I. OPENING QUESTIONS:

Christian's today accept as normal the concept of the Trinity, but it did not start out this way. With a resurgence of pagan polytheistic, worship of many gods, religious beliefs these questions become relevant again for today.

A. Why is the Doctrine of the Trinity important?
B. What does it say to us of the Father?
C. Of the Son?
D. Of the Holy Spirit?

II. BIBLICAL VIEW:

A. The Old Testament

1) Deuteronomy 6:4 The Shema: "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord." Also Exodus 20:3; Deuteronomy 4:35; 32:29; Isaiah 45:14; 46:9.

2) Genesis 1:26; 3:22; 11:7; Isaiah 6:8 The plural name for God, Elohim, seems to indicate distinctions of persons, but not specifically the Trinity.

3) Distinction of persons:

a. Psalm 110:1; Matthew 22:44-45 "The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool." The LORD is distinguished from the Lord.

b. Isaiah 59:20 "And the Redeemer shall come to Zion, and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob, saith the LORD." The Redeemer is distinguished from the LORD.

c. Isaiah 48:16; 59:21; 63:9-10 The Spirit is distinguished from the LORD.

1) I Corinthians 8:4-6; Ephesians 4:3-6; James 2:19 The New Testament insists that there is only one true God.

2) John 6:27; 1 Peter 1:2 The Father is recognized as God.

3) Matthew 9:4; 28:18, 20; John 1:1 Jesus Christ is recognized as God. Colossians 1:15; Hebrews 1:1-3; 1 Peter 3:22.

4) Acts 5:3-4; I Corinthians 2:10; 6:19; John 3:5-6,8 The Holy Spirit is recognized as God.

C. Formulas:

1) Matthew 28:19 Baptismal formula is to baptize in the name or the authority of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

2) John 15:26 Jesus reveals that the Holy Spirit, like Jesus, proceeds from the Father.

3) I Peter 1:2 Our election is based upon the "foreknowledge" or plan of God the Father, sanctification of the Spirit and "unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ."

4) I John 5:6-7 "For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one."

D. In Creation:

1) Jesus was involved: Hebrews 1:1-3; John 1:3; Colossians 1:15-17; Revelation 4:11.

2) The Holy Spirit was involved: Genesis 1:1-2.

E. Trinity:

In John 10:30 Jesus said, "I and the Father are one." "I and the Father" clearly distinguishes two Persons! The verb is also plural. "One" is neuter which declares a oneness in nature or essence, but not Person, which would require a masculine form. Jesus distinguishes himself from the Father and yet claims unity and equality with the Father.

It is difficult to devise a formula for the Trinity. Most err either on the side of Oneness or Threeness. B. B. Warfield states, "There is one only and true God, but in the unity of the Godhead there are three coeternal and coequal Persons, the same in substance but distinct in substance. ("Trinity," The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, James Orr, ed. [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1930], 5:3012).

Augustine (354-439) gave the final conception of the Trinity to the Western Church; that "each divine person is, in respect to substance, identical with the others, or with the entire divine substance: 'For Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit together are not a greater essence than the Father alone or the Son alone, but these three substances, or persons, if they be so called are together equal to each one alone" (Seeburg, The History of Doctrines I, Page 238).

The Augustinian conception of the Trinity was embodied for the Western Church in the so-called Athanasian Creed. The date is unknown, but it is thought to have been completed by the year 500. (Seeburg, the History of Doctrine I, Page 241-243).

The Athanasian Creed

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, another of the Holy Spirit; but the Godhead of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is one, the glory equal, the majesty coeternal. Such as is the Father, such is the Son, and such the Holy Spirit ... And yet there are not three uncreated nor three unbounded, but one uncreated and one unbounded ... not three omnipotents, but one omnipotent ... The Son is the only (son) of the Father; not made, not created, but begotten. The Holy Spirit is of the Father and the Son, not made nor created nor begotten, but proceeding ... In this Trinity there is nothing before or after, nothing greater or less; but the whole three persons are coeternal together and coequal, so that in all things, as has been said above, both the unity in trinity and the trinity in unity is to be worshipped. Whoever, therefore, wishes to be saved, let him think thus concerning the Trinity.

III. THE PERSON OF CHRIST

A. Biblical Basis:

1. The humanity of Christ:

a) Matthew 1:18, 20-23; Luke 1:26-31, 35 Jesus had a mother.
b) Luke 2:52 Jesus grew in wisdom, stature and favor with God and man.
c) Matthew 16:13 Jesus was in appearance a man and called himself the Son of man.
d) Hebrews 4:15 Jesus was tempted in ALL points as we are.
e) Jesus' body was subject to the ordinary physical limitations: he became hungry, sleepy, tired, etc.
f) Luke 4:1, 14 Jesus depended upon the Holy Spirit.
g) Matthew 26:39 Jesus sought divine guidance.
h) Matthew 26:37-38 Jesus sought companionship.
i) Jesus died.

a) The testimony of his disciples.

