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THE TRINITY
May 18, 2008
Matthew 28:16-20
Deuteronomy 6:4-9
We are Christians. Our Savior was born as a Jewish man two thousand years ago, and through him we worship the God of Israel. Or do we? An orthodox Jew will dispute that. “You do not worship the God of Israel. We Jews are monotheists, we only worship one God, Yahweh. You Christians are polytheists, you worship three different Gods – God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. We do not worship the same God.” And yet, every Sunday you come here and I tell you that we are also monotheists. There is only one God, and we worship him alone. So, what’s the truth?
Our Old Testament reading today is called the Shema, Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. It is powerful Scripture to the Jews. It is a commandment. When Jesus was asked which of the commandments was the most important, he didn’t recite one of the Ten Commandments, he answered with the Shema (Matthew 22:37-38). In a Hebrew Bible the last letter of the first and last words of the Shema are exceptionally large, to warn the reader that this is something exceptional. “To this day, orthodox Jews recite the Shema twice daily as part of their prayers; in the morning when they wake up, and at night before they fall asleep.” In Christianity we have several Creeds, statements of what we believe to be true. You know the Apostle’s Creed, and today we read the Nicene Creed. The Shema is as close as Judaism has to a Creed. And, it seems to be fairly straightforward – The Lord our God, the Lord is one. It doesn’t say anything about God having ‘parts’.
But, then again, that depends on how you interpret ancient Hebrew. There are five valid and accepted interpretations of the Shema. The first three are essentially the same: 1) Hear, O Israel, Yahweh our God, Yahweh is one. 2) Hear, O Israel, Yahweh our God is one Yahweh. 3) Hear, O Israel, Yahweh is our God; Yahweh is one. The fourth interpretation moves in a different direction: 4) Hear, O Israel, Yahweh is our God; Yahweh is Unique. And finally, the version that appears in most evangelical interpretations such as NIV: 5) Hear, O Israel, Yahweh is our God; Yahweh alone.
That last version opens the door to the possibility that God is more than a simple single entity. The Hebrew word used for ‘one’ is echad. No where else in the Old Testament is echad, used of a single item. It is always used to mean one in unity – like many fish being called a ‘school’, which is a singular term. In fact, in its most famous usage, when a man and a woman are married they become one flesh (Genesis 2:24). The Bible is not trying to say they become a monstrous two headed beast with one body. It means that although they are separate beings, they operate in perfect unity and harmony, as one. So, the Shema doesn’t necessarily mean that God has only one facet. It can mean that he operates in perfect unity.
Is there anywhere else in the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, which might support our view of a Triune God? As a matter of fact yes! In the Garden of Eden, when God is preparing to create man he says, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness” (Genesis 1:26). The ‘one’ God is speaking, but he speaks of himself in the plural - Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness. After Adam and Eve sin God again speaks in the plural. “See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:22). After the tower of Babel has been built God decides to punish humanity. He says, “Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there” (Genesis 11:7). When the prophet Isaiah is brought before God to examine him for worthiness he writes, “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” (Isaiah 6:8).
There is ample proof in the Old Testament that our God, our one God, exists in more than one part or one person. My favorite of all the Old Testament texts also comes from Isaiah. In this one the Messiah, the Son of God is speaking, and he says, “Draw near to me, hear this! From the beginning I have not spoken in secret, from the time it came to be I have been there.” He says that he is eternal, he has always existed. Then he says, “And now the Lord GOD has sent me and his spirit” (Isaiah 48:16). Right there in the Old Testament we have God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit!
We have a Triune God. That word, Triune, isn’t anywhere in the Bible. It is Latin for tri-unity, or ‘threeness’. It’s a made up word to try and describe that our one God has three separate and distinct parts. And yet, the New Testament totally supports the Old in affirming that there is only one God. James writes, “You believe that God is one; you do well” (James 2:19). We believe there is only one God. And yet, at the same time, we believe that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit is each ‘the God’.
Is that profoundly confusing? Yes, yes it is! And so, we’ve come up with a bunch of different analogies to try and explain how that could possibly work. Of course, no analogy is perfect, they all have defects. You can only take an analogy so far. But, here are some of the ways we’ve tried to describe the nature of God.
