Earlier this year, Jon the freelance theologian was asked to explain the Trinity to a Christian youth group in a twenty-minute talk. Although it’s impossible to give full justice to the topic, here are some of the points he made.

We’re going to talk tonight about the Trinity, specifically: how can one God be three persons, or three persons be one God?

Imagine a person you know. What could you say about them?
They are (more…)

Question 162, from Paul, United Kingdom

Is it possible to think of God as having a gender?

This is an interesting question because most Christians, and most Christian writers, automatically use the personal pronouns ‘He’ or ‘Him’ to describe God. This is partly due to the limitations of human language, and also the longstanding tendency to describe God in human terms that have gender-specific connotations, for example, the word ‘Father’.

While most Christians would acknowledge that “God is Spirit to be worshipped in spirit and truth” and that both men and women were created in God’s image, there is still an underlying temptation to ascribe the male gender to God. (more…)

Question 150, from Roger, United Kingdom

If Jesus sits at the Father’s right hand in heaven, where does the Holy Spirit sit?

There are a few elements to this question that will perhaps be helpful. Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, the idea that Jesus Christ sits at the Father’s right hand is an important symbolic statement, relating to the view of God as ‘King of Heaven’. To sit at the king’s right hand is to assume a primacy in the court or near-equality with the ruling monarch and to act with authority on their behalf.
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Questions 132-134, from Paul, United Kingdom

I have a few questions that I wondered if you could help on.

Question 132: The Bible tells us that God is the same yesterday, today and forever. How can this be true after the incarnation? When Christ returned to heaven surely he took with him a human nature that wasn’t present in the Godhead before. Doesn’t this suggest a change in God?

Question 133: During the incarnation, how can God not be affected by the fact that Jesus is not omnipresent and omniscient? Surely this causes problems for the trinity as although God is three in one, we cannot just divide him up and say that only one person of the trinity is affected.

Question 134: In Gethsemane, Christ prays to the Father saying “Yet not what I will but what you will.” But don’t they have the same will?

The Incarnation has been one of the key areas of Christian inquiry since the earliest Christian writers committed words to paper. Many of the issues raised in these questions have been grappled with over centuries, and in some respects, remain unanswered.
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Question 116, from DW

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As best you can, could you give me a good analogy of the trinity?

The Trinity is one of the most difficult Christian doctrines to grasp, simply because it is actually very hard to define how one God can exist in three persons. The tendency is either to stress the one-ness of God, or to place the accent on the plurality of God. Unfortunately to swing too far either way can lead to denying the reality of the Trinity (saying God only appears to be three persons), or towards a version of polytheism.

Certainly the Trinity is possibly the one doctrine that marked an irrevocable break with monotheistic Judaism. For Christians, the difficulty initially centred on (more…)

Question from VN, United Kingdom

Is God the father the boss of the trinity or are they all equal? Does God have a personality disorder, as there are different bits with varying characteristics?

The assertion that the Christian concept of God is of ‘one God in three persons’ has been the cause of many debates throughout Christian history. It is hard to understand how three can be one can be three, given the fact that human beings are individuals. The relationships between human beings have clearly defined limits and humans, as physical beings, have natural physical limits regardless of relationship. While any number of models to explain how the Trinity ‘works’ have been proposed (e.g. God as the Sun, light and heat), they are all slightly flawed because they rely heavily on physical examples.

It is not easy to talk about the way God relates within the Trinity as opposed to God’s external relationships with the world and created beings. Within orthodox Christian thought, though, one important concept is the idea of ‘coinherence’, or ‘perichoresis’. This idea was present in the Trinitarian debates of the fourth century, and then refined over the following centuries, as this question was repeatedly debated.

Put simply, coinherence/perichoresis refers to a relationship of mutual indwelling, so that when one person of the trinity acts, all three act. One is invariably in the other two, just as they are in the one. From this idea of perfect relationship and harmony comes the uniquely Christian idea of God being in very nature relational, which is the central point of creation and, of course, underscores the absolute tragedy of abused free will and the Fall. The creatures created out of a desire for relationship rebel against that relationship and turn their back on the creator.

