What is meant by the Holy Trinity?

Here in this very majestic declaration of the Oneness of the Godhead, care is taken to state it consistently with the truth afterwards revealed concerning the Three Persons of the Godhead—Father, Son and Spirit. These Three Persons, of one Substance, completely united in thought, will, purpose, counsel, are not three Gods, but One God, not a tritheism, but a Holy Trinity. We cannot understand the mystery of all this, but this truth lies at the very foundation of the Christian faith.

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.

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.

Sabellianism, which holds that there is but one God under three different names.

Each of these errors destroys the Trinity in Unity, the first by denying the Unity of the Essence, the second by denying the Trinity of the Persons. The true and scriptural doctrine of the Trinity steers between these two erroneous extremes, and holds a Trinity of Persons in a Unity of Essence. Now, the Lord Jesus, as the eternal Son of the Father, is distinct from Him as His Son, and yet necessarily one with Him as partaking of the same Essence; and the Holy Spirit, as proceeding from the Father and the Son, is distinct also from those Persons of the Trinity, and yet, as eternally proceeding from both, partakes of their Essence likewise. Thus we have a Trinity of Persons, but a Unity of Essence—One God, but eternally subsisting as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Eternal Sonship gives to the Son a Unity of Essence with the Father, and yet a distinctness of Person; thus, as the Son He is one with the Father (John 10:30), and yet as the Son He is distinct from the Father. So eternal procession from the Father and the Son gives to the Holy Spirit Unity of Essence with the Father and the Son, and yet a distinct Personality. Upon this firm basis the Trinity stands. But if you remove the eternal Sonship of Christ, you also must take away the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit; and by so doing you destroy the Unity of Essence and inter-communion of Nature of Israel’s Triune God. If the denial of the eternal Sonship of Jesus involve such consequences, well may we tremble at such an error as removes the very foundations of revealed truth. All other views of the Sonship of Christ lower His essential and eternal dignity and, however craftily disguised, tend to, and usually end in, Arianism. If His Sonship be not His eternal mode of subsistence, it must, in some way or other, be created Sonship, and what is this but Arian doctrine in its very root and essence? How the Son can be eternally begotten, and how the Holy Spirit can eternally proceed, is a mystery which we cannot understand, much less explain; but we receive it by faith, in the same way as we receive the “great mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh.” If once we begin to reason on these matters, we are lost at the very threshold of our inquiry. To believe, not to speculate; to receive the testimony that God has given of His Son; not to doubt, argue and cavil, is the only sure path, as well as the peculiar blessedness of a child of God.

The Holy Trinity—Three in One, and One in Three—is in its essence a mystery beyond human comprehension, even when the comprehension is that of the renewed mind of the believer. In the very nature of things this must be so. How can the creature comprehend the Creator; the finite, the Infinite; the relative, the Absolute.

The fuller revelation of the Godhead as Father, Son and Spirit — one Name — one God — Three Persons — the ever-blessed Trinity, and the giving of a wider commission to His Apostles, are the circumstances under which Christian Baptism was commanded by the Lord Jesus Christ. How the Apostles understood the charge is seen by their action in the Acts of the Apostles, where, to mention but one instance of many, "He [Peter] commanded them to be baptised in the Name of the Lord." Acts 10:48.

This is a most arresting feature of Hebrew grammar. God, who gave speech to our first parents, must have designed this special plural for a very definite purpose. We can trace this most plainly in the verse we have just quoted. Bearing this in mind the verse reads thus: “Hear O Israel: The LORD [Jehovah, singular] our God [Elohim, plural] is one LORD [Jehovah, singular].” Here is an arresting statement of the Oneness of God, yet along with it care is equally taken to give a very clear and unmistakable intimation of the truth of the Holy Trinity,—Father, Son and Holy Spirit, One in Three, and Three in One, 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.

Solomon, the wisest of men, wrote, “The thing that has been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is NO NEW THING under the sun” (Ecc. 1:9). Unitarian doctrines are no new thing. They were held in various forms as far back as the 3rd century. Sabellius taught there is only one God, the Father; the titles, Son and Holy Spirit, he said, being different designations of the one God. This heresy was condemned at a council held in Rome in 260 A.D.

No doubt many an earnest Christian has sometimes longed for a list of things that are prohibited, as well as things which are permitted, but such a list cannot be found in the New Testament, nor would it have been of much help had such a list been given, for unworldliness is far more than merely abstaining from certain pleasures or going to certain places. And so it has often happened that the Church has given names to certain doctrines, not because the name itself is to be found in Scripture, but because the doctrines represented by the names are to be found there. Thus the word Trinity is not a Bible word. Nor, be it noted, are we ever told in so many words, that there are three Persons in the Godhead. That is, the word Person is never used in this connection. We ourselves are not objecting to its use, but we feel justified in insisting that it is not a Biblical expression because it is in frequent use by those who are building so much upon the fact that "eternal" is not a Biblical expression in relation to the Son. Where in the Bible do we find such a formula as: "In the Deity there are three Persons"?