The Forgotten Trinity: Recovering the Heart of Christian Belief

by James R. White

Anyone who thinks that the doctrine of the Trinity compromises absolute monotheism simply does not understand what the doctrine is teaching.

If we wish to know God truly, we must be willing to allow Him to reveal to us what He wants us to know, and He must be free as to how He wants to reveal it. He has given us a treasure trove of truth about Him, but He has not deemed it proper to reveal everything there is to know (if such is even possible). We dare not go beyond the boundaries He himself has set in His Word.

But we can never allow pride and arrogance to cause us to think that we can “put God in a box” and remove from Him the supremacy that is His.

In Isaiah’s prophecy we find the most explicit testimony to God’s utter uniqueness and to the resultant truth of absolute monotheism. Here, in chapters 40 through 48, we find what I like to call the “Trial of the False Gods.” God sets up His cosmic courtroom and invites those gods vying for the attention of His people to take the stand and experience a little celestial cross-examination.

Idolatry is inherently foolish simply because there is no worthy object of worship other than the one true God.

God knows the future, not because He has some kind of crystal ball, but because, as these passages assert over and over again, He is the Creator of all things, including time, past, present, and future.

But God is completely different than man: He can say that His purpose will be established, and beyond all question, it will be.

The worship of God is not a matter of where but of how. Whether Mount Gerazim (where the Samaritans thought one must worship) or in Jerusalem is not the issue. Spatial location is irrelevant, as space does not limit God, for He is spirit. The important thing is the how of worship (in spirit and in truth), not the where.

From everlasting to everlasting. Without limitation. God has existed as God eternally. There has never been a time when God was not God.

We are creatures, and as such, we have been created to exist temporally, that is, within the realm of time. God is not a creature and does not exist temporally, but eternally.

Since God exists eternally He is unchanging. He is not growing, progressing, evolving, or in any way moving from a state of imperfection to a state of perfection. This is the teaching of the Scriptures. Indeed, the very fact that God is unchangingly faithful to His promises to Israel is based upon the understanding that Yahweh himself does not change with time: “For I, the LORD, do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed” (Malachi 3:6).

These holy men indeed spoke from God, but that does not exclude at all the use of their highest efforts to present God’s truth (2 Peter 1:20–21; 2 Timothy 3:16–17).

In the same way, the prologue of John calls us to do some work, to stretch ourselves beyond what might be our “comfort zone,” but the reward is more than worth it.

The Greeks had used the term logos in their philosophical explanations regarding the functioning of the world. The logos was for them an impersonal ordering force, that which gave harmony to the universe. The logos was not personal in their philosophy, but it was very important.

During the few centuries prior to the coming of Christ, Jewish theologians and thinkers would see in such phrases as “word of the Lord” and in the “wisdom of God” references to a personal rather than an abstract concept.

In fact, as we proceed, we will see that it would be better to write Logos than logos, for John is using the word as a name, not merely a description. He fills the impersonal logos that came before him with personality and life, and presents to us the living and personal Logos, the Word who was in the beginning.

Throughout the prologue of the Gospel of John, the author balances between two verbs. When speaking of the Logos as He existed in eternity past, John uses the Greek word ἧν, en (a form of eimi). The tense[1] of the word expresses continuous action in the past. Compare this with the verb he chooses to use when speaking of everything else—found, for example, in verse 3: “All things came into being through Him,” ἐγένετο, egeneto. This verb[2] contains the very element missing from the other: a point of origin. The term, when used in contexts of creation and origin, speaks of a time when something came into existence. The first verb, en, does not. John is very careful to use only the first verb of the Logos throughout the first thirteen verses, and the second verb, egeneto, he uses for everything else (including John the Baptist in verse 6).

Right from the start, then, John tells us something vital about the Word. Whatever else we will learn about the Word, the Word is eternal.[4] With this John begins to lay the foundation for what will come.

“The Word was with God (πρὸς τὸν θεόν).” Yes, it is the same word “was,” again pointing us to an eternal truth. The Word has eternally been “with God.” What does this mean?

Here John uses the preposition prov=x (pros). The term has a wide range of meanings, depending on the context in which it is found. In this particular instance, the term speaks to a personal relationship, in fact, to intimacy. It is the same term the apostle Paul uses when he speaks of how we presently have a knowledge comparable to seeing in a dim mirror, but someday, in eternity, we will have a clearer knowledge, an intimate knowledge, for we shall see “face to (pros) face” (1 Corinthians 13:12). When you are face-to-face with someone, you have nowhere to hide. You have a relationship with that person, whether you like it or not.[5]

Someone such as John would never think that there were two eternal beings. John will explain himself soon enough.

