The Primitive Trinity

The classical Christian doctrine of the Trinity holds that God is one, yet existing in three coeternal, consubstantial persons or hypostases -- the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; hence, "one God in three divine Persons."

That's a lot to unpack...

For many Christians the Trinity seems too difficult to understand, so many do not even bother to try -- far better to confess the creeds and be done with it. Indeed, finding ways to articulate the Trinity can be a career-long pursuit. Theologians spend years writing books on the subject. This is because the Trinity calls for the utmost conciseness in definition, simplicity of expression, and relevance in presentation. The "relevance" part is what trips up even the best of attempts.

Yet before the subject got so complicated, before the Trinity was a doctrine, it was simply a word. The Latin word Trinitas derives from trinus, meaning "threefold." Literally it means a triad -- a union of three. 

Now here's the interesting part: the word "Trinity" did not exist prior to someone coining it to describe the Christian understanding of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the New Testament. No one knows who actually coined it, because no one takes credit for it. But we don't actually see the word being used until the late second century, specifically in the writings of Theophilus of Antioch, who used it as a shorthand label for the three divine agents that he detected in the creation story of Genesis 1: namely, "God, his Word, and his Wisdom (i.e. Holy Spirit)."

Yet it wasn't until the third century that people started taking notice of the word. The North African theologian, Tertullian, usually gets credit for this. Yet in the course of using it, he subtly shifted its meaning away from a simple label to a shorthand description of the triune (i.e. three-in-one) nature of divine relationship -- thus giving rise to the doctrine. Many in his day took issue with his views on the matter, and he admitted as much. But the term itself stuck, and defining the term has been a major preoccupation for theologians ever since.

But we can take our search for the primitive Trinity back even further than this. Before "Trinity" existed as a word or a term, it existed as a concept and a symbol contained in a formula -- specifically the one we use today in Christian baptism. It first appears this way at the end of the Gospel of Matthew, in the passage known as Jesus' Great Commission:

The eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age." (Matthew 28:16-20)

As New Testament writings go, Matthew is rather late in provenance, being written probably between 80-90 CE. Thus we can hardly claim universality for this baptismal symbol prior to Matthew, especially when other NT writers were apparently unfamiliar with it. Luke (the author of Acts) describes baptism being done "in the name of Jesus" (cf. Acts 2:38), and, similarly, Paul (the earliest NT writer) speaks of baptism "into Christ Jesus" (cf. Romans 6:3). Yet, Matthew's baptismal formula would catch on. We see allusions to it in such early authors as Clement of Rome and Ignatius of Antioch. And we see specific mention of it in the late first century instruction manual known as the Didache. 

So this forces us to go back even further to recover a primitive understanding of the Trinity. We need to go back to a time before the Trinity was a doctrine, before it was a word, and even before the Name of the "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" was ever mentioned in baptism. Before the Trinity was any of these things it was a pattern -- a pattern of divine activity that permeates the entire New Testament. 

We encounter this pattern in the birth announcement given to Mary:

The angel said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God." (Luke 1:35)

We see it at the beginning of Jesus' ministry, after he was baptized by John:

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased." (Mark 1:9-11)

It also features prominently in the writings of Paul, as well as other letters of the New Testament:

[He] was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.(Romans 1:4)

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you. (2 Corinthians 13:13)

And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!" (Galatians 4:6)

I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him...(Ephesians 1:17)

For through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. (Ephesians 2:18)

How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to worship the living God! (Hebrews 9:14)

But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. (John 14:26)

What becomes evident from these and many other NT passages is the idea that the Christian way of knowing God is threefold: We know the Father through the Son in the power of the Spirit. This is the Trinity in its most primitive form, without which the later formula, the later word, and the later doctrine would have no relevance.

Here it is important to emphasize that this is a threefold way of knowing God, rather than of knowing about God. Too much ink has been spilt in controversy because this point has been missed. We can never hope to define the mystery of God. We cannot point to a word like Trinity and say, "This is God" or "This is what God is like." Rather the Trinity is the way that Christians come to encounter God, in the sense of entering into relationship with the Father through the Son in the Spirit.

This threefold way of knowing God begins with an affirmation of the God revealed in the Old Testament: the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; the God who gave the law to Moses; the God proclaimed by the prophets. The ancient Israelites knew this God as Yahweh -- "I am who I am" -- the name revealed to Moses on Sinai. Yahweh adopted the people of Israel, and related to them as divine parent -- as "Father," yes, even at times as Mother. Herein lies the genius behind the Hebrew religion: we do not find God without God first "finding" us. Jesus calls God "Abba" -- Father -- and Christians enjoy this same intimacy with "our Father in heaven" in prayer. 

But Christians go further in their belief that the Father's love for the world became incarnate in the life and ministry of Jesus, whom they confess as the unique and "only" Son of God:

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son. (John 3:16)

The Nicene Creed goes on to confess that Jesus is "of one Being" with the Father. However we might attempt to articulate this duality of natures in Jesus (human and divine), the essence of this confession is quite simple: Christians believe that God's love for the world was embodied in a human person -- his Son, Jesus Christ. As Paul states, "In him the whole fullness of the deity dwells bodily" (Colossians 2:9).

But that's not all. Before his arrest, Jesus promised not to leave his disciples as orphans. He promised to send them "another Advocate" -- the Spirit of Life (John 14:16-17). The Holy Spirit, the last of our triad, is the agent of God's presence in the life of the Christian. Whereas the risen Jesus now stands before the Father as our advocate in heaven (1 John 2:1), the Spirit makes its appeal directly to us, and in us, by disclosing the truth of God's love embodied in his Son through us. The Spirit thus becomes the agent of our union with Christ and with his Father.

This means that the Divine life not only includes Father, Son, and Spirit, but the believer as well -- a "Quadrinity," if you will. And herein lies the relevance of the doctrine of the Trinity -- not an obscure doctrine prone to confusion and misunderstanding, but rather the very heart of the message of the New Testament and the  gospel of Jesus Christ.

Amen.