The Idea of the Blessed Trinity in the Bible – The Christian Monotheism

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Christian monotheism is a divine revelation that focuses on the Blessed Trinity. It is the claim that there are three persons in one God: God the Father, God, the Son, and God, the Holy Spirit. This idea is not limited to John 1:1-3 and John 14, that is, the incarnation and the via et veritas et vita discourses. Many other biblical writings and conciliar decrees attest to it. It is claimed that the incarnation reveals the Blessed Trinity.

The Catholic Preface Prayer of Christmas 1, The Weekday Missal expounds on the mystery of the incarnation as leading to the glory of the Blessed Trinity because in Jesus, God is made known, and we become overwhelmed by the love of God. [i] 

The Preface Prayer of the Blessed Trinity delineates more the underlining of Christianity’s claims to a Trinitarian faith. Hence, God’s glory has been revealed as the glory of his Son, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit; confirming the Godhead as three Persons that share the same majesty, and equal splendour as one Lord and God. [ii]

This writing will examine the biblical foundation of the Blessed Trinity by thematically considering McGrath’s three major personifications of God in the Old Testament: Wisdom, The Word of God, and The Spirit of God. This writing does not have the scope to examine the historical development of the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity. The Trinitarian controversies and ensuing heresies have no place here either however, references to them might be made in the course of some analyses.  

Biblical Foundation of the Blessed Trinity

If a non-Christian asks a Christian to prove to him that the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity is biblical, the Christian will immediately have recourse to the baptismal trinitarian form:

Go, therefore, make disciples of all nations; baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to observe all the commands I gave you (Matthew 28:19-20).

Or, the Christian can cite a Pauline benediction formula:

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all (2 Corinthians 13:13).

Both trinitarian frameworks seem ordinary because they are not prerequisites to the existence of the doctrine of the Trinity. The Christian concept of God is greatly beyond those. According to McGrath the above two verses, either taken together or in isolation can hardly be considered as making up the doctrine of the Trinity. Trinity as a doctrine of faith is more than the (Matthew 28:19-20) and (2 Corinthians 13:13) conspectus.[iii] In Rahner’s renowned rule, the doctrine of the Trinity is an emphasis on “the economic Trinity as the immanent Trinity.”[iv] This economic Trinity derives from the incarnation theology (God appearing in the world, in Jesus Christ). “No one has ever seen God; it is the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known” (John 1:18).

Following McGrath’s three major personifications of God (Wisdom, The Word of God, and The Spirit of God) in the Old Testament (OT), which he argues could lead to the Christian interpretation of the doctrine of the Trinity,[v] this writing will now examine the idea of God personifications in the Bible.

Wisdom in Wisdom Literature

The Wisdom literature consists of the Book of Job, The Psalms, The Proverbs, Ecclesiastes or Qoheleth, The Song of Songs, The Book of Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus as listed in New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) or the Book of Job, The Psalms, The Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs as listed in New Living Translation (NLT). The Wisdom literature treats the “attribute of divine wisdom” as if “it were a person with an existence apart from, yet dependent upon God.”[vi] 

In NJB it is argued that “the single most important contribution of the book” of wisdom in particular, “consists in its reflections on Wisdom, and especially the personification of Wisdom as God’s agent in the world, yet sharing intimately in his nature (7:22).”[vii] With this understanding, it substantiates the interpretation accorded to Jesus Christ as the incarnate Wisdom of God but raises the question of gender:

For within her is a spirit intelligent, holy, unique, manifold, subtle, mobile, incisive, unsullied, lucid, invulnerable, … she is so pure, that she pervades and penetrates all things. She is a breath of the power of God, pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty; so nothing impure can find its way into her (Wisdom 7:22-25).

The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth …. for whoever finds me finds life and obtains favour from the Lord: but those who miss me injure themselves; all who hate me love death. (Proverbs 8:22-36)

God alone understands her path and knows where she is to be found (Job 28ff:23)

If Jesus is considered as the incarnate Wisdom of God, why is this Wisdom referred to as a woman, hence the use of feminine pronouns? What is very clear in wisdom literature is the personification of the concept of wisdom as a woman. According to Claudia V. Camp, the personification of wisdom as a woman is more pronounced in Proverbs and the Wisdom of Solomon and in both texts, it is “referred to as Woman Wisdom to distinguish the personified figure from the more general use of the term.”[viii] David Beldman considers Lady Wisdom and Lady Folly as prominent personifications noted throughout the scripture. He argues that the “composite portrait of wisdom, the intimate connection between Lady Wisdom and God is unmistakable.”[ix] The next question to ask is: Why female personification?

