In studying to teach (and subsequently to blog) on the Trinity, Fred Sanders quickly became one of my favorite theologians. His book The Deep Things of God is a supremely helpful read – I’m happy to recommend it to people.
And in another of his books (that’s too academic for me to recommend widely), he writes.
“…the Trinity is not so much in Scripture as Scripture is in the Trinity. When we search the Bible for its testimony to the Trinity, we should also be aware that the Bible exists because the Father sent the Son and the Spirit. The Old Testament exists because he was preparing to do so, and the New Testament exists because he did so.” [1]
A lot of times we have the wrong expectations for scripture in giving us a doctrine. We think it should just be there, plain as the nose on your face. Like in one of the Epistles, Paul should say: “God eternally exists in 3 persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each person is fully God, and there is only one God. Let me explain.”
We want this ideal of a crass biblicism where unless I have a direct quote – preferably in red ink – it’s not “in the Bible” But we already talked about this in my posts on the doctrine of scripture – that’s not what the Bible is.
Rather, the Bible is meditative literature. It’s meant to be chewed on, thought on, read and re-read.
One literary professor said – not about scripture, but reading in general –
“There is nothing magical in reading. It is in re-reading that some magic may lie.”[2]
The Magic of Re-Reading
And so we re-read the Bible, with the Trinity in mind. And we can’t help but see it everywhere.
After the Son and Spirit are sent, we hit a paradigm shift. Once we see something in a new way, we can never go back to seeing it the old way. It’s like how nativity scenes have been ruined for me.[3]
It’s what happens to the nativity when I show you the stamp from the UK – and subtly mention that in the family band, Mary’s on the keyboard while Joseph provides vocals.
Or we ask why some church would put out a silhouette of a stable, containing two tyrannosaurus rexes fighting over a table saw.
You will never be able to see those two nativities again without seeing dinosaurs or a band.
And once we see the Trinity in scripture, we can never read the Bible the same way again.
Scott Swain, of Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando writes in his Intro to the Trinity… I love this series, too. He says,
“In its own mysterious way, the Old Testament speaks of the Trinity, portraying God as a sovereign speech agent who created all things by his Word and Spirit (Gen. 1:1-3; Ps. 33:6, 9), inviting us to overhear conversations between the Lord and his anointed Son (Pss. 2; 110), and prompting us to wonder about the threefold repetition of YHWH's name in the Aaronic Benediction (Num. 6:22-27) and about the true identity of Wisdom in Proverbs 8.”[4]
“The New Testament draws more definitive lines in portraits only sketched in Old Testament texts (compare Gen. 1:1-3 with John 1:1-3), clarifies the identity of speakers in otherwise ambiguous Old Testament conversations (compare Ps. 2 with Heb. 1, and Ps. 110 with Mark 12:35-37), and recognizes Wisdom as more than a literary personification, identifying him as God's beloved Son, the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation (Col. 1:13-20; Heb. 1:3).”[5]
This is how theological reflection and formulation works. We draw out truths from scripture, and meditate on them, think through them, figure out how they fit and what else is implied.
Define “In the Bible”
What we really need to do is define what we mean by “In the Bible.” I think most people, as I said, are looking for explicit statements, but that’s now how scripture works.
And so, I’ve brought it up before, but when we talk about the doctrine of scripture, it not only applies to the words themselves, but, as the Westminster Confession states, we believe everything “Expressly set down in scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from scripture.”[6]
I was trying to show you this last week; the Bible gives us the material, but doesn’t connect all the dots for us. And, so, we do our best to understand the connections, constantly checking ourselves by scripture.
This is the way God wanted it – He could have included that triangle chart in 1 Corinthians. But He didn’t. He let the church wrestle and study and pray and meditate and talk things out, and figure out where to draw the lines – what fits with what’s revealed, what contradicts what’s revealed.
The precise definition of the Trinity took a few hundred years for the church to work out and agree on. To figure out the errors that contradicted the Biblical material. Nicaea in 325 is the first main Historical creed that delineates the Trinity. In it, we read,
The Nicene Creed
We believe in one God,
the Father almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all things visible and invisible.And in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
begotten from the Father before all ages,
God from God,
Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made;
of the same essence as the Father.Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven;
he became incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary,
and was made human.He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered and was buried.The third day he rose again, according to the Scriptures.
He ascended to heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.He will come again with glory
to judge the living and the dead.His kingdom will never end.
And we believe in the Holy Spirit,
the Lord, the giver of life.He proceeds from the Father and the Son,
and with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified.He spoke through the prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church.
We affirm one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look forward to the resurrection of the dead,
and to life in the world to come.Amen.
The Nicene Creed doesn’t say everything there is to say about the Trinity. It was later clarified and narrowed at the counsels of Constantinople, Chalcedon, and in the Athanasian creed. But Nicaea does say something. It tells us what we at least have to affirm, and what we must not affirm, or we go outside the bounds of what scripture teaches – either expressly or through good and necessary consequence.
Remember that there’s a difference between denying and not having precise knowledge. This plays out in the history of the church.
Nicaea was 325. But before we had precise and delimited creeds and doctrines, we have records of Christians praising the Triune God. We have prayers like the Gloria Patri
“Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost! As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, word without end.”
The Historic church was praising the Trinity before she could articulate the Trinity. That’s really quite significant. And I think that’s the same in all our personal experiences as well.[7]
The work of Theology is faith seeking understanding, because as one author put it, it is praise seeking underpinning.[8]
We prayed to a God based on what we know. And we are faithful to what we know, even as we work through the details and the fuller understanding. At the end of the day, regardless of our level of understanding, to be Christian is to be Trinitarian.
And so, we should praise without complete understanding. And as we grow in our understanding, we should be adding depth to our words and our worship as we proclaim
Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow
Praise Him, all creatures here below
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
The doctrine of the Trinity isn’t primarily about propositions to be worded, but persons to be worshipped.
[1] Fred Sanders, The Triune God, New Studies in Dogmatics (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2016), 90.
[2] E.K. Brown, quoted in Sanders, 215.
[3] Jonathan T. Pennington, Come and See: The Journey of Knowing God through Scripture (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2023).
[4] Scott R. Swain, The Trinity: An Introduction, Short Studies in Systematic Theology (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2020), 25.
[5] Swain, 26.
[6] WCF 1.6
[7] Sanders, The Triune God, 30.
[8] Sanders, 28.