How do Protestants defend and explain the Trinity from the Bible alone.

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WesleyF

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Trinity is implied in scripture, but I don’t think it is explicitly mentioned. Protestants, how do you defend and explain it from the Bible alone? I am asking this since I’m working with some other Protestants in defending the faith against non-Christians. As a Catholic, my defense of the Trinity is rather straightforward - through Scripture and Tradition. However, when working together with Protestants, I have to restrict myself to a “Sola Scriptura” attitude.

So 1) What is the Trinity? Elaborate it. Explain the relationships between the persons.
2) Support the above using Scripture alone.
 
WesleyF said:
Trinity is implied in scripture, but I don’t think it is explicitly mentioned. Protestants, how do you defend and explain it from the Bible alone? I am asking this since I’m working with some other Protestants in defending the faith against non-Christians. As a Catholic, my defense of the Trinity is rather straightforward - through Scripture and Tradition. However, when working together with Protestants, I have to restrict myself to a “Sola Scriptura” attitude.

So 1) What is the Trinity? Elaborate it. Explain the relationships between the persons.
2) Support the above using Scripture alone.
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From a Lutheran perspective, we are not limited by scripture, so long as our understanding of the Trinity does not contradict scripture. The three persons of the Trinity are all present in scripture. Jesus commands us to baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

We Lutherans also subscribe to the three ecumenical creeds – Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian. These creeds help us to understand the Trinity, even if complete understanding is not possible in this world.
 
WesleyF said:
Trinity is implied in scripture, but I don’t think it is explicitly mentioned. Protestants, how do you defend and explain it from the Bible alone? I am asking this since I’m working with some other Protestants in defending the faith against non-Christians. As a Catholic, my defense of the Trinity is rather straightforward - through Scripture and Tradition. However, when working together with Protestants, I have to restrict myself to a “Sola Scriptura” attitude.

So 1) What is the Trinity? Elaborate it. Explain the relationships between the persons.
2) Support the above using Scripture alone.
Click to expand...
Wesley the church fathers at the council of Nicea appealed to scripture to define the Trinity. No one ever doubted the existence of GOD the Father, Son and Spirit as it is the Baptismal formula if you will right from the great commission. The reason Nicea was held among some other smaller issues was to define the relationship between the 3. Jesus identifies Himself as being one in the same with the Father in the Gospels and tells us that in asking the Father a helper will be sent to lead into all truth. That being the Holy Spirit. We see the Holy Spirit spoken of in the book of Acts and in action when sending out Barnabas and Saul. What you have to remember is if the Trinity was not spoken of in scripture then tradition could never have defined it. The elements of the Trinity don’t come from scripture and tradition. They come purely from scripture with the word Trinity getting applied as the description.

PEACE
 
I come from a Protestant background, and think Pastor Gary explained it quite well. Are the people you’re working with very big on “Sola Scriptura”? I ask because it’s a term I’d never in my life heard until joining these boards. If it’s not something the Protestants you work with emphasize, than maybe you have less of an issue than you might be anticipating. And the whole “Sola Scriptura” thing seems almost a false assumption, because as Christians we all have both scripture and tradition. But maybe I just don’t understand the term.

Scripture implies, or more than implies, the Holy Trinity. And it’s also something we get through tradition just as we get many other things (e.g., the dates for celebrating Christmas and Easter, looking to the saints as role models, just to name a few things). As a Protestant, I wouldn’t have been able to elaborate to answer your questions on it, because we didn’t have a lot of teaching about it. So I have learned more about the Trinity in becoming Catholic, and think you’re good teaching the understanding you have of the Trinity. I also think you’re good with your straightforward approach.

Anyway, best of luck in putting together this defense of the faith!
 
Here’s how I understand the Trinity.

The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are three persons (Bible verse?) in one God. The Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father and the mutual exchange of love between the two is the Holy Spirit (Bible verse?).

Jesus and the Holy Spirit are made of the same “substance” as that of the Father. (Bible verse?)
 
