THREE DISTINCT PERSONS

Stuart Olyott

The purpose of this chapter is to emphasize the point which has just been made. The Father is not the Son. The Son is not the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not the Father. Each is God. Each one is all of God. But each is distinct from the other. This truth is not hard to state, but it is totally impossible to understand.

Some people, in trying to make this truth understandable, have merely succeeded in denying it. Usually one of three things has happened.

Some, well aware that the Bible teaches that God is three, have ended up by denying that God is one. They have fallen into the trap of thinking of the three Persons as three separate divine beings. In other words, they have become tritheists--those who believe in three gods.

Others, well aware that the Bible teaches that God is one, have denied the deity of the Son, and the deity of the Holy Spirit. They have refused to accept these two Persons as God. This leaves them with but one divine Person, who is the only divine Being. Such people are called Unitarians, or Arians.

Others, also aware that the Bible teaches that God is one, have thought of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, as one and the same identical Person. There is but one divine Being, who appears at different times in different ways. The names, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, merely describe the different aspects and functions of the one divine Person.

If we have grasped and believed the teaching of the previous chapters, the first two of these errors should be no threat to us. We have seen that God is one. We have seen that each of the three Persons is God. But while we believe both of these facts, we must continue to stress that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are distinct from each other. This will preserve us from the third error.

The titles, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, are not the names of the same Person merely appearing in different forms at different times. They are distinct Persons. Hence in John 12:28 the Father says 'I'; in John 17:4 the Son says 'I'; and in Acts 13:2 the Holy Spirit says 'I'. There are three who are God, and each can say 'I'; and none of them says 'we'. But they have in common one infinite intelligence, power and will. So when we say that they are distinct Persons, we do not mean that one is as separate from the other as one human person is from every other. They are but one God. To us, their mode of existence in the one substance is a profound mystery. There is no way we can explain it. All that is revealed to us is that the Three are distinct as 'one Spirit... one Lord... one God and Father' (Ephesians 4:4-6); 'the same Spirit... the same Lord... the same God' ( 1 Corinthians 12:4-6). They are so very obviously three. And yet it is impossible to forget that they are but one. We must not believe this simply because it is the historic faith of the Christian church. Second-hand faith is not living faith. We need to see this truth for ourselves in the Bible. Why not look up at least some of the Bible references as we go along? This should be particularly easy over the next few pages, where so many of the references are to the same Bible book–John's Gospel.

We saw in chapter 4 that the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son, is God, and that He is the perfect expression of the Father (John 1:18). But it is also revealed that Christ is sent by the Father (John 5:23-24); came from Him (John 16:28); returns to Him (John 14:12; 16:28); receives His commandment (John 10:18; 14:31); does His will (John 4:34; 6:38); loves Him (John 14:3 I); is loved by Him (John 3:35); addresses prayer to Him, using the words 'thee' and 'thou' as He does so (John 11:41; 17:3; 12:27-28), and speaks of Him as 'he', 'him', and 'himself' (John 5:19-26). We also read of the Father speaking to the Son, and addressing Him as 'thou', and not 'I' (Mark 1:11; Luke 3:22); speaking of Him as 'him' (Mark 9:7); and giving an audible reply to one of His prayers (John 12:27-28). It is plain that the Father is not the Son, and that the Son is not the Father. Their very titles suggest this, but now the truth cannot be missed; and yet each is God, as we have seen.

But that is not all. By reading John 14:16, 26; 15:26 and 16:13-15, we learn something further. The Comforter, the Holy Spirit, is also distinct from the Father, and just as distinct from the Son. Jesus asks the Father to send Him. The Father sends Him in the Son's name. Jesus Himself sends Him from the Father. The Spirit glorifies the Son and takes what the Father has given to the Son and shows it to His disciples. We shall look at all these verses again in chapter 8. But at this point we note that each phrase is chosen to make it abundantly clear that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are distinct from each other. One is not the other.

Of course there are other passages where it is plain that God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are distinct. Early in the Gospel of Matthew (3:13-4:1) we read the account of the baptism of our Lord Jesus Christ. As He comes up out of the water, the Spirit of God descends on Him, and at the same time the voice of the Father sounds from heaven, acknowledging Him as His beloved Son, in whom He is well pleased. Could there be a clearer indication of the distinction between the Persons than this–the Father in heaven, the Son on earth and the Spirit descending?

