How The Christian Trinity Is Unique

Undifferentiated concepts of God, like God as nature, or God as the evolution of the universe, yield little meaning because they are so vague they fail to grasp the distinctly differentiated aspects of God’s personhood that offer concrete points of integration with human beings. 

The Bible holds a unique place among world religions because what it records about God and persons occurs over several millennia, arising out of particular historical situations and concrete interpersonal encounters. This creates a public account open to all peoples, a common legacy to humankind. “I have spoken openly to the world,” Jesus says. “I said nothing in secret” (Jn 18:20). The cohesiveness of Scripture comes from the divine Subject who guides the biblical narrative, and the human subjects who interact with God.

Bible

Two singular concepts arise from the Bible that reveal how this divine Subject, this God of the Bible, interfaces with people, concepts that arise from the Old Testament and carry forward into the New. 

The singular message of the Old Testament lies in the revelation of a personal transcendent Creator, a novel concept even in the world of ancient comparative religions. 

The singular message of the New Testament lies in the revelation that right thinking about God, or doctrine, combined with personal faith in God, leads to reconciliation and friendship with God, a thesis original to religions of that day.

Christianity

Christianity puts together the Old and New Testament into the synthesis of orthodox doctrine about the personal transcendent Creator, asserting that God can be known and loved by understanding his personality and attributes. This requires a rhythm of integration and differentiation, so that people can perceive, name, and engage the personal transcendent God.

Just how does God disclose and differentiate himself from all the other claims to deity in world history? He simply says, “I AM” (Ex 3:14; Jn 8:58). God’s essence, therefore, constitutes self-existent personality without beginning or end.

"I AM"

 

From this foundational premise, God continues to reveal himself throughout Scripture with names that provide clarification. From the Old Testament come the names God Almighty, for example, and Lord of Hosts, Holy One of Israel, and Ancient of Days—surely meant to convey awe and wonder, mystery and majesty. Not the average idol in the land of Canaan, or the average tribal god. This is God the one and only, Maker of heaven and earth, a transcendent-personal presence to be reckoned with. 

In the New Testament comes increased differentiation, this time toward personalizing God’s immanence, his holy and loving presence in the world. Now God becomes entirely personal—so personal that his name is Jesus. Human, yes, but also divine: one Person with two distinct natures, co-existing without mixture or confusion, in one interpersonal self: Jesus Christ, the Son of Man and Son of God. Here is differentiation, in rhythm with integration. 

Jesus Christ

And through Jesus, God the Almighty becomes differentiated as God the Father, Holy Father, Righteous Father…Our Father. And whom do the Father and Son reveal but the differentiated Holy Spirit: the Spirit of the Father, Spirit of Christ, and Spirit of the Lord.

And what is the sum total of God’s self-communication in the Old and New Testament story? 

One God in Three Persons, blessed Trinity.

For more, read: 

CHRISTIAN PERSONALITY THEORY:

Compass Psychotheology Applied

Christian Personality Theory

   

The Inner Life of The Christian Trinity

Christ’s personality both shows how human beings are called to live and provides insight into all three persons of the Trinity, who are One in creating and redeeming humanity, inviting people to develop whole personalities and loving relationships, where loneliness and hostility are diminished, and where individuals learn to express their uniqueness in as original a manner as the Lord’s.

While God may be said in a certain sense to remain inscrutable and beyond human knowing, nevertheless, in another sense, because of the Trinity’s direct appearance and involvement in human history, it is possible to house the Self Compasses of each Trinity member within the unity of one Godhead. This arrangement, for diagrammatic purposes, illustrates the unity of the Triune God, while at the same time differentiating between the personal identities of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

                                                                     

The individual Self Compasses show that Trinity members relate through rhythms of communication and communion, the same way that they call human beings to relate to one another and to the Trinity. If one only looks for it, the Scriptures from Genesis to Revelation pulse with examples of God as a supremely innovative agent, brimming with creative motivation and action. Conceptualizing God’s personality as three Self Compasses within a larger circle of the divine self does not imply that God is containable, but rather implies an interpersonal selfhood that allows for infinite variations of self-expression and interpersonal exchanges among Trinity members who are nevertheless one God.

God’s inscrutability lies primarily in the fact that no one can predict what the Lord will say, think, or do next, other than in the compass sense that whatever God does will not contradict the health and wholeness of his being.

The larger circle encompassing the Trinity portrays the mystery of God’s diversity-in-unity, a circle that is not a physical barrier, but rather symbolizes the one God who is all in all. The back-and-forth arrows connecting each Trinitarian member to the others indicate how each Person exists in everlasting rhythmic presence to the other two, empowering the exchange of ideas, conversations, and emotions within an overarching essence of love, expressed through caring self-transcendence that respects, delights in, knows, and wills the highest good of one another.

Some such encounters between Trinity members are recorded for our benefit in Scripture. At Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan River, the Father says, communicating his own point of view and self-identity, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” He is not talking to himself the way a person might self-reflect, but actually addressing the Son with sincere words that convey the depth of his love for Jesus. At the same moment, the Holy Spirit descends upon Jesus, anointing him with power for ministry, and then drives him into the wilderness where Christ must stand alone for a season, firming up his identity as the Son while learning to rely completely upon the Father and Spirit in preparation for his public ministry.

 

Compass psychotheology asserts that this dynamic interplay of the three Persons who are one God has always distinguished God’s essence, and will always characterize God’s relationality (theologians call this the immanent Trinity, meaning what God is outside of human history). Most importantly from the human perspective, this interplay creates a trustworthy basis for the Trinity presence as infinitely caring and intentionally creative dialogue partners across the temporal span of human history (the economic Trinity, which means God’s self-revelation in space, time, history, and personality).

Now note how the Trinity diagram focuses on the phrase “I AM.” Of all the names attributed to God in the Bible—the Lord of Hosts, the Lord God Almighty, the Holy One of Israel—there is none more revealing than “I AM,” for when God reveals this name to Moses (Ex 3:14), and Christ applies this name to himself (Jn 8:58), God means that his existence as the “I AM” transcendent Subject is the ultimate ground of being that renders all else contingent and temporal.

Finally, notice how the “I AM” of each Trinitarian Person fully indwells the others, showing the interpenetration of freely willed devotion, each Trinity member’s identity so secure, so engaged in self-transcendent love, that there is no existence apart from being one God.

In other words, each Person of the Godhead does not consider self-identity and autonomy something to be grasped at or competitively sought, but rather as foundational to adoring, cherishing, and actualizing the uttermost fulfillment of one another.

The Trinity indwells one another non-invasively and non-competitively, generating the perpetual glory of being one God, as Jesus explains: “I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (Jn 17: 21-23).

For more, read:

TRUSTING IN THE TRINITY: COMPASS PSYCHOTHEOLOGY APPLIED