Holy Trinity: Diversity

Perhaps one reason it’s so difficult for us to grab hold of who the Trinity is and how the three Persons of the Godhead function as one is the way they dwell together in such perfect love. There is never any jealousy or impatience among them — nor an ounce of tension or any power-struggle between them. They don’t ever argue about who is best or first or right. The three Persons of the Trinity are so perfectly in union with each other that their diversity thrums harmoniously. 

And that’s so hard for us to imagine in a world fraught with entrenched battle lines, in a culture where we’re told to look out for ‘number one’ and climbing the ladder requires stepping on others to get to the top. We quite literally cannot fathom a place without sibling rivalry, fierce competition, and constant conflict. 

Yet, the second most foundational truth about the Holy Trinity tells us that there are three distinct, divine Persons of the one true God. This heavenly, not-so-human relationship centers on love and common mission – where God is Father, God is Son, and God is Holy Spirit. Diversity in unity.

Indescribable

How to describe the indescribable? Where to find vocabulary that would at least come close to helping our finite minds grasp our infinite God? 

The early church grappled in much the same way as we do, but the way they found to best know God was in their experience of the resurrected Christ.¹ And, we recall, those who led the Church for Jesus initially were uneducated – not highly trained officiants nor deep, philosophical thinkers (Acts 4:13). Yet they were the ones to land on the idea of God being three-in-one.

Of course, Jesus’ final words set the stage for such understanding as He left His disciples with the command to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19). We are to baptize believers in this ‘name’ – which is the singular noun not the plural – because Jesus is revealing the most mysterious and beautiful essence of God’s Trinitarian unity.² The three Persons are God.

And as unified as they are, the Holy Three remain diverse in and of themselves. The Father is unique to the Son, and unique from them is the Spirit, yet they are One. So, how to describe the indescribable? I am coming to understand that the clarity we seek can be found in Scripture, which is the witness of the disciples’ and early church’s experiences of the Godhead laid out before us. 

Again and again, the eye-witness accounts of the New Testament help us see that Jesus came to earth by way of a spiritual relationship. In other words, He was not walking this earth alone nor was He carrying out His own plans. I love Jesus’ prayer in John seventeen for many reasons but especially for the way He describes this interconnected relationship between Father and Son:

• Everything Jesus has comes from the Father (v.7).
• Jesus gives His followers the words the Father gives Him (v.8).
• All Jesus has is the Father’s; all the Father has belongs to Jesus (v.10).
• Jesus and the Father are one (vv.21,22).
• The Father is in the Son (v.23).
• The Father loves the Son – since before Creation (vv.23,24).

Jesus wants us to grasp that everything has been entrusted to Him by the Father (Matthew 11:27 NLT) – and that anyone who sees Him, looks upon the Father (John 14:9). Jesus tells His disciples, and us, that the Father sent the Holy Spirit to be our Truth in order to help us remember Jesus and all He taught (vv.16,26).  

So when we witness, in the Word, Jesus praying to God in heaven for wisdom and Jesus relying on the power of the Spirit throughout His ministry, we’re seeing the diversity of the Trinity. We’re also being shown the supernatural bond that seals them as a single entity.

As the centuries-old hymn tells us, the ‘tie that binds’ the Holy Three…is love! Each of the three divine Persons faces ‘outward’, always glorifying the others, always dwelling in perfect love for one another.³ There’s not one Person greater than the others because God is a community of love within Himself.³ Everything we read in the ‘Love Chapter’ of 1 Corinthians 13 paints a clear picture of this holy love. 

The Three Persons are God. And God is love (1 John 4:8). 
Love is God’s essence. And His activity. 

CS Lewis teaches that this Triunal love “is a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama.”⁴ Theologians, such as Tim Keller and Francis Schaeffer, believed it is this very Trinitarian love that exists at the center of the cosmos.^{3 & 5} And that without it, “the ultimate reality of love falls apart.”³ Because the love between the three Persons who are God has always existed, it always remains whole and holy – and shareable.

It’s no wonder, then, that it’s by this love that the world will know we belong to God (John 13:35).

So while our words may fall short in describing the Trinity, Scripture aids our understanding as does our own experience of our Three-in-One God – because the Trinity is a “lived reality for the ordinary Christian.”⁴ Think about it, when we pray, we pray to God; we’re also motivated by God from within ourselves; and we have the knowledge of God by way of Jesus.⁴ As such, we live out the diversity of our three-in-one God in our daily walks with Him. 