1-1. Matthew 16:16 Peter: "Thou art the Christ."
2-2. John 20:28 Thomas: "My Lord and my God."
3-3. John 1:41 Andrew: "We have found the Messiah."
4-4. John 1:14 John: "And the Word became flesh."
5-5. Galatians 4:4 Paul: "God sent forth his son."
6-6. Philippians 2:6 Paul: "Who being in the form of God..."

b) God's testimony of Christ.

1-1. Matthew 3:17 At Christ's baptism: "This is my beloved Son."
2-2. Matthew 17:5 At the transfiguration: "This is my beloved Son, hear ye him..."

c) The testimony of the angels.

1-1. Luke 1:35 To Mary: "...shall be called the Son of God."
2-2. To the women at the tomb: "Why seek ye the living among the dead?"

d) The testimony of Jesus himself.

1-1. John 17:21 "The Father and I are one."
2-2. Jesus called God "Father."

e) Matthew 28:19; II Corinthians 13:14 the name of Christ is used in the baptismal and benediction formulas.

f) Matthew 4:9-10; 2:11; 8:2; 9:18; 14:33; 15:25; 18:26; 28:9,17; Mark 5:6; Luke 24:52; John 9:38 Christ accepted worship.

g) Matthew 9:2; Mark 2:5; Luke 5:20; 7:47-48; Christ forgave sin.

h) Hebrews 4:15; II Corinthians 5:21; I Peter 2:22; I John 3:5 Christ lived a sinless life.

i) Christ performed miracles.

j) John 1:1-5 Jesus was with God in the beginning.

k) II Corinthians 5:19 God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.

1. Question:

There is only one God! Thus Jesus cannot be equal to God or a divine part of God.

Many religions today claim that Christ is representative of their faith. They also claim that there is one God, yet say Christ is only one of many who discovered the "way" to God. Jesus said, "No one comes to the Father but my me," John 6:45

If Christ is a creation, what does it mean in regards to our salvation?
Can Christ really show us the Father?
Can Christ teach us about God?
Could a creature pay the ransom for mankind? Or atone for man's sins?
Or appease the honor of God?
If Christ is only showing us how to search out God, does it imply that God is not searching for us?
What does this say about being born again?

A triune belief of God is evident in the Scriptures and the early church although the formula is not explicit.

The Apostolic Fathers stated simply that, "These three are one God, because there belongs to them one power."

a) Council of Nicea, 325:

The trinitarian controversy came to a head in the struggle between Arius and Athanasius. The culture was pagan, polytheism, with a pattern of one god with many children. Thus Arius asserted that Christ was a creation of God and not true God himself. (Refer to lesson 1, the 325 Council of Nicea.)

A dispute arose over the incarnation, Christ's relationship to God. Arians tried to protect the doctrine of monotheism (One God) and denied that Christ was the eternal Son of God asserting that Christ was a created being and thus was not of the same substance or essence as the Father.

ARIUS STRESSED THAT:

1) There is only ONE unbegotten God, the Son dare not be represented as an emanation, or a part of the Father having the same nature, nor as alike created.

2) The Son had a beginning, being created by God BEFORE the beginning of the world.

3) The Son is the Logos and the Wisdom of the Father, but he is different from the Logos immanent in God.

4) The Logos is a creature of the Father, created by him as a medium in the creation of the world.

5) The Logos is changeable, inconsistent. But since God foreknew that he would remain good, he bestowed upon him IN ADVANCE the glory which he afterward as man merited by his virtue. IT IS THROUGH THE WILL OF THE FATHER THAT CHRIST IS ONE WITH GOD.

Problem: People interpreting Scripture from their own culture rather than interpreting culture from the Scripture! Arians were bringing their old understanding, tradition, to interpret a NEW THING! Scripture MUST and DOES TRANSCEND THE WORLD!

"The OBJECT of this whole method of regarding the subject is to establish a firm foundation for the salvation of man. Inasmuch as Christ was really God, he could deify the flesh which he assumed; and inasmuch as this was really human flesh, human nature has thereby been deified." (Seeburg, History of Doctrine I, Page 212)

"But it still remains the MATTER OF CHIEF IMPORTANCE that, through the incarnation of the Logos, God himself has entered into the human race for abiding fellowship, and the latter have thereby secured grace and righteousness, the Holy Spirit, a new life and with it immortality:" (Seeburg, History of Doctrine I, Page 214)

IV. THE PERSON OF THE HOLY SPIRIT:

Up to the time of the Nicean Council (325), the Holy Spirit had not come in for a great deal of consideration. Arius held that the Holy Spirit was the first created being produced by the Son. Athenasius asserted that the Holy Spirit was of the same essence with the Father.

