The Doctrine of the Trinity, Part 1 of 3
Posted by Michael Bunker
editor@lazarusunbound.com
“Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied.” (1 Peter 1:2).
September 8, 2003 – In examining the nature of God, there are many introductory elements we must examine. In this study on the Trinity, we will eventually get to the nuts and bolts of scripture, and we will prove the doctrine completely out of Holy Writ, but our attention must be called to some realities that must be faced concerning our attempts to examine the nature of God.
First, let us confess that our desire is to know God TRUTHFULLY, although we will never know God EXHAUSTIVELY. True truth and exhaustive truth are related, but not identical. It is impossible for the finite to ever know infinity exhaustively. For a minute let us think of truth as a large ball. We can examine the size, color and texture of the ball – so long as the ball is small enough. But let’s look at the ball as it grows larger. Eventually, the ball will be too big for us to put our hands around, so we must step back in order to gauge its overall size. As it gets larger, the texture changes in relation to us, and it eventually grows beyond our ability to see its size or judge its shape. Say, for example, that the ball got so big that we were found standing on it. If it were big enough, we would immediately assume that the surface was flat. We would look out on the horizon, and it would seem as if the whole object was like a table. The grooves and textures on the small ball have now become mountains and valleys, gulfs and canyons. Now, when we look at the ball, we can state A TRUTH about it, but from our perspective it would be nearly impossible to state exhaustive truth about it. The larger the ball gets, the less we know about it.
God is not a ball
However large we make that ball, it will always be finite – and as such, it will always have perceivable characteristics. Scientists will always desire to “get their hands around” the ball, as if to know it exhaustively. God says that man will never know His creation exhaustively:
“He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end” (Ecc. 3:11)
So there are God-placed limits on what these scientists will ever know. But the ball will always be finite, so finite man can always attempt to exhaustively know it.
But what of that which is infinite? How can the finite know the infinite? God is infinite. He doesn’t have edges that we can get our hands around. How could we possibly measure and examine that which is Spirit? We can only know God as much as He would have himself known, and only by that revelatory way in which He would allow Himself to be known. For our own safety and well being, God (who is infinite) has limited the ways in which He is to be known, and has banned us from seeking Him outside of His proscribed ways and means for doing so.
We may know God by,
a) Examining His Creation – God’s character and characteristics are made known (truthfully, but not exhaustively) in that which He has created. He has authorized us to examine His works, both in creation and in history, so that we might know Him and His glory (Rom. 1:21). We are invited to “consider the works of God” (Ecc. 7:13), and to rejoice and be glad in what He has made.
b) His Word – God has chosen to make Himself known unto us truthfully by the revelation of Jesus Christ, which is declared to us in His Word (Heb. 1:2). It is His Word that is to be the final measuring stick (or Canon) of how we are to judge any and all revelations about God. God’s Word is just that… His word usward. He has not been silent, but He has spoken to us. We have this revelation in the form of the Holy Bible.
c) Spiritual Revelation – God may reveal truth about Himself through spiritual revelation. But we are to know ABSOLUTELY that every revelation is to be tested (1 John 4:1), and it must match perfectly with His written revelation. No prophecy or revelation may contradict, add to, or take away from the revelation of God that is made in His Word (Rev. 22:18-19)
Beginning Began
We will endeavor in the future parts of this chapter, as we have said, to get into the nuts and bolts of scripture proofs regarding the Trinity. But today, we are going to look at its beauty and perfection. As small children, we will come unto Him and glory in Him alone. We will step back and truly see the majesty that is God. We will see His incomprehensibility, His immutability, His glorious infiniteness.
When we examine the characteristics of God (having agreed that God exists outside of His creation, as any Creator must), our understanding of sequence may inevitably become muddled.
When we say, “In the beginning God created”, we are admitting that BEGINNING BEGAN.
Time is a part of the creation, therefore, it was created by God and necessarily God exists outside of that which He created. God exists outside of time. Beginning began. Saying “in the beginning” does not assume that there was nothing sequentially before that. The word “beginning” has relation to time and therefore the creation, but the Bible speaks often of a “before” creation. We see this evidently as Jesus speaks in these scriptures:
“And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was” (John 17:5)
“Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24)
I want you to make special note of two things. First, that Christ co-existed with the Father before the world was, and second, that there was LOVE between the Father and the Son before the foundation of the world. These points will become very important later on.
