Trinity and the Old Covenant: Some Brief Questions and Answers

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I’d planned to post the next article in my short series about “personhood” in the context of the Trinity. But, alas, my intellectual bandwidth is unequal to the task right now. Next week, though, the article about the social trinitarian understanding of “person” is coming! For now, I leave you with some brief discussions about the doctrine of the Trinity and the Old Covenant scriptures we discussed in the Theology Thursday class in my congregation. Ciao.

Q1: If the doctrine of the Trinity is really so important, why does the Bible not explain it like Grudem’s definition does?

Well, because the bible just isn’t organized that way. It wasn’t meant to be, either! Bible study is a lot like detective work.

Scripture isn’t an encyclopedia, arranged exhaustively by topic. It’s a series of books and letters written to very specific audiences, for very specific purposes. The authors could have said much more than they did

Systematic theology is the branch of bible study that “systematizes” and catalogs the 8 “big” topics of revelation (God, Man, Sin, Christ, Holy Spirit, Salvation, Church, Last Things). Our bible doctrines sum up what we believe the Bible teaches about specific topics based on the evidence we have from the Scriptures. Creeds, confessions, and statements of faith are the fruit of all that effort.

How is bible study like detective work?1 Simple. You find all the evidence. You lay it all out on the table. You weigh it fairly and objectively. Then, you sum up what it tells you about the topic you’re studying.

Detective work takes time. There are premature conclusions. There are corrections to be made. There are bad conclusions. There are incomplete conclusions that are refined as the Church dialogues with itself (“iron sharpens iron;” Prov 27:17).

And, this detective work isn’t done in a vacuum. The Church is the interpreter of Scripture. As individuals, God never intended that we be “lone rangers,” cut off from community with one another. This is an important part of the Book of Hebrews! Likewise, as a congregation, God never intended that we ghettoize ourselves off from other faithful Christian congregations as we learn about the Lord together.

When Jesus promised to send the Spirit to “teach you all things,” it wasn’t simply a promsie to apostles or to your specific congregation. It was a promise to the entire Church. When we say, “this is what we believe,” we mean more than just our individual congregations. We mean the Church. We believe it because it’s in the bible. We also believe it because we’re part of a great tradition. That means we stand on the shoulders of faithful brothers and sisters who devoted a lot of intellectual horsepower to these same issues over the centuries. We ought to listen to them.

The call to scrap every inherited dogma and doctrine and start over “from scratch” is quaint. It always ends up in heresy.

So, what’s the answer to the question?

The answer is that the bible doesn’t explain the doctrine of the trinity (or any doctrine, really) like Grudem because none of the books were written for that purpose. Instead, faithful Christians have examined the evidence from all of scripture and the sum of it all is the trinity.

  1. There is one God; eternal and all-powerful. The Old Covenant is pretty clear on that point (Deut 6:4; Ex 20:3, etc.).
  2. But, the NT shows us three distinct Persons who interact with one another, and speak about each other to each other.
  3. Scripture is from God, and He doesn’t contradict Himself

Therefore, we have the Trinity:

  1. One God consisting of three Persons in union with one another,
  2. acting together with different roles to redeem creation for His glory

Q2: Why was the doctrine of the Trinity only fully revealed in the New Testament? What new revelation did God give us in the New Testament that shows us He is one Being who consists of three Persons?

It’s a fact that God doles out knowledge in fits and starts; people later in the Story know more than folks who came and went earlier (NOTE: I didn’t say they were always more mature or more spiritual; just that they had more revelation!)

  1. Abraham knew more than Noah
  2. Moses knew more than Abraham
  3. David knew more than Moses
  4. John the Baptist knew more than David
  5. Paul knew more than John the Baptist
  6. The NC community today, on the other side of the Cross and after 2000 years of reflection, knows more than the OC community did

Think of it this way. God revealed His unique “Oneness” in the Old Covenant scriptures. He started over again with Noah and his family, who gradually lost the truth about Him in the years after the flood. So, one of Yahweh’s emphases was to recover monotheism in a polytheistic culture. The Decalogue (Ex 20), the Shema (Deut 6) and the constant demand for devotion in heart and action show God’s fixation on allegiance and Oneness.