Incommunicable

So. We have one God, and He is three Persons. Yet, each Person is not merely ‘part’ of God; they are God. They don’t even ‘co-exist’ together as we might co-exist with family members under one roof. Biblical scholars would say they ‘subsist’, likening it to the way we subsist as wife, mother, daughter, sister. They also aren’t separate as individuals; however, there remains within each One a distinctiveness from the others.

And this is what Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin dubbed as each Person’s ‘incommunicable’ reality.¹ At its core, this is the idea that each Person has something about Him that is not shared with the others. While the Holy Three share their Divine Nature, and such subsistence cannot be divided, their relational aspects to each other are not shared. The Father is always the Father, for instance. 

Another aspect of this relatedness has to do with the ‘source’ of the Persons. The Nicene Creed helps us understand this: the Son is eternally begotten of the Father, who Himself is not begotten, and the Spirit proceeds from Father and Son. With this idea, we’ve arrived at my childhood dilemma of wrestling with God’s origins. 

The reality of God is that He has always been. And for our minds and bodies that are so wrapped-up in time, that’s hard for us to imagine! Yet it’s what we mean when we talk about Him as the Beginning and the End, the Ancient of Days, or the Self-Existent One (aka: Yahweh), who is “I AM WHO I AM” (Exodus 3). Yet as three Persons, God can be known in three diverse ways.

First, the Father is both Creator and Begetter – and I’ve learned there is a difference. CS Lewis distinguishes them by helping us think of a ‘creator’ as one who makes something unlike himself as in the way a bird makes a nest or an artist creates a sculpture.¹ To ‘beget’ is to become the father of; it is to beget something just as yourself, such as a human begetting a baby human.¹ Or, as God the Father begetting God the Son – eternally. We’re not talking about Mary’s immaculate conception but about the Father’s begetting of the Son. Jesus was not ‘created’; He was ‘begotten’, and that means He is God! 

The Father begetting the Son defines each of their realities within the Divine Nature. Yet, mysteriously, this is not saying that the Father existed first; rather, it’s a way to explain how they originate from each other. The Father is the Father because He begot the Son. And the very fact that He is begotten is what defines the Son. 

Tara Leigh Cobble helps us unpack this whole concept: 

“In the Godhead, the term Father points to One who gives His identity to another person. He’s the unbegotten and the begetter. The Son is the One who displays this identity. Jesus, begotten by the Father, points to God appointing the Son – not creating Him (also see Hebrews 5:5).”³ 

Similarly, the Holy Spirit originates from both the Father and the Son as the One who ‘proceeds’ from them (John 15:26, 16:7). To ‘process from’ is likened to the exhale of breath, so what ‘proceeds’ from God is God. “The Father and Son eternally ‘breathe’ and that breath is the Spirit.”¹ 

Just as the Second Person’s incommunicable quality is His eternal begottenness, the Third Person’s incommunicable quality is His eternal procession. These are what distinguish each Person within the shared Divine Nature.

Maybe this is where we need to pause and take a breath. LOL

This is also where we remember the bond of love that holds all of this together and how we are encircled by this Love and brought into this holy circle. Or triangle, as it were. In fact, one writer encourages us with our grappling: “Holding on to all three legs of the triangle, we stand in the mystery.”¹ 

Additionally, Scripture describes scenes where the Tri-unity of God appears, helping us see for ourselves their shared Divine Nature and their unique realities. We can begin at Gabriel’s proclamation of Jesus’ conception:

“The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy offspring shall be called the Son of God.”

Luke 1:35

Gabriel speaks to Mary of the three Persons involved in this most unique moment in all of human history: the Holy Spirit, the Most High, and the Son of God. The Three work within their individual realities while moving forward with the ultimate mission – all of it with unifying love (John 3:16). 

Matthew describes the scene of Jesus’ baptism with all three Persons of the Godhead present:

“As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.’”

Matthew 3:16-17

The same “tracks of three-fold-ness” are visible again as Jesus rises out of the water: God the Son sees God the Spirit and hears the voice of God the Father.¹ We’re seeing the “plurality within unity” at work in this scene with visual clarity.¹ 

Next week we’ll take all of this a step further as we unpack the third foundational truth of the Trinity – their equality – and dig a little into each of their roles. In the meantime, we have much to absorb and process. I acknowledge this description is a bit murky and mysterious, so we’ll have to keep reaching for more vocabulary as we continue to journey toward a better understanding of our Triune God. 

