The Biblical Basis for the Trinity

There seems to me to have been a lot of discussion about the Trinity on this forum since I have been a part of it. I thought we could discuss whether or not we thought it was biblical and why. I will say that I think if we only had the Old Testament that we could not form the doctrine called the Trinity. I do think that it is demonstrated in the New Testament. Though the word "Trinity" is never used as many are fond of pointing out. Some possible scriptures we could start looking at are:

Deut 6:4- Says that the "Lord is one"

Psalm 2:7- says the Kings of the earth take their stand against the Lord and His "anointed one".

Isaiah 6:8- Says the voice of the Lord was heard saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" Notice the word "us".

Genesis 1:26 when God was making man he said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, and over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." Notice again the use of the words "us" and "our".

Matthew 3:16-17 As Jesus is coming up out of the water at baptism he sees the Spirit of God descending on him like a dove and a voice from heaven. Seems to be all three members of the Trinity there.

Matthew 28:19-20 The disciples are told to baptize in the name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

2 Corinthians 13:14 This letter ends with a Trinitarian final word "May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all."

John 14:16- Jesus said he would ask the Father and the Father would send another Counselor, who Jesus called the Spirit of truth. Jesus also referred to himself as sent by the Father.

I take the view that the Bible does not support the doctrine of the trinity. Having said that, as I explain in my essay, I don't regard the nature of God to be especially important. So this is a some what academic albeit interesting question.


Did Jesus think he was God? There is some ambiguity within the gospels on this point. He surely saw Himself as from and of God. In John 10:30, Jesus says, “I and my Father are one” and in John 14:9, He says, “he that hast seen me hath seen the Father.” I’m not sure that this is a ringing claim of His godhood. Was Jesus claiming that he was God or that he was one with God, as suggested in this familiar hymn?


We are One in The Spirit,
We are One in The Lord,
We are One in The Spirit,
We are One in The Lord.
And we pray that all unity may one day be restored,

And they’ll know we are Christians by our love.


But it is clear is that the high priests thought that Jesus was claiming he was God, and His sacrilege was one of the reasons they sought His death. Also, the later writers of the New Testament clearly identified Jesus as God. The question also becomes whether or not God died when Jesus died, or, more specifically, what part of Jesus died? When Jesus said in Luke 23:46, “Into thy hands I commend my spirit” , could it be that only his body had died, while His spirit where still alive—commended to God? So, did God redeem mankind by have one third of the Trinity go to earth as Jesus and then one third of Jesus—His body—die for two days? It seems to me that this cannot be true, as in the Bible the physical death of the body is an illusion and an instant in time whereas the death of the soul is not. So did the soul of Jesus die? If God sent Jesus to die, then did God commit suicide? In describing the passion of Christ, preachers often dwell on Christ’s suffering, as if it was the physical rather than the spiritual pain and death of Jesus that redeems us. In what way is humanity complicit is the death of Jesus? Was the passion a pre-ordained cosmic play, or could any number of alternatives unfold based on choices freely taken by Jesus, Judas, or Pontius Pilate?

The process of trying to answer these questions has compelled me to reconsider whether not the trinity is a valid doctrine. My conclusion is that we have grounds for doubt that it is valid. God consists of “three Persons, of one substance, power, and eternity; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” according to the first article of religion of the Church of England. The Willow Creek Community Church Statement of Faith uses different words but says basically the same thing: “We believe there is one true, holy God, eternally existing in three persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—each of Whom posses equally the attributes of deity and the characteristics of personality.” And we sing that familiar hymn


Holy, holy, holy!

Merciful and mighty!

God in three persons

Blessed Trinity!



Are we saying that God is really three distinct people, like the three tenors Carreras, Domingo, and Pavarotti? Jesus was a person on earth, but was he a person in heaven, and, if so, is God the Father and the Holy Spirit also separate beings? When we say that God is “three in one”, the question must be: one of what? A spirit body? Or does God refer to the Godhead—the office of God, much like an executive board consisting of the president, vice president, and treasurer? There are verses in the Old Testament that affirm monotheism while others suggest polytheism. In fact, the first verse in the Bible uses the plural form of the noun elohim. Many but not all of the church fathers affirmed the Trinitarian view of God. In the Gnostic teachings, the Gospel of Thomas, and the Apocalypse of Peter, some Christians thought that there were two, twelve, or even thirty gods. Tertullian, in the third century, was apparently the first to formulate the term, giving theological definition that God was Lord of the universe, father of Christ, and the continuing source of the church’s life.

