Transcript from a portion of a message by Dr. J.I. Packer “What is the Creed and why is it Important?:

…a word or two about the Trinity. Yes, the Trinity is part of a heritage of Christian understanding that all Christendom has received ever since the fourth century but it has always proved a problem to teach. In fact and I say, straight away, that there isn’t a good way of teaching it because it’s a reality for which there is no parallel. And realities for which there is no parallel are very difficult to express in words and equally, difficult to illustrate.

We’re used, I suppose, to the Sunday school illustrations. A teacher will tell the class, “Well, the Trinity is like water. It has three forms: liquid, steam, and ice.” And then there’s another illustration which was very widely used in England, I don’t know whether it’s still widely used over here. But, again, this is Sunday school stuff. You know how the clover leaf is. There are three little clover leaves as it were bound together by a single stalk, that’s how God is. One cloverleaf, three clover leaves, three in one.

You can see, I’m sure, what’s wrong with both of those illustrations. Neither of them makes the point that here we are talking about three persons. Each of them depersonalizes God in a way which really means, I think, that the kids in Sunday school lose more than they gain by being presented with that illustration. It encourages them to think of God as a thing rather than as three persons to each of whom one should be relating.

When I have to teach the Trinity, I offer a couple of different illustrations which try to do justice to the thought that there are three persons here. One of them is the illustration of a family. Now I know that three persons related in a family, whoever they are, are three distinct persons and not, in any sense, one person but they are one family. So, think of the three persons as related in the unchanging way that folk are related in a family. A father is always father in relation to sons and daughters. There’s a pattern there which doesn’t change and so it goes on with other family relationships. The relationship remains the same and that’s what I’m trying to illustrate by using that illustration which a number of theologians these days are working with because they think it’s the best illustration that’s available to us.

My other illustration is purely Packer and may simply be second rate, I’m not sure but, think in terms of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as a team – a team in the same sense that in hockey or in soccer. The 11 players form a team.

Now, how do you define a team. Well, each player is related to 10 others in a way which remains the same whatever is going on in the game. The goalkeeper is always a goalie and the forwards and the backs, they’re related to each other and they are supposed to mark each other and keep together in a pattern. Whatever is happening in the game as the ball goes up and down or the puck if it’s hockey that you’re thinking of. And in the way in the revelation of God that you have in the New Testament, well the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are always are related to each other in the same way. That, I believe, is the best concept to work with when we are thinking about God and the way that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are working for the fulfillment of the Father’s plan.

The Father always does what he does through the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Lord Jesus, our divine Savior, always does what He does on the one hand in obedience to the Father’s direction. He made it very plain when he was on earth that everything that He said and did was in obedience to the Father’s direction. And at the same time, now that he is gone from this world, He works through the Holy Spirit doing everything that he does in our human lives.

So, there you have a constant relational pattern and you identify each of the three persons by stating how He, let’s say He for the moment because God is genderless. Everything that’s involved in masculinity and femininity is involved in God’s being, but God isn’t one as distinct from the other. No, but everything, as I say, God does in this world is done by this three-fold pattern of action, which is a pattern of togetherness, as you can see, and explains what is meant by talking about one God. To my mind, this is the most helpful of the illustrations that is available. If you don’t agree, never mind. It’s only a Packer illustration and I’ve never heard it used by anyone else.

But anyway, what we can agree on even if we don’t attach much weight to any of the illustrations, is that here you have the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, three persons, who yet are one God.

There is at least one Scripture that makes this perfectly explicit with no room for doubt. It’s Jesus’ words recorded right at the end of Matthew’s gospel when He’s giving the church, well, the apostles and through the apostles, the church, their marching orders, which is of course our marching orders – make disciples of all the nations baptizing them, he says, in the name.

Now, name is singular, not in the ‘names’ but in ‘the name.’ So this is one name. In the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, three persons, one name. That’s the foundational scripture, as I say of all the scriptures that refer to the three persons together. It seems to me that the clearest and solidest in the sense of being foundational, that’s the Lord’s directive. Every disciple is to be baptized and baptized in that three-fold or trio name. So, there we have the Trinity.

Article by Kim Riddlebarger – The Biblical Witness to the Holy Trinity (original source here)

It is common to hear claims that Christians, Jews, and Muslims worship the same God. The God of Abraham is often claimed as the father of the three great monotheistic faiths. A survey of the Bible, however, reveals a Triune God completely unlike the god of the Qur’an or even the God of contemporary Judaism. The doctrine of the Trinity is Christianity’s most distinctive doctrine, despite the fact that this doctrine stretches the limits of human language and logic. Admittedly, in many ways the Trinity is beyond our comprehension, yet we confess it because this is how God reveals himself to us in his word.

The biblical witness to the doctrine of the Trinity is extensive and can be set forth in any number of ways. We begin by noting that the Scriptures are absolutely clear that there is only one God. In Deuteronomy 6:4 Moses declares, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” In Isaiah 44:6 we read, “I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god.” In 1 Corinthians 8:4-6 Paul proclaims, “There is no God but one. For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth’as indeed there are many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords”yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.” James writes, “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe’and shudder!” (2:19). The Scriptures of both testaments teach there is but one God.

