Trinity

Trinity is a Christian doctrine that says God is three person’s. Therefore, technically, it is incorrect to say that God is a person. God is personal, yes, but he is not “a” person. This is what serves to distinguish Christianity from other monotheistic faiths like Judaism or Islam which also agree that there is one God who is personal but they think there is only one person who is God. This also serves to distinguish Christianity from various Christian cults and sects like Mormonism (Latter Day Saints) or Jehovah’s Witnesses. Inevitably, it will be found that these sectarian groups get the doctrine of the Trinity wrong – it is almost like a thermometer that can be used to test these different groups to see whether or not they adhere to biblical Christianity.

The doctrine of the Trinity is often obscured by Christians in mystery. Sometimes they will say that the doctrine of the Trinity is logically inconsistent or it is an affront to reason and something that can be held only by faith. It is a mystery. But this really does the doctrine a disservice. The doctrine of the Trinity is not even apparently logically contradictory. The doctrine of the Trinity is not the self-contradictory doctrine that three gods are somehow one God, or that three persons are somehow one person. Rather, the doctrine states that there are three persons in the one God. Another way to put it: God is tri-personal.

Often Christians will offer inadequate analogies of the Trinity in order to explicate this doctrine. For example, it is sometimes told that the doctrine of the Trinity is like one man who is a son, a husband, and a father. There is one man but he is a son, he is a husband, he is a father. Unfortunately, that is not an adequate or accurate analogy for the Trinity because in that case you have only one person who is simply playing three roles or has three relationships, but there really is only one person that is there. Another analogy that is often used is that water can be liquid, steam, or ice. Yet it is all H2O. This is perhaps a better analogy because at least here there is one substance – one essence (H2O) – but this could be in the form of a liquid or of steam or of ice. But again the analogy really fails because the water is only successively in those various stages. It can be first liquid, and then if it freezes it turns to ice, or if it gets boiled it turns to steam. But it is not simultaneous. It is a succession of states in the water.

It is better just to avoid these sorts of analogies. They are all going to be inadequate in the end. It is better to simply say that just as a human is a being with one center of self-consciousness whom he/she calls “I”, God is a being who has three centers of self-consciousness each of which can say “I”. Each one has a first-person perspective: I am the Father. I am the Son. I am the Holy Spirit.

So God is a tri-personal being. He is a being with three centers of self-consciousness in contrast to human persons who are one being with one center of self-consciousness.

The doctrine of the Trinity is a systematic summary of the data of Scripture. Therefore, it does not really matter that the word “Trinity” is not found in the Bible. The important thing is not the word, but rather the concept or the data that this word denominates. Any word could be used to denominate this doctrine so long as the scriptural data are respected and not twisted or bruised in any way. The significant thing is not the word “Trinity.” The significant thing will be the concepts that the Trinity embodies, namely that God is a single tri-personal being.

Biblical Data
Although the word “Trinity” is not found in the Scriptures, that is really incidental. The doctrine of the Trinity is a systematic summary of the biblical data that indicate two things: that there is one God and that there are three distinct persons in the Godhead. If those facts are true then the doctrine of the Trinity is true. The scriptural data that support these two truths can be looked at.

One God
Both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament this doctrine is taught – monotheism, there is but one God. Deuteronomy 6:4: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD” This is the fundamental confession of Judaism – the so-called shema. The first clause of that confession is the uniqueness of God – there is one LORD.

1 Kings 8:60 – this is Solomon’s benediction on the occasion of the dedication of the temple. He prays “that all the peoples of the earth may know that the LORD is God; there is no other.” So there is no other God than the LORD – the God of Israel.

Isaiah 45:5a, 18:

''I am the LORD, and there is no other, besides me there is no God. . . . For thus says the LORD, who created the heavens (he is God!), who formed the earth and made it (he established it; he did not create it a chaos, he formed it to be inhabited!): ‘I am the LORD, and there is no other.’''

So the God of Israel is the only God that there is. There is no other God.

In Isaiah 44, there is at length a satirical critique of the pagan deities of Israel's neighbors. In Isaiah 44 there is this biting satire of idolatry – how the idolater carves a piece of wood, paints it, decorates it, clothes it, and then falls down in front of his own creation and says, Thou art my God, and worships the products of his own hands. Isaiah just laughs at this – makes fun of it, at its folly. Israel did not consider itself to simply have a special God – one of the many gods, this was Israel's God. No. Israel's God was the only God that there is. There is no other God besides the LORD, besides Yahweh.

In the New Testament, the Christian followers of Jesus taught and believed the same thing – there is only one God. For example, at Mark 12:29. Jesus is asked what is the greatest commandment and “Jesus answered, ‘The first is, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.”’” He here quotes the shema as the fundamental commandment and confession of Israel and affirms Jewish monotheism.

