Systematic Theology: The Doctrine of the Trinity

 * Notes for the doctrine of the Trinity for a class on Systematic Theology.

Systematic Theology

 

The Doctrine of the Trinity

 

1.     Importance of doctrine

 

a.     For we must always remember that as we study this fact, we are not dealing with a doctrine about God, with an abstract concept, or with a scientific proposition about the nature of Divinity.  We are not dealing with a human construction which we ourselves or which others have put upon the facts, and which we now try to analyze and logically to dismember.  Rather, in treating of the Trinity, we are dealing with God Himself, with the one and true God, who has revealed Himself as such in His Word.[1]

 

b.     But to have the “right” answers about the Trinity, for example, and to actually believe in the reality of the Trinity, is all the difference in the world.  The advantage of believing in the reality of the Trinity is not that we get an A from God for giving “the right answer.”  Remember, to believe something is to act as if it is so.  To believe that two plus two equals four is to behave accordingly when trying to find out how many dollars or apples are in the house.  The advantage of believing it is that we can deal much more successfully with reality.  Just try dealing with it as if two plus two equaled six.

 

Hence, the advantage of believing in the Trinity is that we then live as if the Trinity is real: as if the cosmos environing us actually is, beyond all else, a self-sufficing community of unspeakably magnificent personal beings of boundless love, knowledge, and power.  And, thus believing, our lives naturally integrate themselves, through our actions, into the reality of such a universe, just as with two plus two equals four.  In faith we rest ourselves upon the reality of the Trinity in action—and it graciously meets us.  For it is there.  And our lives are then enmeshed in the true world of God.[2]

 

2.     Definition

 

a.     God eternally exists as three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and each person is fully God, and there is one God.  –Wayne Grudem[3]

 

b.     Within the one Being that is God, there exists eternally three coequal and coeternal persons, namely, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. 

 –James White[4]

 

c.     So God is one, but somehow also three.  The fact is difficult to understand, but it is quite unavoidable in Scripture and central to the gospel.  The doctrine of the Trinity attempts to account for this fact and to exclude heresies that have arisen on the subject.  Its basic assertions are these: (1) God is one.  (2) God is three.  (3) The three persons are each fully God.  (4) Each of the persons is distinct from the others.  (5) The three persons are related to one another eternally as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.   –John Frame[5]

 

3.     The Logic of Salvation and the Trinity[6]

 

 

a.     “Consider for a moment how the doctrine of the Trinity enters the consciousness of a Christian.  A person hears the gospel and accepts it.  That person is conscious of being a sinner, and of being saved from the penalty and power of sin by Jesus Christ.  But as soon as he begins reflecting on that salvation, he has to ask, how did Jesus bring about this salvation?  The answer is: through his death and resurrection, Jesus paid for my sin by making atonement to God.  That is how the Bible portrays the predicament we are in and the deliverance that Jesus brings.  As soon as this answer is given, though, it raises anther question: Who must Jesus Christ be, if he is capable of saving people in this way?  The answer is that he must be fully human and fully divine.  See how the logic of salvation works it way out into ever wider circles of understanding.  Beginning with the awareness of salvation, the Christian is driven to understand what salvation is (atonement) and who the savior must be (the Son of God incarnate).

 

“But there is a further question to be asked as the logic of salvation unfolds.  If Jesus is divine, then who must God be?  If we are serious when we add ‘God’ to the description of Jesus, we must be equally serious that, in some way, ‘Jesus’ is to be added to the description of God.  The eternal Son, who in the fullness of time became incarnate for us and for our salvation, belongs essentially to the definition of the true God.  As soon as a person is converted to Christian faith, and that faith begins seeking understanding, the logic of salvation leads inevitably through these steps: from the experience of salvation, to the nature of salvation, to the nature of the savior, to the nature of God.”[7]

 

b.     The Logic of Theology

 

Soteriology  Atonement  Incarnation  Trinity

 

4.     Limits to our understanding 

 

a.     God’s incomprehensibility

 

b.     Creator/creature distinction

 

c.     Limitations to human language

 

                                               i.     “person”  temporally and spatially conditioned

 

5.     Biblical Foundations

 

a.     Word “Trinity” is not in the Bible

 

b.     Structure of biblical argumentation

 

                                               i.     Monotheism: there is only one God

 

                                             ii.     There are three divine persons

 

                                            iii.     The persons are coequal and coeternal  

 

 *NOTE: Please see my blog post "Teaching the Trinity: Helping to Explain the Doctrine to Others" for guidance on how to use this triangle diagram.

