The Trouble with the Trinity: A LAYMAN-TO-LAYMAN STUDY OF THE BIBLICAL EVIDENCE FOR THE TRIUNE NATURE OF GOD

Chapter 1

The Beginning

It was 3:00 a.m., late in 1982, and as usual, I was awakened by the shrill alarm of anxiety. I knew the source; I knew the remedy. But I was not yet prepared to apply it. I had to develop an interim strategy.

The source was a concern I had never faced before—how would I pay the bills now that we had stepped out in faith and obedience to the Lord’s calling? The remedy was to trust the Lord. I knew in my heart I could do that. The problem was—that knowledge had not yet ascended to my head.

I had been a successful government worker in Utah with a good salary and a bright future when my wife’s mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Her dad was clearly in need of assistance. To further complicate things, my folks were in their eighties, and our three children had not gotten to know them well. We have strong family bonds, and we wanted them to know their grandparents before it was too late. Since my wife and I were childhood sweethearts, our folks lived in the same town in Vermont on the other side of the country. Thus, it seemed appropriate for us to obey the fifth commandment and honor our fathers and mothers, leave our security, and return to that town to help where we were needed.

We had prayed about the decision, had sought God’s will through His Word, had received godly counsel from our pastor and fellow believers (who all believed we were being called to be obedient), and weighed that against the counsel of nonbelievers who were set against our going. We had also looked for circumstantial evidence that we were doing God’s will. Many events pointed to or confirmed our decision to make the move. Perhaps the most dramatic occurred when my wife, who had returned to look for a house to rent and provide interim care for her mother, was looking at a rental less than a half a mile up the country road from her parents when she discovered a board on a shelf with our last name burned into the end. Needless to say, we rented that house!

I was supposed to be here. It was God’s will. But although He had provided a consulting job prior to my return, had miraculously come up with a summer teaching job at my alma mater to follow the consulting work, and had even used the summer teaching job to launch a new teaching job in the fall, that was only three out of three. After all, there was the spring semester coming up and summer after that and so on. Would He continue to provide our needs?

It was this concern that had drawn me into a state of depression that manifested itself in numerous ways, the most distressing of which was this clockwork anxiety at 3:00 a.m. Although I was still young in the Lord (I had received Jesus as my Lord and Savior five years earlier and had received the baptism of the Holy Spirit four years after that), I was mature enough to realize that some of my problems could be arising from outside me. Satan and his minions might not be happy with what we were doing.

Thus, I decided to counter his efforts by making 3:00 a.m. my quiet time. If this development were from Satan, the Lord and I would team up to thwart him.

It wasn’t long into this regime when I discovered that it yielded two immediate benefits—after an hour or so in the Word, I would frequently find a reassuring verse (which I committed to memory) and my anxiety would dissipate to the point that I could go back to sleep until morning. I also discovered I was beginning to develop an interest in a question that had been simmering in the back of my mind ever since I had come to the Lord—exactly how does the Bible treat the Trinity? What was the evidence for the godhood of each member of the Trinity, and how did this evidence mesh with the concept of a single God?

It was following this discovery of the interest in the latter question, early in 1984, that I decided to research it. So I bought Strong’s Concordance²⁰; made copies of every reference to passages that contained at a minimum both the words God or a synonym and either Father, Son, or Holy Spirit (or a synonym of each of these Godheads²¹); cut them out (there were many hundreds); and arranged them in what appeared to be related groups of confluence. (Remember, if you’re old enough, that this was before personal computers with cut and paste capabilities.) Thus, began the exciting exploration that resulted in this book.

Although the arranging and grouping described above at first seemed daunting, the verses fell together, and the groups formed more easily than I had feared, almost seeming to do so on their own. In the process of looking at what they revealed about God, I came to a third benefit—the resulting arrangement of verses in groups and the logical ordering of these groups provided me with incredibly exciting insights into other aspects of the nature of God, many of which I had never seen nor read about before. God was demonstrating His personal love for me in ways that appealed to my inquisitive and methodical nature.

Finally, as soon as I began this endeavor, I discovered a fourth benefit. Not only was I able to go back to sleep at about 4:00 a.m., but also the next two hours of sleep were more restful and physiologically effective than any full night of sleep I’d ever gotten!