Similarly, in Romans 3:29-30a, Paul also affirms monotheism. Paul says, “Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one.” So, again, Paul did not conceive the Jewish God to be just one of many. He says the God of Israel is, in fact, also the God of Gentiles because there is only one God and therefore Jew and Gentile alike can be united in the worship of the one true God.

In 1 Corinthians 8:4, addressing the subject of pagan idolatry, Paul says, “As to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that an idol has no real existence, and that there is no God but one.” So these idol gods are not real gods. They are figments of the imagination. In fact, he says, there is no God but one – the God of Israel.

1 Timothy 2:5: “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” Again, Paul affirms the uniqueness of God - there is one God and one mediator between God and man.

Finally, in James 2:19, James says, “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe – and shudder!” So even the demonic forces are monotheists – even the demons believe that there is one true God and they tremble because they stand under God's wrath and condemnation.

So it is clear that the Bible teaches there is but one God, and the Old and New Testaments concur that this is the God of Israel.

Three Distinct Persons in The Godhead
Each of the three persons (the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit) can be looked at.

God The Father
The Scriptures teach that God the Father is a distinct person. Several passages that indicate that can be looked at.

First, Matthew 11:27. Jesus says, “All things have been delivered to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” Clearly in this passage Jesus differentiates himself as the Son from the Father. The Father and the Son stand in relationship to each other – they know each other and the Son reveals the Father. So clearly the Father is a distinct person here from the Son who knows the Son, is known by the Son, and is revealed by the Son.

Also, Matthew 26:39. This is Jesus' prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane just prior to his arrest and trial. It says, “And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, ‘My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt.’” Here Jesus prays to the Father and asks that he might be spared this terrible suffering. But then he submits his will to the will of the Father and says, Not as I will, but as thou wilt. Again, showing the distinction of the Father and the Son and the submission of the Son to the Father's will.

The Father and the Son are distinct persons. Now in John 14:16-17 the Father's distinction from the Spirit can be seen. Jesus says,

And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him; you know him, for he dwells with you, and will be in you.

Here there are all three persons of the Godhead. The Son is praying to the Father to send another Advocate – another Counselor – and that will be the Spirit. There are three distinct persons here. The Father is distinct from both the Son and from the Spirit.

The second point is that not only is the Father a distinct person, but that the Father is God. Psalm 89:26: “He shall cry to me, ‘Thou art my Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation.’” So one of the metaphors under which Israel conceived of the Lord (Israel's God) is as a heavenly Father. God is the Father of the children of Israel.

One finds this conception of God as Father elsewhere in the Old Testament. For example, Isaiah 63:16: “For thou art our Father, though Abraham does not know us, and Israel does not acknowledge us; thou, O LORD, art our Father, our Redeemer from of old is thy name.” Here Isaiah says even if Abraham does not acknowledge them (and Abraham was regarded as the father of the Jewish nation), Israel or Jacob does not acknowledge them as his progeny, nevertheless the LORD is their Father. God is the Father of Israel.

In the New Testament, this is the way in which Jesus presents the God of the Old Testament to his disciples and to the people whom he taught. Matthew 6:9. This is the Lord’s prayer. He says, “Pray then like this, ‘Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” Jesus taught his disciples to pray to God as their heavenly Father and to regard God as their Father.

So the Scriptures teach that God the Father is distinct from the Son and from the Spirit, and that the Father is God. He is the God of the Old Testament. In fact, this word “God” in the Greek, ho theos (literally meaning “the God” – the article ho is the masculine definite article) usually, in the New Testament, refers to God the Father. When the authors of the New Testament say something about God (ho theos) they are talking about the Father.

For example, Paul’s customary greeting in his letters was to say something like this: “Grace to you and peace from God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ.” So the Father is identified with God – God the Father.

Paul says in Galatians 4:4-6:

''But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’''

Here, again, all three persons of the Godhead are mentioned. When it says “God” sent forth his Son, “God” sent the Spirit, it means God the Father. This is clear because the Spirit teaches people to cry out to God, “Abba! Father!” So “God” in the New Testament typically refers to the person of the Father. But then it says the Father sends the Son (who is Jesus) and then he also sends the Spirit of his Son into people’s hearts whereby they cry “Abba! Father!”

When reading something about God, it is typically talking about God the Father.

So the first point is the Father is a distinct person, and the Father is God.

