The Forgotten Trinity (5 page)

The large majority of people with whom I have spoken who insisted
they did not believe in the Trinity actually did not believe in a misrepresentation or misunderstanding of the doctrine itself. Most often people confuse modalism, the belief that God exists in three "modes" (Father, Son, and Spirit), but is only one person, with the real doctrine of
the Trinity. "But Jesus prayed to the Father! How could He be the Father?" is what I often hear. It is important to emphasize that we are
not saying that the Father is the Son, nor that the Son is the Spirit.
That is not the doctrine of the Trinity, despite how many people in
honest ignorance think otherwise. No true Trinitarian believes the Father was a "ventriloquist" at the baptism of Jesus, nor that Jesus was
praying to himself in the Garden of Gethsemane.

A WORD TO APOLOGISTS

I write as a Christian theologian and apologist. A Christian apologist is a person who gives a defense, a reason for the Christian faith.
As a Christian apologist, I have often undertaken to define, and defend,
the biblical doctrine of the Trinity.

I do not intend this book to be an exhaustive defense of the Trinity.
There are all sorts of objections I simply will not address, not for lack
of desire to do so, but for another more important reason. It is my
desire that this work function to introduce, explain, and make understandable a doctrine that, while at the center of our faith, is often ignored and misunderstood. I am attempting to explain and, as a result,
cause Christians to love and understand the doctrine of the Trinity. I
do provide some responses to the common objections raised against
the truth of the Trinity, mainly through the use of endnotes, but if I
allowed too much of the "debate" to enter into the work itself, I would
lose the very audience I so desire to see fall in love with the Trinity.
Beyond this, the very space that would be required to respond to every
possible objection would remove this book from the hands of the
Christian who is simply seeking to understand accurately the great God
whom we worship as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

He dragged a big, thick, foreboding-looking book from
under the podium and held it up high. "I am sick and tired of theology!" he yelled, slamming the book down. "Don't give me theology,
just give me Jesus!" The crowd, with the notable exception of my wife
and me, seated in the back row, roared its approval. Yeah, but as soon
as you make one statement about Jesus, I thought to myself, you are
speaking theology.

I love theology. Not the cold, stuffy, lifeless stuff you find in some
corners of the church, but the living, exciting, Bible-based, lifechanging, "wow, isn't God incredible" theology that you encounter in
every verse of the New Testament. I love reading great writers of the
faith like Augustine, Athanasius, Wycliffe, Luther, Calvin, the Puritans,
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (oh, that we had a dozen like him today!),
Hodge, Machen, Warfield, and modern writers like R. C. Sproul, John
Armstrong, and John MacArthur. I remember sitting up till early in the morning reading Sproul's The Holiness of God. I wasn't able to put
it down. Some writers can transport you into the very presence of God
by accurately and forcefully explaining God's truth.

If you are a Christian, you are a theologian. You have no choice.
Theology is simply knowing about God. In fact, since Christians are
called to grow in their knowledge of God, part of the very goal of the
Christian life is theology. Theology is a normal part of the Christian
life-a part that gives rise to everything else.

The primary focus of this chapter is to establish the very foundation of the doctrine of the Trinity: absolute, uncompromised monotheism. Monotheism-the belief in one true and eternal God, maker
of all things-is the first truth that separates Christianity from the
pagan religions of the world. Any discussion of the Trinity that does
not begin with the clear, unequivocal proclamation that there is one,
indivisible Being of God is a discussion doomed to failure. Anyone
who thinks that the doctrine of the Trinity compromises absolute monotheism simply does not understand what the doctrine is teaching.

A PROPER ATTITUDE

We dare not embark on our examination of the Scriptures' testimony to the nature of our Creator without recognizing that it is He
who sets the limits to our study. If we wish to know God truly, we must
be willing to allow Him to reveal to us what He wants us to know, and
He must be free as to how He wants to reveal it. He has given us a
treasure trove of truth about Him, but He has not deemed it proper
to reveal everything there is to know (if such is even possible). We dare
not go beyond the boundaries He himself has set in His Word. The
Scriptures put it this way:

The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things
revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe
all the words of this law. (Deuteronomy 29:29)

God's revelation is a gift to His people, and we are free to delve as
deeply as we desire into its eternal truths. But we can never allow pride
and arrogance to cause us to think that we can "put God in a box" and remove from Him the supremacy that is His. As He reminds us:

"For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways
My ways," declares the LORD. "For as the heavens are higher than
the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts
than your thoughts" (Isaiah 55:8-9).

