The Trinity
This morning we have two closely related passages that we will start with. Both are found in the Book of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy is the fifth of the first five Books of Scripture. We call these first five books the Pentateuch, but our Jewish brethren call them the Ha Torah (The Law) or the Books of Moses.
Deuteronomy 6:4
Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.
Deuteronomy 5:7
You shall have no other gods before me.
This morning we are going to engage in a little time travel. We are going to bounce around, back and forth through time. First, we are going to go back in time to some 3,300 years ago (more or less), when the children of Israel were wondering in the wilderness. During that time, God spoke to the Israelites and gave them His Commandments.
We have copies of those commandments in the first five books in our Bible. As Christians we commonly think of the Big 10, or the Ten Commandments as “The Commandments” of God. We also think of Charlton Heston and the parting of the Red Sea. But we primarily think of the 10 Commandments. However, according to Jewish tradition, and in fact according to reality, there are more than just the Big Ten Commandments. There are in fact 613 commandments found in the first five books of Scripture.
According to the Encyclopedia of Judaism (on the web) it says concerning the Commandments, that they are: “The injunctions recorded in the Pentateuch as having been spoken by God to Moses, to be communicated to the Children of Israel. These commandments were to be observed as the terms of the Covenant between God and His people. A third-century (Jewish Scholar), R. Simlai, postulated that they total 613 commandments, including 365 negative (prohibited) actions corresponding to the number of days in the solar year and 248 positive duties corresponding to the number of organs in the human body. These figures, though not mentioned in tannaitic sources, have been accepted by subsequent authorities (of the law) as authentic, and are the subject of numerous discussions in classical rabbinic works.”
The important thing to get from this, is that while we do have the “Big Ten” we also have 603 other commandments that are just as important for us to follow. Deut. 6:4 is one of those other 603 commandments. Now it is interesting that Deuteronomy 6:4 is considered to be the central tenet of the Jewish faith. It is considered the single most important identifying factor that sets Judaism apart from all other religions, for it was Judaism alone that worshipped only one God instead of a pantheon of gods as did the Romans and Greeks and all other societies around ancient Israel.
In fact, Deut. 6:4 is so central to Judaism that it even has a name that is derived from the first word in Hebrew. Deut 6:4 is called the Schema. It is so important in Jewish thought that the Schema is reflected in our popular culture at times. In fact, there is one scene in the 1949 John Wayne movie The Sands of Iwo Jima, where a dying marine, who is Jewish of course, quotes the Schema as his dying prayer.
In Jewish thought, Deuteronomy 6:4, Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one; and Deuteronomy 5:7: You shall have no other gods before me, are closely associated. For both reflect the very identity of Judaism and its monotheistic nature.
There is no other god than Yahweh! That is still important for us to understand today. All other gods are from the imaginations of men. They either are not real, or they are demons posing as gods. According to Scripture, there are no other choices. It does not matter if that god is Allah or Buddha or any other god; they are either not real or they are demons posing as a gods. Not only is there no other God than Yahweh, but Yahweh is one God. This is incredibly important: there is only one God and that one God is one.
This is an easy concept and it is easy to understand. Only one God and that one God is one. Easy . . . right? One. You don’t even need your fingers and toes to count it up, just one.
So, now let’s move forward in time some 3,200 years (more or less) to the establishment of the Assemblies of God and the 16 Fundamentals. The 16 Fundamentals are the Tenets of our Faith, these are the doctrines that we agree to for fellowship within the Assemblies of God. Number 2 of the 16 Fundamentals is: The One True God. However, we define that one true God as the Trinity. So we now say that there is only one God and that one God is three! We now say that the one God we serve is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
So, we have moved from the single most important tenet of the Jewish faith, that there is only one God and that God is one; to there is only one God and that one God is three. How did we make that transition?
Our belief in the Trinity is one of the major stumbling blocks to Jews or Muslims accepting Christ. But how did we get from a belief in Jewish Monotheism to a belief in the Trinity, a belief that emphasis the triune nature of God? After all, Jesus and all of his Disciples were Jewish and would have held to the Schema as a central tenet of their beliefs. It is not something that they would have easily abandoned. So how did we, as the Church, come to accept that God was three? Is this a corruption of our faith? Did we blend pagan beliefs into Christianity? What caused this fundamental shift in our thought of the very nature of God?
In order to understand why we now believe in the Trinity as opposed to the Monotheistic Worldview of our Jewish predecessors, we need to travel back in time again some 1,900 years to the cultural and religious setting of the first century Church. During the first century, there were various religions that were known as the Mystery Religions. We really do not know much about them for they were a mystery. They were called that because what they actually believed was a mystery to outsiders. They were secret societies that did not share their beliefs with anyone outside their group. The closest modern equivalent that we have is the Masonic Lodge, and that is really not a good comparison for the Masonic Lodge does not claim to be a religion.
