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APOLOGETICS |
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What Does the Bible Reveal About the
Trinity? - Part 1
By
Dr. John
Ankerberg, Dr. John Weldon |
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When we
speak of the Trinity, we must do so with caution and
modesty, for, as St. Augustine saith, "Nowhere else
are more dangerous errors made, or is research more
difficult, or discovery more fruitful." —St. Thomas
Aquinas, Summa Theologies, ia q. xxi,
1272
All we ask
you to understand is that Trinitarian theology was not
derived from pagan sources. It was derived from
biblical passages where honest, godly men said, "Hey,
2 Peter says there is a Person called the Father, and
he’s God. And Acts 5 says there is a Person called the
Spirit, and he’s God. And John 1 says there’s a Person
called the Word and he’s God." You’ve got Three
Persons, and Deuteronomy 6 says, "There is only one
God." Logical conclusion: the Three Persons, somehow,
are the One God. That’s how Trinitarian theology
started. Not with the pagans. —Dr. Walter
Martin, responding to Dr. Robert Sabin, President of
the Apostolic Bible Institute of St. Paul, Minnesota,
on "The John Ankerberg Show"
The biblical doctrine of the Trinity is
vital to understand because it concerns who God
is, that is, a proper realization of the nature of God
as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. To understand the
Trinity is to understand God as He has revealed Himself
to be.
Why is this important? Because if we are
to worship God "in spirit and in truth" (John 4:24), as
Jesus commanded, we must know and worship the one true
God as He really is. To fail to do this is to fail to
know and worship God—and this cannot bring Him glory.
Thus, those who reject the Trinity by definition deny
the true nature of God.
Consider several examples of professedly
Christian religions that forcefully reject what the
Bible teaches. By denying the biblical teaching on the
Trinity, Jehovah’s Witnesses make Jesus merely a
creation of Jehovah and the Holy Spirit merely Jehovah’s
impersonal force. Thus, Jesus "was actually a creature
of God" who earned his own salvation and immortality
1 and the Holy Spirit "is not a person at
all but is God’s invisible active force by means of
which God carries out his holy will and work."2
In rejecting the Trinity, Jehovah’s
Witnesses founder C. T. Russell blasphemously stated
that the God of Christianity "is plainly not Jehovah but
the ancient deity, hoary with the iniquity of the
ages—Baal, the Devil Himself."3 Second
Watchtower president Judge Rutherford declared in a
similar fashion, "The doctrine of the Trinity is a false
doctrine and is promulgated by Satan for the purpose of
defaming Jehovah’s name" and for keeping others from
"learning the truth of Jehovah and his Son, Jesus
Christ." Indeed, "God-fearing persons find it a bit
difficult to love and worship a complicated,
freakish-looking three-headed God."4 Surely
teachings that caricature God in this manner do not
bring to Him honor and glory.
In a similar fashion, Mormons maintain
that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not immortal,
but were individual spirit-men created by the sexual
union of their parent deities, each of whom then later
evolved into Godhood.5 Mormonism thus rejects
the unity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit by
teaching tritheism, or a belief in three separate Gods.
Indeed, Mormons are ultimately
polytheists who reject the concept of one true God.
As a standard text of Mormon doctrine declares:
As
pertaining to this universe, there are three Gods: the
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. To us, speaking in the
proper finite sense, these three are the only Gods we
worship. But in addition there is an infinite number
of holy personages, drawn from worlds without number,
who have passed on to exaltation [that is, Godhood]
and are thus gods.6
Mary Baker Eddy was the founder of
Christian Science, another group that claims to be truly
Christian. Yet in her Science and Health with Key to
the Scriptures, the bible of Christian Science, she
writes:
The theory
of three persons in one God (that is, a personal
Trinity or Tri-unity) suggests polytheism, rather than
the one ever-present I Am. The name Elohim is in the
plural, but this plurality of Spirit does not imply
more than one God, nor does it imply three persons in
one.7
Victor Paul Wierwille, founder of The Way
International, reveals additional common consequences of
rejection of the Trinity: a denial not only of the
person of Jesus Christ but also of His atoning Work on
the cross. Wierwille argues as follows:
Through the
years, the more and more I carefully researched God’s
Word for knowledge, the less and less I found to
substantiate a trinity. Even though I had always
accepted the idea of a three-in-one-God, I continually
found evidence in the Word of God which undermined a
Christian trinity. [Further] If Jesus Christ is God we
have not yet been redeemed. Our very redemption is
dependent on Jesus Christ’s being a man and not God.
So how then did a trinitarian doctrine come about? It
gradually evolved and gained momentum in late 1st,
2nd, and 3rd centuries as pagans, who had converted to
Christianity, brought to Christianity some of their
pagan beliefs and practices. Trinitarianism then was
confirmed at Nicaea in 325 by Church bishops out of
political expediency.8
In essence, the reason the Trinity is
important to understand according to its biblical and
theological formulation is that failure to do so can
lead to heretical views about who God is. This in turn
can lead to rejection of the one true God and worship of
a false god. But if the Bible is clear on anything, it
is clear that faith in and worship of a false god is
powerless to save people from their sins. Jesus Himself
emphasized the importance of having an accurate
knowledge of God when He said, "And this is eternal
life, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and
Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent" (John 17:3).
God warned Israel through the prophet
Hosea, "My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge"
and "You shall acknowledge no God but me, no Savior
except me" (Hosea 4:6; 13:4). As their history so amply
demonstrates, the Israelites were spiritually ruined
because they had rejected the true knowledge of God and
had turned to false gods and idols. Unfortunately, in a
similar manner, those who deliberately reject the
Trinity, knowing in advance what the Bible teaches about
it, only reveal their own lack of salvation (1 Cor.
2:14). In other words, no one can consistently dishonor
what the Holy Spirit has revealed in Scripture as to the
true nature of God and logically claim to be a
Christian.
Notes
1 Q.v.,
"Jesus Christ," Watchtower Bible and Tract Society,
Aid to Bible Understanding (Brooklyn, NY:
Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, 1971), pp. 437,
918; Anthony A. Hoekema, The Four Major Cults
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1970), p. 295 citing
Let God Be True (1952), p. 74.
2
Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, Things in Which
It Is Impossible for God to Lie (Brooklyn,
NY: Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, 1965), p. 269.
3 C. T.
Russell, Studies in the Scriptures— Vol. 7: The
Finished Mystery, p. 410 cited by Wilton M. Nelson
and Richard K. Smith, "Jehovah’s Witnesses" in David
J. Hesselgrave, ed., Dynamic Religious Movements:
Case Studies of Rapidly Growing Religious Movements
Around the World (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1978), p.
181.
4 Cited by
Charles S. Braden, These Also Believe: A Study of
Modern American Cults and Minority Religious Movements
(New York: Macmillan, 1970), p. 371 quoting Judge
Rutherford’s Uncovered (Brooklyn, NY:
Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, 1937), pp. 48-49;
Let God Be True (1946), pp. 82-83, 93.
5 See John
Ankerberg, John Weldon, Behind the Mask of
Mormonism (Eugene, OR: Harvest House, 1996), chap.
10.
6 Bruce R.
McConkie, Mormon Doctrine (Salt Lake City:
Bookcraft, 1977), pp. 270, 576-577.
7 Mary
Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the
Scriptures (Boston, MA: The First Church of
Christ, Scientist 1971), pp. 256, 515.
8 Victor
Paul Wierwille, Jesus Christ Is Not God (New
Knoxville, OH: American Christian Press, 1975), pp.
2-3, 6-7, 25.
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Copyright 2006, Ankerberg Theological Research Institute |
