The Doctrine of the Trinity

It is good to be with you today. I woke up very early this morning someplace else. And that's how road tripping works. And I am not a lifelong RVer or anything like that. So those of you who are, take pity upon me, pray for me as I learn all of the tricks of the trade.

This is my second trip. I went north the first time. And unfortunately there is something called the Rocky Mountains north of me. I am not sure there is a hill between Conway and here. I didn't run into one.

That was pretty amazing. That was, my truck got into a nice rhythm and that was fun. That was very nice. Until we got off the real nice highways and then it's like, oh, this is interesting. Look at all these, you have so many green things here.

I don't really know what those are living in Phoenix. And I have to keep watching because someday the front air conditioner on my unit will be the casualty of my not watching. And that's going to be a horrible sound when it takes place, I can assure you.

But it's good to be with you. I'm on my way to something called G3, the conference in Atlanta. I actually am supposed to be speaking tomorrow night. So tomorrow is going to be an early morning. And please pray that I don't have any issues between here and there.

It's a pretty long, pretty long drive. And but on Friday, I have the assignment of being the warm up for two guys you've probably never heard of before. They'll be preaching after me. Some guy named Votie Balcombe, another guy named Paul Washer.

So I'm not really sure who they are. But yeah, it's going to be a great time hopefully there at G3. And then I've got a number of stops on the way back where I'm going to be speaking and things like that.

So we're just sort of getting used to this. I'm sort of getting used to it. And when I have been up all day and driving, I generally don't throw on the bow tie and things like that. Hope you don't mind.

Because when you have to hook up power cords and water lines and sewer lines and things like that, it's just sort of like, yeah, OK, we'll be casual for the rest of the day after we do all of that. But it is good to be with you.

We have two topics we're going to be covering today. And it was interesting. I just happened to notice, even though I'm pretty much focused on the road and traffic and things like that, you have to be.

By the way, if you drive like a little Prius or something, could I give you a piece of advice? The reason that those of us who are driving something that's over 40 feet long and, in my case, between 16 and 18 ,000 pounds, the reason there's space between me and the next vehicle in my lane is because I need that space to stop.

And so when you take your Prius and zip in front of me and slam on the brakes, I will turn you into a Ritz cracker really fast. It's amazing what people do in those situations. Just a little common sense type thing goes on there.

But I was driving into Jonesboro, and I looked over to my right, and what, to my wondering eyes, did appear? Then an Islamic center. Yes, a mosque. Have any of you visited that mosque, for example? Y 'all have?

A couple of you have?

OK.

And very nicely built there. It's sort of a small one. It's not real big, but there's one there. And I passed a Newman Center for the Roman Catholic Church on the way in as well. So, obviously, there are issues to be addressed, not so much with the Newman Center on this subject, though I would raise some issues concerning Mary on some aspects of things, but especially with the Islamic center there, there is a real need for Christians who know what they believe, why they believe, and are passionate about what they believe to be able to interact with those folks.

I have a special love in my heart, of course, for the Muslim people, having had the opportunity of engaging in debates with them literally all over the world. Those were the before-corona days, where in 2019 I flew 165 ,000 miles and taught in South Africa, Samara, Russia, Melbourne, Australia, spent two months in London, and will probably never get to do any of that ever again,.

To be perfectly honest with you.

But in those days, I got to debate in mosques in South Africa, and I love the Muslim people, and they need Christians who know what they believe, and why they believe it, and are passionate about those things, and can answer sometimes very challenging questions as well.

And so, let's use that as sort of the example to walk us into our topic. It does seem to me that most evangelicals in the West are Trinitarians of tradition, but not so much of passion. If any of you have seen my book, The Forgotten Trinity, you know that I began that book by telling a story, and by raising the phrase, I love the Trinity, and asking the question, when did you last hear anyone say, I love the Trinity?

You hear people saying, I love Jesus, I love prophecy, I love worship, I love eschatology, you hear all that kind of stuff, but when do you ever hear anyone saying, I love the Trinity? And I think the primary reason for that is that for most of us, it is somewhat of a mystery, and we feel uncomfortable with it.

We recognize, you know, if I right now, for example, I've taught systematic theology and seminary many times, and if I right now said, I'm going to pick one of you out, and I'm going to ask you three questions about the doctrine of the Trinity, and I started looking around.

