Biblical Roots of the Doctrine of the Trinity
This section will likely not be as long or as detailed as some might wish. This is primarily because the main concern here is to briefly deal with some particular aspects of the Biblical roots for the Trinity and not to develop a Biblical “proof” for the doctrine of the Trinity (as should be clear from the preceding section). In a sense, this is simply a clearing of the path to consider the actual way our knowledge of the Triunity of God arises below.
One of the things that is very important is that there are key points in the New Testament text where God is named in various triadic formulae. It must be stressed that this does not in any sense “prove” that God is Triune, but it does play a role in our understanding that Triunity correctly. The first of these is at the very end of the Gospel according to Matthew, where Jesus is giving his disciples what has come to be known as the “Great Commission.” Jesus tells his followers to “Make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” He links each of the Persons of the Trinity together in this statement about baptism, which has been central to the life of the church since the very beginning. The next text is at the very end of 2 Corinthians (13:14), where Paul says, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.” The last of these has been mentioned before but is often overlooked. 1 Corinthians 12:4-6, “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are varieties of ministries, and the same Lord. There are varieties of effects, but the same God who works all things in all persons.”
The reason why these three statements are mentioned is because each of them contains the three Persons of the Trinity and nothing else (as is not the case, for example, with the definition of the church in Ephesians 4:4-6). The other reason, which is very important, is that, in each of them, a different Person is named first. Though we often refer to the Father as the “First” Person, the Son as the “Second” Person and the Spirit as the “Third” Person because of the centrality of baptism to the life of the church, it is important to notice that there is nothing about the Father that demands that he be placed first. Each Person can be named first because there is no hierarchy within the being of God. This is being emphasized because there have been many throughout the history of the church who have insisted that the Father is first, not just for convenience in naming him, but because there is something about the Father that makes him more important than the Son or the Spirit. This is not the case.
The other major thing to remember at this point is that, for the majority of the relevant Biblical passages, the stress is not so much on naming the three Persons, but by illuminating the relations between them. Throughout the Gospel of John (as one example for all), Jesus refers to the distinction and yet unity between him and the Father. There can be no confusion that Jesus and the Father are not utterly the same, that is, the Son still refers to the Father using second and third person language (“you” or “him” language rather than “I”), and yet he proclaims that “I and the Father are one.” When we read these passages (which, it must be noted, deal primarily with only the Father and the Son), we realize that we are not presented with a Son that is clearly distinguishable from the Father or a Father that is clearly distinguished from the Son, but a Father and Son that are profoundly united.
The New Testament evidence leads us to conclude that there is not a lot we can say about the Persons of the Trinity in isolation from one another, but that there are distinctions between them. We find ourselves coming to agree with the early church when they said that, whatever we say about the Father, we also say about the Son, except “Father.” The point is that the relations between the Persons are as important as, if not more important than, the Persons themselves. What makes the Father who he is? He is the Father of the Son. What makes the Son distinct? He is the Son of the Father. The Spirit is included as well, but the concept is best grasped with the Father and Son first.
In light of this discussion that the bare mention of the three Persons is not the key, but rather the relations between them, it is important to raise a controversial point in Biblical Studies. 1 John 5:7 says, “There are three that testify in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one.” This is present in the King James Version and a few others, but is largely absent from modern translations. The reason for this is that the evidence for this verse is found only in late manuscripts, that is, there is no truly reliable evidence (like there is for the overwhelming majority of the Bible) that this text is original. There has been a debate and people have gotten very excited about this issue, but it seems that this particular text does not add all that much to the discussion.
First, it must be said that, if your doctrine of the Trinity hinges on the single text of 1 John 5:7, it is not likely that you have an adequate grasp on God’s Triunity. This text, examined in isolation from the rest of the New Testament, is easy to interpret in a modalist way (a view which will be explained below) rather than in a truly Trinitarian way. The simple listing that there are three who are one can easily be distorted in various ways that are misleading at best. There are other passages, such as John 16:5-15, where the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, are all involved, each in their unique way, participating in the unitary work of God, that are far more helpful as far as understanding the nature of God than this single, contested text in 1 John.
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