[06/28/19]
This begins what may well be the most daunting portion of this whole study: Considerations of the Triune nature of God, and of the particulars of those three Persons united in the Trinity. It is, for whatever that may be worth, the very topic that led me to begin taking biblical studies seriously; moving me from a casual reader of the Bible to a diver into its depths. Even so, having worked my way through Augustine’s treatise, ‘On the Trinity’ so many years back, I cannot say I am any more comfortable addressing the topic, although I am perfectly comfortable with abiding in its truth.
As is often observed, it is difficult to give definition even to the idea of triunity without sliding off into some heresy or other, and that is nowhere I care to be found sliding. But, the essential idea is reasonably straightforward. Trinity – expand it a bit. Tri-unity. It is the idea of being three and one at the same time, but as the rules of logic insist it must be, not in the same way. One cannot be three and three cannot be one, except there is something that distinguishes the one-ness from the three-ness. The ancient fathers of our faith struggled long, and sometimes vehemently, to establish some way of expressing this reality that did not in fact promote heretical views, and could not be twisted by the heretics to suggest the confession of the Church supported their views.
We can see somewhat of that struggle by considering the earliest creeds of the Church. The Apostles’ Creed was straightforward in declaring belief in each of the three persons of the Trinity, but says nothing of that Triune nature itself. It will be helpful, then, in identifying some of the unique aspects of those Persons, but not so much for defining that which makes them One. Honestly, it has little enough to say about Father and Spirit, as well.
The Nicene Creed doesn’t get us much farther, other than to insist that the Son is “very God of very God, begotten, not made, of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.” In similar vein, it addresses the Spirit as He “who proceeds from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and Son together is worshipped and glorified.” So, there is at least recognition of connection here, and some suggestion of a sort of equality, and yet, there is also the suggestion of hierarchy.
It’s not until we arrive at the Athanasian Creed that we start to gain definition of this idea. “We worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance.” “But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit is all one, the glory equal, the majesty coeternal.” In all three persons, He is uncreated, incomprehensible, eternal, and almighty. How Athanasius labors at this point, because he had need to do so! Here was a man who had been tossed out of his office in the church for insisting on sound faith, and here was the central point on which the debate within the Church was raging: The nature of the Trinity and of the Persons of God. “In this Trinity none is afore or after another; none is greater or less than another. But the whole three persons are coeternal, coequal.”
He proceeds, as well, to give some definition to the dual natures of Christ Jesus, Who is at once God and man, but let us hold that difficulty for its proper place. As concerns the Trinity, here we have the main definition: In God we find three Persons, a Trinity, and these persons are distinct and distinguishable. Yet, there is one Essence, one substance, which is possessed in whole by any one of these persons. How that may be is not something I can explain, and the usual array of attempts fall short. The egg analogy, the stages of life analogy, and such all make an attempt, and may offers some small value, but they leave us with false understanding and threaten to lead us off into error.
Here are a few key points for us, taken from Athanasius. First, we must insist that there is no order of arrival in the Trinity. Father did not come first and Spirit last, but all are coeternal. Second, as concerns power and authority, there is no hierarchy. Here, I admit, I struggle, for there does appear to me to be something of a chain of command, and as I think I have expressed elsewhere, government by three co-equal heads has been shown, at least in human history, to be quite problematic. It does not lead to stability, but to struggle.
Let me diverge just a moment on that topic. The primary example that comes to mind is that of the Triumvirates by which the Roman Empire was ruled for a time. Here, it truly was an attempt to have three co-equal rulers, a triad of emperors. Quite naturally, given the sinful nature of man, and the corrupting influence of power, this led to power struggles rather than preventing them, as had been hoped. It was inevitable that it should, for egos were not likely to subside while claimants to like power and authority remained.
