God in 3D

Finding the Trinity in the Bible and the Church Fathers

Colin Green

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781532681219
  9781532681226
• eBook ISBN:
  9781532681233
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

This groundbreaking book sets out fresh arguments that common views on the doctrine of the Trinity are mistaken, on three counts. One, the idea of the Trinity can't be found explicitly in Scripture. Two, it is a mystery irrational to the human mind. Three, the classical creeds of the church are the best place to start. These old ideas break down in light of recent research in biblical studies. Writing in plain English, the author sets out where the Trinity can be found in Hebrew and Christian Scripture; that it is rational and understandable; and that there are biblical ways of understanding it that are easier to get across than the classical creeds. This book offers what many interested in teaching or learning about the Trinity have lacked up to now. And it will be a great help to those who are unsure how to communicate the idea of the Trinity in ways that the nonspecialist can understand. For the scholar interested in biblical and early-church studies, recent insights from temple theology and name theology produce a fresh perspective that will stimulate further discussion on this important subject. In the temple of God, we find the triune God.

Chapter 1

People Like You Can Understand the Trinity

1. Why This Book Was Written

This is the untold story of the church’s belief in the Trinity. It is a journey back in time, to the land of Israel in the days of Jesus and his disciples, to see how believers understood the Trinity in ways now barely remembered. And it is a journey further back in time to the era of King Solomon’s temple, a thousand years before Christ, to uncover the origins of their beliefs.

We will rediscover the Israelites’ ancient wisdom about the God who was present in their temple. And, in doing so, we can come to recognize the Trinity in just the way the Bible represents it. This is a journey to discover how the first Christians were primed by the temple stories of the Old Testament, and prepared by Jesus, to understand the three-in-one God—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

The Christian God

Christians believe in a God who wants to have a mutual relationship with them, one of understanding. And not only with them, but a relationship with the whole church and all the people he longs to gather to it. In response, all around the world, Christians desire to live in God’s presence. It is common for Christians to say that there is nothing they enjoy more than the times in which they sense God’s presence. They sometimes even sense God’s Spirit somehow inside themselves, with them.

An individual Christian may speak of himself or herself as a “temple of the Holy Spirit,” and pray to be “filled with the Holy Spirit.” A church community may think of itself as a temple of the Holy Spirit where Christ dwells.

Why mention this now? Because a Christian—or anyone—who knows these things is already holding a key that will unlock a door to understanding the Trinity.

But to listen to some Christian preachers and writers, you would think the Trinity was something impossibly difficult for anyone to understand. Some teachers say it may seem irrational, but then they don’t make it rational for you. Some teachers say it will always be a mystery, but they don’t mean the kind that will be revealed. Anyway, we do not find anything in the Bible that takes that pessimistic view. There is no reason for people to be put off who want to understand.

You don’t need to have had any special training. This book is for the trained or untrained reader alike, for anyone who wants to understand the Trinity, and for anyone who may have doubts about believing in it.

If you listen to some people, you could think the Trinity is not in the Bible at all. To put right any misunderstanding, this book is for those who want their answers from the Bible first. If you have looked for the Trinity in the Bible yourself, but struggled to prove it is there, this is for you. Why? Because what if it is hidden in plain sight? What if we were just following the wrong set of clues? What if it is all in your hands already?

This is not like many a book on the Trinity that takes a Bible verse here, a verse there, and claims that this should satisfy us. This book won’t present the Bible evidence that way. What many people are asking for is just to be shown in the Bible exactly where they can see the Trinity. They want more than the creeds to be explained, although that is a good thing to do. They want to be able to put their finger on a page in the Bible, and say, “That’s the Trinity, there!” That’s what this book is about. Can we explain the Trinity using only Scripture language and concepts? Can we explain how it works? Can we explain the relationships in our three-in-one God? Yes, we can, on all fronts.1

There are not many things in life where we settle for saying, “it’s a mystery.” In other things, we prefer to have an answer. In science, even if at first something is not understood, what scientists do is observe it. They watch. When we watch something enough, we may start to understand it. That is how it is with the Trinity: we must simply observe this God in the pages of the Bible. We will do this in its stories of Solomon’s temple especially. And after observing, we start to understand the object of our study—that is how understanding comes. It pays off because really it is God showing himself.

We see many examples of this scientific way of observing and understanding things in our world. For instance, the bumblebee. No one understood how its little wings could lift its bulky body off the ground. But with modern cameras, how its wings flap has been observed. Now we understand how bumblebees fly. With observing came understanding.

And the Old Testament gives us every help to observe the Trinity. In particular the temple of Solomon gives us a perfect place to ge...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Abbreviations
• Chapter 1: People Like You Can Understand the Trinity
• Chapter 2: The 3D Launch of the Church
• Chapter 3: A Time-Traveler’s Guide to the Name, the Glory, and the Temple
• Chapter 4: 3D Letters to Christians
• Chapter 5: The Gospels in 3D
• Chapter 6: Links in the 3D Chain
• Chapter 7: 3D Discipleship
• Chapter 8: Church Creeds and Beyond
• Epilogue: Academic Case for the Thesis
• Bibliography