What this world needs,There is probably no doctrine so mystifying as the Trinity. God in three persons, it defies all human understanding. And unlike some other mystifying doctrines, we have little room for error here. From early days the church has recognized that those who deny or pervert this truth are anathema: unlike those who mistake issues like eternal security or the nature of Communion, these people believe a properly damnable error.
is a Savior who will rescue,
a Spirit who will lead,
a Father who will love them
in their time of need.
— Casting Crowns, "What This World Needs"
This said, it seems apparent that it is vital to have the strongest grasp and conviction of the Trinity as possible. After all, it is a discussion regarding the very nature of who God is. If we are to worship God, we must know Him, and the Trinity is easily the most defining trait separating our God from the imaginations of other religions.
Probably the simplest way to try to go about discussing the Trinity is to discern the basic points and assess the validity of each. So, written simply, the Trinity in its most basic consists of three truths:
- There is but one God.
- God the Father is God.
- Jesus the Son is God.
- The Holy Spirit is God.
- Therefore one God somehow exists as three persons.
- The persons of God are simultaneous, co-eternal, and co-equal.
There is but one God
Explanation
According to Christianity, there is only one God. This is a fact so basic that all Christians, along with Jews and Muslims, believe it. This is probably the most well-attested fact of the Trinity in the Bible, thus explaining why some heretics would easily drop orthodox teaching on the Trinity by denying the three persons of God. Even so, there is a very fundamental sense in which God is one. Not only is He Himself one God, but there are no other "gods." God alone is truly God.
Support
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one! (Deuteronomy 6:4 NKJV)
To you it was shown, that you might know that the Lord Himself is God; there is none other besides Him. (Deuteronomy 4:35 NKJV)
Is there a God besides Me? Indeed there is no other Rock; I know not one. (Isaiah 44:8 NKJV)
These and countless other verses explain that God is one, and that no other so-called "god" is actually a god at all. In fact, if I had the time and inclination I could probably give dozens of explicit verse along with paragraphs of reasoning explaining why the Bible teaches strict monotheism (one God, the only God). For further support, I would suggest looking in a topical Bible or concordance.
Objections
For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality nor takes a bribe. (Deuteronomy 10:17 NKJV)
Who is like You, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like You, glorious in holiness, Fearful in praises, doing wonders? (Exodus 15:11 NKJV)
For who in the heavens can be compared to the Lord? Who among the sons of the mighty [or: sons of the gods/God] can be likened to the Lord? (Psalms 89:6 NKJV)
There is also a number of verses like these in the Bible, which seem to imply the existence of other gods. Lesser gods, but still gods. How are we to understand these in light of the Biblical evidence that God is one, and there is one God? There are a few possibilities.
- Part or all of the Bible teaches polytheism and/or henotheism
- Henotheism means acknowledgment of the existence of many gods, but worship of only one, usually considered higher than the others. According to most liberal Christian and secular scholars, the Bible begins in a polytheistic religion, and soon becomes henotheistic. Only during and after the exile to Babylon does the Scripture evolve to teach pure monotheism (only one God, supreme over all). I, along with most evangelicals, reject this view entirely because it hinges on a denial of the infallibility of the Scriptures.
- The Israelites were thick
- We know that the Israelites were a bit slow and stubborn based on what we read in much of the early books of the Bible, especially Judges. They took a long time to get things. Also, the liberal may have a point regarding Israelite understanding of God. So it is also possible that while God's revelation to Israel was monotheistic, they were a bit thick and just refused to get it for quite a while. Thus in the beginning they may have understood God more like a polytheistic deity, then came to view Him henotheistically, only to finally accept His claims to being the only God after quite some time. This would explain both the explicit statements of monotheism throughout the entire Bible, along with the implications of other gods, since the authors would still write of God as though other gods existed, even if the Spirit in inspiring the Scripture prevented them from specifically affirming such. This also works with my next point to an extent.
- Other gods were referenced in such a way that does not affirm their existence
- This one can be true both with or without the previous theory. Basically, the Bible mentions other gods to compare with God, but not in such a way that the other gods are said to exist. Nowhere in the Bible is it explicitly stated that there are other real gods. We refer to Allah, Krishna, Buddha, and Zeus as gods without affirming their existence, and we will even tout Yahweh's superiority to them. We can see similar polemic and other use in Scripture.
My next post in this series will defend the deity of the Father and the Son. For now, know this: God is one. Sometimes when discussing the Trinity we separate the three members so much that it is as if they actually are three gods. We must not do this. Many analogies fail here, such as the egg, three-leaf clover, and even the human composition (body, soul, spirit). These all involve three completely different things which happen to be combined. That it not the Trinity. In God, there is but one ultimate thing: God.