To answer this question, Camp said that it could be partly because “in Hebrew, wisdom is a grammatically feminine noun.” She also argues that the female imagery for Woman Wisdom is also closely connected to her negative counterpart in Proverbs, that embodiment of evil referred to as the “loose woman’ (“strange woman,” or “Woman Stranger”).[x]

Examining Proverbs 8:22-36, this personification of the Woman's Wisdom is quite incomprehensible. It is an imagery that suggests that the Woman's Wisdom is present with God before and during the process of creation, as a playful child, or a wise architect, or, in the artful ambiguity of poetry, or both.[xi]

Camp likens this, so to speak, the deification of Woman Wisdom to some ancient goddesses, for instance, the Egyptian goddess of justice known as Ma’at. This goddess was understood as both the child of the creator god and as the ordering principle of creation.[xii]     

This idea of God could be a transcultural phenomenon and a buy-in from different ancient religious cultures. Christianity was not left out. Thus, when Jesus is acknowledged as God’s incarnate, it means that he is the revealed glory of God and thus makes the invisible visible.  

The Idea of the Word of God Personified

The Bible also personifies the idea of God’s Word as an “existence independent of God, yet originating with God.”[xiii]

For as the rain and the snow come down from the sky and do not return before having watered the earth, fertilizing it, and making it germinate to provide seed for the Sower and food to eat, so it is with the word that goes from my mouth: it will not return to me unfulfilled or before having carried out my good pleasure and having achieved what it was sent to do (Isaiah 55:10-11).

Forever, Yahweh, your word is planted firm in heaven (Psalm 119:89).

He sends his word to the earth, his command runs quickly, he spreads the snow like flax, strews hoarfrost like ashes...he reveals his word to Jacob, his statutes and judgments to Israel (Psalm 147:15-16.19).

The personification of the word of God as that, that “goes from my mouth”, “planted firm in heaven” and “reveals his word to Jacob” is very similar to the Qur’anic concept of the word of God as in “The Preserved Tablet” (Al-Buruj 85:21-22). It is the Word through whom everything came into being and without him nothing ever was (John 1:3).

The Spirit of God as God’s Presence in Creation

McGrath also argues that the Old Testament presents the phrase “the spirit of God” as “God’s presence and power within creation.” The following biblical citations buttress the argument:

Here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom my soul delights. I have sent my spirit upon him, he will bring fair judgment to the nations (Isaiah 42:1)

I shall give you a new heart, and put a new spirit within you; I shall remove the heart of stone from your bodies and give you a heart of flesh instead. I shall put my spirit in you, and make you keep my laws, and respect and practice my judgments (Ezekiel 36:26-27).

The hand of Yahweh was on me; he carried me away by the spirit of Yahweh and set me down in the middle of the valley, a valley full of bones (Ezekiel 37:1)

The foregoing does not establish the doctrine of the Trinity in its entirety. McGrath argues that the “three hypostatizations of God do not amount to a doctrine of the Trinity.” However, he contends that to proffer a unitarian idea of God is not enough to understand the dynamic nature of God and he concludes that the Bible is a clear indication that God wants to be known as trinitarian.[xiv] Albeit, in the same Bible, St Paul would argue that “there is...one God and Father of all, over all, through all and within all” (Ephesians 4:5-6). The afore-quoted passage is a Pauline conclusion denoting the Godhead as one.

Christianity’s claims to a Trinitarian faith could be interpreted as a way of pointing at God or recognizing him. As Robert Jenson (1984) opined the Trinity can be thought of in terms of the proper name of the Christian God, which establishes the identity of God based on an affirmation and identification of God’s redemptive acts in history.”[xv] The Trinitarian faith can be understood as not only a way to identify the Christian God but also a way of interpreting the economic Trinity and immanent Trinity as Rahner’s rule suggests.

[i] The Weekday Missal, 1987, a new edition, illustrations by Mark and Anne Primavesi, Collins Liturgical Publications, London. P. 1339

[ii] Ibid. p. 1349

[iii] McGrath, A. E 1999, Christian Theology: An Introduction, Blackwell, Oxford.

[iv] Rahner, K 1997, The Trinity, translated by Joseph Donceel, The Crossroad Publishing Company, New York. P. 22

[v] McGrath, A. E op. cit. p. 293

[vi] Ibid.

[vii] The New Jerusalem Bible: Reader’s Edition. 1990. Doubleday. New York. P. 783

[viii] Camp, Claudia V., “Woman Wisdom: Bible.” Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. 27 February 2009. Jewish Women’s Archive. (Accessed 15 May 2021) https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/woman-wisdom-bible.

[ix] Beldman, David. The Portrait of a Lady (Wisdom): How to find and keep up with a complicated Woman. In The Biblical Mind. February 10, 2021. https://hebraicthought.org/lady-wisdom-complicated-woman/

[x] Camp, Claudia V. Op. cit.

[xi] Ibid.

[xii] Ibid.

[xiii] McGrath, A.E op. cit.

[xiv] Ibid. p. 294

[xv] McGrath, A. E (ed) 1995, The Christian Theology: Reader, Blackwell, Oxford. P. 122 

 

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