What's going to happen is a number of you are all of a sudden going to discover that your left big toe is fascinating. You'd never noticed how fascinating that was, right? Because most of us don't want to be put in that position, and one of the problems, I think, is most pastors don't want to be put in that position either.

And one thing I learned a long time ago, my church history professor put it this way, that which is a mist in the pulpit is a fog in the pew. So if the person up here isn't overly clear about a certain thing, it's going to be even less clear in the pew, because they are going to struggle to be able to express themselves.

They may be inconsistent in how they express themselves on these certain beliefs. And so if many of our seminary graduates are not really passionate about and have a clarity of thought concerning the doctrine of the Trinity, if it's just something that's out there, it's historical.

Well, it is historical. It's a major part of the history of the church. But if it's just out there, if it's just in our systematic theologies, and not a part of the everyday experience of a Christian.

Let's put it this way.

How many of us could honestly admit that we could easily go through an entire day of our life without ever contemplating the Trinity? That shouldn't be the case. Because, for example, when you pray, who are you praying to?

Why do you pray in the way that you pray? Why is it that Jesus said in John chapter 14, about the time after his ascension back to the Father, he said, if you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.

Well, how would you ask Jesus something in his name after he's ascended back to the Father? Well, that's why in 1 Corinthians, Christians are known as those who epikaleo, they call upon the name of the Lord.

The Lord there is Jesus. They are praying to Christ. So, how do you do that? Because most people simply pray to the Father. Or, even worse, how many times have you heard someone praying? I don't want to pick on anybody here.

But you've heard something like this. Oh, Heavenly Father, we thank you for giving us this day to gather together. And oh, Heavenly Father, we thank you for coming and dying for us. And no one even twitches.

The Father didn't die for us. The Spirit didn't die for us. It was the Son who became incarnate. And so, I have often heard people make Trinitarian errors in prayer, which indicates a level of confusion on their part as to what role the Divine Persons have had in the Gospel itself.

I think that impacts our worship. I think it impacts our hymnology, the worship of the Church together. Now, there are some groups that are very explicitly Trinitarian, and most of their people really do know the doctrine fairly well.

That doesn't necessarily mean that the rest of their theology is going to be balanced and sound. But there are certain groups that have a good, strong emphasis in those areas, and we can be thankful for that.

But we as believers should recognize that historically the Church has said, this is the defining doctrine of the faith. I mean, at least up until the last few years, I suppose, it's been pretty obvious that we can't have fellowship with, for example,.

Jehovah's Witnesses.

Not that they were looking to have fellowship with us in the first place. But why couldn't we have fellowship with Jehovah's Witnesses? They think the Bible is the Word of God? Yeah, they've got a weird translation of it.

And, yeah, they're constantly trying to convert us and wake us up on Saturday mornings and make us angry with them and things like that. But why can't we have fellowship with Jehovah's Witnesses? Well, because they believe Jesus is Michael the Archangel, and that the Holy Spirit is an impersonal active force, similar to the electricity that is lighting these blinding lights that are so wonderful over on the sides of the room.

He's not a person. He's an it. And so they deny the doctrine of the Trinity. So we can't have fellowship with them. But how can that be when most of our fellowship doesn't actually involve us really understanding what the doctrine of the Trinity is in the first place?

And then those Mormon missionaries, aren't they some of the nicest young men you've ever seen? I mean, they are so clean cut, and they're in good shape, too. They're riding a bike everywhere, and, you know, they want to talk about families, and they wear white shirts, and it's just great and wonderful.

But we don't have fellowship with them either because they believe they can become gods and that God the Father was once a man who lived on another planet and that his firstborn spirit child with one of his many wives was Jesus and then another one of his spirit children was Lucifer and were all his spirit children that lived on another planet that circles a star named Kolob.

And we go, yeah, no, can't do that. Okay. So if it is central to our experience, central to our faith, then shouldn't it be something that we spend more or less time understanding and studying than, say, oh, knowing what's going on in the current popular, whatever the popular TV series are right now, which I will have to admit I don't have a clue.

I don't have any earthly idea what is popular on television these days. But how many Christians know more about that than they do the doctrine of the Trinity? And does that make any sense? And when we then tell people outside the Christian faith about what we believe and they know and can tell by the well, look, when you try to explain something to someone, you know, my daughter is homeschooling my grandkids, and I think it's wonderful and awesome and they're great kids and she's doing a great job.

