Introduction
History of the Trinitarian Debate
In recent years some popular novels such as Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code as well as the press surrounding the publication of the Gospel of Judas and other Gnostic works have stirred up a lot of controversy surrounding the old debate about the deity of Christ. Conspiracy theories’ concerning massive cover ups by the church and supposed attempts to suppress the truth about the real and, by the way, totally human Jesus, have regained popularity over the last decade. However as we will see, the debate about the deity of Christ and indeed the Trinity were not covert conspiracies but were quite public. As it would turn out the church councils, who affirmed the orthodox view of the full deity of Christ and the tri-unity of God, did not invent something altogether new, nor did they systematically suppress another version of Christianity that was widely held but, rather, they merely affirmed what the church has always believed about God because of the clear teaching of the Scripture. Let’s start by turning our attention to some of the most famous characters in the debate, Arius and Alexander, both bishops of Alexandria Egypt in the early 4th century, and also Athanasius and Emperor Constantine.
Arius (founder of the heresy known as Arianism of which the Jehovah’s Witness are a modern day example) was trained in Antioch. Antioch had long held differences with Alexandria on the matter of how one ought to handle the Scripture in regard to a number of issues. His training undoubtedly played its hand in Arius’ understanding of the doctrine of God and led him to conflict with other church leaders in Alexandria.
About 318 Arius accused Bishop Alexander of Alexandria of subscribing to Sabellianism (the view that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were merely roles or modes assumed in turn by God). Though Alexander had probably been guilty of no more than an incautious use of language, Arius was concerned to emphasize the oneness of God. Unhappily, he went to the other extreme. If the Father was absolutely one, where did the Son come in? Arius explained it thus: “The Father existed before the Son. There was a time when the Son did not exist. Therefore, the Son was created by the Father. Therefore, although the Son was the highest of all creatures, he was not of the essence of God.”[1]
The teaching of Arius grew in popularity and began to spread far and wide. Alexander was extremely disturbed by this false teaching of Arius and moved with all the authority he could muster to stop Arius from teaching it. As a matter of fact Alexander had Arius and his followers excommunicated from the church in the hopes that this would discredit his teaching and be the end of it. However, regardless of Alexander’s strong attempt, Arius continued to teach and continued to gain followers leading to more and more mounting tension in Alexandria, Egypt.
So serious, in fact, did the controversy grow that it actually caught the attention of the Roman Emperor, Constantine. “When the emperor was made acquainted with these disorders, he was very deeply grieved; and regarding the matter as a personal misfortune, immediately exerted himself to extinguish the conflagration which had been kindled, and sent a letter to Alexander and Arius by a trustworthy person named Hosius, who was bishop of Cordova, in Spain.”[2] Constantine was concerned about having peace in his empire and the last thing he wanted was a civil war over a doctrinal dispute in the church!
It is worthy to take a moment to say something about Constantine and how he came to have any concern for matters related to the church at all. As it turns out, Constantine had a very powerful experience with what he believed to be the Lord Jesus Christ which led to his eventual conversion. Philip Schaff, the prominent church historian, has this to say concerning the conversion experience of Constantine:
On his march from Gaul to Italy (the spot and date are not specified), the emperor, whilst earnestly praying to the true God for light and help at this critical time, saw, together with his army, in clear daylight towards evening, a shining cross in the heavens above the sun, with the inscription: “By this conquer,” and in the following night Christ himself appeared to him while he slept, and directed him to have a standard prepared in the form of this sign of the cross, and with that to proceed against Maxentius and all other enemies. This account has a number of reported versions from differing sources but all of them play a very similar tune as to what Constantine and his soldiers experienced. Regardless of what exactly happened it was obvious that Constantine genuinely believe that Jesus Christ won that battle for him and Constantine’s allegiance to the church became very obvious thereafter. About a year after his victory over Maxentius near Rome Constantine in 313 “issued an edict of toleration of Christianity and forced his colleague in the east, Diocletian’s successor Licinius, to confirm the decree. Issued at Milan, it is known as the Edict of Milan.”[3]
So then it is in light of Constantine’s conviction that Christ won the decisive victory for him, which inevitably led him to the place of supreme ruler of Rome, that we now see how the church has come to be free from the persecution it had so long endured. Not only was the church free from persecution but they ended up with an emperor who expressed interest in the doctrinal matters of the church.
