Regional Synod of Canada - Reformed Church in America

Pioneer Christian Monthly

Date - May/69

Contributor - T. Hogerwaard

Title - Systematic Theology For Members Of Consistory

Topic - Consistory

The doctrine of the Trinity

It has been said, and rightly so, that the Christian Church has essentially only one doctrine: the doctrine of God, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Everything else that is taught in the Christian Church is based on this doctrine and stands or falls with it.

The Christian Churches (and they all taken together form the Church of God) disagree on many points, important ones and not so important ones, but on one point all Christian Churches agree and that is that our God is the Holy Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The Heidelberg Catechism, which is very eloquent on many points of doctrine, is extremely brief when it comes to teaching the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Question 25 reads (translation by Prof. Dr. T. F. Torrance): "Since there is only one Divine Being, why do you speak of three: Father, Son and Holy Spirit?" Answer: "Because God has so revealed Himself in His Word that these three distinct Persons are the one, true, eternal God." It is remarkable that this all important doctrine of the Christian Church is formulated with the barest minimum of words. Prof. Dr. Miskotte expresses the opinion that this brevity can be explained from the facts that:

1. the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is presupposed in any Christian confession.

2. that the doctrine of the Holy Trinity cannot be preached because every true preaching rests on this doctrine and derives its truth and life from it.

3. that nothing good can be expected from the endeavour to make the doctrine of the Holy Trinity the object of our speculative thinking. Especially when we are faced with the task of instructing people in the Christian faith, we have to remain as closely as possible to what has been revealed to us.

Everything in our life: the true faith and the actions which are pleasing in God's sight depend upon the right understanding of this most fundamental doctrine. That many Christians do not see this, does not change the fact. More than 35 years ago Dr. E. Brunner wrote that there is a close connection between the misery of many in ;the big cities of Europe and the fact that millions have lost faith in the Triune God. That also applies to the many problems that face practically every nation on earth in our days.

"Disciples and apostles knew with the simplicity of their obedience of faith and experience of faith that it was God Himself Who had come to this world in the power and the glory of His Being; that therefore the work of Christ stands in all eternity, because it was God Himself 'Who reconciled the world unto Himself in Jesus Christ" (Dr. Miskotte). On this point all Christian Churches agree; therefore you can find the same hymns written to the glory of the Holy Trinity in the hymn book of every Christian Church; therefore each and every valid baptism is administered in the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. We start our worships services in the Name of the Trinity, we end our services with the blessing of the Trinity. That the doctrine of the Trinity is indeed the heart of the Gospel is also (negatively) clear from the fact that the Synagogue, the whole world of Islam and all tile cultured enlightened pagans of our day and age (and of preceding ages) have rejected the doctrine of the Trinity most vehemently. True, there is some misunderstanding here, for we do not worship a human being, called Jesus of Nazareth, we worship God as He has revealed Himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

History of the doctrine

In the first centuries of the Christian Church not many intellectuals were members of the Christian community. But in Alexandria (Egypt) there were two great thinkers in the Christian Church before the third century had come to an end. First Clemens and then his pupil Origen (185254). He was steeped in Greek philosophical thinking and this fact exercised a great influence upon his thinking as a Christian theologian. (See articles 3 and 4 of this series). For him, as a man trained in Platonic thought, there was the world of visible things, the world of appearances and the invisible world, the world of the ideas. To this world God belonged and He was One, separated by a great gulf from the world of created things. Now the difficulty from men thinking in this way was: If God is One, separated from all created beings, Who is Jesus Christ in relation to God?

