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Introduction

Traditionally, Christians have spoken of God in trinitarian terms. There is disagreement as to when this understanding of God emerged. The word Trinity is not found in Scripture, but one can find patterns that support a trinitarian vision of God in Scripture. A definitive statement concerning the Trinity emerged out of the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, though the Creed that churches use to confess a trinitarian understanding of God did not reach its final form until the Council of Constantinople met in 381 CE. While traditions confessing their faith using the Nicene Creed have expressed this faith in trinitarian terms, that does not mean everyone has had the same understanding of the Trinity. In fact, adherence to the belief that God is Trinity has ebbed and flowed, especially after the beginning of the Enlightenment. For some at least, this doctrine of the Trinity has been deemed illogical and irrational. To those who struggle with the Trinity, it might be better to affirm the oneness of God and embrace the humanity of Jesus. As for the Holy Spirit, well the Spirit has often been the subject of neglect. The Apostles’ Creed only expresses belief in the Holy Spirit, with no definition of terms. The Nicene Creed does go further, probably due to the influence of the Cappadocian Fathers. While the Nicene Creed gave official definition to a trinitarian understanding of God, using the Greek word homoousious to affirm that while Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three persons, they share one substance or one essence, not everyone fully embraced this understanding. A number of church leaders of that age preferred other terms, including homoiousious, which speaks of “like substance,” instead of homoousious. In the end, the majority of those church leaders who formed the homoiousious party affirmed the position espoused by the homoousious party. Thus, they also affirmed the form of the Creed that has come down to us.

Constantinople did not end the debate over the triune nature of God— further discussion would ensue regarding the way in which the Christ was both divine and human, as well as fully understanding the nature of the Holy Spirit—but a foundation was laid upon which those conversations could be undertaken. The majority of the debates that followed would involve clarification of this doctrine, but there would not be any wholesale changes to the doctrine. Thus, from Constantinople forward the church in east and west confessed that God is at once three persons who share one substance or essence. As for the nature of this essence/substance, there might be differing opinions, but the affirmation has held into the twenty-first century.

The debate over the triune nature of God has Christological roots. It is an expression of the church’s felt need to define Jesus’ relationship to God. If Jesus is the Son of God, what does that mean? For Christians who embrace the Nicene Creed, one can confess that the Christ is “the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one substance with the Father; through him all things were made.” Whether one completely understands this confession, one can go forth with the assumption that in some fashion Jesus is divine, while affirming monotheism. But, what if a person is not a creedal Christian? How might such a person understand the confession found in Mark 1:1 that Jesus Christ is the Son of God? This a key question that deserves our attention. In what way is Jesus the Son of God? Does this entail some sense of divinity? Or, is Jesus a human being who has been adopted by God the Father as God’s son? In addition, there is the question of the status of the Holy Spirit. Is the Holy Spirit a person within the Godhead, or is the Spirit simply a way of designating Gods’ presence in the world, a mode of being? The Creed assumes that what applies to Christ applies to the Holy Spirit, “who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified.”

The fourth-century church leaders and theologians whose reflections led to the formation of the creed may not have been in full agreement as to the meaning of the word homoousious, but they accepted it in the interest of unity (many preferred the term ­homoiousious, or “like substance”). With the Creed in place, a baseline for speaking of God was laid, though the question of Christ’s full divinity and full humanity remained unresolved, at least until Chalcedon in the mid-fifth-century. These creedal statements may not be perfect, but they served to create a foundation for further theological clarification. One might have questions about the meaning of the creed, but confessionally it helped set theological parameters for most Christians.

With this booklet, which focuses on the doctrine of the Trinity, I hope to initiate a conversation concerning the Trinity both within my tradition as well as outside it. This effort emerged out of another project, in which I am seeking to provide a guide to theology for members of my tribe, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). I serve this tradition as a pastor, historian, and theologian (my Ph.D. is in historical theology). While the Disciples do not have an official creed, I am by confession a trinitarian Christian. That is, I am willing to affirm the definition of God found in the Nicene Creed, even if my understanding of the details might differ from others who make the same confession. At the same time, as a Disciple, I cannot and will not make the Creed or belief in the Trinity a test of fellowship. Since we are a non-creedal community, such a requirement would be difficult to implement, but it would also be a self-defeating effort. It will do nothing to convince non-trinitarians of the value of this long-held doctrine of the church.