We read, “and the Word was God (θεός ἠν ὸ λόγος).” Again, the eternal en. John avoids contradiction by telling us that the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

John avoids equating the Word with all of God through his use of the little Greek article, the equivalent of our word “the” (ὸ).

It may seem “nit-picking” to talk about such a small thing as the Greek article, but as my friend Daniel Wallace points out, “One of the greatest gifts bequeathed by the Greeks to Western civilization was the article.

What does this have to do with John 1:1? Well, in English, the final phrase would be literally rendered, “God was the Word.” But in English, we put the subject first, and the predicate nominative later. The Greeks used the article to communicate to us which word is the subject, and which is the predicate. If one of the two nouns has the article, it is the subject. In this case, “Word” has the article, even though it comes after “God,” and hence is our subject. That is why the last phrase is translated “the Word was God” rather than “God was the Word.”

If both of the nouns in a predicate nominative construction like this one have the article, or if both lack the article, this is significant as well. In that case, the two nouns become interchangeable. That is, if “Word” had the article, and “God” did, too, this would mean that John is saying that “God was the Word” and the “Word was God.” Both would be the same thing. Or, if neither of them had the article, we would have the same idea: an equating of all of God with all of the Word. “God” and “Word” would be interchangeable and equal terms.

If John had put the article before theos, he would have been teaching modalism, a belief we mentioned earlier that denies the existence of three divine persons, saying there is only one person who sometimes acts like the Father, sometimes like the Son, sometimes like the Spirit. We will discuss modalism (which is also often called “Sabellianism”) later. For now, we see that if John had placed the article before theos, he would have been making “God” and the “Word” equal and interchangeable terms. As we will see, John is very careful to differentiate between these terms here, for He is careful to differentiate between the Father and the Son throughout the entire Gospel of John.[11]

One commentator has rightly noted regarding the prologue, “John is not trying to show who is God, but who is the Word.”[12] The final phrase tells us about the Word, emphasizing the nature of the Word.

The structure of the third clause in verse 1, theos en ho logos, demands the translation “The Word was God.” Since logos has the article preceding it, it is marked out as the subject. The fact that theos is the first word after the conjunction kai (and) shows that the main emphasis of the clause lies on it. Had theos as well as logos been preceded by the article the meaning would have been that the Word was completely identical with God, which is impossible if the Word was also “with God.” What is meant is that the Word shared the nature and being of God, or (to use a piece of modern jargon) was an extension of the personality of God. The NEB paraphrase “what God was, the Word was,” brings out the meaning of the clause as successfully as a paraphrase can.[13]

Monotheism in the Bible—certainly it cannot be argued that John would use the very word he always uses of the one true God, θεός, of one who is simply a “godlike” one or a lesser “god.” The Scriptures do not teach that there exists a whole host of intermediate beings that can truly be called “gods.” That is gnosticism.

The anarthrous θεός—If one is to dogmatically assert that any anarthrous noun must be indefinite and translated with an indefinite article, one must be able to do the same with the 282 other times θεός appears anarthrously. For an example of the chaos that would create, try translating the anarthrous θεός at 2 Corinthians 5:19 (i.e., “a god was in Christ . . .”). What is more, θεός appears many times in the prologue of John anarthrously, yet no one argues that in these instances it should be translated “a god.” Note verses 6, 12, 13, and 18. There is simply no warrant in the language to do this.[16]

No room for alternate understanding—It ignores a basic tenet of translation: if you are going to insist on a translation, you must be prepared to defend it in such a way so as to provide a way for the author to have expressed the alternate translation. In other words, if θεός ἧν ό λόγος is “the Word was a god,” how could John have said “the Word was God?” We have already seen that if John had employed th...

Ignores the context—The translation tears the phrase from the immediately preceding context, leaving it alone and useless. Can He who is eternal (first clause) and who has always been with God (second cla...

In summary, then, what do we find in John 1:1? In a matter of only seventeen short Greek words, John communicates the following truths: The Word is eternal—He has always existed and did not come into existence at a point in time. The Word is personal—He is not a force, but a person, and that eternally. He has always been in communion with the Father. The Word is deity—The Word is God as to His nature.

Creation is always God’s work. If the Logos created all things, then the Logos is divine—fully.[21] John is very careful. He doesn’t say “most things,” or “some things,” but all things came into being, were made, by the Logos. Creation took place through Him, by His power. Apart or separately from Him, nothing was made which has been made.[22] This is clearly an exhaustive assertion.

If it exists, it does so because it was created by the Logos.

“And the Word became flesh.” Here John uses egeneto, a verb that refers to an action in time. And the reason is clear: the Word entered into human existence, “became flesh,” at a particular point in time. The Logos was not eternally flesh. He existed in a nonfleshly manner in eternity past. But at a blessed point in time, at the Incarnation, the Logos became flesh. The Eternal experienced time.

