Who Is The Holy Spirit
John 15:2627 describes the Spirit as the one sent from the Father and the Son, and he bears witness to the Son.. In addition, Gregg Allison notes, From Genesis to Revelation, from creation to new creation, the Spirit of God is an active participant in the story of Scripture. He is life-giving, empowering, and transforming. We believe that the Holy Spirit is truly God.
Why Is The Trinity Important
God has to be a trinity in order for all of His attributes to be manifested, demonstrated and glorified. One of Gods attributes is Love. And if there was no Trinity, then God could not be love. Love requires someone to do the loving, someone to be loved, and a relationship between them. If God was not three beings in One Godhead, then He could not be love.
7. 1 Corinthians 8:6 yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.
8. Acts 20:28 Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood.
9. John 1:14 The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father full of grace and truth.
10. Hebrews 1:3 The Son is the radiance of Gods glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.
The Trinity In Matthew 2: 19
Nazianzuss use of a numerical example is fruitful beyond his immediate purpose. Although he does not make the connection, part of the question about whether the doctrine of the Trinity is in the Bible is the question of whether the number three is in the Bible with reference to divine things.
Throughout his theological orations, Nazianzus explicates the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit , which he summarizes as a threefold name.
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy SpiritMatthew 28:19
He frequently uses the word triad in reference to God, but also in reference to the threeness in the words of the risen Lord as he gave the baptismal command. Triad simply is Greek for threeness, just as thrynnysse is Anglo-Saxon and trinitas is Latin for threeness. Any reader of Matthew 28:19 must admit there is threeness, or trinity, in the biblical text.
The substantive question, of course, is what kind of threeness is envisioned? Subtrinitarian answers would include:
- three ways of talking about one God
But baptism in the name of one Father, one Son, and one Holy Spirit must signify three somethings, which puts threeness in the text, though not the word threeness. At the first level of analysis, Trinity is in Scripture as a very modest summarizing statement about how many names are to be counted in the one baptismal name in Matthew 28:19.
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Each Member Of The Godhead Is Identified As God
Over and over in Scripture we can see that each member of the Trinity is referred to as God. Each distinct Person of the Godhead is his own distinct Person, yet He is One in essence or being. God the Father is called God. Jesus Christ the Son is called God. The Holy Spirit is also called God. None is more God than the other. They all are equally God yet function in their own unique roles. Having different roles does not make us any less valuable or worthy.
31.2 Corinthians 3:17 Now the Lord is Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
32.2 Corinthians 13:14 May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
33. Colossians 2:9 For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form.
34. Romans 4:17 That is what the Scriptures mean when God told him, I have made you the father of many nations. This happened because Abraham believed in the God who brings the dead back to life and who creates new things out of nothing.
35. Romans 4:18 Even when there was no reason for hope, Abraham kept hopingbelieving that he would become the father of many nations. For God had said to him, Thats how many descendants you will have!
Understanding The Holy Spirit And His Role In The Trinity
This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. The one who keeps Gods commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us. 1 John 3:19-24
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Where Does The Bible Talk About The Trinity
by Wes | Apr 18, 2018 | Theology
The doctrine of the Trinity is the idea that there is only one God and God has always existed as three distinct persons, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Though the word, Trinity is not found in our Bibles, the question remains, is the idea of a triune God a biblical idea? Can we find that teaching in the Bible or is it simply a religious tradition? Lets take a look at a few passages.
There is One God
It is one of the foundational truths of both the Old and New Testaments that there is only one God. As the Apostle Paul wrote, Although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth as indeed there are many gods and many lords yet for us there is one God . The idols people worship are not gods at all.
Read the way Isaiah mocked idolatry in Isaiah 44. He talked about a man who cuts down a tree
Half of it he burns in the fire. Over the half he eats meat he roasts it and is satisfied. Also he warms himself and says, Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire! And the rest of it he makes into a god, his idol, and falls down to it and worships it. He prays to it and says, Deliver me, for you are my god!