But when you're a homeschooler, there are certain subjects you do real well in and then there are those subjects you didn't do all that well in school either. And so you're much more dependent upon the textbook and your answers aren't so quick and they aren't so clear and you really can't give good illustrations and things like that.

Can people tell that when we answer questions about the doctrine of the Trinity that we're struggling, that we're having to really put a lot of thought into it? And that would tell them, we may say it's central, but we're not living as if it is.

Now, I don't have time in the amount of time that we have together in this hour, hour 15, something like that, to do a full-orbed seminar on the doctrine of the Trinity. I've done that many times. There's stuff like that online and things like that.

But what I would like to do is look at what is key in defining the doctrine of the Trinity and hopefully lay a foundation for you, clarify some of the key issues, and also make an appeal. I'm a bit concerned about some of the stuff going on in the church today and even in what I would consider to be sound circles of theological discourse and discussion in regards to this doctrine of the Trinity.

When I wrote The Forgotten Trinity, it came out, I think, in 1998. How many of you were not around in 1998? Anybody here that wasn't around in 1998? Oh, there you go. I'm sure you were not around in 1998.

That's true. That's good. So most of you are around anyways. But it was a while back, and I made the argument that I am a biblical Trinitarian. And I laid out what that meant, and fundamentally my assertion was, if you believe scripture is the sole infallible rule of faith in the church, sola scriptura, and if you believe that you have to believe all of scripture, tota scriptura, then the Bible teaches three foundational doctrines that, if you believe all three of them, require you to believe it to be a Trinitarian.

There are some today who would find the foundation of the doctrine of the Trinity in some rather abstract philosophical speculations and would consider my approach to be rather naive, to be perfectly honest with you.

But the fact of the matter is, I can't see any other foundation for believing in the doctrine of the Trinity. And in fact, I would say one of the reasons that liberal denominations or leftist denominations, whatever you want to call them, they're denominations that eventually die.

For example, all the mainline denominations that are just disappearing into the mists of history right now. I just saw an article just this morning that the United Church of Christ just sold its headquarters building, where over 300 people used to work, and it moved into something like the size of a house.

And at the current collapsing rate, they will be completely... They used to have over 2 million members. They will disappear into history by 2045. There won't be anybody left. And there's a reason for that.

They abandon any even semblance of belief in the Bible as Word of God. They basically abandon any semblance of belief in the supernatural. And if you do not believe that this is a consistent revelation from God, there is no reason to believe in the doctrine of the Trinity.

There's none. Why in the world would you believe that God is one being and three persons? Why would you make that distinction? Why would you distinguish between the Father and the Son? Just to give you an illustration, I attended a debate, and I wasn't actually debating, which is very unusual for me to attend a debate when I'm not debating.

But I attended a debate about five, six years ago. It was on the subject of homosexuality, but in the process, the leftist that was pushing the idea of becoming accepting of the LGBTQ movement in the church made the argument that we've already learned to think past and believe past what Paul, a first-century Jew, believed.

And we need to do the same thing to recognize that we need to be able to believe differently than Jesus, a first-century Jew, believed. And this professor at the time was an adjunct for Fuller Theological Seminary, so I went up to him during the break, and I said, Did I hear you correctly when you said that?

And he said, Yeah.

I said, So you don't believe, for example, the Nicene Confession of Faith in Christ? And he said, Do you really think the apostles thought Jesus was God? Now, this is a professor in a theological seminary.

And once you abandon this as your foundation, and once you abandon the commitment to believe this and to believe all of it, Sola Scriptura and Tota Scriptura, there's no reason to believe in the Doctrine of Trinity.

I mean, you can say, Well, traditionally, this group said that, and this group said that, and blah, blah, blah. But that's all it is. It cannot have any kind of authority in your life at all. And if you just, in passing, would like to make an obvious connection between what we're talking about now and what's going on in our society right now, and for some of us, it's sort of like, Oh, we're talking about what sounds like an abstract theological concept over here, but there are people in my country right now who are hoping to be able to make it so that if I don't say whatever they want me to say and do whatever they want me to do and think like they want me to think, that there's going to be a nice, uncomfortable gulag to stick me in very soon.

