"THY WORD IS TRUTH" ¹

The Bible the only source of true revelation

There is no doubt that despite current strivings for unity modern Christianity is a deeply divided religion. Evidence of this is to be found in almost any large city of the Western world. In the average British cathedral town the shadow cast by the towering Gothic edifice of the Church of England falls, figuratively if not literally, upon the humbler buildings of the Baptist or United Reformed Church. Down the street is an Evangelical hail and further off a simple meeting room of The Brethren. In other countries the Roman Catholic Church is dominant, or maybe the Lutheran Church is a major influence. Further east the Greek Orthodox Church takes over from the Rome-based Catholic Church. Thus everywhere the mix of different Churches and sects is apparent. All these sectors of the Christian community obviously have variations in beliefs, tradition, or ritual: otherwise the need for their separation from each other would disappear.

But among this wide spectrum of differing views and divergent practices there is a common thread that unites all these various sections of Christianity—and this is their concept of God. Whether the believer is Roman Catholic or Methodist, High Church of England or Primitive Baptist, Greek Orthodox or the television preacher from the American Bible Belt, virtually all share the view that the Godhead is a trinity composed of three persons, and that one of those persons assumed human form and came down from heaven to earth for the salvation of mankind.

One writer* ⁽²⁾ likens the various components of Christian belief to the parts of a motor car. Some things, such as lights or horn, could be considered non-essential as far as the actual running of the car is concerned, for it can still be driven without them. But some parts are indispensable: the car body for example. It holds all the parts together. Remove it and the car falls apart. The doctrine of the Trinity, he says, is the equivalent of the car body. It is the one basic concept that underlies and unites the whole of the Christian Church.

But the doctrine of the Trinity is usually considered to be more than just the one belief that unites the Christian world. It is also taken to define Christendom. God descending to earth and taking human form for man*s redemption is regarded as so fundamental to Christianity that it is used as the yardstick to measure those who can appropriately claim the name of Christ. By this rule all who subscribe to the doctrine of the Trinity are classed as Christian, and all who do not believe the doctrine are considered unworthy to bear that name, despite all other criteria. Hence the understandable, even if embarrassing, scene described in the Prologue.

One of the purposes of this book is to explore the relationship between God and Jesus and so test the validity of this frequently made assertion that in order to be a Christian one must believe the doctrine of the Trinity. The authors contend that the boot is really on the other foot, and that it is only among those who deny the doctrine of the Trinity that the Christian tradition about God is found in its original form.

Does it matter what we believe about God?

"What does it matter?", it might be asked. "If a person has the basic belief that God exists and that mankind is saved through the work of Jesus, and tries to lead a good life, is it really necessary to understand what could be considered to be the more technical aspects of Christian belief? Let the theologians argue about the doctrines whilst we get on with practical Christianity! ~‘

This approach superficially has a down-to-earth and common sense air to it. But is vagueness in belief altogether a good thing? Does Christianity merely consist of doing good, irrespective of what is believed? Clearly not. It would appear from the incident described in the Prologue that for some people the correct understanding of God is important. But, of much more relevance, this is also the teaching of the founder of Christianity himself. On the night before he died Jesus prayed to God on behalf of those who would become believers on him. He said to his Father:

"This is eternal life, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent" (John 17:3).

So, on the authority of Jesus himself, a Christian's eternal life is dependent on his knowledge of God. This means that an enquiry into the nature of God is not something that can be left just to professional theologians, but is a vital exercise for all who are concerned about their salvation. The object of this book is to assist such an enquiry by reverently trying to set out a true understanding of God. This can then lead to knowing Him in the more personal sense of the word.

We are not writing with theological scholars in mind. They have written volumes about God, but usually such books are full of their particular jargon. Pick up a book attempting to explain the theology of the Godhead and one usually finds it full of terms such as deism, theism, kenosis, hypostatic union, communion of the properties, Arianism, Homoiousians, etc., which may convey something to the author's fellow scholars but leave the ordinary reader completely baffled. By contrast, the present authors' objective is wherever possible to present the true teaching about God in everyday language.