 

c.     Sheet with scriptural references and diagram

 

                                               i.     Diagram: denying one of the sides (biblical foundation) leads to the error in the corner directly across (heresy)

 

1.     Tritheism: belief in three gods

 

2.     Subordinationism: one or (two) of the persons in the Godhead is seen as metaphysically (ontologically) inferior (i.e., the belief that Jesus Christ is a created being and not eternal God)

 

3.     Modalism: the belief that God is one person who manifests himself in three different modes of revelation

 

 

 

6.     Trinity in Old Testament

 

It is a plain matter of fact that none who have depended on the revelation embodied in the Old Testament alone have ever attained to the doctrine of the Trinity.  It is another question, however, whether there may not exist in the pages of the Old Testament turns of expression or records of occurrences in which one already acquainted with the doctrine of the Trinity may fairly see indications of an underlying implication of it.[8]

 

a.     Triads

 

                                               i.     Numbers 6.24-26

 

1.     Three mentions of “Lord”

2.     Model for 2 Corinthians 13.14  Trinitarian benediction

 

                                             ii.     Psalm 45.6-7  Hebrews 1.8

 

                                            iii.     Isaiah 6.3; 33.22

 

                                            iv.     Psalm 33.6: Lord, his word, breath (spirit)

 

                                              v.     Isaiah 48.16:Speaker is YHWH, Sovereign Lord has sent me, with his spirit

 

                                            vi.     Isaiah 63.9-10: YHWH, the angel of his presence, Holy Spirit

 

                                          vii.     Malachi 3.1-2; Hosea 1.7

 

b.     Yet, no developed doctrine or full revelation of Trinity in Old Testament

 

c.     The Old Testament may be likened to a chamber richly furnished but dimly lighted; the introduction of light brings into it nothing which was not in it before; but it brings out into clearer view much of what is in it but was only dimly or even not at all perceived before.  The mystery of the Trinity is not revealed in the Old Testament; but the mystery of the Trinity underlies the Old Testament revelation, and here and there almost comes into view. Thus the Old Testament revelation of God is not corrected by the fuller revelation which follows it, but only perfected, extended and enlarged.[9]

 

7.     Trinity in NT as already fully developed: Galatians 4.4-6; Ephesians 1.3-14; 2.18; 3.14-17; 4.4-6

 

a.     It is clear, in other words, that, as we read the New Testament, we are not witnessing the birth of a new conception of God.  What we meet with in its pages is a firmly established conception of God underlying and giving it tone to the whole fabric.  It is not in a text here and there that the New Testament bears its testimony to the doctrine of the Trinity.  The whole book is Trinitarian to the core; all its teaching is built on the assumption of the Trinity; and its allusions to the Trinity are frequent, cursory, easy and confident…The doctrine of the Trinity does not appear in the New Testament in the making, but as already made.[10]

 

b.     Experiential Trinitarians: Matthew 3.16-17; 17.5; Acts 2.1-4

 

The disciples were, indeed, “experiential Trinitarians.”  They had walked with the Son, heard the Father speak from glory, and were now indwelt by the Holy Spirit.[11]

 

c.     Trinity revealed in the event of Christ coming

 

“The revelation itself was made not in word but in deed. It was made in the incarnation of God the Son, and the outpouring of God the Holy Spirit. The relation of the two Testaments to this revelation is in the one case that of preparation for it, and in the other that of product of it. The revelation itself is embodied just in Christ and the Holy Spirit. This is as much as to say that the revelation of the Trinity was incidental to, and the inevitable effect of, the accomplishment of redemption. It was in the coming of the Son of God in the likeness of sinful flesh to offer Himself a sacrifice for sin; and in the coming of the Holy Spirit to convict the world of sin, of righteousness and of judgment, that the Trinity of Persons in the Unity of the Godhead was once for all revealed to men. Those who knew God the Father, who loved them and gave His own Son to die for them; and the Lord Jesus Christ, who loved them and delivered Himself up an offering and sacrifice for them; and the Spirit of Grace, who loved them and dwelt within them a power not themselves, making for righteousness, knew the Triune God and could not think or speak of God otherwise than as triune. The doctrine of the Trinity, in other words, is simply the modification wrought in the conception of the one only God by His complete revelation of Himself in the redemptive process. It necessarily waited, therefore, upon the completion of the redemptive process for its revelation, and its revelation, as necessarily, lay complete in the redemptive process.”[12]