In the last verses of the same Gospel we read of our Lord's commission to make disciples of all nations, and to baptize the converts 'in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit' (Matthew 28:19). The use of the word 'and' in this sentence is sufficient to indicate that the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit is not the Father. And yet the unity of God is not broken: the converts are to be baptized, not in the 'names', but 'in the name'.

We see something similar in 2 Corinthians 13:14, where Paul's benediction is: 'The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all. Amen.' Once more the word 'and' shows that we must regard the Three as distinct from one another. Yet, as we have seen, Paul clearly believed in the unity of God. He invokes all three Persons in his benediction, and clearly accepts God's three-ness. He can do this, while still maintaining God's one-ness. We say it again, although the word 'Trinity' is not found in the Bible, the doctrine of the Trinity is there for all to see.

But there is another word which we have used a good deal in this book which we have not found in any of the Bible passages we have examined. It is the word 'Person'. Something needs to be said about this.

The doctrine of the Trinity is not hard to find in the Bible, but Christians have often found it hard to express. It is not hard to say that there is but one God. It is not hard to say that there are three who are God. The difficulty comes when somebody asks, 'Three what?' You cannot say 'three thirds', because the Father is not a part of the one God, but the whole of God; and the same is true of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. You cannot say 'three gods', because that means that you fall into tritheism, and deny God's unity. So what do you call the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit? They are the three...? of the Godhead. You cannot go through history leaving a blank. You must fill it in, either by finding a suitable word, or by coining a new one.

A number of different words have been used through the centuries, and all of them have proved inadequate in some way or another. Greek writers generally used the word hupostasis ('hypostasis'), while Latin authors used persona ('mask', or 'character in a play'), substantia ('substance'), and sometimes, especially in the Middle Ages, subsistentia ('subsistence'). The use of different words simply underlines the fact that none of them was considered to be really good enough to express what was wanted. Our word 'person' is a take-over of persona, and is the word which has come to be used most often in the English-speaking world.

But it is a word which we must use most carefully. We must certainly not use it in its original Latin sense. The three Persons of the Godhead are not like an actor in a play, who appears in three different roles or costumes. But nor must we use the word 'person' as we do in ordinary speech. Then we use it of a distinct and individual human being, who has his own self-consciousness–he is conscious of his own separate identity. In God there are not three individuals alongside each other and separate from each other, who, at least in theory, can act against one another. To think like that will bring us back into tritheism. By 'Persons' we mean that there are personal self-distinctions within the divine Being, who can use of themselves the word 'I', and of the others the words 'thou' and 'he'. But we do not mean that the divine Being is capable of being divided, or is to be thought of as a collection of three separate individuals. Mysteriously, one Person can be said to be 'in' another (John 17:21). God is 'one indivisible essence'. In this sense He is one. But this divine essence exists eternally as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. In this sense, God is three. We cannot conceive how three Persons can have among them but one intelligence and one will. But it needs to be underlined that we believe it, not because we can grasp or explain it, but because this is what God has revealed about Himself in His Word. He is

Once we think of Him in any different way, we shall have a view of God which is different from that of the Scriptures. We shall have created a God of our own imagining. This is idolatry.

We are deeply conscious that the Trinity is a mystery beyond our comprehension. The glory of God is incomprehensible. There are no analogies for what we have been describing. There is no way we can picture this truth. You can have three men, each of whom is equally human, and distinct from the other. But at the end of the day you still have three men, and not one. The three Persons of the Godhead are each equally God, and distinct from each other. The mystery is that you still have but one God. This God does not exist outside of, or apart from, the three Persons. He has no other existence, except as the three Persons of the Trinity. Whatever you can say about God, you can say about each of the Persons, for each of them is God, and has equal dignity in the Godhead. In this sense one of them cannot be either over or under the others, and what you can say about one of them, you can say about the other two.

And yet, having said that, there are things which can be said about the Father, which cannot be said about the Son or the Holy Spirit. Similarly, there are things which can be said about the Son alone, and about the Holy Spirit alone. In the words of the Westminster Larger Catechism, 'There be three persons in the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one true, eternal God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory; although distinguished by their personal properties.' It is to this question of their 'personal properties' that we now come.