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The word Trinity is nowhere to be found in the Bible. I'd have to say, that the absence of a particular word or phrase from the Bible doesn't exclude it as less valid or true. For example, nowhere in the Bible can one find the word, "theocracy," and yet, many of the same people who discount the Trinity as a concept due to it's absense from the Bible, would argue that a theocracy is not only valid, but true indeed. So how can we extract such a difficult concept as the Holy Trinity from a document that appears to make no mention of it? Hopefully, I can address some issues that critics of the doctrine, misunderstand as some sort of pagan, or occultic falsehoods. While the development of the Triunity concept of God may appear to have antededental origins, the conclusions I've made concerning it's validity are taken only from scripture. If the concept truly is borrowed from pagan mysticism, it would make sense that Satan might have twisted truth conveniently in his favor before the chronological appearance of the Savior. As I understand the Orthodox Christian view, the ONE true God being pure Spirit has chosen to manifest Himself to His creation in three distinct ways. Some would call these individual expressions of the Godhead, persons. Others see the assignment of personage as an admission of separate entities (or gods). For the sake of discussion, I will use the former and say that GOD has shown Himself in the Bible as three persons, while remaining to be the ONE true God. For it is clear that Jesus Christ himself, knew not only of his relationship to the Father as a Son, he must have also recognized the distinct difference between the roles of His Father as Saviour, and His own role as Saviour. This understanding can also be borne out of the fact that he saw himself as a distinct person from the Father. In a question posed to Jesus, he answered to the Jewish Pharisees:
Here, Jesus unmistakably spoke of himself as being an individual who was separate and distinct from His Father. In addition, it is important to recognize that throughout Scripture there are sprinkled hints of the Tri-Unity of the ONE true God. Here are a few of those hints:
[such an obvious example of God's multiplicity] "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit..." Matthew 28:19 [note the use of the word "name" is singular, implying oneness among the three]. "...one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all". Ephesians 4:6 [over all= God the Father; who is through all = God the Son; who is in all= God the Holy Spirit who indwells us]. "May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all." 2 Corinthians 13:14 [this implies the distinct ministries God has and how He carries them out]. After much biblical study, here is how I have been able to arrive at my own conclusions of what most orthodox Christian biblical scholars have conceptualized for centuries. I've broken it down into determining the specific attributes of God. How God is referred to, who He says He is, etc. I have then cross referenced attributes of God, which the Bible also applies to either the Son (Jesus Christ) or the Holy Spirit. |
| Attributed to God the Father | Attributed to God the Son | Attributed to God the Holy Spirit | Conclusion |
|---|---|---|---|
| The First and Last! Isaiah 44:6 and 48:12 |
The First and Last! Revelation 1:8 and 1:17 |
. | Both the Father and the Son are ONE [God]. |
| King of kings and Lord of lords 1Timothy 6:15 |
King of kings and Lord of lords Rev 17:14 |
. | Both the Father and the Son are ONE [God]. |
| God is the Lamb Revelation 22:3 |
Jesus is the Lamb John 1:36 |
. | Both the Father and the Son are ONE [God]. |
| Our bodies are God's temple 1Cor 3:16 |
. | Our bodies are the Holy Spirit's temple 1Cor 6:19 |
Both the Father and the Holy Spirit are ONE [God]. |
| God is quoted in Jeremiah 31:33 | . | The identical quote is attributed to the Holy Spirit. Hebrews 10:15-16 |
Both the Father and the Holy Spirit are ONE [God]. |
| God raises Jesus from the dead Acts 2:24 and 2:32 |
Jesus raised himself from the dead John 2:19-21 |
The Holy Spirit raised Jesus from the dead Romans 8:11 |
The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are ONE [God]. |
| We are to be baptized into His name. Matthew 28:19 |
We are to be baptized into His name. Matthew 28:19 |
We are to be baptized into His name. Matthew 28:19 |
The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are ONE [God]. |
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Holy Trinity Links on the Web: Here on the Christian Activist's Doctrine website, you can find an excellent preview of the Trinity Doctrine. You may have to scroll down a bit on this page, but it's worth it. There's some other great stuff there related to doctrine. Michael Bremmer's webpage simply titled The Trinity explains misconceptions of the Trinity and defines heresies like Tritheism and Monarchianism. Here is a poignant paragraph from that webpage disputing the Modalistic view:
Clearly, two persons are conversing with one another. Some insist that this is Jesus' human nature speaking with His divine nature. Yet, natures do not speak. Persons speak. The Biblical position on the person of Jesus Christ is that He has both a divine nature and human nature, yet is ONE person. The ordinary reader, as some of those present that day, understand that Jesus spoke with someone in heaven. Was Jesus' divine nature in heaven? Holding to a Modalistic view makes the events that occurred in Jn. 12.29-30, and in many other places as well, nothing less than divine deception." Here is Dr. Walter Martin's explanantion of the Trinity as he refutes Jehovah's Witnesses' claims that Christians worship a three-headed beast.