Please join me now on this voyage of discovery. As in any other project He undertakes, God has done an awesome job describing the fullness of His Triunity in His Word.

Incidentally, did God supply our needs as He promised He would? Well, I suppose my answer should be like that of my fellow Vermonter who was asked if he’d lived in Vermont all his life; he responded, Not yet. We likely have more years to depend upon Him. But here, it is thirty-six years later. All four of our parents have died, but other reasons that brought us back to Vermont to serve the Lord continue unabated or have not been resolved, and new ones have arisen, so we’re still in our hometown. God put us through a period of sixteen years when He provided income in such a way that we needed to trust Him two or three times a year to get us through the next several months. After that, He freed us from that burden with a good salary and a permanent job. He has been so faithful so many times that His trustworthiness is no longer a question. "He is faithful" has finally ascended to my head. My heart and head are now fully in agreement. Halleluiah!

Chapter 2

The Trouble

One God, or one with several forms²²? Or maybe two, three, or perhaps many separate Gods? If you seriously study all the Christian religions, you will find that each of these possibilities is claimed. That is one trouble with the Trinity—there are just too many possibilities. Which, if any, is right? Which view does the Bible support? And if it supports one view, how strongly, and exactly how is that view supported?

These are five questions that are most critical to the Christian belief and yet often the least examined by the Christian. The Three in One is taken for granted. Then, by taking it for granted, we are unable to defend our belief when confronted with alternate claims made by those taking specific Bible verses out of context or twisting the meaning of one verse here and another there. Suddenly, it seems their arguments make sense and are supported by the Bible. Before we know it, we have become members of their cults, often locked in for life and eternal damnation.

But God wants His children to avoid this fate. So, knowing all, He is able to anticipate the twisted lies Satan would contrive—lies designed solely to hurt God by stealing God’s children from Him. Thus, as you will see, God has clearly woven a picture of His divinity into the tapestry of His Word. He has done so not only clearly but also considerately! Rarely will we have to resort to the strategy of tying together distant verses to see this picture emerging. God is not even satisfied with clearly and considerately. He goes on to copiously. He repeats parts of that picture as a unique theme in many places throughout the Bible and then does the same thing with variations on that theme.

I believe He partitions and distributes His truth in this manner for three compelling reasons—1) He desires that we spend time in His Word, seeking the truth; 2) He does not want us to miss the truth, if we are faithful in looking for it; and 3) by spreading out His truth in this way, God has secured His Word from misrepresentation by the cults because it is impossible for them to find and change all the relevant entries to support their mistaken view.

Yes, God wants us to see the picture He has woven, but His divinity is not easily grasped by a people limited by finite minds and three dimensions. That is another trouble with the Trinity—despite the fact many concepts of the Trinity can be beautifully portrayed in a simple shape (to be revealed in chapter 11), others cannot. Unfortunately, many people are not willing to wrestle with the difficult concepts God conveys in the Bible. Instead, they find a verse that says something to them and run with it, assuming it teaches all they ever need to know about that subject, while, in reality, God’s truth is too big for one or two verses. Thus, this book attempts to look at every verse that weaves together a name for a form of God with a theme about how that form fits into the Triune nature of God. By so doing, we will discover a large percentage of the whole counsel of God to mankind, concerning the divinity of the Trinity. We will see the majestic tapestry revealed thread by beautiful thread.

Near the end of the book, in chapter 11 (Weaving the Spans Together), I will present a composite of the picture God has woven. At times in the process of getting there, I will present portions of that picture. You may be offended or more likely be confused by what the picture suggests up to that point, but please bear with me. God is an artisan of incomparable perfection. He is not to be rushed. I am convinced the end will be worth the labor—it will, in the vernacular of my youth, knock your socks off.

Chapter 3

Is the Father God?

This seems a good question with which to start a fact-finding expedition into the divinity of the Trinity. Any exploration always starts on familiar ground, and few people who have some concept of God will dispute that he possesses fatherly attributes. In fact, most often, when we hear the word God, we tend to unconsciously shift to the Father. But is the Father called God anywhere in the Bible? Let’s find out.