The Word became flesh. He did not simply appear to be flesh. He was not “faking it,” to use modern terminology. Jesus was not simply some phantom or spirit masquerading as a real human being. He became flesh. John uses a term that was easily understandable in his day. It’s not an unusual word. At times it refers solely to flesh, as in the material stuff of our bodies. At other times it refers to the whole human nature. In any case, its meaning could not be missed. The Logos entered into the physical realm. He became a human being, a real, living, breathing human being.

What, then, does a person do who believes in dualism but wants to make some room for the message of Jesus? He has to get around the plain fact that Jesus Christ came in the flesh. So these teachers, known to the early church by the term Docetics,[23] denied that Jesus truly had a physical body so that they could keep the idea that He was good and pure and holy. They even spread stories about disciples walking with Jesus along the beach, and when one of the disciples turned around, he saw only one set of footprints, because, of course, Jesus doesn’t leave footprints! John is tremendously concerned that his beloved readers do not fall for this kind of teaching, so he strongly emphasizes the reality of Christ’s physical nature. He leaves no stone unturned in his quest to make sure we understand: the eternal Logos, fully deity by nature, eternal Creator, the very source of life itself, became a human being. This is the only way to understand his words.

To summarize that information for our purposes here, the Greek term used is μονογενής (monogenes). The term does not refer to begetting, but to uniqueness. While the traditional translation is “only-begotten,” a better translation would be “unique” or “one of a kind.”

John moves on to again make note of John’s testimony to Jesus in verse 15, and finally makes it plain that he is speaking of Jesus Christ by using that phrase for the first time in verse 17. But before he closes his prologue, John uses what is often called the “bookends” technique. He provides a closing statement that sums up and repeats, in a different form, what he said in his introduction. And this is found in the final verse of the prologue, verse 18.

What is John telling us by using such an unusual phrase? One thing is for certain: he is not telling us that Jesus Christ was “created” at some time in the past. He is not denying everything he said in the previous seventeen verses and turning Jesus into a creation! Such ideas flow from wrong thinking about what monogenes means. Remember that the term means “unique” or “one of a kind.” In light of this, John’s meaning is clear. In fact, I would submit that outside of a Trinitarian understanding of this passage, John is making no sense at all!

No man has seen the Father at any time. So how do we have knowledge of the Father? The μονογενής has “made Him known” or “explained Him.”[26] The unique One has made the Father known. Or, in light of the use of the term Father, the Only Son has revealed the Father. But this is not merely a dim reflection, a partial revelation, provided by the Only Son. This is the monogenes theos, the Only Son who is God. The divine nature of the μονογενής is again plainly asserted, just as it was in verse 1. This is what forms the “bookend,” the assertion in verse 1 that the Logos is divine, repeated and reaffirmed here in verse 18 with the statement that the Only Son is God.[27]

Difference in function does not indicate inferiority of nature. Not exactly an earth-shattering concept? It isn’t, but the vast majority of material produced by those who oppose the deity of Christ ignores this basic truth.

That is, just because the Father, Son, and Spirit do different things does not mean that any one of them is inferior to the others in nature.[1]

This is what is called the “Eternal Covenant of Redemption.” The Father chose to be the fount and source of the entirety of the work; the Son chose to be the Redeemer and to enter into human flesh as one subject to the Father; and the Spirit chose to be the Sanctifier of the church, the indwelling Testifier of Jesus Christ.

The large portion of arguments against the deity of Christ and the Trinity make one major unspoken (and false) assumption: that for either the Son or the Spirit to be truly and fully God, they have to do the exact same things as the Father in the exact same way.

Any difference in function, they assume, results in an inferiority of nature. To put it simply, they assume a unitarian view of God (as opposed to the Trinitarian view), and assume that God could never do what He has revealed He has done in the work of redemption.

When we encounter someone who denies the deity of Christ, we often “let them off the hook” by not asking them to defend their view on the basis of each passage we are considering. We don’t apply the same arguments to their position that they are applying to ours.

Could we describe Michael as the Way, the Truth, and the Life? (John 14:6). Could an angel say, “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest”? (Matthew 11:28). Is an angel King of kings and Lord of lords? (Revelation 19:16). Does divine grace come from God the Father and Michael the Archangel? (1 Corinthians 1:3). Can Michael say, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father”? (John 14:9). What could it possibly mean to say, “For to me, to live is Michael the Archangel and to die is gain”? (Philippians 1:21). We can go on and on in this way, for many of the strongest proofs of the deity of Christ are found in recognizing that no mere creature could ever say the words Jesus said, do the things Jesus did, or be described in the way Jesus is described.