If I look to the model of governance established for the US, there is something of that same problem. We do not vest equal authority in three individuals, but in three bodies, if you will; the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. Each is designed to be effectively equal in power, and to be final authority within their own sphere of duty. Yet, each has power to effectively counteract abuses by the other. That, at least, is the design. In practice, the results at present are questionable, and it seems to many that the judicial has taken to legislating, and the legislature has all but ceded that ground because, I suppose, it’s too much work. They’d rather harry the executive which, in its own turn, has taken to largely ignoring the legislative and simply doing what it is felt must be done. The whole thing has spun out of balance, and largely for the same reasons that the Triumvirate approach failed: Power struggles are inevitable, and those who populate the offices, being drawn from fallen mankind, tend to be fallen men, enamored of power and struggling for primacy. Whether it can be brought back into proper alignment remains to be seen, but I fear Mr. Franklin’s dark warnings may well prove wholly prescient: A republic, if you can keep it. Sadly, it seems to be more and more the case that all three branches of government have learned to bribe the people with temptations, and to curry favor, as in Rome, with nothing but bread and circuses.
With that thought, I’ll go back to grander considerations, and turn my eyes back to that Triune governance in heaven in which the effects of the Fall are not found, and the unity of the Trinity persists eternally and undisturbed.
[06/29/19]
“Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one” (Dt 6:4). If in fact the God of the Bible is God, then this declaration cannot be abandoned or altered. He IS one, `echad. Whether that is to be understood as one in being united, or one as in being first, I am not fit to say. What I am fit to say is that nothing about the New Testament has set this aside, and in fact, Jesus Christ personally sets this forth as His answer to the question of which Law is foremost. “The foremost is, ‘Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength’” (Mk 12:29-30). Here, He has used the term heis to translate, specifying a cardinal, rather than an ordinal meaning, so it’s not first, it is one in number, or at minimum, one in being united.
This is, of course, exactly where our challenge lies, for we also have this sense of three Persons, and in some manner distinct Persons, in the Godhead, and to this day, you will find there are those, even in ostensibly Christian circles, who take umbrage at the very idea. No! He is One. There can be no ‘tri’. But, as I think we shall see in due course, there most assuredly is evidence of a ‘tri’. My concern would be this: That we read into the proclamation that the LORD is one our sense of multiplicity which was not intended. Neither should I wish for us to maintain any such sense of the multiplicity of Persons as would violate the essential, necessary unity and indeed singularity of God.
I stressed this hard enough, I think, in my introductory considerations. The very nature of God, the very idea of God, requires that there can be only one. The moment you introduce another, you introduce the inevitability of a power struggle. At arrest of minimums, you introduce the need for this unanswerable authority to answer to another unanswerable authority. The very idea of two equally unanswerable authorities defies logic, defies acceptance, for they must at least answer one to another, in which case, neither is unanswerable; neither is God. That being the case, our understanding of the unity, the singularity of God must exclude any sense of multiplicity.
I think Athanasius steers us well with his attempt to express the point. “In this Trinity none is afore or after another; none is greater or less than another. But the whole three persons are coeternal, coequal.” Yes, there are three Persons, but there is one Godhead, one glory, one majesty. The Persons are equally uncreated, equally eternal, equally almighty. Now stop there for a moment. We are back at conundrum. To be all-powerful, almighty, takes us back to unanswerable power and authority, such a power and authority as admits of no higher. Here, Athanasius tells us, are three Persons who are all equally unanswerable, presumably even to one another, for as I have observed, otherwise, they are in fact answerable to another. But, these three are never ‘another’. These three are one. Thus, when we encounter the Father, we encounter the Godhead in full; when we encounter the Son, we encounter the Godhead in full; when we encounter the Spirit, we encounter the Godhead in full. And yet, though it bends our minds to try and add it, the Godhead is incomplete except all three Persons are present.
Here’s the good news: The three Persons of the Godhead are always present. Remember? God is omnipresent. There is no place He is not. Here, it may be well to consider that eternal covenant of which Dr. Pink wrote. This conveys the sense that within the unity of the Godhead, these three Persons made covenant together, at a point before time, in which covenant was agreed the whole working out of Creation and of Salvation. It is to be observed that we do not find one Person of the Godhead at work in Scripture, but the other two are present and active as well. We do not see the Father acting apart from Son and Spirit, nor the Son acting apart from Father and Spirit. In the present age, which might be construed as the age of the Spirit from our perspective, as He seems the most immediately present and active among us, the same holds. The Spirit never acts apart from Father and Son. God is One.
