The Trinity

How can God be three persons, yet one God?

A. The Doctrine of the Trinity Is Progressively Revealed in Scripture

• The word trinity is never found in the Bible, however is used to summarize the teaching of Scripture that God is three persons yet one God.

B. Three Statements Summarize the Biblical Teaching

1. God is three persons
2. Each person is fully God
3. There is one God

• Scripture is clear that there is one and only one God.
• The three different persons of the Trinity are one not only in purpose and in agreement on what they think, but they are one in essence, one in their essential nature.
  
• Isaiah 45:5-6, "I am the Lord, and there is no other, besides me there is no God; I gird you, though you do not know me, that men may know, from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is none besides me; I am the Lord, and there is no other."
  

C. All analogies have shortcomings

• People have used several analogies drawn from nature or human experience to attempt to explain this doctrine. Although these analogies can be helpful at an elementary level of understanding, they all turn out to be inadequate or misleading.
• To say, for example, that God is like a three-leaf clover, which has three parts yet remains one clover, fails because each leaf is only part of the clover, and any one leaf cannot be said to be the whole clover.
• To say, that the trinity is also like the three forms of water (steam, water, and ice) is also inadequate because no quantity of water is ever all three of these at the same time, they have different properties or characteristics, the analogy has nothing that corresponds to the fact that there is only one God, and the element of intelligent personality is lacking.

Summary

• "It is important to affirm that each person is completely and fully God; that is, that each person has the whole fullness of God's being in himself. The Son is not partly God or just one0third of God, but the Son is wholly and fully God, and so are the Father and the Holy Spirit. Thus, it would not be right to think of the Trinity with each person representing only one0third of God's being. Rather, we must say that the person of the Father possesses the whole being of God himself. Similarly, the Son possesses the whole being of God in himself, and the Holy Spirit possesses the whole being of God in himself. When we speak of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit together, we are not speaking of any greater being than when we speak of the Father alone, or the Son alone, or the Holy Spirit alone. The Father is all of God's being. The Son also is all of God's being. And the Holy Spirit is all of God's being. But if each person is fully God and has all of God's being, then we also should not think that the personal distinctions are any kind of additional attributes added on to the being of God. Rather, each person of the Trinity has all of the attributes of God, and no one person has any attributes that are not possessed by the others. On the other hand, we must say that the persons are real, that they are not just different ways of looking at the one being of God. Rather, we need to think of the Trinity in such a way that the reality of the three persons is maintained. There is no difference in attributes at all. The only difference between them is the way they relate to each other and to creation. The unique quality of the Father is the way he relates as Father to the Son and Holy Spirit. The unique quality of the Son is the way he relates as Son. And the unique quality of the Holy Spirit is the way he relates as Spirit."