Apologists have tried to explain trinitarianism using analogies that I think don't do much to illuminate this belief. For example, H20 consists of liquid water, steam, and ice under different conditions. But trinitarianism posits three different persons under the same conditions. Another analogy is to a shamrock leaf. But that isn’t accurate either, unless we have in mind a three-headed god. The sun, consisting of light, heat, and radiation, or the mind, consisting of emotion, will, and intelligence also fail as analogies, as these are different but integrated manifestations from a single source. An egg consisting of yolk, white, and shell isn't accurate as they are merely parts of a whole, whereas the presumed attributes of the trinity such as omniscience cannot be so isolated between the persons. Time, consisting of past, present, and future, is also a bad analogy, as past and future do not in any real sense exist, except as memory or expectation. We need to be clear in what we are trying to analogize-- three independent beings who co-exist and share the attributes and qualities of each other without compromising their uniqueness.

It could be that the “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” or “Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer” formulas may be a bit like calling me “father, programmer, and Republican”-- three names to different roles of the same person. (The theological term for this is modalism.) If this is the case, then we could also have three thousand names for the same person. The idea of three persons of one substance, is true with any collection of gods be they ancient Greek, ancient Norse, or Hindu. All those groups of gods have a common divinity but manifest different qualities. I only wish the Trinitatarians would be more honest in identifying their belief for what it is: Polytheism. Triniterianism may have developed as a compromise between monotheistic and polytheistic views of God. But, if this is true, then it would be a compromise the humans created rather than what really exists. Furthermore, it defies common sense. Consider three Chicago Bulls players on a basketball court. Even if every one of those players were clones of Michael Jordon—the same in every way—the team would still consist of those three people. There is no mystery here. It seems clear to me that if there are three people who are God, there must be three gods, even if those gods are acting collectively, as would team members on a basketball court. Thus, in defining my monotheism in a way that is consistent with the Bible as I read it, I would say that God the Father is Jesus who is also the Holy Spirit and perhaps much more. I suppose my view is shaped to some degree by Occum’s razor, the principle that “entities should not be multiplied save out of necessity,” and I cannot conceive why God would consist of three people when one would do, and most importantly I don’t see that claim in the Bible. No where do I see for example an independence of will or personality between the Holy Spirit and the other two persons. Thus, when you grieve the Holy Spirit, God and Jesus grieve as well—because they are, I believe, one and the same.

On the other hand, there does appear to be a difference in will between God the Father and Jesus, as we see in Matthew 26:39: “O, my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt.” When Jesus was talking to “my Father,” was he talking to another person who was distinct from him or to himself, much as we do when we have an interior dialogue? The mystery deepens when you consider the role of Mary, whom Catholics regard as the mother to God while still believing in the Trinity, consisting of two persons that were not brought into existence by Mary—the Holy Spirit and God the Father. In John 14:16, Jesus says that "I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Comforter" -- the Holy Spirit. In what sense is the Holy Spirit a person? We talk about the "pleasant" sunshine and the "angry" sea, but neither the sunshine nor the sea are people that have emotions. Is that the same when we look at the Holy Spirit-- not as a person but as a spirit? If so, how can that spirit be a person in the same way that Jesus was a person? According to Luke 24, Mark 16, and Acts 1, Jesus ascended bodily into heaven, but does it follow that Jesus has a physical body in heaven, and that God the Father, and the Holy Spirit also have bodies?