How silly. The man chose a part of the block of wood to burn in a fire and another part of the wood to be his god, hoping that block of wood will deliver him.
The entirety of Scripture testifies to this great truth, The Lord is God there is no other besides him .
The Father is God
Jesus is God
The Holy Spirit is God
Wes McAdams
The Background For How The Trinity Was Introduced
Since the Trinity is not found in the Bible, as so many scholars and theologians admit, how did it come to be viewed as such an important teaching?
Theology professors Roger Olson and Christopher Hall explain part of the puzzle in their book The Trinity: “It is understandable that the importance placed on this doctrine is perplexing to many lay Christians and students. Nowhere is it clearly and unequivocally stated in Scripture . . . How can it be so important if it is not explicitly stated in Scripture? . . .
“The doctrine of the Trinity developed gradually after the completion of the New Testament in the heat of controversy, but the church fathers who developed it believed they were simply exegeting divine revelation and not at all speculating or inventing new ideas. The full-blown doctrine of the Trinity was spelled out in the fourth century at two great ecumenical councils: Nicea and Constantinople ” .
We see from this and other sources quoted above that the idea of a Trinity was foreign to the biblical writers. Instead, as many of these sources openly acknowledge, the doctrine of the Trinity developed considerably later and over a span of several centuries.
To understand the factors that led to the introduction of this belief, we must first go back to see far-reaching and little-understood trends that started in the first few decades of the early Church. It’s a surprisingand in many ways shockingstory!
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Before The Council Of Nicaea
While the developed doctrine of the Trinity is not explicit in the books that constitute the New Testament, it was first formulated as early Christians attempted to understand the relationship between Jesus and God in their scriptural documents and prior traditions.
An early reference to the three âpersonsâ of later Trinitarian doctrines appears towards the end of the first century, where Clement of Rome rhetorically asks in his epistle as to why corruption exists among some in the Christian community “Do we not have one God, and one Christ, and one gracious Spirit that has been poured out upon us, and one calling in Christ?” . A similar example is found in the first century Didache, which directs Christians to “baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”.
Ignatius of Antioch similarly refers to all three persons around AD 110, exhorting obedience to “Christ, and to the Father, and to the Spirit”. Though all of these early sources do reference the three persons of the Trinity, none articulate full divinity, equal status, or shared being as elaborated by Trinitarians in later centuries.
Adoration of the TrinityThe Heavenly and Earthly Trinities
St. Justin and Clement of Alexandria referenced all three persons of the Trinity in their doxologies and St. Basil likewise, in the evening lighting of lamps.
Who Is The Son
Christ, the Son, took on flesh to dwell among us Colossians 1:1516 describes him as the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, the one by whom and from whom all things were created. As the one who died and rose again, he is the head of the church and the firstborn of the new creation. Jesus Christ is both truly man and truly God.
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Is There A Danger In Rereading
Rereading can even be made to sound subversive and transgressive, as if in the high-theory war between reader and author, rereading is a matter of taking up arms in anarchic rebellion against the author.
Matin Calinescu situates rereading as a counter-practice against the regime of normative first reading. But normative first reading could be a side effect of romanticism, which expects textual love at first sight, or of scientism, which expects self-evident meaning to be transferred at a single reading that does not need to be savored for its literary quality.
Rereading is, after all, one of the primary pleasures of popular reading.
Successful novelists from Jane Austen to J. K. Rowling prove themselves to their fans not by how good their books are for reading but for rereading. Whole new vistas of insight and enjoyment open up to the reader who returns to certain well-structured books, where there is a palpable frisson between intuiting the whole text at once and reclaiming the linear experience of another trip through it.
Scripture, religiously experienced, is obviously another key site of rereading.
It is not only an interpretive practice to be embraced by the consumers of the Bible, but because of the cumulative character of the biblical canon, rereading is a crucial element in the production of Scripture. Rereading is a mode of the New Testaments use of the Old.
R. T. France has pointed out:
A Doctrine That Unites And Divides
The doctrine of the Trinity has been called the most puzzling doctrine in the Christian faith and the central truth of the Christian faith. Which is it? Inscrutable puzzle or central truth? The answer is, both are true.