Here is perhaps a central tenet of the unity of the Godhead to which we must adhere not merely in principle, but in our understanding. God cannot act against Himself. I suppose, if we wanted to go into the entirely theoretical realm of speculative reasoning, we must posit that such an act is conceptually possible, but it is utterly unrealizable, for God never acts except in accord with His own will, and in His will, His Persons are wholly united. What are the implications for us? Well, for one, we will not find the Son saying something which is at odds with the Father. We will not have the Spirit indicating something that is at odds with the Son.
This is critical to our era, not only because the Spirit is the most viscerally active of the Persons amongst us, but because our innate curiosity and our desire for spirituality lay us open to all manner of deceiving voices. How are we to recognize deception? Is it sufficient to posit questions in our prayers and listen for the answer in our mind’s ear? Well, no. It’s that same ear that gave attention to the deception, if deception it is. Do we check our hearts? Oh, I should hope so, but if we trust our hearts, we are fools and have disbelieved the word of God revealed in the Bible. The heart is deceptively evil, as almost no other! Are we at a loss to discern, then? By no means! For God has given us the Bible; the tested revelation of that which He chose to reveal.
Here is test number one: Does this spirit confess that Jesus Christ came in the flesh from God? (1Jn 4:2) It’s insufficient to declare that He existed. It’s insufficient to claim that He came from God. He is no mere emanation, no phantasm or spirit being without substance. He came in the flesh, as He had to come in the flesh, for apart from a life lived in the flesh, His sacrifice could achieve nothing. He must have come from God, and indeed have been eternal God, else the payment made by His sacrifice could not have satisfied the penalty due our sins against eternal God. That is an idea to be developed more as we consider the Son specifically, but that is the sense of John’s primary test. Anything less than this confession reveals the spirit of antichrist.
I am not convinced this is the sole and sufficient test. It is the primary checkpoint. Start here. But, there is this as well: If the one you suppose to be speaking from the Spirit speaks that which is at odds with the revealed word of God in Scripture, then you have God speaking against God, and that cannot be in God Who is One. Why else do you suppose so much effort and energy is expended by those who oppose Christianity to try and paint the revealed word as self-contradictory? If it contradicts, it cannot be Truth, and it can safely be dispensed with. I will, I must accept that there are many points which appear, at least on the surface, to disagree with one another. If it were not so, I don’t suppose we would have the multiplicity of denominations and doctrinal camps that define the contours of the modern Church. We would all be perfectly agreed in every point of doctrine, and that would be that. But, we do have our disagreements as to the sense of things, and largely due to what are, for us, ambiguities at best in the text. But, in my experience, I have found that any appearance of contradiction turns out to have been insufficient understanding on my part. The whole holds together as a unified whole. Truth stands in no need of admitting contradictory points, and God remains God.
[06/30/19]
At this juncture, I think I have need of modifying just a bit one of my long held views, for as I consider the Unity side of Tri-Unity, and particularly as I consider the sense of it put forward by Athanasius, I find I need to set aside even the idea of the Father being first among equals, or of any sort of chain of command. While such structures seem needful to our earthbound thinking, they cannot if fact apply where there is but one essential Being. There, there is no need, for our God, He is One. I have long had this idea of the Father commanding, and the Son obeying, and there is much in Scripture to convey such a sense. I daren’t discount that sense, but I must, as best I may, understand it in the context of this oneness which is God. I shall, I suspect explore that more as I look at the other side of the equation, the Three-ness of God, but must first firmly establish the oneness in my own thinking, lest I go astray.
