Reference: Trinity
Easton
a word not found in Scripture, but used to express the doctrine of the unity of God as subsisting in three distinct Persons. This word is derived from the Gr. trias, first used by Theophilus (A.D. 168-183), or from the Lat. trinitas, first used by Tertullian (A.D. 220), to express this doctrine. The propositions involved in the doctrine are these: 1. That God is one, and that there is but one God (De 6:4; 1Ki 8:60; Isa 44:6; Mr 12:29,32; Joh 10:30). 2. That the Father is a distinct divine Person (hypostasis, subsistentia, persona, suppositum intellectuale), distinct from the Son and the Holy Spirit. 3. That Jesus Christ was truly God, and yet was a Person distinct from the Father and the Holy Spirit. 4. That the Holy Spirit is also a distinct divine Person.
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Hastings
TRINITY
1. The doctrine approached.
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And Jesus, after his baptism, came straight from the water: and lo! the heavens were opened for him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as it were a dove, and coming upon him: and lo! a voice from the heavens, saying, This is my Son, the beloved, in whom is my delight.
At that time Jesus spake and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and the intelligent, and hast revealed them to babes:
Go therefore, make disciples among all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
IN the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
IN the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. read more. All things were made by him; and without him was not one thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness did not comprehend it. A man was sent from God, whose name was John. He came for a witness, that he might bear testimony concerning the Light, that all men through him might believe. He was not the Light, but sent that he should bear testimony concerning the Light. He was that true Light, which illumines every man by his coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his peculiar people, and his peculiar people did not receive him. But as many as did receive him, on them he bestowed authority to become children of God, even on those who believe on his name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became incarnate, and tabernacled with us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. John bore witness concerning him, and cried, saying, This is he of whom I said, He that is coming after me, is before me: because before me he was. And from his plenitude we all have received, even grace corresponding with [his] grace. For the law was given by Moses, but the grace and the reality came by Jesus Christ. No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath thoroughly described him.
No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath thoroughly described him.
Jesus saith unto her, What is that to me and thee, woman? my hour is not yet come.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that every one who believeth in him should not perish, but have life eternal.
In these lay a vast multitude of infirm persons, blind, lame, withered, waiting the motion of the water. For occasionally an angel descended into the pool, and put the water into commotion: he therefore who first stepped in after the commotion of the water became well, under whatever complaint he had laboured.
And instantly the man was made whole, and took up his bed, and walked away: and that day was the sabbath.
And he that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; because I always do the things acceptable to him.
There was therefore a division again among the Jews, on account of these sayings.
And supper being served, (the devil having now injected into the heart of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, that he should betray him;)
he rises from supper, and lays aside his garments, and taking a towel, he wound it about himself.
And I will ask the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; because he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.
But the Comforter, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, which I have spoken to you.
But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me:
But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me:
But because I have spoken these things to you, sorrow hath filled your heart. Yet I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I went not away, the Comforter would not come to you; but if I go, I will send him unto you.
Yet I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I went not away, the Comforter would not come to you; but if I go, I will send him unto you. And when he cometh, he will convince the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment: read more. of sin first, because they believe not in me; then of righteousness, because I am going to the Father, so ye see me no more; and of judgment, because the ruler of this world hath sentence pronounced on him. I have many things to say to you, but ye cannot bear them just now. But when he is come, the Spirit of truth, he will conduct you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever things he shall hear, he shall speak: and he will declare to you the things that shall come hereafter.
But when he is come, the Spirit of truth, he will conduct you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever things he shall hear, he shall speak: and he will declare to you the things that shall come hereafter. He shall glorify me: for he shall take of mine, and shall shew it unto you.
He shall glorify me: for he shall take of mine, and shall shew it unto you. All things whatsoever the Father hath are mine: therefore I said, that he shall take of mine, and shall shew it unto you.
THESE things spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son may glorify thee:
For the declarations which thou gavest to me I have delivered to them; and they have received them, and have known assuredly that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou hast sent me.
