Are We Misunderstanding the Most Important Doctrine in Christianity?

It's insufficient to say Jesus is God. Even the Arians agree. We have to show how the Son and Father are included in the definition of the one God of Israel.

In recent years, I've observed a growing trend of people questioning the biblical basis for the doctrine of the Trinity. While the Bible doesn't use the precise theological language developed centuries later at the Councils of Nicea and Constantinople, the Bible names the relationship between the Father and the Son in ways that led to the Nicene Definition.

The Councils of Nicea (325 AD) and Constantinople (381 AD) sought to articulate the biblical arguments describing the natural relationship between the Father and the Son. They recognized that the Father begets the Son, and because both are Eternal, this relationship must be an eternal one. Just as a human father and son share in their essential nature of "fatherness" and "sonness," these councils sought to understand the divine relationship.

Justin Martyr, attempting to articulate this relationship, offers a helpful analogy for how God begot the Word. Justin noted that human words don’t mean we lack the ability to speak afterward; similarly, when one fire lights another, the original fire remains unchanged. Likewise, God can beget the Word without diminishing or changing. This imperfect analogy helps explain how the Father and Son can be distinct yet share in what it means to be the one God of Israel.

Early church fathers like Justin, Tertullian, and Irenaeus weren't trying to impose fourth-century philosophical language onto biblical text. Instead, they were wrestling with a profound mystery: how to understand how the Bible presents the Father and Son as distinguishable yet as both the one God of Israel.

Not all attempts were successful. Justin Martyr and Origen of Alexandria initially described the Father and Son as being two Gods. However, this language proved untenable when contrasted with biblical passages like Deuteronomy 6:4 and 1 Corinthians 8, which emphasize God's oneness. Declaring "two gods" was insufficient.

Some theologians in the 3rd century suggested the Father and Son were united by will. While Jesus indeed says he does only what the Father shows him, this explanation falls short. Passages like John 5:26 and John 1 reveal a more intimate connection, showing Jesus has life and light in himself.

The Gospel of John's prologue is particularly pointed: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Cyril of Alexandria explains this verse as showing how the Word is eternal at the beginning, distinguishable with God, and also God himself. John 1 also alludes to Genesis, where God creates by speaking ("Let there be light"). This Word spoken in Genesis 1 is none other than Jesus himself, the Word become flesh (John 1:14).

Beyond the term Logos, we can look to Paul, who uses multiple descriptions: Christ as power, wisdom, and the image of God. Titus and 2 Peter simply affirm Jesus as God. This linguistic diversity isn't confusion but a multifaceted testimony to the Son's divine nature and relationship with the Father.

The challenge for Christians in the early centuries was finding language to summarize this theological reality that the Father and Son are included in the one definition of God. Father and Son are the one God of Israel.

Terms like "person" and "essence" were developed as shorthand to avoid constantly repeating elaborate explanations like: God is the Father eternally begetting the Son, and the Son being eternally begotten, and the Spirit proceeding from the Father through the Son. Even Augustine in his De Trinitate noted that "person" was an answer to the question of “three what”? Person simply is shorthand for God is the Father eternally begetting the Son, and the Son being eternally begotten, and the Spirit proceeding from the Father through the Son.

Critically, the doctrine of the Trinity was never about simply proving Jesus's divinity. Even heretics like Arius acknowledged Jesus's divine status. The real argument was about how the Father and Son are included in the definition of the one God of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

The doctrine of "inseparable operations" was key here: whatever the Father does, the Son and Spirit also do. This shared activity, especially in creation, implies a shared divine power, namely, the power of creation. So Father and Son are uncreated Creator of all things, and thus the Son falls on the side of Creator, not a creature.

Other patterns of reading Scripture included tracing the acts of the Son and Father to divine power, the power that only God could have (e.g., Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa). Or Christians made much of the prepositions in the Bible that distinguished the Father, Son, and Spirit (ek, dia, en, etc.).

Without a robust understanding of these Scriptural patterns of argument, we risk reducing the Trinity to a "Jesus is God" statement that fails to show how the Father and Son are included in the definition of the one God of Israel. Such a failure opens us up to attacks since Arians and Mormons alike will call the Son divine. The argument cannot stop at Jesus being divine (true), but we must also say that he is the God of Israel.

If we lack this next step, we will find ourselves clobbered. In fact, we might already be clobbered if we consider the kind of podcasts, videos, and book that are coming out.

To that end, I recently recorded a long response to Dan McClellan on John 1:1, where he rejects the traditional meaning of “the Word was God.”