Information about God

Most people look to their church for guidance and instruction, and in seeking to learn about God there is apparently good reason for this. The Church claims that throughout its history it has been guided by the Holy Spirit into all truth. As we have seen, the Church speaks with a virtually unanimous voice about God, and furthermore does so with the authority of centuries of tradition behind it. It will point out that its views on the Godhead have continued virtually unchanged for 1650 years. Way back in the year 325 the basis of the official doctrine of the Trinity was forged out of the controversies raging at that time, and the belief has held almost undisputed sway ever since.

That year 325 saw the important council of Nicea, a town in what is now modern Turkey, at which the trinitarian formula was decided on. This was expressed as the Nicene Creed, which from that day to this has been the definitive church statement concerning the relationship between God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

But 325 is still nearly 300 years after the mission of Jesus and the first preaching of the apostles. Can we be sure that in formulating its final statement the church had not perpetuated wrong ideas that had gradually accumulated during those three preceding centuries? Does not the fact that the Council of Nicea was called for the very purpose of resolving controversies about this topic raise some legitimate doubts as to whether belief in the Trinity had also been the position of the primitive church and of the immediate disciples of Jesus?

Error predicted

One of the outstanding features of the apostles' preaching was the repeated prediction that soon after their death the original purity of the faith would become corrupted by ambitious men arising from within the Christian movement, and by wrong doctrine imported from outside. Paul's warning to the church at Ephesus is an example:

"Take heed to yourselves, and to all the flock ... I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them" (Acts 20:28-30).

This warning was reiterated by Peter, who said that the new Christian church would not escape the activities of false teachers any more than had the Jews in Old Testament times:

"But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies" (2 Peter 2:1).

At the end of the first century, within 70 years of the death of Christ, the Apostle John referred to some who had already corrupted at least one aspect of the original teaching about Jesus:

"For many deceivers have gone out into the world, men who will not acknowledge the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh: such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist" (2 John 7).

In view of this clear prediction by the Holy Spirit that the primitive faith would be corrupted, the modern church needs to do more than justify its belief in the Trinity by claiming uninterrupted acceptance of the doctrine back to the third or fourth century. It needs to demonstrate that the tradition went back further still, right to the days of the apostles. This it cannot do. It can only point to a gradual growth of a doctrine that reached maturity at the Council of Nicea. This introduces the possibility, which the authors sincerely believe to be the reality, that the doctrine of the Trinity was not an original Christian belief, but a prime example of the development of false teaching as predicted by the apostles.

Only one authority

Faced with this possibility the only satisfactory course is to accept as authoritative nothing but the original teaching expressed by the founders of the Christian church. In other words our knowledge of God must be obtained exclusively from the words of Jesus and the Apostles and any writings whose trustworthiness they endorse. This means that the Bible, and that alone, is the source of the information about God that is so vital for human salvation.

By the Bible we mean the whole of both Old and New Testaments. Most of those who claim to be Christians would accept the authority of the New Testament, but some have reservations about the Old. Such a view overlooks the fact that the Old Testament was the only Bible the first Christians possessed. They regarded it as the sole authority on divine matters, they drew their teaching largely from it, and to them a "thus saith the Scriptures" was an end to all argument.

This was particularly true of Jesus and his apostles. Christ would round on his opponents with a "Have you never read?", and then proceed to base his infallible teaching on the relevant passage from the Old Testament, quoting the words of such men as Moses, David or one of the later prophets. In fact he made acceptance of the Jewish Scriptures an essential pre-requisite for believing on himself:

• If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?" (John 5:46-47).


• "If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if some one should rise from the dead" (Luke 16:31).

Jesus accepted the authority of the Old Testament because he knew that it was his Father's revelation to mankind, produced by the Holy Spirit power of God acting upon the writers. As the Apostle Peter was later to say:

"First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God" (2 Peter 1:20-21).

