Trinity: The Biblical Evidence

In this video/article I want to examine the biblical evidence for the doctrine of the trinity. In the first video/article on this topic entitled ‘Denying the Trinity’, I dealt specifically with the deity of Christ, so I won’t repeat that material here. 

One of the most common objections to Trinitarian doctrine comes from people ignorant of the words of Jesus concerning His relationship to the Father during His life on earth. The claim is that when Jesus states that ‘the Father is greater that I’ (John 14:28), or ‘without the Father he can do nothing’, this indicates He is not God but just a servant of God.

Philippians 2:6-7 tell us that Jesus Christ ‘who being in very nature God, emptied Himself and took the very nature of a slave and became obedient to death, even death on a cross’. How and what Christ emptied Himself of is not clear, however, the fact that He remained ‘in very nature God’ is not debatable, for no one can change their primary nature. It is obvious when we read the gospels that Jesus never used His divine nature throughout His temptations, but submitted Himself completely as a vulnerable human being. Had He not done so, He could not have made atonement for our sins. Hebrews chapter 2 explains this well, firstly by telling us that Jesus was ‘made lower than the angels for a little while’ (2:9) but is now crowned with glory and honor. 2:14-18 explains that Jesus had to be made like his brothers in every way in order to make atonement for sin.

In essence, the Logos the ‘Word’ who is the pre-incarnate Christ, became flesh (John 1:14), denying Himself access to His divine power, united humanity and divinity in His birth, death and resurrection, and returned to His heavenly throne as the Lord Jesus Christ. Before the incarnation and resurrection, God the Son, the eternal Logos sat at the right hand of the glory of the Father who is ‘spirit’ and He (the Logos) was the physical manifestation of the Godhead, but now the Lord Jesus Christ sits on that throne, the Logos and humanity united as one.

So…to the biblical evidence. For brevity, I will just offer a sample of verses.

Firstly, the Old Testament.

 In Genesis 1:26 we see the plural form for God used in the words ‘let us make man in our own image’. The word Elohim is plural, but has multiple meanings, therefore many argue it is not definitive evidence for the trinity.

In Genesis 3:8, we read that, after they sinned, the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord walking in the garden in the cool of the day and hid from him amongst the trees. We know that the Father is spirit, (John 4:24) and this was a physical presence, so it was not the Father, who is invisible to us, walking in the Garden of Eden. The word Yahweh is used twice in the verse. 

This is the first christophany recorded in Scripture, the pre-incarnate Logos appearing in physical form. A christophany is not the same as a theophany, where God makes His presence known in nature, such as the burning bush, but rather, a christophany is God the Son prior to the incarnation for, as we discussed in the previous video on the trinity, He is the ‘image of the invisible God’ (Colossians 1:15) the ‘radiance of God’s glory and exact representation of his being’ (Hebrews 1:3).  

There are other christophanies such as when the Lord visited Abraham accompanied by two angels (Genesis 18). On this occasion they appeared as ‘men’, however the text makes a definitive distinction between the angels and the Lord, and the Hebrew of verse 1 specifically says that Yahweh appeared to Abraham.

In Psalm 55 David is crying out to God for forgiveness after being confronted with his acts of  adultery and murder. In verses 1 and 10 he uses the plural elohim to address God, and then in verse 11 prays, ‘do not cast me from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me’. The presence of God was usually connected to His presence in the Tent of Meeting, specifically in the Holy of Holies, but here David makes a distinction  between God’s presence and the Holy Spirit being upon Him as an anointed King.

Isaiah 9:6 is profound verse about the person of Jesus Christ who is to come into the world, and His names within the Trinitarian Godhead. 

‘For unto us a child is born, to us a child is given, and the government will be upon his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace’.

In this verse we see both the indivisibility and individual qualities of the triune God. God is one God, in three persons, but these persons, although individual, are also indivisible. This is an impossible concept to grasp for mere human beings. When Jesus said ‘the Father and I are one’, and ‘when you have seen me you have seen the Father’ He was expressing this profound truth, a truth beyond human comprehension. 

