God in Three Persons

Trinity Sunday marks a time in the church year when specific attention is turned to God in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  As part of this, many church groups will recite the Athanasian Creed, which was written to help explain the difference, yet sameness, of each Person in the Godhead.  Its length and repetitive language can dissuade the reader, and one wonders if something else could not have been constructed with fewer words.  Shorter creedal statements about God have been made, but somehow they are incomplete: they simply do not convey the same depth of understanding and clarity.  After all, how does one condense and describe the omnipresent and indescribable in fewer than the 44 lines linked above?  We should praise the author(s) of that ancient document for accuracy and thoroughness—and brevity.

Consider for a moment the opening three verses of the Bible:

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.  The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep.  And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.  And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.  (Gen 1:1-3)

How would one describe God from these verses?  You might mention that there was an all-powerful being, God, who existed before the heavens and earth, that He or She created everything, that the original state of things was somewhat chaotic needing form and structure, and God spoke things into existence.  Then you go a bit deeper: What is the Spirit of God?  Is this someone different than the God mentioned in verse one or an extension of the same?  These last two questions are actually more interesting than the first.  God is presented as the creator of all things, but His Spirit seems to be working somewhat independently yet in concert with God.

If the above is not sufficiently confusing, we must add another level of mystery—the God’s speech.  We assume that the Creator is the one speaking, rather than the Spirit hovering over the waters, but how does He communicate and able to enact great and mighty works through that communication?  What mode is used to transport the words?  What or Whom initiates the declarative act?  Scripture sheds light on this in an unexpected place:

The Lord created me in the beginning of His ways for His works;
He established me in the beginning before time,
Before He made the earth, and before He made the abysses,
Before the going forth of the fountains of the waters,
Before the mountains were created;
And He begot me before all hills.
The Lord made the fields and the uninhabited places
And the inhabited heights under heaven.
When He prepared heaven, I was present with Him,
And when He set apart His throne upon the winds.
When He made strong the things above the clouds,
And made sure the fountains under heaven,
And made strong the fountains of the earth,
I was working beside Him;
I was He in whom He rejoiced;
Daily and continually I was gladdened by His face.
When He completed the world, He rejoiced,
And He rejoiced in the sons of men.  (Prov 8:22-31 LXX*)

Here we have a recounting of creation from a different perspective—a heavenly one.  In this passage, Wisdom is personified and actively involved in creation.  Though personified elsewhere in Proverbs as an attribute to be pursued, the interworking here suggests a relationship more as one of Creator and Co-creator working together toward a result.  God is shown establishing Wisdom over His works and making all things through Wisdom.  And it is not that Wisdom is created, as we would imagine it, but rather established over all in the beginning before time having been begotten by the Lord.

Wisdom exists outside creation, and therefore cannot be considered part of the creation sequence, but rather is over it as a Workman.  The words indicate the relation of Wisdom to the Creator as as offspring, (i.e., the Son of the Father), begotten before and outside all time and ages.  Wisdom, being the Son of the Father, was present with the Father when He made the world, therefore, the Son exists with the Father outside creation.  And since the Father is not a creature, neither is His Son.

Were there, then, multiple Gods who created the world?  No.  The Son also created the world, for He was working beside the Father.  The Father is the Creator, and the Son is the Creator.  How so?  Because the working is one working.  They are distinct Persons, but the work of creation is one work.  Is the Son the same as the Spirit who hovered over the waters, as mentioned above.  Again, no.  The creation work of Wisdom, the Son, was more “hands on” during construction, while the Spirit’s work was primarily enlivening—preparing and giving life.  Three distinct Persons created the world, therefore the Holy Trinity, our one God, made the world with one working, and when completed, They rejoiced in one another.

Some will wonder why this concerns us, offering up a retort like: “So what if that group doesn't teach the Trinity.  They believe in Jesus, and that should be good enough.”  Except that is not good enough.  Look at the beginning and end of the Athanasian Creed:

•   1. Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic faith;
•   2. Which faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.
• 44. This is the catholic faith, which except a man believe faithfully he cannot be saved.

The doctrine of the Trinity is important, because without a correct understanding, we believe and worship another god, not the God of the Bible.  There are many groups who mention Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in their doctrinal documents, but deny the God who is both one in essence yet three in persons: among these are Oneness Pentecostals, Mormons, and Jehovah Witnesses.  These groups are not Christian.  Though they give ascent to God and to three entities somehow working together, they deny either the full deity or the unique personage of each member.  Without a proper understanding of God, His Person, and His redeeming work, what is believed cannot save, because the individual divine work needed to complete our redemption cannot be accomplished.  Therefore, if we choose to trust in such a god and inadequate work, we are left in our sins.

