The doctrine of the Trinity is the most sublime truth of the Christian faith and its supreme treasure. Christian teaching concerning one God in three persons flows from the revelation of the high and holy name of the Lord God Almighty, ‘the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit’ (Matt. 28:19).2 This glorious name identifies the true and living God and, because it is the name into which we are baptized, constitutes our only comfort in life and in death. Not only does the doctrine of the Trinity identify God; it also illumines all of God’s works, enabling us to perceive more clearly the wonders of the Father’s purpose in creation, of Christ’s incarnation and of the Spirit’s indwelling. All things are from the Trinity, through the Trinity and to the Trinity. And so, seen in the sublime light of the Trinity, we see all things in a new light.
Sublime and supreme, the doctrine of the Trinity is also singular and self-interpreting. The doctrine is singular in so far as the truth about God as Trinity cannot be categorized among or explained by comparison with other ‘trinities’ in creation (e.g. the threefold form of ice, water and vapour). The Lord asks in Isaiah 40:18:
To whom then will you liken God,
or what likeness compare with him?
And the desired response is ‘no one’. The triune God is and acts in a class by himself. For this reason the Trinity is self-interpreting, a mystery that faith comes to grasp only in so far as the triune God interprets his identity and action to us in holy Scripture. ‘No one knows the Father except the Son’, Jesus declares in Matthew 11:27, ‘and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him’. The good news of course is that the triune God does interpret himself to us, presenting to Christian theology the delightful and demanding task of bearing witness to the supreme and singular reality that is the Lord our God, the reality of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
The purpose of this chapter is to provide a brief overview of the doctrine of the Trinity, following the Lord’s teaching in Matthew 11:25–27 as our primary guide, but also attending to ways in which this teaching is echoed throughout the Bible and summarized in the church’s creeds and confessions. In the doctrine of the Trinity, as in all other doctrines, the Lord Jesus Christ is our only teacher (Matt. 23:8). He alone knows the Father (again Matt. 11:27) and he, with the Father, gives us the Spirit that we may know the things freely given to us by God (1 Cor. 2:11–12). Therefore, if we would learn of the Trinity, we must learn from Jesus (Matt. 11:29). We must direct our attention to the place where he speaks, Holy Scripture, and we must submit our minds to the obedient pattern of thinking that he demands. Only then will we know the doctrine of the Trinity as we ought to know it. Only then will we share the mind of Christ.
At that time Jesus declared, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.’
The revelation of the Trinity causes Jesus to rejoice. This revelation is not a puzzle we are called to solve or a conundrum devised to confound us. It is a source of joy: first in Jesus, then in those who come to know this revelation through Jesus. Unveiled at the Father’s sovereign behest, ‘such was your gracious will’ (11:26), and to an unlikely audience, ‘to little children’ (11:25), the mystery of the Trinity makes known the supreme life of communication and communion that is God’s life as Father, Son and Spirit. The Father, the Son and the Spirit, official church teaching says, are ‘consubstantial’ in one divine life, one divine action, one divine right to our faith and worship.
Jesus’ teaching about the Trinity begins with teaching about the Father. Note the twofold description of God that Jesus acclaims: ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth’ (11:25). The first description ‘Father’ takes up the Old Testament characterization of God as the father of Adam (Gen. 5:1–3; Luke 3:38), Israel (Exod. 4:22; Deut. 32:6) and the Davidic king (2 Sam. 7:14), and gives it a new and unique significance by applying it to God’s relation to Jesus. (We will return to this new and unique sense of God’s fatherhood in a moment.) The second description ‘Lord of heaven and earth’ signifies the Father’s supreme sovereignty. God is the Father who reigns ‘in heaven’ (Matt. 6:9), with whom ‘all things are possible’ (Matt. 19:26), from whom every blessing in nature and in grace flows (Matt. 6:25–34) and to whom belongs eternal dominion and glory (Matt. 6:13).