 

 

8.     Ontological and Economic Trinity

 

a.     “These are not two Trinities but the same Trinity viewed in different aspects.”[13]

 

b.     Ontological: “Ontological Trinity is the Trinity in itself, as it (or, rather, he) exists apart from the creation, as he would have existed if he had never created anything.”[14]

 

c.     Economic: “The economic Trinity, however, is the Trinity in relation to the creation… the three persons of the Trinity take on a sort of division of labor with regard to creation and redemption: the Father plans, the Son executes, the Spirit applies. … The three persons are equal, but they take on different jobs in creation and redemption.”[15]

 

9.     No analogies fully capture orthodox Trinity  analogies actually demonstrate heterodox views 

 

a.     “It is especially when we reflect on the relation of the three persons to the divine essence that all analogies fail us and we become deeply conscious of the fact that the Trinity is a mystery far beyond our comprehension.” (Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology, p. 88)

 

b.     See my blog post: “Proving the Trinity from Science: Some Cautions” (online: https://whiterosereview.blogspot.com/2013/12/proving-trinity-from-science-some.html)

 

10. Heretical deviations undermine the Christian life and are so much more inglorious in terms of practical consequences!

 

a.     Mormonism (LDS): Plurality of Gods

 

                                               i.     The founding prophet of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, unequivocally denies the doctrine of the Trinity and the monotheism which is crucial to this doctrine.  Consider the following words from Joseph Smith from what is known as the “King Follett Discourse.”

 

“I will preach on the plurality of Gods.  I have selected this text for that express purpose.  I wish to declare I have always and in all congregations when I have preached on the subject of the Deity, it has been the plurality of Gods.  It has been preached by the Elders for fifteen years.

 

“I have always declared God to be a distinct personage.  Jesus Christ a separate and distinct personage from God the Father, and that the Holy Ghost was a distinct personage and a Spirit: and these three constitute three distinct personages and three Gods.  If this is in accordance with the New Testament, lo and behold! we have three Gods anyhow, and they are plural; and who can contradict it?”  Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith compiled by Joseph Fielding Smith (Deseret, 1976), 370.

 

“Many men say there is one God; the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost are only one God.  I say that is a strange God anyhow—three in one and one in three! … All are to be crammed into one God, according to sectarianism.”  Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith compiled by Joseph Fielding Smith (Deseret, 1976), 372.

 

                                             ii.     Not only did Joseph Smith affirm polytheism and deny the Trinity, he also spoke of how God himself was not always God but was a man like us but attained to Godhood.

 

“God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens!  That is the great secret.  If the veil were rent today, and the great God who holds this world in its orbit, and who upholds all worlds and all things by his power, was to make himself visible,—I say, if you were to see him today, you would see him like a man in form—like yourselves in all the person, image, and very form as a man; for Adam was created in the very fashion, image and likeness of God, and received instruction from, and walked, talked and conversed with him, as one man talks and communes with another.”  Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith compiled by Joseph Fielding Smith (Deseret, 1976), 345.

 

“…it is necessary we should understand the character and being of God and how he came to be so; for I am going to tell you how God came to be God.  We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity.  I will refute that idea, and take away the veil, so that you may see.

 

“These are incomprehensible ideas to some, but they are simple.  It is the first principle of the Gospel to know for a certainty the Character of God, and to know that we may converse with him as one man converses with another, and that he was once a man like us; yea, that God himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ himself did; and I will show it from the Bible.”  Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith compiled by Joseph Fielding Smith (Deseret, 1976), 345-346.

 

                                            iii.     Joseph Smith argues that God the Father himself had a Father!

 

“If Abraham reasoned thus—If Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and John discovered that God the Father of Jesus Christ had a Father, you may suppose that He had a Father also.  Where was there ever a son without a father?  And where was there ever a father without first being a son? … Hence if Jesus had a Father, can we not believe that He had a Father also?  I despise the idea of being scared to death at such a doctrine, for the Bible is full of it.”  Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith compiled by Joseph Fielding Smith (Deseret, 1976), 373.

 

b.     Jehovah’s Witnesses: Ontological subordination of the Son and depersonalization of the Spirit

 

                                               i.     Father is Jehovah (God Almighty)

                                             ii.     Son of God is the first created being (not equal to the Father); Jesus is a perfect man corresponding to Adam

                                            iii.     Holy Spirit is an impersonal force

 

·      How can a mere man atone for the sins of the world?  Works salvation enters in.  Doctrine of God effects the doctrine of salvation

·      Of what glory is there in union with Christ if he but a mere creature?  There is still something more to desire—union with God himself!