THE MORNING PRAYER

Each morning the faithful Jew repeated the words that defined his
faith and provided the foundation of his religion. This prayer is known
as the Shema, taken from the Hebrew word "to hear":

Hear, 0 Israel! The LORD' is our God, the LORD is one! You
shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your
soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. (Deuteronomy 6:4-6)

Monotheism. One God, Yahweh. No other gods beside Me. These are
basic and fundamental truths confessed by Jews and Christians alike.
God chose to begin His revelation of His truth not by arguing for His
existence, but by asserting that He alone is God, the Creator of all
things (Genesis 1:1). As the one God of Israel, He is to be loved with
all the heart, soul, mind, and strength. The Lord Jesus said this is the
greatest commandment-there is no higher calling than to love this
one God. God's people have always accepted God's claims about himself:

Behold, to the LORD your God belong heaven and the highest
heavens, the earth and all that is in it. (Deuteronomy 10:14)

It was truly novel, in the days when polytheism reigned supreme
as the religious "consensus" of the world, for anyone to claim that their
God was the Creator of all things. But God would not allow His worship to be polluted by the false idea that He was but one God among
many true deities. He is distinguished from all the false gods of the
peoples around Israel by the fact that He alone is God, and He alone
created all things.

God often had to remind His people Israel of the most basic of His
truths. They were always wandering off into idolatry, attempting to
join His worship with the worship of other deities. The Old Testament
is a tribute to His longsuffering patience with them, and His constantly
bringing them back into the fold. A constant cycle of punishment, repentance, and restoration unfolds for us in the Scriptures, and it is
always associated with the confession on the part of the penitent Israelites that they had indeed sinned in going after "other gods."

In Isaiah's prophecy we find the most explicit testimony to God's
utter uniqueness and to the resultant truth of absolute monotheism.
Here, in chapters 40 through 48, we find what I like to call the "Trial
of the False Gods." God sets up His cosmic courtroom and invites
those gods vying for the attention of His people to take the stand and
experience a little celestial cross-examination. God is unrelenting in
pressing His claims against these false gods, and in the process, He
reveals a tremendous number of fundamental truths about himself. By
comparing the real thing with all the pretenders, God exposes them all
for the frauds they truly are.

"You are My witnesses," declares the LORD, "and My servant
whom I have chosen, in order that you may know and believe Me
and understand that I am He. Before Me there was no God formed,
and there will be none after Me" (Isaiah 43:10).

Here Yahweh (the LORD) calls as a witness in His suit against the false
gods His own people, Israel. He chose Israel for a purpose: that they
might know and believe Him. As a result, they are witnesses to the
truth of the statement "Before Me there was no God formed, and there
will be none after Me."' God is saying, "Israel, I alone am God. There
are no true gods beside me. There were none before Me, for I am eternal. And there will be none after Me, for I do not age, and will not
pass away. There is no room for other gods, for I alone am God, the
Creator."

"Thus says the LORD, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the
LORD of hosts: `I am the first and I am the last, and there is no God besides Me. Who is like Me? Let him proclaim and declare it;
yes, let him recount it to Me in order, from the time that I established the ancient nation. And let them declare to them the things
that are coming and the events that are going to take place. Do
not tremble and do not be afraid; have I not long since announced
it to you and declared it? And you are My witnesses. Is there any
God besides Me, or is there any other Rock? I know of none"'
(Isaiah 44:6-8).

Again, Yahweh speaks and reminds us that He is the first and the
last. Such a phrase is exhaustive. "There is no God besides Me." Idolatry is inherently foolish simply because there is no worthy object of
worship other than the one true God.

God then asks, "Who is like Me?" There is no answer given, for
this is celestial rhetoric-anyone who attempts to answer is guilty of
idolatry.

God then challenges anyone who would claim to be like Him to do
what only He can do: reveal the future with exacting and minute detail
and accuracy. God knows the future, not because He has some kind of
crystal ball, but because, as these passages assert over and over again,
He is the Creator of all things, including time, past, present, and future.

God comforts His people by saying that they need not be fearful
of the gods of the peoples, for those gods have no existence in reality.
He then asks a question that should end all discussion: "Is there any
God besides Me?" The believer can only answer, "No."

"Declare and set forth your case; indeed, let them consult together. Who has announced this from of old? Who has long since
declared it? Is it not I, the LORD? And there is no other God besides
Me, a righteous God and a Savior; there is none except Me. Turn
to Me and be saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and
there is no other" (Isaiah 45:21-22).

The scene is still the courtroom, and here God demands that the idols
present their case as to why Israel should give them worship. You will
note the idols never respond. Aside from the fact that they are dumb
(mute and blind as well), even if they could speak, what would they say? They have no defense. So basic is the realization that there is only
one true God that centuries later Paul can refer to idols as those that
"by nature are no gods" (Galatians 4:8). A god other than Yahweh is,
by nature, a "no-god."