This compulsion to speak and write the words of God is termed in Scripture inspiration, and there are many examples which show that the writers knew they were speaking God's words, not their own. Here are some samples:

• "The Spirit of the Lord speaks by me, his word is upon my tongue" (2 Samuel 23:2).
• "Hear the word of the Lord" (Isaiah 1:10).
• "The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord" (Jeremiah 35:1)

The Jewish Scriptures, our Old Testament, are therefore an infallible source of revelation for all time. They represent the words of the unchanging God Himself. This is important for our enquiry into the God of the Bible. One often hears people contrasting the God of the Old Testament with the God of the New Testament, as if there were two separate deities. One is allegedly cruel and vindictive, the other loving and merciful. So if asked the source of the following two quotations: "Our God is a consuming fire" and "In his love and in his pity he redeemed them", many would probably instinctively locate the first in the Old Testament and the second in the New. In fact the reverse is true (Hebrews 12.29, and Isaiah 63.9), and many other examples could be given. So these stereotyped concepts of God are completely wrong. The Bible teaching about God is consistent in both the ancient Jewish Scriptures and the later Christian ones. Recognition of this essential unity of teaching throughout both Testaments is vital for a biblical understanding of God.

Turning to the origin and authority of the New Testament we are told that it was written by chosen men within the original Christian community who were also invested with the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus spoke to them of this impending inspiration:

"... the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you" (John 14:26).

This inspiration, Jesus said, would give the New Testament writers the authority of Jesus and of God Himself:

"He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me" (Luke 10:16).

On this basis the Apostle Paul could claim:

"What I am writing to you is a command of the Lord" (1 Corinthians 14:37).

Every genuine follower of Jesus should therefore agree wholeheartedly with Paul's assessment of the authority of Scripture as the infallible guide to Christian doctrine and behaviour:

"All scripture is inspired by God, and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work" (2 Timothy 3:16-17).

There is no escaping the meaning of these words. The Scriptures are inspired by God, and are the source of all doctrinal information. In the spirit of this pronouncement the present authors will base their discussions and arguments relating to the doctrine of the Trinity on the Old and New Testaments.

The Authority of the Church.

But some will say "Surely, this is also the position of the Church. No Christian would deny that the Bible is the ultimate source of appeal in theological questions." It is true that this is the theoretical position, but in practice the authority of the Church itself is given equal or even greater weight than that of Scripture. One of the dominant ecclesiastical figures of the nineteenth century was John Newman, an Anglican vicar who in later life switched to Rome and eventually became a Catholic Cardinal. If he is at all remembered today it is for his hymn "Lead, kindly Light", but in his day he was well known for his prolific doctrinal writings. He wrote about the doctrine of the Trinity as follows:

"It may startle those who are but acquainted with the popular writings of this day, yet, I believe, the most accurate consideration of the subject will lead us to acquiesce in the statement as a general truth, that the doctrines in question (viz., the Trinity and the Incarnation) have never been learned merely from Scripture. Surely the sacred volume was never intended, and is not adapted to teach us our creed; however certain it is that we can prove our creed from it, when it has once been taught us ... From the very first, the rule has been, as a matter of fact, for the Church to teach the truth, and then appeal to Scripture in vindication of its own teaching". ³

Notice the clear implication of these words. The Church formulates the doctrines and then appeals to Scripture in an attempt to support them. This is very different from coming to the Bible with an open mind in order to learn what it teaches.⁴

Another Catholic priest, the Rev James Hughes, was even more outspoken about the real source of Church doctrine in general and the Trinity in particular:

"My belief in the Trinity is based on the authority of the Church: no other authority is sufficient". ⁵

This is a bold, even audacious claim. It alleges that the Church has greater authority in formulating its doctrines and traditions than God*s own revelation to mankind. This simply cannot be right. Way back in the days of Israel*s prophets God castigated those who disregarded His words:

"Should not a people enquire of their God? ... To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, they have no light of dawn". (Isaiah 8:19-20 NIV)

Undoubtedly, then, if the doctrine of the Trinity cannot be reconciled with the whole tenor of Scripture, it should immediately be dismissed as spurious—no matter what the Church teaching and centuries of tradition may be.