Jesus’ teaching about the Trinity begins with teaching about the Father, but continues with teaching about his identity as the Son. Here we have a twofold description of the Son that parallels the twofold description of the Father. First, Jesus has received ‘all things’ from the Father. This description indicates that, with the Father, the Son shares supreme divine sovereignty. Jesus has sovereign authority on earth to forgive sins (Matt. 9:6), an authority that belongs to God alone (Matt. 9:3; Mark 2:7). Jesus exercises sovereign authority over the wind and the waves (Mark 4:35–41), an authority that belongs to God alone (Ps. 107:23–32). Jesus exercises ‘all authority in heaven and on earth’ (Matt. 28:18) – again an authority that belongs to God alone (Ps. 135:6). Second, Jesus stands in a unique relation to the Father, the relation of ‘the Son’ (Matt. 11:27). Jesus is not just one son of God among many, not even in the Davidic sense of being the messianic king appointed by God to rule on earth as God rules in heaven (see Matt. 22:41–46). He is the Son of God in the full and proper sense (John 5:18), a sense that distinguishes him from all other creaturely sons of God. He is God’s lordly Son, who has received all things from the Father (Matt. 11:27), who with the Father reigns on God’s sovereign throne (again Matt. 22:41–46), and who with the Father reveals the mystery of the Trinity to us (Matt. 11:25, 27). Jesus is God’s divine Son.
The twofold description of the persons exhibited in Matthew 11:25–27, and also in many other biblical texts, constitutes the fundamental biblical basis for the doctrine of the Trinity. The Bible identifies the persons with characteristics each person holds in common with the other persons (‘common properties’), and with characteristics each person holds in distinction from the other persons (‘personal properties’).
With respect to the first type of description, the Bible identifies each person as the one true and living God. The three persons share a single divine ‘name’ (Matt. 28:19): the Father is the one Lord God (e.g. Matt. 11:25), the Son is the one Lord God (e.g. John 20:28; 1 Cor. 8:6) and the Spirit is the one Lord God (e.g. Acts 5:3–4; 2 Cor. 3:17–18). Furthermore, the Bible identifies each person as an agent of God’s uniquely divine acts of creation, providence, redemption, and so forth (Gen. 1:1–2; Ps. 33:6; John 1:1–3; Gal. 4:4–6; etc.). These ‘common properties’ reveal that the multiplication of persons in the Trinity does not amount to the multiplication of gods (see Eph. 4:4–6). The doctrine of the Trinity is a species of monotheism (cf. Deut. 6:4 with 1 Cor. 8:6). The three distinct persons are in common, and completely in themselves one supreme Lord and God. Again, to borrow creedal terminology, the Son and the Spirit are ‘consubstantial’ with the Father.
With respect to the second type of description, the Bible indicates that each person is truly distinct from the other persons. What is the nature of this real distinction? The distinction does not involve the deity of the persons – these three are one Lord God. Nor does it involve a distinction in their power, wisdom or will – in God all these things are ‘one’ (Deut. 6:4). The nature of the real distinction between the persons is revealed in their personal proper names: ‘Father’, ‘Son’ and ‘Holy Spirit’. As these names indicate, the persons are distinguished by their relations: the Father is Father to the Son (‘paternity’ is thus his unique ‘personal property’), the Son is Son to the Father (‘filiation’ is thus his unique personal property) and the Spirit is the Spirit of the Father and the Son (‘spiration’ is thus his unique personal property). These personal properties are not interchangeable. The Father is not the Son. The Son is not the Father. And the Spirit is not the Father or the Son.
What more can be said about these personal properties? Again, attentive to the personal names themselves, the church has recognized that these names indicate communicative relations. That is to say, the personal names reflect the distinctive ways in which the persons share or communicate (i.e. ‘make common’) the one divine essence they hold in common. The Father is Father in that he eternally communicates the one divine essence to the Son through eternal generation: ‘All things have been handed over to me by my Father’ (Matt. 11:27). ‘As the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself’ (John 5:26). As Adam begot Seth in his likeness, communicating human nature to him (Gen. 5:3), so the Father has eternally begotten the Son, eternally communicating the divine nature to him.
To be sure, the Adam–Seth relation is but a creaturely analogue of the Father–Son relation. Consequently, we should not measure the latter divine relation by the standard of the former creaturely relation. Adam begot Seth in time and in so doing became a father. However, the Father has eternally begotten the Son and so has always been a Father. Furthermore, when Adam begot Seth, communicating human nature to him, that human nature was divided into two human beings. However, in eternally begetting the Son, and communicating the divine nature to him, the divine nature is not divided into two divine beings. The Father eternally communicates the simple, undivided divine essence to the Son, constituting him a second divine person but not a second God.
The Son, accordingly, is Son in that he eternally receives the one divine essence from the Father in eternal generation. He is the radiance of the Father’s glory and the exact representation of his person (Heb. 1:3). In terms of the Nicene Creed the Son is ‘God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God.’ As the preceding discussion suggests, the point of eternal generation is not that the Son is a derivative deity. The point is only that his distinctive way of being the one God is as the true Son of the Father: the Father’s eternal offspring, one God with his Father in every way.