God the Father (and Its Variation)

God the Father

The most obvious expression to look for is "God the Father²³. If we find it, we will have a clear indication that the Father is God. Let’s look at Philippians 2:11, To the glory of God the Father. The Greek word for God" in this phrase²⁴ is the singular theos²⁵. This is the most common word for God encountered in the New Testament²⁶. In fact, unless otherwise noted, it is the word used hereafter. To the pagan Greek, it was a name that would denote any of a pantheon of the gods he worshipped. To the Greek believer, it was the best word available to encompass the concept of the single divinity. The word Father²⁷ is pater²⁸. It has essentially all the connotations of our word father and is the Greek word that is consistently rendered Father in the English that follows.²⁹

Yes, God is identified as the Father in one verse. But one verse should not make a doctrine. As it turns out, the phrase "God the Father" appears no less than sixteen times in the New Testament, including the above reference. The other fifteen are John 6:27; 1 Corinthians 15:24; Galatians 1:1; Ephesians 5:20 and 6:23; Colossians 3:17; 1 Thessalonians 1:1; 2 Thessalonians 1:2; 1 Timothy 1:2; 2 Timothy 1:2; Titus 1:4; 1 Peter 1:2; 2 Peter 1:17; 2 John 1:3; and Jude 1:1.

God, the Father

It also appears as "God, the Father in 1 Corinthians 8:6, Yet for us there is but one God, the Father, and Colossians 1:3, We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you."

God and Father (and Its Variation)

God and Father

Apparently, God knows that one phrase is not enough to convince us that he is the Father. Elsewhere in his Word, he uses other phrases that also establish that the Father is God. The next to look for is "God and Father that appears by itself seven times—Galatians 1:4; Ephesians 4:6; Philippians 4:20; 1 Thessalonians 1:3, 3:11, and 3:13; and Revelation 1:6. Notice here that the Greek word for and," like the English, does not always link two different entities. He is our God, and he is our Father. It is not logical in these verses to assume the writer is talking about God on one hand and a separate entity, the Father, on the other. If we think further about the significance of the word and, we discover a particularly important concept since it leaves room for God to be other things as well. If he could be God and Father, he could just as easily be God and something else. What else will be left for later chapters.

The God and Father

Finally, the phrase "the God and Father" is used in Romans 15:6, 2 Corinthians 1:3 and 11:31, Ephesians 1:3, and 1 Peter 1:3. Of note here is 2 Corinthians 1:3 that provides him with at least two characteristics—the Father of compassion and the Father of all comfort.

God Our Father

The next phrase is "God our Father. In all but two of the examples cited above for God and Father, if we had included the prior word, they would have read our God and Father. Since most of us are not the offspring of the same earthly father, the word our linked to a singular Father who is also our God must be referring to our spiritual Father. The sense here is that the Father with a capital F" is our spiritual Father because he provides the seed for the spiritual life of the believer.³⁰ "God our Father" appears nine times—Romans 1:7, 1 Corinthians 1:3, 2 Corinthians 1:2, Galatians 1:3, Ephesians 1:2, Philippians 1:2, Colossians 1:2, 2 Thessalonians 1:1 and 2:16, Philemon 1:3, and James 1:27.

Father God (of Our Spirits)

The fourth theme deals with the way God becomes our Father. You may have wondered above what the Father provides the seed to. After all, the male provides the sperm (seed) and the female provides the ovum that the sperm fertilizes. The sperm and ovum together form a new creation that starts out as a single cell, the zygote, but grows into a wondrous and complicated new creature.

If we consider what Jesus had to say about the relationship of God the Father to his children, we see that God does not become our spiritual Father until we are ready to submit to him in the proper way. At that time, our hitherto dead spirit becomes the ovum, and the union of the Father’s seed with our dead spirit makes it whole and imparts life to it. This new life, like that of the zygote, will grow into a new creature with new attitudes. Two willing partners are necessary to make this new creature. Any attempt on the ovum’s part to become a new creature by itself is doomed to failure.

