Explaining the Trinity

SYLVANUS GATORWU

LITERATURE REVIEW

DR. PAGE BROOKS

SEMINARY DISCIPLINE

NOVEMBER 3, 2019

 ON THE TRINITY SUBMITTED AS ASSIGNMENT AT THE SCHOOL OF URBAN MISSIONS

[SUM]

Abstract

For centuries, this subject of Trinity has been debated. It has taken so much effort from theologians throughout history to come out with a definitive description of exactly what it means. This paper attempts to dig out the scriptural basis for the Trinity. Other views opposing the doctrine are also looked at and their reasons for their opposition also explored.

Introduction

Much as various creeds support the Trinity, much as it has become a fundamental truth for Christendom, it is also still vehemently refuted by sects like the Jehovah’s Witness who carry on with Arinian doctrine. It is of utmost importance that this subject is explored by all who seek to intellectually defend the Christian faith.

Purpose Statement

The purpose of this study will be to explore the trinity. This paper will seek to explain how the scriptures explain the doctrine of the Trinity as against the other schools of thought on the subject.

Thesis

The Trinity has been with Christianity for time immemorial. Even though it has taken centuries for it to find a good explanation, it is still being contended by other faiths who also profess Christ. This piece will attempt to make a case for the Trinity and to answer, how the study of theology can help us explain this all-important fundamental concept of Christianity.

Literature Review

According to Kelvin DeYoung, if there is any doctrine makes Christianity what it is, it must be that of the Trinity. He says all the three major creeds of Christian history are weaved around the Trinitarian theology.”[1]

Even though the word cannot be found in the Bible, a vigilant study of the Bible will show that the teaching of Trinity is founded on certain truths from the Bible. God is one, and he is in three separate personalities who can all be found displayed in the Bible and each of those is fully identified as God. In this paper, an attempt will be made to answer a few questions.

What are some of the other views on Trinity? What are some of the objections to Trinity?

From the Bible, how can the Trinity be explained? What does the Bible say about it from the Old and New Testaments? These would be answered in the review of various literatures.

What are some of the other views on trinity?

Three heresies arise against the teaching of Trinity, Modalism, Arianism, and Tritheism.[2]

Modalism: Is a school of thought held by a Christian, Sabellius. He opined that God is one, the Father and that he decided to make himself visible as the Son, as a result, he came into existence with the name Jesus Christ of Nazareth[3]

According to the Modal teaching, God in history can manifest himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit at different times but not the three at once concurrently.

According to Driscoll, for those who ascribe to this thought, it is God the Father who manifested as Jesus Chris, and then after he had died and resurrected, this same Father came back as the Holy Spirit.[4]

Some consider this school of thought as protecting the inviolability and Bible standpoint that God is regarded as the Father. He will forever be God. Quoting John 10:30 and 14:9 respective, Modalists claim there is only one God. Their major challenge, however, is how to integrate this belief with other places in the scriptures where the Trinity appears not as a mono being but in different forms.

Even though the Modalist upholds the oneness of God, they were going struggle to explain certain scriptures and incidents like the Baptism of Jesus. Ware argues that God must at the same time be all three at the same time and not just modes for the occurrence at the baptism to have happened.[5]

Arianism: A school of thought championed by Bishop Arius from Alexandria,  this view denied the deity of Jesus as God the Son and also the Holy Spirit. Arianism simply says God the Son became who he was at a time in history and had no pre-existence with the Father as the Trinity seeks to uphold.[6] Arianism has John 1:14; 3-16, 18 and 1 John 4:19 as their scriptural basis. Their explanation is that Jesus Christ is God’s “only begotten” and does not in any way connote being equal with the Father. They claim that once Jesus was begotten, he must come into existence when he was born.[7]

I Cor 1:15 according to Arianism means the conception of Jesus and so he is not divine as the Trinity sort to portray. The Council of Nicea in A.D. 325 rejected Arianism, it was at this gathering that Bishop Athanasius made a case for the deity of Jesus Christ. The Nicene Creed was subsequently written to support Christ being as same nature and substance of the Father.