The primacy of one Trinitarian person over the others was the cause of the fourth century Arian controversy, which saw God the Father as the prime, unbegotten God, with the Son as a lesser divine agent, and the Spirit as lesser again. This idea of gradated Godhead was countered at the Council of Nicea in AD325, when the Son was declared to be ‘homo-ousios’ (literally: of exactly the same being) as the Father, and then again at the Council of Constantinople in AD381 when the same was applied to the Spirit. The names ‘Father’ and ‘Son’ denote relationship, but not primacy. The ‘Father’ cannot be a ‘Father’, without a ‘Son’; the ‘generation’ of the Son happens eternally within the Godhead, so there was never a time when the Father was alone. The Spirit is the ‘bond of love’ between the Father and the Son. The Spirit thus proceeds from the Father and the Son (although that indicates a major point of theological disagreement between western Catholic theology and eastern Orthodox theology, with the west historically regarding the Spirit’s procession from both, while the east sees the Spirit proceeding from the Father alone).

While it is tempting to do, the concept of a coinherent Trinity means that drawing distinctions between God’s “different bits with varying characteristics” is slightly misguided. While the different persons may act in different ways towards the created cosmos and the creatures who inhabit it, there is a strong sense of united purpose and action together. So, the Son becomes a mortal man through the impetus of the ‘sending’ Father and the agency of the Spirit, all three working together as one to achieve the same ends; the Father endorses the Son through the sending of the Spirit; and the Son imparts the Spirit to reveal the Father in the life of the Church.

Thanks for your question VN.

Question from MF, USA

Why do we speak of three persons or incarnations of God, when the OT cites numerous different and separate incarnations of God between Creation and Christ? I.e., as the voice speaking to Abraham, the burning bush, as angels, and so on. Each time this happened, God needed in some way to be “incarnated” to be seen and heard in the physical realm. Why do we distinguish between these incarnations and the life of Jesus?

This is a very technical question and it helps to understand that theological terms tend to be very precise in their usage. The Christian concept of the Trinity is ‘God in three persons’, not three incarnations. The Incarnation of the second person of the Trinity (the eternally begotten Son) as Jesus the carpenter from Nazareth, meant that God became a human being, i.e. took on a body. The phrase from the prologue of John’s gospel ‘the Word became flesh’ sums up the idea of ‘incarnation’. ‘Incarnation’ means ‘in flesh’, from the Latin word ‘caro’ (‘flesh’).

In theological terms, the other ways in which people ‘meet God’, e.g. through a disembodied voice or a voice heard through a burning bush, or in a dream are known as ‘theophanies’, from the Greek words ‘theos’ (God) and ‘phainein’ (to show or reveal). In those instances in the Old Testament where humans interacted with God in His own nature (e.g. Adam in Eden, Moses on Sinai, the high priest in the Holy of Holies in the Temple), there is no mention of God having a physical body.

Thanks for your question, MF.

Question from MF, USA

Why, if The Holy Spirit is among us since Christ’s ascension into heaven, do we not pray to that figure but instead to Jesus – who is not currently among us and won’t be until he “comes again”?

There are a couple of theological points to make here. Firstly, in a Christian, Trinitarian model, praying to one person of the Godhead is the same as praying to all, due to the essential Unity of the Trinity (one God in three persons). This might sound confusing (and provoke all kinds of further questions), but it is worth bearing in mind. In technical doctrinal terms this is called coinherence, ‘perichoresis’ or mutual indwelling.

The second point is that we have a number of models of prayer in the New Testament. Jesus began his instructional prayer pattern ‘Father in Heaven’ (Matthew chapter 6, verse 9). In the first chapter of Acts, Peter addresses his prayer ‘Kyrios’, the Greek word for Lord used of Jesus earlier in the same section, which has led commentators to believe the prayer was addressed to the ascended Jesus (c.f. chapter 1 verse 6 with verse 24). However, this initial section of Acts immediately precedes the dramatic arrival of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost.

In Ephesians chapter 6, verse 18, Paul urges the Christians receiving his epistle to pray in the Spirit, not to the Spirit. The Spirit therefore acts as a guide to the Christian regarding what to pray, described in Romans chapter 8, verse 26 as the Spirit interceding. Paul’s understanding of Christian life was of a Spirit-led, Christ-centred, life so prayer naturally involved the Spirit.

Given these New Testament models, there has been a recent increase, in churches that style themselves as Spirit-led at least, to directly appeal to the Holy Spirit (as in the form of ‘Come Holy Spirit’ etc.). Whether this is doctrinally correct is moot given the first theological point made above. It probably has more to do with the intention of the person praying the prayer. If the person wants a manifestation of the Spirit’s power, or some kind of ‘sign’, then it would be obvious to address it directly to the Spirit. From a confirmed Trinitarian point of view, perhaps prayer should be addressed to all three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Question from GT, United Kingdom

What does the Bible say about the Trinity?