And to the New Testament

At the baptism of Jesus we read that God the Father spoke saying ‘this is my Son’ and God the Holy Spirit came upon Him (Matthew 3:16). John the Baptist testified that God gave him this sign that the one on whom the Holy Spirit came and remained was the Lamb of God (John 1:32-34). Father, Son and Holy Spirit are present at Jesus’ baptism.

Throughout the gospels we read Jesus identifying Himself as the ‘I AM’ who knew Abraham in John 8:58, and in the verses mentioned later,  tells His disciples that He and the Father are one (John 10:30). He and the Father states two individual persons, and the phrase ‘are one’ echoes the Shema of Deuteronomy 6:4, that the Lord our God is One, indivisible.  

In answer to Philip’s question, Jesus told the disciples that in seeing Him, they had seen the Father (John 14:9) and then went on to explain that when He returned to the Father He would send the Spirit who was presently ‘with them’ and ‘would be ‘in them’ (John 14:17). The Holy Spirit is spoken of as a person with specific roles and not some divine energy or other heretical view.

The gospel of Matthew ends with the command to make disciples and baptize them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19). The word ‘name’ is singular, but three names are given. Again, here we see the One God, in three persons.

In Acts 7 we read of the murder of Stephen by stoning. Moments before he died we are told, that ‘Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God’ (Acts 7:55-56). All three persons of the trinity are mentioned here; the Holy Spirit within Stephen, the Father who is the glory of the Godhead but without physical form, and the Lord Jesus Christ standing at His side, the Logos returned to His rightful place.

Then in Romans 8:9-11 Paul writes of the Spirit of Christ living within us, the Spirit of God within us and the Spirit of He who raised Christ from the dead living in us’, all three persons of the trinity are mentioned here as the Godhead we receive,  One God indivisible and individual.

In 2 Corinthians 13:14 Paul ends his letter with these words.

‘May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all’.

Grace, love and fellowship are ascribed to the persons of the trinity. 

In conclusion. There are people who ignorantly claim that the doctrine of the trinity is a human idea invented in the 4th century by the emperor Constantine or some such thing. These kind of statements show an incredible ignorance of Church History. For the first 250 years of Church history the majority of Christians and Christian leaders were trying to spread the gospel and keep from having their heads chopped off by gladiators, thrown into prisons, or thrown to lions to entertain Roman crowds. When heresies arose, they confronted them, and such is the reason we have Irenaeus, one of Christianity’s first theologians, writing his comprehensive work called ‘Against Heresies’, a refutation of Gnosticism. However, in Irenaeus we also see passages related to what we call an ‘economic trinity’ meaning, a form of practical application of the roles of the divine persons. 

Christology, and Trinitarian doctrine developed during the first two centuries with men such as Clement of Alexandria and Origin. The issue for these writers was similar to our own, namely in what words to describe profound concepts which are fundamentally beyond human understanding. 

Tertullian, who lived from 160-240, was instrumental in using words such as substance, essence, and personas in an effort to explain what was obvious in Scripture, but not explained in Scripture. Tertulliun concluded that there was one divine substance (substantia), subsisting in three persons (personas) which is best described with the word trinity (trinitas). All of this was considered the norm of the biblical evidence long before Constantine was even born.

From 312-318 a priest called Arius came into conflict with his superior for teaching that Christ was not God, but rather an honorary creature, an idea he had developed from Origen’s ideas regarding the Logos. Incidentally, all of this happened at the time when Constantine had his so-called conversion and persecution ended. It was during this time of peace that these issues were debated and formulated in the creeds.

The doctrine of the trinity is the best explanation of a revealed truth about the nature of God that mere human beings can put into words. Can any of us ever fully understand how the Creator of the world became a man, can we explain exactly how He walked on the Sea of Galilee or turned water into wine? We do our best to understand and explain these revealed facts, but let’s take a spoon full of humility before condemning those who, in their passion for Christ and love of truth have tried to put profound truths into basic human language.

Steve Copland