PTM WEEKLY UPDATE -- JUNE 30, 2008

The triquetra, a pre-Christian symbol used by early Christians to help illustrate the Trinity.

The Trinity is like what?

Q. Please explain to me what you and the general world of Christians believe the Trinity to be. Is it like, Superman, Batman and Spiderman come together to make the Superteam? Or is it like mind, body and spirit makes up a person?

A. Here's a brief survey of the Trinity teaching. The Trinity is a biblically based teaching that historic Christianity decided upon after generations of study and debate. It is the first teaching/doctrine that Christianity formally articulated because there were challenges to biblical teaching and practice in the early Christian church, with one of the most virulent being about the nature of God.

In brief, the Bible teaches that God is one. God revealed himself to his people, the nation of Israel, the Jews, as one God, and insisted that he alone was and is God. The first of the Ten Commandments of Sinai insists on him being the one God, and the second and third are related. The Jews, to this day, recite what is called the Shema, in synagogues -- it is taken from Deuteronomy 6:4 -- "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one." Not two, three, or more -- for to believe such a thing is polytheism, and is traditionally the way that Christians, not to mention Jews and Moslems, have defined pagans. A pagan is one who believes in more than one God. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are all mono-theistic, believing in one God. The great difference is that the one god of Islam is not the God of the Bible, and the God of Judaism is only the God who reveals himself in the old covenant.

When God came to us, in the Incarnation, coming to us in the person of Jesus, to save us from our sin, the world of Judaism at large (there were no Christians yet of course) was shocked. Their centuries long problem, recorded throughout the Old Testament, was idolatry - turning after false gods of the nations around them. By the birth of Jesus (actually somewhat before that) the Jews had learned their lesson in this regard. God is one. One God only.

But then Jesus came and claimed to be God in the flesh -- the Son of the Father. Two Gods! Unthinkable for Jews at that time. So they determined to kill him, as John tells us -- "For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God" (John 5:18). Breaking the Sabbath? Also unthinkable. They reasoned, "This could not be God in the flesh, this could not be the Son of God, this couldn't even be a prophet sent by God."

But Jesus constantly affirmed his divinity, recorded for us in many places throughout the four Gospels, though the Gospel of John provides the most specific study of this subject. John says that Jesus himself would resurrect his own body, proving he was no mere man, but the God-man (see John 2:18-22). Shortly before the cross Jesus told his disciples about a "third" God -- the Comforter/Counselor -- God the Holy Spirit -- who would come to them after Jesus' death and resurrection. After his resurrection Jesus gave his disciples, and all Christians that followed them, the commission to make disciples, and to baptize them "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Matthew 28:18).

So now we don't only have "two" Gods, but "three." The passage in Matthew 28 does not indicate three separate Gods, but one name for three divine Persons who are one -- they have the same name. They are all God and they are one -- three divine Persons in the Godhead. In the book of Acts we read that the Holy Spirit came (Acts 2) and, as we continue to study the book of Acts, that the Holy Spirit has personality, in the sense that God the Holy Spirit speaks and directs (some teach the Holy Spirit as less than God, an impersonal force or power -- but this teaching is unbiblical).

The early Christians were thus left with a seeming contradiction, until they devoted themselves to a careful study of the whole Bible, both Old and New Testaments. They found that God is one, as the Jews believed and still do, but he is also three -- God is one Godhead who exists eternally as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. These three are divine Persons (not at all like human persons) who are distinct, yet separate. They are co-essential, of one essence, yet three in Person.

The Trinity has been proven over many centuries to be the best human attempt to frame, in imperfect human language, the perfection of God. All other attempts fall short -- some are so woefully inadequate as to lead into heresy. In fact, virtually all cultic groups share one thing in common -- they all reject the biblical teaching of the nature of God in favor of some other definition, which falls short of how God reveals himself to us in the pages of Scripture.

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