The God of the Bible is the Triune God, He is God in three persons. The study of God is the highest pursuit that we can have. Though we might have a difficult time wrapping our mind around the Trinity, we can Biblically define it. Usually, when we try and explain something, we use analogies. If you are trying a new dish and you ask someone what it tastes like, nine times out of ten, the answer will be “it tastes like chicken.” We describe the unknown by relating it to the known. But there is nothing like the Trinity and every example you try to use will end up going off the rails. When it comes to the Trinity, we need to just receive the truth and believe it in faith.
So how do we know about the Trinity? The only way we know is from the Bible. Any concept that you have of God that does not come from scripture, is an idol. I’m a Trinitarian because the Bible teaches the Trinity. The only way you can know who God is in character and nature is by what God has told us about Himself (1Corinthians 2:7-12). Lots of people want to tell us who they think God is or tell you what their tradition says God is. But only in the Bible does God tell us who He is.
The Bible teaches that God is Trinity, or He is one eternal, infinite being of God, shared fully and completely by three persons, Father, Son and Spirit. Within the one Being that is God, there exists eternally three coequal and coeternal persons, namely, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Trinity means that there are three persons, united in one being and the whole undivided essence of God belongs equally to each of the three persons. That’s a mouthful, but it is worth our time and our effort to understand.
Let’s think of those terms. To have being is to have existence. This paper has being, it exists. You are a human being, you have existence. Unlike inanimate objects, we humans exist as personal beings. I have being and I am a person. God is one, infinite, eternal being of God who eternally and at the same time exists as three persons. God is eternally, fully, equally God, yet undivided. There is only one God, as written in Deuteronomy 6:4 “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD.” There is within the one being of God three co-equal and co-eternal Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
These three persons, in the one divine being have eternally and simultaneously existed, each fully and completely and eternally God. The Godhead is not divided into parts or thirds, and God isn’t sometimes the Father and sometimes the Son. As the Athanasian Creed states, “We worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance.”