As a rule, these Mystery Religions had secret rituals, secret initiations and secret knowledge that they kept . . . well, secret. Now, when these people accepted Christ, they had a strong tendency to Christianize their Mystery Religion instead of experiencing a true conversion of thought. While their hearts may have been renewed, their minds were another issue. We still see this happening today in cultures around the world and even with new converts to Christ in the States. This is why we as the Church believe that Discipleship is so important. For some reason, it is hard for people to accept that what they believed prior to conversion was entirely wrong, so they must find ways to interweave their pagan beliefs into their Worldview of Christianity. And thus heresies and cult groups are born.
We now know this corruption of Christianity in the First Century Church as the Gnostic Heresies or Gnosticism. The name comes from the Greek word for knowledge, gnosis. They believed that it was not who you knew that saved you, but what you knew. It was not the person of Jesus Christ that saved you; it was what you believed about Jesus that was truly important. While you may not be familiar with the name of this heresy, I believe that many of you are familiar with the modern incarnation of Gnosticism and just do not realize it. The New Age Movement is largely Gnosticism revisited.
But at a more culturally relevant and popular level, the 2003 book and the 2006 movie made from the book, The DaVinci Code, brought this modern heresy into our popular culture. It is an interesting work of fiction that was catapulted into a best seller by the claim that it was all true. The secret to publishing is that if you want your book to be a best seller, make it controversial, especially to the church. It worked for the author and publisher of The DaVinci Code.
The Gnostics in the first century thought that what they believed was all true also. However, just because you believe a lie to be true it does not make that lie true. No matter how much you want it to be true. No matter how much truth you mix with the lie, it will still fundamentally be false. No matter how hard you believe it, that lie will stay a lie and it will never be the truth.
In the first century there were many variations of the Gnostic Heresy, but as a rule, their secret knowledge doubted that Jesus was a man or that he was divine depending upon which group you belonged to. There were also many variations of the theme. Among the numerous variations in the beliefs of the various Gnostic groups were that Jesus only appeared to be a man, when in fact he was a spirit; or Jesus was just a man and nothing more, period; to Jesus was just a man that became the Christ sometime during his ministry (perhaps it was when the Spirit descended upon him like a dove or maybe it was when he was being crucified).
You can readily see that these beliefs are problematic since they destroy the importance of Jesus death and resurrection. If Jesus were not a man, then he could not die. If Jesus were not God in the flesh, then his death had no meaning. That the Gnostic Heresies were a problem in the first century church is apparent since the Apostle John opened his book 1 John with a response to those heresies. In fact, many scholars believe that this entire book was a response to the Gnostic heresies. He said in 1 John 1:1-4:
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us—that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.
And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.
As you can see, the opening verses to this book were a salvo across the bow of Gnosticism. Most conservative scholars agree that the Gnostic Heresies were cultic offshoots from mainline Christianity and that these heresies were never accepted by the true Church which are the true followers of Jesus. While they may have been part of the Church for awhile, they left the Church because of their heretical beliefs. In fact, some commentators believe that John later refers to these Gnostics as the antichrists in 1 John 2:18-20. Where the Apostle says:
Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour.
They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.
But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge.
Notice his mention that they have all knowledge? That is a direct attack against Gnosticism and its belief in secret knowledge. That is the Apostle’s defense against the heresy that secret knowledge is needed. He is saying that they already have all the knowledge they need, they don’t need any more and their knowledge was supplied by the Holy Spirit.
OK, so the stage is set, and the church fights this heresy for a couple of hundred years through sermons, and letters to the different churches. But the real problem is that good people keep being deceived and the church needed clear instructions in how to combat this heresy. Remember, it is not just a heresy that says you need secret knowledge, but it is a heresy in many forms that has heretical teaching about who Jesus really was and that attacked his finished work on the cross.
Again, the two major Gnostic camps were; 1) those that taught that Jesus was not really a man, so he could not have died for your sins or been crucified, it only appeared so, and 2) those that taught that Jesus was only a man and not God. Again, I want to stress that this attacks the finished work of the cross. Now, these were not the only heretical teachings that the Gnostics had, it is just the headliners. Most of their beliefs were heretical in nature and attacked the very identity of the Church.
So what was needed was clear instruction about what was the accepted belief among the true believers, the true followers of Jesus concerning who Jesus really was. This was such an issue in the early church that the new Christian Emperor Constantine called for a Church Council to be held at Nicaea in the Spring of 325AD. Nicaea was a city in what is now North Western Turkey just off the Black Sea. As a result of this council, the Creed of Nicaea was crafted by the bishops present. It reads:
‘We believe in one God, the Father, Almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible; And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, only-begotten, that is, from the substance (ousia) of the Father; God from God, Light from Light, Very God from Very God, begotten not made, of one substance (homoousios, consubstantial) with the Father, through whom all things were made, both in heaven and on earth; who for us men and for our salvation came down and was incarnate, was made man, suffered, and rose again on the third day, ascended into heaven, and is coming to judge the living and the dead; And in the Holy Spirit.