The Bible is not a ‘systematic theology’ so the complex doctrines of the faith, such as the Trinitarian nature of God, are never laid down in Scripture as unarguable fact. The development of the doctrine of the Trinity took place over a few centuries, but there are a couple of points to make about that.

Firstly, the theologians who argued for the Trinitarian view of God saw themselves as explaining and defending both the Biblical revelation of God and the historic faith of the church held since the time of the apostles. Secondly, the description of God as Trinity was not the development of an idea in isolation. The creedal formulations of early Christianity were a response to other points of view, which were being subsumed into the faith, but were in danger of turning Christianity into a belief system not unlike the Gnostic cults of the time or the Greek ‘philosophical’ systems. For example, concepts such as ‘Logos’, used in John’s prologue, meant different things to different people. It is a thought-form borrowed from Greek philosophy that meant more than just ‘Word’ as translated in John chapter 1, it also meant ‘creative principle’, ‘divine mind’, ‘demiurge’ (the being that existed to allow the Transcendent One to interact with the evil material world), or any number of other ideas.

The theologians often referred to as ‘church fathers’ had to face these twin problems – the Bible was clear about the character of God, but vague about the nature of God and the information that was given could easily be misconstrued and cause confusion. Over the course of the fourth century, during the ‘Arian controversy’, this vagueness gave way to complicated statements of the faith; the creeds (from the Latin word ‘credo’, meaning ‘I believe’ and also the root of the English word ‘credible’).

The Arian controversy is worth summing up briefly. It was based loosely on Greek philosophical ideas that stated that the ‘One God’ created an intermediary who interacted with the world. This obviously paralleled the Christian idea of a ‘Father’ and a ‘Son’. In this system the ‘Father’ had to precede the ‘Son’, so the Arians catchphrase became ‘there was a time when the Son was not’. In some time before time, the Father dwelt alone, then created the Son and through the Son created the world. This all sounds very complicated and artificial to modern minds, but it tapped into the kind of religious beliefs that were popular and it was a thorough-going logical system, which made it very attractive.

The problem for those who opposed Arianism was that Jesus Christ was considered the Son of God and not merely a created being. How else to explain classic Bible verses like Jesus’ statement ‘I and the Father are one’ (John 10 verse 30)? This led to the classic formulation at the Council of Nicea in AD325 that Christ was ‘begotten’ not created. The ‘Son’ was therefore distinct from the created order – a fact that was considered vital if he was part of the plan to save creation – and, because the ‘Father’ could not be a father without the Son, the Son had to have existed eternally. Hence the phrase used by those early theologians that the Son is ‘eternally generated’ by the Father.

That would be complicated enough, but then further disputes arose over the deity (or not) of the Holy Spirit. One theologian who held to the Nicene Creed was Gregory of Nazianzus and his argument for regarding the Holy Spirit as fully divine came to be accepted as almost the final word on the matter. Shortly before the Council of Constantinople in AD381, Gregory preached this sermon as the fifth in a series of orations that covered the nature of God from a Trinitarian standpoint. Interestingly he recognised the difficulty faced by Trinitarians regarding the paucity of Scriptural references for the doctrine, paraphrasing his opponents’ argument as ‘from whence are you bringing in upon us this strange God, of whom Scripture is silent?’ (Gregory’s Fifth Theological Oration can be found in anthologies of Patristic texts. A very good, readable version can be found in the Library of Christian Classics, Volume 3, published by SCM in 1954).

Gregory’s argument for accepting the Holy Spirit as divine hinged on a number of activities undertaken by the Spirit according to Scripture as well as the Spirit’s attributes. For example, the Spirit sanctifies, so must be divine for only God can make something holy. In that sense, the Holy Spirit must be divine because only God is intrinsically holy. (There are numerous other instances in the Bible where the Spirit is described in divine terms or undertakes divine activity.) The threefold blessing of ‘Father, Son and Holy Spirit’, which had been a part of the Christian baptismal rite since apostolic times, was also considered an indicator of the equality of status among the divine persons.

