This article is the tenth installment in our series "Christian, What Do You Believe: The Belgic Confession of Faith". Find the whole series here.
The Athanasian Creed summarizes the Christian faith in this way, “We worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity.” Orthodox Christians affirm that there is only “one simple and spiritual Being” (BC art. 1) who exists in three distinct, though undivided persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. All three persons are coeternal and coequal.
And contrary to modern theological flexibility, the historic church allows no wiggle-room on this doctrine. The Athanasian Creed says, “He therefore that will be saved must thus think of the Trinity.” If right thoughts about the Trinity are essential for salvation we must listen carefully to how the triune God reveals himself to us.
The Belgic Confession explains that we know God as triune from the testimony of Scripture, the church, and personal experience. Put differently, what Scripture says the church affirms and biblical Christians truly experience—and Scripture teaches “us to believe in this Holy Trinity” in “many places.”
The Testimony of Scripture
In the beginning God said, “Let us make man in our image” (Gen. 1:26, 27; cf. Gen. 3:22). God isn’t speaking to angels; they are not creating beings (see Heb. 1:10) but ministering spirits (1:14). The Father is speaking to the Son and the Spirit. Clearly, “There is a plurality of persons within the Deity.”
Jesus’ birth announcement further reveals the Trinity: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you [Mary], and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God” (Luke 1:35). The angel Gabriel spoke to Mary of three distinct divine persons. Later, when Jesus was baptized “the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove,” and the Father voiced his pleasure in his “beloved Son” (Luke 3:21–22).
In Christian baptism, disciples are bound to the one God. At Saul’s baptism, for instance, he called “on the name of the Lord” (Acts 22:16). But believers aren’t merely baptized in God’s name. Jesus commands his disciples to baptize into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Matt. 28:19).
In the New Testament letters, the Lord’s blessing is the gift of the Triune God: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen” (2 Cor. 13:14). The Aaronic benediction is a three-fold blessing (Num. 6:24–26); now, in light of the clearer revelation of the New Testament, we know the names of the three persons of this one God.
The Testimony of the Church
What Scripture teaches about the Trinity the church declares.
The church affirms the Trinity in the creeds. In both the Apostles’ and Nicene creeds the church confesses faith in one God in whom three persons are distinguished. The Athanasian Creed most explicitly teaches the Trinity in a series of affirmations and denials. Creeds don’t say everything; they are summaries of the faith. But they do establish basic benchmarks for what we must say if we are to understand and worship God truly.
Moreover, the church affirms the Trinity against other religions. Adherents of Judaism and Islam affirm a pure unity in God. Tragically, by denying the Trinity they miss the eternal love of God, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. A third century Persian philosopher named Mani founded another influential religion, Manichaeism, based partly on Christianity in which Jesus was a purely spiritual messenger of God. For a time, the church father Augustine belonged to this sect before converting to the biblical faith.
The second century theologian Marcion proposed a perversion of Christianity in which Jesus, a loving spiritual messenger, rescued people from the harsh tyrant-god of the Old Testament. Other early Christians more faithfully tried to preserve the unity of the Godhead but at the expense of its persons. Praxeas rejected any distinct persons in God. He proposed that God temporarily emptied himself into Christ to become a redeemer. Sabellius taught that God was not essentially triune but revealed himself in three different modes at different times. Paul of Samosata taught that Christ was an ordinary man who becomes God chiefly through his baptism. Arius, like the Jehovah’s Witnesses who follow him, taught that since God is one Christ is merely the highest of all created beings; there was a time when he was not.
The church fine-tuned its trinitarian theology in response to these false notions of God.
The Testimony of Christian Experience
We know the Trinity through the revelation of Scripture. We are confirmed in that knowledge by the witness of the church. But to truly experience the Trinity “we must note the particular works and activities of these three persons in relation to us.” Believers can actually “feel within ourselves” the effects of the Triune God. The confession gives examples of this.
We are created by the one true God. We should especially love the Father for his powerful work of creation. Intelligent design should be obvious to everyone. But only a believer can say that the God who made “the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1) is my Father! I am not a meaningless speck of dust in a limitless universe. I am a child of the King who has made a world for me so that I might bring glory to him.
We are saved and redeemed by the one true God. We should especially love the Son for his sacrificial work of salvation. We are saved not because we are good but because the second person of the Trinity took on flesh so that he could bear the penalty for our sin (1 Pet. 1:18). “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). That’s just what Jesus did!
We are sanctified by the one true God. We should especially love the Spirit for his indwelling work of renewal. Other religions put adherents on a life-long quest to find God and to become sufficiently like him to earn his kindness. In the gospel God graciously condescends and takes up residence in his people to restore in them true knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. If you believe the gospel, love God, and want to live for him, it is because the Spirit has begun in you a “most delightful, astonishing, mysterious” work.
We believe in the Trinity because we know the Father’s creative power, the Son’s saving redemption, and the Spirit’s internal work of cleansing. And these three blessed persons act harmoniously as one God. In redemption the Father sent the Son, the Son gave himself, and the Spirit applies the benefits of Christ’s work. By faith believers draw near to God being conformed into the image of his Son, encouraged by the Holy Spirit. We must believe this doctrine now, even as we wait “to know and enjoy it fully in heaven.”
Footnotes
Athanasian Creed, art. 26.
Athanasian Creed, art. 28.
Canons of Dort 3/4.12.