The Son (or Jesus Christ)
The biblical writers affirmed the deity of Christ. In doing so they confronted the difficulty of saying that Jesus is God but without saying that Jesus is the Father. This is problematic because the word for God in the Greek – ho theos (ho is the definite article “the” so “the God” literally) – refers to the Father. The New Testament Christians, while believing that Jesus was deity (was divine) did not think that he was the Father. That is why many statements in the New Testament that Jesus is ho theos – that Jesus is God – are not found. That would be to say Jesus is the Father. Instead they picked a different term to characterize Jesus, and that was the term kyrios or Lord. Kyrios is the Greek word that translates the name of God in the Old Testament – Yahweh. The early Christians would call Jesus “Lord” and they would apply to him Old Testament passages about Yahweh saying that these are in reference to Christ. So there is the very odd situation that the New Testament writers, while shunning the label theos for Jesus, do affirm that Jesus is kyrios. Thus there are these odd circumlocutions such as 1 Corinthians 8:6, “For us, there is one God the Father, and one Lord, Jesus Christ.” In the New Testament the writers attempted to do everything they could to affirm the deity of Christ but without saying that he was the Father.

The Scriptures say that Jesus Christ is a distinct person from the Father and the Spirit, and that Jesus Christ is God not in the sense that Jesus is the Father but in the sense that he is divine. The New Testament typically refers to Jesus by the Old Testament name of God – kyrios or Lord.

The Holy Spirit
The New Testament affirms both that the Holy Spirit is a distinct person from the Father and the Son, and that the Holy Spirit is likewise God.

Logos Christology
The Logos Christology of the early Greek apologists was a doctrine taken up into Western theology through the church father Irenaeus.

Modalism
It is another primitive Christology.

Arianism
During the century following Modalism the church would be confronted with a challenge from the opposite end of the spectrum – Arianism – which affirmed the personal distinction of the Father and the Son but denied the deity of the Son. Whereas the Modalists affirmed that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all God but not distinct persons, Arius affirmed that the Father, Son and Spirit are distinct persons but they are not all God. Only the Father is God; the Son is, in fact, a creature who was made by God.

This challenge that the church faced in Arianism lead to the Council of Nicaea and the codification of the doctrine of the Trinity.

The 3 Persons of The Trinity
The question is: if there are three hypostases all exemplifying the divine nature, what are these? The opinion unanimously on the part of orthodox theologians is that these are persons. Three persons. It is very frequently said today that people must not read this affirmation that they are persons anachronistically by importing into it the modern psychological concept of a person. While this caution may be in order, still it needs to be seriously qualified. What is true is that the word hypostasis does not mean person. They are not synonymous words. Hypostasis is an individual – a property bearer. Nevertheless when talking about a rational hypostasis then this does come very close indeed to the modern concept of a person. For Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher, the essence or nature of man is captured by the phrase “rational animal.” That is what human nature is. He is a rational animal. Humans have an animal body joined with a rational soul, and that differentiates them from mere animals. Animals have souls according to Aristotle, but they lack rationality. They have a sort of lower-order souls that do not have rationality. So it is this property of rationality that serves to distinguish human beings from other animals. So a rational hypostasis is what can only be referred to as a person. It is a person.

This was strongly emphasized by the Cappadocian church fathers – some of the most important of the post-Nicene church fathers. Cappadocia is in central Turkey today. This ancient region in central Turkey is unworldly. Among the Cappadocian fathers were people like Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory Nazianzus. There were two Gregory's. And then there was Basil of Caesarea. These Cappadocian fathers were very emphatic about the personal nature of these three hypostases in the Godhead. For example, Gregory of Nyssa illustrates the idea of three hypostases having one nature by pointing out Peter, James, and John. He says these are three hypostases – Peter, James, and John – all exemplifying the same human nature. There is no other way to take that than by saying that these are three persons who share the same human nature. Moreover they ascribe to the three divine hypostases properties which are constitutive of a personhood such as mutual knowledge of one another, mutual love, and mutual will. They emphasize that these three persons are always in concord, always in harmony, with each other, and so they cannot be separated or disagree with each other. But nevertheless they are characterized by mutual knowledge, love, and will. Gregory Nazianzus boasts that unlike the modalists he says they worship the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, one Godhead – God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. One nature in three personalities – intellectual, perfect, self-existent, numerically separate, but not separate in the Godhead.

The ascription of personal properties to these three individuals in the Godhead is especially evident in the Cappadocian fathers’ strong emphasis upon the full equality of the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son. In the Nicene Creed the Holy Spirit gets short shrift. All it says is “and in the Holy Spirit” - we believe in him too. But the Cappadocian fathers emphasized that like the Son the Holy Spirit is a divine hypostasis. Basil, for example, says that the Holy Spirit is not only incorporeal, purely immaterial, and indivisible, but, “We are compelled to direct our thoughts on high and to think of an intelligent being boundless in power.” So the Holy Spirit is an intelligent being boundless in power. He quotes 1 Corinthians 2:11 where Paul says who knows the person of a man except for the spirit that is in him. He compares the Holy Spirit to the human spirit that is in each person. He says in his sanctifying work the Holy Spirit makes people spiritual by bringing them into fellowship with himself.

