what the one God is, one identity of will and being, so that they are essentially one and one only, yet distinct in willing and acting (and we can distinguish them in willing and acting: hence we commonly speak of persons), yet never willing or acting but in the common will and unity of nature.

So we must be careful in using the terms, first, second and third Persons in the Trinity, not to think there is any difference in importance. The Father is God; the Son is God; the Spirit is God—the Spirit equal in nature and substance to the Father and the Son. If the three Persons of the Godhead are each of them God, it does not follow that there are three Gods. That were impossible. There can be only one God, supreme and unique. Orthodox Christendom believes in three Persons in the Godhead, yet one God, indivisible and unique—the three Persons in the Godhead with one will, one purpose, each sharing to the full every thought and desire and purpose in the minds of the others. We may not, nay cannot, comprehend this. It is a mystery hidden in the Godhead, yet the Godhead is pleased to reveal Itself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The revelation that we have of God conveys to us the great truth that He is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; three persons, yet one God, and God is love. This is what He is in His nature, what He is in His very being. There is nothing but love between those Divine and Eternal Persons. "Thou lovedst Me," says Jesus to the Father, "before the foundation of the world" (John 17:24). "God is Love" is the only absolute appellative that is used of the supreme Being; and what a wave of infinite happiness and indescribable joy overwhelms the soul as we meditate upon the marvellous fact that love is the nature of the One with whom we have to do. That "God is light" the Word also declares, but we are also said to be light, and therefore I take it that light is a more relative term, and not so absolute as love.

The chapter opens with GOD. The word used in the Hebrew is Elohim, a word, remarkably enough, of plural form. This is the more striking when we remember that the Hebrew has, besides a singular, a dual form for its nouns. Dual signifies two, plural therefore signifying three or more. Yet the verb "created" is in the singular! Why this apparent breach of grammar? Evidently in order that in the very introduction to our knowledge of God we may receive a hint of the truth afterwards plainly revealed that He is a Trinity in Unity — three Persons yet one God. We have only to read verse 2 to discover mention of the Spirit of God, and later in the New Testament we find the active work of creation consistently attributed to the Lord Jesus, the Son. "His Son … by whom also He made the worlds" (Heb. 1:2). The first verse of the Bible, therefore, contains a denial of Unitarianism.

India has 33,000,000 gods and vile creatures of the mind, emanations of the bottomless pit, deceits of Satan. But the Bible reveals to us the only true God as one God, supreme and unique. How then is the name of God in the plural? In the light of the New Testament which teaches that there are Father, Son and Holy Spirit yet one God, we see enshrined in the first verse of the Bible the truth of the Trinity—three Persons, but one God. We Christians do not believe in three Gods. There cannot be other than one God, one supreme, eternal Being from Whom everything flows—everything material and spiritual for the blessing and enjoyment of man.

It is worthy of note that in quoting this passage Paul says, "Well spake the Holy Ghost." If we turn to Isaiah 6, we find the prophet saying in regard to this message, "Also I heard the voice of the Lord," referring to Jehovah of Hosts; and turning to John 12, we find the comment, "These things said Esaias, when he saw His glory, and spake of Him," and we have only to look at the preceding verses to discover that the "His" and "Him" refer to Jesus. How plain it is then that Jehovah of hosts is to be identified with both Jesus and the Holy Ghost — three Persons, yet one God.

The Holy Ghost is a separate Personality in God. His Name is seen in conjunction with the names of the Father, and the Son, in Matthew 28 Christian baptism commits one to the confession of God as revealed by Christ, the full revelation of the one true living God being Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. There are not two Gods, or three Gods, as ignorant objectors allege; but three Personalities in one God. These three ever subsisted in the Godhead; and with regard to the Holy Spirit, He is expressly called the Eternal Spirit (Heb. 9:14). Before the worlds were made, God is (Heb. 11:3, 6); but even when heaven and earth were created these material things were not capable of bringing to light all that God is. Moreover, though Enoch and Noah walked with God, and Abraham was called God's friend, and the lord spake face to face unto Moses as a man speaks to his friend, their great intimacies did not bring to light the full truth. He was known to the patriarchs under His name of Almighty God, for the attribute of All-might pertains to the whole Godhead. Later, an advance was made when God especially linked His name of Jehovah with the nation of Israel (Exodus 6:2-3), for eternal existence and unchangeable glory (which are implied in that name) belong equally to the whole Godhead. Yet amid all the glories unfolded by the prophets, the Godhead secret w as never fully disclosed until in the fulness of time Christ came When it was no longer a question of the creation of worlds, or of the power that could sustain faith and reward it, as in Old Testament times, but rather of making purgation of sin and of revealing all that God is, the appearance of the Son of God in a concrete human form, apart from sin, necessarily brought to light His relations with the other Persons in the Trinity. Christianity therefore is based upon the knowledge of God as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

This baptizing is "unto the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." The name, not the names, of the Triune. This is the Christian revelation of God; and what is not done in this way is not Christian. The "name" in Scripture gives the real character of what it stands for; and the name here is the truth of the Godhead as now made known to us: thus "baptism" and the "faith" are once more, as in Eph. 4 ("one faith, one baptism,"), connected together.

C.C. — Yes; that is another line. It is a different word. Now, if there are persons in the Godhead, and yet the Godhead is a unity, in what sense or senses are the three persons one? They are one in substance; one in nature; one in life; one in purpose, plan and counsel.