He sums it up much better than I can!
In fact, I am compelled to quote from His brilliant synopsis: COMPOSITE UNITY AND THE TRIPLE POINTThe second important fact to be remembered is that of the meaning of the term "one.""How is it possible," say the Jehovah's witnesses, "for Jehovah to be three and one both at the same time? It is illogical, unreasonable and confusing; and God is not the author of confusion!" To answer this all-too-common objection, it should be kept in mind that the word "one" can denote composite as well as solitary unity. For instance, in Genesis (chapter 2), Adam and Eve are called one flesh; and Numbers (chapter 13) speaks of "one" when the context indicates that it was in reality a cluster of grapes hanging from one stem. Here are bona fide instances of composite unity. The same Hebrew word, "echod" (one) is used in both cases, however, even as it is in Deuteronomy 6:4 where we are told that God is "One." The evident composite unity indicated here is confirmed in the New Testament. Our Lord spoke of composite unity where marriage is concerned (Mk. 10:8); so He, too, was aware of this important distinction. See also Joshua 9:2; Judges 20:1; 2 Chron. 30:12; Isaiah 65:25; Nehemiah 7:66 and Ezra 6:20 for further instances of composite unity. Finally, let us illustrate how it is both logically and rationally possible for three to be one and one to be three simultaneously, since Jehovah's Witnesses do NOT believe this is possible. It is a well-known fact of chemistry that plain water, when placed in a vacuum under 230 millimeters of gas pressure and at a temperature of 0 degrees Centigrade, solidifies into ice at the bottom of the container, remains liquid in the center and vaporizes at the top! At a given instant the same water is both solid, liquid and gas, yet all three are manifestations of the same basic substance or nature: H2O - hydrogen: two parts; oxygen: one. If one of the simplest of all created substances can be three in manifested form and yet remain one in nature, then the Creator of that substance can surely be Father, Son and Holy Spirit - three Persons and one Nature - without any violation of logic or reason whatever if He so wills. God is not triples (1+1+1) - He is triune (1x1x1), and He has revealed Himself fully in the Person of our Lord, Jesus Christ (Col. 2:9; John 14:9). The Fingerprints of God The following are excerpts from a discertation that Dr. Kennedy gave on the radio broadcast of Coral Ridge Ministries, Truths that Transform. An audio tape of the broadcast can be provided by Coral Ridge Ministries. Ask for the tape entitled, "The Fingerprints of God." " Let's consider for a moment what the Trinity is not... The Bible doesn't teach that the Father is a third of God, and the Son is a third of God and the Holy Spirit is a third of God. The Bible teaches that the Father is God, and the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. So that just won't work. Then there are those that teach, "Well you see the Father is God, and the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and there are three separate Gods! There must be because obviously one plus one plus one doesn't equal one, it equals three (1 + 1+ 1 = 3), obviously!" Yet the Bible very very clearly teaches that there is but One God. As the Jews were so fond of saying, "Hear oh Israel, the Lord our God is ONE!" It is worth noting that, one times one times one equals one (1 x 1 x 1 = 1), not three!.... ...Dr. Nathan Wood, formerly the President of Gordon College, wrote a marvelous book which I-- I'm afraid is out of print, titled the Secret of the Universe. And it's a wonderful book that describes his researches into the revelation of the nature of God as it's found in the Universe. And, I'd like to share some of those things with you because I think they are absolutely fascinating and I believe that you will find them to be so. He points out that anyone who manufactures anything will no doubt leave his fingerprints on the article which he has made. And I suppose that this beautiful pulpit in which I am standing right now, contains on it somewhere the fingerprints of that man or men that made it. And if we were to carefully dust it for fingerprints, we could perhaps find who they were. And he says that therefore, the Universe also contains upon itself the impress or fingerprints of it's maker. As the scripture says that, "the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth His handiwork." And so impressed upon this Universe are the fingerprints of the Triune God. Now I'm not looking for some metaphor; some simile; some analogy, unless we use analogy in the geometrical sense of the word, where you have