And so we sort of go, What's more important? You know, I probably should be thinking about this stuff over here and not this abstract theological stuff over there. Well, let me just point something out to you.

One of the primary responses that Christian people are offering to the rise of totalitarianism in our day is the words that we all know from Matthew 28. We all know the Great Commission, Therefore go, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I've commanded you, and along with you always, even at the end of the age.

But there's a therefore there, and the previous verse says what? All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Jesus said, All authority has been given to him in heaven and on earth. Now, if Jesus was just simply a man, those would be insane words.

They would be frightening words. You don't give all authority to anyone other than someone who can bear that authority appropriately. And so when Christians say we are to live our lives in light of the Lordship of Christ, we are making claims about this one.

We're not only claiming he rose from the dead, we're also claiming that he was the eternal Logos who took on human flesh. He is the Son of God incarnate. He's the maker of all things. When I talk to my Muslim friends down the road there, I say to them, I say you can't have a Jesus who's just simply a prophet, a mere Rasul, as the Quran says.

The Jesus of the New Testament gave you every breath of your mouth and every beat of your heart. You can't be neutral toward him. And so what we believe about Jesus is intimately connected to what we believe about the doctrine of the Trinity.

And what we're saying to the world is there is a higher authority than any Congress, than any President, than any Premier, than any Prime Minister. And in fact, every member of every Congress, including that one Democrat who said that the existence of God is not relevant to this Congress, just about what, about a year ago he said that?

Boy, those are words I would not want to take into heaven and answer for. Well, actually it wouldn't be heaven that you'd be answering it for, but into judgment to answer for. But every member of every Congress, every Premier, every Prime Minister, every President will someday stand before the one who rose from the dead to be judged for the deeds done on the body.

And so the doctrine of the Trinity is very much connected to any decisions that we are making today as to how we are to respond to individuals who are attempting to establish a secular totalitarian state wherein everybody gets to think what they tell them to think.

And the Christian says someday there will be a totalitarian state. What did Paul say to the Philippians? That after the resurrection of Jesus, God highly exalted Him and gave Him the name which is above every name, that is the name of Jesus.

What? Every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is kurios, He is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. That is the Christian message, and we should not shirk back from that.

That is not established by military force, however. To recognize who Jesus is at this point in time is the work of the Holy Spirit in a person's heart and life. And only when judgment takes place is there a mighty display of His power.

So that connection made,.

And that short sermon delivered, that connection made, that short sermon delivered, doctrine of the Trinity, I put, are you guys good back there with the thing there? I grabbed just four little slides from my normal presentation to sort of give you a framework to utilize and to function from if you want to take notes or stuff like that.

Like I said, there's an entire presentation we could do here, but I want to give you the framework of the basics as to how to understand the doctrine of the Trinity. This has helped a lot of folks. I hope it helps you, and I hope it makes it easier for you to communicate when you're talking with your friends or if you happen to go by the mosque or whatever.

Are the Jehovah's Witnesses even going door-to-door anymore? I have not seen them. You still got some around here? Okay, all right. In Arizona, I honestly... I know the Mormons went into hiding in March of 2020 and no one's seen them since.

I've jokingly said that they're going to finally come out of their basements and they're going to be so pasty white it's not even... Talk about white and delightsome. They will be white and delightsome at that point in time.

No, really, I don't know what's going on with the Mormons. They shut down their temples. They haven't had an in-person general conference since October of 2019. It's amazing. There's going to be a huge, massive splintering of Mormonism eventually.

Either that or it's just going to whimper and die, one of the two. Anyway, when talking with all those folks, it's extremely helpful to recognize that there are three foundational truths that are biblical teachings that give us the doctrines of Trinity.

Once you know these biblical truths, these three foundations, then when you're talking with someone and you hear their objections or their misunderstandings or whatever else it might be, you're able to focus in on what's really important and you're also able to take them to the key text.

Let the Word of God testify concerning its truthfulness. I think a lot of folks who talk about the Trinity, someone has an objection and we just start becoming, all of a sudden, philosophers. There's nothing wrong with a philosophy that recognizes Christ as the center of philosophy, which most philosophers will not.

But if this is a biblical doctrine, if it's what this presents, and by the way, if you think this is inspired and consistent enough to give you a doctrine like the Trinity, you are today in the minority in what calls itself Christianity.