So these Cappadocian fathers would have resisted fiercely any attempt to depersonalize the Holy Spirit and make him into some sort of impersonal divine force. It is evident that their intention was to affirm that there are really three persons in a rich psychological sense in the one God.

While modalism affirmed the equal deity of the three persons at the expense of their distinctness, and Arianism affirmed their distinctness at the expense of their equal deity, orthodox Christianity maintained both the equal deity and the personal distinctness of the three persons. Moreover they did this without surrendering their commitment to monotheism. There exists only one God who is three persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Problem of The Trinity
Is this a logically comprehensible and defensible doctrine that there are three persons who are one God? At one level the problem seems to be that the doctrine of the Trinity looks logically incoherent because the doctrine of the Trinity says that the Father is God, that the Son is God, and yet the Father is not the Son. So the Father is identical with God and the Son is identical with God then it follows from the transitivity of identity that the Father is identical to the Son. Yet that is not right. So how to make sense of this idea that the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, and yet the Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Spirit? There are three distinct persons. Basically the problem is the transitivity of identity. If A is identical to B, and B is identical to C then A is identical to C. And yet in this case that fails.

Solution
One solution is to say that the Trinity is God. To make an identity statement God has to be identical to the Trinity. If someone says, “Who or what is God?” the answer would be the Trinity. The Trinity is God. This triune substance is God. But obviously the Trinity is not identical to the Father nor identical to the Son because the Son is one person, not three. The Father is one person, not three. So the Trinity is not identical to the persons. These persons are therefore not instances of the divine nature of God. The Trinity is an instance of the divine nature. This tri-personal being.That is why the Trinity is not a fourth god in addition to the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. There is only one God and that God is the Trinity.

However are not the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit God? Should that not be affirmed? Not in the sense of an identity statement. When one says that the Father is God, one is not making an identity statement. When one says the Son “is” God, one is not making an identity statement. Rather this “is” is an “is” of predication, not of identity. For example, if “Elizabeth is queen” it is not the case that Elizabeth is identical to the queen. She may hold the office or the role or the title of being queen, but it would be possible for there to be co-regents. Sometimes that happens. There is more than one king or more than one queen. So “Elizabeth is queen” is not an identity statement; it is a predication. It is predicating being queen of England. The statement is like this: “Elizabeth is regal.” She is the queen in that sense. It may not be an identity statement but a predicate is assigned. Elizabeth is regal.

So saying the Father is God is a way of saying the Father is divine. Saying that the Son is God is a way of saying the Son is divine. It is making a predication of the Father and the Son. It is predicating full divinity of the Father and the Son. It is not making an identity statement. Otherwise that would mean three gods.

So properly speaking the true identity statement would be “the Trinity is God.” When it is said the Father is God, the Son is God, those are not identity statements, rather they are predications. They are predicating properties of the Father and the Son, namely the property of being fully divine.

A Model of The Trinity
The doctrine of the Trinity that there are three persons who are one being is a logically coherent doctrine when properly understood. But that still leaves the question: how can three distinct persons be one being? How can there be three divine persons who are together one being?

A start can be gotten at this question by means of an analogy. There is no reason to think that there has to be an analogy to the doctrine of the Trinity among created things. But analogies can be helpful as a springboard for philosophical reflection and for accurate formulation. This analogy can be considered. In Greco-Roman mythology one of the labors of Hercules was to subdue the ferocious three-headed dog named Cerberus who guarded the gates of Hades. Suppose that Cerberus, having three heads, must have had three brains and therefore three distinct states of consciousness. Each one would be whatever it is like to be a dog. Therefore Cerberus, although he is a sentient being, does not have a unified consciousness. Rather he has three consciousnesses. Even though he is one being, he has three consciousnesses. Proper names could even be given to each of these consciousnesses. For example, rather whimsically, they can be referred to as Rover, Bowser, and Spike. These three centers of consciousness are entirely discreet, and it is thought about they might even come into conflict with one another. Still, in order for Cerberus to be viable as a biological organism not to speak of being able to function effectively as a guard dog, there has to be a considerable degree of cooperation among these three consciousnesses Rover, Bowser, and Spike.

Despite the diversity of his three mental states, Cerberus is clearly one dog. He is a single biological organism exemplifying a canine nature. Rover, Bowser, and Spike may also be said to be canine even though they are not three dogs. They are parts or aspects of the one three-headed dog Cerberus. So if Hercules were attempting to enter into Hades and Spike snarled at him or bit him on the leg Hercules might well say Cerberus snarled at me or Cerberus attacked me.

Now the church fathers would have resisted analogies like Cerberus. But once the doctrine of divine simplicity (that God has no aspects or distinctions within his being) is given up, Cerberus does seem to be what St. Augustine called an image of the Trinity among creatures. These are not exact analogies but they are a shadow image of what the Trinity is among creatures. There is here one biological organism – one dog – which has three centers of consciousness.