a perfect likeness with all of the angles and lines identical. It is the mathematical precise sense that I want to see if we can find the fingerprints of God. Because afterall, fingerprints must match exactly... they must not simply be similar one to the other. With that in mind, let us note our surroundings. Not some little isolated instance or example here or there, but the entirity of the Universe in which we live. And we might note that I just said that it is a Universe and that I think is a singular place to begin. It is not a "multi-verse" but a Universe--ONE!!! Universe comes from the Latin words, Uni and verteri-- To turn into one! That all things with their manifold differences turn and form one single Universe. And we will find, if we examine this Universe, that it consists as any scientist will tell you, of space, time and matter. Those three, no more. Furthermore, it is not possible in this Universe which we know, to have any two of those without the other. This Universe always exsists of space, time, and matter. This Universe cannot exsist as we know it in any other way, but with all three of them. Take away any one of them and you have no Universe. Now if that isn't striking enough, lets turn our microscope up a little higher, and look at each one of those in it's turn and we'll discover that each one of those elements of this triniverse, is itself triune! For example, take the first one, SPACE! Space is made up of longitude, lattitude and altitude. Length, breadth and height. These three, no more. Furthermore, it is not possible in the physical Universe to have anything that doesn't contain all three. Everything that we know of in the physical Universe, always under all circumstances contains length, breadth and height. And if you take away any one of those, it ceases to exsist. You cannot have one without having all. Lets move on from space to time. Time, as every schoolboy knows, is composed of the past, the present and the future. Thse three, no more. And in this world as we know it, you cannot have time, without having all three. Furthermore, from some perspective, all time is at one point all future. In the beginning, when God started time, all time was future. And at the end of time, when God reaches out and lays His hand upon the turning wheel of time and stops it as the angels swore that time shall be no more-- in that hour at that moment all time will be past. And yet, from our exsistential experience we see that all time is present. And the fact of the matter is, we can exsistentially know time in no other way, but the present... and this is a remarkable thing. Now, Dr. Wood writes a paragraph which I think is so inceredible that I'm going to ask you to listen to it carefully. Turn up your volume, sharpen your focus, put up your antenna and try to get this. I'm going to read the same paragraph twice-- exactly twice, with four changes. But listen to it the first time (By the way, where does time come from? Some people think it comes out of the past, because we come out of the past. But that's not true, time comes out of the future, and we meet it head on. Today, yesterday was tomorrow! And a week ago it was next week. And some time ago it was next year, but now it's today. So time comes out of the future, meets us in the present that recedes into the past. Everybody should know that I trust.) Listen carefully: "The Future is the source! The Future is unseen, unknown, except as it continually imbodies itself and makes itself visible in the Present. The Present is what we see and hear and know. It is ceaselessly embodying the Future, day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. It is perpetually revealing the Future, hitherto invisible. The Future is logically first! But NOT chronologically first. For the Present exsists as long as time exsists, and was in the absolute beginning of time.The Present has exsisted as long as time has exsisted. Time acts through and in the Present! It makes itself visible only in the Present. The Future acts and reveals itself through the Present. It is through the Present that time , that is that, the Future enters into union with human life. Time and humanity meet and unite in the Present. It is in the Present that time, that the Future becomes a part of human life, and so is born and lives and dies in human life. The Past in turn, comes from the Present. We cannot say that it embodies the Present, on the contrary, time in issuing from the Present into the Past becomes invisible again. The Past does not embody the Present, rather it proceeds silently, endlessly and invisibly from it. The Present therefore, comes out from the invisible Future. The Present