The Trinity is the bedrock of our
beliefs as Christians. If we do not know
who God is how can we know anything about how we are to live in relation to
this God? There have been a number of
disagreements throughout history about how we are to understand God. In this paper we will look at three different
time periods. First we will see that during
the ancient church the Arian controversy forced the theologians of the day to
truly grapple with the question who is this God that we know as Father, Son and
Holy Spirit. Then we will look at some
of the confessions of the Reformation
to see if the believers of that time found it necessary to redefine the Trinity
in any way. Finally, we will end by
looking at a redefinition that is being attempted by a few evangelical
theologians today to see how well it fits into the historical understanding of
God.
“The
problem of the relationship between God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ
became an acute problem in the church soon after the cessation of persecution.”
During the early days of Christianity, the persecution kept the focus away from
theological disputes since survival was the highest priority. Once time was available for theological
thought and dispute, it was only natural that the question of this one God with
three different names and focuses would arise.
In trying to understand God, the early church worked diligently to
express two seemingly contradictory truths.
From Judaism we inherited through the Old Testament the truth that there
is only one God. From Jesus and the New
Testament we learned of three individuals who are represented as being equal to
God. There is one God and yet there is a
Father, a Son and a Holy Spirit. How do
we even begin to understand this?
In
the Apostles’ Creed (the earliest of the three universal creeds accepted by the
church)
this truth is alluded to in passing as we say “I believe in” for each member of
the Trinity individually,
but it is not hammered out in a definitive way as the Arian controversy was to
show. Much of the controversy focused on the Father
and the Son in order to sort out their relationship to each other. Scripture shows them both as equals and yet
also as a Father with a subordinate Son.
Origen, one of the ancient church fathers presented the Father and the
Logos as being of the same substance by using the word begotten for the
existence of Jesus rather than created.
However, Origen still saw a subordination in Jesus when placed beside
His Father. Were the Father and the Son one or two? The question would be answered by two opposing
perspectives debating the different possibilities. Alexander, bishop of Alexandria and later
Athanasius argued for unity between Jesus and the Father. Arius and those who agreed with him argued
for a greater distinction between the Father and the Son. “Origen’s theology could be developed either
in the direction of emphasizing the unity of the nature (this Alexander did) or
of emphasizing the subordination to the extent of saying different natures
(this Arius, with a penchant for pushing things to their logical conclusions,
did). Since the exact relation of the
Logos to the Supreme God was still not clearly agreed upon, further formulation
was needed.”
“Constantine
tried to settle the dispute by letters to the bishop of Alexandria and Arius,
but the dispute had gone beyond the power even of a letter from the
emperor. Constantine then called a
council of the bishops of the church to work out a solution to the dispute. This council met at Nicaea in the early
summer of 325.” The
result of this council was the first Nicene creed which was then followed by 56
more years of wrangling and a final Nicene creed in 381. This creed is the second creed accepted by
the universal church.
This creed clearly shows Jesus as God equal with the Father and as subordinate
Son only for a limited time while involved in His earthly ministry.
The
Nicene creed emphasizes both God’s unity and tri-personhood. “The doctrine of the unity of God is held in
contradistinction to Polytheism, which is belief in a multiplicity of gods; to
Tritheism, which teaches that there are three Gods—that is, that the Father,
the Son and the Holy Ghost are, specifically, three distinct Gods; and to
Dualism, which teaches that there are two independent divine beings or eternal
principles, the one good, and the other evil, as set forth in Gnostic systems,
such as Parseeism.” So we believe in the unity of God—there is
only one God. But God is not only unity,
He is also Trinity—three persons in one God.
“We Christians uniquely believe in one tri-personal God: Father, Son and
Spirit. It is this doctrine that
explains how Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit can be ‘coequal’ God with the
Father. Christ is God in revelation. Our saving knowledge of God is given solely
through Jesus Christ. We worship Jesus
Christ because we believe He is God. The
Holy Spirit, we believe, likewise is God.
