What does the word trinity mean?
This word simply means threeness or triple.
What is the meaning of this word in a theological context?
This is a word used with reference to God meaning that there is a sense in which God is three.
Are not Christians monotheists?
Yes, they are, but the Bible teaches us that, in another sense, God is three.
What are these texts?
The first are those texts which speak of God as three persons. Other texts teach the divinity of Jesus; and finally, there are texts which teach the divinity of the Holy Spirit.
What are those texts which speak of other persons in the Godhead?
Consider these texts:
- In the great commission, Jesus tells His disciples: Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, (Matthew 28:19)
- At Jesus’ baptism, we read of Jesus being baptized, the Father pronouncing “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased,” and the Holy Spirit descending out of heaven as a dove and landing on Jesus.
- In the opening verses of John’s gospel, he writes about God but then goes not to say that the Word also was God. (John 1:1)
- On several occasions, Jesus speaks of “another Helper” (John 14:16-17, 16:7-15) who Jesus Himself will send (John 15:26) and who comes from the Father. (John 14:26)
- Paul closes his second letter to Corinth 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.”
- Peter writes in his first letter: Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who reside as aliens, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, who are chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to obey Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with His blood: May grace and peace be yours in the fullest measure. (1 Peter 1:1-2)
So the difficulty here is to reconcile those texts which speak of God as one and those which speak of the divinity of Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
Yes, precisely.
What suggestions have been put forward?
The orthodox understand this to be a mystery which God has not given us the information to resolve. Thus, we adopt language that avoids a contradiction, expresses what we do know, and maintains the mystery.
What is this language?
The church uses the language of one God or one Essence and three persons. Beyond this, we cannot go. Braaten writes about the person of Christ:
It can be safely concluded that the council [of Chalcedon] accomplished the negative purpose of condemning heresy, for a time building a protective fence around the mystery of the person of Jesus Christ. “The Person of Jesus Christ,” in Christian Dogmatics, ed. Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 2011), 505–506.
The same can be said for the terms God, Essence, and persons. They are a protective fence around the mystery of the holy Trinity.
Some thinkers have undoubtedly tried to explain this mystery.
Yes, but all these proposals fail. Some of them protect God’s threeness; others God’s unity. Others subordinate one Person to Another.
Explain the position of those who eliminate God’s threeness.
These are the modalists. The idea is that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are just different ways the Father manifests Himself. Orr writes (p155):
Sabellius (a Libyan?) is first met with in Rome under the episcopate of Zephyrinus (202–18ad) as an adherent of Cleomenes. He was excommunicated by Callistus (himself a Patripassian). His heresy had a powerful revival in North Africa about 260ad, and reappeared in the fourth century as a reaction against Arianism (Marcellus). In principle its solution is the substitution of a Trinity of revelation for a Trinity of essence; a Trinity of modes or aspects of the one Divine Being for a Trinity of Persons. The one God (Monas) expands and contracts in successive revelations, as the arm may be outstretched and drawn back again. God revealed in the Law is the Father, in Jesus Christ is the Son, in the indwelling in believers is the Spirit. The incarnation is thus a passing mode of God’s manifestation. Pushed to its issue, it means nothing more than a dynamical presence of God in the soul of Christ.
Explain the teaching of those who protect God’s threeness.
No Christian thinker of any significance has suggested that there are actually three Gods.
Explain the doctrine of those who subordinate Jesus or the Holy Spirit to the Father.
The first of these is Paul of Samosata. He denied that Jesus and the Holy Spirit were persons. Schaff writes (p575):
He denied the personality of the Logos and of the Holy Spirit, and considered them merely powers of God, like reason and mind in man; but granted that the Logos dwelt in Christ in larger measure than in any former messenger of God, and taught, like the Socinians in later times, a gradual elevation of Christ, determined by his own moral development, to divine dignity. He admitted that Christ remained free from sin, conquered the sin of our forefathers, and then became the Savior of the race. To introduce his Christology into the mind of the people, he undertook to alter the church hymns, but was shrewd enough to accommodate himself to the orthodox formulas, calling Christ, for example, “God from the Virgin,” and ascribing to him even homoousia with the Father, but of course in his own sense. (cf Neander p601; De Pressense p131)
Arius is the much more famous thinker who taught that Jesus was the first creation of God the Father. He denied that Jesus was eternal and infinite; see here.