perpetually and ever newly embodies the Future in visible audible livable form and returns again into the invisible time in the Past. The Past acts invisibly. It continually influences us in regard to the Present. It casts light upon the Present. That is it's great function. It helps us to live in the Present which we know, and with reference to the Future which we expect to see!" Now all of us would say, of course, that is exactly the way time operates! And now, Dr Wood repeats that same paragraph and changes four words. In place of Time, is God. In place of the Future, the Father; in place of the Present, the Son; in the place of the Past, the Holy Spirit. Now listen again: "The Father is the source! The Father is unseen, except as He continually imbodies Himself and makes Himself visible in the Son. The Son is what we see and hear and know. He is ceaselessly embodying the Father, day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. He is perpetually revealing the Father, hitherto invisible. The Father is logically first! And yet, NOT chronologically first. For the Son exsists as long as God exsists, and was in the absolute beginning of God.The Son has exsisted as long as God has exsisted. God acts through and in the Son! He makes Himself visible only in the Son. The Father acts and reveals Himself through the Son. It is through the Son that God , that the Father enters into union with human life. God and humanity meet and unite in the Son. It is in the Son that God, that the Father becomes a part of human life, and so is born and lives and dies in human life. [The Spirit in turn, comes from the Son. We cannot say that He embodies the Son, on the contrary, God in issuing from the Son into the Spirit becomes invisible again. The Spirit does not embody the Son, rather He proceeds silently, endlessly and invisibly from the Son.*] The Son therefore, comes out from the invisible Father. The Son perpetually and ever newly embodies the Father in visible, audible, livable form and returns into the invisible God in the Spirit. The Spirit acts invisibly. He continually influences us with regard to the Son. He casts light upon the Son. That is His great function. He helps us to live in the Son which we know, and with reference to the Father which we expect to see!" Now my friends... that is not a simile or metaphor. That is an exact geometric analogy. And furthermore, it is the divine Hand of the Triune Jehovah: Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Do you know Him? Do you love Him? One of the most incredible things is that this doctrine of the Trinity immerged out of Israel, perhaps the most fiercely monotheistic people that ever lived upon this earth! Who everyday repeated their shamah... The Lord our God is ONE. And yet out of that, arose the teaching of the Trinity. How did that come to be? My friends, it happened not theoretically, not abstractly, but it happened experientially, because they met Jesus Christ. And they discovered after asking their questions, "What manner of man is this, that even the winds and the waves obey his voice?" And over and over again, ever they ask, "What manner of a man is this?" and finally they discovered that this was indeed the incarnate God dwelling in their midst. And they came to know Jesus, and when they came to know Him, they came to know God as He really was, the tri-une Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They came to know Jesus who told them that his Father had sent him. They came to know Jesus who told them that he was going to heaven and would send to them the Holy Spirit. And if you would know God my friends, you must know him experientially, you must know Him by meeting Jesus. And coming to discover him as the Divine Redeemer. The only one that can pay for our sins and cleanse us from all of our iniquity and guilt and can redeem unto his Father a vast multitude out of every nation, tongue and tribe. Have you met him, this Divine Redeemer, this God-Man, this incarnate God. If you've met him, and you know His Glory and his grace, then you know who God really is. The truine Jehovah: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And to know Him is to love Him and to trust Him with all of your heart. May we pray!" There are volumes that can be, and indeed have been written about the Trinity. But nothing can compare with knowing the ONE true living and Triune God. He is love, He is life, and He is Savior. I pray that what I have written and shared with you will bless your heart infinitely. *This portion was not in Dr. Kennedy's original message, but was added to complete the analogy in its entirety. |
This page provided, courtesy of Rob Leuschke.