“And those who say: “There was a time when he was not”, and: “Before he was begotten he was not”, and: “He came into being from nothing”, or those who pretend that the Son of God is “Of another substance (hypostasis), or essence (ousia)” (than the Father) or “created” or “alterable” or “mutable”, the catholic and apostolic church places under a curse.’ From Eerdmans’ Handbook to the History of Christianity, pages 158, 159.
Notice how careful these Bishops were to clearly state what they believed about Jesus. Now these Bishops are not what we think of a Catholic Bishop today, that is high in the church hierarchy, they were the Pastors of the Churches called together for a council. They said: “Very God from Very God, of the same substance, begotten not made.” You can tell the heresies they were answering by how they crafted this response. They wanted to make sure to say that Jesus was both God and Man, that he was the Man God. That he died for our salvation.
Now, you might think that this was the end of the dispute, that this clear statement ended the heresies once and for all. However, just with modern heresies and cult groups today, that was not the case. It did not matter what the church had to say, they continued to believe their heretical teachings. For the next few hundred years they clarified and rewrote this initial statement about the triune nature of God in response to continuing heresies, new cult groups and even Gnosticism. In fact, much debate throughout the years and the centuries and additional church councils has continued to try and explain in a clear and concise manner what the Church believes about the Trinity. These debates continue to this day.
Even though it is some 1,700 years after the Council of Nicaea that was held in 325 AD, the debate goes on. Among the modern errors are those that believe that the Trinity is the “God Family”. Now this belief was held and is held by many in the church that have not been educated in the History of the Church and theology and what the Trinity truly is. There are also some that describe the Trinity as though God is schizophrenic. And then there are the Oneness Believers that wish to return to a much simpler belief of who and what God is by returning to Jewish Monotheism.
Among some of our modern theologians, are those that think we should abandon the terms Trinity and Person to avoid all of the misunderstanding and baggage that these terms engender. They suggest that we adopt the term Tri-Unity instead of Trinity and some prefer the term manifestation over person.
While there is still disagreement, even after 1,700 years, about how to best express the Trinity, there are certain things that we must accept, however we choose to express it. First it is important for us to realize that while the Old Testament clearly teaches that there is only one God . . . so does the New Testament.
I Corinthians 8:6: yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.
Ephesians 4:4-6:There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
James 2:19: You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!
Not only does the New Testament clearly state that there is only one God; it also clearly indicates the triune nature of God in several passages. Perhaps three of the clearest examples of this are found in the following verses.
2 Corinthians 13:14: The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
Matthew 28:19: Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
Matthew 3:16-17: And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
For most people, the doctrine of the Trinity is confusing at best and totally incomprehensible at worst. The important things to remember first of all are that God is one. There is not a God family in heaven. Christianity is not a poly-theistic religion or even a tri-theistic religion, we believe in only one God. Remember the Schema, God is one.
Secondly, while we believe that somehow there is that in God that is three in nature, through the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, God is not schizophrenic, nor is the appearance of God being three done with smoke and mirrors. We do not have to understand how God is one and yet three at the same time, we just need accept it by faith.
Third, we need to realize that when we attempt to explain the Trinity, we are finite created beings with very limited understanding trying to understand and explain an infinite and eternal being that had the power, knowledge, understanding and intelligence to create everything that exists in the Universe. After 35 years of study, I have come to believe that it is impossible for us to understand the nature of God and explain his being and to explain how God is one and three at the same time. It is a paradox and we just need to accept that paradox.
Fourth, The Father is God. But so is the Son. And actually the Holy Spirit is also God. Not only are all three God, but as the writers in the fourth century council at Nicaea said, they are of the same substance or same essence. In other words, everything that makes the Father God, makes Jesus God and it also makes the Holy Spirit God. So while God is one, somehow that one God is three.
Fifth, we just have to accept this by faith. Not because some council 1,700 years ago said so, and not because the Assemblies of God almost 100 years ago said so in the 16 Fundamentals, but because there is clear evidence in Scripture for this.
I think that most of you have noticed that I did not spend any time trying to explain the Trinity; instead I briefly described the conditions that caused the development of the doctrine of the Trinity. I spent this time explaining how we changed from a belief that there is one God and that God is one to how we now believe that there is one God and that God is three. God is still one, yet somehow he is also three.
Now I could have taken an entire semester in a graduate class to explain the historical development of the Trinity. I could have provided you with the political, religious and theological climate that caused the development in detail and the main players and still would have only had time to hit the highlights and not much more. Also, I could have taken an entire graduate semester at seminary to explain the Trinity and still I would left you confused on the topic.
Again, when you boil down all the wrangling of words to a clear simple statement, what we as the Church needs to accept and believe as the Trinity is: God is one . . . yet he is eternally existent as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God is one, yet somehow he is also three.
