The Holy Trinity

In Scripture, History, Theology, and Worship

Robert Letham

• Editore: P Publishing
• Anno: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781629953786
• Argomento: Teologia e religione
• Categoria: Teologia cristiana

This revised and expanded edition of Robert Letham's award-winning The Holy Trinity engages critical issues, addresses developments in theological studies, and clarifies Letham's position on recent disputes.

PART 1

BIBLICAL FOUNDATIONS

“And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.’” (Matt. 3:16–17)

“How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.” (Heb. 9:14)

“If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.” (Rom. 8:11)

“And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.’” (Matt. 28:18–19)

“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” (2 Cor. 13:14)

1

OLD TESTAMENT BACKGROUND

The Bible and the Doctrine of the Trinity

We must distinguish between the doctrine of the Trinity and the Trinity itself. God always is, and he always is Trinity. From eternity he is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, one indivisible being, three irreducible persons.

On the other hand, the doctrine of the Trinity is the developed formulation of what the church understands God to have revealed in the history of revelation and redemption, as recorded in Scripture. Here, the church responded to erroneous ideas that imperiled the gospel. It used refined concepts, language stretched to express the reality that God disclosed.

The Trinity is revealed in the OT in latent form, in the NT implicitly but pervasively. Yet the fully fledged doctrine awaited prolonged reflection on the biblical record. As Wainwright states, “In so far as a doctrine is an answer, however fragmentary, to a problem, there is a doctrine of the Trinity in the New Testament. In so far as it is a formal statement of a position, there is no doctrine of the Trinity in the New Testament.”¹

God in Genesis 1

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” It takes the rest of the Bible to disclose the meaning concealed in this cryptic sentence.² Even so, the first chapter of Genesis reveals much. It portrays the creation and formation of the world, and the ordered shaping of a place for human beings to live. It presents man as head of creation, in relation to and in communion with God his Creator. The act of creation itself is direct and immediate (Gen. 1:1–2), distinct from the work of formation that follows.³ The result is a cosmos formless, empty, dark, and wet—unfit for human life. The rest of the chapter describes the world’s formation (or distinction) and adornment, God’s introducing order, light, and dryness, making it fit for life to flourish. First, God creates light, and sets boundaries to the darkness (vv. 2–5). Second, he molds the earth into shape so that it is no longer formless (vv. 6–8, 9–10). Third, God separates the waters and forms dry land, so that it is no longer entirely wet (vv. 9–10). Following this, he populates the earth, ending its emptiness (vv. 20–30), first with fish and birds, then with land animals, and finally, as the apex of the whole, by humans made in his image. This God is not only almighty, but also a master planner, artist, and architect supreme.

This order is clear from the parallels between two groups of days, the first three and the second three.⁴ On day 1 God creates light, while on day 4 he makes the moon and the stars. On day 2 he separates the waters, the clouds and the seas, and forms the sky, while on day 5 he creates birds and fish to live there. On day 3 he forms the dry ground, and on day 6 he creates animals and humans, whose native element this will be. He shows his sovereign freedom in naming and blessing his creation, and sees that it is thoroughly good. At the end of it all comes the unfinished seventh day, when God enters his rest that he made to share with man, his partner, whom he created in his own image. Entailed is an implicit invitation for us to follow.⁵

It is needless to elaborate on this, so generally recognized is it. Especially striking is God’s sovereign and variegated ordering of his creation. In particular, he forms the earth in a threefold manner. First, he issues direct fiats. He says, “Let there be light,” and there is light (Gen. 1:3). With seemingly effortless command, he brings into being the expanse (v. 6), the dry ground (v. 9), the stars (vv. 14–15), and the birds and fish (vv. 20–21). It is enough for him to speak; his edict is fulfilled at once. Second, he works. He separates light from darkness (v. 4), he makes the expanse and separates the waters (v. 7), he makes the two great lights, the sun and the moon (v. 16), setting them in the expanse to give light on the earth (v. 17), he creates the great creatures of the seas and various kinds of birds (v. 21), he makes the beasts of the earth and reptiles (v. 25), and finally he creates man—male and female—in his own image (vv. 26–27). The thought is of focused, purposive action by God, of divine labor accomplishing his ends. But there is also a third way of formation, in which God uses the activity of the creatures themselves. God commands the earth to produce vegetation, plants, and trees (vv. 11–12). He requests the lights to govern the day and night (vv. 14–16). He commands the earth to bring forth land animals (v. 24). Here the creatures follow God’s instructions and contribute to the eventual outcome. This God who created the universe does not work in a monolithic way. His order is varied—it is threefold but one. His work shows diversity in its unity and unity in its diversity. This God loves order and variety together.

