Part II: The Trinity in the New Testament
The Old Testament emphasized the unity of God and only hinted at His tri-unity. As Gregory Nazianzen stated it above in our introduction, it was essential that God first clearly established his oneness before he could disclose his tri-unity. Polytheism was common in the ancient world, and the temptation in Israel would have been too great to slip into tri-theism had not God firmly insisted upon his unity for a millenium or two before manifesting Himself as Trinity.
Yet with the coming of the Messiah, God gradually disclosed His Trinitarian nature and the infinite, intimate communion of love that has existed between the three divine persons for all of eternity. We will now examine some of the Trinitarian passages of the New Testament.
One Lord
The New Testament agrees with the Tanakh in affirming that there is only One Lord:
[There is] one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. (Eph 4:5)
But at the same time the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are all called "Lord":
The Father is Lord: "I will be a Father to you…says the Lord Almighty." (2 Cor 6:18)
The Son is Lord: "the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." (2 Pet 1:16)
The Spirit is Lord: "Now the Lord is the Spirit." (2 Cor 3:17)
Three Divine Persons
All three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, are called "God":
The Father is God (1):
For He received from God the Father honor and glory… (2 Pet 1:17)
The Son is God (2):
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (Jn 1:1)
And Thomas answered and said to Him, ‘My Lord and my God!’" (Jn 20:28)
The Spirit is God (3):
Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit? …You have not lied to men but to God. (Ac 5:3-4)
Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? (1 Cor 3:16)
Trinitarian Passages in the New Testament
Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father (1) and of the Son (2) and of the Holy Spirit (3). (Mt 28:19)
But the Comforter, the Holy Spirit (3), whom the Father (1) will send in My name (2)… (Jn 14:26)
There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit (3). There are differences of ministries, but the same Lord (2). And there are diversities of activities, but it is the same God (1) who works all in all. (1 Cor 12:4-6)
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ (2), and the love of God (1), and the communion of the Holy Spirit (3) be with you all. (2 Cor 13:14)
For through Him (2) we both have access by one Spirit (3) to the Father (1). (Eph 2:18)
For this reason I bow my knees to the Father (1)… that He would grant you…to be strengthened with might through His Spirit (3)… that Christ (2) may dwell in your hearts through faith. (Eph 3:14-17)
How much more shall the blood of Christ (2), who through the eternal Spirit (3) offered Himself without spot to God (1) cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God. (Heb 9:14)
To the pilgrims… elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father (1), in sanctification of the Spirit (3), for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ (2). (1 Pet 1:2)
But you, beloved… praying in the Holy Spirit (3), keep yourselves in the love of God (1), looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ (2) unto eternal life. (Jude 20-21)
The Dogma of the Holy Trinity
These passages reveal the presence of the Trinity in the New Testament, but they do not explain to us how the Trinity "works". Without getting into a complete treatise on the Trinity, we now turn to the Compendium of Catechism of the Catholic Church for a description of the most essential expression of the Blessed Trinity:
48. How does the Church express her trinitarian faith?
The Church expresses her trinitarian faith by professing a belief in the oneness of God in whom there are three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The three divine Persons are only one God because each of them equally possesses the fullness of the one and indivisible divine nature. They are really distinct from each other by reason of the relations which place them in correspondence to each other. The Father generates the Son; the Son is generated by the Father; the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.
It’s important to note that the terms “generates” and “generated” here do not mean that the Father “created” the Son, or “gave birth” to Him in a human sense. The Father was not originally alone, and then later “created” or “begot” the Son. The Son did not come into existence “later” than the Father; He is not “younger” than the Father (this would really be polytheism). Rather, the Son is “eternally begotten” by the Father and eternally receives His divine nature from the Father. The Son is the Father’s eternal Word, Idea, or self-expression. Father and Son are like thinker and idea: distinct, but not separate, always existing alongside the other and in perfect communion with one another.
And so the Son did not begin to exist when Jesus was conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary some 2,000 years ago. The divine Son existed eternally; but He took on our human nature and became man 2,000 years ago.
The more comprehensive Catechism of the Catholic Church expands upon this understanding of the Trinity:
253 The Trinity is One. We do not confess three Gods, but one God in three persons, the "consubstantial Trinity". The divine persons do not share the one divinity among themselves but each of them is God whole and entire: "The Father is that which the Son is, the Son that which the Father is, the Father and the Son that which the Holy Spirit is, i.e. by nature one God."
254 The divine persons are really distinct from one another. "God is one but not solitary." "Father", "Son", "Holy Spirit" are not simply names designating modalities of the divine being [such as, for example, water, ice, and steam are three forms of the same substance], for they are really distinct from one another: "He is not the Father who is the Son, nor is the Son he who is the Father, nor is the Holy Spirit he who is the Father or the Son." They are distinct from one another in their relations of origin: "It is the Father who generates, the Son who is begotten, and the Holy Spirit who proceeds." The divine Unity is Triune.
255 The divine persons are relative to one another. Because it does not divide the divine unity, the real distinction of the persons from one another resides solely in the relationships which relate them to one another: In the relational names of the persons the Father is related to the Son, the Son to the Father, and the Holy Spirit to both. While they are called three persons in view of their relations, we believe in one nature or substance... Because of that unity the Father is wholly in the Son and wholly in the Holy Spirit; the Son is wholly in the Father and wholly in the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit is wholly in the Father and wholly in the Son.
An Illustration
All this makes for pretty complex theology. Thankfully, there is a simpler way to explain the Trinity. Though this is a classical explanation going back to St. Augustine (early 5th century), the following formulation is borrowed from Frank Sheed's masterful book Theology and Sanity:
God, as person, knows and loves. Because He is infinite, His knowledge and love are infinite. Because He is infinite, His knowledge and love are simply Himself. God's infinite knowledge is the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son. God's infinite love is the Third Person, the Holy Spirit. The Second Person, therefore, proceeds from the First by way of knowledge. The Third Person proceeds by way of love.