The Cerberus story can be enhanced by imagining that Cerberus is rational and has self-consciousness. In that case Rover, Bowser, and Spike are plausibly personal agents. They are self-conscious, personal agents. Cerberus would therefore be a tri-personal being.

What makes Cerberus a single being despite his three minds is that he has a single physical body. It is because he is a single biological organism that Cerberus is one thing even though he has three mental states, three persons. But suppose Cerberus were to be killed and his minds survive the death of his body. Suppose they are immortal and live beyond the death of his body. In what sense would they then still be one being? How would those three persons differ intrinsically from three exactly similar minds which have always been unembodied? If he is one being because he is embodied in this canine organism, if the three minds survive the death of the body, how would they be any different than three minds that have just always existed unembodied? What would make them one being any more as opposed to three separate beings? And in the case of the Trinity, since the divine persons are (at least prior to the incarnation) unembodied then why is there here one being rather than three individual beings?

This is a difficult question but insight can be gained on it by reflecting on the nature of the soul. Souls are immaterial substances, and some philosophers think that animals have souls as well as human beings. On this view souls come in a wide spectrum of varying capacities and faculties. For example, higher animals like chimpanzees and dolphins have souls that are more richly endowed than the souls of lower animals like turtles and iguanas. What makes the human soul a person is the fact that the human soul is equipped with rational faculties of intellect and volition which enable it to be a self-reflective agent capable of self-determination. Animals do not have souls that are so richly endowed as to be self-reflective agents capable of self-determination.

God is very much like an unembodied soul. In fact as a mental substance God just seems to be a soul of some sort. Normally a rational soul is equated with a person but that is because the human souls that humans are acquainted with are persons. In people’s experience all of the rational souls that people are familiar with are individual persons. But the reason that human souls are individual persons is because each soul is equipped with one set of rational faculties which are sufficient for being a person. Suppose then that God is a soul which is endowed with three complete sets of rational faculties each of which is sufficient for personhood. In that case God, though one soul, would not be one person but rather he would be three persons for God would have three centers of self-consciousness, intentionality, and volition. God would clearly not be three discrete souls because these cognitive faculties are all faculties of just one soul. So God would be one soul which is tri-personal in nature. Just as individual souls support one person because they are equipped with one set of rational faculties sufficient for personhood, God is a soul which is equipped with three sets of rational faculties, each sufficient for personhood. This sort of model gives a clear sense to the classical formula three persons in one substance.

The model does not include the derivation of one person from the other which is enshrined in the confession of the Nicene Creed that the Son is begotten of the Father, light of light, very God of very God, begotten not made. The model does not preclude that either. It just leaves it an open question. So the derivation of one person from another can be added. But on the model, God could just exist eternally with his three sets of cognitive faculties and capacities. Three self-consciousnesses. This is a strength of the model because although the doctrine of the generation of the Son from the Father and the procession of the Spirit is a part of Nicene orthodoxy, nevertheless it seems to be a relic of this old Logos Christology of the Greek apologists which has no warrant in the biblical text and introduces a subordinationism into the Godhead which would make affirming the full deity of Christ very troubling.

Biblically speaking, the vast majority of contemporary New Testament scholars recognize that the word which is translated in the authorized version as “only begotten” (namely monogenes) means simply “unique” or “one and only.” It does not mean “only begotten.” It means “unique” or “one and only.” Most modern translations will translate verses like John 1:14 and others not as “only begotten” but as “God the one and only”. It is true that when this is used in the context of a family then to say that a child is monogenes is an only child would imply that he is only begotten. It does not mean only begotten but it would imply that this child is only begotten. But at the biblical references to monogenes which would include verses like John 1:14 or John 1:18 when it says the only begotten God or God the one and only who is in the bosom of the Father has made the Father known they are not talking in these verses about some kind of pre-creation or eternal procession of the divine Son from the Father. Rather, they seem to be connected with the historical Jesus being God's Son. It is in virtue of the incarnation that Jesus is God's special Son. For example, Luke 1:35 is an illustration of this. Luke 1:35 – this is the annunciation to Mary by the angel. In verse 35 the angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the most high will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be called Holy, the Son of God.” Here Jesus being the Son is connected with the virginal conception. It is because Jesus had no human father that he could be called God's special Son. If that is right then Jesus being monogenes has less to do with the Trinity than with the incarnation.

This primitive understanding of Jesus’ Sonship can be seen still in the letters of the very early post-apostolic church father Ignatius. Ignatius describes Christ as “one Physician, of flesh and of spirit, begotten and unbegotten,. . . both of Mary and of God” (Ephesians 7). Here Ignatius associates Jesus being begotten with his flesh being begotten of Mary, but insofar as he is Spirit and of God he is unbegotten he says. There is no idea here in Ignatius at least that Christ is begotten in his divine nature.