But the Emperor’s Spaniard messenger was not sufficient to bring peace in Alexandria as he had hoped. It was evident that Constantine’s concern was little over who was right but merely that the fighting and division would come to a stop. However, as it would turn out, it would take gathering the bishops and church leader together under one roof to settle the matter. Constantine convened a council to settle both the issue of the nature of Christ to the Father but also the long standing argument concerning the proper time to celebrate the Feast of Passover, an issue not as divisive but nonetheless a long-standing point of tension in the church.
When, therefore, the emperor beheld the Church agitated on account of both of these causes, he convoked a General Council, summoning all the bishops by letter to meet him at Nicaea in Bithynia. Accordingly the bishops assembled out of the various provinces and cities; respecting whom Eusebius Pamphilus thus writes, word for word, in his third book of the life of Constantine.[4]
Despite the fact that it had primarily been Arius and Alexander who were the main adversaries up to the point of the council of Nicea (which convened in 325 A.D.), as it would turn out there came another spokesmen for the position that Christ was true deity and one with the Father, a man named Athanasius, a greatly loved deacon in Bishop Alexander’s own church. Athanasius quickly took center stage in the debate between Arius and his followers and the orthodox view of Christ. It was through Athanasius’ winsome arguments and unwavering dedication to the text of Scripture that the entire council minus only a few would affirm the biblical teaching of Christ sharing the very being of God.
The council rejected Arianism and any concessions to Arius and, with the approval of the emperor, adopted the following creed. 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, the only-begotten of the Father, that is, of the substance [ousias] of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one substance [homoousion] with the Father, through whom all things came to be, those things that are in heaven and those things that are on earth, who for us men and for our salvation came down and was made flesh, and was made man, suffered, rose the third day, ascended into the heavens, and will come to judge the living and the dead.[5]
Interestingly enough it is this debate where the saying “It doesn’t make one iota of a difference” comes from as the debate came down to whether Jesus was of the “same” (Gk. homoousios) or of “similar” (Gk. homoiousios) substance as the Father. The “iota” referring to the letter of the Greek alphabet that made all the difference between the two words being argued over.
So then it was settled at Nicea that the Scriptures truly taught that Jesus was truly God along with the Father. The Holy Spirit was likewise affirmed as truly God by the council of Constantinople in 381 A.D. This council put forth the creed “And we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Life-giving, who proceeds from the Father, who is to be glorified with the Father and the Son, and who speaks through the prophets.” And although the council avoided the term “of the same substance” as in the Nicene Creed, the language is unequivocally stating that the Holy Spirit is God with the Father and the Son.[6]
Now that we have covered just very briefly the historical debate concerning the doctrine of the Trinity, let us now take a look at the text of Scripture itself and engage the text as those men of God (and heretics) did back at the council of Nicea and Constantinople. As I stated at the beginning of this paper, the doctrine of the Trinity is a logically consistent and coherent doctrine concerning the existence of God and is clearly taught in Scripture through three basic teachings. The first of those teachings is the least disputed among those who claim to believe the Bible as the authoritative and revealed word of God, namely, there is only one God. More verses from the Bible could be cited in support of “monotheism” then the parameters of this paper could contain, so let us simply examine a handful of particularly striking proclamations of this truth.
