Saturday, April 22, 2017
Monday, April 3, 2017
The One True God Is The Triune God Of Christianity
“In the
beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form,
and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God
moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there
was light.” (Genesis 1:1–3)
The Triune God
This
text, in the context of the totality of Scripture, gives to us an understanding
of God as a plurality in unity, as it speaks to us of God creating and the
Spirit being present. We must specifically, when speaking of the God of the
Bible, speak of God as a Tri-unity, or Trinity. The one God is three persons in
perfect unity of being, essence, and agreement. We see this by considering the
fact that the Son is as much Creator-God as the Father (See John 1:1-4,14 and
Hebrews 1:1-3), and by understanding that the Spirit of God is equally Divine
(Job 33:4, Acts 5:1-5 and Romans 8:9-10). These three persons, Father, Son, and
Spirit, are the One God.
Why Is The Triune God Necessary?
Why
would we say that the Triune God of Scripture is necessary to knowledge?
First
of all, truth is expected to be an unity. We expect that which is true in one
field of study to agree with what is true in any other field of study in
whatever fashion those fields of truth intersect. For example, we would expect
that mathematical truth would be the same whether it were applied to
governments or to a building contractor’s business. We would not expect the
realities of mathematics to change simply because of the field in which math
was applied changed. We expect truth to be true wherever truth appears.
What
this means is that we expect there to be unity in plurality. While there are
many fields of knowledge, we expect the truth to be united across the plurality
of fields. There is one body of truth, though many fields of knowledge; and the
truths found in every field of knowledge agree, as truth is an unity.
The
problem is that we must then find a source and standard for truth and knowledge
that can provide unity in plurality.
Pantheism
cannot provide this unity in plurality. If all is god, then there is actually
more of a monad than a plurality. Not only so, but all is subsumed into god
leaving us with obscurity. There would be no true revelation, because all is
god and there would be nothing distinct from the god to receive knowledge. In
fact, we would be unable to even know what to call this god. This would cause
everyone and everything to be a standard of truth in and of itself/ourselves.
This would leave us with relativism, because we would be unable to point
anywhere to a united standard of truth that addresses the problem of plurality
in unity.
If
God were totally one in the sense that Allah, the god of the Muslims, is one,
then we would again have an unknowable standard. The god would then be so
utterly other than the world and humanity that the god would be unapproachable
and unknowable. There would be no way to have a divine revelation that would
give us truth and knowledge. Neither would we have a standard by which to know
truth. We would be left in the dark.[1]
What,
then, is the answer to our dilemma? The Triune God of Scripture is the answer.
He alone meets our need for a single, sovereign, intelligent Creator God who is
the source of all knowledge and truth. Apart from the Trinity there can be
neither truth nor knowledge.
The
Bible, as the source of our knowledge of this Triune God, is our only ground of
rational thought. It is in the Christian Scriptures that we find that God is:
1. Our
Creator (Genesis 1:1-3;Jeremiah 32:17;Hebrews 1:1-3;11:3).
2. The
God of knowledge and truth who judges us (Deuteronomy 32:4;1Samuel 2:3).
3. The
God who is one God, yet three persons (Genesis 1:1-3,26-28;Psalm 110:1-7;John
1:1-4,14;3:16-17;5:17-21;Hebrews 1:1-3).
4. The
God who makes Himself known to His creatures (Genesis 1:1-31;2:1-25;Psalm
19:1-11;Isaiah 40:1-8;John 1:18;Hebrews 1:1-3;Revelation 1:1-8;22:1-6,16-21).
With
this in mind, we need to approach our Bibles as God’s revelation of Himself;
and, if God reveals Himself to us in the Scriptures, we must acknowledge that
the Scriptures are true.
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