What Is The Trinity? (Crucial Questions, #10)

by R.C. Sproul

When we confess our faith in the Trinity, we affirm that God is one in essence and three in person.

But the Hebrew indicates that when God says “before me,” He is saying, “In My presence.” His presence, of course, is ubiquitous; He is omnipresent. So when God says, “You shall have no other gods before me,” He basically is saying that when a person worships anything apart from Him, whether that person lives in Israel, Canaan, Philistia, or anywhere else, he engages in an act of idolatry, because there is only one God.

the God of all the universe has manifested Himself to everyone (vv. 18–20). That means that every human being knows of the existence of the Most High God, but the sinful character of humanity is such that all of us repress and bury that knowledge, and choose idols instead.

the English word with, but the word that is used here suggests the closest possible relationship, virtually a face-to-face relationship. Nevertheless, John makes a distinction between the Logos and God. God and the Logos are together, but they are not the same.

one of the best ways of learning orthodoxy is by learning what is false. In fact, heresy historically has forced the church to be precise, to define its doctrines and differentiate truth from falsehood.

Unfortunately, many people who should know better say that Chalcedon affirmed that Jesus was fully God and fully man. That is a contradiction. If we say that His person is completely and totally divine, then He must have only one nature. We cannot have a person who is completely divine and completely human at the same time and in the same relationship. That is an absurd idea.