Arianism holds the view that the Son is created, but he is not divine. It also supports “Subordinationism” in that the Son is less than the Father in being The Christian faith affirms[8]

Traces of Arianism can still be found in cults like Jehovah’s Witnesses founded by Charles Teze Russell in 1881. To this sect Driscoll responds “Thus, Jesus is the archangel Michael, who is mentioned in the Old Testament. Neither is the Spirit divine but rather more of a cosmic force of Jehovah”[9]

Trintheism: according to Mark Driscoll, Tritheism doctrine is that of three different autonomous Gods[10]. This view seems to emphasize the plurality of the Godhead but denies the unity which the Trinity seems to espouse. This teaching, therefore, says God is three different persons and each person is fully God[11]. The minus of this school of thought is that it promotes contrary to the Bible, a concept of polytheism.

 How does the bible affirm Trinity?

To help explain this for the rest of this paper, the summary of Dr. Bruce Ware will be explored. He says Christianity upholds, there is one God, who forever exists in the various three personalities of the Trinity.[12]

Only One God

At a time where polytheism was the order of the day, the scriptures affirmed the “monotheistic” nature of God in Gen 1:1 and Dent 6:4. John MacArthur in supporting this standpoint says the fact of God being one was key to Israel because they lived in the middle of societies that had many gods.[13] We will never fully understand God, even though he is a simple and good God.[14] There is, of course, an explicitly Trinitarian understanding of prayer, whether liturgical or personal: that prayer is offered to the Father, through the Son and in the power of the Holy Spirit, which relates to the passage in Rom. 8.15–17.[15]

While the world at the time had many gods in almost every culture, God commanded that he alone be worshipped according to I Kings 8:60. Later on, in history, the Prophet Isaiah declared “I am the Lord and there is no other” Isaiah 45:5-6.

God being one is also loudly spoken of in the New Testament in John17:3 and I Cor 8:6. Paul says Jesus Christ is the only mediator between God and man in I Tim 2:5. Dr. Bruce again clarifies “The Bible is clear: there is one and only one God. The God of the Bible, the God of the Israelites, is the only true God.”[16]

How does the Bible explain three persons?

John MacArthur on this says, “God is one, yet exists not as two but three distinct persons. That is a mystery unparalleled in our experience.”[17] Invariably, this implies that the Father is fully God, the Son Jesus Christ is fully God and the Holy Spirit is also fully God.

Commenting on Gen 1:26, Millard Erickson observes that “Here the plural occurs both in the verb, ‘let us make’ and in the possessive suffix ‘our.’ What is significant from the standpoint of logical analysis, is the shift from singular to plural. God is quoted as using a plural verb with reference to himself.”[18] In finding a solution to the Tower of Babel, a plural nature of himself is referred to by God as “Come, let us go down” in Gen 11:7 connoting a plural nature of God. The truth that God is three persons is distinctly loud in the New Testament when Jesus spoke to his disciples in Matt 28:19. Over there the use of the singular “name” is crucial to God as one person yet three persons. Millard again opines “name is singular but there are three persons included in that name”[19].

The baptism of Jesus presents another opportunity to explain the Trinity in Matt 3:17 when the Father spoke as the Holy Spirit came down upon the Son who was being baptized.

Gen 1:1 uses a similar plural underpinning of the nature of Elohim “us”. In teaching the disciples to pray, Jesus says in Matt 6:9 refers to a Father. The Apostle Paul referred to God as a Father to Jesus in Eph 1:3. Millard explains that Jesus is not just deity, the Scriptures actually see him as God himself[20]

John 1:1 opens with an endorsing statement in which Christ is referred to as the incarnate “Word” which dovetails into Genesis 1:1, meaning Christ existed before he was born as human. Far ahead in John 20:28, Thomas screams “my Lord and my God”. To further explain this Dr. Wayne Grudem fittingly says a comprehension of the Father and Son as God would better explain texts like Matt 28:19. The Holy Spirit will then be placed neck to neck with the Father and Son.[21]

For the Jehovah’s Witnesses cult, Jesus was a god and not God. This opposition comes from a misinterpretation of John 1:1. The direct interpretation of this verse would render it as “God was the Word”. Textually, it would be wrong for anyone to suggest that the “Word” was anything else but God. John M. Frame argues that scriptural passages that affirm Jesus as God are about ten, and goes on to state that their contest is difficulties that certain people may have and not because the texts themselves resist the claim of Jesus as God.[22]

Even though opponents of the Trinity might try as hard as they can, it would impossible in the face of certain Biblical texts. In Acts 5:3-4, Peter accuses Ananias of lying to the Holy Spirit, and in verse 4, he declares the Holy Spirit to be God, an equation hard for the Watchtower to explain.[23] This scripture and more affirm the fact that the Holy Spirit is God too.

