but I certainly hadn’t ever experienced anything quite like that. It was still a few years off before I began to understand what the Holy Ghost was. Getting comfortable talking about the Holy Ghost took even longer. Needless to say, changing the name to the Holy Spirit was very helpful for me. But no sooner did I think I had it down, than I started hearing that the Holy Spirit was part of something called the Trinity.
Three in One
The Doctrine of the Trinity is the central Christian belief that there is One God who exists in Three Persons. I must confess that this doctrine is one of the most difficult and confusing puzzles we face in theology. As a youth going through Sunday School and confirmation, the concept of the Trinity never quite made it with me. Even after completing seminary and many years of ministry I’m not sure that I have fully solved the puzzle, because it is a mystery. “It is a mystery in the strict sense, in that it can neither be known by reason apart from revelation, nor demonstrated by reason after it has been revealed, but it is not incompatible with the principles of rational thought.”TPD1DPT
The word “trinity” is not found in scripture, but is thought to be first used by Theophilus of Antioch in 180 A.D. The concept of the Trinity is foreshadowed in the Old Testament and is found more clearly in the New Testament.
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 … (Matthew 28:19)
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. (II Corinthians 13:14)
There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all. (Ephesians 4:4-6)
The doctrine of the Trinity is voiced clearly in our earliest Christian creeds, our doxologies, and our sacramental formulas. It was at the Councils of Nicaea (325 A.D.) and Constantinople (381 A.D.) that the doctrine was confirmed and defended, and has been a central part of our statements of faith ever since.
Some of the early language used to describe the Trinity has been unfortunate. The concept is that God is one in three persons. The word “persons” has come to us from the Latin word persona, which literally means, “mask.” In stage presentations of the first century, one actor would play more than one character. The actor would simply change their persona or mask. Just as unfortunate, in Greek plays the actor playing more than one part was called a hypocritēs, which is where we get our English word, “hypocrite.” This is also the source of our colloquialism “two faced.” You can easily see the difficulty.
The concept of the Trinity is fully intended to do exactly the opposite. The three Persons of God reveal who God is. It is the taking off of the mask. Many different modern metaphors have been offered to explain the conception of the Trinity. Some have used electricity – we know it’s there and that it works, but we can’t see it. Many have used an equilateral triangle, which was very helpful for me. Charles Swindoll tells a story about a Sunday school teacher using a pretzel with its three holes in the middle.TPD2DPT
This is an illustration I particularly enjoy, because it has its roots in my family. As I shared earlier in the chapter, my father’s family attended the Brethren Church in Ohio. This heritage came through my paternal grandmother’s side of the family, the Snyders. Members of my family still live on the Snyder Farm, on Snyder Road near Dayton. The legend is one I’ve heard many times down through the years. If your local grocery store carries Snyder Pretzels, buy a box and read the whole legend usually found on the back.
It seems that the threefold pretzel originated in a European orphanage. The story goes that Mr. Snyder, the cook, wanted to provide the children with a special treat as a reward for saying their daily prayers. It was the custom then for people to kneel in prayer and fold their arms across their heart as an act of reverence and submission. Mr. Snyder came up with the idea of a bread stick folded like the little children’s arms. Prayers were offered in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The pretzel thus became a reward for praying and a visual aid for teaching children about the Trinity.
While these, and all other examples, fall short of fully explaining the mystery of the Trinity, they have helped some to accept the doctrine. I will offer my own frail attempt at explaining how One God can be three, yet one. Visualize, if you would, a beam of light projected through a prism. Once the light passes through the prism it can be seen as many different colors. It is one light going in and the same single light coming out, but we are able to see the different facets of one light. We have one God, but through the concept of the Trinity we can understand a little about God and His different facets – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
He’s not an “It”
The Bible teaches us that the Holy Spirit is God. Furthermore, the Holy Spirit is a person. When Jesus talks about the Holy Spirit in John’s gospel account, He never refers to the Spirit as an “it.” Jesus always speaks of the Holy Spirit as “He.” The Spirit is not a thing, a force, a theory, or even a ghost as we’ve come to understand them. Whoever speaks of the Holy Spirit as an “it” hasn’t been fully taught and perhaps doesn’t fully understand “whom” the Holy Spirit is. Some of you may have caught this error earlier in the chapter when I was sharing my introduction to the Spirit. I intentionally used the term “what” to make this point. The Holy Spirit is not a “what” but a “whom!”
Boy, did I learn that lesson the hard way. While still in seminary, I served a little church in Atlanta as a student pastor. On Pentecost Sunday I was preaching and teaching about the Holy Spirit. At the close of the service, I was standing at the door shaking hands with the folks, feeling quite proud of my effort behind the pulpit. Many were politely feeding my ego. But not Katherine. Katherine was an older lady with a unique personality. She was well read, intelligent, and didn’t mind sharing a bit of her mind, especially if it was different than your bit of mind. I have never forgotten what she said to me going out the door, and I will never stop thanking her for sharing her thoughts.
“Bob, you don’t know the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not an “it,” He’s a “He.” You need to work on that one.”
I did work on that one and still am. I suppose I will still be working on that one when Jesus comes to take me to that place He’s prepared for me. But, the point is clear and important if you and I want to truly know who the Holy Spirit is. The Holy Spirit is God and the Holy Spirit is a person. To resist the Holy Spirit because of a lack of understanding is ruinous. To depersonalize the Holy Spirit for fear of wandering too close is tragic. To run from the presence of the Holy Spirit prevents us from knowing who God really is.
Inching closer to God and allowing our faith to disclose a fresh understanding of the Holy Spirit is not without difficulties. I feel your struggle and identify with your hesitancy. The most obvious problem we have is speaking of the Holy Spirit anthropomorphically. That big word simply means we run into trouble when we try to describe God with human attributes. If we’re not careful we find ourselves recreating God in our image instead of the other way around. But if you stop and think about it, what choice do we have? As human beings we are limited to using words and illustrations that are…well, er…human! Theologians tend to use words that are infamously deep and outrageously unclear, like anthropomorphically. To bring God down to our level, we often use object terms to depict the Holy Spirit. Then we are irreverently guilty of making God nothing more than a graven image. No wonder people are afraid to get close up and personal with the Spirit.
The Holy Spirit cannot be cramped by some deep theological uncertainty and will not be