It’s great that you’re working together on apologetics with some protestant friends. It’s not so great that you seem to have agreed to default to their theology to do so. You are looking to go into spiritual combat and they appear to want to keep one hand tied behind their backs. That’s no reason to have your hands tied up too!

I think you can bring Sacred Tradition out into your explanation without actually using those words. Simply refer to the clear understanding that even the first Early Fathers had of God being Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Demonstrate how they baptised in that name and why. It doesn’t have to be a division with the protestants, just a difference.
 
NDfan said:
Wesley the church fathers at the council of Nicea appealed to scripture to define the Trinity. No one ever doubted the existence of GOD the Father, Son and Spirit as it is the Baptismal formula if you will right from the great commission. The reason Nicea was held among some other smaller issues was to define the relationship between the 3. Jesus identifies Himself as being one in the same with the Father in the Gospels and tells us that in asking the Father a helper will be sent to lead into all truth. That being the Holy Spirit. We see the Holy Spirit spoken of in the book of Acts and in action when sending out Barnabas and Saul. What you have to remember is if the Trinity was not spoken of in scripture then tradition could never have defined it. The elements of the Trinity don’t come from scripture and tradition. They come purely from scripture with the word Trinity getting applied as the description.

PEACE
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I agree that the elements are there, but what about the relationships? The understandings of the Trininty that we have?

Can you say that all of the Athenasian creed is in Scriptures?
 
WesleyF said:
That’s what I’m asking. Can the Trinity be supported solely from the scriptures, or do we need Tradition as well?
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I would say that the entire dogma requires both. I cannot see any other way around it.

Granted, the chicken and the egg questions can be raised, such as which one is more important or which one is primary. The answer, naturally, is that both are equal and neither can contradict the other.

But I am Catholic…
 
ralphinal said:
I would say that the entire dogma requires both. I cannot see any other way around it.

Granted, the chicken and the egg questions can be raised, such as which one is more important or which one is primary. The answer, naturally, is that both are equal and neither can contradict the other.

But I am Catholic…
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The Gospel of John is loaded with the Trinity. I think you could get it by just reading the New Testament.
 
Numbers 23:19

“God is not a man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should repent.
Has he said, and he will not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfil it?”

This is God in no persons, sola scriptura…
 
WesleyF,

I had this same question about two years ago. Previous to that I had read church creeds and statements of faith in addition to brief summeries with Bible verses to back up the claim that the Trinity was in the Bible. But I never felt comfortable and sure that I couldn’t really prove it in a debate. So, I decided to make a study of it myself. I spent about 2 months studying God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. I mean after all, if you can prove that Jesus is God from the Bible then you are halfway there. I also looked at some of the arguements against the diety of Jesus given by the cults like the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Once that was accomplished, I was half-way there.

Then I studied the doctrine of the Holy Spirit the same manner. I used 7 or 8 major works on theology and I really threw myself into the task. Now I have it (the Trinity) in my head and heart and totally Bible based. So to answer your question on how I did it, the answer is two months of detailed Bible study.
 
Greetings and peace be with you WesleyF;
The Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father
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All the law and the prophets of God hang on the greatest commandments, does this love between Jesus and the Father hang on these commandments too.

The Father loves the son as he loves himself.
Jesus loves the Father as he loves himself.

Can it possibly be that God the Father loves each and every one of us as he loves himself?

There is a need to search for a meaning for the greatest commandment in this relationship between the Father and Son; it seems profound.

In the spirit of growing together through the love of Christ

Eric
 
CHRISTINE77 said:
The Gospel of John is loaded with the Trinity. I think you could get it by just reading the New Testament.
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Really? Then why is the Morman view wrong, based on the Bible? Why is modalism wrong, based on the Bible?

Same questions, Jon Hus.

