6 Points to Help You Talk about the Trinity (Tsouloufis)
My Friend Dan Tsouloufis wrote a brief explanation on how we as Christians are to talk about God as a Trinity. I think its really helpful:
As believers, we need to be able to articulate the doctrine of the Trinity in concise language that’s understandable and pithy. This doctrine is foundational to our understanding of who God is and how God reveals Himself to us. The below 6 points are my attempt to state the doctrine as such.
1. God is a unity in His essential nature. His substance is indivisible. Thus, there is one God and God is one.
2. Yet, He exists as a Godhead of three persons (from thee Latin “trinitas”). Thus, there is real personality, communication and love within the Trinity.
3. Each person of the Trinity is co-equal and co-eternal with the other. The Bible clearly affirms the unity of God as well as the full deity of the 3 persons in the Godhead. The unity of the Godhead is affirmed in terms of essence or substance, while the diversity of the Godhead is expressed in terms of person.
4. It is important to recognize that the doctrine of the Trinity does not fully explain the mysterious nature of God. Rather, it sets the boundaries outside of which we must not step. It sets the limits of human speculation about the nature of God. As the Athanasian Creed states so simply but profoundly: “We worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the Persons nor dividing the Substance.” And in another line it states: “In this Trinity, nothing is before or after, nothing is greater or less: but all three Persons co-eternal, together and equal.”
5. We affirm the doctrine of the Trinity because God has chosen to reveal Himself in this way to us, first by means of His Incarnation, and second by means of His Word. In the Incarnation, Jesus is the embodiment and self-revelation of God. Because God is Triune, we can know Him better, since the Son revealed the Father through the Incarnation, and the Holy Spirit inspired and illuminates God’s Word to us.
6. In relation to the Trinity, we affirm that Jesus is God in essence, Son of God in personality. And we affirm that the Holy Spirit, the Helper whom Jesus promised would come, is equally God in essence, yet distinct in His person in relation to God the Father and God the Son.