The Nature of the Trinity
What is the Trinity? Is it a doctrine that can be fully understood by mortal man? The mere idea of one God possessing three distinct and fully developed personalities while still possessing a distinct Oneness can be challenging to either the new believer or the well educated theologian. For the purposes of this paper, the personalities of three personalities of the Trinity will be explored and, through that explanation, there should be a measure of comfort in that the knowledge of God pertaining to the Trinity can be logically understood, but not entirely grasped.
That nature of God, himself, in His Oneness is in itself a mystery that can not be fathomed. However, Cornelius van Til in The Defense of the Faith attempts to define or summarize the general personality of God. In the first chapter, he (van Til) states, “What we have discussed [the revealed nature of God] under the attributes of God may also be summed up by saying that God is absolute personality. The attributes themselves speak of self-conscious and moral activity on the part of God” (10). Van Til previously wrote on the doctrine of God under the pretense of understanding the type of God Christianity believes in. He quickly names four attributes of God that can be clearly seen through the Bible. The first attribute that he names is God’s independence. “By this is meant that God is in no sense correlative to or dependent upon anything besides his own being. God is the source of his own being, or rather the term source cannot be applied to God. God is absolute. He is sufficient unto himself” (9). Van Til is speaking to the fact that God is completely unto Himself sufficient, alive, and not requiring anything outside of Himself to sustain Him. He is self-dependent on Himself alone outside any other influence.
Van Til moves forward to explain the other three attributes of God. “Secondly, we speak of the immutability of God. Naturally God does not and cannot change since there is nothing besides his own eternal Being on which he depends (Mal. 3:6; James 1:7).” (9). God is not affected by time or the effects of gravity. The Creator of time cannot age along with His creation because He is outside of the time used within His creation. The same can be said for the affects of gravity on God which moves into the third attribute of God. Van Til states that God is infinite and eternal. He defines the eternity of God with relation to the question of time (10) as well as the omnipresence of God in terms of space (10). “By the term eternity we mean that there is no beginning or end or succession of moments in God’s being or consciousness (Ps. 90:2; 2 Pet. 3:8).” (10). In short, God is not confined by the limits of time which is mind-boggling in thought and action because, as human beings created to serve time, it is inconceivable to think of God who exists outside of time and, consequently, that influences our lives outside of time. “By the term omnipotence we mean that God is neither included in space nor absent from it. God is above all space and yet present in every part of it (I Kings 8:27; Acts 17:27).” (10). God has the ability to exist inside of space without existing within it. What is meant to be said is that God does not exist within a space as human beings or corporeal, inanimate objects exist within a space. God also does not need to be corporeal to interact within space. Because God is transcendent above all space and yet still in space, He can influence space without existing within the restricted confines of space.
The fourth attribute of God is that of His unity. God exists both in the forms of unified singularity and unified simplicity. “The unity of singularity has reference to numerical oneness. There is and can be only one God. The unity of simplicity signifies that God is in no sense composed of parts or aspects that existed prior to himself (Jer. 10:10; I John 1:5).” (10). The personality of God is one and yet He is existing in all. The attributes named by Van Til are not to be seen as the only attributes of God. They are to be seen as fundamental characteristics that existed within God. They did not gradually come to be within God. They have always and will always exist within God because they are fundamental to understanding His overall nature. God’s place within the Trinity can be seen, through knowing these attributes, to be the place of the head. He is the Father. He is the Creator of everything and, most importantly, He is the master of the other two personalities inhabited within the Trinity. The term “master” is to be clearly defined in this context to mean, “the leader, the one who sets in motion.” The other two personalities within the Trinity are both subservient and equal to God, but God the Father as He exists within the Trinity is to be recognized and understood to be the one who sets in motion His will.
The theology of Christ, God’s son, while not as difficult in terms of understanding as the paradoxal nature of God, is difficult in its own right to understand based on the fact that God is present within His Son but His Son is also a separate entity to Himself. C.S. Lewis, in his book Mere Christianity, begins a discussion on the nature of the only begotten Son of God. “Now that is the first thing to get clear. What God begets is God; just as what man begets is man. What God creates is not God; just as what man creates is not man” (122). Lewis is attempting to clear up the misconception that God was fully human with attributes of God existing within Him. Because God the Father fathered Jesus through Mary, that means that God laid into Mary His seed. Jesus is the only begotten of God, hence logically it can be said that if each reproduce after their own kind, then God reproduced after His own kind which was another God. However, this is not be confused with the concept that God the Father Himself was the seed within Mary therefore making Him the one who became the Son who was a God in human form.