From these verses, we can be assured that God existed before (sequentially) the Creation began. Jesus Christ always has been, and He existed in a loving relationship with the Father before there was any creation. We can derive this, too, from the understanding that Jesus Christ was the agent of Creation, as it says in John 1:3 and Hebrews 3:3-4.
The Holy Spirit was there too, as we can tell from His presence in the Creation event:
“And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters” (Gen. 1:2).
Our point right now is not to prove the existence of the Trinity, though all the proofs we offer tend towards that end. Our goal right now is to prove the always wasness of God. God always was.
We have already shown where LOVE is a principle attribute of God, and since God is immutable (Mal. 3:6, James 1:17), we can know with surety that God is love and that love has always been. The divine Godhead exists and subsists in love:
“He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love” (1 John 4:8)
“And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him” (1 John 4:16)
Love and communication existed in the Godhead as part of the “always wasness” of God.
Jonathan Edwards proposed, and I think I must agree with him, that we will also find the “always wasness” of the Holy Spirit by examining the pre-existing love between the Father and the Son:
“The Scripture seems in many places to speak of love in Christians as if it were the same with the Spirit of God in them, or at least as the prime and most natural breathing and acting of the Spirit in the soul. (Phil. 2:1) "If there be therefore any consolation in Christ, any comfort of love, any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels of mercies, fulfil ye my joy that ye be likeminded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind." (II Cor. 6:6) "By kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned." (Romans 15:30) "Now I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake, and for the love of the Spirit." (Col. 1:8) "Who declared unto us your love in the Spirit." (Rom. 5:5) "Having the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given to us." (Gal. 5:13-16)” (Jonathan Edwards, An Unpublished Essay on the Trinity)
Love existed in the Godhead. The Godhead existed before (and outside of) any Creation. Communication of that love existed in the Godhead prior to the creation as well. As a part of this communication, a promise was made within the Godhead before the foundation of the world.
Titus Chapter 1, verse 2 states that God promised eternal life before the foundation of the world. So we must ask, to whom was this promise made? After all, God was all that there was before anything else was. This promise was made evident to Abraham, though Christ sealed the promise with himself (Hebrews 6:13). Romans the 9th chapter tells us that the children of faith, elect and called by the Father, are the children of this promise (both of Jews and Gentiles). But our point here is that this promise was made before there was any creation. The promise was made within the Godhead, and was part of the beautiful and continuous love and communication that God had while there was yet no creation.
So let us, for a moment, look (albeit with clouded minds and through a glass darkly) at the God of all Creation, who existed and loved and communicated while there was yet any thing made. But let us look at him as a personal God, for without personhood, we are left without any explanation for the “why” and “how” of Creation.
In man we see “personhood”, in that man is personal, and has “mannishness” or traits of personality. He thinks. He loves. He communicates. These are the attributes of personhood that man still exhibits having been created in the image of God. Man is personal, having been created in the image of a personal God. That God is personal is evident in what he has created, and a personal God is the only answer to the “why” of Creation, and the characteristics of that being (man) which is closest to Him in character. As Francis Schaeffer put it,
“…as I look at the Being which is the external universe, it is obviously not just a handful of pebbles thrown out there. What is there has form. If we assert the existence of the impersonal as the beginning of the universe, we simply have no explanation for this kind of situation.
Second, and more important, if we begin with an impersonal universe, there is no explanation of personality. In a very real sense the question of questions for all generations -- but overwhelmingly so for modern man -- is, "Who am I?" For when I look at the "I" that is me and then look around to those who face me and are also men, one thing is immediately obvious: Man has a "mannishness." You find it wherever you find man -- not only in the men who live today, but in the artifacts of history. The assumption of an impersonal beginning cannot adequately explain the personal beings we see around us; and when men try to explain man on the basis of an original impersonal, man soon disappears” (Francis A. Schaeffer, Genesis in Space and Time).
The personal nature of the universe and the personhood of man demands an infinite, personal Creator God, just as the existence of a creation demands a Creator.