It is true, it MUST be true, that the Son, in the course of His ministry, spoke only as He heard the Father speak, acted only as He had seen the Father act, did only and fully what the Father had commanded Him to do. We might ask, however, if Jesus, in saying these things, spoke in regard to His humanity or His divinity. It is much the same as that most difficult of sayings when He tells His disciples He doesn’t know the Father’s timetable. Of course He must, for He is God Himself. God is One, and perfect in knowledge with nothing missing. Yet, He could not be lying, for God is Truth, and for Truth to Lie, it must cease being Truth, God must cease being God, and if He can cease to be God, He never was God. So, then, if it is the humanity of Christ speaking, is it not still God ceasing to be God for that moment, or on that subject? This is where the limits of our knowledge must leave us unsatisfied, for the answer is beyond us, so far as I can discern. I know it is a question I’ve asked over the course of the last several years, and I know I received at least one answer, but I cannot say that I recall that answer, and therefore, I assume I found it insufficient. Of course it could just be that either my attention span or my memory are short.
My point is simply this: If the Father commanded it, so, too, did Son and Spirit. Whatever it is that makes them separate and unique in their Threeness, it is not a distinction of authority. God is One and acts as One, wills as One. He is answerable only to Himself. I can see a way to arguing that even if there were a command structure within the Trinity, He would still only be answerable to Himself, but it would still leave part of Him more answerable than other parts, to the degree that the Persons can be thought to be partial. They aren’t. As has been stressed, each is wholly God, or ‘very God of very God’.
I observe that I am primarily leaning on extra-biblical sources for this topic, and am not entirely sanguine that it is so. My goal is to establish a Biblical understanding of these topics, and not to simply accept what other men have had to say. But, I admit that on discussions of the Triune nature of God, as much effort as I have given it in the past, I am rather at a loss to recall to mind such references as might demonstrate the accuracy of my understanding. This is not good, in my opinion. But, it is what I have to hand. Perhaps I shall return to Augustine’s ‘On the Trinity’ if only to obtain some points of reference in Scripture.
And there is, indeed, a relatively obvious reference to be had in the high priestly prayer of Jesus. As He prays, there is one primary request made, it seems to me, “That they may all be one” (Jn 17:21a). The things asked leading up to this point tend to support the main request. What is asked previously? “Keep them from the evil one” (Jn 17:15). “Sanctify them in the truth” (Jn 17:18a). And now, we arrive at the main point, “That they may all be one.” Surely, if we are in the truth, we must be one, for the Truth is One. Surely, if we are to be in the Truth, we will not merely need to be kept from the evil one, but we will have been kept from the evil one. The whole builds to this point, and then the basis is given, “even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in Us.” And shortly after, we arrive at this, “just as We are one; I in them, Thou in Me, perfected in unity” (Jn 17:22b-23a).
This may actually muddy the waters somewhat, insomuch as Jesus speaks of us being in like unity as He is discussing in regard to His Person and the Father. To be sure, whatever may come, we are not made divinity at the culmination of all things. We are made holy as He is holy, yes, but not divine as He is divine. No doubt, we can find those who would actually insist such is the case, but it is foolishness to suppose so. For our purposes at present, let the focal point remain on the Godhead. “We are One.” I think, so far as the ‘just as’ is concerned, we must recognize limits on the ‘just’ part, perhaps soften it to, ‘in like fashion as’. Indeed, looking at the lexicons, it seems the term, kathos, can have the sense of inasmuch as. Per Thayer, at least, that is the sense to be taken here. It is causal, not comparative. It is indeed the reason Jesus can pray that we be one: Not qualitatively, that we might have the exact same union or unity of being as is in the Trinity, but that we might be united amongst ourselves because Father, Son, and implicitly in this case, Spirit, are One in the ultimate sense. I might suggest that God is One in the same sense as He is Love, or Truth, or Holy. He is so in His very essence and is, in fact, the essential, defining quality thereof. God is not Love because He happens to be loving. Love is love because God is Love, and only insomuch as it truly reflects and represents that perfection of Love which is in God alone.
