As far back as I can remember, I’ve always been a science nerd. And although this eventually led me into archaeology, I actually started college with a major in physics. Many people don’t know this, but one of the most interesting things about physics is that there are some aspects of reality, at a very fundamental level, that don’t make sense. One of the best examples of this is ordinary light. Light, we know, is made up of tiny particles, called photons. This can be easily verified in a laboratory. But light is also made up of waves of electromagnetic energy. This can also be verified in a laboratory. Unfortunately, those two facts contradict. Waves and particles are not the same thing, and light can easily be shown to be just one substance, not a mixture of two. So how can these facts be reconciled? No one knows. The evidence is real; it checks out. But what it means, no human being knows.
The reason I’m telling you this is that it illustrates the fact that it’s possible to say that something is true, based on evidence, even if we don’t understand what it means. In other words, the fact that we don’t understand something is not grounds to say that it isn’t true. It very well might be true, and we might very well have good reason to know that it’s true. That’s a very important point to keep in mind when we start to investigate what the Bible teaches us about the nature of God. There could easily be things we can say we know are true, even though we don’t understand them. We are only human, after all, and we shouldn’t expect to understand everything there is to know about God’s nature. But what does the evidence actually show?
God is One
One of the most basic truths God has revealed about himself is that there is only one of him. When Jesus said that the greatest of all the commandments was to love God (Matthew 22:37-38, Mark 12:29-30), he was quoting a passage from the Old Testament:
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength (Deuteronomy 6:4-5).
The prophet Isaiah tells us:
This is what the Lord says – Israel’s King and Redeemer, the Lord Almighty: I am the first and I am the last; apart from me there is no God (Isaiah 44:6).
In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul writes:
We know that “An idol is nothing at all in the world” and that “There is no God but one” (1 Corinthians 8:4).
Even demons know that there is only one God (James 2:19). This is the first, the most fundamental thing we need to know about God. Everything else we learn must be understood in light of this basic truth: God is one.
In the Beginning was the Word.
God is one. Yet, the Apostle John begins his account of Jesus in this way:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made (John 1:1-3).
And in case there’s any question what he means by “the Word,” a few verses later he writes:
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:14).
That’s Christ, the Son of God, who also is God. The Son, who both was with God and was God, is the one through whom all things were made; the Creator. John does not want there to be any doubt about what he’s saying; Jesus is God, the creator of heaven and earth.
Much earlier, in the Old Testament book of Psalms, the coming Messiah is addressed as God:
Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever; a scepter of justice will be the scepter of your kingdom. You love righteousness and hate wickedness; therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy (Psalm 45:6-7).
Notice that the author is simultaneously addressing God directly, “Your throne, O God,” and saying “God, your God, has set you above your companions.” And we know this passage is addressing Jesus, because that’s made clear when this exact text is quoted in Hebrews 1:8-9.
There’s more. The Apostle Paul wrote:
The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross (Colossians 1:15-20).
Once again, Christ is called the creator of heaven and earth, and all the fullness of God dwells in him.
Jesus himself said, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). His audience at the time understood very well what this statement meant, because they tried to stone him for claiming to be God:
“We are not stoning you for any good work,” they replied, “but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God” (John 10:33).
The same thing happened when he said of himself “before Abraham was born, I am!” (John 8:58), applying to himself the sacred name of God (Exodus 3:14). And in Revelation we read first:
“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty” (Revelation 1:8).
But then, later in that same book, Jesus uses those same words about himself:
“Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End” (Revelation 22:12-13).
Jesus is identified in Scripture as God. But he also speaks of his Father as God, and as a separate person from from himself:
Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God’” (John 20:17).
And yet, none of this negates the repeated statement in the Bible that there is only one God.
The Spirit of the Lord
If you’re counting, that’s two – Father and Son. But there is a third person we must consider, and that is the Holy Spirit. I use the word “person” deliberately. In the original Greek text of the New Testament, the Holy Spirit is always referred to with the personal pronoun “he,” never as “it.” The Holy Spirit is able to speak and to teach (Mark 13:11, Luke 12:12, John 14:26, 16:13, Acts 28:25, 1 Timothy 4:1), he testifies as a witness (John 15:26, Acts 5:32, Romans 8:16, Hebrews 10:15), he makes judgments about things (Acts 15:28), he has desires (Romans 8:5, Galatians 5:17), and he can be pleased (Galatians 6:8). The Spirit has a mind (Romans 8:27), and he can grieve (Isaiah 63:10, Ephesians 4:30) or be insulted (Hebrews 10:29).
So he is treated as a person, but the Holy Spirit is also treated as God. He has temples (1 Corinthians 6:19). The Apostle Peter told a man who had lied to the Holy Spirit that he was lying to God:
Then Peter said, “Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied just to human beings but to God” (Acts 5:3-4).
He can also be blasphemed, which is specifically the offense of insulting God. Jesus told a group of religious leaders:
“And so I tell you, every kind of sin and slander can be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come” (Matthew 12:31-32; compare also Mark 3:28-29, Luke 12:10).
Further, the Holy Spirit is not just another name for the Father or the Son, but a separate person. Jesus distinguished the Spirit from both himself and the Father when he told his disciples:
“And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever – the Spirit of truth” (John 14:16-17).
And also:
“I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will receive from me what he will make known to you” (John 16:12-15).
So the Spirit glorifies the Son by revealing what the Son has received from the Father. In addition, all three persons appeared together when Jesus was baptized:
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 alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:16-17; see also Mark 1:10-11 and Luke 3:21-22).
And after Jesus was raised from the dead he said:
“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, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:19-20).
Now think back to the beginning of this article, where I said that it’s possible to believe something, based on evidence, even if we don’t understand it. That’s what’s going on here, too. The evidence from the Scriptures is that three separate persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, are, somehow, all God, even though God is one. Just as the nature of light is a mystery, so is the fundamental nature of God. This is the mystery that Christians for centuries have called the Trinity.
Bad Analogies
There are a number of analogies that people have come up with to try and explain the Trinity. Unfortunately, all of them that have been suggested so far have been deeply flawed. Here are some of the more common ones, and why they’re wrong:
One common analogy compares God to a stalk of clover with three leaves. This analogy is commonly associated with Saint Patrick, although that might just be a legend. It’s wrong because the leaves are only part of the clover stalk, and the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not parts of God; each member of the Trinity is completely God (even though there is only one God).
A second common analogy compares God to the sun, with the light and the heat representing Jesus and the Holy Spirit. But the light and the heat are not the sun; they are created by the sun. Christ and the Holy Spirit were not created, however. They are eternal and co-equal to the Father.
Another bad analogy compares God to water, which exists in three forms; ice, liquid water, and vapor. God is also sometimes likened to a man, who can be a father, a son and a husband. But God does not just appear in three forms, or with three functions; the Trinity is actually three separate persons, so these analogies fail as well.
I would love to be able to give you a good analogy to explain the Trinity, but in two thousand years of Christian history, nobody has yet come up with one. So I’ll stick with presenting the Biblical evidence and not try to explain what a great many theologians, most of them smarter than I am, have not been able to explain.
I’m not going to be troubled by my inability to understand the Trinity, however. A being that could fit inside my brain wouldn’t be worthy of being called “God.” He is infinite; I am not. It only makes sense that there must be some limits to our finite human understanding of an infinite God. And this, it appears, is one of the limits. I’ve shown you what the evidence says. That’s as far as I can go.