Not that I am disputing you, but the Bible Alone can lead to problems with the Trinity
 
ralphinal,

Since I don’t know you and what motivates you I will operate on the assumption that you are asking this rather complex question (which would require hours of typing to explain properly) in good faith. Briefly, the New Testament teaches that Jesus was both God and Man. He is unique in that sense. He is God in that he created the world (Heb. ch1), yet a man, the sinless Lamb of God sent to take away the sins of the world.

Modalism is an attempt to (among other things) to avoid a tritheism (as opposed to monotheism) by denying the distinct personalities of the Godhead. In other words, instead of one God with three persons (traditional trinity) it teaches a complete oneness of the Godhead with no personal distinctions. NOTE: I’m a clumsy writer and this is a complex issue.

As far as Mormon teaching my understanding is that Jesus became diety, he wasn’t always God.

Both of these doctrines came about due to a lack of Bible understanding, not as is implied that a study of the Bible alone can allow this to happen. A doctrine of faith cannot contridict scripture. John Chapter 1 vs. 1 and 2 clearly state that Jesus in the beginning created the world and that he is God. This echos Gen. Ch 1 vs. 1 and 2 where Jehovah and the Holy Spirit are involved with creation in the beginning.

I would further add that modalism was argued against and defeated by the use of scripture. The premise of the question is wrong because if it wasn’t for scripture, modalism would have won the day and would have become dogma of the church by way of tradition (of the fathers).

And no one ever became a Mormon or Jehovah Witness by reading and studying the clear teaching of the Bible. Both of these groups use other publications to supplement and superceed the Bible, the Mormons have D&C, Pearl of Great Price and the Book of Mormon, the JWs have the Watchtower, AWAKE!, their own biased “translation” of the Bible and literally fifty million other books that they use for their doctrine.

As a point of fact, the JWs are not allowed to study the Bible without using watchtower literature under threat of excommunication. They say that if you study the Bible without WT literature, within two years you will “fall out of the truth” as they see it.

I’m sure this answer or anything else that I write will not satisfy you so I’m keeping it brief because this is a fools errand I’m on.
 
geometer said:
Numbers 23:19

“God is not a man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should repent.
Has he said, and he will not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfil it?”

This is God in no persons, sola scriptura…
Click to expand...
This is how it is read in my Bible.
God is not man that he should speak falsely, nor human, that he should change his mind.
Is he one to speak and not act, to decree and not fulfill?

Basically our Bible’s say the same thing. Since it was the Old Testament, God had not come to earth yet in the fullness of time, in the flesh, God/(Divine)/Man(Human). So he was speaking of God as he (Balaam) understood Him.

If you read further…in the next chapter Numbers 24:16-19, you will see this:Then Balaam gave voice to his oracle: The utterance of Balaam, son of Beor, the utterance of the man whose eye is true,
The utterance of one who hears what God says, and knows what the Most High knows, Of one who sees what the Almighty sees, enraptured and with eyes unveiled. I see him, though not now; I behold him, though not near:** A star shall advance from Jacob, and a staff shall rise from Israel**, …

In the footnotes of my Bible it says this about that verse:
A star – a staff Many of the Fathers have understood this as a Messianic prophecy. The star is Christ himself, just as He is the staff from Israel. (see Isaiah 11:1)

1 But **a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a bud shall blossom. **In the footnotes it says this:
Jesse: David’s father. Shoot…stump: after the Babylonian Exile only a stump of the Davidic dynasty will remain; from it will arise the new shoot, the messianic King.

(my bold)

WesleyF What about where they are first all three mentioned together at Jesus’ Baptism, the Father spoke, the Holy Spirit decended upon Jesus. (just another thought.)
 
allhers said:
This is how it is read in my Bible.
God is not man that he should speak falsely, nor human, that he should change his mind.
Is he one to speak and not act, to decree and not fulfill?

Basically our Bible’s say the same thing. Since it was the Old Testament, God had not come to earth yet in the fullness of time, in the flesh, God/(Divine)/Man(Human). So he was speaking of God as he (Balaam) understood Him.

