The Doctrine of the Trinity

In connection with this sacred mystery the Word of God emphatically brings before us the Unity of God. There is but one God to the exclusion of all others—the One living and true God. There appears to be a necessity of reason for conceiving of God as one. That which is absolute and infinite cannot but be One. There cannot be two or more infinite and unchangeable beings. “There is none good but one, that is God.” (Matt.19.17). He is a spirit, infinite, eternal and unchangeable in His being (i.e. in His essence or nature) one in all the glorious attributes and perfections of His nature—His wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth. These perfections or attributes are not distinct from God Himself, for they are the essential properties of His nature or essence. We in our weakness think and speak of them separately, but properly speaking they are the infinite perfections of the divine nature. The glorious excellency of His nature is revealed in the names whereby he has made Himself known. His name Jehovah is especially expressive of the self-existence of His being or essence. “I am that I am.” Being self-existent He is therefore necessarily eternal and infinite.

A Plurality of Persons in the One Essence or Godhead

“There are three Persons in the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost and these three are one God, the same in substance (i.e. the divine nature or essence) equal in power and glory.” (Shorter Catechism) The Word of God makes it clear that the divine essence as a whole exists eternally as Father and as Son and as Holy Ghost, that each Person possesses the whole essence and is constituted a distinct person by certain incommunicable properties not common to Him with the others. “This essence” to quote Dr. Gill, “is common to the Three Persons in God, but not communicated from one another; they each of them partake of it and possess it as one undivided nature; they all enjoy it; it is not a part of it that is enjoyed by one, and a part of it by another, but the whole by each; and ‘all the fulness of the Godhead dwells in Christ’ (Colossians 2.9); and in the Holy Spirit; and of the Father there will be no doubt; these equally subsist in the unity of the divine essence, and without any derivation or communication of it from one to another.” (Body of Divinity).

The Three Persons are self existent and exist together in the same undivided essence. They are the same in substance equal in power and glory. “The doctrine of Scripture” writes Calvin, “concerning the immensity and the spirituality of the Essence of God, should have the effect not only of dissipating the wild dreams of the vulgar, but also of refuting subtleties of a profane philosophy . . . His immensity surely ought to deter us from measuring Him by our sense, while His spiritual nature forbids us to indulge in carnal or earthly speculation concerning Him . . . while He proclaims His unity, He distinctly sets it before us as existing in Three Persons. These we must hold, unless the bare and empty name of Deity merely is to flutter in our brain without any genuine knowledge. Moreover, lest any one should dream of a threefold God, or think that the simple essence is divided by the Three Persons, we must have such a brief and easy definition which may effectually guard us from error. But as some strongly inveigh against the term Person as being merely of human invention, let us just consider how far they have any ground for doing so.

“When the apostle calls the Son of God ‘the express image of His person’ (Heb. 1.3), he undoubtedly does assign to the Father some subsistence in which he differs from the Son . . . But because the Father, though distinguished by His own peculiar properties, has expressed Himself wholly in the Son, He is said with perfect reason to have rendered His Person (hypostasis) manifest in Him. And this aptly accords with what is immediately added, viz., that He is ‘the brightness of His glory.’ The fair inference from the apostle’s words is, that there is a proper subsistence (hypostasis) of the Father which shines refulgent in the Son. From this, again, it is easy to infer that there is a subsistence (hypostasis) of the Son which distinguishes Him from the Father. This, moreover, is not a distinction of essence, which it were impious to multiply. If credit, then, is given to the apostle’s testimony, it follows that there are three Persons (hypostases) in God. The Latins having used the word Persona to express the same thing as the Greek hypostasis, it betrays excessive fastidiousness and even perverseness to quarrel with the term. The most literal translation would be subsistence. Nor indeed, was the use of the term Person confined to the Latin Church. For the Greek Church in like manner, for the purpose of testifying their consent, have taught that there are three prosopa (aspects) in God. All these, however, whether Greeks or Latins, though differing as to the word, are perfectly agreed in substance.

“But to say nothing more of words, let us now attend to the thing signified. By person, then, I mean a subsistence in the divine essence—a subsistence which, while related to the other two, is distinguished from them by incommunicable properties. By subsistence we wish something else to be understood than essence. For if the Word were God simply, and had not some property peculiar to Himself, John could not have said correctly that He had always been with God. When he adds immediately after, that the Word was God, he calls us back to the one essence. But because he could not be with God without dwelling in the Father, hence arises the subsistence, which though connected with the essence by an indissoluble tie, being incapable of separation, yet has a special mark by which it is distinguished from it. Now, I say that each of the three subsistences, while related to the others, is distinguished by its own properties. Here relation is distinctly expressed, because when God is mentioned simply and indefinitely, the name belongs not less to the Son and Spirit than to the Father. But whenever the Father is compared with the Son, the peculiar property of each distinguishes the one from the other. Again, whatever is proper to each I affirm to be incommunicable, because nothing can apply or be transferred to the Son which is attributed to the Father as a mark of distinction.” (Calvin’s Institutes, Book I)

