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The Trinity

The Biblical teaching about the triune God may be summed up very simply. There are three who are called God and who are treated as God in the Bible.

  1. The Father is called God, and we are to worship Him and to

reckon with Him as God.

2. The Son is called God, and we are to worship Him and to respond to Him in ways appropriate only to God.

3. Likewise, the Holy Spirit is called God, and we must respond to Him accordingly.

4. In the Bible, each of these is not only the other but is distinct from the other in personal ways. The Father gave His Son and sends His Holy Spirit. The Son prays to the Father and likewise sends the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit witnesses to the Father and to the Son.

5. Yet there is just one being who is God. We do not worship three gods; we are monotheistic.

In the one God are three interpersonal relationships, and no Christian claims to understand this mystery. But it is not a contradiction. And it is not nonsense. All we are really saying is that God's psychology is more complex than our own human psychology. This ought not to surprise us or to prove too troublesome to handle. We do not yet even understand our own finite human psychology. Why should we not expect the psychology of the infinite God to be more complex and mysterious than ours? Why should we insist that we must understand the divine psychology fully before we are willing to receive what God reveals to be true about His own nature?

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