The Trinity: Who is the Christian God?

Triquetra

On the curved edges of my brother’s gravestone is an attractive symbol carved out of the ice grey marble. It’s called a triquetra. I like to run my fingers over it, feeling the smoooth raised pattern of the stone. It’s a tri-cornered shape made of three overlapping arcs with pointed outer sections like a three-cornered knot.  You see it used in jewellery and clothing and as far back as the Book of Kells (a Scottish illustrated manuscript of the four gospels from the early 8th-century). It’s sometimes referred to as an Irish Celtic knot or a trinity knot. With my little fingers there in the rock I think about what it means that our family belong to this God. This God of three interlocking strands, three persons in one, “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.” (Revelation 1:8)  We worship Him, an eternal God, and our dead have gone to be with him, and us too one day. Walking through the cemetery I see this symbol on a lot of other graves. It’s a symbol that even today still means something potent. 

The trinity is such a big concept to wrap your mind around  - Don’t we worship one God? But then Jesus is God too... And then there’s the Holy Spirit, but is he even a person? It can feel very confusing. You won’t find the word “trinity” written down anywhere in the Bible. It’s a word coined by Tertullian, an early Christian thinker, to hold together what the New Testament teaches about who God is. Understanding the trinity is important as it distinguishes who the Christian God is from the other monotheistic religions: Judaism; and Islam and creates an important bedrock to know the truth about God.

An Underlying Doctrine

Whilst the doctrine of the trinity isn’t the central doctrine of the Christian faith (we’ll get to that in a moment) it’s a really great place to start to understand the basic grammar of Christian faith. Particularly the idea that the three persons of the Godhead (God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit)  are always working together in unity. So everything we say about God we are saying about the triune God. To unpack this idea, let’s take a look at what Martin Luther described as the central doctrine of the Christian faith, “The doctrine by which the church stands or falls”: The doctrine of justification.

The Central Doctrine: Justification

The way that Bray describes the process of justification here shows that knowing the doctrine of the trinity, an underlying doctrine, makes it possible for us to see deeper into the heart of our God:

…[T]he death of Jesus Christ for our sins did not become effective until he returned to his Father in heaven and offered him the sacrifice he had made (Eph. 4:8-10; Acts 2:33.) He is now sitting at the Father’s right hand, pleading for us on the basis of that sacrifice, and so a third person becomes necessary in order to apply that work in our hearts. That person is the Holy Spirit, who represents both the Father and the Son and makes them present and active in our lives. (John 14:18-23)   (Bray p. 108.)

I have found it phenomenally helpful to be reminded by Bray that all parts of the Godhead are at work every time Jesus the Son, God the Father or God the Holy Spirit are at work. Jesus took our sins on the cross, it’s his work on the cross, made possible by his willingness to submit to his good and perfect Father’s will. His Father accepts the sacrifice and out of love sends the Holy Spirit to be at work in our lives turning our hearts to him. You can trace this process through for each doctrine, such as election; creation; the attributes of God, to name three, they are always all involved. You might like to spend a moment now and think how all three persons are involved in the creation of the world, even though we attribute the work of creation to the Father.

Unity, Diversity, Community

Ravi Zacharias says, “The term university is the art of finding unity in diversity.” He goes on to explain that the best example of this is the Biblical concept of the trinity. “In the Bible we have a unity, diversity, community in the trinity.” So going back to the title of Bray’s book, God is Love, it’s the triune God - the God of three persons in community with one another - that is love.  One God in three persons, all loving, all the time.

There’s so much to reflect upon here, particularly how this perfect community in the Godhead speaks to how communities between believers, husbands and wives, parents and children are originally designed to operate harmoniously, created as we are in his image (Genesis 1:27). Flipped around another way how might our communities be adversely affected if God were not a trinity?

Trinity Comes from the Gospel

What we understand about the trinity comes out from the gospel, “No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6) There’s so much to learn about Jesus’ relationship with his Father from  John’s gospel. Bray writes, “The relationship between the Father and the Son encourages us to think of them as being two persons, however hard it may be to reconcile that idea with the belief that there is only one God.” (Bray pp.107-108)

It’s very helpful the way  Bray shows from the Biblical texts how the doctrine of the Trinity developed, that it is not an idea imposed by early Christian thinkers on the text but an idea emanating from the gospel itself. This is just one of the many times throughout the book that you see evangelical doctrine at its best, allowing the Bible to set the agenda, and allowing the weight of evidence there to set the scope and limit of what we can say. 

I think that the doctrine of the trinity is another example of how truly supernatural the Bible is. Who would ever dream up the idea that God is three in one? Yet while the concept of the trinity combines qualities that our mind struggles to keep together, like a portrait torn in three, it reminds us once again that our God is so big! And his love for us is unfathomably deep. 

I hope that these blog posts have ignited an interest in doctrine and pointed you to a resource that helps join the dots and begin a journey to trace connections, recognise consequences and maintain the proportions of Biblical doctrines all solidly anchored in the teaching of the Bible.

I pray that you might continue to grow in your love of God and of his word in 2020.

Meet our contributor

Katie loves books, baking and beaches and finds the Christmas season a great time to get into all three! She leads a Bible Study at her local Anglican church in Leichhardt. She teaches the Bible at two local High schools and enjoys hearing what teenagers think about Jesus. She is studying at Moore College.