The doctrine of the trinity is largely based on the Nicene Creed drawn up by the Council of Constantinople in 381 AD. This creed came out of a debate about who Christ was and how scripture was to be interpreted. On one side, you had the Arians who interpreted the scripture literally and believed that Christ was not of the "same substance" as God. If he wasn't of the same substance as God, then there was a time when he didn't exist. On the other side you have the school of thought coming out of , where scripture was interpreted mystically and where they believed that Christ was of the "same substance" as God, and thus was God coming to earth as a man. At the Council of Nicea, the literalists lost—an irony as conservatives regard the literalists as closer to the true meaning or fundamentals of the Bible. Athanasius, later bishop of , pushes through the Alexandrian creed that God and Christ were one. This was the direct pre-cursor of the Nicene Creed. The debate came to a head in 380 AD when the Emperor Theodocius the Great declared Christianity the official religion of the . He called the First Council of Constantinople in 381 AD to resolve the debate. The council that convened were mostly followers of the Alexandrian creed of God and Son being one of the "same substance". Theodocius declared this to the official creed of the Empire. With Christianity being the official religion of the realm and a formal creed being accepted by the emperor, the debate was over. The church did all it could to make sure this was the accepted creed. Anyone opposed to this creed were declared heretics. But time would work against the church on this subject. With the Renaissance and the Protestant breaks with the church, the Bible would be translated into common languages, and more and more people would become literate. Scholars during the Enlightenment began to examine the history and philosophy of the ancient world and they began to see the parallels between Greek and Egyptian mysticism and the development of the Trinity within the Christian church. This questioning turned to direct examination of the scriptures and how they supported the Trinitarian teachings and the Nicene Creed. The examinations were not favorable to the Trinitarian teachings. As I reflect on this question, I have become more persuaded that this doctrine sprang not from the pages of the Bible but from the political compromises, mystical pagan influences, and organizational dynamics of the church in the third century AD.

My view is that there is but one God who is Jesus who is also the Holy Spirit. There is no "trinity"-- there is just God who is Our Savior. Most Christians who read this probably believe what they have been taught-- in the trinity. But we can put our selves in the shoes of the early church fathers who debated this issue in 380 AD, with nothing more than the Bible and our mind. If we start with the premise that triniterianism is true, then we'll find verses to support that position. But we're in effect trying to find an answer from our conclusion. We're begging the question. If we posit the conclusion that the earth is flat, polygamy is moral, and people should be enslaved, we can find in the Bible ample justification, which doesn't mean that those propositions are true. Perhaps a more honest approach is to empty our mind of presuppositions about the nature of God and then research the question much like the early church father did from the holy texts. But, for the sake of argument, let's assume that triniterianism is true. To make that case, we may want to create a chart consisting of four columns, with attributes in the first column and texts in the other columns.

But with this we haven't even scratched the surface. The question is not: what does the Bible say about God the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit? Rather, the question is: what does the Bible say about God? After we determine that from the evidence of the scriptures, we can then decide whether or not a trinity fits the evidence. So, to take our study to a higher level, we should add another column consisting of a name of God used almost 7,000 times in the Old Testament-- Jehovah. And then we could add another column with yet another-- Creator-- or yet another name-- I AM. The Old Testament alone has hundreds of verses that use these names for God. We could also draw yet more columns. For example, El is used 250 times, Elohim 2,570 times, El Shaddai is used 48 times, and Adonai is used 300 times. And there is no reason to stop with the Old Testament. We could reference the many names of Jesus to draw yet more columns: Shepherd of the Sheep; Master; King of kings; Lord of lords; Bishop and Guardian of our Souls; Daystar, Deliverer, Advocate, Last Adam, Ancient of Days, Branch, Chief Cornerstone, Immanuel, First Born, Head of the Body, Physician, Rock, Root of Jesse, Stone, Potentate; Chief Apostle; Great High Priest; Author and Finisher; Lamb of God; Lamb Slain before the Foundation of the World; Lord God Almighty. In the Bible, there are upwards to 1,000 different names used for God. No one suggests that each of these names represent a different person of the godhead-- that there are 1,000 people that are God. But that is triniterian thinking taken to its logical extreme, and it is that theory that strikes at the heart of Biblical monotheism. There is nothing magical about the number three, and there could very well be seven persons or twenty persons, using the same logic that the triniterians use-- asserting personhood from the verses that are synonyms for God. Some proof texts also have dubious parentage. An example is I John 5:7-8: "For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one." Scofield writes "It is generally agreed that this verse has no ms. authority and has been inserted." Finally, I find it curious and perhaps compelling that the apostle Paul began each of his epistles without referencing the Holy Spirit, a strange omission if the Holy Spirit was indeed a person of the godhead:


Romans 1:1, 7-9: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ. First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all…”


I Corinthians 1:1, 3: “Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God…Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.”


II Corinthians 1:1-3: “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God…Grace be to you and peace from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ…”


Galatians 1:1, 3: “Paul, an apostle, (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised Him from the dead)…Grace be to you and peace from God the Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.”