We would be remiss if we should fail to start with Deuteronomy 6:4 which reads “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.”[7] This statement is referred to as “The Great Shema” which is derived from the Hebrew word meaning “to hear.” Faithful Jews would recite the Shema often because it was what made their faith definitively unique among the polytheistic religions they were surrounded by. The Shema was a statement concerning the Lord as the only true God compared to the false “gods” all around them in the neighboring Gentile countries, but it also was a statement of God’s oneness. In regard to this passageThe New American Commentary states:
Despite a variety of ways of viewing that clause (“Yahweh our God is one Yahweh,” “Yahweh our God, Yahweh is one,” and the like), the structure of the line, almost poetic, favors the rendering “Yahweh (is) our God, Yahweh is one.” That is, the Divine Name should be construed as a nominative in each case and the terms “our God” and “one” as parallel predicate nominatives. However, as the following discussion points out, there is sufficient ambiguity as to allow the idea of God’s oneness as well as his uniqueness.[8]
In addition to the “Shema” of Deuteronomy 6 we may turn also to the Prophet Isaiah for his powerful, if not at times satirical, proclamation of the fact that there is one true God and all other “gods” are nothing but idols. Isaiah 44:6-8 contains a dialog of God speaking to the people and challenging them to present another who can match him:
6Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts: “I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god. 7Who is like me? Let him proclaim it. Let him declare and set it before me, since I appointed an ancient people. Let them declare what is to come, and what will happen. 8Fear not, nor be afraid; have I not told you from of old and declared it? And you are my witnesses! Is there a God besides me? There is no Rock; I know not any.” [9]
The Bible Knowledge Commentary points out that “The Lord argued for His uniqueness (apart from Me there is no God; cf. Isa. 43:11; 44:6; 46:9) by challenging anyone to tell of the past and the future (44:7; cf. 41:22-23).”[10] Only the omniscient God of the universe is able to meet this test, no one else compares. It is clear that the Old Testament teaches that there is only one true God but does the New Testament change this teaching? Absolutely not!
Consider with me briefly the following passage in Matthew 4:8-10 where Jesus is being tempted by Satan in the wilderness. “8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. 9 And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” 10 Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’”[11] Here we see Jesus face of with the Devil who offers Him all the kingdoms of the world in exchange for His worship. Jesus replies however that there is only one God whom we are to worship, keeping with the Spirit of the Old Testament teaching. Furthermore we have several explicit statements in the New Testament teaching that there is only one God. 1 Corinthians 8:4 states “Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that “an idol has no real existence,” and that “there is no God but one.”[12] Likewise 1 Timothy 2:5 says “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”[13] About this verse in 1 Timothy The Holman New Testament Commentarynotes that “The declaration of the exclusivity of God and Christ is basic to the Christian message. Yet it is a point on which many people stumble. Even those who agree that there is one God often refuse the claim of Jesus as the only way to knowing God.”[14]
So then I think we are justified in concluding that both the Old and New Testaments teach authoritatively that there is only one true God. Now then, with that affirmation in mind we may consider the second biblical teaching that forms the doctrine of the Trinity, that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three unique persons and distinct from one another. One of the clearest portraits of the individuality of the three persons of the Trinity comes at Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist. Luke 3:21-22 renders the account this way “21 Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened, 22 and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”[15]
The Bible Exposition Commentary makes my point for me when it notes “When our Lord came up from the water, the Father spoke from heaven and identified Him as the beloved Son of God, and the Spirit visibly came upon Jesus in the form of a dove. Those who deny the Trinity have a difficult time explaining this event.”[16] The distinction between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit can scarcely be made clearer then it is here. The Father speaks from Heaven, the Holy Spirit descends from Heaven to Earth in the form of a dove and the Son has just come up out of the water from being baptized. There are clearly laid before us three distinct and unique persons.
Finally we come to the third teaching that composes the doctrine of the Trinity, namely, The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all the same God. The bible indeed assigns the same divine name of God to all three persons of the Trinity. One of the most prominent examples is found in John 1:1 which reads “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”[17] This verse says may say more about the individuality and oneness of the members of the Trinity than any other. Note that the “Word” (identified later in verse 14 as the one who became flesh and dwelt among us, and as the “Son”) is said to be with God and to be God at the same time. The normal meaning of the word “with” not withheld indicates a distinction between the main subject and the other person, and yet the subject “the Word” is also the one whom He is with! To some this sounds like contradictory doublespeak, however we will later show that it is indeed not a contradiction at all. Weirsbe tells us the correlation between the Word and God the Father here stating “Just as our words reveal our mind and heart, so Christ reveals the mind and heart of God to men. “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9, NKJV).”[18]
There are a number of other direct references to Jesus being called God including Titus 2:13 “waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ”[19], also 2 Peter 1:1 “Simeon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ.”[20] In addition to these and others is also the Apostle Thomas’ powerful confession after he encounters the resurrected Jesus in John 20:28 and “Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’” Such a statement would have been blasphemy for a Jew to utter unless he was convinced that the God of creation was standing before him.
