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Help I don't understand the Trinity!

Nicean Creed (Council of Constantinople 381)

Every year on the Sunday after Pentecost churches around the world celebrate Trinity Sunday, and think about that essential Christian understanding about God. We believe that God is three, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and yet at the same time there is only one God. But what does all that mean?

The understanding of God as one substance in three persons was adopted by the Council of Constantinople in 381 AD and still declared today in that Nicene Creed. Different theologians have described the doctrine of the Trinity as “the cornerstone of systematic theology”,  “a `far country' of irrelevant complex speculation” and “the key unlocking the mysteries alike of individual human life and of the history of our universe.”

C. S. Lewis said of the Trinity that it is either the most farcical doctrine invented by the early disciples or the most profound and thrilling mystery revealed by the Creator Himself, giving us a grand intimation of reality.

But the doctrine of the Trinity is often a stumbling block to people enquiring about the Christian faith. They cannot understand it! The first thing we should admit is that Christians don't understand the Trinity either! It is a truth about God too deep for us to fathom, a "mystery".

“We believe in God the Father incomprehensible, God the Son incomprehensible, and God the Holy Spirit incomprehensible, these three incomprehensibles being not three but one incomprehensible!”

So why do we believe in the Trinity?

WHO HERE believes in the Trinity ? God as 3 in 1 and 1 in 3?     WHY???

The word Trinity NEVER appears in the Bible!   Where do we find Trinity in the New Testament?  

Matt 28:19 the ONLY clear reference

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of  the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

Deliberate Threefold Structures can be found

in 1 Cor 12:4-6,

4  There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit.  5  There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord.  6  There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men.

Spirit, Lord, God.

Eph 4:4-6.

4  There is one body and one Spirit- just as you were called to one hope when you were called-  5  one Lord, one faith, one baptism;  6  one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

Spirit, Lord, Father

2 Cor 13:14

14  May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

Conclusion: - The doctrine of the Trinity does not lie on the surface of Scripture.

BUT God as Trinity is IMPLIED in New Testament

The doctrine of the Trinity grew as Christians grappled with their understanding of their experiences of God. The earliest Christians were Jews, and Jesus Himself was a Jew, and the thing which always distinguished the Jews from all the other religions was their central belief that there is only one God. It is prayed in the shema every day, `Hear O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one.' (Deuter.my 6:4)

So it was a great shock to every Jew when Jesus came working miracles, preaching the gospel and claiming Himself to be God. That was the `blasphemy' for which He was crucified. The first Christians were those who believed that Jesus really was Immanuel, `God with us' and worshipped Him as Lord and God. They had met with God incarnate, living as a human being (John 1:14).

Christ's divinity and pre-existence is recognised in the N.T. We believe Christ is God, quite apart from any specific verses about the deity of Christ, because those first Jewish Christians worshipped Jesus, when only God was to be worshipped! Then in was the Risen CHRIST who poured out the Holy Spirit into the Church in Acts 2 – and only God could send His Holy spirit.

In fact it was just as they were beginning to understand that Jesus and His Father are indeed one (John 14:6) when the Holy Spirit overwhelmed the church at Pentecost, and continued to express God's love and power in the churches. The Jews had always used the expression `the Spirit of God' to refer to God's activity in the world, and it then took two centuries for Christians to recognise fully that the Holy Spirit was indeed divine, personal, and a person distinct from the Father and Son, actually the third Person of God, the `other Counsellor' who the Father gives to represent Jesus and continue His work through the Church (John 14:15-20, 16:13-14).

Our God is a Trinity. This means there are three persons in one God, not three Gods. The persons are known as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and they have all always existed as three separate persons. The person of the Father is not the same person as the Son. The person of the Son is not the same person as the Holy Spirit. The person of the Holy Spirit is not the same person as the Father. If you take away any one, there is no God. God has always been a trinity from all eternity:

God is not one person who took three forms or “faces”, i.e., the Father who became the Son, who then became the Holy Spirit. This belief is false.

Nor is God only one person as Unitarians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Christadelphians teach

The Bible says there is only one God. Yet, it says Jesus is God (John 1:1,14); it says the Father is God (Phil. 1:2); and it says the Holy Spirit is God (Acts 5:3-4). Since the Son speaks to the Father, they are separate persons. Since the Holy Spirit speaks also (Acts 13:2), He is a separate person. There is one God who exists in three persons.

