One of the most misunderstood ideas in the Bible has to do with the doctrine of the Trinity. Although Christians claim to believe in one God, they are constantly accused of polytheism (worship of at least three gods).

The Scriptures do not teach that there are three gods; nor does it teach that God wears three different masks while creating the spectacle of history. What the Bible teaches is expressed in the doctrine of the Trinity: There is one God who has revealed himself in three persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and these three persons are the one God.

Although difficult to understand, it is nevertheless what the Bible tells us, and it is the closest approach that the finite mind can reach so far to explain the infinite mystery of the infinite God, given what the Bible says about the nature of God.

The Bible teaches that there is one God and one God: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4). “One is God” (1 Tim. 2:5). “Thus saith the Lord King of Israel, and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts: I am the first and the last, and beside me there is no God” (Isa. 44:6).

But although God is one in essence and nature, He is also three persons. “Let us make man in our image” (Genesis 1:26). “And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is like one of us” (Genesis 3:22).

The pluralistic nature of God is alluded to here, because he could not speak to the angels on these occasions because the angels did not or could not help God in creation. The Bible teaches that Jesus Christ created everything; the angels had no part in it (John 1:3; Col. 1:15; Heb. 1:2).

In addition to speaking of God as one and at the same time alluding to the plurality of God’s nature, Scripture also goes so far as to refer to God by the names of three persons. There is one person whom the Bible calls Father, and the Father is called God the Father (Galatians 1:1).

The Bible speaks of a person called Jesus or the Son or the Word, also called God. “The Word was God…” (John 1:1). It was Jesus who “also called God his Father, and thereby made himself equal with God” (John 5:18). A third person is mentioned in Scripture, called the Holy Spirit, and this person – along with the Father and the Son – is also called God (“Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit… he did not lie to men, but to God” (Acts 5:3-4).

The facts of biblical teaching are these: There is one God. This one God has a plural nature. This one God is called Father, Son, Holy Spirit, all are different personalities, all are called God. Thus we come to the conclusion that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are one God, according to the doctrine of the Trinity.

To help us better understand this teaching, Dr. John Warwick Montgomery made the following analogy:

»The doctrine of the Trinity is not “irrational”; However, it is irrational to suppress biblical evidence in favor of the Trinity in favor of unity or to suppress evidence in favor of unity in favor of the Trinity.

Our data must take precedence over our models or, to put it better, our models must reflect the full spectrum of data. A close analogy to the theologian’s approach can be found here in the work of the theoretical physicist: he claims that units smaller than atoms have the properties of waves (W), particles (P) and quanta (h).

Although these properties are incompatible in some respects (particles do not break while waves do, etc.), physicists “explain” or “model” an electron as a PWh. You must do this to give all relevant data the weight they deserve.

The same thing happens to the theologian who speaks of God as the “Triune One.” Neither the scientist nor the the theologian expects to be able to form a picture with the help of his model; the purpose of the model is to help him take all the facts into account, rather than to distort reality by imposing an apparent logical consequence on everything.

The choice is clear: either the Trinity or a ‘God’ who is a pale imitation of the Lord of biblical Christianity through the centuries« (How do we know there is a God?, p. 14.15).