In Conclusion

This short paper shows how the Teaching of the Trinity has soldiered through history. It has explained the nature of God as three persons from the scriptures and has also shown some opposing views to it. The true creator of the universe exists in three discrete persons but equal and are fully each God.

Apostle Paul in closing his written sermons would declare “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Cor. 13:14)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Byassee, Jason. Trinity : The God We Don’t Know. Vol. First [edition]. Belief Matters. Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon Press, 2015.

Collins, Paul M. The Trinity: A Guide for the Perplexed. Guides for the Perplexed. London: T&T Clark, 2008. Accessed November 2, 2019. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e000xna&AN=344171&site=ehost-live.

DeYoung, Kevin. The Good News We Almost Forgot: Rediscovering the Gospel in a 16th Century Catechism. Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2010.

Driscoll, Mark, and Gerry Breshears. Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe. Wheaton: Crossway, 2010.

Erickson, Millard J. Introducing Christian Doctrine. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001.

Frame, John. A Theology of Lordship v 4 The Doctrine of the Word of God. Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co, 2010.

Grudem, Wayne A. Bible Doctrine: Essential Teachings of the Christian Faith. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1999.

MacArthur, John. “An Interview with John MacArthur, Jr.” Fundamentalist Journal 3, no. 10 (November 1984): 47–49.

Martin, Walter. The Kingdom of the Cults. Edited by Ravi Zacharias. Revised, Updated edition. Minneapolis, Minn: Bethany House Publishers, 2003.

Ware, Bruce A. Big Truths for Young Hearts: Teaching and Learning the Greatness of God. 1 edition. Wheaton, Ill: Crossway, 2009.

Ware, Bruce A. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Relationships, Roles, and Relevance. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2005.

White, James R. “Loving the Trinity.” Christian Research Journal 21, no. 4 (1999): 20.

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[1] Kevin DeYoung, The Good News We Almost Forgot: Rediscovering the Gospel in a 16th Century Catechism (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2010), 49.

[2] Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears, Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe (Wheaton: Crossway, 2010), 71.

[3] Bruce A Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Relationships, Roles, and Relevance (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2005), 65.

[4] Driscoll and Breshears, Doctrine, 60.

[5] Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, 65.

[6] Wayne A Grudem, Bible Doctrine: Essential Teachings of the Christian Faith (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1999), 113.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid., 114.

[9] Driscoll and Breshears, Doctrine, 62.

[10] Ibid., 63.

[11] Grudem, Bible Doctrine, 114.

[12] Ware, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, 121.

[13] John MacArthur, “An Interview with John MacArthur, Jr,” Fundamentalist Journal 3, no. 10 (November 1984): 18.

[14] Jason Byassee, Trinity : The God We Don’t Know, vol. First [edition], Belief Matters (Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon Press, 2015), 18.

[15] Paul M. Collins, The Trinity: A Guide for the Perplexed, Guides for the Perplexed (London: T&T Clark, 2008), 17, accessed November 2, 2019, http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e000xna&AN=344171&site=ehost-live.

[16] Bruce A. Ware, Big Truths for Young Hearts: Teaching and Learning the Greatness of God, 1 edition. (Wheaton, Ill: Crossway, 2009), 40.

[17] MacArthur, “An Interview with John MacArthur, Jr,” 19.

[18] Millard J Erickson, Introducing Christian Doctrine (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001), 110.

[19] Ibid.

[20] Ibid., 108.

[21] James R White, “Loving the Trinity,” Christian Research Journal 21, no. 4 (1999): 21.

[22] John Frame, A Theology of Lordship v 4 The Doctrine of the Word of God (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co, 2010), 663.

[23] Walter Martin, The Kingdom of the Cults, ed. Ravi Zacharias, Revised, Updated Edition. (Minneapolis, Minn: Bethany House Publishers, 2003), 29.