You go to most seminaries and Bible colleges, maybe not necessarily around here, but I'm sure plenty of them you can find around here too, and their doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture will not be sufficiently high to believe that this is consistent enough to reveal something like this.

That's a sad commentary, but it helps you to explain how people end up where they end up. So the first foundation, the bedrock of the doctrine of the Trinity. What is Trinity? Tri-unity. It's that unity that is monotheism.

There is only one true God.

Now,.

You and I may just sort of assume that. We've just grown up with that, right? But in the history of mankind, that was a radical idea. And especially in the ancient Near East when Israel would say Yahweh created the heavens and the earth.

That was considered incredibly offensive because what you're saying is your God didn't. And in fact, your God doesn't even exist. Everybody back then, every nation had its own gods and they ruled within the borders of that particular nation, that particular country, and that's how you got along with everybody.

You worship your God, we'll worship our God. It's cool. And if you went to war, then if you could steal their God, hey, now you win because their God can't do anything about it anyways. So when Israel comes along and says Yahweh made the heavens and the earth, even great nations, great empires like the Babylonians, their gods came out of the creation.

The creation preexisted them and gave rise to them. So when you have the constant testimony from Genesis through Malachi, or as the Jews would have said, Genesis through 2 Chronicles, their order of canonicity is different than ours, that Yahweh is the maker of all things, that he is the only true God, he knows of no other gods, all the gods of the nations are idols, those were incredibly offensive words to the people around them.

But everybody knows how a Jewish person would identify themselves, right? You know what would identify a Jewish person in the days of Jesus or before that was you said the Shema. You would, each day you would pray the Shema.

Shema means hear in Hebrew. So Shema Yisrael, Yahweh Eloheinu, Yahweh Echad. Hear O Israel, Yahweh is our God, Yahweh is one. And that's how they were identified. That was their profession of faith. And that was a profession of faith that was very offensive to the people around them.

Most of us would go, yeah I know the Bible teaches there's only one true God and because we assume it, unless you've spent time witnessing the Mormons, who don't believe there's only one true God, you might struggle to find all the passages in Scripture that say it, but I would just suggest to you if you want to read and contemplate this particular truth, go to what's called the trial of the false gods in Isaiah 40 -48 chapters 40 -48.

And there Yahweh places the idols of the people on trial. And in the process reveals so much about himself and the unique attributes of his divine being by demonstrating that the gods of the peoples are just idols.

And interestingly enough one of the primary arguments that that section gives is the true God knows the future. The idols cannot tell you the future but the true God knows the future because he's the creator of all things.

So monotheism, the fact that there is only one true God, and that does not change in the New Testament. We don't have one God in the Old Testament and one in the New Testament. If you want to see especially how this is, just for a second look at 1 Corinthians chapter 8 with me.

1 Corinthians chapter 8, if you've not seen this before and I get to show it to you first well great, then you will always thank me for this. But 1 Corinthians chapter 8, remember I just quoted to you the Shema, and that's what defined the Jewish people.

But in 1 Corinthians chapter 8, Paul's talking about things sacrifice to idols. Because back in that day if you wanted to go pick up a pound of beef to make dinner tonight you'd go to the meat market and you knew if you were in some place like Corinth, every bit of that meat in the meat market had been offered in one of the pagan temples to one of the gods.

So it had been put on the altar and sacrifice had been made and then it's taken out the back door and sent to the meat market and sold. And so there were some Christians who knew this and their consciences were troubled by this.

And so Paul's discussing this in 1 Corinthians chapter 8, and he says, you know, there's no such thing as an idol of the world. There's no god but one. There are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth as there are many gods and many lords.

And so there are all sorts of deities that people will identify. If you were in Corinth, there was a deity on almost a temple to a deity on almost every corner. But then he says in verse 6, yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for him and one Lord Jesus Christ by whom are all things and we exist through him.

Now, I have all sorts of cool graphics I could illustrate this, but what Paul does in verse 6 is he takes the Shema. If you look at verse 6 in Paul's writing in Greek and you look at the Shema from the Old Testament in Greek and what's called the Greek Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament which is what everybody in Corinth would be reading at this point in time and you compare the two of them, you can see Paul is taking the Shema where it says one God, Lord is Kurios, Yahweh.

