Topical Studies
What the Bible says about
Trinity Doctrine
(From Forerunner Commentary)
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Psalm 69:32
Seeking God makes the heart live. How many times have we seen heart, spirit, mind, and thoughts in the same context? Is that not what we want in this relationship with God? We want our heart to live. What is it that makes it live? It is the Spirit of God energizing it because of the close communion. A biblical example of this is when Moses went up on the mount to be with God for forty days and forty nights. While he was gone, the Israelites made the Golden Calf. When Moses came down from that close association with God, he came down with his face glowing, shining, reflecting the glory of God through close communion with Him all those days. This situation is a form of what the psalmist means about the close communion with God. Seeking Him, dressing and keeping the relationship, and submitting to Him are what make the heart live because His Spirit is flowing into it. When that happens, we are living the life He lives, what the Bible calls "eternal life." Eternal life is to live as God lives. We are seeking to have a relationship with One who is not far from us. He is close to us—in us by His Spirit—and He delights to pour Himself into our hearts and minds. We seek Him through desire. Do we really want this One to be our Husband? Do we really want to be like this One we are to marry? If we do not desire Him, He will not reciprocate with any zeal, and the relationship will just sputter. We seek Him by turning our thoughts to Him by communion in prayer and in Bible study. The desire to be like Him in every way drives our submission to Him in obedience. We are in the midst of a courtship. Can there be any passing of spirit when one is so far from the other that desire is completely absent? Desire rises when we know Him so well that we are constantly thinking about all His wonderful attributes. This is not a "cure-all" for every spiritual problem. As Christ's letters to the Ephesian and Laodicean churches show, it was so important to Him that He threatened both groups with destruction. One had lost their first love, and the other was complacent. Neither was close to Him. Are we attracted enough to Him to be affectionate toward Him? Spending time in fervent communion with God in prayer, Bible study, meditation, and occasional fasting all lead to a pure submission to Him. It enhances the closeness. It is essentially the same process that brings human beings together—talking and experiencing things together as we go through life. A fervent attitude of sincerely wanting to be like God will bring a positive response. The principles are simple and are as old as the hills. They work because that is how spirit is transferred to create oneness. That is why people marry one another. The same principle and process work in our courtship with Christ.
John W. Ritenbaugh
The Holy Spirit and the Trinity (Part Seven)
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1 Corinthians 1:3
The most curious—and theologically significant—facet of these epistolary salutations is the wholesale absence of greetings from the Holy Spirit. In nearly every greeting, the writer sends greetings from God the Father and God the Son, Jesus Christ. A Bible reader brought up in traditional Christianity would expect that the so-called Third Person of the Trinity would get equal billing with the Father and the Son from the apostles, but the biblical text omits all mention of the Holy Spirit in terms of personal greetings to the churches. Is this just a mistake? An embarrassing omission? A slight? If greetings from the Holy Spirit were absent in some but not all the salutations, we might make a case for any of these explanations, but because they are entirely absent among the greetings of twenty epistles (not counting Hebrews) from five apostles, they make an implicit theological point: The Holy Spirit sends no greetings because there is no Third Person in the God Family to send them! Put simply, the Father and His Son are the only divine Persons, and in grace, mercy, and peace they send their personal greetings to the church. Not being an additional, distinctive entity, the Holy Spirit does not send any greetings. The clearest biblical explanation of this truth appears in John 14, where Jesus Himself provides the correct understanding: . . . I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever—the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. . . . 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. (John 14:16-18, 23) Jesus teaches here that the Holy Spirit is not another personality but the divine essence of both the Father and the Son that comes to and resides in each of God's chosen sons and daughters. Since Jesus Christ is the One who most often interacts with humans, the apostles single Him out most frequently as "the Spirit." In II Corinthians 3:17, Paul states this plainly, "Now the Lord is the Spirit. . . ." It does not get much clearer than that! The apostle also equates "the Spirit Himself mak[ing] intercession for us" (Romans 8:26) with "Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us" (verse 34). The "Christ in you" statements (see Romans 8:10; Galatians 2:20; Ephesians 3:17; Colossians 1:27; etc.) also have this sense: The Spirit of the Son lives, abides, or continues with us. Broadly, the Holy Spirit is the personality, mind, and power of God to do His will throughout His creation. But for those of us who believe and love Him, it is also the means by which the Father and the Son live in us, interact with us, empower us, and enable us throughout our developing relationship with them. In a way that we as humans cannot fully fathom, the Spirit is both of them in us, uniting us with them, as Jesus explains in His prayer in John 17:20-23: I do not pray for these [disciples] alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me. Because the Father and the Son are fully united in all things, when Christ is in us, the Father is in us also, and we are thus united with both of them in spirit and growing to become united with them in character. There is no need for a Third Person of a Trinity. It is truly amazing what can be learned from realizing that we must live by every word of God—even what the salutations of the epistles do not say is instructive!
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Whither the Holy Spirit?
