Dr Paul Allen

In chapter 17 of the first book of his Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin expresses his delight in this passage written by the fourth-century Cappadocian church father Gregory of Nazianzus. Specifically, Calvin points to the following sentence: “No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the Splendour of the Three; no sooner do I distinguish them than I am carried back to the One.” Why does John Calvin find joy in these words? Calvin understands that contemplating our triune God exposes us to a truth that surpasses our total comprehension. He knew that to avoid error in our thoughts and words about God, we must be careful. Gregory of Nazianzus (AD 329–390) was one of the greatest theologians of the early church. He was instrumental in the resolution of the fourth-century Trinitarian crisis that engulfed the church. Certain of his writings, particularly Orations 20, 23, 25 and the five theological orations (27–31), are foundational works in the history of T...

The Nicene Creed is the world's most widely used confession of faith, and has been for over a thousand years. Sunday after Sunday in their worship services, Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Anglicans, and others recite the creed to profess their beliefs. Those who do not know the creed—who have not learned it by heart from years of repetition—are a minority in the Christian world. Why say the Nicene Creed? The creed is a Bible-based summary of the gospel of Jesus Christ. To say the creed is to say who God is—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—and who Christ is: the only-begotten Son of the Father, God from God, who for our salvation became incarnate, which is to say fully human, and was crucified, raised from the dead, and now sits enthroned at the right hand of God the Father. Joining other Christians in saying and believing in the creed is thus a way to come to know God. There are other creeds, most importantly the Apostles’ Creed (so called because its teaching goes back ...

  The Eastern and Western churches have understood the Trinity in rather different ways, each with distinct problems. For the East, the person of the Father is the centre of divine unity. The potential danger is a sub-ordinationist tendency, with the Son and the Holy Spirit having a derivative status.  On the other hand, the West, since Augustine, has focused on the one divine essence (being), only with difficulty accounting for the real eternal distinctions between the persons. A less-than fully personal view of God has resulted. Its bias is in a modalist direction, wherein the distinct persons are blurred.  Unfortunately, the Trinity is not a vital part of worship; for Western Christians, it is a mathematical conundrum, a matter for advanced philosophers, not ordinary believers. Conversely, the Eastern church, while maintaining the Trinity at the heart of worship, has taught that the divine essence is unknowable, placing a question mark over the reality of our knowledge...

  Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, better known as Tertullian, lived circa 160 – 240 A.D. This Christian scholar and writer became famous for defending the early Christian faith against heretical attacks and for coining one of the most important theological terms in Christianity. Early in the 3rd century, a priest called Sabellius began teaching that God had three different forms or “modes” which he flipped between Father, Son, or Spirit. He described God as having three masks, which God selected, depending on what he was trying to reveal to mankind. This was a heroic attempt to explain why God is sometimes called the Father while at other times, the Son, and yet also the Holy Spirit. But this attempt by Sabellius didn’t sit right with Tertullian, who countered it with his own, more biblical, explanation. At that time there wasn’t even a word that existed for the three natures of God. So Tertullian made one up. He called his concept the Trinity. As I’m sure you realize… the...

The early church, Christian thinkers have seen a shadowy witness to the Trinity in the “let us” of Genesis 1:26. However, it is considerably more likely that the plurality seen in this text relates, first and foremost, to the Divine Council — a monotheist form of the assembly of the gods one encounters in various ancient Near Eastern cosmologies. Even in the book of Revelation, this remains the chief context in which God is revealed: not in his eternal, invisible, uncreated transcendence, but in variegated theophanic manifestations in the created realm of a heavenly throne room and assembly — the throne, the Lamb, and the sevenfold Spirit, surrounded by four living creatures, twenty-four elders, seraphim, cherubim, various angelic ministers, and redeemed human beings. These theophanic manifestations reveal God, while not being directly identified as God. Son and Spirit A fuller understanding of the identity of Christ and the Trinity emerges only gradually out of reflection u...