In those comments of Newman and Hughes do we detect some uneasiness among the advocates of the doctrine of the Trinity? If the biblical evidence for the belief is unassailable why does the Church need to justify the doctrine by invoking its own authority? Such a claim suggests that the Bible*s support for the Church doctrine is, to put it mildly, not as strong as is generally supposed. A later chapter ⁶ will show that many theologians down the centuries have admitted that the biblical evidence for the Trinity is indeed very weak.

But not all Christians are members of an Established Church. Many non-conformists and evangelical groups claim to have by-passed the Church and to have gained their teaching directly from Scripture. And they, almost without exception, believe the doctrine of the Trinity. Yet how accurate is their claim that they are guided solely by the Bible and not by church tradition? Professor F.F. Bruce, the noted Manchester University theologian, keenly observed:

"People who adhere to sola scriptura (as they believe) often adhere in fact to a traditional school of interpretation of sola scriptura. Evangelical Protestants can be as much servants of tradition as Roman Catholics or Greek Orthodox Christians; only they don*t realise that it is ‘tradition*" ⁷

The seeker after truth, then, will test every belief by Scripture, and will accept nothing that cannot be clearly demonstrated by the Word of God.

But in relying exclusively on the Bible for our understanding of God we must also recognise the fact that the Bible is an ancient book—one of the oldest in the world—and that it was originally written in languages now unfamiliar to most of us, and to a people of an entirely different culture and society. The only way that ordinary people today can understand the Bible is because it has been translated into their own language. Recognition of the fact that the English Bible is a translation — for ease of reading often a rather free translation—must always be borne in mind in our attempt to probe its teaching about God.

The Trinity a ‘Mystery*

This leads us on to mention another frequent misapprehension about a word often used in relation to the Trinity. We refer to the word ‘mystery*. The doctrine of the Trinity is termed a mystery, and the implication is that the relationship between God and Jesus is therefore beyond our understanding. This is based upon the conventional meaning of the word, which implies something inexplicable or unintelligible. Bishop Beverage in his Private Thoughts on Religion described the Trinity as the "mystery of mysteries" and went on to call it a "heart-amazing, thought devouring, inconceivable mystery". Such a view may have been prompted by a passage about the coming of Jesus in the writings of the Apostle Paul:

"Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of our religion: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated in the Spirit, seen by angels, preached among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory" (1 Timothy 3:16).

But by using the word translated mystery is Paul really saying that Christ's appearance among men is something impossible for us to understand? Not at all. His word had a slightly different meaning. Rather than describing something inexplicable it meant "what is known only to the initiated" (Young's translation). So the idea is that of secret information which once divulged is clearly understood by the recipient. Jesus used the word in this sense concerning his parables. The crowd could not see the underlying meaning of the stories, but Jesus explained them to his disciples with the comment:

"To you it has been given to know the secrets (AV mysteries) of the kingdom of God; but for others they are in parables" (Luke 8:10).

So Biblical mysteries are in fact Biblical revelations that all who read with care and understanding can readily grasp. The whole purpose of the Bible is to reveal, not to conceal. This is particularly true of this topic of the relationship between God and His son Jesus. If we allow the whole Bible to speak and if we listen to its voice to the exclusion of all others, this "mystery" becomes crystal clear. ⁸

This will be our aim in the following pages.

REFERENCE

1. John 17:17

2. M. Green, The Truth of God Incarnate, Hodder and Stoughton, London

3. Arians of the Fourth Century, pp 55-56

4. For a more detailed examination of this see Chapter 8.

5. Bible Christian, quoted by White, in "The doctrine of the Trinity".

6. Chapter 8.

7. Personal Communication

8.The term 'incomprehensible' is also used to describe the Trinity, and by some it is assumed that this also refers to something unknowable. Rather the term means 'unable to be contained or confined' and is correctly used to speak of God's filling all things. "Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the LORD" (Jeremiah 23:24).