It is noteworthy to mention that Jesus received worship numerous times in the New Testament (Matthew 2:11; 14:33; 28:9, 17; Luke 24:52; etc.), and yet Jesus affirmed the Old Testament command to “worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve” when he rebuked Satan in the wilderness. So Jesus either contradicted Himself by allowing others to worship him or, as the Scripture teaches, he was truly the God worthy of worship! Apostles refused worship (Acts 14:8-18), the Lord’s angels refused worship (Revelation 19:10) and King Herod falls down and dies for accepting worship that is due only to God (Acts 12:23), but Jesus readily receives worship because He is God in flesh.
Now we turn to several passages that identify the Holy Spirit as God also. In Acts 5 contains a story about a man and his wife who try to deceive God to gain the praise of men but without giving up their earthly treasure. In response to their evil this is what happened:
3 But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land? 4 While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God.” [21]
So then lying to the Holy Spirit is lying to God!
In support of the equal deity of all three persons of the Trinity is Matthew 28:19, part of the great commission, where the Lord Jesus gives instructions concerning the methodology of baptism. “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.”[22] In The Forgotten Trinity White expounds on the significance of this passage writing:
The Lord is about to ascend to heaven. His words are measured and solemn. His disciples are listening very closely. He gives the entire church her charter, commanding believers of all ages to make disciples. Who is a disciple? One who has been baptized and taught. Baptized in whose name? There is only one name mentioned (the word “name” is singular here): that of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.[23]
Some have argued that the doctrine of the Trinity is not taught nor is it even possible given the strong teaching in the Old Testament concerning God’s unity. This however is incorrect. The Bible was written over a period of about 1,500 years by approximately forty different authors. Over the years of its writing God’s revelation unfolded progressively. In other words, more knowledge of God’s nature and plan was known to Moses than it was to Abraham and more was known to David than Moses, etc. So then while the teaching of the Trinity was not fully developed in the Old Testament, it is far from being denied and in some cases it is specifically alluded to. Even from the very first book and chapter of the Bible, Genesis 1, we have a strong indication of the plurality and singularity of the being of God. Genesis 1:26 says:
26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.[24]
Notice the interchangeable use of both plural “us” and “our” with the singular use of the words “God”, “He” and “His”, all related to the making of people in the image of the one God! Spence puts it this way:
Having already explained the significance of the term Elohim, as suggesting the fulness of the Divine personality, and foreshadowing the doctrine of the Trinity (ver. 1), other interpretations, such as that God takes counsel with the angels (Philo, Aben Ezra, Delitzsch), or with the earth (Maimonides, M. Gerundius), or with himself (Kalisch), must be set aside in favour of that which detects in the peculiar phraseology an allusion to a sublineconcilium among the persons of the Godhead (Calvin, Macdonald, Murphy).[25]
This, along with other passages (e.g., Genesis 11; 18; Psalm 2:12; Judges 6; etc.), leave more than enough room for the fullness of God’s nature to be revealed as three persons in one being as God’s revelation would eventually be completed.
Philosophical Clarification
So then we find ourselves with the doctrine of the Trinity implicitly taught in the Old Testament and explicitly taught in the New. White offers this well said, fully formulated, definition of the Trinity “Within the one being that is God, there exists eternally three coequal and coeternal persons, namely, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”[26] While there are a number of important terms here, such as, “coequal” (which means all three persons of the Trinity are equal in power in glory) and “coeternal” (which means that all three persons of the Trinity have existed eternally as God, none are created), let us finish this paper by clarifying what is often the source of the most confusion, namely, what it meant by the words “being” and “persons.”
Philosophically speaking the word “being” merely refers to the existence of of a thing is. Rocks have being, chairs have being, humans have being, etc. Any quality or feature that can properly be attributed to something is part of its being. Part of a rock’s being are the minerals that it has, a chair’s being might contain wood, metal or plastic and have 3 to 4 legs and any number of colors, all of which would be characteristics of its being (existence). Human beings are different from the beings of chairs or rocks in many ways, but one important way in particular is that human beings have “personhood”, that is, human beings have intelligence, self awareness, thoughts, emotions, moral judgments, where as a rock does not. Human beings can be defined by their attributes of a skeletal system, organs, flesh, as well as their personhood, that which separates them from rocks and trees and chairs. Every human being has one person as a part of their being. God however is unique from rocks and chairs, but He is also unique from human beings in that his being (existence) contains three distinct persons as part of who His existence. Rock beings have no personhood, human beings have one person, God’s being has three persons. God is one being in three persons. He has unity in his existence, but plurality in persons.
