​Last week we examined the fact that God is one in both the Old and New Testaments.  This week we will consider the other side of the coin that God is also three distinct persons within the one God.  Our confession is this, “God is a Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, each an uncreated person, one in essence, equal in power and glory.”  Therefore in addition to teaching that God is one, the Bible should also teach that God is three.  The best way to understand this truth is to examine each of the persons in turn to discover whether or not the Bible actually makes the claim of deity for the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
          This week we will consider the Father.  For everyone who believes in God, the deity of the Father is never called into question.  It would be meaningless to try to prove the deity of the Father as we will the Son and the Spirit because we believe everywhere in the Bible God is mentioned at least the Father is being referred to.  The bigger problem related to the person of the Father is to think he is more God than the Son or the Spirit.  In other words, God the Father does not have more divine attributes than any other member of the Trinity.  What he does have is a different role.  His role is unique as Father.  Jesus prays that the will of the Father would be accomplished and that the kingdom of the Father would come, (Matthew 6: 9-10).  We have another example of the “positional supremacy” of the Father in 1 Corinthians 15: 28 which says, “When all things are subjected to him (speaking of Jesus), then the Son Himself also will be subjected to the One who subjected all things to Him, so that God may be all in all.”  What does that mean?  It simply means that there is a role of authority which the Father holds over the Son and the Spirit.  That does not mean the Father is more God than the Son or the Spirit, nor does it mean that there is not perfect harmony in the Trinity.  It is not as if the Father gets two votes and the Son and the Spirit get one vote each.  No, there is no voting in the Trinity.  There is pure, unadulterated unity in all things.  This is complicated and heavy no doubt.
          The important thing for us to remember is that the Trinity is not just some mysterious part of the Christian life for theologians to debate.  The perfect relationship between the members of the Trinity is a model for us to follow.  How perfect the Father’s love is.  That should be an example for earthly fathers in their love.  How willing the Father is to shine the spotlight on the Son, and how willing the Son is to shine it back on the father.  Our God is perfect beyond our comprehension.
 
In Christ,
Blain Craig

​How do we know God is a Trinity?  Everything we know about God must be grounded in the truth of his word.  God has written us a personal love letter in the pages of Scripture.  Just as we might reveal things about ourselves in a letter to a loved one, God has revealed some things about himself in his letter to us.  God tells us he is one and he tells us that he is three.  Many would say that is a nonsensical statement.  They would say he is either one or three, he cannot be both.  The simple truth is that the Bible has clearly said God is both one and three.  Over the next couple of weeks, we are going to think about what the Bible says that helps us know God is one and three.
          God is one.  The most famous verse telling us this truth is Deuteronomy 6:4, “Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one!”  This verse is the clearest statement of the truth that separated Israel from all of the other nations around them.  Israel was monotheistic.  That means they not only were supposed to trust in one God, they were supposed to believe in one God.  Now, often they were guilty of breaking God’s command to believe only in him, but that doesn’t mean there are really any gods other than Yahweh, the one true and living God.  Over and over throughout the Old Testament God reminds his people that he alone is to be worshipped.   "Thus says the LORD, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the LORD of hosts: 'I am the first and I am the last, and there is no God besides Me.  Who is like Me? Let him proclaim and declare it; yes, let him recount it to Me in order; from the time that I established the ancient nation. And let them declare to them the things that are coming and the events that are going to take place. Do not tremble and do not be afraid; have I not long since announced it to you and declared it?  And you are My witnesses is there any God besides Me, Or is there any other Rock? I know of none.'" (Isaiah 44: 6-8).
          The New Testament does not change the fact that God is one.  James says, “You believe that God is one You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder.” (James 2: 19)  Even though Jesus is obviously God, and the Holy Spirit is God, never does the New Testament say, “You know, we were wrong, we thought there was one God, but now we see there are three.”  That never happens because God has always been one and will always be one.  Next week we will see from Scripture how He is three.
 
