God is one, but he is not remote. God has existed for all time in a perfect community and desires that community of love to extend to humanity. This was accomplished as the Son was incarnated as Jesus thereby uniting himself to humanity and opening up the gate to communion with God. While the doctrine of the Trinity may be confusing, mystical, and old, it is far from outdated. This vital part of the Christian life is poised to speak profoundly to a world in desperate need of meaningful connection.
This essay is the first of four theological overviews focusing on various topics in systematic theology. This and the following essays were written for an academic setting. As such, you may encounter terminology that is technical and left undefined. This is not intended to be exclusive but simply represents its context. Feel free to Google-search any terms that you are unfamiliar with for additional information. |
Introduction
The doctrine of the Trinity is at the center of the Christian faith. Its debate caused the first major church schism and it continues to be a source of confusion for Christians in the West and a source of persecution for those living in the Majority World. Since the term is found nowhere in the Bible, many question the scriptural foundation of the belief and whether it is antiquated and should be left behind. This survey seeks to explore the various views of the Trinity and show that it is a doctrine that naturally arises from both the Old and New Testaments with great implications for the world today.
Summary
In Renewal Theology, Williams begins his treatment of the Trinity by vigorously affirming the unity of the Trinity 1. Williams then establishes the three persons in the Godhead through a survey of the Old and New Testament addressing verses that speak of God in plural language or explicitly deal with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit 2. Next, Williams shows that each member of the Trinity is God 3. Williams spends little time establishing the fact that the Father is God, but appeals to the prophetic literature, the New Testament, and Christians’ lived experience to show that the Son is God. Williams then turns his attention to the Holy Spirit who he argues is God in both the Old and New Testaments. The nature of one God in three persons is Rodman’s next subject, which he tackles by drawing on a tradition that says the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are of one essence, attributes, and works but are three in person with distinct properties 4. Williams states that the properties of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are generation, filiation, and procession,
William J. Rodman, Renewal Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Academie Books, 1988), 83.
Ibid., 84-85.
Ibid., 86-89.
Ibid., 90-91.
respectively. None of these properties are acts but rather are properties of their nature which have existed eternally. Finally, Williams details the acts of God which he breaks down into creation, incarnation, and the coming of the Holy Spirit which correspond to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit 5.
In his work “One God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity,” Bray tackles the question of whether the challenge of translating the doctrine of the Trinity into other cultures and languages is a battle worth fighting 6. He notes that the doctrine of the Trinity is foundational to the Christian faith, but that it has come under pressure from both liberal theologians in the West and other monotheistic faiths in the Majority World. Bray then recounts that the formation of the doctrine arose in an unlikely time and culture and traces its origin before talking about how it may be revised. Bray details the early attempt to separate the persons of the Trinity by function or action through the Council of Chalcedon and the Chalcedonian Definition 7. Bray then outlines more contemporary Western attacks against the Trinity in the forms of Socinianism, unitarianism, and secularism which all see the Trinity as antiquated, inaccurate, or irrelevant 8. There is danger here, Bray notes, that the Majority World Christians will find the unitarianism of liberal theologians attractive due to its simplicity 9. Finally, Bray responds to modern criticisms of trinitarian doctrine having to do with the terms “substance” and “person,” both of which are often dismissed as being outdated or inaccurate. He argues that human language will always be inaccurate and that new terms may be embraced, but the insufficiency of the terms does not render the thing they try to describe as unreal 10. Ultimately, traditional trinitarian doctrine must
5. Williams, Renewal Theology, 93.
6. Gerald Bray, “One God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity,” in Majority World Theology: Christian Doctrine in Global Context ed. Green, Gene L., Stephen T. Pardue, and K. K. Yeo (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2020), 17.
7. Ibid., 18-22.
8. Ibid., 22-24.
9. Ibid., 24-25.
10. Bray, “One God in Trinity,” 25-26.
be maintained, for in it Christians find the basis of their faith, even if the language of the doctrine needs to be adapted for the diverse cultures where Christians find themselves 11.