Father God in the New Testament

This can be seen in the eighth chapter of John when Jesus is challenging Jewish believers with the requirement of their commitment to God. In verse 42, Jesus instructs, "If God were your Father, you would love me. Now in the prior verse, the Jews had claimed God as their Father, but because they did not love Jesus as he should be loved, Jesus tells them God is not their father. In verse 54, Jesus reiterates, My Father, whom you claim as your God, is the one who glorifies me. Jesus infers that simply laying claim to God is not enough. We must do more to submit to him in the proper way." Exactly what more will be explored later in this book.

For the moment, we need to comprehend two other statements that place the importance of having God as our spiritual Father in stunning perspective. The first is also from chapter 8 in the Gospel of John. In verse 41, the Jews make the claim that triggered Jesus’s response given in the prior paragraph, "The only Father we have is God himself. In answering this claim, Jesus does not dispute their need for a single Father; rather, he concentrates on making them aware that their father is Satan, not God. In Matthew 23:9, Jesus focuses sharply on the need for a single, heavenly Father, And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven." Clearly, to Jesus, the spiritual Fatherhood of God was all that mattered. The fact that we each have a biological father on earth is of no consequence, for our biological fathers provided the seed for our physical bodies that are doomed to die and blow away, while our Father in heaven provides the spiritual seed for a life that is spent eternally with the Father.

Father God in the Old Testament

So far, I’ve only quoted from the New Testament. The Old Testament supports a slightly different view that the Father is God as it relates to Israel. Furthermore, it supports this view in the most convincing way possible—by God’s own words. Jeremiah 31:9 reads, "I will lead them besides streams of water on a level path where they will not stumble, because I am Israel’s father [sic] and Ephraim is my firstborn son. Who the I is can be found in verse 7, which introduces the speaker of verses 7–14: This is what the LORD says. LORD" is the Jewish national name of God³¹ Jehovah, Yahweh, or the tetragrammaton (yod, he, waw, he) YHWH³², revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai (Exodus 3:15). Father is the Hebrew word ab, which is like the Greek word pater and the English word father in its connotations.³³ The word ab is used in all the following verses from the Old Testament translated with the word Father.³⁴ The discerning reader will notice that there appears to be something exceptional going on here. God has provided the spiritual seed for Israel without the apparent need for them to submit to him in the proper way. It is true God chose the nation of Israel to be his special introduction to the rest of the world. However, the evidence for this is not relevant to the topic of this chapter. It is relevant to the discussion in chapter 11 (Weaving the Spans Together) where we will explore it thoroughly. Nevertheless, what follows shows God expected the Israelites to obey him, and it shows that in a way that is relevant to the current theme.

In Jeremiah 3:19, we read, "I [the LORD, v 20] thought you would call me ‘Father’ and not turn away from following me. Verse 18 reveals who the you is—the house of Judah and the house of Israel, that is, the Hebrew nation. This theme of the failure of Israel to respond to God properly and thus fail to become his spiritual children also is found in Deuteronomy 32:6, Is this the way you repay the LORD, O foolish and unwise people? Is he not your Father, your Creator who made you and formed you? and in Malachi 2:10, Have we not all one Father? Did not one God create us? Why do we profane the covenant of our fathers by breaking faith with one another? Now, you might be saying, Wait, isn’t God identified as the Father of all men in these two verses? No, a reading of the setting for both reveals that the author in each case is talking only about the people of Israel. LORD in Deuteronomy is YHWH,³⁵,³⁶ and God" in Malachi is el,³⁷ ³⁸ the most widespread word for god in the ancient Near East.³⁹ In one other place in the Old Testament, this word el is linked with Father—Psalm 68:5, which reads, "A father [sic] to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling."

Father God of Our Spirits

Returning to the New Testament, we find God’s response to Israel’s failure to call him Father—he adopts a new people as his children, "Yet to all who received him [Jesus, v 17], to those who believe in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God (John 1:12–13). Paul sounds a similar theme in 2 Corinthians 6:18 as he combines two Old Testament passages into a statement of the latest step in God’s eternal plan, ‘I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.’" Notice that in both the above passages, God is not already our Father, but he will become our Father. This fatherhood has not always been; rather it requires something mystical before it can be, implying that it is likely spiritual in nature. If doubt remains that God is the Father of believers’ spirits, Hebrews 12:9 makes it perfectly clear, "How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live! The word Father refers to verse 7 that says, God is treating you as sons. Of course, you" refers to the Hebrew believers who are the recipient of this letter.

