Evangelical Movement of Wales (EMW) Statement of Faith
- The Infallible Word Of God (1)
- The Holy Trinity (2)
- God And Father Of Our Lord Jesus Christ (3)
- The Lord Jesus Christ (4)
- The Holy Spirit (5)
- Rescued From Sin (6)
- Jesus Did It All (7)
We believe in the only true and living God, the Holy Trinity of Divine Persons in perfect unity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, each of whom is co-equal and co-eternal, and sovereign in creation, providence and redemption.
It is obvious that the Christian faith is centred on God. God is the object of faith. But who is God? There are a multitude of pagan gods. The answer is that all Christians are baptised into the one name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the new covenant name of God (Matt. 28:19-20). This is integral to Christian experience, in prayer and worship (Eph. 2:18).
The problem: how to understand and articulate it?
The Old Testament is rigorously monotheistic, marked by belief in only one God. Genesis 1 reflects the fact that the God of Israel was no mere territorial deity but the creator of the universe, having no rival. In Deuteronomy 6:4 and the following verses, Israel was taught unequivocally the uniqueness of Yahweh, who had taken them into covenant. Their allegiance was to be entirely devoted to him. The first commandment made that very clear (Ex. 20:1). Later, their persistent idolatry brought upon them the catastrophic judgment of exile in Babylon, seemingly destroying their hopes and expectations. After this, they learned their lesson; worship of pagan deities was effectively ended.
In this light, Jesus’ claims to deity were abhorrent to the religious establishment in Israel. He appeared to be challenging the very root of their existence; if this movement continued it seemed to threaten their integrity and existence. They executed him for blasphemy, on the grounds that he made himself equal to, and one with, God.
The question for the church was, how could they express their belief in the deity of Christ (focus on the Spirit came later), grounded in the teaching of the apostles, and recorded in the New Testament, while maintaining the uniqueness and unity of God?
Two false attempts to explain the mystery
Some claimed that God’s revelation as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit were merely ways in which the one God chose to make himself known, like an actor taking on different roles, and did not reflect who he is eternally in himself. Thus he revealed himself as Father in the Old Testament, as Son in the life of Jesus, and later as the Holy Spirit. It was simply the way the one God chose to operate in human history. This is known as ‘modalism’.
If modalism was correct, we could have no true knowledge of God since we would have no way of knowing whether what purported to be the self-revelation of God actually represented who he eternally is.
Others took another line of argument. They held that the Son and the Spirit are somehow less than the Father. The Father is supreme, the Son and the Spirit being merely his instruments for action in the world. This is termed ‘subordinationism’. A leading subordinationist in the fourth century was Arius. He was followed a few decades later by Euonmius, a bishop who was far abler than Arius. Both argued that at some point the Son came into existence. He was another being than the Father, a creature by whom God created the world, effectively a servant. Moreover, in creating, God became Father but he was not so eternally. It followed that the Holy Spirit had a similar status to the Son, as a creature or else merely as the power of God. Again, if this were the case we could have no true knowledge of God. God’s revelation would not represent who he eternally is. Jesus could not have been speaking the truth when he spoke of him and the Father being one (John 10:30).
The resolution
The church, in the Councils of Nicaea (325AD) and Constantinople (381AD), determined that Scripture requires us to think of God as one and indivisible, while the three ‘persons’ are eternally distinct yet each and together exhaustively God. Consequently, in all God’s works all three work together: in creation (Gen. 1:1-5); in the incarnation (Luke 1:34-35); in the crucifixion (Heb. 9:14); in the resurrection (Rom. 8:10-11); and in Pentecost (Gal. 4:4-6) even though in any one of these events, only one of the three persons is directly involved (for example, only the Son died on the cross, only the Spirit came at Pentecost).
The three are eternally real and distinct; the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Spirit. Yet each of the three is the whole God. The Son is all that the Father is, except for being the Father. Furthermore, the relations of the three in the one indivisible being of God are marked by brimful, overflowing life: the Father begets or generates the Son and breathes out the Spirit. God is not inert or static; he is life itself. In fact, the free act of creation would not be possible if God were not, in himself, triune.
While this doctrine has been, and is, the subject of intense and highly refined analysis, it remains a mystery. We can never as creatures, come to a comprehensive understanding of the infinitude and transcendence of the God who has revealed himself in his Son, Jesus Christ, through the operation of the Holy Spirit. We can only exclaim with Paul:
O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! (Rom. 11:33).
The doctrine of the trinity as the church articulated it and as we confess it is rooted in the reality disclosed in Scripture. It is founded on the oneness and uniqueness of God, simultaneously seen in the eternal and irreversible distinctions of the three ‘persons.’ While God brought all other entities into existence, he does not name himself in terms of anything in creation, such as Creator, Redeemer or Sanctifier, although these are works he performs. Rather, he names himself as who he forever is in himself, eternally the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. He is relational, for the Father is the Father of the Son. He is love, for only a being that is relational can love; Allah cannot be love since the god Muslims worship is a solitary monad. Only the God who is inherently relational can be personal, for it is persons (whether divine or human) that love.
While we speak of three ‘persons’, the persons of the trinity are unlike ourselves. We are each separate beings. We all differ in appearance, characteristics and length of life. The three trinitarian ‘persons’ are forever the same, mutually indwelling each other, for since they are each and together the whole God they occupy the same infinite divine space, as Gerald Bray once wrote.
Pre-eminently, God discloses himself as triune in Jesus Christ. At his baptism, the Father announces that he is his beloved Son, the Spirit descending and resting upon him. At the cross, the eternal Son offers himself through the eternal Spirit to the Father (Heb. 9:14). All three persons operate together. Jesus’s personal identity is the eternal Son who has taken human nature as his own. One of the trinity knows the depths of human suffering, human death and human burial, and has conquered them, bringing life to all who trust him.