 

c.     Modalism (Oneness teaching): God is one person with three manifestations.  

 

                                               i.     God is hidden and not truly revealed in the language of Scripture.

 

                                             ii.     The cross is emptied of its drama.

 

Rather, these Fathers clearly understood that what was at stake in this battle was the authenticity of God’s self-revelation.  They understood that if the relationality found throughout the New Testament between the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit was something that God merely assumed in time for the purpose of our salvation, as the modalists maintained, then even when we come to know God as he truly is.  For what God is “truly” like, according to both ancient modalists and contemporary Oneness believers, lies in the supposed “undifferentiated Oneness,” which is hidden behind the three (or more) “masks” he wears in time.

 

In other words, in Oneness theology the three temporary “roles” of God do not arise out of God’s essential eternal being.  God “plays” Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  But in his heart of hearts—whoever he is—he is not these three.

 

The big question, then, was whether the history of salvation was to be thought of as a sort of stage where God merely acts out certain roles that are otherwise foreign to his essential self, or whether this history reveals the innermost heart and internal depth of the eternal and infinite Godhead.  Does God simply wear masks before us, or does he lovingly envelop us into the very depths of his essential and eternal being?  The early Fathers, thankfully, perceived that the latter was the truth.[16]

 

                                            iii.     Love between the Father and Son is compromised

 

Perhaps the most tragic implication of reducing the Father/Son personal distinction to a mere distinction of natures (or even outright “illusion”) is that it completely undermines the genuineness of the Father’s personal love for the Son and the Son’s personal love for the Father spoken of so poignantly throughout the New Testament.  [David] Bernard specifically addresses the issue of this apparent loving relationship between the Father and the Son when he writes:

 

John 3:35, 5:20, and 15:9 state that the Father loves the Son [forget the numerous other texts!], and John 17:24 says the Father loved Jesus before the foundation of the world.  In John 14:31 Jesus expresses love for the Father [again, one verse!].  All of these statements do not mean separate persons….What these verses express is the relationship between the two natures of Christ.  The Spirit of Jesus loved the humanity and vice versa….Remember, the Son came to the world to show us how much God loves us and also to be our example. For these two objectives to be achieved, the Father and Son showed love for each other.  [David Bernard, The Oneness of God: Series in Pentecostal Theology, vol. 1 (1983)]

 

                                    Greg Boyd adds:

 

Therefore, in beholding the love of the Father for the Son and the love of the Son for the Father, we are not seeing anything that concerns the eternal heart of God himself.  God could just as well have done without this pseudo-interpersonal “projected” love.  Since the two “persons” are projected, and the love is expressed only for an example, none of this can tell us how God really is, how God really feels, what God is really like.  In the Oneness view, we only know that God is “absolutely one,” so whatever he is like, he is not like he appears when the Father and Son are portrayed as distinct and as perfectly loving one another.  And thus in the end the Incarnation shows us, not what God is (compare John 1:14, 18), not even what God is like, but only what we human beings should be like![17]

 

d.     Islam: Unitarian in nature

 

                                               i.     Love is not eternal in Islam

 

                                             ii.     Focus  submission

 

                                            iii.     Love is essential to the nature of God in Christianity for the three Persons lived in love and communion with each other from eternity

 

 

 

11. Practical Consequences

 

a.     The doctrine of the Trinity was formulated by followers of Jesus Christ to safeguard the good news that in Jesus Christ we encounter God face to face.  It was not devised to make God less understandable, or to make God so mysterious that the common people would have to depend on clergy and theologians to understand it for them as the JWs charge.[18]

 

b.     What then is lost from Christian theism, when we cease to think in trinitarian terms?... The conviction that God is love is the major casualty of unitarian theism.

…………..

