The Trinity: A mystery known by the Christian

Someone writing comments on a blog has given me an opportunity to write about the Trinity and Jesus as the only Son of the Father.

Quite a while ago, almost a year, some one wrote this about the Trinity in the comment section of a blog:

"God is Father when we ask of God the things we ask of a Father. God is Spirit when we ask of God the things we as [sic] of God the Spirit. And God is the Son when we ask of God the things we ask of God the Son.

Ask and it shall be given unto you.

It is maddening to hold these three in our head at the same time. Which is He. Father? Son? Holy Spirit? the answer is "yes". Is he Wisdom? Again the answer is "yes". Can there be more persons to the Trinity? Sure, why not? It does not violate Scripture at all. The only thing that violates Scripture is to think of them as separate gods.

They are all one and the same. What we see depends on how we look. And if we look in a really weird way, we will see a really weird manifestation."

I felt this person must be thinking of the Trinity in modalistic terms. That is, Father, Son and Holy Spirit are thought of as offices rather than eternal in their person. Like people who belong to the United Pentecostal Church or those who are called Jesus only Pentecostals they would in some way envision God as being sometimes father, sometimes son and sometimes spirit. Of course this would mean that when Jesus was praying to the Father he was really just praying to himself.

On the other hand, there are progressive Christians who have loosely formulated an old heresy that tends to divide the Trinity into different historical ages. This in its self is a kind of modalism. For instance according to this view there was the age of the Father (O.T.), then the time of the Son (The Gospels), and then the age of the Holy Spirit. They percieve that now in the age of the Spirit, the Spirit is doing a new thing or revealing more of God's revelation. In past ages the Ranters and Men of the Free Spirit held such a view. Some of todays' Pentecostal groups also fall into this aberrent teaching.

But then the person I mentioned above suggested that there could be more than three persons in the Trinity. That is, of course, a heresy. A very blatant heresy!

In this manner, some aberrent Christian groups have seen the Church as the fourth person of the Trinity. They are usually, but not always, Pentecostal groups. But what is important to understand here is that when the emphasis is on the Holy Spirit rather than Jesus, or when Jesus Christ is not lifted up to his proper position as the eternal Son of the Father all kinds of strange teachings slip into both the Church and individual conceptions of the Christian faith.

We are aware of God as Trinity because of our knowledge through the Scriptures of Jesus as the eternal Son of the Father.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. ...And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth." (John 1:1-3, 14)

Recently in another comment section on a different blog, the person mentioned above, rejecting modalism, tried explaining what they wrote earlier:

"Just to set the record straight, I am not a modalist. Probably the biggest difference between what I said and what modalism says is that Modalism says God puts on different masks, and what I said is that >we<> put on different masks.

Beyond that, the Doctrine of the Trinity is a human invention that tries to explain how it is that we can be monotheists and worship God the Father, his Son, and the Holy Spirit. The fact that people still argue about it passionately today is evidence that a) it is an unsatisfactory explanation, and b) nobody has any idea what they are really talking about. God Is Who God Is. That is God's name. We will never fully understand it and that is what the Doctrine of the Trinity ultimately asserts: A Mystery."

This turns into the very post-modern and progressive idea that we are the one who defines God.

Now that can turn on two different wheels. One can believe that we really do define God since we somehow are a part of God and there is this give and take between divinity and our own selves. Or, and this is probably what this person is referring to, God is so mysterious that we can't really know anything about him so we attempt to use words to define what is undefinable.

But here again we should return to the person of Jesus Christ. Since he is God's revelation of who God is we must look to Jesus as he is revealed in the Holy Scriptures. To attempt to define God without Jesus Christ is to miss not only the Trinity but also the grace of God.

From the very beginning the promise of the Messiah defines God as the gracious and forgiving one who provides for His people. For instance connected to the sin of Adam and Eve is the promise of a Savior.

God in the midst of his rebuke to the snake, who is either an image of Satan or is used by Satan to lead Eve astray, (so in reality God is speaking to Satan) promises the coming One who will defeat Satan. He states "And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel." (Genesis 3:15)

Derek Kidner in his wonderful little commentary on Genesis writes of this verse:

"There is good New Testament authority for seeing here the protevangelium, the first glimmer of the gospel. Remarkably, it makes its debut as a sentence passed on the enemy (cf. Col. 2:15), not a direct promise to man, for redemption is about God's rule as much as about man's need ... The prospect of struggle, suffering and human triumph is clear enough, but only the New Testament will unmask the figure of Satan behind the serpent (Rom. 16:20; Rev. 12:9; 20:2), and show how significant was the passing over of Adam for the woman and her seed (cf. Mt. 1:23; Gal. 4:4;? 1 Tim. 2:15)"

So back to the Trinity; we know from the biblical text that God is one, that Jesus is God and that the Holy Spirit is God so we know that God is one, known in three eternal persons who are co-equal, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That is a mystery not because we don't have knowledge about God, God's word gives us that knowledge, but because we have not experienced a human who is both one and three.

The Trinity is also a mystery in the sense that God is truly wonderful, awesome, in His being and in His graciousness toward us. And added to that is the mystery of the incarnation. Paul speaks of the Christian's true knowledge which comes from a "full assurance of understanding." And that true knowledge is of "God's mystery, that is Christ himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." (Col 2:2b-3)

So we are not without knowledge or understanding of the being or graciousness of God. And all of this because of Jesus Christ the only begotten Son of the Father.