By Ronald Nugent
The Importance of the Doctrine of the Trinity
I am convinced that of all Christian beliefs the most important and the most fundamental is the doctrine of the Trinity. Yet in so-called Bible-believing churches the Trinity is probably the least taught and the worst understood of all Christian teachings. When did you last hear a sermon, read a book, or take part in a Bible study on the subject of the Holy Trinity? Can you explain this doctrine to those who ask questions, show those who are doubters that it is taught in the Scriptures, and answer the objections of those who reject it?
This is the first in a series of articles on our website in which I will be expounding the doctrine of the Trinity. In this article we will examine why we should know this doctrine well and be able to explain it to others. In future articles we will look at what the doctrine says and means, where it is taught in the Bible, how it was developed by the church, and how it affects our worship and our witness.
The doctrine of the Trinity teaches the tri-unity of God, that is, God is both three and one. It is well summed up in the answers to Question 5 and 6 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism:
Q5: Are there more Gods than one?
A: There is only one God, the living and true God.
Q6: How many Persons are there in the Godhead?
A: There are three Persons in the Godhead: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory.1
In the midst of busy lives and faced with a perishing world, why is it important for us to spend our time and give our energy in studying the Trinity? Is it not a rather intellectual and difficult doctrine of no practical significance? Are there not more urgent tasks for the church at the beginning of the Twenty-First Century? Would our time not be better spent in taking the gospel to the lost or campaigning against the sin of abortion? While we most certainly should be spreading the gospel and opposing abortion, I want to suggest four reasons why it is essential for us also to know and understand the doctrine of the Trinity.
First, the doctrine of the Trinity is widely believed. All of Christendom confesses faith in the Trinity. Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic, Protestant and Pentecostal, Calvinist and Armenian may disagree about many things but all agree that there is one God in three Persons. (It is true that there is some disagreement between the churches of the East and the West over the relationship between the Son and the Holy Spirit, but the matters of consensus far outweigh this one matter of difference). Furthermore, all Christians agree that to deny the Trinity is to undermine salvation. We therefore ignore this doctrine at our peril.
Not only is this doctrine held by Christians of all denominations, but it has also been believed in all periods of church history. After the death of the Apostles it was the first major theological question which the church had to answer. This was the issue on which the church cut its theological teeth. Our fathers in the faith assessed this issue as too important to ignore: they reckoned that here was a matter of life and death. If our spiritual ancestors worked so hard to hammer out and hone down this doctrine, it behooves us to work just as hard to restore it to its rightful place in our churches and in our lives.
Secondly, the doctrine of the Trinity is widely disputed. Indeed, this most important doctrine is rejected by all the non-Christian religions. The world’s two great missionary religions are Christianity and Islam. They are the two largest religions in the world and the only two major religions that are growing by adding converts. The biggest single difference between Christians and Muslims is the doctrine of the Trinity. The Quran states, “Christ Jesus the son of Mary was (no more than) an apostle of Allah, . . . so believe in Allah and His apostles. Say not ‘Trinity’: desist” (Sura IV.171),2 and, “They do blaspheme who say: Allah is one of three in a Trinity: for there is no God except One Allah” (Sura V.76).3
There are today over 1,000,000 Muslims in the world and Islam is the majority religion in forty-three countries. In 1900 Muslims were one in eight of the world’s population; today they are one in five. The largest country of Muslims in the world is Indonesia, our nearest neighbour. In Australia, while the proportion of Evangelicals in the population has declined over the last decade, the proportion of Muslims has doubled, so that they now outnumber Baptists. If we are to share the gospel with Muslims, we must be able to explain and defend the doctrine of the Trinity.
The doctrine of the Trinity is also rejected by most of the cults that dwell and prey on the fringes of the church. For example, the Jehovah’s Witnesses say that “Satan is the originator of the Trinity doctrine”4 and Herbert W. Armstrong has described the doctrine of the Trinity as an “heretical and false doctrine introduced by pagan false prophets who crept in.”5 If we are to defend the truth against its enemies and if we are to win our neighbours to the Lord, then we must know what the doctrine of the Trinity says and why we believe it.
Thirdly, the doctrine of the Trinity is widely ignored. We live in an age of biblical illiteracy and doctrinal ignorance. Even Christians may imbibe the anti-intellectual and anti-theological spirit of the age. Things were not always so. At the time of the Council of Constantinople in AD 381, Gregory of Nyssa described the vigorous theological debate among the common people:
The whole city is full of it, the squares, the market places, the cross-roads, the alleyways. Old-clothes men, money changers, food sellers: they are all busy arguing. If you ask someone for change, he philosophizes about the Begotten and the Unbegotten; if you inquire about the price of a loaf, you are told by way of reply that the Father is greater and the Son inferior; if you ask “Is my bath ready?” the attendant answers that the Son was made out of nothing.6
I think that the reason that even Christians show little interest in doctrinal discussions today lies in the dominant ideologies of our generation: pragmatism and mysticism. Pragmatism teaches that the validity of an idea depends upon its practical consequences. Hence books on systematic theology have given way on our shelves to books on marketing the church, and doctrinal sermons have been replaced in our pulpits by pop psychology. To the pragmatist the doctrine of the Trinity is seen as remote, abstruse and boring. However, theology is like the human body: if the heart is weak, the limbs also are weak. I believe that the poverty of our worship and the ineffectiveness of our witness are due in no small part to our ignorance of doctrine.
Mysticism teaches that truth and God may be known by immediate intuition or inward revelation. So prophecies are supplanting Bible study and dreams and visions are replacing creeds and confessions in the lives of many churches. The preference for repetitive choruses (such as one that simply repeats the word “amen” eleven times) over doctrinal hymns (which require us to work with our minds) is a sign of the growing influence of Eastern mysticism in Christian circles. A strong dose of solid doctrine is a healthy antidote for such New Age infections and a good tonic to build us up in our faith.
Fourthly, the doctrine of the Trinity is widely misunderstood. Many who profess faith in the Triune God do not really know what they believe. I have heard a preacher compare the three Persons of the Trinity to the three states of water, which is the ancient error of Modalism. I have heard Christians in prayer thank the Father for dying for our sins, which is the ancient error of Patripassianism. And I have heard a Bible study leader say several times that we are children of Christ, which was the error of the heretic Noetus in ancient times. To know something of the history of this doctrine is to be immunized against the errors of the past.
Responsibility for ignorance of the doctrine of the Trinity among Christians rests in large part with those of us who are pastors, for we have often failed to instruct the Lord’s people in this most fundamental and important of all Christian beliefs. In coming months on this website I therefore plan to look at what we believe about the Trinity, why we believe it, and how it affects our lives. In the next article I will examine what the doctrine of the Trinity says, what it means, and where it is taught in the Bible. We will see that it is derived, not from philosophy, but from the Scriptures and that we believe it, not because it is logical, but because it is biblical.
NOTES
1 Rowland S. Ward, editor, The Westminster Confession and Catechisms in Modern English (Wantirna, Victoria, New Melbourne Press, 1996), 68.
2 A. Yusuf Ali, The Holy Quran: Text Translation & Commentary (Lahore, Pakistan: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, 1938), Vol. 1, 234.
3 Ali, The Holy Quran, Vol. 1, 266.
4 Quoted in Walter R. Martin, The Kingdom of the Cults (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Bethany Fellowship, 1977), 46.
5 Quoted in Martin, The Kingdom of the Cults, 308. Italics in original.
6 Quoted in Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1993), 35.
Copyright ©1996, 2004 by R.G. Nugent