The objection
Neither the word “Trinity” nor the finished formula “one being, three persons” appears in the Bible. Does this not place a later ecclesiastical doctrine above the written Word?
1. Scripture binds us to its meaning
A doctrine is biblical if it states what scripture teaches. It need not form every sentence exclusively from individual biblical words. Otherwise every translation and explanatory sermon would already be impermissible. Thomas Aquinas makes this point precisely: New concepts can become necessary to preserve transmitted faith's content against a new distortion. What matters is whether they preserve scripture's meaning.[1]
“Only statements with expressly biblical technical terms are binding” is also no biblical doctrinal proposition. The objection thus itself introduces an additional rule. This rule must not decide which inferences we may draw from God's Word.
2. Three statements must not be played against one another
First: There is only one God (Deuteronomy 6,4; Isaiah 45,5). Second: Father, Son and Spirit are really distinct. In John 14,16 the Son asks the Father, and the Father gives another Advocate. Third: The Son and Spirit belong on God's side, not that of his creatures. John 1,3 includes everything that came into being within the Word's creative work. Acts 5,3–4 describes lying to the Spirit as lying to God.
These statements do not yield three gods. The first sentence prohibits this. Nor do they yield a single person with changing names. The second sentence prohibits this. And they yield no gradation from one true God to two divine helpers. The third sentence opposes this. “One being, three persons” preserves the three statements together.[2]
3. The Trinity is already the order of Christian life
Matthew 28,19 places Father, Son and Holy Spirit together within the one baptismal belonging. Ephesians 2,18 describes the same access to God: through Christ, in one Spirit, to the Father. The church therefore does not begin with an indefinite God and later add a complicated theory. Baptism, redemption and prayer refer to Father, Son and Spirit from the beginning.
No single grammatical detail of the baptismal formula carries the whole doctrine. Its strength lies in agreeing with statements about God's unity, the Son's deity and the Spirit's personhood.
4. The confession serves revelation
Christians do not first grant the triune God the right to be God after a neutral examination. We think from his self-revelation. Precisely for this reason our explanations must correspond to scripture. The confession is binding because it aptly summarizes God's Word; the church neither created God's being nor determined it by a vote.
The productive follow-up question is therefore: Which biblical statement is supposed to be abolished by pointing to the missing word? The absence of a later designation refutes none of these texts.
Biblical texts in context
Sources and further study
- Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiaeI, q. 29, a. 3, reply to objection 1: biblical meaning and later terminology.
- Wayne Grudem, Biblische DogmatikCh. 14: “God in three persons”; especially the three interconnected statements.