In Christ,
Blain Craig

​We are continuing to focus on God as Trinity.  This doctrine is heavy and beautiful at the same time.  Brilliant theologians have invested their lives in trying to better understand the nature of God as Trinity.  The fact that we cannot really understand how God is three in one is evidence that he is Almighty God.  No human could conceive or contrive something so grand and complex as the Trinity.
          Last week we said what the Trinity is not.  God is not three gods, nor is he like superman, changing his appearance from the Father to the Son to the Spirit.  These beliefs are common misconceptions, but they are also dangerous heresies.  Let’s begin to think about what the Trinity is.  God is one God, he has one nature or essence that is in three distinct persons.  That means the Father is God, Jesus is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, but the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the spirit.  They are separate persons.  The danger in calling them persons is that we think of human persons with human personalities and human characteristics.  This is not what we are talking about when we say the person of Christ or the person of the Holy Spirit.  C. S. Lewis said he is beyond personality.  That is a good way of thinking about how God is three.  He is super-personal.  If we focus on the person of Jesus as a self contained independent personality like we would a human person, we can quickly lose sight of the unity within God.  See, without the Father and the Spirit, the Son ceases to exist.  That is very different from human relationships.  Unlike humans, the persons of God are grounded in His unity.  They are in perfect, eternal communion and undivided union.
          There is so much we could say about all of this, but an ancient theologian named Gregory of Nazianzen (there will be a test later) has said it beautifully in 381AD, “No sooner do I conceive of the one than I am illumined by the splendor of the three; no sooner do I distinguish them than I am carried back to the one.  When I think of any one of the three I think of him as the whole, and my eyes are filled, and the greater part of what I am thinking escapes me.  I cannot grasp the greatness of that one so as to attribute a greater greatness to the rest.  When I contemplate the three together, I see but one torch, and cannot divide or measure out the undivided light.”
 
In Christ,
Blain Craig

Every major heresy in the history of the church as started with a misunderstanding of the nature of God.  Without fail, heretical cultic groups diminish the person of Jesus Christ and the nature of God in general.  Maybe the main reason Baptists in particular are so susceptible to cultic teachings is that we don’t have a solid, biblical understanding of the nature of the Trinity as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  The perfect, mind-boggling truth is that God is one nature in three persons.  Over the next weeks I will devote the space of this block to rediscovering the truth of the triune God.  That is almost a laughable ambition, considering how short these articles are each week and how complex the doctrine is.  Writing on the Trinity would take years of blocks to do the doctrine justice.  Nevertheless, we will focus on this because I am convinced that our understanding of God as Trinity impacts how we understand all of Scripture. As a matter of fact, we should go so far as to say that the Christian faith stands or falls on the doctrine of the Trinity.  “The Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all,” 2 Corinthians 13: 14.

When the issue of the Trinity comes up, we usually say it is a mystery.  I do understand that the Trinity is in some ways a mystery.  None of us, for all eternity, will ever really grasp the intricacies of God within himself as one God in three persons.  As we think about the Trinity, the subject is daunting and almost overwhelming.  Where to begin is one of hardest parts of the discussion.  I think it is best to describe what God is not, before trying to explain what he is.
First of all, the word Trinity does not mean we worship three gods.  As we often see in various cult groups, when Jesus is misunderstood in Scripture the result is often tri-theism.  That simply means three distinct gods to be worshiped.  Hinduism as well as ancient Greek mythology were polytheistic, in other words they had hundreds of gods.  That is most certainly not what we mean when we say, the Father is God, the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God.  Deuteronomy 6: 4 settles that discussion saying, “Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one!”  The Jews of the Old Testament were very unique from the neighboring nations because they were distinctly monotheistic, meaning they worshiped only one God.

As true as this is, there is another error that can be committed regarding the doctrine of the Trinity.  Some people want to emphasis God’s oneness so much that they deny his threeness.  This is a dangerous heresy.  These people will say that the Father and the Son and the Spirit are only different manifestations of God.  In other words, they understand God as being like an actor in a play wearing masks.  Sometimes he is the Father, sometimes he is the Son, but he is never both at the same time.  This belief is sometimes called the “Superman” theology.  You know, Clark Kent steps into the phone booth as a man, he steps out Superman.  The proper term for this belief is modalism because God takes on different modes.

These two very easily committed errors are why the Trinity is such a difficult thing to talk about.  We love analogies.  The problem is that every analogy of the Trinity almost always commits one of the two errors mentioned above.  For example, sometimes people will describe the Trinity as being like water.  Water can be in liquid form, solid form as ice or gas form as steam, but it is still H2O.  The problem is that the analogy leads to modalism because the element cannot be liquid and solid at the same time.  God is simultaneously three persons of exactly the same essence and nature, one God!
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In Christ,
Blain Craig