Pomazansky, in his work Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, begins with an overview of the Trinity as one in essence and Tri-hypostatical, revealing that God is close to creation being above it, with it, and in it through the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit 12. The relationship between the persons of the Trinity is described as the Father eternally begetting the Son and the Holy Spirit eternally proceeding from the Father 13. These are in contrast with the manifestations of God within time such as the incarnation of the Son and the sending of the Holy Spirit 14. The Latin filioque dogma is the next subject, which is rejected as an unscriptural Latin innovation in which Pomazansky argues the West confuses the Father and Son sending the Spirit to the Church with the Trinity’s eternal relationship outside of history 15. Pomazansky affirms the absolute divinity and equality of the persons of the Trinity who are each equally worthy of worship while rejecting various heretical teachings that arose in the Church, which attempted to lessen the divinity of the Son and the Spirit 16.
Synthesis
Both the Old and New Testaments vigorously affirm the unity of God, but the plurality of God in the Old Testament is harder to substantiate. Rodman is right to note the central location that the Shema had on the life of Israel and its strongly monotheistic statement that “the LORD is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4) 17. The fact that Jesus echoes this statement further strengthens this
11. Bray, “One God in Trinity,” 26.
12. Michael Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology: A Concise Exposition. Trans. Hieromonk Seraphim Rose (Plantina: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1997), 77-78.
13. Ibid., 78, Pomazansky notes that no one knows the difference between these two types of relationship.
14. Ibid., 85-87.
15. Ibid., 89-93.
16. Ibid., 93-102.
17. Williams, Renewal Theology, 83.
claim on the unity of God. Unfortunately, both Rodman and Pomazanksy fail to take into account Hebrew grammar or context as they approach the plurality of the Godhead in the Old Testament leading them to misinterpret passages such as Gen 1:1, 1:26, 3:22, and 11:7. They argue that the first person common plural verbs, pronomial suffixes, and the plural of majesty in elohim in these verses lays the groundwork for the Trinity, however neither Scripture nor the ancient Near Eastern context supports this reading 18. Rodman is notable for including Genesis 16 which tells the story of Hagar “where ‘the angel of the Lord’ is both distinguished from the Lord and identified with Him” 19 as a place that hints at a complex Godhead. This ambiguity between the Lord and the angel of the Lord is common in the Old Testament, which, along with the word of the Lord showing up in visionary events and the personification of the wisdom of God, provide a strong backdrop for the plurality of God within the Old Testament 20.
18. Paul Joüon, and T. Muraoka. A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew (Roma: Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 2006), §136d. The plural of majesty exists for Hebrew nouns, however, Wenham doubts whether this is significant and argues that it should be thought of as a frozen plural, which is “plural in form but singular in meaning.” Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1-15. Word Biblical Commentary, Volume 1 (Waco, TX.: Word Books, 1987), 14. Either option is a better interpretive choice than using elohim to imply plurality within God since this would be foreign to ancient Israelite context. Similarly, it is better to read the plural verb forms and pronomial suffixes of these passages in Genesis as referring to the divine council, a group of angelic beings present with God as he created the world. Wenham, Genesis 1-15, 28; Randall W. Garr, In His Own Image and Likeness: Humanity, Divinity, and Monotheism. Culture and History of the Ancient near East, V. 15 (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 20. This explanation accords more closely with the text and context of Genesis 1, 3, and 11 and avoids reading the New Testament trinitarianism back into the Old Testament.