If you read further…in the next chapter Numbers 24:16-19, you will see this:Then Balaam gave voice to his oracle: The utterance of Balaam, son of Beor, the utterance of the man whose eye is true,
The utterance of one who hears what God says, and knows what the Most High knows, Of one who sees what the Almighty sees, enraptured and with eyes unveiled. I see him, though not now; I behold him, though not near:** A star shall advance from Jacob, and a staff shall rise from Israel**, …

In the footnotes of my Bible it says this about that verse:
A star – a staff Many of the Fathers have understood this as a Messianic prophecy. The star is Christ himself, just as He is the staff from Israel. (see Isaiah 11:1)

1 But **a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a bud shall blossom. **In the footnotes it says this:
Jesse: David’s father. Shoot…stump: after the Babylonian Exile only a stump of the Davidic dynasty will remain; from it will arise the new shoot, the messianic King.

(my bold)

WesleyF What about where they are first all three mentioned together at Jesus’ Baptism, the Father spoke, the Holy Spirit decended upon Jesus. (just another thought.)
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You mention things that are not clearly established. Christ is Greek and means Messiah. The trinity is not definitetly taught by anyone in scripture. It would have been a huge argument, if it was taught by Jesus or any of his disciples. There would have been a lot of letters written about it, if any of the biblical figures adhered to such a new doctrine. They were all Jews and there is no sign in scripture that anyone had to struggle with such a doctrine. You know yourself all the weird ideas that people come up with when they try to understand the trinity, there is none of that in scripture. And what he taught is is not taught today. He taught in language that babies can understand, that those who believe him would do the miracles that he did and greater miracles than he did.

So what happened?

They did not have to figure out the trinity because it simply was not taught. Jesus stated the Shema as the foundation of the all of the law, and the prophets, that was his teaching about the oneness of God, and they knew that, and that is all they knew. Jesus never surprized anybody with a trinity.
 
My protestant brothers, please understand me, I’m not here to start an argument (although some might take this thread in that direction). There is enough evidence in scripture to prove that Jesus is God and that the Holy Spirit is God.

But is there evidence in scripture to prove the relationships between these three persons?

Let me state my question again. Can the following be proved from scripture alone -
  1. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are three persons in one God. (I don’t think that word “person” is used in the Bible to describe the three).
  2. The Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father and the mutual exchange of love between the two is the Holy Spirit. (I don’t think the Bible says that mutual exchange of love between the two is the Holy Spirit).
  3. Jesus and the Holy Spirit are made of the same “substance” as that of the Father. (I don’t think this can be proved scripturally).
Our Christian apologetic group was recently challenged by a Muslim to prove the Trinity from the scripture alone. If that Muslim had asked me in person, I would, as manualman put it, use both hands, Scripture and Tradition to give him the knock out blow immediately. But since I was restricted to “Sola Scriptura”, it was slightly difficult, although not impossible. I basically used all the arguments supporting Jesus’ divinity and then made the classic Catholic point of the authority of the church. When the Muslim would say that “this verse can also mean this…”, I simply responded by saying that Christians should listen to the constant interpretation of the church 👍 and not some novel private interpretation. He said, “Don’t quote any creed to prove the trinity…” I said, “Why not? It is the teaching of Christ to listen to his church 😃 and therefore we are right in listening to the Church’s definition of the Trinity as defined in the various creeds! 👍” I think the “sola scriptura” argument of the authority of the church was enough to knock him out, but what I’m concerned about is whether the relationships between the persons (3 questions stated above) can be proved from scripture alone.
 
WesleyF said:
I think the “sola scriptura” argument of the authority of the church was enough to knock him out, but what I’m concerned about is whether the relationships between the persons (3 questions stated above) can be proved from scripture alone.
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Books do not prove anything. From books you have descriptions, that is all a book contains. And, it is impossible to get the essential ideas from the book by itself. People must teach the words, and a tradition must carry the ideas, otherwise there will be ten thousand different interpretations of the sentences.

There are scriptures were God tells us that we are to experience him, and that has not changed, books are not gods…
 
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