This article is the tenth installment in our series "Christian, What Do You Believe: The Belgic Confession of Faith". Find the whole series here.
From nature we can know that God exists and that he is orderly, holy, and good (Rom. 1:19–20). But to truly know God we need to meet him in the Bible, God’s special revelation to his people. Because Scripture reveals to us is that he is one God in three persons, Christian theologians use the word “trinity” to speak of God’s being. So, knowing the Trinity is vital to knowing God.
The Belgic Confession’s lesson on the Trinity is more technical than most of its other articles. This shouldn’t trouble us. In every field of knowledge people use specialized language to ensure accuracy. You don’t want your mechanic reporting that “some stuff under the hood is busted,” but that you have a faulty camshaft position sensor. You appreciate that precision with your mechanic. How much more important is precision when we contemplate the one, true, and living God? As theologians we should ponder God as carefully as possible even if our language is inadequate to totally comprehend him.
Let’s explore the basic idea of the Trinity before considering separately God’s oneness and three-ness.
God Is a Trinity
Trinity comes from a compound Latin word. “Tri” means three. “Unity” means one. The word “trinity” is not found in Scripture, but it beautifully and faithfully encapsulates the biblical teaching of the three-in-one-ness of God.
Supporting this trinitarian formula are several biblical truths. First, there is only one living and true God (Deut. 6:4); “The Lord is God; there is no other (1 Kings 8:60). Yet this one God is a sort of plurality. In Scripture’s first chapter, God is both “I” (Gen. 1:29) and “us” (1:26). In the New Testament, God is distinguished in three persons (e.g. 2 Cor. 13:14). And lest we imagine that the Father, Son, and Spirit are but three names for a single person, each performs unique tasks and communicates with each other. The Father is not the Son; rather he gave the Son (John 3:16). The Son is not the Spirit; he promised to send the Spirit as “another helper” (John 14:16). Neither are these three persons divided into three beings; their attributes and works are uniquely those of the one God. The Father is eternal (Is. 9:6). The Son is eternal (John 8:58). The Spirit is eternal (Heb. 9:14). Yet God alone is eternal (1 Tim. 1:17). The Father is our maker (Deut. 32:6), the Son is our maker (Col. 1:16), the Spirit is our maker (Job 33:4). Yet, only God is our creator (Gen. 1:1).
The doctrine of the Trinity is mysterious, but both the Eastern and Western church confesses that to deny the Trinity in favor of Unitarianism (that only the Father is God) or Tritheism (that there are three Gods) dishonors Scripture. God is one divine essence in three distinct persons. Let’s explore both parts of that description.
God Is One in Essence
Essence is the ultimate nature of a thing. Essence is not what something does, or what it likes, but what it is most basically. You might be a salesman who loves your wife, but in essence you are a person created in the image of God. That wouldn’t change if you got a new job or your wife passed away. Jesus angered the Jews because he “was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God” (John 5:18). They understood that Jesus was claiming to be of the same “stuff” as the Father. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are “the one single essence” of God. God is not made of three parts: “The Father was never without his Son, nor without his Holy Spirit, since all these are equal from eternity, in one and the same essence.”
God’s unity is seen in the equality of the shared attributes of his persons. For example, the three persons are one in truth. The Father is the “God of truth” (Ps. 31:5), the Son is the truth (John 14:6), Spirit is the Spirit of truth (John 15:26). In opposition to the devil, the father of lies (John 8:44), we trust in one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who cannot lie (Heb. 6:18). The three persons are also one in power. The Father is “the Lord Almighty” (2 Cor. 6:18). The apostolic witness centered around the power of Jesus (2 Pet. 1:16). The Spirit “is the eternal power” (see Acts 1:8). And the three persons are one in goodness and mercy. We shouldn’t imagine an angry God begrudgingly forgiving sinners because of the goodness and mercy of Jesus. Instead, a loving father offers his Son to give us life in the Spirit (see John 3:16). The one God whom we worship has an undivided substance, a perfectly focused will, and a profoundly harmonious nature.
God Is Three in Persons
It may sound strange to talk about the Godhead in terms of “persons.” But the Latin persona simply indicated “in Roman law an objective individual capable of having property or substance.” In later theology the term person became classically defined as “an individual substance of a rational nature.” Thomas Aquinas defined persona as “a relation in the divine.” The members of the Trinity are not persons like us, but they are three distinct individualities.
The ancient Athanasian Creed says that we must not “confound” or “confuse” the persons, mashing them into one. Here’s how the confession explains that: “The three persons are really, truly, and eternally distinct according to their incommunicable properties; namely the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit … The Father is not the Son, nor the Son the Father, and likewise the Holy Spirit is neither the Father nor the Son.” For example, “The Father has not assumed the flesh, nor has the Spirit, but the Son only.” Some have tried to teach that there is simply one God who functions in three modes. Like how a man can be a father, brother, and son at the same time so, it is alleged, God functions in the modes of Father, Son, and Spirit. But in Scripture the persons of the Trinity genuinely interact with each other. The Son prays to the Father. The Son promises to send another Counselor, the Spirit of truth. The Father speaks to the Son, encouraging him in his ministry. Each person “has his own subsistence distinguished by characteristics.”
Scripture presents not three Gods but one. In this one God are three persons—the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The persons are distinct, but not divided. They are unified, but not identical nor intermixed.
The doctrine might be technical, but it is not impractical. The triune nature of God helps us to see every divine act as a work of amazing and comforting cooperation. And it assures us that love didn’t begin with creation. God is love (1 John 4:8) because the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit love each other—and God loves his people. The Father loves us enough to create us and care for us. The Son loves us enough to share his image with us and to die that we might live. The Spirit loves us enough to help us and encourage us in godliness.
Treasure the doctrine of the Trinity so that you can better understand, love, and serve God in a way that rightly reflects who he is.
Footnotes
Richard Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1985), “Persona.”
