What is the Holy Trinity according to the Bible?
The word "Trinity" never appears in the Bible, yet Christians confess that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit — one God, not three. The question is whether that confession comes from Scripture itself, and how far a human mind can follow it.
The word is absent, the truth is not
Commentators are frank that the title is a human word chosen to hold together what the Bible actually says.
A. J. PollockOur title at the head of this paper is one such. Yet there is abundance of teaching in the Holy Scriptures that God reveals Himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, not three Gods, but a Triune God, though Scripture teaches that the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, yet one God indivisible.
A preacher put the same distinction to people troubled by the subject, pointing them to the scene at the Jordan river where Jesus was baptised:
W. T. P. WolstonPeople are sometimes troubled about the Trinity. You have it here... It is not that I find the word in Scripture, but I find the thing. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are each before us in this scene.
What happened at the Jordan
That river scene is the one moment where all three are open to the senses at once.
F. B. HoleOn this praying and dependent Man the Holy Spirit descended in bodily shape like a dove, while the Father's voice declared Him to be the beloved Son, the Object of all the Divine delight. Thus at last the truth of the Trinity became manifest. The Spirit became for a moment visible; the Father became audible; the Son was here in flesh and blood, and so not only visible and audible but able to be touched as well.
Three, yet one God
Naming the Persons in order can suggest a ranking. Writers warn against reading it that way.
A. J. PollockSo 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 would be impossible. There can be only one God, supreme and unique.
Why the word "Person" needs care
The danger sits inside our ordinary use of the word "person".
A. J. PollockIn human language when we speak of a person, we think of a separate entity, separate existence, separate will, different characteristics, thoughts and plans peculiar to each person, not shared with any others. Carry that human thought into the subject before us, and the truth of the Trinity is entirely perverted and lost. Instead of the Trinity — Father, Son and Spirit, ONE God — we should have three Gods, an absolute impossibility.
Traces before Christ came
The Old Testament is not silent, though the clearest light comes later. One verse in Isaiah names three at once:
A. J. PollockThere is a most remarkable, perhaps the most remarkable, unveiling of the truth of the Holy Trinity found in the Old Testament: "Come near to Me, hear this; I have not spoken in secret from the beginning; from the time that it was, there AM I [the assertion of Deity], and now the Lord God and His Spirit have sent Me" (Isa. 48:16). Here we have three Divine Persons — "the Lord God," "His Spirit," "Me."
(He is using an older English rendering; the ESV reads, "And now the Lord GOD has sent me, and his Spirit.")
Each sends, and each comes
The New Testament describes the sending of the Spirit in three different ways, and that overlap is itself the argument.
A. J. PollockJohn 14:26 tells us that the Holy Spirit is sent by the Father in the Name of the Son; chapter 15:26 tells us the Lord Jesus sends the Holy Spirit from the Father; chapter 16:13 says, "When the Spirit is come," that is, the Spirit comes of His own initiative. So we have the Father sending the Spirit; the Son sending the Spirit; the Spirit coming. These statements could not be true unless the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are ONE God.
Not a puzzle but a rescue
This is not abstract. Each Person has a share in how anyone comes to be a Christian at all.
J. T. MawsonBut the Father would have sent the Son in vain, and the Son would have come and died and risen again for nothing as far as men were concerned, if the Holy Spirit had not come to give an answer in the hearts of men to the grace of the Father and the Son... There could have been no Christianity, not one of us would have been a Christian, apart from the Spirit. He it was that convicted us of our sinful, lost condition; it was by Him through the Word that we were born again.
Why not simply leave it alone
Some argue the subject is too high to touch. The answer given is that God chose to disclose it.
A. J. PollockIf God has revealed Himself, as is seen in the Scriptures, surely He desires that revelation to be received and prized above everything else. Our highest blessing springs from the revelation God has been pleased to make of Himself... To neglect this is to slight Scripture, indeed to slight God Himself, and to doom ourselves to a perpetual immaturity in divine things.
Summary
- Revealed, not reasoned — God in His own being is beyond us; what we know of Him as Father, Son and Spirit comes only because He disclosed it in Scripture.
- Revealed at the Jordan — the Spirit visible as a dove, the Father audible from heaven, the Son standing in flesh: one scene, three Persons.
- Revealed as one — the Father is God, the Son is God, the Spirit is God, with no difference in importance and no second God; borrowing our human idea of "separate persons" wrecks the truth.
- Revealed in action — Father sends the Spirit, the Son sends the Spirit, the Spirit comes of Himself; only oneness makes all three statements true.
- Revealed for you — the Father sent, the Son died and rose, the Spirit convicted and gave new birth; refuse the subject and you stay spiritually immature.