When the Holy Spirit comes into our life as we become Christians, God
comes into our life. If we think and
believe anything less about Jesus Christ or the Spirit, we think less of
God. If Jesus or the Spirit are in any
way less than God, then we are mistaken in worshiping Jesus Christ as God in
the power and presence of the Spirit of God.”
To
see the Trinity spelled out even more clearly than the Nicene creed manages to
do it, we can look at the third creed that the ancient church accepted
universally—the Athanasian creed. In the Athanasian creed the relationships in
the Godhead are spelled out very clearly and there is no room to suggest that
one person is subjugated under another. As
statements of faith, the creeds are amazing in pulling together what we believe
into a simple memory tool. Athanasian’s
is not as short and simple as the others and it finds at least one topic that
Protestants might challenge (the permanently Virgin Mary), but the thorough
description of God as Trinity is wonderful.
That we worship one God in
Trinity, and Trinity in Unity;
Neither confounding the persons
nor dividing the substance.
For there is one person of the
Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Spirit.
But the Godhead of the Father,
of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit is all one, the glory equal, the majesty coeternal.
Such as
the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Spirit.”
And this is but a snippet of how
the Athanasian creed describes the Trinity in their coequality. But now we move forward through time to take
a look at four confessions of faith from the Reformation.
We
will look at these four confessions of the Reformation to see how they see the
Trinity. Do they simply accept what the
ancient church Fathers had worked out or do they find a need for a different
definition? The earliest of the four is
the Schleitheim Confession of 1527
that was written by the Swiss Anabaptist Michael Sattler.
This confession simply puts forward in what ways the Anabaptists differ from
the other Christians of the time and so it does not give a definition of God
since they assume everyone already knows Who God is. Therefore it could be argued that they agree
with the Nicene creed, but they do not actually say what they believe about
God.
The
second confession we will look at is the Augsburg Confession of 1530 that was
largely written by Philip Melanchthon and reviewed by Martin Luther. It has become the major Lutheran Confession. This confession accepts the definition of God
found in the Nicene creed. “1] Our
churches, with common consent, do teach that the decree of the Council of
Nicaea concerning the unity of the Divine Essence and concerning the Three
Persons, is true and to be believed without doubting; 2] that is to say, there
is one Divine Essence which is called and which is God; . . . and 3] yet there are three Persons, of
the same essence and power, who also are coeternal, the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Ghost.” They believed in one God who through three
persons was one essence, one power and coeternal who were not only called God,
but are God so that none of the persons of the Godhead are God in name only but
God actually.
The
third confession we will look at is the Second Helvetic Confession of 1566 that
was written by Heinrich Bullinger from a Swiss Reformed perspective. It is a “[m]oderate statement of Reformed
doctrine emphasizing continuity with ancient church teaching” and was
Bullinger’s private confession. In this confession, Bullinger not only spells
out a description of God similar to the Nicene creed, but he also includes a
very interesting section that spells out what is a Trinitarian heresy. He says in this document “We also condemn all
heresies and heretics who teach that the Son and Holy Spirit are God in name
only, and also that there is something created and subservient, or subordinate
to another in the Trinity, and that there is something unequal in it, a greater
or a less . . . “ Jesus and the Holy Spirit are not God in name
only and are not subservient or subordinate to another in the Trinity and so
again we have a coequal Trinity—three equal persons making up one God.
The
fourth and final confession we will look at is the Westminster confession of
1647 which was written by delegates for the English Presbyterian church. This confession also takes its definition of
God from the Nicene creed since it specifies that God in all three of His
persons is only one substance, one power and one eternity. Again we have a classic description of the
Trinity that states that all three persons are equal in substance, power and
eternity—in another word “coequal”.
“The
Bible and the interpretive tradition summed up in the creeds and Reformation
confessions speak of a coequal Trinity where there is no hierarchical
ordering.” That is the only real summary one can find
looking at these creeds and confessions—there is one coequal Trinity where
there is no hierarchical ordering because they are all fully equal and living
in fellowship with one another. But what
about today, is our understanding of the Trinity still something that needs to
be discussed? Perhaps it is
surprising, but the Trinity is not simply “old hat” and unimportant because
what we believe about God affects what else we believe. But why is our understanding of the Trinity
so vital for today? Today there are two
main pictures (definitions) being presented to the church and each one is used
as a picture of how people are to interact with each other. So if we have a true understanding of the
Trinity, there is an excellent possibility that we also have a good
understanding of how people are to interact with each other and both pictures
(definitions) have people treating each other quite differently.
