Being Presbyterian

The Communications Office gets lots of questions through the contact form on presbyterian.ca. Most are inquiries for this or that resource or piece of information, but sometimes one comes along and makes us go, “Huh . . . ” (note: that’s a thoughtful “Huh”, not a nonplussed “Huh?” [although we get some of those, too]).

Here’s a good one asking about the nature of the Trinity. We thought we’d post it here for the benefit of others.

Hello,

I just read on your website this quote:

“As Presbyterians, we believe in the triune God. In other words, God is
one person and yet three: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”

Do you believe that God is three persons in one God or three Gods in one
person?

Also, is belief in a triune God necessary for salvation as the Nicene
Creed tells us?  I find zero scriptures that tell us that it is.

The Rev. Dr. Rick Fee, General Secretary of the Life and Mission Agency, consulted with The Reverend Dr Clyde Ervine, Minister at Central Presbyterian Church, Hamilton, Ontario and former Professor at Presbyterian College, Montreal, Quebec, and came up with this answer:

Thank you so much for your e-mail concerning the reference to God on our web-site.  You have asked several critical and complicated questions. I hope what follows will help clarify.

As a Christian church, we believe in the triune God. That is what the website says and that is what is important to us.  All sorts of people say they believe in God.  But ‘god’ can be used in very generic ways.  When Christians say ‘God’, they are naming God in a particular way, namely as the God of whom we read in both the Old and New Testaments, a God who is ultimately Creator, but also the Redeemer of a creation that has gone awry.

We believe that the ultimate creator God, in order to redeem creation, actually stepped into creation in human form, in the person of Jesus.  And we believe too that Jesus, who is no longer visible, sent his Spirit to us whom we name as the Holy Spirit.  God, for us, is certainly one, yet known through the persons of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  As one might expect, God is a much more profound reality than the human mind might imagine.

You are quite correct in noting that the Bible doesn’t present a doctrine of God in a systematic fashion.  But, to suggest that there is zero scripture relating to the triune nature of God, is going too far.

Scripture isn’t a philosophical treatise or even a theological one; it is essentially a narrative.  But in narrative form, what unfolds is an ever-enlarging picture of God, whom we know first of all as a largely hidden, transcendent deity, but whose real and loving nature is slowly revealed through Jesus and the Holy Spirit.  Admittedly, any human language for God remains human, and can never do justice to the heights and depths of who God is.  But the church has not come up with a better way of describing God than by insisting that God is one and indivisible, yet within Gods-self, a perfect, eternal community of three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

This is the God we worship and serve, and this is the God whom we believe will save this world.  As to whether it is necessary for salvation that we understand the triune nature of God, that question is surely answered over and over again in the negative.  That is, all through the Old Testament, before the full, triune nature of God had been revealed, all sorts of people trusted in the God about whom they did know.  And that is a good way of approaching others today who are worshippers of God, but do not know God’s triune nature.  Though believing Jesus to be the fullness of God in human form, or as the Bible says, the Light of the World, we do not dismiss the presence of God’s light before the coming of Jesus, nor in other places and people who know nothing yet of Jesus.

I hope this helps to answer your thoughtful query.

And by the way, the wording on our web-site might need a slight change so that it reads: “In other words, God is one God, yet revealed in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit”.