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1 Corinthians 1:18-24
The truth is so easy to understand, so shockingly simple: Christ crucified. The Creator God died on a tree, giving His blood to cover human sin. It is quite simple—yet confoundingly profound! From that "simple" idea of Christ crucified, countless books have been written. At its root, the idea is simple, something that we can all understand, but the depth of knowledge and understanding that can be derived from it is limitless! However, to the so-called wise and prudent, who cannot perceive that truth, whose eyes have not been opened, it is just sheer foolishness, even offensive. But we know that the gospel of Christ crucified—which does not leave Him dead on a tree but proclaims Him alive at God's right hand—is the dynamic power and wisdom of God, which leads no less than to salvation and eternal life. The people of Athens were ready to name Paul a fool for the idea of resurrection (Acts 17:32) because, as the wise of this world, that is how they saw the message: "God dies then comes back to life again, and because of that, we can have eternal life, too?" The Greeks, the ones intellectuals hold up as emblems of wisdom and philosophy, thought they were wise to scoff at the truth. To their heirs in the world, the Bible's message and its simple truths do not measure up to their erudition. For example, they find God's nature, as revealed in Scripture, to be lacking. God's Word shows that there is God the Father and Jesus Christ, His Son. They have a spirit, the essence of their minds, by which they act. How plain! Nevertheless, the "wise" reject this in favor of a convoluted and ultimately illogical Trinity that they admit cannot be found in the pages of God's Book. Paul also mentions that "Jews request a sign"; they want some supernatural occurrence—fire from heaven or a miracle of healing or the like—to confirm the preaching of God's revelation to men. Yet, even Christ—God in the flesh—refused to do that. His only sign of His Messiahship would be one He had no control over, to rise from the dead after three days and nights (Matthew 12:40). The Jews would not accept that, wanting to see a miracle. Thus, when the teaching of the truth, unaccompanied by a sign, does not conform to their traditions, they, too, scoff and return to their comfortable rituals. As Psalm 78:41 asserts, Israel limits God. They do not have the capacity to see Him as He is or in His multifaceted works. Jesus says to His disciples, "But blessed are your eyes for they see, and your ears for they hear; for assuredly, I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it" (Matthew 13:16-17). Though speaking specifically to the Twelve, Jesus' words also apply to us: Our eyes and ears have been opened to marvelous things from His Word (Psalm 119:18). As the saying goes, with great privilege comes great responsibility. We have an obligation to respond to what God has revealed to us and, with its power, carry out its implications to their eternal ends. Peter tells the church, "the pilgrims of the Dispersion [the scattering]" (I Peter 1:1), ". . . as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby" (I Peter 2:2). He ends his second epistle with an exhortation to "grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" (II Peter 3:18). Our present duty is to soak up God's amazing revelation and to convert it into a righteous way of living that pleases Him. We must leave babyhood, foolishness, and weakness behind and become mature, wise, and strong in Christ.
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Truth Revealed to Babes
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1 John 5:1-8
A recurring theme throughout the apostle John's writings is the authenticity of Jesus Christ's testimony that He: 1. is the Creator God—the Son of God the Father (John 1:1); 2. is the promised Messiah (John 1:41); 3. is tasked with announcing the coming Kingdom of God, to provide expiation for mankind's sins, and to provide a perfect, living example of “the Way,” before being crucified and resurrected (John 1:29; 18:36-37; 14:6; 19:16-37; 20:1-31). To that end, I John 5:1-5 presents a foundational description of Christ's followers—those who believe in His authenticity—and how they would display their love for both the Father and the Son and their inspired capacity to overcome the world through their faith. In verses 6-8, John continues building on this foundation by revealing three of the most significant “witnesses”—all in agreement—to the authenticity of the testimony of Jesus Christ: “the Spirit, the water, and the blood.” The trouble begins in between, with deceptive language added to verses 7 and 8, again, only in a few translations.
Martin G. Collins
Does I John 5:7-8 Support the Trinity Doctrine?
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1 John 5:7-8
The Holy Bible teaches that the God Family currently consists of two fully divine Beings, God the Father and God the Son. However, most nominal Christians believe we should add a third distinct Being, the Holy Spirit, to what is called the “Godhead,” forming a “Trinity,” a term that does not appear anywhere in Scripture. By “rightly dividing the truth” (II Timothy 2:15), one can relatively easily dismiss virtually all the verses used to support this false belief. However, one passage, I John 5:7-8, in four popular translations—the King James, the New King James, the New Living Bible, and the Amplified Bible Classic—appears to support the Trinity doctrine by using additional verbiage missing from most other translations. In the New King James Version, the following italicized words were added, apart from the majority of ancient manuscripts: “For there are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness on earth: the Spirit, the water, and the blood; and these three agree as one." According to Anthony and Richard Hanson, professors of theology, in their book, Reasonable Belief, the troubling language was added by some enterprising person or persons in the ancient Church who felt that the New Testament was sadly deficient in direct witness to the kind of doctrine of the Trinity which he favoured and who determined to remedy that defect. (1980, p. 171). From The Big Book of Bible Difficulties, by Norman L. Geisler and Thomas Howe, we read: This verse has virtually no support among the early Greek manuscripts, though it is found in Latin manuscripts. Its appearance in late Greek manuscripts is based on the fact that Erasmus was placed under ecclesiastical pressure to include it in his Greek NT of 1522, having omitted it in his two earlier editions of 1516 and 1519 because he could not find any Greek manuscripts which contained it. Its inclusion in the Latin Bible probably results from a scribe incorporating a marginal comment (gloss) into the text as he copied the manuscript of I John. (2008, pp. 540-541) The wise Christian remains alert to the constant threat of our cunning and beguiling adversary, Satan the Devil, to contaminate God's truth (II Corinthians 11:3; 2:11; Genesis 3:1; Ephesians 6:11-12). The false doctrine of the Trinity is foundational to many of the aberrant Protestant and Catholic beliefs. It is not by coincidence, then, that deceptive verbiage was added to a passage devoted, not only to proving the authenticity of Jesus Christ as the Messiah, but also to identifying key characteristics of His true disciples. In doing so, the Trinity doctrine is used to deceive professing Christians by introducing a false third Being into the God Family, as well as to overshadow a major precept of our faith.
Martin G. Collins
Does I John 5:7-8 Support the Trinity Doctrine?
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