“The doctrine of the Trinity has always bristled with difficulties, and therefore it is no wonder that the Church in its attempt to formulate it was repeatedly tempted to rationalize it and to give a construction of it which failed to do justice to the Scriptural data.” — Louis Berkhof
The following essay is from Ligonier Ministries. Author unknown.
The early church father Tertullian is believed to have been the first to use the word, Trinity. In his treatise Adversus Praxean, Tertullian refers to the “Trinitas unius Divinitatis, Pater et Filii et Spiritus Sancti” (the Trinity of the One Divinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit).
Tertullian provided the building blocks regarding the multiplicity of persons (Latin personae), but later fathers provided the essential vocabulary to understand and defend Trinitarian doctrine. Athanasius was the great defender of the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son—i.e., that the Father and Son are the same in essence—after the Council of Nicaea, and the Cappadocian Fathers (Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa) drew the clear distinction between the meaning of essence and person.
The Cappadocian Fathers were the determinative voices in the outcome of the Council of Constantinople, which built on the Council of Nicaea by clarifying the distinct personhood of the Holy Spirit in light of His unity of essence with the Father and the Son. Nicholas Needham explains, “The Cappadocians fashioned the language of Trinitarian orthodoxy that we still use today. In addition to the term ousia for the divine nature, they defined the term hypostasis to express the reality of the divine persons.”
In the early church, the deity of the Son was the central point of doctrinal contention. The Christian church’s definitive presentation of the core truths of the doctrine of the Trinity was established at the Council of Nicaea (AD 325) and at the Council of Constantinople (AD 381). In both councils, Christological error was refuted and doctrinal precision established. The essential elements of the deity of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity were codified in the Nicene Creed (also known as the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, because it was refined and expanded at the Council of Constantinople).
After the Cappadocians, Augustine further refined established trinitarian distinctions. His De Trinitatis (On the Trinity) is one of the most significant theological works in church history. Herman Bavinck explained the importance of Augustine’s articulation of the Trinity:
[Augustine] does not derive the Trinity from the Father but from the unity of the divine essence, nor does he conceive of it as accidental but rather as an essential characteristic of the divine being. It belongs to God’s very essence to be triune. In that regard personhood is identical with God’s being itself. . .. Each person . . . is identical with the entire being and equal to the other two or all three together. With created beings that is different. One person does not equal three but, says Augustine, “in God that is not so, for the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit together are not a greater being than the Father alone or the Son alone; but these three substances or persons, if they must be so called, are at one and the same time equal to each individually” (De trin., VII, 6).
One particular phrase became controversial over the course of church history. In the eleventh century, the Western church added the word filioque (and the Son) to the Nicene Creed, in keeping with centuries of liturgical practice and the biblical testimony that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son, not the Father alone. Eastern Orthodox churches rejected (and continue to reject) the filioque clause, which contributed to the break between the Eastern and Western churches in 1054.
The Reformed confessions and catechisms of the seventeenth century concur with the early and medieval church regarding the doctrine of the Trinity. The Westminster Standards summarize the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity. The Westminster Shorter Catechism states, “There are three persons in the Godhead; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory” (Q&A 5). The Westminster Larger Catechism notes that the members of the Godhead are “distinguished by their personal properties” (Q&A 9), which are defined in this way: “It is proper to the Father to beget the Son, and to the Son to be begotten of the Father, and to the Holy Ghost to proceed from the Father and the Son from all eternity” (Q&A). This distinction serves to delineate the order of existence among the members of the Godhead. The Father is commonly said to be the first person of the Godhead, the Son is the second person, and the Spirit is the third person. This does not suggest any subordination in the Godhead. Rather, it reflects the persons of the Godhead in their personal capacity and their order of operation. Salvation comes to us from the Father through the Son and by the Holy Spirit, and we return praise to God by the Holy Spirit through the Son unto the Father.
“In the formula of the Trinity, the church bows to sacred Scripture, honoring both the unity of God and the distinctions among the persons of the Godhead. The formula made use of terms such as person, subsistence, hypostasis, in an attempt to get at the unity and the distinction within God Himself. In addition to affirming the deity of Jesus, without which deity it would be blasphemous for Him to be an object of worship in the church, the Holy Spirit is also described in the Scriptures in terms of divine attributes. He is omnipotent. He is omniscient. He is infinite. He is eternal. He is actively involved in the divine work of creation, and in conjunction with His being the author of life and human intelligence, He is active in empowering the work of Christ in redemption. We see in the Bible that the work of creation involves the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, just as the work of redemption includes the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. All three are testified to uniformly by the Scriptures as being divine. They are not three gods, because the unity of God remains axiomatic in the Monarchianism of sacred Scripture. The church still declares that the Lord our God is one. He is one being, though we must distinguish within that one being the subsistence of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” — R.C Sproul, “Triune Monarchy” Tabletalk magazine
Have a blessed Lord’s Day.
Soli deo Gloria!
His Word Today 