He's using all the same language and he's expanding it in light of the Incarnation. And here is an early, most people believe, early Christian creed. Some English translations even put verse 6 in poetic form to show that that's probably what it is.

But this is an early Christian confession of faith, an early Christian creed. There is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for him. Notice the creation aspect. And one Kurios, that's the Greek word that translated the name of God, Yahweh, in the Old Testament.

Jesus Christ by whom are all things and we exist through him. So this doesn't change then. You don't have monotheism in the Old Testament and Trinitarianism in the New Testament. Trinitarianism is a monotheistic belief and this is one of the places where our Muslim friends can be very confused.

Because it seems like the author of the Quran was greatly confused at this very point as well. Every time the Quran says do not say three referring to the Trinity, the next line is there is only one God, Allah.

And so the author of the Quran thought that whatever it was we were saying implied polytheism. And that simply is not the case if you understand the doctrine of the Trinity and it does not seem that he did.

So monotheism is the foundation. It has to be rock solid at the bottom. The second foundation is where most of us struggle. So let me come back to it because the third foundation we sort of understand and that is the co-equality and co-eternality of the person.

So in other words if you've ever tried to demonstrate the deity of Christ, the places where Jesus is called God where he's described as being the creator, being eternal things like that. Discuss the person of the Holy Spirit and you've gone to Acts 5, you've not lied to God but you've lied to the Holy Spirit and so on and so forth.

You've been defending the third foundation and that is the co-equality and co-eternality of Father, Son and Spirit. And so that's where the deity of Christ arguments come in with Jehovah's Witnesses or other Unitarian groups and things like that.

And so it's important to know those things but that's the third foundation. Where a lot of people struggle is foundation number two. The existence of three divine persons. How can you say one in the first foundation and three in the second foundation?

And so there are a lot of groups, they will try to confuse us by saying well you're saying one plus one plus one equals three. No we're not. Well, you said one in the first and you're saying three in the second and you can't tell us what the difference is.

Well, but we assert there is a difference. We are saying that there is one being of God and three divine persons that share perfectly that one being. Well, how do you distinguish between being and person?

Well, we distinguish between being and person every single day. It's a natural part of our language. So, I don't know if any of you very few of you in the room are old enough to remember but back in the 1970s there have been some really dumb things.

Remember mood rings? Anybody remember mood rings? A couple of you are going, I'm not admitting that. No, I don't remember mood rings. No. We had mood rings and I remember I think I was in junior high school when everybody was running around with mood rings.

But right around the same time someone came up with the idea of having pet rocks. Pet rocks. Now, the nice thing about it was they weren't expensive because they are rather plentiful in almost anywhere you live.

You can find rocks of pretty much any size shape you want. Paint some eyes and stuff. It thankfully didn't last for a long time but the fact was you could take a rock and you could spend a lot of time painting it very nicely and making it very well, as attractive as a rock can be, I suppose.

But if you picked up that rock and you swung it at somebody and you hit somebody with it, you could go to jail for assault with a deadly weapon, right? Why? Because the rock has being. It exists. And how do I know that?

Throw it at my face and I will know that it exists. It can prove it exists. However, all the painting in the world all the nice stories about how much your pet rock means to you will never make it personal.

And how do I know that? Because I could put my pet rock right there and I could go, I love you, pet rock. You just mean the world to me. And you know what? Its expression would not change. It would not care because it's not personal.

Or I could call it every name in the book. It still wouldn't care. It has being, but it's not personal. We distinguish between the two. Now, my cats have being and in a way they can tell when I'm angry at them because they just ripped up something I didn't want them to rip up.

I remember I still have a couple Bibles that I bought when I was younger that my cats got to and the spines are just, those are great for sharpening those claws and just all torn up. And they knew I was not happy with them, but they forgot about that by the next day.

They can't see themselves as part of cat kind, for example. They cannot recognize their own personhood over against any other cat. What beings do we know in Scripture.

Are.

Properly described as personal? Well, God is. He uses personal pronouns. The angels seem to be as well. And human beings. We know that we exist in human kind. We can distinguish ourselves from others.

So we see the connection we have to all other people as far as our humanity is concerned, but we also recognize that we are not all other people. We are distinguished from all other people. And so when we're talking about the doctrine of the Trinity, we are distinguishing between being and person.