Athanasius later applied the same arguments to prove the Holy Spirit is also fully God, "But if in the fellowship of the Spirit we become partakers of the divine nature, he would be mad who should say that the Spirit is of created nature and not of the nature of God. (Seeburg, History of Doctrines, Page 215)

The final formulation came from John of Damascus of the eastern church who expressed that there is but one divine essence, but three persons. The relations of the persons to one another is described as one of 'mutual interpenetration', without commingling.

V. ON THE TWO NATURES OF CHRIST:

A. Question:

A major issue raised in the discussion of the Trinity involved the union of the Holy Christ and earthly nature of man.

What is the relationship between the man Jesus and the Christ?
Are their two wills and intellects or one made of the two?
In the incarnation, is Christ more divine or natural?

1. Apollinarius:

Apollinarius of Laodicea, born 310, attempted to define the relationship between the divine nature of Christ and the human nature of Jesus. Believed that the Logos assumed the body and soul of a man, but that the divine Logos took the place of the spirit or intellectual soul. The Logos did not assume a human soul, but only the seed of Abraham. "For God having become incarnate, has in the human flesh simply his own energy, his mind being unsubject to sensual and carnal passions, and divinely and sinlessly guiding the flesh and controlling the fleshly emotions, and not alone unconquerable by death, but also destroying death. And he is true God, the unfleshly appearing in the flesh, the perfect one in genuine and divine perfection, NOT TWO PERSONS, NOR TWO NATURES." (History of Doctrines I, Page 245)

As man Jesus could suffer, and as divine Christ could save the world.

However he failed to explain how two personal natures could exist in one person.

The Antiochians proposed two distinct natures, one human and one divine. Their conclusion was that the Son of God dwelt within the son of David, the Logos dwelt in the man Jesus. This was not seen as a 'natural' union, but a moral union which exists between the two according to their 'good pleasure'. The two personal natures through their unity of will can be spoken of as one person. They are two different natures, each nature remaining indissolubly by itself, but in their combination they are one person. The example of the union of husband and wife is used as becoming one flesh, where it is said, "The one receives blessing, the other gives it!"

Accordingly in the sufferings of Christ "the deity was indeed separated from him who suffered. The worship of Jesus is, therefore, possible only in so far as the worshipper combines in his thought his humanity and his divinity.

It cannot be said that the divine has really become man, as there is only a moral union by the will of each.

The Cappadocians followed the approach of Athanasius that the God-man is a concrete unit, in whom we discriminate in the abstract two natures. They thought of two natures coalesced in one, a miraculous commingling, the one deifying and the other deified.

Gregory of Nyssa stated it as such: "He mixed his lifegiving power with the mortal and perishable nature.... The Immutable appears in the mutable, in order that, having changed and transformed from the worse into the better the evil commingled with the mutable subject, he might, having expended the evil in himself cause it to disappear from the nature. For our God is a consuming fire, in which all wood of evil is thoroughly burnt up".

The historical character of Christ compels them to maintain the two complete natures as well as the intimate union of these two natures. But their conception of redemption leads them to think of this union as a commingling of the natures, as a transformation of the human into the divine.

Cyril of Alexandria (Bishop from 412-444) gave the final formulation of the problem. Cyril taught that two natures are to be acknowledged, the divine and the human, both of them complete, so that the latter includes the reasoning soul (spirit); Christ is "of like nature with his mother as with his father." In consequence of his becoming man, there is a concurrence and union of these two natures; NOT a conversion or change, since "the nature of the Logos is immutable and absolutely unchangeable." Both natures retain their own characteristics unmingled.

The deity throughout all the changes of its earthly lot remains in its full glory what it was beforehand, and the humanity remains complete with us. Cyril can speak of two natures and he can compare the relation of the two as that of body and soul in man, which together compose one man. After their union, the two natures are the same as they were before, but they are combined in indissoluble unity by means of the unity of the person.

