By Rev. S.M. Williams J.P.
Adherents of other religions have been inadvertently accusing Christians of worshipping three gods. It is indeed an intriguing issue to the uninitiated. In this piece I intend to throw light on the issue so that in its end minds of skeptics would have been disabused. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is nowhere mentioned under that term in Scripture though the doctrine is clearly there by implication. We have come to the central mystery of the Christian faith and let us note that we shall not fully understand the mystery at the end.
Not that they need depress us unduly. It is commonly agreed among all who believe in God that a God completely comprehended is no God. Could a being fully understood by mortals be God? We should expect not the irrational but the unfathomable; a deep where all our thoughts are drowned.
The church fathers knew better than we do how superficially absurd it would seem “Three in One, and One in Three”. What a field for the thin humour of those who are ready to engineer a joke out of blasphemy! But a field also for those ready to be lost in wonder, love and praise.
We live in an age when the fashionable philosophy puts much stress on logic and denies the usefulness of any discussion not conducted in terms precisely defined. And what an impregnable position that is! Even if it does kill much discussion on most of the fascinating mysteries of life. The Doctrine of the Trinity these philosophers assert, is not discussible. It is indeed what the average man already suspects, just “playing with words”.
God The Creator
The Bible begins with the words “In the beginning God…” So when the record was set down man already had clear concepts. We do not know in full detail the whole religious history of our race.
Travelers have found primitive people with only the haziest idea of a supreme God (and sometimes not even that) but living in what they believe to be a world much influenced by spirits-kind and unkind too.
The penetrating awareness that there is but one living God of the whole world is the glory of the Hebrew people and the reason why they rank with Greece and Rome as teachers of humanity. One God for all, Only One!
“Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one. All other “gods” are fabled deities”. This is the truth! One God! Holy, just merciful, loving etc.
Other people have come to the conviction of One supreme God, not so much by revelation as by reflection. They have looked at the world, seen its mixed character (lovely sunsets and hideous earthquakes, little lambs and vipers and concluded that the world had One Creator who was good.
God The Redeemer
He came from Nazareth and was called Jesus. The fishermen of Capernaum noticed nothing peculiar about his dress or his accent but his words and his power and his whole personality were almost beyond belief. He was a carpenter by trade and had no more formal schooling than they had had themselves “but never man so spoke”. He spoke with such authority that he compelled them to hear. The mystery of his nature deepened for his adoring companious and the conviction grew in them that he was the Christ, the Messiah, the promised deliver of their people. Precisely who or what the Messiah would be not even the leaders of Israel had clearly defined nor did these fishermen pause to ponder.
He forgave sins and (as the scribes so justly remarked) who can forgive sins but God only. He had no sense of personal sin – a phenomenon quite unknown among truly good men. He said such things about himself as to label him either as mad or… (but how can a Jew say it?) God himself. He that has seen me has seen the Father”… I am the bread of life”… Before Abraham was I am… I and the Father are one”.
Jesus was not a mortal adopted to messiahship. He was God incarnate here on earth, said Thomas: My Lord and my God! The disciples were Jews to a man and devout but they were now sure of this. God had visited and redeemed his people.
God The Sanctifier
During the last solemn talks Jesus had with his disciples at the close of his earthly ministry he spoke much about a Comforter, an Advocate a spirit of Truth who would come when he had gone. He referred to him as a person. They took little heed of the announcement of his impending death, and rising again, but after the Resurrection and his further reminders, it took a foremost place in their minds and after the Ascension they thought of little else. Absorbed in prayer together they awaited the coming of the Holy spirit. But the precious and abiding truth was that God was now in them and they could part form one another while God stayed with them all.
If they were to have victory over the sin and selfishness inside them, they must have God inside them too remaking their nature, beating the evil down and divine love the motive of all they did.
Slowly, the awareness of what had happened grew upon them in the days succeeding Pentecost. The savior had fulfilled his word. The Holy spirit was within them to make them holy too; to impatrt his own fruit of love, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, humility and self-control, to convict the world of sin, through them and make them mighty in evangelism.
From the earlier years of the church the three-fold blessing was in use. We are at the central mistery of our most holy faith.