This doctrine unites all true Christians and separates us from those who are not Christian. You may believe and still not be a Christian, but if you deny this doctrine in your heart, you are not a Christian at all.
I come now to the end of my sermon. In so doing I end where I began. The Trinity is a doctrine that all Christians believe but no one really understands. That much should be clear from this message. If you try to explain the Trinity, you will lose your mind. But if you deny it, you will lose your soul.
Someone asked Daniel Webster, who happened to be a fervent Christian, “How can a man of your intellect believe in the Trinity?” “I do not pretend fully to understand the arithmetic of heaven now,” he replied. That’s a good phrasethe arithmetic of heaven.
The Trinity should cause us to bow in humble adoration before a God who is greater than our minds could ever comprehend.
Let us rejoice that we have a Triune God who has provided for Trinitarian salvation. When we were lost in sin, our God acted in every Person of his being to save us. The Father gave the Son, the Son offered himself on the Cross, and the Holy Spirit brought us to Jesus. We were so lost that it took every member of the Godhead to save us.
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What Is The Holy Spirit
It is interesting that throughout Scripture the Holy Spirit is not given a personal name such as Yahweh or Emmanuel, but is described only in terms of His work. Perhaps that omission has led some to think of the Holy Spirit as a force, a power, or an inuencesome entity less than a person.
The Holy Spirit does not have a physical body, but rather describes qualities, characteristics, and actions. Heres what the Bible says about the Holy Spirit
He intercedes for us He helps to make our weaknesses become empowered strengths He can be lied to , insulted , grieved , and resisted .
In the New Testament, the Holy Spirit comes to us in person to glorify Christ in every believer as He works to create Gods family on the earththat is, the Church as Gods household. He is called the Spirit of truth and our Advocate . When He indwells the life of the believer, He takes the truth of the words of Christ, and reveals their depth of meaning to that individual.
God The Son Loved Us So Much That He Was Willing To Pay That Penalty So We Could Have Eternal Life
John tells us, Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down ones life for his friends .
As a child, did you have a best friend? Perhaps one of your fellow students in school. Perhaps a neighbor in your community. A best friend is someone you can talk to about anything. Someone who always stands up for you. A best friend is a person who is on your side.
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What Adventists Believe About The Trinity
Learn About the Trinity
Seventh-day Adventist Christians believe there is one God. And that this one God is three co-eternal beings who work together in unity. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit have always been, and always will be.
Its impossible to wrap our finite minds around this infinite concept. How does the doctrine of the Trinity work? How can there be one God, but three persons?
Well dig into Scripture to find out:
Difficulties With The Trinity Considered And Answered
The Meaning of Only-begotten
John 1:14 And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 1:18 No man has seen God at any time the only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.
In John 1:18, the King James Version has huios, Son, in place of theos, God, and reads, No man hath seen God at any time the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.
Because to our mind the words only begotten suggest birth or beginning, some have tried to take the use of this designation of Jesus Christ to mean that Christ had a beginning, that He only became the Son of God. Such an understanding denies His eternality and also the concept of the trinity. So what does John mean by the term only begotten?
Vine has an excellent summary of the use of monogenes in John 1:14 and 18:
We can only rightly understand the term the only begotten when used of the Son, in the sense of unoriginated relationship. The begetting is not an event of time, however remote, but a fact irrespective of time. The Christ did not become, but necessarily and eternally is the Son. He, a Person, possesses every attribute of pure Godhood. This necessitates eternity, absolute being in this respect He is not after the Father .
The Meaning of First-born
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The Concept Of The Lords Word Personified
There are points in the Old Testament where Gods very word is personified as it would be if Gods Word referenced Jesus.
- For the word of the Lord is right and true he is faithful in all he does.Psalm 33:4
- The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever.Isaiah 40:8
In his gospel, John describes Jesus as the Word of God. This sheds new light on the on many of the Old Testament references to Gods Word.