Until then, let’s take a page out of Paul’s book. In his power-packed prayer to the Ephesians, Paul doesn’t attempt to explain the Trinity. Rather, he simply prays them.¹ With that, let’s close in prayer, as we do each week, this time with the prayer of Paul. His poetic but perfectly aligned words will stretch us to reach beyond understanding our Three-in-One God to that of experiencing the Trinity. 

It is my hope that we will each receive all that Paul prays over us:

“I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.“
–Ephesians 3:14-21 NIV

Resources: I love sharing with you the books, podcasts, articles, and anything else that has inspired, encouraged, or taught me. These are humble offerings with no expectations.

• 1 – Darrell Johnson’s book, Experiencing the Trinity^
• 2 – Biblehub page on the Greek for ‘name’ in Matthew 28:19 (scroll to the bottom for specific description)
• 3 – Tara Leigh Cobble’s book, The Joy of the Trinity: One God, Three Persons^
• 4 – Several of my sources, cited and not cited, quoted from CS Lewis’ book, Mere Christianity^
• 5 – From this Institute for Faith and Culture article
• I added another song to our series-Spotify-playlist, Holy Trinity — a hymn called “Of the Father’s Love Begotten.” Though I don’t believe I’ve ever heard or sung this hymn before, I was thrilled to discover its existence this week as I was dragging myself through the mire of ‘begottenness’. LOL. The hymn is cited as having seven stanzas, but our version is much shorter. The seven stanzas together, however, deeply and poetically describe God the Son, the One begotten by the Father’s love. I do believe our fleshly responses to such a sentence must be checked — for we know by now that this is no flesh-driven love-fest. This is God giving His identity to the Uncreated One. Begotten, not made. Here’s the first stanza:
  Of the Father’s love begotten,
  Ere the worlds began to be,
  He is Alpha and Omega,
  He the source, the ending He,
  Of the things that are, that have been,
  And that future years shall see,
  Evermore and evermore.
• Usually, each Wednesday I upload a “Teacup” teaching video that carries on the topic here, but I’ve taken a bit of a break for this series. You can, however, find all my previous videos on my Facebook Author Page, as well as Instagram and YouTube.
• Many of you have found me on Substack. Thank you so much! And, if you’d like to listen to (rather than read) these weekly posts, you can do so on Substack. It’s easy to see and use the audio bar across the top of each post. While you’re on Substack, check out the ministry I’m blessed to be part of, the Devoted Collective.
• My monthly newsletter, The Abiding Life, goes to email inboxes the first week of each month to those who have subscribed on my website. I also post them on Substack. My most recent edition can be found there, and you can subscribe for future newsletters on Substack, here.

Rhythms: As my newsletter’s title infers, we seek to develop an abiding life in this space — a place where we can get informed but also be transformed as we learn to abide in God’s presence throughout our days. I like to think that developing rhythms is one way to aid us in our desire to become more Christlike.

• For this series, our rhythm of focus will be seeking to know God better in the reading of His Word and with the help of His Spirit. It’s good and right to ask Him for His help each time we desire to read with His eyes, to understand with His mind — so we begin there. Then we invite Holy Spirit to lead and reveal as we open Scripture and read. Each week I’ll put a verse or passage before us to read, to contemplate, to wrestle with. But I invite you to do your own investigating of the Word, for it is in such pursuit that you’ll meet the Living God smack dab in the middle of His Word. I’d love to hear what you see and learn and wonder about!
  • This week, our passage is John 1:9-18 MSG — and I’d love to recommend reading this passage in The Message paraphrase. Eugene Peterson does an incredible job of weaving in language we relate to within John’s deep, theological explanation of Jesus and those who believe in Him. In fact, check out the way Dr. Peterson describes believers (aka: children of God):
    
    These are the God-begotten,
        not blood-begotten,
        not flesh-begotten,
        not sex-begotten. (v.13)
    
    And the way he describes the Son (and how He reveals the Father):
    
    No one has ever seen God,
        not so much as a glimpse.
    This one-of-a-kind God-Expression,
        who exists at the very heart of the Father,
        has made him plain as day. (v.18)
    
    Brilliant. Beautiful.

• We’re all called to share the truth about who Jesus is. One way you can do that is by sharing this site and telling others your own stories of faith experiences. May we use our whole selves to tell others about our holy God!!

Featured Photo by Andy Goldsby on Unsplash — a picture of Holy Trinity Church in Stratford on the Avon!
“All the Bits and Pieces” Photo by Sahand Babali on Unsplash.
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