The early church fought off false teachers and doctrines to obtain a better understanding of what the Bible teaches about who God is and how the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit relate to one another in terms of their existence and works. They thought deeply and biblically regarding the Scripture’s affirmation that we worship one God in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In so doing, the church defended biblical truth against three errors: modalism, Arianism, and semi-Arianism. Yet, these errors did not go away but have periodically reappeared throughout church history. MODALISM Modalism1 arose in the late second and early third centuries when theologians promoted the doctrine of Monarchianism. Monarchianism (from the Greek mono, “one,” and arch, “ruler”) is the heretical doctrine that teaches that the one God is only one person who manifests Himself in different ways at different times. A third-century theologian by the name of Sabellius (c. AD 215) could not reconcil...

Is the doctrine of the Trinity biblical? Well, that depends on what you mean when you say “biblical.” Does the Bible anywhere contain anything like the Nicene Creed? No.  Does the Bible anywhere present a systematic statement of the doctrine of the Trinity using technical theological terms such as homoousios or hypostasis? No.  So, if this is what is required in order for the doctrine of the Trinity to be biblical, then no, the doctrine isn’t biblical. But this is not what is required for a doctrine to be biblical. The Westminster Confession of Faith explains, “The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture” (1.6).  The doctrine of the Trinity is not expressly set down in Scripture in the technical sense described above, but it is certainly a “good and necessary consequence” of what ...

There can be no eternal relations of authority and submission ad intra, (at the interior) within the life of the Trinity from eternity, because:   (1) submission is the subjection of one will to another and therefore it requires multiple faculties of will; because  (2) will is a property of nature, not person, and thus two wills require two natures; and  (3) there is only one nature in the Godhead.  There can be no submission or subjection within the Godhead ad intra without there being a distinction of nature. The reason the incarnate Son can submit to the Father (which, of course, everyone grants is the case) is that He has added a human nature (and thus a human will) to His divine nature, which He possesses in perpetuity (Col 2:9; 1 Cor 15:28). Before He assumed a human nature in the incarnation, there is no subjection of the Son’s will to the Father. God is one God; each person of the Trinity fully subsists in the single, simple, undivided ...

Balaam and the Angel, a painting by Gustav Jaeger, 1836. In this excerpt from Reformed Dogmatics , esteemed Reformed scholar Geerhardus Vos states what we can discern about the doctrine of the Trinity from the Old Testament. The Trinity 1. Why must we not seek a decisive proof for the Trinity in the Old Testament? a) Because Old Testament revelation was not finished but only preparatory. The perfect comes only at the end. b) Under the Old Testament’s dispensation the concept of the oneness of God had to be deeply impressed upon Israel’s consciousness in the face of all polytheistic inclinations. c) We must not imagine that the Old Testament saints were able to read in the Old Testament everything that we can read there in the light of the New. Yet, what we read in it is clearly the purpose of the Holy Spirit, for He had the Scripture of the Old Testament written not only for then but also for now. 2. Which traces of the doctrine of the Trinity can we nevertheless discover in the Old...

One of the most essential doctrines of the Bible is also one of the hardest to understand and articulate—the Trinity. At the same time, this is the single most offensive element of the Christian faith to Muslims. So it is utterly important that we properly understand the Trinity, especially as we share the gospel with our Muslim friends. In this post, we will try to briefly describe and give evidence of the Trinity. Helpful and unhelpful ways of understanding the Trinity Muslims typically do not have a proper understanding of what we mean when we say God is a Trinity. Typically, a Muslim assumes Christians believe God had a relationship with Mary that produced Jesus, the Son of God. As Christians who desire to be faithful in proclaiming the gospel, we must correct a Muslim’s erroneous understanding by both speaking and demonstrating the truth of what God’s word says. However, in our attempts to share the gospel, there are many unhelpful and wrong examples for explaining the Trinity,...