Is The Doctrine Of The Trinity Man Made?

As followers of the Lord Jesus Christ and lovers of the God of the Hebrews, we must clarify precisely what the Bible teaches regarding the Messiah’s identity. One of the most serious attacks on Christianity is directed at Christ’s deity. Some view him as just a prophet sent by God while others regard Him as a good teacher with good ethics. However, the Bible portrays Jesus Christ as God’s only begotten Son, one in essence with God. As soon as we make this declaration, we are attacked  from both opponents of the Christian faith and from inside the Christian faith ( folks who reject the doctrine of the Trinity). Some argue that because the term “trinity” does not appear in the Bible, it is a man-made construct. Is that correct? I’ll invite you to watch the lecture below courtesy of the late Dr. RC Sproul in which he used Scripture to argue the truth regarding the Trinity. The greatest method to interpret Scripture is, once again, using Scripture.

R.C. Sproul: For the Doctrine of the Trinity

Here are some  of the key points in this address in case you aren’t able to watch it in its entirety.

How was the Trinity Doctrine formulated?

In church history, the affirmation of Christ’s deity has been attacked with a vengeance in the fourth century, the fifth century, the nineteenth century, and the twentieth century. And the issues that surfaced in 19th century European liberalism, with its all-out assault on Christ’s deity, carried over into the twentieth century and did not end at the end of the twentieth century, those matters have carried over into our time, and are being exacerbated.

In the book of John, in verses 1 through 2, we read the following,

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . ² He was in the beginning with God. ³ All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.

That verse has some major implications and was the at the root of the controversy about the Trinity. The word “WORD” is translated in Greek into the word Logos. The challenge that the early Christian church encountered in dealing with her theology was that the Christian community of the first century was entirely committed to monotheism. The church also understood that the most fundamental sin of fallen humanity is idolatry, and what idolatry entails is the worship and service of an idol who is not God. Paul develops this in Romans 1, that the fundamental sin of the human race is to exchange the truth of God for a lie and serve and worship the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever, and so to ascribe worship to anything less than God would be the worst type of Idolatry.

We also have to remember that the Christian faith arose from Judaism, and the acceptance of Jesus did not imply a rejection of classic biblical monotheism; rather, the difficulty that the church faced in understanding her faith was reconciling the multitude of references in Scripture that would indicate the Bible’s teaching that Jesus was God incarnate. He shares titles that only God has- the I am formulae of John. Jesus  has been  given the greatest title that only God has, Adonai ( Philippians 2:1-9). The name Lord is a title reserved for God and God alone; Jesus got into a lot of problems with the Pharisees when He claimed for Himself prerogatives that every Jew claimed only belonged to God. So that was the challenged the church had to wrestle with.

We read in John that the word (logos) existed in the beginning, and we also read – and the Word was with God. The English word “with” can now be translated into three different Greek nouns. There is para, which means alongside, as in paramedics  who work alongside  medics, and we have para ministries that operate alongside churches, and so on. Then there’s the word syn, from which we got the prefix syn, where you synchronize your watches and make them all read the same time. When  the Jews joined together when they gathered in groups. They went to the synagogue, a syn-agogue. Then there was this word pros, the root of which is the Greek word for face, and the concept with Pros is that it is the closest conceivable relationship two people can have. So John tells us that the logos  was in this face to face relationship (Pros God ) or (with God) in the beginning.  From this, we also learn  that the logos is being distinguished from God. But then the apostle John’s prologue erupts with the following declaration, and the Word was God: the logos was not only with God in the beginning, not merely pros God , but now it is stated clearly- He was God, and John explicitly acknowledges the deity of the logos in this writing.

Do you see why the church was forced to clearly articulate the deity of Christ? So, how can we make sense of this? How can someone be identified  with God while yet being distinguished from God, so that you have both an identity and a distinction? This is the origin of Trinitarian theology. The two major criticisms on Trinitarian thinking in the early centuries were extracted from John chapter. And that leads us to the attacks against the trinity concept.

Opponents of Trinitarian Theology

The first opponents of trinitarian theology were from a group known as the Gnostics. Gnostics were those who claimed to have extraordinary knowledge, special mystical insight into truth, that beyond the Apostles of Jesus. They also claimed that their knowledge did not originate through rational inquiry, but rather from an immediate, mystical revelation, and that not everyone was blessed with the gift of Gnosis. Furthermore, the Gnostics held a pantheistic view of reality, believing that the ultimate reality or BEING was ONE, but that this ultimate reality or BEING sent forth emanations from the center, and that the further these emanations radiated from the core, the lower the degree of reality. In other words, one would go from GOD through angels, humans, animals, vegetables, and rocks. Because they were so far from the center, the rocks didn’t contain as much of the substance of the emanation, but they were still part of the BEING, a sort of pantheism.

Introducing Sabellius Modalistic Monarchianism

Now, in the third century, there was a teacher named Sabellius who adopted the idea of many levels of beings that were modes of beings that flowed out of the core Being. Sabellius was a modalistic monarchian. According to Sabellius, Jesus and the logos were divine in the sense that they shared in God’s essential being but at a lower level than God. His favorite comparison was the Sun and the rays that it emits. We see the sun’s rays shining on the earth and understand that they share the essence of the Sun, but we don’t associate those with the core ball of fire ( SUN).