God is ‘like’ a three leaf clover. There are three separate and distinct leaves, and yet the clover is a single plant, there is only one clover. God is ‘like’ a tree. A tree has roots, a trunk, and branches. Each part looks different and each part has a very different function. And yet, a tree is a single thing, a single entity. Here is one that I like. God is ‘like’ water. Water can exist in liquid form as water, in a solid form as ice, or in a gaseous form as steam. Those three parts look and act and feel completely differently. And yet, they are all made of the exact same molecules – there is only one thing in all of them, water.
St. Augustine tried to describe the Triune God as ‘like’ the mind of a man. The human mind is composed of wisdom, reason, and ego. Sometimes, in a situation we behave a certain way because it is the smart thing to do (wisdom). Sometimes we behave a certain way because it is the right thing to do (reason). Sometimes we behave a certain way just because we want to (ego). Wisdom, reason, and ego. We can get three different reactions, to the same situation, from the same human mind. And, if we were to lose any one of those three functions – wisdom, reason, or ego, we would cease to be human. We would no longer be ‘us’. Augustine says God is kind of like that.
William Placher says that if God is perfect (Matthew 5:48, Romans 12:2), and if God is love (1 John 4:8,16), then to describe God we must describe perfect love. If you only love yourself, you are vain and egotistical, so your love is not perfect. Two people locked in mutual love have about them a selfishness and an exclusiveness that pushes others away, and is not perfect. Love is only perfect if it shares itself, when it wishes that a third person be loved equally by the one you love supremely. Think of a Mother, a Father, and their child. So, according to Placher, perfect love requires at a minimum a Trinity of persons. God couldn’t be perfect unless he were a Trinity.
That’s still pretty confusing, don’t you think? Some believe the concept of the Trinity is confusing because it just isn’t true. There have been attempts to find defects with the Trinity.
There was Modalism, which said that there is only one God, and he has three separate modes. He simply shifts to the most appropriate mode (Father, Son, or Spirit) depending on the situation. Kind of like changing costumes. The problem is that if there is only one God, why does the Son pray to the father (Luke 22:41-42)?
There was Arianism, which said Jesus was physically created by the Father at his human birth, and was therefore inferior to the Father. Only the Father was God. However, the Apostle Paul said that is definitely not true, “He is the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15).
Subordinationism said that because Jesus had a physical body, he had to be tainted by some sin, so he was inferior to the Father. Only the Father is God. And yet, Jesus was adamant, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). If he was a liar, then he couldn’t save us from our sins.
There was Adoptionism, which said Jesus was only a human man until he was adopted at his baptism. The Apostle John says Jesus was with God in the beginning, and was present when everything was created (John 1:1-3). That pretty much eliminates any possibility he was human.
I don’t know if there is any good way to describe what the Trinity is, and how the Trinity works. Augustine thought he had it figured out. He believed he could lay out a series of statements that logically described the Trinity. Simply read the statements in order and you will understand. When I read his work I get confused and lost. Thomas Aquinas, who was the authorized voice of the Catholic Church on all metaphysical matters, came to the exact opposite conclusion. He decided the Trinity can never be reasoned out, it’s beyond our grasp. It is something God has revealed, and we must just accept it. He sort of summed it up by saying, “If we could understand everything about God, then we would be God.” You’re never going to understand all of it, deal with that.
We are Christians. We believe there is only one God. We believe the Father is that God. We believe Jesus, his Son, is that God. We believe the Holy Spirit is that God. And, we believe there is no conflict in what I have just said. That is the mystery of faith.
Daniel I. Block, “How Many is God?: An Investigation into the Meaning of Deuteronomy 6:4-5”, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 47:2 (June 2004), 193-212.
William C. Placher, “Three in One: Believing in the Triune God”, Christian Century 124:8 (April 17, 2007), 28-32.
Evan F. Kuehn, “The Johannine Logic of Augustine’s Trinity: A Dogmatic Sketch”, Theological Studies 68:3 (September 2007), 572-594.