The Holy Trinity
Deut 6.1-9 Jn 14:6-27
Have you ever struggled with the idea of the Trinity - one God in three beings? Our Christian faith has such strong roots in the Old Testament that we “know” that “The Lord is One” – after all, isn’t that what is said in the OT?
So, how can Christians say that One God exists in THREE separate beings – Father, Son and Holy Spirit? Of course the Jehovah’s Witnesses tell us that the NT doesn’t say this. Well, let’s have a look at some references:
Mt 3.16+17. As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.
Mt 28.18+19. Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
2 Cor 13.14. May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
1 Pet 1.1+2. To God’s elect, strangers in the world, … who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood:
Jude 20+21. But you, dear friends, build yourselves up in your most holy faith and pray in the Holy Spirit. 21 Keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.
That’s pretty clear isn’t it? In each pss there is ref to ALL THREE persons of the Godhead. So how do we understand it then? Judaism says ONE! This is reinforced by Islam, which has the same early roots as Judaism, which tells us: “There is only one God”. But Christianity says one in three!
Let me try to answer this in some different ways:
1. For some people, the problem lies with the idea of ONE thing consisting of THREE separate things. Yet there are many examples of that in our world – one egg consists of three parts … shell, albumen and yolk.
The “Triple Point of Water”, as any High School science student will remember, can be reached by putting a lump of ice into a sealed test tube and applying heat. Before long that container of H2O will contain a smaller lump of ice and some water and some steam … three separate and distinct forms of one substance (H2O) all together at one time, in one place.
So that’s not really where the problem lies – one thing can very easily consist of three (or more) things.
2. Other people struggle more with the sense that the clear “One” of Jewish and Islamic thinking becomes “Three” in Christian thinking. “How can we change ‘the truth’?” they ask.
But there are many ways in which Christianity differs from these other Great World Faiths. If we think only of Judaism (which is our own root):
• we believe that the Messiah has come, they wait for him to come;
• we believe that we are under grace, they believe they are under Law;
• we no longer hold to the Kosher laws that they hold to … because the New Testament has repealed or changed them;
• the Christian Sabbath has moved from Saturday to Sunday, which is the day of the Lord’s rising, no longer the last day of the week.
These are just a few. There are a whole lot of other examples of ways in which Christianity and Judaism differ. Another one is that Judaism believes that God is one, Christianity that God is three in one.
Just think about this - If we did not differ in our beliefs we would all be of exactly the same faith. We are not! We do hold to different beliefs about certain things.
3. Could it be that there is another way to read the Old Testament Scriptures? … And here comes a fascinating question: Is it possible that even the Old Testament teaches that God is plural?
Well, look at the very first page of the Bible – in Genesis 1: 26 we read “God said ‘Let us make humans in our own image’.” According to this verse, is God singular or plural? Let me read it again – with emphasis! “God said, ‘Let us make humans in our own image’.” It’s quite clear! Right from the very beginning of the Bible, God speaks of himself in the PLURAL! And there are many verses like that.
Now, the real problem arises when we come to that verse, central to the Jewish faith, which they quoted in every Temple or Synagogue service. It’s called the Shemah (this name comes from the first word of the verse in Hebrew): Shemah Yisrael, Adonai eloheinu, Adonai echad. This is translated in English: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” (Levit. 6:4) [COMPARE SIDE BY SIDE …] This seems to be quite clear, doesn’t it? You can’t argue with that!
Until we take a careful look at the words …
The first word that we must look at is eloheinu. The word for ‘God’ in the Old Testament is ‘El’, the plural of this - ‘Gods’ - is ‘Elohim’. In the possessive tense - ‘our Gods’ – it becomes Eloheinu. Notice that the plural word is what is used in the Shemah! “Adonai eloheinu”, “the Lord our Gods” (Adonai simply means ‘the Lord’). The Lord our God plural! There it stands, for all to read.
Do you get that?!
Now, this is where I get to sound like a TV commercial: “But that’s not all!” Eloheinu isn’t the only word in the Shamah that we should look at!
The other word is echad - ONE. In Hebrew there are two words that we translate into English (or Afrikaans, or Sotho) as the word ‘one’. Echad and yachid. What’s the difference between them? Echad implies “a compound one”, and yachid implies “one in number; only one”.
Let’s look at a few verses and see how echad is used in context:
* Gen. 1:5: “God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.” One day, echad, consisting of … two parts! Evening and morning. A compound one. (cf also Gen. 2:24)
* Ezra 2:64 “The whole assembly numbered 42,360” One assembly, in Hebrew: echad, consisting of thousands of people. A compound one.
Okay, so echad means one … but one made up of more than one parts!
Now look at the word yachid in context:
* Gen. 22:2: “He said, ‘Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you’.”
The reference to Isaac as "only son" uses the word yachid which means ‘one in number; only one’.
* Judges 11:34: “When Jephthah came to his house at Mizpah, his daughter came out to meet him with tambourines and with dancing. She was his only child. Except for her he had neither son nor daughter.”
The reference to the "only child" uses the word yachid which means ‘one in number; only one’ as the writer helpfully goes on to explain to us!
Do you see the difference? There are two words in Hebrew that are translated into our English word ‘one’ – echad, a compound one, one made up of many, and yachid, a singular one, one and only.
Did you notice which ‘one’ the Shamah used? “Adonai echad” “Adoni plural one”. We translate it “The Lord is one.” If we translate it literally we should say that the Lord is a composite one, made up of more than one part!
So, if we are to accurately state the Shemah in English, we should say: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our plural God (or Gods), the Lord is a compound one.”
(Don’t say this to your Jewish friends, it makes them very angry! But say it to a ‘completed Jew’ – one who has come to recognise Jesus as the Messiah – and they will say “Of course!”.)
If, on a physical or natural level, one thing can exist in three forms in the same place at the same time (remember the triple point of H2O? – ice, water and steam in the same container, at the same time) then why should the divine being that created that H2O not be able to do the same thing?
Why did the Jews not accept the evidence of their own scriptures, right before their eyes? I don’t know! It beats me!
But certainly for Christians there is no question – God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit – all eternal, all all-powerful, all all-knowing. All part of the same God. One in his essential being – one in his Godhead, yet appearing in three modes or forms at one time in one or in many places.
For God, it’s as easy as the triple point of H2O!!
Amen.