The transference of Jesus being God’s Son from Jesus of Nazareth to the pre-incarnate Logos seems to be an invention of these early Greek apologists. It has helped to depreciate the importance of the historical Jesus for Christian faith.

Theologically speaking, orthodox theology rejects firmly any depreciation of the Son with regard to the Father. For example, Athanasius writes, “They that depreciate the Only-Begotten Son of God blaspheme God, defaming His perfection and accusing Him of imperfection, and render themselves liable to the severest chastisement" (In illud omnia mihi tradia sunt 6). Here what Athanasius is condemning is subordinationism which is a doctrine inspired by Gnostic or Neo-Platonic thought which conceived of God as “the One” - a kind of undifferentiated unity which then in a kind of series of stair steps descends down to the world and in which there could have been these kind of intermediate stages that are not equal to the One but are kind of lower-class deities. For example, Origen who was trained under the Neo-Platonist philosopher Ammonius Saccas, says this about the Son. He speaks of the Son as a deity of the second rank having a sort of derivative divinity as far removed from that of the Father as he himself is from creatures. He says the Son's divinity is as far from the Father's divinity as it is from the creatures below him. That kind of subordinationism was rejected by the church fathers. Origen was condemned for holding such a view. Yet at the same time these very same theologians continued to affirm the doctrine that the Logos is begotten of the Father. The Son in their view derives his being from God the Father. Athanasius says this: “the Son has His being not of Himself but of the Father” (On the Opinion of Dionysius 15). Hilary (another church father) declares that “He is not the source of His own being. . . . it is from His [the Father's] abiding nature that the Son draws His existence through birth” (On the Trinity 9.53; 6.14; cf. 4.9). These same theologians that affirmed the full equality of the Son and the Father also affirmed that the Son does not have existence in himself but derives his being from the Father. Despite their assurances to the contrary, this does nothing but diminish the Son because he becomes an effect which is contingent upon the Father. Even if this eternal procession takes place necessarily and apart from the Father’s will, the Son is less than the Father because the Father alone exists a se, that is to say through himself or of himself. He has aseity. The Father exists a se while the Son exists through another.

Subordinationism in The Godhead
This model of the Trinity – of God as a tri-personal soul – does not feature (though it does not preclude) the derivation of one person of the Trinity from another. It does not include the notion of the Son's being eternally begotten from the Father. It is good that the model leaves this an open question because the doctrine of the begetting of the Son from the Father in his divine (as opposed to human) nature is not biblically attested. It also introduces an inevitable element of subordinationism into the Godhead which would seem to make the Son inferior to the Father because only the Father is unbegotten who exists in a self-existent way and the Son has the ground of his being in the Father and therefore has a derivative existence which makes the Son arguably inferior to the Father.

The early church fathers interpreted this Arian proof-text (John 14:28), “The Father is greater than I,” not in terms of Christ’s humanity but in terms of his being generated eternally from the Father. Athanasius, for example, affirms that the reason the Father is greater than the Son is because only the Father is unbegotten. Similarly Hilary (another church father) says, “The Father is greater than the Son: for manifestly He is greater Who makes another to be all that He Himself is, Who imparts to the Son by the mystery of the birth the image of His own unbegotten nature, Who begets Him from Himself into His own form” (On the Trinity 9.54). Does that not make the Son therefore inferior to the Father if the Father is the source and the origin of the Son? Hilary denies it. Hilary says, “The Father therefore is greater, because He is Father: but the Son, because He is Son, is not less” (9.56). The Father is greater than the Son, but the Son is not less than the Father. That is just to talk logical nonsense. That is similar to saying that six is greater than three, but three is not less than six. That just does not make logical sense.

Basil, one of the Cappadocian church fathers, sees the contradiction in Hilary’s statement, but he tries to avoid this contradiction by saying, “the evident solution is that the Greater refers to origination, while the Equal belongs to the Nature” (Fourth Theological Oration 9). So what Basil is saying is that the Father is greater in terms of origination (because he is unbegotten whereas the Son is begotten) but in terms of nature they both share the same nature and therefore are equal. This reply raises all kinds of difficult questions. Does it not belong to the nature of the Father as an individual person to be unbegotten? And does it not belong to the nature of the Son as an individual person to be begotten? Or is there a possible world in which the Father is begotten and not unbegotten? Classical trinitarian theology would deny this. So how are the Father and the Son equal in nature if greatness refers to origination and the manner of their origination is essential to their individual natures. Suppose that they are equal in nature but that the Father has the contingent property of being unbegotten and the Son has the contingent property of being begotten. In that case they have the same nature but the Father still has this contingent property of being unbegotten, a property the Son lacks. Would that not make him greater than the Son at least in this respect? It would.