19. Williams, Renewal Theology, 85
20. The angel of the Lord and the Lord are set in poetic parallelism in Gen 48:15-16 when Jacob pronounces a blessing over Ephraim and Manasseh and in Hosea 12:3-4 describing Jacob’s nighttime struggle against an embodied Yahweh who is also described as the angel of the Lord. Although the Lord and the angel are separate beings they are so closely identified that the biblical authors can speak of both being present in the same actions or events. Similarly this confusion happens on the narrative level in Genesis 22:10-18, 31:11-13, and Judges 6:11-24 where the angel of the Lord and the Lord are so closely identified it is unclear who the narrative intends to portray as performing the actions. There are also many instances that the biblical narrative describes the word of the Lord appearing in a vision (notice not auditory encounter) or acting in corporeal ways, for instance, see Genesis 15:1-6 where the word of God appears in a vision and takes Abraham outside, 1 Samuel 3:19-21 where the word of God visually appears to Samuel, and Jeremiah 1:9 where the word of the Lord reaches out and touches Jeremiah. Finally, Proverbs 8:22-31 personifies wisdom as a woman who was present with God in the beginning aiding in his creation of the cosmos. All of these point to a complex unity within the Godhead which ultimately led to a heretical Jewish monotheistic binitarianism that was present in the centuries before and after Jesus’ birth. Alan F. Segal, Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports About Christianity and Gnosticism (Boston, MA: Brill Academic, 2002).
The fact that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all God finds its greatest support in the beginning of the Gospel of Mark which begins with a quotation from Isaiah the prophet about a messenger making the paths of the Lord straight in anticipation of His coming (Mark 1:2-3). The Gospel then presents John the Baptist as the messenger and puts the person of Jesus, the voice from heaven, and the Spirit descending into the slot of God making them all equally God (Mark 1:9-11). Further support for the Son being God can be found in John 1 where John picks up the theme of the embodied word of God from the Old Testament and applies it to Jesus. Furthermore, in Revelation 22:13 Jesus refers to himself as “the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end,” which is a title also explicitly used in Revelation to refer to the Father thus establishing their equality as God.
Application
The doctrine of the Trinity lays a burden upon Christians to show God as a relational God to the rest of the world. The Trinity shows that God does not simply desire relationship with humans or have a propensity for relationships in general; it shows that relationship is something that is core to the identity of God himself. Pomazansky’s insight is particularly relevant as he reflects that God can be above, with, and in the world simultaneously 21. In this way, God can be said to be a superpersonal being whose presence in the world is so all-encompassing that one need only take a small step toward him to meet him. To be effectively communicated, this message must be embodied in a relational and personal way. The church must therefore find creative ways to demonstrate the relational nature of the Godhead in both word and deed.
21. Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, 78.
Conclusion
Far from the cultural kaleidoscope of views of God that exist which paint God as an impersonal force, a distant unknowable God, or a complete non-entity, the Trinity stands in stark contrast. God is one, but he is not remote. God has existed for all time in a perfect community and desires that community of love to extend to humanity. This was accomplished as the Son was incarnated as Jesus thereby uniting himself to humanity and opening up the gate to communion with God. While the doctrine of the Trinity may be confusing, mystical, and old, it is far from outdated. This vital part of the Christian life is poised to speak profoundly to a world in desperate need of meaningful connection.
Bibliography
Bray, Gerald. “One God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity,” in Majority World Theology: Christian
Doctrine in Global Context. Edited by, Green, Gene L., Stephen T. Pardue, and K. K. Yeo. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2020.
Garr, W. Randall. In His Own Image and Likeness: Humanity, Divinity, and Monotheism. Culture and History of the Ancient Near East, V. 15. Leiden: Brill, 2003.
Joüon, Paul, and T. Muraoka. A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew. Roma: Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 2006.
Pomazansky, Michael. Orthodox Dogmatic Theology: A Concise Exposition. Translated by Hieromonk Seraphim Rose. 2d ed. Plantina: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1997.
Segal, Alan F. Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports About Christianity and Gnosticism. Boston, MA: Brill Academic, 2002.
Wenham, Gordon J. Genesis 1-15. Word Biblical Commentary, Volume 1. Waco, TX.: Word Books, 1987.
Williams, J. Rodman. Renewal Theology. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Academie Books, 1988.
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