While we are non-creedal that doesn’t mean we are anti-theological. It simply means greater weight is given to Scripture than to later developments. Thus, Barton Stone, who was one of the founders of the Stone-Campbell Movement, of which the Disciples are but one branch, would accept as true only that which is provable from Scripture. Since the term Trinity is not found in Scripture, members of this faith community will need to agree to disagree on what some of us believe is an important matter of Christian theology. Another way of putting this is to say that while we are noncreedal, that does not mean that everyone within the Disciples community rejects the testimony of the historic creeds. It does mean that affirming the message of these creeds is a personal decision, not one imposed from on high.1

With this preface, it should come as no surprise that within the Disciples community there is no unanimity regarding belief in the Trinity. That includes both the denomination and the congregation I serve. There are Disciples who embrace the doctrine, and Disciples who do not. This has been true for us from the earliest days of the Stone-Campbell Movement. Writing early in the twentieth century, Edward Scribner Ames, a leading liberal Disciples theologian, could write that the meaning of the doctrine of the Trinity was never very clear, and that “the doctrines of the Trinity have little significance for our time.” Why? Because “they are not demanded by our moral life and they are not taught by the Scriptures. Therefore, they may be allowed to pass with the intellectual world to which they belonged.”2 While the doctrine emerged in large part due to questions about Jesus’ relationship with God, Ames believed these questions were the concern of an earlier age that had long passed. They have nothing to say to modern concerns. Testimonies to the birth and death of Jesus are nothing more than “the record of the wonder-love of the human heart, which continues to make legendary narratives about very human men.”3 Ames wrote this before the renaissance of trinitarian thinking that is generally attributed to Karl Barth, but Ames’ view is consistent with much current Disciples thinking on the subject.

What follows is an invitation to Disciples, and others who struggle with the doctrine of the Trinity, to enter a conversation about the Trinity. I do not intend for this brief book to be taken as an imposition of a trinitarian vision on the Stone-Campbell Movement as a whole or on the Disciples branch in particular. However, I strongly believe that the doctrine of the Trinity can enhance one’s vision of God. I agree with Leonard Allen, a Church of Christ theologian, who writes that that “the explicit doctrine of the Trinity that gradually emerged in the first four centuries was not simply a philosophical construct imposed back upon Scripture but rather a result of the necessary work of filling out the New Testament’s pervasive triadic language about God as the gospel mission engaged Greco-Roman culture.”4

Since this book emerged from a larger theological project meant to stir theological conversation within my own ecclesial community, I offer it up to Disciples and the Christian community at large as an invitation to think deeply about the theological foundations of the Christian faith. That is, this is my invitation to fellow Disciples (and others) to move along the path of faith toward understanding, knowing that full understanding will never come to us in this life. As Paul reminds us, we are simply viewing reality as if a reflection in a mirror (1 Cor. 13: 12).

This journey of discovery will include engaging in conversations with members of the Stone-Campbell tradition, especially Alexander Campbell and Barton Stone. We will also engage the biblical record, for that is in keeping with the tradition of my people. We will also spend some time looking at the development over time of trinitarian vocabulary as well as historical efforts to understand and define the nature of God as Trinity. In the course of the journey I will engage with Disciple theologians, especially Clark Williamson and Joe Jones, but also theologians from outside the movement, especially Elizabeth Johnson and Catherine Mowry LaCugna—both of whom are Roman Catholic feminist theologians—whose work I have found helpful. As the conversation moves to a close I want to pose the question of whether having creeds is a necessary step in our ability to speak faithfully as Christians about God. I realize this will seem counter-intuitive, but I wonder whether we would be better off to affirm, at the very least, the confession of Constantinople as a sign of our ecumenical commitments.

Again, I write this book as a Disciple pastor and theologian, with Disciples in mind. While Disciples are my primary audience, because we struggle with, and often shy away from, this conversation, I know we are not alone. In part, this is because many Christians find the Trinity to be an incomprehensible doctrine. Even within strongly trinitarian communities there is a tendency to either embrace tri-theism (three gods) or modalism (one god who is experienced in three modes of being). It is no wonder that Barton Stone threw up his hands in bewilderment, declaring that the doctrine was completely illogical. So, whether you are a Disciple, a member of the Stone-Campbell Movement, or some other tradition, I invite you to join me on this journey of discovery regarding the Trinity. Perhaps you will join me in embracing a trinitarian understanding of God’s nature, or perhaps not. That is your prerogative (at least from a Disciples perspective). Whether you embrace the doctrine or not, I think it’s incumbent upon us to try to understand the issues at hand.

1 Robert D. Cornwall, Freedom in Covenant: Reflections on the Distinctive Values and Practices of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2015), pp. 8-9.

2 Edward Scribner Ames, The New Orthodoxy, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1918), pp. 45-46.

3 Ames, New Orthodoxy, p. 46.

4 Leonard Allen, Poured Out: The Spirit of God Empowering the Mission of God, (Abilene, TX: Abilene Christian University Press, 2018), p. 63.