 

The other losses of non-trinitarian religion are of a piece with this major casualty.  Christ becomes one inspired man among others; and the Spirit a universal divine immanence within creation.  We no longer have a living Saviour, by incorporation into whose Body we too can say ‘Abba, Father’; we no longer can think of our prayers and worship as taken up into the inner movement of God’s life.[19]

 

c.     Why was the church so concerned about the doctrine of the Trinity? Is it really essential to hold to the full deity of the Son and the Holy Spirit? Yes it is, for this teaching has implications for the very heart of the Christian faith. First, the atonement is at stake. If Jesus is merely a created being, and not fully God, then it is hard to see how he, a creature, could bear the full wrath of God against all of our sins. Could any creature, no matter how great, really save us? Second, justification by faith alone is threatened if we deny the full deity of the Son. (This is seen today in the teaching of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who do not believe in justification by faith alone.) If Jesus is not fully God, we would rightly doubt whether we can really trust him to save us completely. Could we really depend on any creature fully for our salvation? Third, if Jesus is not infinite God, should we pray to him or worship him? Who but an infinite, omniscient God could hear and respond to all the prayers of all God’s people? And who but God himself is worthy of worship? Indeed, if Jesus is merely a creature, no matter how great, it would be idolatry to worship him—yet the New Testament commands us to do so (Phil. 2:9-11; Rev. 5:12-14). Fourth, if someone teaches that Christ was a created being but nonetheless one who saved us, then this teaching wrongly begins to attribute credit for salvation to a creature and not to God himself. But this wrongfully exalts the creature rather than the Creator, something Scripture never allows us to do. Fifth, the independence and personal nature of God are at stake: If there is no Trinity, then there were no interpersonal relationships within the being of God before creation, and, without personal relationships, it is difficult to see how God could be genuinely personal or be without the need for a creation to relate to. Sixth, the unity of the universe is at stake: If there is not perfect plurality and perfect unity in God himself, then we have no basis for thinking there can be any ultimate unity among the diverse elements of the universe either. Clearly, in the doctrine of the Trinity, the heart of the Christian faith is at stake. Herman Bavinck says that “Athanasius understood better than any of his contemporaries that Christianity stands or falls with the confession of the deity of Christ and of the Trinity.” Bavinck, The Doctrine of God p. 281. He adds, “In the confession of the Trinity throbs the heart of the Christian religion: every error results from, or upon deeper reflection may be traced to, a wrong view of this doctrine.” Ibid., p. 285.[20]

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     [1] Herman Bavinck Our Reasonable Faith: A Survey of Christian Doctrine (Baker: 1956 [originally 1909]), 143.

     [2] Dallas Willard The Divine Conspiracy (Harper Collins, 1998), 318.

     [3] Wayne Grudem Systematic Theology (Zondervan, 1994), 226.

     [4] James White The Forgotten Trinity (Bethany House, 1998), 26.

     [5] John Frame The Doctrine of God (Presbyterian and Reformed, 2002), 621-622.

     [6] Fred Sanders, The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything (Crossway, 2010), 73.

     [7] Fred Sanders, The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything (Crossway, 2010), 73.

     [8] Benjamin B. Warfield, “The Biblical Doctrine of the Trinity” The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield, vol. 2 (Baker, 2000; [original—1932]), 140.

     [9] Benjamin B. Warfield, “The Biblical Doctrine of the Trinity,” 141-142.

     [10] Benjamin B. Warfield, “The Biblical Doctrine of the Trinity,”143.

     [11] James White The Forgotten Trinity (Bethany House, 1998), 167-168.

     [12] Benjamin B. Warfield, “The Biblical Doctrine of the Trinity” in The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield, vol. 2, (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000 [Original: Oxford University Press, 1932]), 144.  Available online here: http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/sdg/warfield/warfield_trinity.html.

     [13] John Frame, Salvation Belongs to the Lord: An Introduction to Systematic Theology (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: Presbyterian Reformed, 2006), 36.

     [14] John Frame, Salvation Belongs to the Lord: An Introduction to Systematic Theology, 36.

     [15] John Frame, Salvation Belongs to the Lord: An Introduction to Systematic Theology, 36.

     [16] Gregory Boyd, Oneness Pentecostals and the Trinity (Baker, 1992), 178-179.

     [17] Gregory Boyd, Oneness Pentecostals and the Trinity (Baker, 1992), 183-184.

     [18] Robert M. Bowman Jr. Why You Should Believe in the Trinity: An Answer to Jehovah’s Witnesses (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1989), 138.

     [19] Brian Hebblethwaite, “Recent British Theology,” One God in Trinity (Westchester: Cornerstone Books, 1980), 168-169.

     [20] Wayne Grudem Systematic Theology (Zondervan, 1994), 247-248.  Available online: https://www.biblicaltraining.org/library/trinity-wayne-grudem.