One God In Three Manifestations
I humbly request that each of you read through this entire writing to get the full picture of what I am trying to present. If you simply read a part here or a part there you will miss the whole picture that I am hoping to present to you. In no way do I intend to present the entire subject, but rather an overview of what we stand for. I don’t pretend to understand every aspect about God, to do so to me would be the height of arrogance. While knowing God is not subjective to each of us personally (he is the true reality and there is only one proper way to comprehend his reality) he does reveal himself to us in a process throughout our life. We all must be open to correction from the Scripture and the unction of the Holy Spirit. My hope for all who read this and myself as well is that each of us would be sensitive to the Holy Spirit working on our conscience.
The trinity of co-equal and co-eternal persons is a post biblical one, it is not based upon the apostolic teachings. The Oxford Companion to the bible clearly explains this fact.
“Because the Trinity is such an important part of later Christian doctrine, it is striking that the term does not appear in the New Testament. Likewise, the developed concept of three coequal partners in the Godhead found in later creedal formulations cannot be clearly detected within the confines of the canon.” “Trinity,” in The Oxford Companion to the Bible, Oxford University Press, 1993, p. 782.
As bible believers we hold to scripture as the final authority not the creeds nor confessions of Christendom as they have often proven to be in contradiction to one another and thus cannot be fully relied upon.
While the majority of Christian theologians focus on and seek to maintain the threeness of God as most important we want to focus on what God declares to be the greatest commandment, his oneness or unity. These are the words of Jesus and if there is any proper confession about who God is this is it, “And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord.” This is the first and greatest command of the law and the greatest and first command that Jesus gives to us. God is one. He does not say God is three persons in one essence. Secondly, those who hold to the trinity should know that there is no where in Scripture that God is spoken of as a trinity of three persons. This is an ancient word that was used to describe the various triumvurate gods and godesses within various pagan systems of worship.
We want to define God as Scripture defines him and not through philosophy. Unfortunately, after the death of the apostles the church began to gradually drift away from the proper understanding of the oneness of God towards a Greek philosophical one.
The confession that God is three distinct persons is none other than tri-theism, the belief in three gods. The trinity seeks to maintain the oneness of God by stating that he is one essence or ousia. However, myself, my wife and my daughter each are made up of the same essence or ousia, flesh, bones and blood. We are still three persons and to confess that this is what God is is a belief in three gods.
I confess, that the majority of Christians do not fully believe in the Trinity of three persons, they confess belief in it, but the reality is they believe something far different in practice and thought.
The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are never spoken of as three persons. We will bear this out scripturally to properly understand the relationship between Father and Son, but any supposed threeness of God is in his manifestations of himself. During the first 300 years of the church there was a gradual departure from Hebrew thought to Greek philosophical thought. The Greeks always sought to understand God inside of himself, but the Hebrews always sought to understand God in his manifestation to mankind. The Greeks separate knowledge from relationship, the Hebrews viewed knowledge as intimacy with the object of knowledge. Hence, sexual intercourse with ones wife was to “know” her. God is not known to us inside of himself, he is known as he is revealed to us in time/space. Thus, we conclude that Father, Son and Spirit are three various ways God manifested himself to mankind. It is three different aspects of the one true God.
God created man in his own image. He gave man a body, a mind and a soul or spirit.. As the image of God he is a triune being. Man is one being, one individual but has three aspects to his one being. God also is a triune being not beings, but singular being. There is no God but God and he is one. There is one Spirit that is omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent. There are not three persons that are omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. God as a triune being has a mind, expresses himself through is word (body) and is spirit.
God as Father is the creator and the foundation out of which all existence flows. The Father was expressed in a visible and tangible way in the Son who was God manifest in flesh. God is a Spirit and this Spirit proceeds from the Father to work in and through mankind to work to draw us to the Son in order that we might receive eternal life.
“The Father loves the Son…” according to John 5:20. Often it is cited one aspect of God’s being cannot love another aspect of his being. While this is not necessarily true, the fact remains that here we have a relationship between Father and Son. This is a relationship between the eternal, invisible God who’s glory covers the whole universe and the man Christ Jesus who was born of the virgin Mary after being generated by the Holy Spirit. Jesus is a real flesh and blood human being that grew in wisdom and knowledge (Luke 2:52), did not know the outcome of all future events (Mark 13:32), was subordinate to God (John 14:28) and was subject to the Father’s will (John 5:30). Those who hold to a trinity of persons and the hypostatic union between the 2nd person of the trintiy and the man Christ Jesus state all these merely point to the human nature of Jesus Christ. Scripture does not teach a hypostatic union between two natures. It teaches us that Jesus is God manifest in flesh and that he is a real human being that submitted himself fully and perfectly to God. God does not ask us to explain what kind of union there is between himself and his Son. The human body, of course, is not God since God is not a tangible object, but the human body reveals God as Jesus said, “he that has seen me has seen the Father.” John 14:9. Thus the human being who is the Son of God is the tabernacle of the fullness of Deity.