So it is with this Oneness. God is not One because He acts as it were in one accord. God acts in one accord because He is One. We are united, if indeed we are united, because the will of God has made us one, to serve as a manifestation of His essential Oneness. We are one only insomuch as our unity reflects the perfection of Unity which is in God alone. It is foolishness, then, for us to seek to enforce a unity that is not had in Truth. It is foolishness as well to accept all manner of nonsense and contradiction amongst ourselves in hopes of somehow promoting some perception of being united. We are not one if we are at odds with one another. How can we be? That is not unity, that is, well, I’m not sure what it is. If it claims to be unity, it is a lie, and to the degree it claims to promote perception of the unity of the Godhead, it is downright criminal. We cannot uphold the Truth of God by a lie. We cannot present ourselves as manifesting the Unity of God when that unity we express is but a mask thrown upon our differences.
[07/01/19]
Before moving on, I wish to consider one more point from this passage. “All things that are Mine are thine, and Thine are Mine” (Jn 17:10a). John has been laying out his sense of the purpose in Christ’s ministry and being. From the outset he has been establishing that Jesus is in fact God Incarnate, Who was God in the beginning. He has shown, in the few miracles he chooses to relate, how Jesus is in command of things material and things spiritual alike. He calms the seas. He heals the blind. He commands demons to depart. He raises the dead. All things are His and His to command. But here, He makes a pointed observation in the course of His prayer, and He makes it not to remind Himself, nor to remind God in heaven, for God in heaven is in no need of reminding.
These things are spoken for the same reason the prayer is prayed. “I ask on their behalf” (Jn 17:9). And just to point out, for those of universalist proclivity, “I do not ask on behalf of the world, but of those whom Thou hast given Me, for they are Thine.” The high priestly prayer is given on behalf of those over whom Christ is High Priest forever. That group, as the prayer itself declares, are a group whose membership is determined by the Giver; God. “They are Thine.” Only then does Jesus proceed to declare this mutual ownership of this particular ‘all’.
So, let us pause just a moment. “All things that are Mine are Thine, and Thine are Mine.” The very phrasing sets bounds on the ‘all’. It is not all things everywhere that are in view, although at some level what is said would apply even then. Yes, all things are His however inclusively we declare the all, but all things are not equally His in the qualitative sense. All things are His by right, as Creator. All things are not His in the sense of showing loving obedience to Him. Again it comes down to the absolute reality that while every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess the Lordship of Christ, not every knee and tongue will have done so willingly, joyfully. Some, quite probably the vast majority, will bow and confess under severe compulsion, for the Truth will out.
But, for this prayer, ‘all things that are Mine’ indicates the subset of willing subjects: Those given, those called. The prayer is for them, and these words are for them: What belongs to Christ belongs to God, and what belongs to God belongs to Christ, for God is Christ and Christ is God. For these first disciples, called out of the age-old Jewish religion, or at least called over to one side of it, and facing serious opposition from the old order, this was a necessary point to establish. God is still One. You have not abandoned the God of Israel. This is He. “He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him” (Jn 1:11).
The ownership of all things is held mutually, and again I must observe the tacit inclusion of the Holy Spirit in this, for all that God belongs to God, and all that God has, God has in any one of the three Persons of His being. As there is not a unique majesty of Father, Son, or Spirit, so there is not a unique possession of Father, Son, or Spirit. They are one majesty. They have one possession: The bride of Christ, the inheritance of the saints.
This has to inform our worship. It is unfitting, if these three Persons are one God, and equal in every regard, to exalt one above the other. For Christendom, the great temptation has got to be that we exalt Christ Jesus to the exclusion of Father and Spirit. It seems to me that over the years I have seen over-reactions to this possibility as ministries arise which exalt the Father almost to the exclusion of Son and Spirit, or lift the Spirit to a place above that of Father and Christ as if He were the primary figure to be worshiped. I suppose if we must set one foremost in our thoughts it had best be Christ Jesus, for He it is by whom we must be saved, and no other. Yet, Christ Jesus is no other than Father and Spirit, not at essence.
Clearly, there are distinctions to be made, else we would not be bothered with the difficulty of three Persons, and that matter I shall attempt to explore in the next portion of this study. But, whatever the distinctions, let us hold fast to the Truth that these three Persons are in fact co-equal, and equally completely One God.