Separate verses of Scripture teach us that each of the persons of God, each of Father, Son and Holy Spirit are separately called God. Each are eternal. They were each involved in Creation and in the Resurrection of Jesus. They each are all-knowing, each give life, each make us holy, each speak, each love, each search hearts”.   (VISUAL AID)

So Christians believe in God in Trinity, One God who is the Father (God above us), the Son (God with us) and the Holy Spirit (God inside us). Within his own mysterious being God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The designations are just ways in which God is God. Within the Godhead there are three “persons” who are neither three Gods nor three parts of God, but coequally and coeternally God.

Jesus commanded us to baptise disciples `in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.'(Matt 20:19) But this belief is not some complicated invention of deep thinkers to confuse us. It is simply the response of Christians who continue to experience God as Father, as Son and as Holy Spirit, and trust God even if they cannot understand.

 

So what is the use of the doctrine of the Trinity?

The Trinity as a Key to correct interpretation if the Bible.

In the first four centuries the churches and theologians developed a number of statements of belief, of “Creeds” (Heron) For Trinitarian Christians, `The purpose of the Creeds is to help us to interpret the sayings of Scripture. They are a hermeneutical prism.” There is an `affinity' of the Creeds to Scripture, as a key to understanding. If the decisions of the councils go beyond the words of the New Testament, they do so `in a way intended to preserve and maintain the integrity and the witness of the New Testament. .... It goes beyond, indeed, but not in order to go away.' The authority of the doctrine is not independent of Scripture `but in the closest possible liaison with it.' All the time, the creeds were developed by Christians who week in week out were sharing in worship and prayer to the God who is “Three in One”, with trinitarian formulations central in baptismal declarations and credal confessions.

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So the doctrine of the Trinity should function as `a lens designed to focus for our eyes the nature of the God to whom the bible testifies,' `a prism focussing the testimony'. As such its authority rests not on individual proof texts but on the whole sweep of Scripture. If the texts of Bible are compared to the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, doctrines such as the Trinity can act as descriptions of the picture which the whole puzzle presents, even though no one piece presents that whole picture.

For this it is not necessary that every biblical reference presenting an aspect of the Trinity would have been understood in Trinitarian terms by its author or first readers. Nor is it necessary that the doctrine arises unambiguously out of the text. It's sufficient that the doctrine of the Trinity is COHERENT or consistent with the New Testament.

The Christological and Trinitarian dogma which the Councils produced `constitute an indispensable commentary upon and exegesis of the biblical testimony.' It's supreme value is that, in Gunton's words, `In the light of the theology of the Trinity everything looks different.'

The development of doctrine must be assessed by `an essential congruence with the tendency and direction of the New Testament witness, not of mere repetition of what had already been said there.' There is an open-ended Trinitarianism in the N.T. texts but this was narrowed by the developing trinitarian dogma, to defend Scripture against heretical interpretations. The purpose of the doctrine of the Trinity is to use it as a framework for interpreting the NT texts correctly and to guard against heresy.

{{LaCugna and McDonnell discuss ways in which}} The doctrine of the Trinity is a model or a metaphor for God. It necessarily containing both correspondence and distortion. It is an icon, not a replica. There is danger of over-investing in the model, for it is not the reality. Now `we see in a glass darkly' (Kelly). Heron notes `The doctrine of the Trinity is an ecclesiastical doctrine, subject to correction and development in the context of the church's continuing listening to the Word of God in Scripture.'

`The trinitarian discipline is not simply a doctrine but also a method and a critical principle. .... not only the central mystery of Christianity but also the unifying principle of all Christian Theology.' At the same time for all believers it has `radical consequences for Christian life.' The doctrine of the Trinity achieves these functions by acting as a key for the interpretation of Scripture.

Some implications of God as Trinity

1. "Being as communion"  (Zizioulas, Colin Gunton)

- being a "person" derives from relationships

2. The significance of the cross  (Moltmann)

- the sinfulness of sin and the greatness of God's love - `social Trinity' on the basis of the events of the Cross and the sending language, both of Father sending Son and Son sending Spirit

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