Ephesians 1:1-3: “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints which are at …Grace be to you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.”


Philippians 1:1-2: “Paul and Timotheus, the servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus, which are at Phillipi…Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.”


Colossians 1:1-3: “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God…Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We give thanks to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ…”


I Thessalonians 1:1: Paul, and Silvanus, and Timotheus, unto the church of the Thessalonians… Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.


II Thessalonians 1:1-2: Paul, and Silvanus, and Timotheus, unto the church of the Thessalonians… Grace unto you, and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.


Philemon 1:1, 3: “Paul, a prisoner of Jesus Christ, and Timothy our brother, unto Philemon our dearly beloved, and fellowlabourer…Grace to you, and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”


Titus 1:1, 4: “Paul, a servant of God, and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God's elect, and the acknowledging of the truth which is after godliness…To Titus, mine own son after the common faith: Grace, mercy, and peace, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ our Savior.”


These verses not only challege the Triniterians. They also challenge me, as they imply two distinctive divine beings-- the Father and Jesus. Elsewhere, the Bible mentions that Jesus prayed to His Father in heaven, and that His death would be God's will, that Jesus mediates between us and God, and that Jesus sits on God's right hand. My resolution is to insist what is obvious to me-- that Jesus is God. There is absolute identity of Jesus with God. He was God before he came to earth, was incarnated as a human of earth, and is God now. References to His Father is simply language indicating His humility and momentary abdication of His throne while on earth to redeem us from our sins. They do not indicate a biological or a subordinate relationship. Jesus is, in the words of the benediction in Jude 1:24-25 "able … to present you … to the only wise God, our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever." Thus, Jude suggests, there is only one God, who is our Savior.

No where does the Bible state the theology of the Trinity. It’s an argument pasted together by taking passages out of context then stringing them together and coming to a conclusion, using the same kind of sophistry to support, for example, the Catholic doctrine of purgatory. But I’m not prepared to claim that the triniterianism is apostasy. Nor do that I suggest that preachers should stop preaching about the Trinity or that we should strike the word from the names of our institutions and creeds. I acknowledge that the weight of Biblical tradition and popularity leans towards triniterianism, and that alone prevents me from claiming dogmatically that God is one spirit-person. I can only say that I’ve yet to read an explanation of triniterianism that makes it clear that we’re not worshiping three gods-- tritheism-- consisting of God the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit or two gods consisting of God the Father and Jesus. Faith is fine, so long as it is based on the authority of the Bible. The authority in this case is not so much the Bible as it is in a millennia and a half of creeds, sermons, and hymns which may be only peripherally based on the Bible. Triniterianism is so embedded in our culture that any challenge is regarded as unorthodox, despite its paucity of scriptural support. Students must attest to a Trinitarian creed before going to seminary. They are taught by professors who must also affirm triniterianism. Thus, there is little chance we will learn anything but triniterianism in either the seminaries or the churches. Appeals to tradition and authority are not always fallacious but they do weaken the Trinitarian case. After all, tradition and authority claimed for several millenniums from the scriptures that the earth was flat. “Why do we follow the majority? “ Pascal asked. “Is it because they have more reason? No, because they have more power. Why do we follow ancient laws and opinions? Is it because they are more sound? No, but because they are unique and remove from us the root of difference.” On the other hand, I must also be skeptical of my own skepticism, and allow for the possibility that I’m wrong.

Is it important to believe that God is one or three people? A good rule of thumb is that if a doctrine is ambiguous, it is probably not important. What is important is that Jesus is God and that Jesus died so that we can live. “He that believeth on the Son has everlasting life.” (John 3:36) And, as interesting as it is to think about this, there are limits to disputation and much wisdom in the words of Thomas a Kempis (1380-1471) that evoke the spirit of I Corinthians 13. In Of the Imitation of Christ, he wrote "What doth it profit thee to enter into deep discussions concerning the Holy Trinity, if thou lack humility, and be thus displeasing to the Trinity? For verily it is not deep words that make a man holy and upright; it is a good life which maketh a man dear to God. I had rather feel contrition than be skillful in the definition thereof. If thou knewest the whole Bible, and the sayings of all the philosophers, what should this profit thee without the love and grace of God?"