As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I sent them into the world.
I in them, and thou in me, that they may be perfected into one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.
Then the other disciples said to him, We have seen the Lord. But he said to them, Except I should see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I shall never believe it.
And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God!
Then said Peter, I have neither silver nor gold; but what I have, that I give thee: By the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarean, arise, and walk!
The God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers, hath glorified his Son Jesus; whom ye delivered up, and denied him in the presence of Pilate, when he had determined to release him.
but ye slew the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead: of which we are witnesses. And through faith in his name hath his name restored this man to strength, whom ye behold and know: yea, the faith which is by him hath given him this perfect soundness in the sight of you all.
Unto you in the first instance, hath God, after raising up his Son Jesus, sent him to bless you, to the end that every one of you should turn away from your iniquities.
This is the stone which, though set at nought by you builders, is become the head of the corner. And there is no salvation in any other person: for there is no other name under heaven given unto men, whereby we must be saved.
For they have been in truth collected together against thy holy Son Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, even Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the heathen, and the people of Israel,
But Peter said, O Ananias! why hath Satan filled thy heart that thou shouldst lie to the Holy Ghost, and secrete something from the price of the estate? it remained unsold, was it not vested in thee? and when sold, was it not in thine own power? why then hast thou determined in thine heart to do this deed? thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God.
Wherefore I appeal to you this day as witnesses that I am pure from the blood of all men.
of whom are the fathers, and from whom as respecting the flesh Christ sprung, who is over all, the blessed God for evermore. Amen.
that in one mind, with one mouth, ye may glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Now I exhort you, brethren, by our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the love of the Spirit, that you wrestle earnestly with me in prayers for me unto God;
but to those who are called, whether Jews or Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.
And my conversation and my preaching was not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but with demonstration of the Spirit, and of power: that your faith might not stand on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God. read more. But we speak wisdom among the perfect: yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the rulers of this world, who are destroying themselves:
Now concerning eating things sacrificed unto idols: we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is no other God but one.
by whom also ye have been built up together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.
one God, and father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.
who being in the form of God counted it no usurpation to claim equality with God:
for in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily; and ye are complete in him, who is the head of all principality and power: read more. in whom also ye have been circumcised with the circumcision not made with hands, by the putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, through the circumcision of Christ:
PAUL, and Silvanus, and Timothy, to the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father, and in the Lord Jesus Christ: grace unto you, and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.
But to the Son, "Thy throne, O God, is unto eternity; a sceptre of rectitude is the sceptre of thy kingdom.
Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe and tremble.
elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by sanctification of the Spirit, that they might be brought to the obedience, and sprinkled with the blood of Jesus Christ: grace unto you and peace be multiplied.
Morish
A word only used to convey the thought of a plurality of Persons in the Godhead. This was revealed at the baptism of the Lord Jesus. The Holy Spirit descended 'like a dove' and abode upon Him; and God the Father declared "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." That the Father is a distinct Person and is God is plainly stated, as in Joh 20:17. Many passages prove that the Lord Jesus is God: one will suffice: ". . . . in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life." 1Jo 5:20. That the Holy Spirit is a Person and is God the following passages clearly prove: Ge 1:2; Mt 4:1; Joh 16:13; Ac 10:19; 13:2,4; 20:28; Ro 15:30; 1Co 2:10. The three Persons are also named in the formula instituted by Christ in baptism. Mt 28:19. Yet there is but one God. 1Ti 2:5. Satan will have an imitation of the Trinity in the Roman beast, the false prophet, and himself. Re 13:4,11; 20:10.
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THEN was Jesus led away by the spirit into the wilderness, to be tempted by the devil.
Go therefore, make disciples among all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
But when he is come, the Spirit of truth, he will conduct you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever things he shall hear, he shall speak: and he will declare to you the things that shall come hereafter.
Jesus saith to her, Touch me not; for I have not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and tell them, I am ascending to my Father, and your Father; to my God, and your God.