We now see clearly that before there ever was a creation… before “in the beginning”… before the foundations of the world… God was. And He was personal, infinite, loving and complete. So the question naturally arises, “Did God HAVE to create?” We are asked this question often. If God HAD to create, where did this overwhelming “have to” come from, and wouldn’t that mean that God was incomplete without His creation? Schaeffer again answers the question for us:
“Often in a discussion someone will say, "Didn't God, then, if He is personal and if He loves, need an object for His love? Didn't He have to create? And therefore, isn't the universe just as necessary to Him as He is to the universe?" But the answer is, No. He did not have to create something face-to-face with Himself in order to love, because there already was the Trinity. God could create by a free act of the will because before creation there was the Father who loved the Son and there was also the Holy Spirit to love and be loved. In other words, God had someone face-to-face with Himself in the three Persons of the Trinity.” (Francis A. Schaeffer, Genesis in Space and Time)
So the beauty of the picture becomes ever more evident before our eyes. God did not create out of a “have to”, but out of the perfect _expression of His own sovereign will. This amplifies the understanding of how evil it is when men insist on their own “free will”. A will truly and totally free would imply total power and Godhood. All of creation is limited by the decree and command of the Creator. God suffered under no such limitation as He enacted the creative act of His own perfect will. Man has no such perfection, therefore he has no such will. This adds to our wonder at God’s full glory.
God did not NEED creation, God WANTED creation. Therefore God did not NEED me, but he WANTED me. His love is not one of compulsion, but one of perfection. His desire is not one of changeable passions, but of the ultimate outworking of His own character and will. His love for me is not subject to time, mass or matter, but it is subject to His own immutability. God loves His own, because He is IN His own. His love within the Trinity is outworked by His love for His own precious sheep.
We are invited, then, by Grace alone through Faith alone, to participate in that love which existed before ever the world was, the perfect love that was communicated within the Tri-une Godhead. Perfect joy, perfect peace, perfect contentment, and perfect love.
There is a reason that all of the major cults, in their doctrines, destroy and deny this basic and critical Christian doctrine. It is because the devil desires to humanize God, and deify both himself and man. Men will always build for themselves gods who are less than the One, True God. They must have a finite God who they can envelope with their fallen minds.
Fallen, scientific man is then left hoping that the ball will get smaller, or that his scientific instruments will get bigger and better to the point that all of Creation can one day fit into his finite mind. He will, then, have become god to himself because he has always considered God to be like himself. Part of the fallen nature is to worship everything BUT the one, true, infinite, personal God. Generally, this worship falls into the following categories:
1) Man creates and forms gods with his own hands. He bows down to them and he worships them – until he, too late, finds out that they cannot save him, nor can they explain the personal universe or the personality of man. He is left without any answers, and His gods are destroyed even as he himself is destroyed.
2) Man finds men to worship, Caesars, leaders who claim to be gods, or they act on behalf of the gods. Since he cannot be “as god”, then he will have god to be like him. Human gods will help the man explain why the man himself is personal, but will never suffice to explain the “how” and “why” of the universe. A finite god can be no god at all. And this small god can never explain or give reason for infinity.
3) Man creates a mystic, invisible, creator God from his own imagination. This he does because he will not have the TRUE God to rule over him. He would rather have an invisible god who approves of his behavior and worldview, and does not condemn him in that which he allows. His finite, mystical god exists in contradictions, but in the end, he is just like him, only sinless. Most Christians even give this false god the name “Jesus”, and they pray to him religiously, although this Jesus cannot be the true Messiah, the Jesus Christ found in the Holy Bible.
4) Man makes of himself a god. He elevates his own reason and his own so-called “science” to the point where there is no need for a “god”. This man does worship, and he has faith… but his worship terminates in himself by way of his own reason, and his faith and hope must ultimately be in non-reason. He knows instinctively that HE did not create the universe, so he must conclude that it created itself.
We will never succeed in exhaustively knowing God. He is infinite, while we are finite. He has lovingly placed true Truth about Himself both in His creation, and in His Word.
There is a Trinity in the Godhead, not just because the Bible teaches that fact from “in the beginning” to “…come, Lord Jesus”. There is a Trinity in the Godhead, because it must be so. Any less of God, is less than God. Any god that is worshipped who is not the Tri-une God of the Holy Bible is no god at all. Anti-trinitarians will not have a Tri-une God, because He would be too big to get into their tiny heads. But the true church of God can cry with the angels unto the thrice holy God, “Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory” (Isa. 6:3).
Amen,
Michael Bunker
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