The man, who most consistently applied the consequences of Greek thinking to the Biblical evidence was Arius. He taught that Christ indeed existed before He was born in Bethlehem, but that He was created, not resembling the Father, subordinated to God and not worthy of the same honour. But his bishop, Alexander, ably assisted by his secretary Athanasius, did not agree at all. He saw at once that this teaching destroyed the Gospel. Alexander taught that the Son is of the same Being with God, worthy of the same honour. This of course, laid him open to the accusation that he taught that there were two Gods: the Father and Jesus Christ. It took a few decades before this difficulty was cleared. The conflict between Arius and bishop Alexander broke out in 318 A.D. and soon spread over the whole Church. The emperor did not like that at all. As an endeavour to make peace within the Church, he called the Council of Nicea (325 A.D.) Arius was condemned as a heretic and the bishops agreed in the statement that the Son is "homoousius", that is: of the same Being with the Father.

This, however, was not the end of the struggle, but only a new starting point for it. Several times in the following decades the opponents of Athanasius had the ear of the emperors: consequently Athanasius had to spend many years in exile. But that was God's way of forcing Athanasius to concentrate his whole life on the great issue. He never wavered in his conviction that the Son is God, one with the Father in Being and in honour. But now 'he was also forced to think about the Holy Spirit in His relation to the Father and the Son. For Arius, and those who agreed with him, the Holy Spirit was, even lower than Christ. For him both Christ and the Spirit were creatures, on this side of the gulf which separates creation from the Creator.

But more and more Athanasius came to the conclusion that "of the same Being" did not only apply to Christ, but to the Holy Spirit as well. For if it is the Holy Spirit Who establishes our relationship to God, then He must be God as well. It goes without saying that those who refused to confess that Christ was God put up an even greater resistance against the teaching that the Holy Spirit God. The matter was finally settled at the Council of 381, held in Constantinopel.

There it was generally accepted that the Biblical teaching about God is that He is one Being in three Persons. Did this mean that the fathers in Constantinopel naively assumed that they 'had adequately formulated the mysterious Being of God? Far from it! We saw that the men influenced by Greek pagan, thinking had started the un-Biblical teaching about Christ and that Athanasius and his friends had doing nothing else but defend the Biblical message against the false teaching that threatened to destroy the Christian understanding of God altogether. They knew very well that all our knowledge is imperfect, but of one thing they were deeply convinced: that their way of expressing God's Being was most in accordance with the Biblical testimony and that was all they wanted to do. Christian doctrines have always been formulated as a measure of defense against false teachings (heresies) that threatened to destroy the Christian faith. There is another point involved here: Against those who make a distinction between "God as He is in Himself" and "God as He has revealed Himself to use it has to be insisted upon that God is, as He has revealed Himself. He IS: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

In order that we do not 'think too simply about these matters, we have to add that several difficulties remained. For instance, the word which we translate as "person" did not precisely mean what we nowadays understand by "person". Moreover, in the Latin speaking part of the Church a different word was used from the one the Greek fathers used and the two terms do not completely cover each other. Dr. Miskotte is in favour of saying that God's eternal Being is a threefold way of existence. But we can safely say (with the ancient Church) that the work of the Father is different from that of the Son and that the work of the Holy Spirit differs from that of the Father and the Son.

The great difficulty when thinking and speaking about God's Being is, that we always run one of two dangers. If we stress too much the fact that the Father differs from the Son and from the Spirit, then we do not justice to the fact that God is One; if we rest too much the fact that God is One then the fact that the Father is not the Son and the Son is not the Spirit is obscured. That is the reason, why, in my opinion anyway, all the endeavours to improve on the statements of Nicea and Constantinopel have failed. It is far easier to criticize the way the, Greek fathers expressed their understanding of 'the Biblical message about God than to present Something better. But the best thing to do - for all of us - is "to sing to the Father, and to, the Son and to the Holy Spirit", to worship the Holy Trinity Who has revealed Himself to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Or to pray the prayer of Polycarp:

"For this reason I praise Thee for all things, I bless Thee, I glorify Thee through the everlasting and heavenly High Priest, Jesus Christ, Thy beloved Child, through Whom be glory to Thee with Him and the Holy Spirit both now and for the ages that are to come, Amen."

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