Only by believing, teaching, and confessing the almighty, Triune God as revealed in Scripture do we have a true basis for our assurance of salvation, hope of a resurrection, and promise of an eternal destiny with our Lord.


*  I used the Septuagint because it seemed to have a better reading for the active work of Wisdom.

Give Me a Soapbox!

Praise the Lᴏʀᴅ!

I will give thanks to the Lᴏʀᴅ with my whole heart,
    in the company of the upright, in the congregation.
Great are the works of the Lᴏʀᴅ,
    studied by all who delight in them.
Full of splendor and majesty is his work,
    and his righteousness endures forever.
He has caused his wondrous works to be remembered;
    the Lᴏʀᴅ is gracious and merciful.  (Ps 111:1-4)

Would that it were allowed me to deliver this argument with the whole world formed, as it were, into one assembly, and to be placed in the hearing of all the human race!  Are we therefore judged guilty before you with an impious religion, and because we approach the Head and Pillar of the universe with worshipful service, are we to be considered—to use the terms employed by you in reproaching us—as undesirable godless?  And who would more properly bear the odium of these names than he who either knows, or inquires after, or believes any other god rather than this God of ours?

Do we not owe to Him this first, that we exist, that we are said to be men, that, being either sent forth from Him, or having fallen from Him, we are confined in the darkness of this body?*  Does it not come from Him that we walk, that we breathe and live, and by the very power of living, does He not cause us to exist and to move with the activity of animated being?  Do the causes not emanate from Him, through which our health is sustained by the bountiful supply of various pleasures?  Whose is that world in which you live, or who has authorized you to retain its produce and its possession?  Who has given that common light, enabling us to see distinctly all things lying beneath it, to handle them, and to examine them?  Who has ordained that the fires of the sun should exist for the growth of things, lest elements pregnant with life should be listless by settling down in a stupor of inactivity?

Arnobius of Sicca, Against the Pagans I.29

Consider, O Man, God's Works

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.  (Psalm 19:1-2)

Consider, O man, His works,—the timely rotation of the seasons, and the changes of temperature; the regular march of the stars; the well-ordered course of days and nights, and months, and years; the various beauty of seeds, and plants, and fruits; and the divers species of quadrupeds, and birds, and reptiles, and fishes, both of the rivers and of the sea; or consider the instinct implanted in these animals to beget and rear offspring, not for their own profit, but for the use of man; and the providence with which God provides nourishment for all flesh, or the subjection in which He has ordained that all things subserve mankind.  Consider, too, the flowing of sweet fountains and never-failing rivers, and the seasonable supply of dews, and showers, and rains; the manifold movement of the heavenly bodies, the morning star rising and heralding the approach of the perfect luminary; and the constellation of Pleiades, and Orion, and Arcturus, and the orbit of the other stars that circle through the heavens, all of which the manifold wisdom of God has called by names of their own.

He is God alone who made light out of darkness, and brought forth light from His treasures, and formed the chambers of the south wind, and the treasure-houses of the deep, and the bounds of the seas, and the treasuries of snows and hail-storms, collecting the waters in the storehouses of the deep, and the darkness in His treasures, and bringing forth the sweet, and desirable, and pleasant light out of His treasures; who “makes the mist rise from the ends of the earth.  He makes lightning for the rain;”* who sends forth His thunder to terrify, and foretells by the lightning the peal of the thunder, that no soul may faint with the sudden shock; and who so moderates the violence of the lightning as it flashes out of heaven, that it does not consume the earth; for, if the lightning were allowed all its power, it would burn up the earth; and were the thunder allowed all its power, it would overthrow all the works that are therein.

Theophilus of Antioch, To Autolycus 1.6

* Jeremiah 51:16

Confessing God as Father and Creator

I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.

Thus we learn from this article that none of us has of himself, nor can preserve, his life nor anything that is here enumerated or can be enumerated, however small and unimportant a thing it might be, for all is comprehended in the word Creator.

Moreover, we also confess that God the Father has not only given us all that we have and see before our eyes, but daily preserves and defends us against all evil and misfortune, averts all sorts of danger and calamity; and that He does all this out of pure love and goodness, without our merit, as a benevolent Father, who cares for us that no evil befall us.

Thus we have most briefly presented the meaning of this article, as much as is at first necessary for the most simple to learn, both as to what we have and receive from God, and what we owe in return, which is a most excellent knowledge, but a far greater treasure.  For here we see how the Father has given Himself to us, together with all creatures, and has most richly provided for us in this life, besides that He has overwhelmed us with unspeakable, eternal treasures by His Son and the Holy Ghost, as we shall hear.

Martin Luther, Large Catechism: Apostle's Creed, 16-17, 24