So what Basil has to say is that having self-existence is not after all a perfection or a great-making property. He says, “That which is from such a Cause is not inferior to that which has no Cause; for it would share the glory of the Unoriginate, because it is from the Unoriginate” (Ibid.). That is not a convincing answer. To be dependent upon the unoriginated being for one’s existence is to lack a ground of being in oneself alone, and that surely is not as great as to be a self-existent being which is able to exist all on one’s own. It has the ground of its existence in itself. This kind of derivative being is the same way in which creatures exist. Creatures exist in virtue of being caused by another.

So despite the protestations to the contrary, Nicaean orthodoxy has not completely shed the subordinationism that was introduced into the doctrine of the Trinity by the early Greek apologists with their Logos doctrine.

The Ontological and Economic Trinity
Suppose that the notion that the Son and the Spirit proceed eternally from the Father is dropped from the doctrine of Trinity. The model does not feature it though it does not preclude it. So suppose that is dropped off. How then should the intra-trinitarian relations be understood? Here a distinction between the ontological Trinity and the economic Trinity has to be drawn. The ontological Trinity is the Trinity as it exists in and of itself apart from God’s relationship to creation. This is the Trinity or God insofar as he exists in and of himself apart from any relation to the created order. The economic Trinity has reference to the different roles played by the persons of the Trinity in relation to the world and in particular to the plan of salvation. So the question that is raised is: to what degree is the economic Trinity a reflection of the ontological Trinity?

Marcellus of Ancyra, an important church Father during his own time, was one of the leaders at the Council of Nicaea who championed the orthodox cause. But as Marcellus read the Gospel of John he noticed that the Logos is not referred to as “the Son” until after the incarnation. In fact it would be hard-pressed to find anywhere in the New Testament where there is a reference unambiguously to the pre-incarnate Christ as “the Son.” These observations led Marcellus to hypothesize that prior to creation the economic Trinity just did not exist. The Logos becomes “the Son” only with his incarnation. So on Marcellus’ view the relations in the economic Trinity do not always mirror the distinctions within the ontological Trinity.

Similarly on the model of the Trinity the persons of the ontological Trinity can be just as similar to one another as three individuals can be in terms of having the same knowledge, the same love, the same will, although each one from its own first-person perspective. It may well be arbitrary which person chooses to play the role of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Those titles have reference to the economic Trinity – the relations that are played by the three persons in the plan of salvation with respect to the created order. “The Son” is whichever one of the three becomes incarnate and takes on a human nature. “The Spirit” is the one who stands in the place of and continues the ministry of the Son. And “the Father” is the one who sends the Son and the Spirit. But in a possible world in which God did not create any world at all but just existed alone the economic Trinity would not exist even though the ontological Trinity would exist.

In contrast to Marcellus it is unnecessary to say that the economic Trinity began at the moment of creation as he thought. The economic Trinity exists eternally because the persons of the Godhead all knew the respective roles that they would play in the plan of salvation. They have foreknowledge of the different roles that they will play even if the deployment of that economy does not take place until the fullness of time when Christ eventually becomes incarnate and so forth so.

On this view the economic Trinity can be just as eternal as the ontological Trinity but it is not fundamental to the nature of God or of the persons. Although they did not agree with Marcellus’ rather maverick view, both Athanasius and the other members of the Nicene party continued to support him. Although he was pushing the boundaries of orthodoxy, they felt that he was still one of themselves and part of the orthodox party.

On this view within the economic Trinity there is subordination (or maybe a better word would be submission) of one person to another. The Son submits to and does the Father’s will, and the Spirit speaks not on his own account but he speaks on behalf of the Son. This economic Trinity does not mirror or reflect differences in the ontological Trinity between the persons. Rather the economic Trinity is an expression of God’s free and loving condescension on our behalf for the sake of our salvation. So on this view the error of Logos Christology was conflating the economic Trinity with the ontological Trinity and thereby introducing this subordinationism right into the nature of God himself rather than seeing it as purely functional.

Argument for the Truth of the Trinity
A plausibility argument for the truth of the doctrine of the Trinity can be offered. The doctrine of the Trinity belongs to revealed theology not natural theology. That is to say it is not possible to prove that God is a tri-personal being through the resources of human reason alone. It might be possible to prove that God exists but it cannot be known that God is a Trinity. Rather, this is a matter of divine revelation, and one accepts this doctrine based upon God’s self-revelation in Scripture as a tri-personal being: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Still, there are arguments that might support the plausibility of this doctrine that would say, yes, this teaching or doctrine is a credible teaching.

This plausibility argument has been defended by a number of contemporary Christian philosophers for God’s being a plurality of persons – not simply one person but a plurality of persons. The argument goes like this. By definition God is the greatest conceivable being. That is St. Anselm’s insight in the ontological argument. If anything greater than God could be conceived then that would be God. So by definition God is the greatest conceivable being. Now as the greatest conceivable being God must be morally perfect. A perfect being must be morally perfect because to be morally perfect is a great-making property. Love is a moral perfection, and therefore a most perfect being (a greatest conceivable being) must be a loving being. It is better for a person to be loving than to be unloving. So as a morally perfect person God must be essentially loving – a perfectly loving being.

