July/August 2003
Defending the Trinity
by Gannon Murphy
| The doctrine of the Trinity is consistently among the first of those teachings to be attacked by the opponents of the historic Christian faith. |
One of the first clues tipping us off to the importance of the historic doctrine of the Trinity is the perennial smoke of controversy that has surrounded it throughout the history of the church. Antitrinitarianism is an ancient cancer that has festered and re-festered in a multitude of forms over the last two millennia.
The seemingly endless demand for a cogent and sturdy defense of biblical Trinitarianism provided many of the church fathers with the motivation they needed to pen some of the most powerful apologetical works ever issued. Tertullian's Against Praxeas (2nd century), Gregory of Nyssa's On Not Three Gods (4th century) and Augustine's On the Holy Trinity (early 5th century) are just a few examples of works defending the Trinity.
The Trinity was also the central issue at several early church councils such as those in Nicea (325) and Constantinople (382) where the heretical, antitrinitarian teachings of Arius and his followers were sternly repudiated.
Significant spurts of antitrinitarianism continued, however, and carried themselves well over into the Middle Ages (especially in Peter Abelard and the Nominalists), through the period of the Reformation (as in Faustus Socinus and the Socinians), and well into the period of the Enlightenment in which antitrinitarian congregations began sprouting up all over Europe and were carrying over to America.1
A steady stream of vehement antitrinitarianism can be traced all the way through the first century-right up to the present day where it is made brazenly manifest in such groups as the Unitarians, Mormons, Christian Scientists, Theosophical Society and the Jehovah's Witnesses.
Why Is the Trinity Attacked?
The doctrine of the Trinity is consistently among the first of those teachings to be attacked by the opponents of the historic, Christian faith. Cultists and religious devotees of a variety of persuasions come against Trinitarianism with a venom uncommon in most other arenas of doctrinal controversy. Missionaries for the Mormon church,
Jehovah's Witnesses and Islam, for example, often receive training in specific methods for "refuting" the Trinity.
Why is this? Why all the hubbub? What is so threatening about a doctrine which some care to deem merely "academic," "heady," "too speculative," "contradictory" or "confusing?" The answer is really quite simple: If the Christian doctrine of the Trinity is not true, then Jesus Christ is not who he said he was, God the Savior.
But if the Trinity is true, resistless logic points us to the inescapable conclusion that Jesus Christ is indeed, the logos sarx, the Word in human flesh who "made his dwelling among us" (John 1:14).
| If the Christian doctrine of the Trinity is not true, then Jesus Christ is not who he said he was -- God the Savior. |
Enemies of the Holy Trinity know that if the fabric of Trinitarianism can be torn down, then Jesus was but a mere man, perhaps a prophet at best, but certainly not the Theanthropos, the Godman-100 percent man, 100 percent God (Philippians 2:5-7), as the Bible and the historic creeds of Christianity affirm. And if Christ was not these things, then he did not make proper satisfaction for our sins by virtue of his death on the cross and victorious resurrection three days later. Indeed, as Paul affirms, "if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins" (1 Corinthians 15:17).
If the Trinity is not true, then Christ is not God, dead and raised, and, plain and simple, Christians are worshipping a dead man. So how important is the Trinity and its defense? I'd say it doesn't get more important than this!
The Bible, of course, never actually uses the word "Trinity." Rather, the term-- since coined by the church father Tertullian -- "has simply been found a convenient designation for the one God self-revealed in Scripture as Father, Son and Holy Spirit."2 Biblical passages affirming both the "Oneness" and the Triunity of this Oneness are in ample supply. Deuteronomy 6:4 affirms that "The Lord our God is one Lord" while passages such as Matthew 28:19 and 2 Corinthians 13:14 both make explicit use of the "Trinitarian formula."3 The Divinity of Christ is also affirmed in various places like Colossians 2:9 where Paul calls Jesus "the one in whom the fullness of deity dwells bodily" (see also Philippians 2:5-7; John 8:58; John 17:5; Revelation 2:8).
A Mystery, Not A Contradiction
Contrary to claims of the skeptics and antitrinitarians, the doctrine of the Trinity does not go against reason, but beyond it.4 There is a huge difference between these two assertions. The Trinity is a mystery, not a contradiction.
Properly formulated, the doctrine of the Trinity declares that "God is one in nature (or essence) and three in person." If, on the other hand, the doctrine were to declare that God is "one in nature and three in nature," then, indeed, we would have an irreconcilable contradiction that violates reason. For God to be both one and three at the same time and in the same sense is a patent violation of the law of noncontradiction which governs all rational thought and without which all intelligible thought and communication would be impossible.
The doctrine of the Trinity cuts right to the core of the very nature of God. For this reason, the doctrine is an essential teaching of the Christian faith. As we have seen, it is inextricably interwoven with who Christ is-the Author and Perfecter of our faith (Hebrews 12:2).
We should not agonize over the mysteriousness or complexity of this doctrine. Rather, we can take great comfort in it. For, a most glorious aspect of the Trinity is the manner in which it represents the relationality of God, in love. Augustine spoke at length of this Triunity of love. Love, he said, involves a lover. Thus, the Father might be likened to the Lover; the Son to the One loved and the Holy Spirit to the bond of love.5
C.S. Lewis once put it this way, "The union between the Father and the Son is such a live concrete thing that this union itself is also a Person."6 The Trinity, then, makes the very fact of love possible-an important and comforting fact indeed.
The Ground of Our Salvation
The prodigious energies that the great apologists of Christian orthodoxy throughout the centuries have poured into defending the historic doctrine of the Trinity should positively humble the laxity of the church today with regard to this cardinal tenet of our faith.
The Trinity is not simply a "heady speculation" or "abstract doctrine" without real, live import for our lives. The Trinity grounds our salvation in the immutable reality of the Godhead. It is not an optional or marginal teaching.
The Christian faith is not such that we can pick and choose our doctrines and affirm one central tenet while we drop another. Where the essentials of the faith are concerned, you cannot say, "Hey, at least I've got nine out of ten!" It's an all or nothing deal.
St. Augustine says, "In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity." The doctrine of the Trinity falls into the first category. This is not a debate over end-times scenarios or paedo-baptism or similar in-house issues. Rather, it is a hill that all Bible-believing Christians must be willing to die on and to defend with the greatest of fortitude.
Paul says, "Watch your life and doctrine closely...." Why says Paul? "Because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers" (1 Timothy 4:15-16). This is a matter of eternal salvation and is precisely why we must not be lax toward the doctrine of the Trinity but must be ready to offer a defense -- in an age where it is unpopular to do so -- of the paramount importance of the Trinity.
1 C.G. Singer, "Unitarianism" Evangelical Dictionary of Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1984), p. 1126.
2 G.W. Bromiley, "Trinity" Evangelical Dictionary of Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1984), p. 1112.
3 Herbert Lockyer (Editor) "Trinity" Illustrated Dictionary of the Bible (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1986), p. 1073.
4 Norman Geisler, "Trinity" Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1999), p. 730
5 Ibid., p. 733
6 C.S. Lewis, "The Trinity" The Joyful Christian (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1977), p. 47
Gannon Murphy is the founder and director of the Minnesota Apologetics Project.