Christ Jesus remains the mediator between God and man because he has combined both natures, not turning into flesh, but rather taking it to himself, and ever mindful of his being God. "SINCE THERE IS HERE BUT ONE PERSON, ALL THE ATTRIBUTES MAY BE ASCRIBED TO THE ONE CHRIST. THE LOGOS IS VISIBLE AND TANGIBLE. HIS SUFFERINGS ARE THE SUFFERINGS OF GOD. HUNGER AND THIRST, LEARNING AND PRAYING, WERE PARTS OF HIS EXPERIENCE; WHILE, ON THE OTHER HAND, THE BODY OF CHRIST WAS A 'DIVINE BODY', AND THE SON OF MAN COMES FROM HEAVEN, RETURNS TO IT, IS WORSHIPPED, ETC. (HISTORY OF DOCTRINES I, Page 254)

Cyril's contribution is his emphasis upon the UNITY Christ Jesus' person and manifestation.

The Western church did not concern itself with this controversy since they held little concern for the emphasis upon the incarnation and resurrection or our identification with God held by the Eastern Church. The West instead emphasized forgiveness and the freedom from guilt and moral purity. Seeing God alone as transcendent from the world they stressed the need for a mediator. While the West sought not to compromise God, the East stressed the deliverance of the flesh from mortality. In 341 the Western church unconditionally endorsed the doctrine of Athanasius.

The Western church rested upon the formula of Tertullian and did not go through the questioning or even see the discussion as a 'problem'. Hilary of Poitiers stated that, Christ is God and man. As One, he is God just as he is man; "neither to believe that Christ is other than Jesus, nor to preach that Jesus is other than Christ". He believed that the divine nature did not and could not feel the sufferings.

Ambrose presented the genuine Western Christology of Tertullian: "the Son of God is said to be one in both natures, because both natures are in the same a two fold substance...both of divinity and of flesh."

Augustine did not advance beyond the views traditional in the West. Augustine held as a fixed fact that in Christ two complete natures or substances constitute one person; "Christ is one person of two-fold substance, because he is both God and man."

God is three in One revealed as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

a) Old Testament:

1-1. ELOHIM (plural) - Genesis 1:26

b) New Testament:

1-1. The Baptism of Jesus - Matthew 3:16,17
2-2. Baptismal formula - Matthew 28:19,20
3-3. Apostolic Benediction - II Corinthians 13:14
4-4. John 14:26

c) Scriptural Summary:

1-1. The Father as God - John 6:27
2-2. The Son as God - Hebrews 1:8; Titus 2:12,13
3-3. The Holy Spirit as God - Acts 5:3,4
4-4. Luke 2:52

Jesus was born of a woman of the Father God's divine seed - Luke 1:26-33. Thus Jesus is all God and all human. Jesus was born without sin and maintained a sinless life to offer himself as a perfect sacrifice. Jesus was not born perfect, but innocent as Adam. But while Adam was born of God's breath, Jesus is born of the same essence, substance of God - Philippians 2:5-11. Jesus grew in wisdom, stature as well as in favor with God and man - Luke 2:52. Jesus "Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; and being made perfect, be became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him."

VI. CLOSING STATEMENTS:

In answer to the Questions raised at the beginning of this lesson, let me respond:

The Doctrine of the trinity is important because it defines the coequality and coeternality and the cosubstantiality of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. We find not three separate independent beings, but three manifestations of the One and True God who created all things and set all things in order.

That God the Father really loves and cares for us as children because He not only created and ordered all things; but as Father desired to reveal Himself to His children on their level and has throughout history sought us to reconcile us to Himself so that we can have a full and positive relationship with each other. The Bible is unique because it is written not as a documentation of man's quest for God, but of God's quest for man!

Jeremiah prophesied, another evidence of God's search for mankind, "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord: But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more." Jeremiah 31:31-34.

In order o consolidate this new covenant, God as Father begot His very nature into the earth. "And they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us (Matthew 1:23)" He was called Jesus which means Savior. Thus Jesus was born of a virgin, all man and all God.

That Jesus was truly a mediator! As Christ Jesus He revealed the nature, personality and character of God. Christ revealed the great love of the Father for us, not as creatures but as individuals created in His own image. As Jesus Christ He revealed man's ability to be united with God, knowing God fully and intimately, being transformed from death caused by sin into everlasting life. Everlasting life is not living for ever, but it is descriptive of the very life which only God possesses!

"But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace; And that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby: And came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh. For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father. Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God;" Ephesians 2:13-19.

That the Holy Spirit is that part of God which empowers us with God's nature, personality and character for witnessing, Acts 1:8, and for daily living. For we are in the world, but not of it. The Holy Spirit counsels us, guides us and comforts us; thus revealing the interpenetration and union between God and man. The Holy Spirit teaches us of God in a way that exceeds our ability to know God simply through the witness of Jesus and Jesus' doctrine. The Holy Spirit, like Jesus, does not act independently of the Father. The Holy Spirit takes that which belongs to the Father and the Son and reveals them to us.