Bible Stories

The New Testament also takes its starting-point in the confession and the commandment that God is one. Jesus himself repeats the opening words of the ‘Shema’; Paul writes to the Corinthians: ‘For us there is one God, from whom are all things and for whom we exist.’ James writes: You believe that God is one; you do well.’ The apostles time and again speak of God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, the Father and Jesus are clearly distinguished. Yet the same writers say, with equal emphasis, that Jesus Christ himself is also God.

Admittedly, the name ‘God‘ is not often applied to Jesus. We find it in only seven or eight passages, some of which can be translated in a different way. But Christian belief in the deity of Christ does not depend on these passages only. On the contrary, the concept that Jesus is God undergirds the whole New Testament.

Again and again the name Kurios (’Lord’, the translation in the Greek Old Testament of the Hebrew name for God) is applied to Jesus. And often it plainly carries its full Old Testament significance.

• Jesus is worshipped.
• Quotations from the Old Testament are transferred from the Lord God to Christ.
• He performs divine functions: creation, forgiveness, judgement.
• Several authors state that Jesus was pre-existent and ‘came’ from the Father.
• Paul sums it all up, when he writes that ‘in him (Jesus Christ) the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily’.

All this, naturally, introduced an entirely new element into the doctrine of God. For this is not a matter simply of an extension of divine personality, but in this man, who is at the same time God, we are faced with interaction within the Godhead. No wonder this was the stumbling block for the Jews. Judaism knew the idea of extension of God’s personality. But the idea of interaction within the extended personality is not Hebrew (nor Hellenistic), but definitely Christian.

As well as the New Testament teaching about Jesus Christ there is also the question of the Holy Spirit. In the New Testament itself this receives less emphasis than belief about Christ. In the Gospels we read comparatively little about the Spirit. John writes: ‘As yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.’ But even after Pentecost, when the Spirit was given to the disciples, the Spirit never comes into the full limelight. This is due to his particular task: to glorify Jesus.

Yet after Pentecost his image does become much clearer. He is much more than a divine power. He is a divine ‘person’. Again and again personal names and activities are ascribed to him: leading, allowing, being made sad. Only one conclusion is possible: in the Spirit God himself is with and in the believers.

How then can we describe the New Testament picture of God? On the one hand, God is one, truly and absolutely one. On the other hand, this one God exists as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This threefoldness is present throughout the whole New Testament, not as a formal statement, but as a pattern to be seen everywhere. And here and there in the New Testament there are attempts to find an answer to the problem involved in this threefold existence of God:

Everywhere in the first three Gospels the threefold pattern can be seen. As is to be expected, they show it in particular in the life of Jesus. It comes to the fore in his birth: the Father sends Jesus into the world and the Holy Spirit prepares the way. When he is baptized all three persons are present: Jesus in the water, the Father’s voice from heaven, the Spirit coming down like a dove.

The same pattern gives the framework for the temptation story. At the end of Matthew’s Gospel, as he commissions the disciples, Jesus uses the three names side by side: ‘Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.’ Again, this is not a formal statement of doctrine; Jesus is simply bringing out the enormous importance of the new sacrament of Christian baptism. Yet it remains striking that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are mentioned side by side, while at the same time the ‘unity’ (’the Name‘, in the singular) is emphasized.

In the writings of Paul, too, we repeatedly find the three persons linked together. The pattern runs as a golden thread through the texture of all his letters. It is quite evident that he has given much thought to the problems involved. Repeatedly, he comes to grips with the question of the nature of Christ. He writes: ‘Christ Jesus … always had the nature of God, but he did not think that by force he should try to become equal with God .. . of his own free will he gave up all he had, and took the nature of a servant. He became like man’; He is the visible likeness of the invisible God. He is the firstborn Son … for through him God created everything.’

Paul also wrestled with the nature of the Holy Spirit, as appears, for example, from a passage in Romans 8, where the Spirit is called alternatively the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ. Finally, there are some passages in which Paul sets the three persons side by side.

The deepest reflection in the New Testament we find in the writings of John. At the very beginning of his Gospel he takes up the Old Testament concept of the word of God and speaks of the ‘Word‘ (Logos), who was in the beginning, who was with God, who was God. Two things are set side by side here: the Word is distinguished from God, and yet the Word is at the same time identical with God. In this paradox lies the whole mystery, a mystery that becomes even greater when John writes: ‘And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.’ Further on in the Gospel, John moves from the idea of the Word and speaks instead of ‘Father‘ and ‘Son‘, but it is the same mystery. He is ‘the only Son . . . at the Father’s side‘.

John also struggled with the relationship between Jesus and the Holy Spirit. He clearly distinguished them. He quotes Jesus‘ words about the Spirit as ‘another Counsellor’ whom Jesus himself will send to the disciples ‘from the Father, even the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father‘. Yet at the same time Jesus and the Spirit are inseparably related, for the Spirit ‘will not speak on his own authority’, but ‘He will glorify me (Jesus), for he will take what is mine and declare it to you’.

None of this New Testament teaching constitutes a full doctrine of the trinity, but it certainly lays a foundation for such a doctrine. It is sufficient proof that the later doctrine of the trinity, as formulated by the church in its creeds, is not a foreign element imposed upon the New Testament, but rather a natural consequence of the New Testament witness.

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