So Sabelius was saying that the logos( the second member of the Trinity, Jesus) of which John speaks is of the same essence, the same substance as God, but was not God, just as the sunbeams could not  be identified with the Sun.  In 267, at Antioch, Sabellius was condemned as a heretic and the term “homoousios”( of  the same substance or essence) was condemned as a heretical concept. It is important for us to to realize that the church categorically rejected the term homoousios in the third century, in 267. For more on Sabellius’ heresy, see the post below

Sabellius Heresy: Modalistic Monarchianism Or Modalism

From Sabellius to Arius: Dynamic monarchianism

The threat from modalistic monarchianism began to dissipate and pass away, but a new threat arose that was even worse and  was called dynamic monarchianism. The chief proponent of this concept was Arius, you can also refer to him as the father of the modern day Jehovah Witnesses. He developed the idea that the logos was a high being, but was a created being ,the most elevated being of all beings, apart from God, the firstborn of all creation. He claimed that the logos enjoyed the highest posture in the universe, except for God, high enough that we could worship him but not to be seen as God.

I wrote an entire post exposing Arius’ heresy, see link below

How To Spot A Heretic E1: The Jehovah Witnesses

According to Arius, since the Bible speaks of Jesus being the firstborn of creation and being the only begotten of the Father, he was saying that the Bible itself denied the deity of Christ, but rather affirmed that he had a beginning, because the Bible used the term begotten with respect to Christ. Now this provoked a fierce controversy that threatened the unity of the entire Roman Empire and the sons of Constantine were deeply involved in the arguments and debates that went on. And this whole issue came to a head in 325 at the Council of Nicaea.

At Nicaea, Arius was condemned as  a heretic. The church declared that the logos, the second person of the Trinity, was homoousios with God. Remember that  in 267 they condemned that word and said that that Christ was “homoiousios”, like God. The church did a 180, not because it had changed its mind, but because they realized that Arius was using the language that the church approved in 267, “homoiousios” to deny the deity of Christ.

The Official Introduction of Trinitarian Theology

The Church affirmed that Jesus ( the logos) is “homoousios”,  of the same essence as GOD, and herein is the historic definition of the Trinity that the logos is of the same substance as God. The Nicene Creed says that the second person is Coeternal and Consubstantial with the father, meaning there was no time in which the logos didn’t exist, but the logos has existed from all eternity and the logos is of the same essence as the Father and yet is distinguished from the Father. But the distinction between the father and the Son and then also the Holy Spirit, was not what we would call an essential distinction, because the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are all Homoousios: they are the same essence, the same Being. There’s only one Being, we call God, but that One Being is triune.

When the Bible  speaks of Christ  being the only begotten  of God,  the term is  not used in biological categories, but rather in relational categories that the Father and the Son are the same essence, although distinct in persons. In essence, One, and three in person , it’s a mystery.

None of us have been able to fathom the depths of that, but it is not irrational. It is not absurd, it is not a contradiction and, most importantly, it is faithful to the scriptures who tell us that the second person of the Trinity, is God. And it is the second person who became incarnate and that the fullness of God dwelt within him bodily, so that the divine nature of Jesus is of the same essence as the Father.

We have to understand that there is a unity of being in the Godhead, the Father Son and Holy Spirit, and yet we must distinguish within the Godhead, the persons, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

I’d like to point out another passage that clearly shows the three members of the Trinity in action, it occurred at the baptism of Christ by John the Baptist, Matthew 3:13-17,

¹³ Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him. ¹⁴ John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” ¹⁵ But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. ¹⁶ And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him,^[c] and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; ¹⁷ and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son,^[d] with whom I am well pleased.”

As you can see from this passage, John the Baptist, he couldn’t conceive how Jesus ( who was without sin) could be baptized by Him. Listen to what John the Baptist himself declared in John 1:29-34,

²⁹ The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! ³⁰ This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me.’ ³¹ I myself did not know him, but for this purpose I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel.” ³² And John bore witness: “I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. ³³ I myself did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ ³⁴ And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son^[i] of God.”

John the Baptist had no problems admitting that Jesus ranked before him even though He ( Jesus) came after John in regard to His human nature. John also agreed that Jesus was the Son of God, thus confirming that He was of the same essence as God, Coeternal with God, very God.  When the Bible speaks of Jesus as the Son of God, the Jews understand what it means, it simply means that HE is God. This is why the religious elites sought to kill Him so many times because they accused Him of being blasphemous (Jesus claimed prerogatives that only belonged to God). The classic example occurred in John 8:58,

⁵⁸ Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am. 

Now back to Matthew 3:13-17. The Spirit of God is made mention of in the Scripture and is distinguished from Jesus ( the Son) and the Father. In the Scripture, the voice that is heard is from the Father who says of Jesus ( the Son)-This is my beloved Son,^[d] with whom I am well pleased. And honestly, if we truly understood the Law of Moses, we would understand that there is none righteous, not even one. In other words, when  the Father says that HE is well pleased with Jesus because that is His beloved Son, HE is basically ascribing to the Son the title God as well, because there is none righteous but God, and God can only be pleased with Himself, therefore Jesus is also God.

In conclusion, even though the word trinity doesn’t appear in the Bible, the concept is clearly articulated and to reject it is to reject  God.