What Is the Trinity?

Key Points

1. The Trinity refers to the belief in one God as three distinct persons: God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.
2. This belief is not explicitly stated in the Bible but is derived from various passages and teachings.
3. The Trinity can be compared to three candles forming one flame, representing distinct persons but of the same nature.
4. This belief is essential to Christianity and has been debated and questioned throughout history.
5. Jesus and the Holy Spirit are considered equal to God the Father but also distinct from Him.
6. The doctrine of co-equal and co-eternal persons highlights the unity and equality of the three Persons.
7. The Trinity is a complex and mysterious concept that represents God’s complex nature and His relationship with His followers.
8. It serves as a reminder of God’s love and connection among the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
9. Despite its complexity, the Trinity remains a central belief in Christianity.

Transcript (lightly edited)

One of the questions that I’ve heard – I’ve sometimes heard it in a baptism class, I’ve also heard it from people trying to understand Christianity, is:

• Is God one?
• What is this Trinity?
• How can God be both one and three?

And this has been an ancient question.

Jewish people of course believe that God is one, and that’s an affirmation we hear in the Hebrew Bible.

Now Jesus and his first followers, they were all Jewish and they believed that God was one.

And yet, because of who Jesus was, and what he did, and what grew up around him, we began to develop this concept of the Trinity.

Now the word “Trinity” does not appear anywhere in the Bible.

However, we hear from the very beginning, way back in Genesis, God says “let us make man in our own image.”

Well, who’s the ‘Us’ God’s talking about there if God is just all by God’s self?

And there’s a famous icon, a painting, that shows Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three persons, gathered at one table breaking bread.

Christians believe that the Trinity… we have God Almighty, God the Creator of the Universe, the God who Jesus called, father.

That’s one member of the Trinity.

We believe that the Resurrected, Exalted Christ, that’s the second member of the Trinity.

And the third member is the Holy Spirit.

We see in Paul’s writings that we often hear of the Holy Spirit, referred to as the spirit of God or the spirit of Christ.

In the Book of Proverbs, we hear this… there’s a wonderful whole chapter, chapter 8, about how Divine wisdom, the spirit of wisdom, was with God when the whole world was created.

In John chapter 1, in the prologue, in the first 14 verses, we hear “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

And John is asserting that Jesus pre-existed before he came to Earth and was born as a baby and grew up and became the man Jesus of Nazareth.

Paul, in Philippians chapter 2, quoting an early Christian song, or creed, talks about how Jesus did not see equality with God as something to be exploited or used to help himself, and how he gave that all up and emptied himself, and came in human form and taking the form of a slave.

So, Father Almighty, Creator of the universe; Exalted Resurrected Christ; Holy Spirit… these are the three members of the Trinity.

Here’s the image that I like to use that I think explains it the best, how can this happen, how can this be.

So, I want you to imagine – and I’m sorry I don’t have them with me – but imagine I have three lit candles, and if I gave you one and you leaned it toward me, and I took the other two, and if we lean the candles so that all of their flames came together as one and were indistinguishable, we would have three candles, right? Three candles but one unified flame, and that flame has the exact same character. Now is it one, or is it three?

Well, the answer is yes, it’s both. It’s three candles, but it’s one flame, of the same nature.

For me, that’s one of the most helpful images to understand the Trinity. That God, the Exalted Christ, the Holy Spirit… they are of the same nature, but they are distinct. And that’s what Christians mean when we talk about God and the Trinity.