Can You Explain The Trinity? ***Theology from a Golf Cart: Episode 01***

Explaining the Doctrine of the Trinity

Hey guys, this is Pastor Keith, and this is Theology from a Golf Cart. Now, this is my first episode, and I'm doing this at the end of a very long day. I just wanted to get out and do something kind of fun, and I know I'm low on light right now, so I hope this looks okay on video.

But as I was looking, I posted a video saying I was going to start doing Theology from a Golf Cart, and I looked through some of the questions, and one of the questions that was on there was the question of explaining the Trinity, and I thought, what a fun way to start out this series that I'm going to do.

I might do these once a week. I don't know how often I'm going to do it, but it's a lot of fun. I'm driving the Golf Cart around my neighborhood, just enjoying being out, kind of enjoying the cool night air, and talking about Theology, and thought you guys might want to do it with.

Me.

So, somebody said, can you explain the Doctrine of the Trinity? Well, I can explain what we teach when we say we believe the Doctrine of the Trinity, and I've talked about this a lot on my show. I've talked about this a lot in lessons, and seminars, and even in my book.

I wrote a book called God in Three Persons. It's going to be coming out. It was self-published, and now it's being re-edited, and it's going to go through a publisher, which is really cool. It's going to come out this year, so I'll be telling everybody about that when it comes.

Out.

One God in Essence, Three Persons

So, what do we mean by the Doctrine of the Trinity? Well, the Doctrine of the Trinity is the doctrine that is defined in this way, and the simplest definition for the Doctrine of the Trinity is that God is one in his essence, or in his being, but that God is three in his person, and so we are distinguishing between God's being and his person, and that's difficult to understand exactly how those things work out, but that is how we are defining this phrase, and so when I'm teaching the church, and I'm teaching them how to define the Trinity, I'll say, here's the definition.

God is one in essence. He is three in person. These three persons are co-equal, co-eternal, and distinct, meaning we can distinguish between the Father, and the Son, and the Son, and the Spirit in relation to what we call the economic trinity, what the Father does, what the Son does, what the Spirit does, and yet as far as ontology in regard to his being, he is one in essence, and so we define God that way because this is how the Bible has described God to us.

God has described, or the Bible has described God as one. The Bible clearly teaches that there is one God. There aren't other gods. There is not a pantheon of gods. We are not polytheists. We believe in one God, and so, and we see this in several places.

Deuteronomy 6, obviously, the Shema, which says, Here, O Israel, the Lord thy God, the Lord is one, right, and there are many other passages. In Isaiah, it says there's no other God before me, and there will be no other gods after me, right, and so there are places where the Bible clearly defines God as one, and yet there are three persons in the Bible who are called God.

The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit Are Called God

The Father is called God, obviously. Jesus is called God in several passages. John 1 -1, In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God, and who.

Is the Word?

He's the one who became flesh, according to John 1 -14. John 8 -58, Jesus said, Before Abraham was, I am, referring to himself by that title, I am, and so Jesus identifies himself with God as God, and so there are two persons who we know are identified as God, and then there's a third person, and that is the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is called God, and we see this as in the book of Acts, when Ananias and Sapphira lie, Peter says, You've lied to the Holy Spirit, you've not lied to men, but you've lied to God. The Holy Spirit is always given a personal pronoun.

The pronoun is he, not it. The Spirit is not just a force, as is described in certain cultish systems would say the Spirit is just a force, that's not what we learn in Scripture, rather what we learn in Scripture is that the Holy Spirit is a person, and he's distinguished from the Son.

The Distinction Between the Persons and the Economic Trinity

Jesus said, I'm going to go to the Father and I'm going to send you alas pericletos, that's another comforter, one like me, alas means another of the same kind, whereas heteros means another of a different kind, and so we have God as one in essence, he has three in person, these three persons are all demonstrated to have an equality as far as being God, they are all considered to be eternal, Jesus was in the beginning with God, he did not become in the beginning with God, and that's an important verbal distinction, he already was in the beginning, he didn't come into existence as some people believe, and so when we arrive at that sort of construction, it does bring up other questions, but at least we can rightfully understand what we mean by the doctrine of the Trinity when we say God is one in his essence, he is three in his persons, this is why we're not modalists, we don't say God adopts three different modes of being, but rather he is three persons that interact within that one being of God, I like the word share, and this is actually an idea we get from scripture, because in John 17, Jesus says, when he's praying to the Father, he says glorify me with that glory that we shared before the world existed, well the Old Testament says God shares his glory with no one, so when Jesus says we had this glory, this glory we had together before the world existed, that idea of sharing the glory of God, that's sharing the being, the essence of God, and so that's a very short, very brief, very golf cart understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity, I hope it was helpful, I'm losing light, I hope that this new series is going to be enjoyable for you guys, and I hope this little setup that I have works well, so if you like this, please let me know in the comments, if you have other questions you want me to deal with on golf cart theology, please let me know, and we'll keep doing these videos as long as you keep watching them, so if you like this video, hit the thumbs up button, and if you didn't, hit the thumbs down button, twice.