But while Peter was musing upon the vision, the Spirit said to him, Lo! three men are inquiring after thee.
And as they were employed in the ministry, and kept a fast, the Holy Ghost said, Set apart for me now both Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them.
They then being sent forth indeed by the Holy Ghost, went down to Seleucia; and from thence sailed to Cyprus.
Take heed therefore to yourselves, and to all the flock, over which the Holy Ghost hath made you bishops, to feed as shepherds the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood.
Now I exhort you, brethren, by our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the love of the Spirit, that you wrestle earnestly with me in prayers for me unto God;
and ye are complete in him, who is the head of all principality and power:
For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;
But we know that the Son of God hath come, and hath given to us understanding, that we might know the true God; and we are in him that is true, in his Son Jesus the Messiah. HE is the true God, and the life eternal.
And they worshipped the dragon who had given authority to the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like to the beast? who is able to wage war with him?
And I saw another beast rising up out of the earth, and he had two horns like a lamb, though he spake as the dragon.
And the devil who deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and they shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.
Watsons
TRINITY. That nearly all the Pagan nations of antiquity, says Bishop Tomline, in their various theological systems, acknowledged a kind of Trinity, has been fully evinced by those learned men who have made the Heathen mythology the subject of their elaborate inquiries. The almost universal prevalence of this doctrine in the Gentile kingdoms must be considered as a strong argument in favour of its truth. The doctrine itself bears such striking internal marks of a divine original, and is so very unlikely to have been the invention of mere human reason that there is no way of accounting for the general adoption of so singular a belief, but by supposing that it was revealed by God to the early patriarchs, and that it was transmitted by them to their posterity. In its progress, indeed, to remote countries, and to distant generations, this belief became depraved and corrupted in the highest degree; and he alone who brought "life and immortality to light," could restore it to its original simplicity and purity. The discovery of the existence of this doctrine in the early ages, among the nations whose records have been the best preserved, has been of great service to the cause of Christianity, and completely refutes the assertion of infidels and skeptics, that the sublime and mysterious doctrine of the Trinity owes its origin to the philosophers of Greece. "If we extend," says Mr. Maurice, "our eye through the remote region of antiquity, we shall find this very doctrine, which the primitive Christians are said to have borrowed from the Platonic school, universally and immemorially flourishing in all those countries where history and tradition have united to fix those virtuous ancestors of the human race, who, for their distinguished attainments in piety, were admitted to a familiar intercourse with Jehovah and the angels, the divine heralds of his commands." The same learned author justly considers the first two verses of the Old Testament as containing very strong, if not decisive, evidence in support of the truth of this doctrine: Elohim, a noun substantive of the plural number, by which the Creator is expressed, appears as evidently to point toward a plurality of persons in the divine nature, as the verb in the singular, with which it is joined, does to the unity of that nature: "In the beginning God created;" with strict attention to grammatical propriety, the passage should be rendered, "In the beginning Gods created," but our belief in the unity of God forbids us thus to translate the word Elohim. Since, therefore, Elohim is plural, and no plural can consist of less than two in number, and since creation can alone be the work of Deity, we are to understand by this term so particularly used in this place, God the Father, and the eternal Logos, or Word of God; that Logos whom St. John, supplying us with an excellent comment upon this passage, says, was in the beginning with God, and who also was God. As the Father and the Son are expressly pointed out in the first verse of this chapter, so is the Third Person in the blessed Trinity not less decisively revealed to us in Ge 1:2: "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters:" "brooded upon" the water, incubavit, as a hen broods over her eggs. Thus we see the Spirit exerted upon this occasion an active effectual energy, by that energy agitating the vast abyss, and infusing into it a powerful vital principle.