Jesus was a man who was the Messiah and Son of God as to his humanity. He bypassed the normal human birth process in order to be the perfect sacrifice for our sins. To be Messiah and to be Son of God means to be human. He was not some kind of a split personality. He was a human being in whom the full divine nature and attributes dwelt. All the heavens were not emptied of the presence of God for “in him we live and move and have our being.”(Acts 17:28) But all that the invisible, unseen God IS was expressed in and through the man Jesus Christ. Though he is a human being Jesus Christ is the one true and living God because the fulness of the divine nature was expressed in him.
God is One Person According to Scripture
Notice as you read scripture that God is spoken of as a singular pronoun thousands upon thousands of times. If when the writers of scripture were referring to God and they truly believed he was three persons would they not refer to God as they, them, their, we, us, our rather than I, me, mine, my, etc. Certainly, there are several times that God speaks as us, however, when you as one person speak and you say “us” clearly you are speaking of yourself and someone who is not yourself. When God says us he is speaking to someone who is NOT God.
Here is Galatians 3:20 from the Amplified Bible, “Now a go-between (intermediary) has to do with and implies more than one party [there can be no mediator with just one person]. Yet God is [only] one Person [and He was the sole party in giving that promise to Abraham. But the Law was a contract between two, God and Israel; its validity was dependent on both.” God is only one person not three. The entire scripture bears this out.
The truth about baptism bears this truth out. Matthew 28:19 says, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” God is spoken of as one singular name. There are not three names here, there is one. There are three titles, Father, Son and Spirit, but one name. What is that one name that the Lord Jesus tells us about? Jesus told them to baptize in the singular name of the Father, Son and Spirit. What is that name? Notice, the obedience of Peter in Acts 2:38, “Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.” The NAME of the Father, Son and Spirit is Jesus Christ. There are three manifestations of God in that one person, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the one person of God manifest in human flesh. (1 Timothy 3:16)
John 14:9, “Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Show us the Father?” Here we find out that the Son is the visible manifestation of the Father. When you see the Son you are seeing the Father manifested visibly. He is “the image of the invisible God” and “the express image of his substance.” (Col. 1:15, Heb. 1:3) “No man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.” John 1:18. “Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.” 1 Timothy 1:17. No man has seen God in himself at any time for he is invisible. God in himself is Spirit for John 4:24 declares that God is a Spirit. That is God’s substance or essence. Ephesians 4:4 tells us there is one Spirit. There is one invisible God, whom no man has seen at any time, he is one substance and that substance is one Spirit. God within himself cannot be seen nor comprehended by mankind for “in him we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28) However, this invisible God chose to create this world and mankind as well as relate to mankind in a way that we can understand. What love and grace to condescend to us so that we could know him even though we are sinners.
So this God who is one Spirit, covers all space and is invisible, no man has seen him at any time nor can you see him chose to condescend to reveal himself. This is where the unfolding and condescending of God comes in. God chose to limit himself in such a way that he could be seen.
Logos
Proverbs 8:22-24, “The LORD possessed me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water.”
Before there was time or even an atom, there was nothing but God. How he existed and what was there we do not know. He created everything out of nothing. Prior to anything being created God sent forth his thought or logos from himself. When this thought was expressed it became logos. Prior to creation God’s wisdom was IN himself. Just before creation he brought forth his logos, which was the Son of God prefigured in order to limit himself and manifest himself inside of and to his creation. The word prefigured means to picture beforehand or to announce by type. In other words, the item you are speaking of does not yet exist, but you are announcing it prior to its arrival.
God’s wisdom or word are not a separate being from himself, but the logos is the limitation of the Father to a form by which he can be seen and understood. No man knows the Father save the Son and to whomsoever the Son reveals him. (Matthew 11:27) The Logos that went out of God was the Son prefigured. That is, the Logos showed forth what Jesus was after his birth, he is the revelation of the Father, the visible expression of God. As I said previously, you cannot say that God’s reason or wisdom is a separate person from him, it is simply his body, his means of limiting himself to a form that can be understood. The Son is the delimitation of the Father. The Father is the eternal, invisible God and the Son is the self-limitation of the Father to a body that could be seen and understood.
If the Logos is the prefiguration of the Son does this mean that there are two persons of God. As I stated previously, the wisdom of God is not a separate person from the Father. It is the self-limitation of the Father into a body or a form by which he can be seen. Your body is not a separate person from you any more than your thought is. As your body and soul are two so is the Father and his logos. The Father is like unto the soul and the logos is like unto the body whereby the soul is seen.
As stated previously, the Spirit of God cannot be separated from God because there is one Spirit not two or three. Jesus said, “God is a Spirit.” The Spirit of God is also referred to as the “power of the Highest” in Luke 1:35. God’s power is not a distinct person from him.
Summary
We are not denying the Deity of Jesus Christ, but rather embracing a biblical construct of what that means that a human being is the manifestation of the only true God. “No man has seen God at any time, the only begotten Son…has declared him.” John 1:18 God cannot be seen, yet his invisible attributes including his eternal power and divine nature were declared in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are attributes and aspects of the one true and living God as he is revealed in time/space. The greatest command is God’s unity and oneness. We must maintain this above all other concepts of God.
I do not deny that there are mysteries to the nature and revelation of God, but there is a difference between a mystery and a contradiction. We embrace the apostolic teachings of the bible and the prophetic utterances of the prophets in the old testament. However, we do reject the post-biblical constructs that created the trinity of persons.