Lord Father

From the preceding discussion in this chapter, you may have sensed that the word Lord is in many ways synonymous with the word God. We might ask, then, is Lord used in conjunction with Father? The answer is, yes. they appear together twice. Both times provide more light on the theme of God’s Fatherhood. In Isaiah 63:16, we read, "But you are our Father, though Abraham does not know us or Israel acknowledge us; you, O lord, are our Father. Then after several more verses of acknowledging their waywardness, Isaiah says in the next chapter, verse 8, Yet, O lord, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand." Here, Isaiah, troubled by the plight of the scattered Israelites, is reminding God that he fathered them by choosing them as his people. He is sovereign and can influence the lives of his children, much like an earthly father. Isaiah pleads with the heavenly Father to forgive his children and usher them back into a right relationship with him.

Heavenly Father

Less direct evidence that the Father is God comes from the phrases "heavenly Father, Father in heaven, and Father who is in heaven. Although these expressions are used with the possessive pronouns your, our, and my" (Jesus’s), it is clear from the context that they are not referring to a departed earthly father who has gone to heaven, but to God.

Heavenly Father

Heavenly Father appears six times—Matthew 5:48, 6:14,26,32, 15:13, and 18:35.

Father in heaven

The phrase Father in heaven appears fourteen times, twelve in Matthew (5:16,45; 6:1,9; 7:11; 10:32,33; 12:50; 16:17; and 18:10,14,19), once in Mark 11:25, and once in Luke 11:13, while the most famous of these is Matthew 6:9, which is the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer.

Father Who Is in Heaven

The phrase Father who is in heaven appears once in Matthew 7:21, "Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven." This passage underscores the importance of our being obedient to our heavenly Father, discussed above.

Father, Lord of Heaven

But it turns out the Father is more than just in heaven. In Matthew 11:25 and again in Luke 10:21, he is identified as "Father, Lord of heaven. The Greek word for Lord" used here is Kurios⁴⁰ a word that had several connotations in the Greek. One that was particularly used by the Jews of the day referred to one who is the supreme authority.⁴¹ Clearly, this title supports the contention that the Father is God. But not only is he the Father of all in heaven, as we are told in Ephesians 3:14, but also there, he is identified as the Father of his family (believers) on earth as well.

Summary

In this chapter, we found seventeen occurrences of "God the Father, two of God, the Father, seven of God and Father, and five of the God and Father. There were eleven references to God our Father. We found four references to Father God, five references linking God with the Father in the Old Testament, and three more doing the same in the New Testament. Lord Father was found twice. Six times heavenly Father was used, and we encountered thirteen passages that spoke of the Father in Heaven and one using Father, who is in Heaven. Three times the Father is described as the Lord of Heaven." These seventy-eight passages encompass eighty verses. Seven of the verses were from the Old Testament, and seventy-three were from the New Testament.

Confronted with no less than eighty verses from the Bible that directly link a word for God with Father or place the Father in the position of supreme heavenly authority, we must concede that which we suspected, the Father is God. Furthermore, as we reflected on over twenty verses, we see that God’s role as Father is played out in the spiritual lives of believers whose spirits he has sired. We have also seen suggestions that the Father is not God in toto.

The first span is laid down. It has the following general appearance: God the Father; God, the Father; God and Father; the God and Father; God our Father; Father God; Father in the Old Testament; Father in the New Testament; Lord Father; and heavenly Father (Father in heaven, Father who is in heaven, and Lord of heaven).

Chapter 4

Is the Son God?

To even begin to answer this question, we should ask a more specific question–is the Son, Jesus, called God anywhere in God’s Word, the Bible?

God the Son

The first verse of the first chapter of the Gospel of John is a good place to begin, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. In verse 14, we confirm what we already may have suspected—the Word John refers to is none other than Jesus. Now, the word Word" in Greek is logos⁴². It is the