Why Can't Theologians Explain the Trinity Doctrine?
Many people assume that the Holy Spirit, along with God the Father
and Jesus Christ the Son, form what is commonly known as the Trinity.
The doctrine of the Trinity expresses a belief in one God who exists
in three distinct but equal persons. Is the Holy Spirit truly a third
divine person, along with the Father and Jesus?
In spite of these assumptions, the word Trinity doesn't appear anywhere
in the Bible. In fact, it did not come into common use as a religious
term until several centuries after the last books of the Bible were
completed.
Notice this admission in the New Bible Dictionary: "The
term 'Trinity' is not itself found in the Bible. It was first used by
Tertullian at the close of the 2nd century, but received wide currency
and formal elucidation [clarification] only in the 4th and 5th centuries" (1996, "Trinity," emphasis
added).
The dictionary goes on to explain that "the formal doctrine of
the Trinity was the result of several inadequate attempts to explain
who and what the Christian God really is ... To deal with these problems
the Church Fathers met in 325 at the Council of Nicaea to set out an
orthodox biblical definition concerning the divine identity." However,
it wasn't until 381, "at the Council of Constantinople, [that]
the divinity of the Spirit was affirmed ..." (ibid.).
We see, then, that the doctrine of the Trinity wasn't formalized until
long after the Bible was completed and the apostles long dead in their
graves. It took later theologians several centuries to sort out what
they believed concerning the Holy Spirit.
And by no means are theologians' explanations of the Trinity doctrine
clear. A.W. Tozer, in his book The Knowledge of the Holy, writes
that the Trinity is an "incomprehensible mystery" and that
attempts to understand it "must remain forever futile." He
admits that churches, "without pretending to understand," have
nevertheless continued to teach this doctrine (1961, pp. 17-18).
