The Trinity
This audio is from a teaching recorded at our Wednesday Gathering on November 1, 2023.
Key Terms
Trinity:
The English word trinity is from the Latin trinitas meaning threeness or tripleness. The doctrine of the threeness teaches that God is both one and three; there is one God and three persons in God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Ontological equality:
In the Godhead, the three persons are equal in deity and attributes, none greater or more divine than the others; equality of deity does not mean sameness of persons, as the three are distinct, and distinctly named Father, Son, and Spirit by their eternal relations.
Economic subordination:
In the “economy” of salvation, that is, in created time and history, Jesus, the God-man (divine Son, who took on humanity), submits to and obeys the commands and will of his divine Father. This “economic subordination” in the incarnation does not reflect eternal subordination within the Godhead, though the respective relations of Father and Son make the Son’s sending, and “economic subordination,” fitting.
Eternal begetting of the Son:
“Beget” has been the verb employed by Christian theologians to capture the relationship between Father and Son. A father begets or generates a son. However, to be clear, in the Godhead is not the human begetting of a father and mother, but a divine and eternal generating of the Son by the Father.
The Filioque Clause (Latin for “and the Son”):
The occasion of the great Schism in 1054 between the Eastern and Western churches. The West rightly sensed the need to include the Spirit’s relation to the Son; the East rightly sought to guard against the equation of Father and Son. One solution might have been “from the Father, through the Son,” but the filioque controversy became the occasion of dividing over many deep underlying issues, including the relationship of Eastern churches to the Pope. For an evenhanded retelling, see Scott Hubbard’s article, “Father, Son, and Controversy.”
Modalism:
The heretical belief God is one person, and comes to humanity in three modes. That is, God is only one but appears to be three by playing three different roles. This heresy is also known as Sabellianism, modalistic monarchianism, or today “Jesus only” Oneness Pentecostals.
Arianism:
This heresy denies the deity of the Son and Spirit, claiming they are created beings (more on Arianism to come in our Christology lessons next spring); Arians today: Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Subordinationism:
This errant view claims the Son is eternal and divine but not equal in being or attributes with the Father. So, the Son is subordinate to the Father in being (but not function); this error famously attributed to theologian Origen (185–254).
Adoptionism:
This heresy claims that Jesus was an ordinary man until God “adopted” him as his “Son,” either at his baptism or resurrection; denies deity of Son and Spirit.
Tritheism:
Belief in three Gods, rather than one God in three persons.
Key Texts and Quotes
Matthew 28:19,
“... make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
Matthew 3:16–17,
“... when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
Ephesians 1:3–15,
“... Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world . . . . In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ . . . . In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses . . . . In him we have obtained an inheritance . . . . In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.”
2 Corinthians 13:14,
“... The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”
Ephesians 2:18,
“... through him [Jesus] we both [Jews and Gentiles] have access in one Spirit to the Father.”
1 Peter 1:2,
“... according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood.”
B.B. Warfield:
“The revelation of the Trinity was incidental to, and the inevitable effect of, the accomplishment of redemption.”
Fred Sanders:
“Rereading is a mode of scriptural reengagement that allows Trinitarian interpretation to maintain the original meaning of the Old Testament, but also to layer onto it the insights that arise from later developments of its themes. . . . [R]ereading preserves the original linear sense while adding the holistic sense, and that much depends on what amount of text counts as the whole. . . . Trinitarian theology is canonical rereading of the identity of God, comprehending the total meaning of the text without effacing or replacing the linear meaning.”
Our Member Affirmation:
“We believe that there is one living and true God, eternally existing in three persons, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit; and that these are the same divine essence, are equal in every divine perfection, and that they execute distinct but harmonious offices in the work of creation, providence, and redemption.”
From our Leader Affirmation:
“We believe that God is supremely joyful in the fellowship of the Trinity, each Person beholding and expressing His eternal and unsurpassed delight in the all-satisfying perfections of the triune God.”
Resources for Further Study
30 minutes of reading:
Ask Pastor John: “Do I Need to Understand the Trinity to Be Saved?”
Ask Michael Reeves: “How Do I Delight Myself in the Trinity?”
David Mathis, “The Happiest Family of All: How Father and Son Glorify Each Other”
2 hours of reading:
John Frame, Salvation Belongs to the Lord, Chapter 3
Scott Hubbard, “Father, Son, and Controversy”
Greg Lanier, “Whose Son Is He? How the Gospels Whisper Christ’s Divinity”
Matt Crutchmer, “All Reality Flows from the Trinity”
5 hours of reading:
Alastair Roberts, “Where Is the Trinity in the Old Testament?”
Fred Sanders, The Holy Spirit: An Introduction (just published)