THE TRINITY OF GOD 1

The doctrine of the Trinity is the foundation of all our communion with God and our comforting dependence on Him. The salvation we experience and the fellowship with God that results is grounded in the Trinity. The Father ordained our redemption before the foundation of the world, Ephesians 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ! 4 In him God chose us before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless before him, 5 having predestined us in his love to be his adopted children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, 6 to the praise of the glory of his grace which he has bestowed upon us in his beloved. 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the remission of sins, according to the riches of his grace. The Son is the one who agreed to incarnate and appear as a simple man; Filipinos 2:5 Have in yourselves the sentiments which were in Christ Jesus, 6 who, existing in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be snatched away, 7 but emptied himself. , by taking the form of a servant, by becoming like men; and having appeared as a mere man, 8 he humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even unto the death of the cross. The Spirit individually applies the benefits of the redemption acquired by the Son and decreed by the Father. The Spirit regenerates the Father's elect through the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ and stirs up faith in them; 1 Peter 1:22 Having purified your souls by obeying the truth to sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly one another with all your heart, 23 since you have been born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible seed, through the living and continuing word of God. Because they are justified, believers become the children of God who puts the Spirit of adoption within them; Romans 8:15 And you have not received the spirit of bondage, to fear again; but you have received a Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry: Abba! Father! 16 The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. The doctrine of the Trinity also determines how we pray and worship God. We pray and worship one God while distinguishing between the persons of the Trinity. When we worship God, we simultaneously worship the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. There is no need to apply inter-Trinitarian distinctions every time we speak of God or to God. However, Scripture shows us how the Trinity informs the way we pray. Prayer is addressed to God the Father specifically, we speak to Him as to our Father; Matthew 6:9 Therefore this is how you should pray: Our Father who is in heaven! Hallowed be your name... We must address him through the Son; John 14:13 and whatever you ask in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If you ask anything in my name, I will do it. that is to say, it is by virtue of the mediation of Jesus Christ that we approach God. We are led in our prayer and worship by the Holy Spirit; Jude1:20 For you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, and praying in the Holy Spirit; who himself intercedes for us with the Father; Romans 8:26 Likewise also the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know what it is proper for us to ask in our prayers. But the Spirit himself intercedes with inexpressible sighs; 27 and he who searches the hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because he makes intercession for the saints according to God. We cannot conceive of our communion with God without the richness brought by each of the people of the Trinity. We must not confuse the divine persons by leaving our worship vague; but we must worship one God respecting the distinctions and properties which Scripture attributes to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. We do not have to be masters of theology to be able to pray, but we must learn to pray and worship better and better in the light of God's Word. The believers who lived before the incarnation of the Son of God worshiped the Triune God; Genesis 18:1 The LORD appeared to him among the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the door of his tent in the heat of the day. 2 And he lifted up his eyes, and looked: and, behold, three men were standing by him. When he saw them, he ran to meet them from the entrance of his tent and bowed down to the ground. 3 And he said, Lord, if I have found grace in thy sight, I pray thee, pass not from thy servant. In addition to being the basis of all our fellowship with God, the doctrine of the Trinity is the basis of fellowship among believers. Jesus asks, in his priestly prayer; John 17:11 I am no longer in the world, and they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep in your name those whom you have given me, that they may be one like us. 20 Not for these only do I pray, but also for those who believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and as I am in you, that that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 I have given them the glory which you gave me, that they may be one, as we are one, 23 I in them, and you in me, that they may be perfectly one, and that the world may know that you sent me and that you loved them as you loved me.

                                           THE TRINITY OF GOD 2

Some reject the doctrine of the Trinity because they consider it impossible for God to be one and three simultaneously. The Trinity appears to them as an irrational sophistication by which the Christians of the 4th and 5th centuries would have distorted the doctrine of God revealed in the Scriptures. In reality, those who reject the Trinity on the grounds that this doctrine is incomprehensible because it is mathematically impossible are trying to rationalize God. The doctrine of the Trinity consists of affirming by faith all the biblical data concerning God: there is only one God, the Father is God, the Son is God and is distinct from the Father, the Holy Spirit is God and he is distinct from the Father and the Son, there are not three Gods, but only one. The Bible teaches each of these statements. Confessing the doctrine of the Trinity consists of affirming all of these elements at once without seeking to modify them in order to accommodate the finitude of our reason why there seems to be a contradiction between the elements of the Trinity. Some have therefore attempted to explain the Trinity by saying that God revealed Himself successively as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. For them it would not be a question of three distinct eternal persons, but of three modes by which God would reveal himself. Others have affirmed that there are indeed three distinct persons who are not one God, but three “Gods”: the Father is the only true God while the Son and the Spirit are a subordinate deity. These conceptions in no way correspond to the Christian faith. This is how the Confession of 1689 affirms the Trinity of God. This short statement is extremely theologically charged and contains centuries of thought regarding the God who has revealed himself in Scripture. To explain that God is one and three at the same time, theologians have used perichoresis (relationship between each person of God) or even circumincession. These are two synonymous terms, the first comes from Greek while the second comes from Latin. These two terms designate the interpenetration of distinct, but inseparable elements. For example, is Christ divine or human? He is divine and human. Is His divine nature humanized or is His human nature deified? In no way! These are two distinct natures that exist without confusion in the same person. There are not two Christs, but only one human and divine Christ at the same time. The co-inherence of the two distinct natures of Christ is an example of circumincession or even perichoresis. How does this apply to the Trinity of God? We must distinguish between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, but it is impossible to separate them (distinction without separation). When one of the three is present, all three are present. Thus Jesus declares in John 14:9 “He who has seen me has seen the Father; how do you say: Show us the Father? » John 10:30 Jesus is one with the Father, he is in the Father and the Father is in him. Perichoresis also allows us to understand how each person of the Trinity “possesses the entire divine essence, and yet the essence is not divided.” The three divine persons are not each a third of the whole, but they equally possess the entire divine essence. Here is an illustration to help us understand this ontological (metaphysical) mystery. In a three-dimensional cube where all sides are identical, the face, vertices and edges interpenetrate in a “perichoretic” manner. Each of the dimensions is distinct from the other two while fully filling the whole. The height covers the entire width and depth; it is nevertheless distinct, although inseparable from the other two. A single dimension cannot be a cube since three are necessary, yet each dimension does not fill a third of the cube, but the entirety. Wherever the cube is present the three dimensions are present. This analogy, imperfect since it compares a finite object to an infinite Being, nevertheless helps us understand how the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are distinct, but inseparable; how the three are always present where God is present; how each person possesses all of the divine essence without it being divided. What is geometrically true of the cube allows us to grasp a little better what is ontologically and eternally true of God.

God bless you !