The Second Person: The Word and the Son
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (Jn 1:1)
In Frank Sheed's words:
An idea is, so far as we make it so, the mental double or image of the object we are contemplating; it expresses as much of that object as we can manage to get into it. Because of the limitation of our powers, the idea we form is never the perfect double or image, never totally expresses the object, in plain words is never totally adequate. But if God does, as we know from Himself that He does, generate an idea of Himself, this idea must be totally adequate, in no way less than the Being of which it is the Idea, lacking nothing that that Being has. The Idea must contain all the perfection of the Being of which it is the Idea. There can be nothing in the Thinker that is not in His Thought of Himself, otherwise the Thinker would be thinking of Himself inadequately, which is impossible for the Infinite. Thus the Idea, the Word that God generates, is Infinite, Eternal, living, a Person, equal in all things to Him who generates It - Someone as He is, conscious of Himself as he is, God as He is. (Frank Sheed, Theology and Sanity, pg 104)
It also helps to reflect upon the two main titles that describe the Second Person of the Trinity: God the Son and God the Word.
Jesus is God the Son: A son is like in nature to the father. So God the Son, like the Father, is infinite, omnipotent, eternal. Jesus is also God’s Word: God is pure spirit, so His word is like a thought or an idea. God knows himself. When God thinks of himself, this thought must be perfect, because God is perfect, so whatever is in the Father must be in this idea of himself: the "image of the invisible God." (Col 1:15)
The Third Person
Between the two infinite persons of the Father and the Son, there is an infinite love. Since in their mutual love they give everything they have, then the love between them is perfect, so that love produces an eternal person as well, the Holy Spirit:
The First Person knows Himself; His act of knowing Himself produces and Idea, a Word; and this Idea, this Word, is the Second Person. The First Person and the Second combine in an act of love - love of one another, love of the glory of the Godhead which is their own; and just as the act of knowing produces an Idea within the Divine Nature, the act of loving produces a state of Lovingness within the Divine Nature. Into this Lovingness, Father and Son pour all that They have and all the They are, with no diminution, nothing held back. Thus this Lovingness within the Godhead is utterly equal to the Father and the Son, for They have poured Their all into it. There is nothing They have which their Lovingness does not have. Thus Their Lovingness too is Infinite, Eternal, Living, Someone, a Person, God. Observe that here again we are still within the Divine Nature. For love is wholly within the nature of the lover. But this love wholly contains the Divine Nature, for God puts the whole of Himself into love. (Frank Sheed, Theology and Sanity, pg 106)
The Work of the Trinity
The inner working of the Trinity is interesting, you may say, but what has it got to do with us? In fact, the Trinity has everything to do with us. For the Trinity, God's life of love, is the eternal home to which we are called. God freely wills to communicate to us the glory of his blessed life. Such is the eternal plan of his loving kindness: "He destined us in love to be his sons," "conformed to the image of His Son," through "the spirit of sonship" (Eph 1:4-5; Rom 8:15, 29). God’s plan unfolds in the work of creation, the whole history of salvation after the fall, and the missions of the Son and the Spirit which are continued in the mission of the Church. The whole divine economy is the common work of the three divine Persons. Yet each Person has a unique role: the Father is Creator and Provider. The Son is Savior and Redeemer. The Spirit is Sanctifier, Guide, and Guarantor. (CCC 257-59)
The following passages describe the common work of the persons of the Trinity in the New Testament:
In Creation:
Father: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." (Gen 1:1)
Son: "All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made." (Jn 1:3)
Spirit: "And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters." (Gen 1:2)
At Jesus’ Baptism:
Father: "And suddenly a voice came from heaven, saying, ‘This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." (Mt 3:17)
Son: "Jesus came up immediately from the water." (Mt 3:16)
Spirit: "and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting upon Him." (Mt 3:16)
At Jesus' Resurrection:
Father: "Jesus of Nazareth…whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death…" (Acts 2:22-24)
Son: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." (Jn 2:19)
Spirit: "But if the Spirit of Him who raised Christ from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you." (Rom 8:11)
Working in the life of the Christian:
Father: "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him." (Jn 14:23)
Son: "I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you." (Jn 14:18)
Spirit: "the Spirit of truth…you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you." (Jn 14:17)
In the Communication of the Divine Life:
Father: "I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ…that He would grant you…that you may be filled with all the fullness of God." (Eph 3:14, 19)
Son: "that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith." (Eph 3:17)
Spirit: "that He would grant you…to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man." (Eph 3:16)
In the Resurrection of the Believer:
Father: "For as the Father raises the dead and gives life to them…" (Jn 5:21)
Son: "everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day." (Jn 6:40)
Spirit: "But if the Spirit of Him who raised Christ from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you." (Rom 8:11)
God's Image and Likeness: Called to Share in God's Life
Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness… So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. (Gen 1:26-27)
The Trinitarian God created us in His own image and likeness. He desires to make himself known and to share His life with us (CCC 257, 260) so we may share in his truth, beauty and goodness (CCC 41, 319). Being in the image of God, man is capable of self-knowledge, of self-possession and of freely giving himself and entering into communion with other persons (CCC 357) - in other words, of imitating the Trinity's life-giving love. This is our ultimate calling: to become capable of loving as God loves us, and to imitate the life-giving love which is the very nature of God, who is an eternal exchange of love within Himself. Our participation in God’s trinitarian life is made possible especially in the Church's liturgy and sacraments, whereby we partake of God's life of grace. The sacraments are efficacious signs of grace by which God's divine, trinitarian life is dispensed to us (CCC 1131).