Then, God revealed His “triuneness” in the New Covenant scriptures. Trinity is hinted at in the Old Covenant, but never spelled out. Trinity was only revealed in the incarnation + outpouring of the Spirit. See especially the way Jesus speaks of the Father and the Spirit in passages like John 14:15-31. So, once again, the evidence forces us to say:

  1. There is one God; eternal and all-powerful. The Old Covenant is pretty clear on that point (Deut 6:4; Ex 20:3, etc.).
  2. But, the NT shows us three distinct Persons who interact with one another, and speak about each other to each other.
  3. Scripture is from God, and He doesn’t contradict Himself

Therefore, we have the Trinity:

  1. One God consisting of three Persons in union with one another,
  2. acting together with different roles to redeem creation for His glory

Q3: Did Noah, Abraham and David know God was triune? If they didn’t, can they be considered true believers?

Yes, they were true believers. If God doles out revelation over time (and He does), and the canon of Scripture is closed (and it is), then this means you’re responsible to believe the revelation you do have, not the revelation you don’t have.

Consider:

  1. Was Apollos not a believer at first, in Ephesus (Acts 18:24-26)?
  2. Was John the Baptist not a believer when he preached that the Messiah was coming (cp. Lk 7:18-19)?
  3. Were the 12 “disciples” in Ephesus believers before Paul found them (Acts 19:1-7)?

They were believers; they just didn’t have all the revelation, yet. You’re only responsible for the revelation you have. Noah, David and Abraham had different information, at different times - they’re responsible to believe what had been given. There was clearly an “in-between” period of unknown length after Jesus’ ministry where people waited for Him, not even knowing He’d already come, lived, died, rose again and gone! There is no “in-between” time now; revelation is complete. This is why missions is so important!

Notes

1 This is a very simplistic explanation. For an outstanding discussion on the process of “doing theology,” see the discussion with that very title in Erickson’s systematic (Christian Theology, KL 1287ff).

Discussion

Here is Donald Bloesch expressing what I did a poor job of expressing (above) in my discussion of Q1:

An ecumenical orthodoxy holds to the unfolding of scriptural truth in church tradition. It acknowledges that the Spirit has been active in guiding the church to a true perception of the meaning and impact of biblical revelation. But we would also do well to consider that scriptural truth has always been compromised and distorted in church tradition. We should always view tradition critically, though never iconoclastically. It behooves us to discriminate between what is true and false in church tradition. We must not read scripture through the eyes of the ‘great tradition’ but asses the great tradition in light of the infallible standard for faith and practice - the confluence of Word and Spirit.

He goes on, in a vein that some here will find troubling:

It should be obvious that I am not a theological liberal (though some conservatives have labeled me as such), but I wish to have a liberal spirit in the sense of being self-critical. I am opposed to liberalism as an ideology but not to the liberal call for self-examination. A truly liberal spirit combined with a passion for the gospel leads to a creative and expansive orthodoxy in contrast to a narrow or constrictive orthodoxy. An orthodoxy that keeps itself open to revision in light of the new truth disclosed by the Spirit in the Bible and in gospel preaching will play a pivotal role in the revivification of the church in our time.

The Church: Sacraments, Worship, Ministry, Mission (Downers Grove: IVP, 2002), 15-16.

Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.

If JESUS is so important, why didn’t he show up in the garden? Or to Cain and Abel, or Moses, or David, etc.?

God used progressive revelation, sometimes giving foreshadowing, other times things were completely hidden until they were revealed.

And no doctrine is carefully defined in the Bible as you find in a systematic theology.

Here is a thought by way of analogy. One reason the key doctrines are disguised or progressively revealed, or not clearly defined, is that God wants us to spend time looking for Him in His revealed word. It’s like my dog in the backyard. She goes out there every day. But, every time I let her out she sniffs it out, explores it, and looks around, like she has never been there before. When something cool happens, like I mow the lawn, she acts like this is a new land to explore, sticking her head into every knew hole that appears.

Similarly, we need to be digging around God’s revelation to find Him in his many facets.