Elohim seems to be the general appellation by which the Triune Godhead is collectively distinguished in Scripture; and in the concise history of the creation only, the expression, bara Elohim, "the Gods created," is used above thirty times. The combining this plural noun with a verb in the singular would not appear so remarkable, if Moses had uniformly adhered to that mode of expression; for then it would be evident that he adopted the mode used by the Gentiles in speaking of their false gods in the plural number, but by joining with it a singular verb or adjective, rectified a phrase that might appear to give a direct sanction to the error of polytheism. But, in reality, the reverse is the fact; for in De 32:15,17, and other places, he uses the singular number of this very noun to express the Deity, though not employed in the August work of creation: "He forsook God," Eloah; "they sacrificed to devils, not to God," Eloah. But farther, Moses himself uses this very word Elohim with verbs and adjectives in the plural. Of this usage Dr. Allix enumerates many other striking instances that might be brought from the Pentateuch; and other inspired writers use it in the same manner in various parts of the Old Testament, Job 35:10; Jos 24:19; Ps 109:1; Ec 12:3; 2Sa 7:23. It must appear, therefore, to every reader of reflection, exceedingly singular, that when Moses was endeavouring to establish a theological system, of which the unity of the Godhead was the leading principle, and in which it differed from all other systems, he should make use of terms directly implicative of a plurality in it; yet so deeply was the awful truth under consideration impressed upon the mind of the Hebrew legislator, that this is constantly done by him; and, indeed, as Allix has observed, there is scarcely any method of speaking from which a plurality in Deity may be inferred, that is not used either by himself in the Pentateuch, or by the other inspired writers in various parts of the Old Testament. A plural is joined with a verb singular, as in the passage cited before from Ge 1:1; a plural is joined with a verb plural, as in Ge 35:7, "And Jacob called the name of the place El- beth-el, because the Gods there appeared to him;" a plural is joined with an adjective plural, Jos 24:19, "You cannot serve the Lord; for he is the holy Gods." To these passages, if we add that remarkable one from Ecclesiastes, "Remember thy Creators in the days of thy youth," and the predominant use of the terms, Jehovah Elohim, or, the "Lord thy Gods," which occur a hundred times in the law, (the word Jehovah implying the unity of the essence, and Elohim a plurality in that unity,) we must allow that nothing can be more plainly marked than this doctrine in the ancient Scriptures.
Though the August name of Jehovah in a more peculiar manner belongs to God the Father, yet is that name, in various parts of Scripture, applied to each person in the holy Trinity. The Hebrews considered that name in so sacred a light, that they never pronounced it, and used the word Adonai instead of it. It was, indeed a name that ranked first among their profoundest cabbala; a mystery, sublime, ineffable, incommunicable. It was called tetragrammaton, or the name of four letters, and these letters are jod, he, vau, he, the proper pronunciation of which, from long disuse, is said to be no longer known to the Jews themselves. This awful name was first revealed by God to Moses from the centre of the burning bush; and Josephus, who, as well as Scripture, relates this circumstance, evinces his veneration for it, by calling it the name which his religion did not permit him to mention. From this word the Pagan title of Iao and Jove is, with the greatest probability, supposed to have been originally formed; and in the Golden Verses of Pythagoras, there is an oath still extant to this purpose, "By Him who has the four letters." As the name Jehovah, however, in some instances applied to the Son and the Holy Spirit, was the proper name of God the Father, so is Logos in as peculiar a manner the appropriated name of God the Son. The Chaldee Paraphrasts translate the original Hebrew text by Mimra da Jehovah, literally, "the word of Jehovah," a term totally different, as Bishop Kidder has incontestably proved, in its signification, and in its general application among the Jews, from the Hebrew dabar, which simply means a discourse or decree, and is properly rendered by pithgam. In the Septuagint translation of the Bible, a work supposed by the Jews to have been undertaken by men immediately inspired from above, the former term is universally rendered ?????, and it is so rendered and so understood by Philo and all the more ancient rabbins. The name of the third person in the ever blessed Trinity
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Go therefore, make disciples among all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
God is a Spirit: and they who worship him, must worship him in spirit and in truth.