The earliest Christians were very keen to read back into Scripture the various doctrines of the faith, so they had no problems reading the Old Testament and discovering ‘references’ to Christ and even to the Holy Spirit. Sometimes that meant they took texts well out of their Biblical context, or interpreted stories where certain mysterious characters, for example Melchizadek in Genesis chapter 14, were regarded as pre-Incarnation representations of Christ. This use of Scripture has to be regarded with caution, but there are hints in the Old Testament of a plurality in God (Isaiah chapter 6 verse 8 being the classic example). Then in the New Testament, the Messiah refers to God as his Father (implying a shared nature), is referred to himself as divine in several places by the New Testament writers and introduces a third entity, the Parakletos (John chapter 16, translated as Counsellor or Comforter), in a way that implies this new person is an adequate replacement.

This giving of a ‘new counsellor’, the Spirit, was where Gregory believed the life of the Church began and this became his key argument for the divinity of the Spirit. The Old Testament revelation was of the Father-Creator, the New Testament revealed the Son-Redeemer and the ‘third transition’ – the institution of the Church or community of saints – revealed the Spirit. “Now the Spirit himself dwells among us, and supplies us with a clearer demonstration of himself.” (Library of Christian Classics, Vol. 3, p.209) The unvoiced commentary is that those who disputed the deity of the Spirit, did not know the Spirit and were not really Christians.

In conclusion, then, the Bible never lays out the doctrine of the Trinity in a neat ordered way. It was left to later generations to take what had been revealed in Scripture and arrange that revelation into an ordered doctrine that did not conflict with what was revealed in the Bible. In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis discusses the concept of a three-personal God and sums up this development of the doctrine of the Trinity.

“People already knew about God in a vague way. Then came a man who claimed to be God; and yet He was not the sort of man you could dismiss as a lunatic… They saw Him again after they had seen Him killed. And then, after they had formed into a little society or community, they found God somehow inside them as well: directing them, making them able to do things they could not do before. And when they worked it all out they found they had arrived at the Christian definition of the three-personal God.” (C.S. Lewis, op. cit. page 139)

Question from JM, United Kingdom (again)

“Did Jesus know he was God? If so, at what stage?”

Jesus’ self-awareness seems to have been quite high from the beginning of his ministry. In John’s Gospel he is announced as ‘the Lamb of God’ by John the Baptist (chapter 1 vs29-34) and in Matthew, Mark and Luke proclaimed as ‘the Christ – the chosen one of God’ by Peter. In Luke chapter 4 he starts off his public ministry claiming to be the fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophetic statement regarding the ‘anointed one’ (Messiah).

Whether Jesus regarded himself as the Son of God, as has been stated in Christian theology ever since, we simply do not know. The gospels are not tell-all autobiographies or even objective studies of the man Jesus. People who knew Jesus and were convinced that he was the Son of God wrote the books.

Jesus often described himself using the phrase ‘Son of Man’, but then he also referred to God as Father and implied that his will and the Father’s will were inseparable (e.g. see John 5 v19). If Jesus was aware of his own divinity at this point, he was also constrained by his humanity. In the gospels he is weak, fearful, hungry, tired (napping during a serious storm on the Sea of Galilee for example) and he frequently asks questions. He is hardly the all-knowing, all-powerful God that Christians claim that he is.

This duality of natures, divine and human co-existing caused a number of theological headaches in the early Christian debates. It was common for the aspects of Christ’s life that revealed his limitations to be ascribed to his human nature, while the miracles and other inexplicable things to be ascribed to the divine nature.

Another, and neater, explanation of this is found in ‘kenotic theology’. ‘Kenosis’ is a Greek word literally meaning ‘self-emptying’ and is used in Philippians chapter 2. According to kenotic theology, the second person in the Trinity, the eternally begotten Son, surrendered his divine status in order to live a fully human limited life. The ‘divine activities’ of the Incarnate Son have been explained, e.g. by John Wimber, as the human Jesus acting in the power of the third person of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit.

Pre-resurrection, Jesus must have known he was different. As an empowered human working in close conjunction with the Holy Spirit to carry out the Father’s will, he discouraged people from calling him the messiah as he knew they had an inadequate earth-bound view of messiah-ship. After the resurrection he had resumed his rightful place at the right hand of the Father and his followers were left in no doubt as to who he really was.

In between, there was still room for doubt. “Will you leave too?” he asks his disciples (John 6 v67). He prays that a different path could be shown to him (Luke 22 v42). And on the cross he cries out in abandonment (Matthew 27 v46). It was only after the resurrection that all doubts ceased, including those of his followers.