Eternal generation is not something our minds can comprehend, so determined is our thinking by the categories of time and finitude. According to Martin Luther, the doctrine of eternal generation ‘is not even comprehensible to the angels’, and ‘those who have tried to grasp it have broken their necks over it’.3 Nevertheless, Luther also insists, eternal generation is a doctrine ‘given to us in the gospel’ and glimpsed ‘by faith’. The doctrine is, furthermore, beautiful teaching, for it indicates the kind of perfection that characterizes the Father as an eternally radiant, communicative perfection, and it indicates the kind of perfection that characterizes the Son: when we see the Son, we see deity shining forth in its full brilliance, supreme over all creaturely lights.
What about the Spirit? The Spirit is the Spirit of the Father (Matt. 10:20) and of the Son (Gal. 4:6). The Spirit is Spirit in that he eternally receives the one divine essence from the Father and the Son by ‘spiration’ or by being ‘breathed out’. In classical Augustinian terms the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son as from one spirating source. The Spirit’s ‘communicative relation’ is even more difficult to describe than that of the Son. But this difficulty should not discourage us; for in fact the difficulty in perceiving his mode of procession follows from the way he reveals himself: the Spirit sovereignly ‘blows were he wishes’ (John 3:8), characteristically directing us away from himself to the person of the Son (see John 16:13–15). When it comes to the divine light that is the Holy Spirit, proceeding from the Father and the Son, we do not typically look at that light but through that light to the glory of God that shines in the face of Jesus Christ (see 1 Cor. 2:9–16; 2 Cor. 3:18; 4:4, 6; Eph. 1:17–18). In his light we see light (Ps. 36:9).
One further point about the personal properties is worth making. The personal properties of the Father, the Son and the Spirit not only teach us about the distinctive ways in which the persons are God but also about the distinctive ways in which the persons act as God. While all three persons cooperate in all divine actions because they are one Lord God, their unified divine action nevertheless exhibits an order that corresponds to their distinctive personal properties. As the Father is the first person of the Trinity, neither begotten nor breathed, so he initiates all divine action. All things are ‘from him’ (1 Cor. 8:6). As the Son is the second person of the Trinity, eternally begotten of the Father, so he acts from the Father. All things are ‘through’ him (1 Cor. 8:6). As the Spirit is the third person of the Trinity, eternally breathed out by the Father and the Son, so he acts from the Father and the Son:
When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you. (John 16:13–15)
All things are brought to completion ‘in him’.
In the light of the Bible’s twofold description of the divine persons, and the doctrine of the Trinity that arises therefrom, we can better identify the root of several trinitarian errors that have plagued the church throughout history. The error of ‘Sabellianism’ or ‘modalism’ rightly recognizes the common properties of the persons – the properties that identify the persons as one God, but fails to recognize the personal properties of the persons – the properties that distinguish the persons from each other. The error of ‘Arianism’ or ‘subordinationism’ makes the opposite mistake, rightly recognizing the personal properties that distinguish the persons from each other but failing to recognize the common properties that identity each person as the one Lord God. This error not only occurs among those who deny the full deity of the Son and the Spirit; it also occurs among those who fail to appreciate that the common properties not only identify the persons as equally divine but also as identically divine – as one Lord God. This is the error of tritheism, an error that many contemporary ‘social trinitarians’ come dangerously close to making.
Space forbids lengthy reflection on these errors. It is nevertheless instructive to observe their common root: each of these trinitarian mistakes arises, to some degree, from a failure to consider what the whole counsel of God teaches regarding the persons of the Trinity. That is to say, each of these trinitarian mistakes arises from a partial, selective reading of the Scriptures. Of course, these errors exhibit other methodological mistakes as well; for example, the attempt to measure the unlimited being of the Trinity by the limited standard of creaturely being. Still, it is their failure to consider all of God’s wonderful names, both personal and common, that constitutes the root of their idolatries.
When it comes to the mystery of the Trinity, Francis Turretin says we are dealing with a topic ‘which neither reason can comprehend nor example prove’, but which ‘the authority of divine revelation alone proposes to be received by faith and adored with love’.4 This is the goal of trinitarian doctrine: that we may rejoice in the Father, the Lord of heaven and earth (Matt. 11:25), that we may rejoice in the Son, to whom the Father has given ‘all things’ (Matt. 11:27) and through whose death and exaltation the Father has granted us every spiritual blessing (Rom. 8:32; Eph. 1:3) and that we may rejoice in the Spirit (Luke 10:21), who fills our hearts with the fullness of love that characterizes God’s eternal, sublime life as Father, Son and Spirit.
© Scott R. Swain, 2016