One God in Three Persons
Yet the Bible also teaches that, although there is one God, he is revealed in three distinct persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. When John the Baptist baptizes Jesus, the Father declares, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” even as the Spirit of God descends upon Jesus as a dove (Matt. 3:16-17). In Matthew 28:19, Jesus commands his disciples to “go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” The mission of the church is to go and make disciples by baptizing them in the name (singular) of the three persons of the Godhead (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit).

In the benediction concluding his second letter to the church at Corinth, Paul blesses his readers with, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Cor. 13:14). In John 14:26, Jesus informs the disciples that “the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things.” As God in human flesh (cf. John 1:14), Jesus speaks of both the Holy Spirit and the Father as equals.

Another line of biblical evidence for the Trinity is that the same divine attributes of glory and majesty are assigned to each of the three persons of the Godhead. The Scriptures teach that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are eternal. According to Isaiah, God says, “I am the first and the last” (44:6), and Paul adds that God is “eternal” (Rom. 16:26), without beginning or end. John records the Son saying, “I am the first and the last” (Rev. 22:13), and Micah notes that God’s “coming and going are from everlasting” (5:2). In Hebrews we read of the Holy Spirit as “the eternal Spirit” (9:14). All three’Father, Son, and Holy Spirit’are eternal, without beginning or end. Continue reading →

Article: Three Trinitarian Controversies Every Christian Should Know by Adriel Sanchez (original source here)

Adriel serves as pastor of North Park Presbyterian Church, a congregation in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). In addition to his pastoral responsibilities, he also serves the broader church as a contributor on the White Horse Inn radio program. He and his wife Ysabel live in San Diego with their three children.

It may surprise you to find out that, generally speaking, everyone in the “Trinitarian controversies” of the ancient church had some sort of doctrine of the Trinity. Worship of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit was so entrenched in the liturgical life of the church that even those who denied the true deity of Christ still found themselves praying and singing to him! That Christ existed, and was divine in some sense, was not the primary question early on.

Throughout the history of the church, Trinitarian controversy has centered on how the Persons of the Trinity relate to one another. Here are three controversies every Christian should be aware of:

1. The Arian Controversy
Arius was a priest in Alexandria during the fourth century. Because of his views, he was excommunicated from the Egyptian church around 320AD. Arius taught that God was absolutely transcendent, and that as such could not have any genuine intersection with the created world.

Although the Arians believed Jesus was divine in some sense, they didn’t understand him to be divine in the same sense as the Father, who alone was the eternal God. Arians confessed that “God has not always been a Father,” and that “once God was alone, and not yet a Father, but afterwards he became a Father.” In other words, God the Son didn’t always exist, and at some point, came into being, making God a Father. This conclusion denies what’s called the eternal generation of the Son, a Christian doctrine that emphasizes the fact that the second Person of the Trinity has always existed—even before his incarnation as Jesus of Nazareth.

According to Arian doctrine, Jesus is the most preeminent creature created by God, but he’s still just an exalted creature! This is not very different from what some sects teach today, like the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society or Jehovah’s Witnesses.

2. The Modalist Controversy
Modalism is a third century Trinitarian heresy often associated with Sabellius of Rome.

The Modalists did not properly distinguish between the Persons of the Trinity; they taught that the Father and the Son were the same Person. Unlike the Arians, they believed in the essential deity of Christ, but they did a bad job of distinguishing him from the Father. In this understanding of the Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are simply different modes of the one God. The Father God of the Old Testament who revealed himself to the patriarchs is the same Person who took on flesh and suffered for mankind.

This failure to properly distinguish between the Persons of the Trinity involved Sabellius and his followers in another dangerous heresy called Patripassianism. This was the idea that the Father suffered on the cross with Jesus. The orthodox Christian view differed from this in that it taught that the Father and the Son participated in the Incarnation in distinct ways, and that only God the Son was incarnate, and suffered for sins.

Today, groups like the Oneness Pentecostal Church teach something similar to ancient Modalism.

3. The Filioque Controversy
Perhaps the most tragic of the Trinitarian controversies, the filioque controversy was at the heart of the split between Eastern and Western Christianity.

The word filioque is a Latin term that means “and the Son,” and it refers to an addition to the Nicene Creed in the section on the Holy Spirit. Originally the Creed stated, “And I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father.” Over time, the Western church began to include the word filioque after “Father,” so that the Creed stated “…proceeds from the Father and the Son.” This addition led to ecclesiastical debates about whether the inclusion of the filioque clause was in line with the apostolic faith.

In the Western church, men like St. Augustine taught that the Spirit proceeded from the Father and the Son.

The differences on this issue between the church in the West and the East were never resolved, however, and ultimately played a part in the Great Schism of 1054 AD, when Cardinal Humbert of Silva condemned the Patriarch of Constantinople. To this day, the church in the East confesses the Nicene Creed without the filioque clause, while the Western church maintains it.

These three controversies don’t exhaust the Trinitarian disputes of the last two thousand years, but they give us a glimpse into how important this doctrine is for the health of the church. In order to rightly worship God, we need to properly describe how he has revealed himself! The orthodox taught that the Son was equal to the Father (unlike the Arians), but that he was also distinct from the Father (unlike the Modalists). They based their teachings on the Scriptures, and the apostolic faith they had received through the liturgical life of the church. We need to be committed to those same Scriptures, and the proper worship of God, so that we too might rightly adore the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.