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.

the word Trinity means “tri-unity.” Behind the concept of unity is the biblical affirmation of monotheism.

That name, Elohim, is striking because the suffix, him, is the plural ending of the Hebrew noun, so one could translate the name Elohim as “gods.” However, while the name Elohim has a plural ending, it always appears with singular verb forms.

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.

Later in the Pentateuch, we find a striking statement of monotheism. It appears in the Shema, ancient Israel’s confession of its belief in one God: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one” (Deut. 6:4).

We have to understand that the distinctions in the Godhead do not refer to His essence; they do not refer to a fragmentation or compartmentalization of the very being of God.

Augustine once wrote, “The New [Testament] is in the Old [Testament] concealed; the Old is in the New revealed.”

When we look into the Scriptures, we see what we call in theology “progressive revelation.” This is the idea that, as time goes by, God unfolds more and more of His plan of redemption.

Progressive revelation is not a corrective, whereby the latest unveiling from God rectifies a previous mistaken revelation. Rather, new revelation builds on what was given in the past, expanding what God has made known.

In fact, the very word universe combines the concepts of unity and diversity—it describes a place of great diversity that nevertheless has unity.

This concept conforms to Paul’s declaration in Romans 1 that 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. That is why we are all held guilty before God.

In John’s gospel, Jesus makes a number of “I am” statements: “I am the bread of life” (6:48), “I am the door” (10:7), “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (14:6), and others. In each of these statements, the wording in the Greek New Testament for “I am” is ego eimi. These Greek words also happen to be the words with which the essential name of God, Yahweh, is translated from the Hebrew. Jesus, then, by using this construction for Himself, is equating Himself with God.

Jesus told the Jewish leaders that Abraham had rejoiced to see His day (v. 56). When the leaders asked how Jesus could possibly have seen Abraham, He replied, “Before Abraham was, I am” (v. 58). He did not say, “Before Abraham was, I was.” Rather, He said, “I am.”

Then John declares that the Logos not only was with God, He was God. So in one sense, the Word must be distinguished from God, and in another sense, the Word must be identified with God.

The first great heresy that the church had to confront with respect to monarchianism was called “modalistic monarchianism” or simply “modalism.” The idea behind modalism was that all three persons of the Trinity are the same person, but that they behave in unique “modes” at different times.

So the early church came to see God as one being with three personae: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.