Some people dismiss it as an invention of the church, while others ignore it as a point of doctrine that theologians in ivory towers talk about because they have nothing useful to do.
But the truth of the Trinity is more important and relevant than you could imagine.
This
isn’t something that developed in the early centuries of the Christian era.
It’s something that is found right on the very first page of the Bible. In
Genesis 1:26 God says, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our
likeness”, showing us that within the being of God there is a plurality of
persons – there is relationship, communication, love. This plurality within the
nature of God is all throughout the Old Testament, and then is fully revealed
in the incarnation of the Son and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
But
why does it matter?
If God
were just a single solitary person, then it would make no sense to say that His
nature is love, because love requires an object as well as a subject. C. S.
Lewis said, “All sorts of people are fond of repeating the Christian statement
that ‘God is love’. But they seem not to notice that the words ‘God is love’
have no real meaning unless God contains at least two Persons. Love is
something that one person has for another person. If God was a single person,
then before the world was made, He was not love.”[1] Real love isn’t
self-centred but is self-giving (1 Cor. 13:5). A unitarian God could not have
love as His essence.
Aristotle,
the Greek philosopher reasoned that, since God is the greatest good, He must be
loving and kind, but it makes no sense to say that God was loving and kind when
He was all on His own, so the universe must be eternal in order that there
would be an object for God’s love. But this makes God dependent on His creation
– He would not be self-sufficient, but rather would need something outside
Himself for His fulfilment.
Only
in the doctrine of the Trinity do we have a God who is essentially and
eternally loving and self-sufficient. He experienced and enjoyed love, yet
didn’t need creatures to do it.
So, if
you think love is real and love is good, trace that river back to the source.
The source of love isn’t mindless matter, an impersonal life-force, or a
unitarian god, but a tri-personal God who existed forever in loving
relationship. If you deny the Trinity you have no foundation for affirming the
reality or virtue of love. Love is real and good because it flows from the
nature of God – the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
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