Many
theologians today still agree with this assessment of the Trinity that
subordination cannot be eternal for any person in the Trinity because God is
one in authority, power, eternity and equality. “In light of this contemporary stress on the
coequality of the divine persons who are to be understood to be bound together
in the most intimate bond of love and self-giving, it is no surprise that some
of the best contemporary expositions of the doctrine of the Trinity see the
Trinity as a charter for human liberation and emancipation. If no one divine person is before or after,
greater or lesser because they are “coequal” (as the Athanasian creed says),
this suggests, we are told, that all hierarchical ordering in this world is a
human construct reflecting fallen existence, not God’s ideal. God would like to see every human being
valued in the same way. It is the
Christian’s duty to oppose human philosophies and structures that oppress
people, limiting their full potential as human beings made in the image and likeness
of God.” When we read through the Gospels we see Jesus
raising women to a status not known previously (Mary sitting at Jesus’ feet to
study about God; the woman at the well participating in a theological
discussion with Jesus in Samaria; the women at the empty tomb being sent to
tell what they had witnessed because they were trusted to do so faithfully) and
what we find in the Trinity is the reason for such freedom and equality—it is a
part of the very nature of God that everyone is equal and therefore to be developed
to their full potential.
But
there is also another picture of the Trinity.
This picture has come to the forefront in the last few decades at the
same time that the Trinity living in equal community and fellowship has been
flourishing. This picture does not
encourage all people to work together as coequals living in community and
sharing the load together. This picture
returns to the hierarchies of the past and tells us that hierarchies are the
way God the Father intends us all to live.
How is this possible? “Paradoxically,
in this same thirty-year period [closer to forty now] many conservative
evangelicals concerned to maintain the permanent subordination of women have
been developing a doctrine of a hierarchically ordered Trinity in which the
Father rules over the Son just like men are to rule over women in the church
and the home. We are told that the
Father is eternally “head over” the Son just as men are permanently
“head over” women in the church and the home.
On this model of the Trinity, the doctrine of the Trinity indicates that
God has appointed some to rule and some to obey, and this is the ideal. It is not unfair to say that rather than
being a charter for emancipation and human liberation, this doctrine of the
Trinity suggests that social change and female liberation should be opposed.” With this picture we are told that patriarchy
is God’s intended will for human interaction.
We
are today hearing two very different definitions for the Trinity. In one definition each person—Father, Son and
Holy Spirit—is a full and equal part of the Trinity since God is quite simply
only one God. However, there is also
another definition in which it is proposed that Jesus is subordinate to His
Father because He is under the authority of His Father for all eternity while
at the same time He (Jesus) remains fully God.
This definition gives us God in hierarchy permanently with no
possibility of ever moving or changing such an arrangement.
Coming
full circle—the Trinity is the bedrock of our Christian beliefs. Who is this God? From the ancients we see that He is Trinity,
that He is three in one because God is one substance while also being three
persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. So there is only one God even while we see
three separate persons. Since God is one
substance, God is one God with one will, one power, one authority, and one
eternity. In essence God is a Trinity of
coequals. Authority and obedience cannot
be used to separate them because as the Augsburg confession and the Second
Helvetic confession show, it is a heresy
to call Jesus “God” in name only and if He is eternally subordinate and
eternally obeying God the Father, He has been relegated to being “God” in name
only. If Jesus is denied the full power
and authority of God, He is essentially denied being a part of the Godhead
because Jesus cannot simply be called God, He must also be God with the full
authority of God.
Therefore,
we must continue to abide by the picture that the ancients and the reformers
drew for us of the one God made up of three persons (the Father, the Son and
the Holy Spirit) living in loving and self-giving community as coequals for all
eternity. Amen.