Many people who reject the biblical doctrine of the Trinity do so because of confusion and misunderstanding. They think that Christians are saying the Bible teaches that God is one person and that God is three persons at the same time and in the same way. If that was actually what Christians were saying then the Trinity would indeed be a logical contradiction. However, when properly understood that God is one “being” who exists as three “persons,” and we understand the difference between the words “being” and “person,” then there is no logical contradiction in the Trinity. The fact of the matter is that God is simply a different kind of being than human beings, containing more persons in His existence than human beings have. Some will say “but there is nothing else like this to which we can point!” We as Christians say “Amen. There is no one like our God!” It is exactly for this reason that we should not try to explain God by comparing Him to things in this world, because there is nothing to which He can be compared.
Conclusion
In this paper we have briefly skimmed the historical debate that has surrounded the doctrine of the Trinity, and the major characters in that debate during the 4th century. We then presented three biblical teachings concerning the existence of God that show Him to be a Trinity, namely, that there is only one God, that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are three distinct persons, and that all three of those distinct persons share the being of God. Finally we argued for the philosophical validity of the doctrine of the Trinity showing that properly understood there is no contradiction involved in the definition of a triune being.
[1] Douglas, J. (1992). Arius. In J. Douglas & P. W. Comfort (Eds.), Who’s Who in Christian history (J. Douglas & P. W. Comfort, Ed.) (35–36). Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House.
[2] Schaff, P. (1997). The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Second Series Vol. II (6). Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems.
[3] Schaff, Philip: History of the Christian Church: Volume 3. Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., 2006.
[4] Schaff, P. (1997). The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Second Series Vol. II (8). Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems.
[5] Enns, P. P. (1997). The Moody handbook of theology (420). Chicago, Ill.: Moody Press.
[6] Ryrie, Charles C. (1999). Basic Theology (66). Chicago, Ill.: Moody Press.
[7] The Holy Bible : English standard version. 2001 (Dt 6:4). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.
[8] Merrill, E. H. (2001). Vol. 4: Deuteronomy (electronic ed.). Logos Library System; The New American Commentary (162–163). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.
[9] The Holy Bible : English standard version. 2001 (Is 44:6–8). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.
[10] Walvoord, J. F., Zuck, R. B., & Dallas Theological Seminary. (1983-). The Bible knowledge commentary : An exposition of the scriptures (Is 44:6–8). Wheaton, IL: Victor Books.
[11] The Holy Bible : English standard version. 2001 (Mt 4:8–10). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.
[12] The Holy Bible : English standard version. 2001 (1 Co 8:4). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.
[13] The Holy Bible : English standard version. 2001 (1 Ti 2:5). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.
[14] Larson, K. (2000). Vol. 9: I & II Thessalonians, I & II Timothy, Titus, Philemon. Holman New Testament Commentary; Holman Reference (165–166). Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers.
[15] The Holy Bible : English standard version. 2001 (Lk 3:21–22). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.
[16] Wiersbe, W. W. (1996). The Bible exposition commentary (Lk 3:21). Wheaton, Ill.: Victor Books.
[17] The Holy Bible : English standard version. 2001 (Jn 1:1). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.
[18] Wiersbe, W. W. (1997). Wiersbe’s expository outlines on the New Testament (211). Wheaton, Ill.: Victor Books.
[19] The Holy Bible : English standard version. 2001 (Tt 2:13). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.
[20] The Holy Bible : English standard version. 2001 (2 Pe 1:1). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.
[21] The Holy Bible : English standard version. 2001 (Ac 5:2–4). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.
[22] The Holy Bible : English standard version. 2001 (Mt 28:19). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.
[23] White, James (1998) The Forgotten Trinity (174) Minneapolis, Mn.: Bethany.
[24] The Holy Bible : English standard version. 2001 (Ge 1:26–27). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.
[25] The Pulpit Commentary: Genesis. 2004 (H. D. M. Spence-Jones, Ed.) (29). Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.
[26] White, James (1998) The Forgotten Trinity (26) Minneapolis, Mn.: Bethany.