This reflects the chapter’s record of God himself. The triadic manner of the earth’s formation reflects who God its Creator is. He is a relational being. This is implicit from the very start. Notice the distinction between God who created the heavens and earth (Gen. 1:1), the Spirit of God who hovers over the face of the waters (v. 2), and the speech or word of God issuing the fiat “Let there be light” (v. 3)—and his speech recurs frequently throughout the chapter. Of course, it is most unlikely that the author and original readers would have understood the Spirit of God in a personalized way, because of the heavy and insistent stress in the OT on the uniqueness of the one God. The word ruach can mean “spirit,” “wind,” or “breath.” Many commentators understand it to refer to the energy of God—the divine force, the power that creates and sustains life (Driver), an awesome wind (Speiser), a mighty wind (Westermann), God’s outgoing energy (Kidner), or the wind of God (Wenham). Wenham is sound when he suggests that this is a vivid image of the Spirit of God.⁶ Driver recognizes that this passage prepares for the personal use of the term Word in John’s Gospel and, by the same token, that the later NT personalizing of the Spirit of God is a congruent development from this statement also.

With the creation of man is the unique deliberation “Let us make man in our image,” expressing a plurality in God (Gen. 1:26–27). Von Rad comments that this signifies the high point and goal to which all of God’s creative activity is directed. But what does it mean? A variety of interpretations have been advanced to explain it. Some suggest that God is addressing the angels and placing himself in the heavenly court, so that man is made like the angels.⁷ Yet the agents addressed are invited to share in the creation of man, and this is never attributed to the angels elsewhere in the Bible. Second, Driver is one of those who suggest a plural of majesty, a figure of speech underlining God’s dignity and greatness.⁸ But this is no longer as favored as it once was. Among other things, plurals of majesty are rarely if ever used with verbs. Third, Westermann and many recent interpreters favor a plural of self-deliberation or self-encouragement. Yet few parallels support it. Wenham puts forward a variant on the theme of the heavenly court, only in his case he argues for God’s inviting the angels to witness the creation of man rather than to participate in it. He points to Job 38:4–7, where at creation the morning stars are said to sing together and all the sons of God (angels?) shout for joy.⁹

Scripture, however, has a fullness that goes beyond the horizons of the original authors. Many of the fathers saw this statement as a reference to the Trinity. While this was concealed from the original readers and from the OT saints as a whole, the fathers were not at variance with the trajectory of the text. Rabbinical commentators were often perplexed by this passage and other similar ones referring to a plurality in God (Gen. 3:22; 11:7; Isa. 6:8). Philo thought they referred to subordinate powers assisting God in the creation of man. Puzzling over these passages, Jewish interpreters tried to see them as expressing the unity of God.¹⁰ Perhaps it is significant that the NT never refers to Genesis 1:26 with regard to God, but that does not mean it is unwarranted to see here a propleptic reference to the Trinity. The NT does not refer to everything, but it does give us the principle that the OT contains in seed form what is more fully made known in the NT, and on that basis we may look back to the earlier writings much as at the end of a detective mystery we reread the plot, seeing clues that we missed the first time but are now given fresh meaning by our knowledge of the whole. In other words, in terms of the sensus plenior (the fuller sense or meaning) of Scripture, God’s words here attest a plurality in God, a plurality later expressed in the doctrine of the Trinity. The original readers would not have grasped this, but we, with the full plot disclosed, can revisit the passage and see there the clues.

I have written elsewhere, commenting on Genesis 1:26–27, that “man exists as a duality, the one in relation to the other. . . . As for God himself, . . . the context points to his own intrinsic relationality. The plural occurs on three occasions in v. 26, yet God is also singular in v. 27. God is placed in parallel with man, made in his image as male and female, who is described both in the singular and plural. Behind it all is the distinction God/Spirit of God/speech of God in vv. 1–3. . . . This relationality will in the development of biblical revelation eventually be disclosed as taking the form of a triunity.”¹¹ I refer there to kindred comments by Karl Barth.¹²

In short, this God who made the universe—establishing an order with a vast range of variety, with human beings as the crown of his creation, representing him as his image-bearers—is relational. Communion and communication are inherent to his very being. In creating the world, he has made us for himself, to enter into communion with him in a universe of ravishing beauty and ordered variety. By his creation of the seventh day, he ceased from his works in contemplation of their ordered beauty and goodness, and invites us to join him. The first chapter of Genesis says to all who read it that Yahweh the God of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Moses, is also the Creator of all things. He who made his covenant with his peopl...