It belongs to the very nature of love to give oneself away to another. Love reaches out to another person rather than centering wholly in oneself. If one loves they are giving themself away to another. Since God is perfectly loving by his very nature (this belongs to the essence of God) that means that God must be giving himself in love to another. But who is that other? It cannot be any created person because creation is a result of God’s free will, not a result of his nature. It belongs to the very nature of God to be loving, but it does not belong to the very nature of God to be creating. So there is a possible world in which God freely chooses to refrain from creating anything at all. There are no creatures at all in such a world and God remains solitary and alone. And yet God would still be essentially loving in such a world because love belongs to his very nature as the most perfect being. So created persons, though they are loved by God, cannot be the explanation for whom God essentially loves. Moreover it is known from modern science that created persons have not always existed. The universe has been around for around 14 billion years and human beings have only appeared relatively recently on the scene. Therefore even though God loves created persons, they are not eternal. They have not always existed. But God is eternally loving. He did not just begin to be loving some time ago when human beings came into existence. So, again, created persons cannot sufficiently explain or account for God’s being a perfectly loving being.

It therefore follows that the other to whom God’s love is necessarily directed must be internal to God himself. In other words, God is not a single isolated individual person as unitarian forms of theism like Islam hold. Rather God must be a plurality of persons as the Christian doctrine of the Trinity affirms. On a unitarian view of God like Islam, God is a person who does not give himself away essentially in love for another. He is focused essentially only on himself, and therefore he cannot be the most perfect being, the greatest conceivable being. But on the Christian view, God is a triad of persons in eternal, self-giving, love relationships. Because God is essentially loving, the doctrine of the Trinity is more plausible than any unitarian concept of God.

This is a very good argument for thinking that God is a plurality of persons. It does not prove that God is three persons, but it does show that there must be a plurality of persons in God to whom God’s love is necessarily directed. Therefore it serves to show the plausibility of the doctrine of the Trinity.

Practical Application of the Trinity
Three points can be made about the application of the doctrine of the Trinity to people’s lives.

Ordering Prayer Lives Correctly
The doctrine of the Trinity helps us to order our prayer lives correctly. When the disciples came to Jesus and said to him, Teach us to pray, how did Jesus teach them to pray? He taught them to pray to the Father. “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” Prayers are to be directed to the Father. Jesus also said, Whatever you ask in my name I will do it for you. So people are to come to the Father in the person and the authority of the Son. It is because people are in Christ that they dare to approach the throne of the holy God, sinful creatures though humans are, to give their request. Then they do it in the power of the Holy Spirit. Paul says in Romans 8, We don’t know how to pray as we ought but the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness with groans too deep to be uttered, and he who knows the mind of the Spirit then knows what requests we make of him and what we need. The Spirit intercedes for people according to God’s will. So while one might on occasion pray to the Lord Jesus or invoke the presence of the Holy Spirit, the normal model for prayer life ought to be prayer directed to the Father in the authority and name of the Son and with the power of the Holy Spirit.

Family and Marriage Relationship
The Trinity provides a very healthy model of the family and the marriage relationship. I the Trinity all three of the persons are co-equal. They are all omnipotent, omniscient, morally perfect, eternal, and so forth. They are all partakers of the divine nature and so completely equal. And yet in the economic Trinity these persons take on different roles in the plan of salvation. The Father sends the Son into the world. The Son takes a human nature to himself and dies on the cross as a substitutionary punishment for the sins. The Holy Spirit then works in the place of the Son to establish the church until the Son returns to Earth. So there is a subordinationism (or a submission) of the persons in the economic Trinity. The Son submits to the Father and his will. The Holy Spirit submits to the Son and stands in his place and continues his ministry. So even though all three of the persons are co-equal there is a kind of submission of one person to another within the economic Trinity.

In the same way, in the marriage relationship the husband and the wife are co-equal before God – both made in the image of God. In Galatians 3:28 Paul says, “In Christ there is neither male nor female, slave nor free, but you are all one in Christ Jesus.” So before God’s throne in God’s grace the husband and the wife are co-equal. Similarly the children are equal with the parents insofar as they are in Christ and before God. They are all equal. But in the family unit, for the sake of the functioning of the family, God says that the wife should submit to her husband’s leadership and that the children should submit to their parents and do as they are commanded by their parents. Contrary to what feminists assert, this does not in any way imply inferiority of the wife or of the children for that matter. This is a purely functional submission for the sake of order in the family and does not imply the inferiority of the wife or the inferiority of the children who are all co-equal before God.