The Trinity: Theological “Guilt by Association”

So-called triadic passages or verses, where the LORD God or Father is mentioned alongside the Son and spirit (e.g., Isa. 48:16; 61:1; Matt. 28:19; John 3:34-35; 2 Cor. 13:14; 1 Pet. 1:2), continue to be misused as proof of the doctrine of the Trinity. The argument, just to be clear, is not based on the non-biblical word “Trinity,” but on the claim that whenever Father, Son, and spirit appear together, the later doctrine is somehow implied. But to force such texts to say something their writers never actually say amounts to a kind of theological “guilt by association.”

The fact is that Scripture never provides the later Trinitarian formula that the one God eternally exists as three distinct yet co-equal persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These passages simply name or associate three subjects or titles—Father, Son, and holy spirit—but it does not follow that the writers are somehow mysteriously revealing a triune God. Indeed, some of the clearest of these texts distinguish the three: God anoints Jesus with holy spirit (Acts 10:38); God sends His Son and then sends the spirit of His Son (Gal. 4:4-6); and Paul identifies the “one God” specifically as “the Father,” alongside the “one Lord” and the “one Spirit” (Eph. 4:4-6; cp. 1 Cor. 8:6).

The Trinity theory has been especially reinforced through the so-called Johannine Comma at 1 John 5:7-8. Medieval Western theologians came to regard the expanded Latin reading—“the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one”—as an important Trinitarian proof text. Yet the noted Catholic scholar and humanist Erasmus omitted the Comma from the first two editions of his Greek New Testament in 1516 and 1519. Erasmus acknowledged that he could not find the text in the Greek manuscript tradition available to him. Only in his third edition of 1522, after a Greek manuscript containing the reading had been brought forward, did he include it; that edition subsequently helped transmit the passage into the Textus Receptus and the influential KJV. Modern textual scholarship recognizes that the Comma is absent from the early Greek manuscript tradition. Erasmus himself was deeply suspicious of over-defining such theological matters. In the preface to his 1523 edition, he wrote:

“If I believe the tradition that there are three of one nature, what is the use of labored disputation? If I do not believe, I shall not be persuaded by any human reasons,” adding that “the sum of our religion is peace and concord” and that as few matters as possible should be dogmatically defined (Erasmus, Preface to Hilary of Poitiers, 1523, Ep. 1334; cf. Collected Works of Erasmus, Ep. 1334:232-34).

This and many other comments from Erasmus reveal how far these later metaphysical definitions had moved beyond the simple language of Scripture. Thus, Erasmus has gone down in history as a leading Renaissance humanist who courageously opposed the coercive theological excesses of his own church, despite the dangers posed by the Catholic inquisitorial system of his time.

Lastly, note how even major architects of later Trinitarian theology were forced to confront the apparent tritheistic problem. One of the so-called Cappadocian Church Fathers, Gregory of Nyssa, in To Ablabius: On “Not Three Gods,” explains the Trinitarian difficulty plainly. His argument turns on the fact that Peter, James, and John, though sharing one human nature, are nevertheless called three men; yet Trinitarians confess three distinct divine persons sharing one divine nature while refusing to speak of three Gods. Gregory himself acknowledges that this presents a “very difficult” problem and at times seems to question why Trinitarians cannot speak in such tritheistic terms!

The very existence of this fourth-century philosophical problem should give anyone pause, since nowhere do the biblical writers wrestle with invented logical and mathematical conundrums such as how three divine persons can nevertheless be “one God.” The biblical language from the Old to the New Testament is far simpler:

“Do we not all have one Father? Has not one God created us?” (Mal. 2:10)

For us Christians, “there is one God, the Father” (1 Cor. 8:6), whom Jesus identifies as “the only one who is true God” (John 17:3). And Jesus is the one this one God commissioned and “made both Lord and Messiah” (Acts 2:36), not another LORD God.