“And to show the divine equality of the adorable Person in the Godhead, each Person at times is named or placed first, sometimes Christ is named first: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen.” (2 Cor. 13.14) Sometimes the Son stands first: ‘That their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding; to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ.” (Col. 2.2) Sometimes God the Father stands first: “For there are Three that bear record in heaven; the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit; and these Three are One.” (I John 5.7) Now, as this last order is not always attended to, it shews that one is not before or after another, and that one is not greater or less than another. Again, “Now, there are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit; and there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord; and there are diversities of operations, but the same God, which worketh all in all.” (I Cor. XII 4-6) Here the Holy Ghost takes the name of Spirit, Lord and God to Himself, and therefore He must be the Spirit, Lord and God. Sometimes the Holy Ghost is prayed to as God. “But the Lord is faithful who will establish you, and keep you from evil. And we have confidence in the Lord touching you, that ye both do and will do the things which we command you. And the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God, and into the patient waiting for Christ.” (2 Thess. 3, 3-5) The Lord, who is faithful, and who establishes the churches, and keeps them from evil, and in whom Paul places his confidence, is the Holy Ghost, and He is prayed to, that He may direct the saints’ hearts into the love of God, and into the patient waiting for Christ. The Holy Spirit is prayed to as a Divine Person, to direct souls into the love of God, who is another Person, and into the patient waiting for Christ, who is another one distinct Person from the former two. (“Contemplations on the God of Israel” p.23, by Wm. Huntington).

Proof that God is a Trinity in Unity

The adversaries to the Trinity object because the express word Trinity is not mentioned in the Bible; but it is not the word that they hate and fight against, but the doctrine. We know that two is a couple or a pair, three is a trinity, and four a quaternity; and “there are three that bear record in heaven” and no more, and these Three are One; not three names and one Person, but three distinct Persons in the one undivided essence.” (Wm. Huntington)

1. “Hear O Israel; the Lord our God is one Lord.” (Deut. 6.4) This verse is one of the stock arguments used by Unitarians and the different false sects which deny the Doctrine of the Trinity. It is to be noticed that the Hebrew word here for one is echad, which means a ‘compound unity,’ as in the expression ‘one cluster of grapes,’ and is never used except in connection with a collective body. When the Hebrews would indicate one meaning absolute unity or only one, they used the word yachid. The word yachid is NEVER ONCE USED to express the unity of the Godhead.

2. In Genesis 1.1, we read “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” The word for God is Elohim which is a plural word. In the original Hebrew, the noun can be singular number implying one, dual number implying two, or plural number implying three or more than three. Observe how the word “Elohim” is the plural number. However, it is followed by a singular verb, created. this shows that there are Three Persons in the Godhead acting in unity. Again in Genesis 1.26 we read, “And God (Elohim) said, ‘Let us make man in our own image’.” Here is an astounding fact: God says that man is to be made in our image; yet He also says men were created in His image in verse 27. The use of the pronouns clearly indicates that the Persons of the Godhead acted together in creation. (From “Are there Three Persons in the Godhead?” by J. Reid.)

3. “What passages in the Old Testament imply the existence of more than one person in the Godhead?”
   Mark the use of the plural in the following passages—Gen. 1.26; 3.22; Isaiah 6.8. Compare the three-fold repetition of the name Jehovah (Numbers 6, 24-26) with the apostolic benediction — 2 Cor. 13.14. Mark also in Isaiah 6.3 the three-fold repetition of the ascription of holiness. (“Outlines of Theology” by Dr. A. A. Hodge.)

4. “The ordinance of baptism, a very solemn part of divine worship, is ordered to be administered ‘in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost’ (Matt. 28.19), which are to be understood not as three names and characters, but three persons distinctly named and described, and who are but one God, as the singular word name prefixed to them signifies; men are to be baptised in one name of three persons; but not into one of three names, but into the name of Three Persons of equal honour and glory.” It is to be observed that the connective particle and, is repeated before each of the Persons mentioned which clearly discovers a Trinity of Persons. (“Body of Divinity” by Dr. Gill.)

5. “God alone is to be invoked in prayer, and petitions are directed sometimes to one Person and sometimes to another; sometimes to the First Person the God and Father of Jesus Christ (Eph. 3.14) sometimes to Christ Himself the Second Person, as by Stephen (Acts 7.59); and sometimes to the Lord the Spirit, the Third Person (2 Thess. 3.5)

6. “In the benediction 2 Cor. 13.14: ‘The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen.’ We have here distinctly named Three Persons and each communicating a separate blessing, according to His own order and manner of operation. The benevolence of the Father in designing, the grace of the Son in the acquisition, the communion of the Holy Ghost in the application of salvation. These are three distinct personal names, three distinct modes of personal agency, and each equally divine.”

7. Proof of the Trinity is afforded by the narrative of Christ’s baptism in Matt. 3, 13-17. “Here we have presented to us Three Persons distinctly named and described as severally acting, each after His own order, the Father speaking from heaven, the Spirit descending like a dove and lighting upon Christ, Christ acknowledged as the beloved Son of God ascending from the water.” (“Outlines of Theology”)

(to be continued)