The other complexity of understanding God the Son is realizing that when Jesus was born through Mary, He had the same limitations as a human being had. He aged. He grew. He could get angry. He could lust. He could be tempted. One of the differences between Jesus and any other man would be that Jesus, being God incarnate, was perfect. He was tempted as human but He refuted the sin as God. He was an example of perfection and, perhaps, a portrait of humanity before the Fall. Jesus possessed the freedom of mind to sin and He was tempted on more than one occasion to fall, but serving His Father and obeying His Father kept Him from impurity and thus lived a perfect life while on earth. Lewis states, “But what man, in his natural condition, has not got, is Spiritual life-the higher and different sort of life that exists in God” (123). Lewis is getting to the point that Jesus was a mortal being who not only possessed a biological life but that also possessed a Spiritual life. In modern times, Christians are trying to live a Spiritual life, but this Spiritual part of the life can never be achieved. If man were able to have a Spiritual life, then man would have been as Jesus. However, because man was flawed and did not possess the Spiritual life which led to direct fellowship with God (as the Spiritual life that Jesus had enabled him to do) then man is forever separated from God. Jesus’ place within the Trinity is that He is the Son of God, embodied by God the Father but a separate personality as Jesus Christ, the Son of the Almighty God. Jesus is below God as the Son of God and the Son within the Trinity, but He is also equal with God in terms of having the power of God and having the revealed nature of God because Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God.
The last understanding is that of the Holy Spirit. This is perhaps the most confusing and complex part of God. Sheila C. Guthrie, Jr., in her book Christian Doctrine, discusses the Holy Spirit and who exactly He is. “He is ‘God coming to man in an inward way to enlighten and strengthen him’” (292). The Holy Spirit is, as far as human terms and reasoning can tell, is the most direct influence of God in man outside of the time of Jesus Christ’s life on earth. The Holy Spirit is God guiding the soul of man through divine inspiration in some level that is yet to be explained. Guthrie goes on further to state that there are three basic truths in understanding the Holy Spirit. The first aspect in understanding the Holy Spirit is that the Holy Spirit is a person. “If the Spirit is God himself, he is Someone, not something. A common error is to speak of the Spirit as neuter: ‘When it is at work in our heart’ or ‘When it controls us’” (292). Guthrie affirms that God is indeed the Spirit, yet He is yet again represented as separate personality existing both within and outside of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is God’s direct messenger to man. It speaks to the heart, mind, and soul of man and directly addresses the state of the man’s soul through his actions. The Spirit judges man by working through the teachings of the Scriptures. The Holy Spirit has been explained by secularists to be the conscience of a person: the thing that addresses right and wrong both inside of a person and as outwardly expressed through actions.
Guthrie moves forward to express the other two aspects of the Spirit. She states the He (the Spirit) is the God that is known to Christians. “What He wills and does is what God the Father Almighty will and does. He is the Spirit of Christ…and what he wills and does is what God the Son , our Lord, wills and does” (293). Her statement supports the claim that God the Spirit possesses the same motivations and knowledge that God the Father and God the Son possess and is yet something new and different in comparison to God the Father and God the Son. God the Spirit is alive within Christians. “The Holy Spirit is God at work in a new and different way-in us instead of only over us, now and not only in the past…He is the Spirit at work in our lives to enable us to be human creatures in the image of God, sinners reconciled to God, to our fellowmen and to ourselves” (293). Thirdly, Guthrie defines God the Spirit as Lord. He is the direct lord over the lives of Christians. “He is Lord. He works wherever, whenever, and however he chooses. He is especially promised first to the church and then to individual Christians within the church. But he is not limited to work only in the Christian community and the hearts of believers” (294). God the Spirit is not just limited to the will of God. That is to say, He is not subjected to the will of God whenever God the Father wills. If He is God the Father represented to Christians in a new way, then that means that God the Father is directly influencing Christians through Himself in the form of the Spirit. As with God the Son, God the Spirit is Himself a separate personality of God the Father and yet He is God the Father. The Spirit is God the Father working through His Spirit to influence Christians and the church (regardless of denomination), though it is interesting to note that the Spirit comes first to the church and then to the individual Christian.
In conclusion, it is clearly seen that the Trinity is the three-part embodiment of God into three distinct and separate personalities as presented by God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit. These three distinct, fully developed personalities are all alive, possessing the knowledge and power of God and yet able to be separated by the influence and holy will of God. That is to say the three distinct personalities are subject, in their distinct forms, to not be privy to all the information of God the Father. Jesus Himself in all of His God-ness did not know the time and place of second return to earth. That is clearly something that the distinct God the Father can know. The Trinity can be seen as the embodiment of God in three persons through which these three persons and impact and effectively influence Christians and the church in order to further the holy will of God. Because of these three personalities, God can impact the world in ways that only an all-powerful God can and, because of the impact, can spread the message of Good News to all the nations to hopefully one day be baptized in the flowing river of grace, justice, and mercy of His love.
Works Cited
Guthrie, Jr., Sheila C. Christian Doctrine. John Knox Press.
Lewis, C.S. Mere Christianity. The Macmillan Company.
Van Til, Cornelius. The Defense of the Faith. The Presbyterian and Reformed Company.
