The Trinity according to the New Testament

For my New Testament class...

According to the New Testament, the one and only God is revealed in three eternal, equal, yet distinct persons: The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This is called the doctrine of the Trinity. Within the religion of Christianity, this is a very common doctrine. Most Christians would even say that it is the most important or even essential doctrine one could hold. I will demonstrate the accuracy of this doctrine using various sources.
Before I begin, I want to point out that I will be approaching the issue with the presupposition of the existence of the supernatural. Because my theory deals with a doctrine based on textual contexts, and not with the historicity of an event in the New Testament, this will not affect it much. Nonetheless, it should be known.
In my opinion, most Christians “believe” in the Trinity, not because of what they read in the New Testament (moreover, the entire Bible), but because they have heard this doctrine their entire lives. I recently interviewed two gentlemen from the Jehovah’s Witness church, and we had quite an interesting discussion concerning the Bible’s revelation of the nature of God. As I will point out, it really all comes down to the interpretation of various texts, based on the method of interpretation one uses.
It does seem (in my opinion) that the “ground” held by Trinitarians is slipping. Even movements “within” Christianity stray from the historical definition of the doctrine of the Trinity. I will discuss and refute the two main opposing groups: Anti-Trinitarians, and Modalists.
One of the most well known Non-Trinitarian groups is the Jehovah’s Witnesses. One of their most well known publications against the Trinity is the booklet, “Should You Believe The Trinity?” It poses the question, “Is Jesus Christ the Almighty God?”
As far as the “origin” of the concept of the Trinity, the Witnesses refer to various “triune” or “three-headed” gods that were “prevalent in Egypt, Greece, and Rome in the centuries before, during, and after Christ.” (4) In my recent interview with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, I learned several things about their reasoning. I believe that in order to refute a Jehovah’s Witness, or any anti-Trinitarian for that matter, you must learn to “scale the language barrier”.
The verses they use to prove that Jesus is not God, but only the “Son of God,” are the very verses I would use to draw a distinction between the Father and the Son. For example, when Jesus cries out from the cross in Luke 23:46, “Father into Thy hands I commit my spirit,” the Witnesses, reason that “If Jesus were God, for what reason should he entrust his spirit to the Father?”(4) At this point, I would reason that this is merely an example of two distinct persons of the Godhead that are demonstrating their relationship. Jesus has a relationship of obedience and humility to the Father. An example of this humility is given in an additional passage in the New Testament. Philippians 2:6-8 (NKJV) reads, “who (Christ Jesus), being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but …being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.” Not only does this passage describe Jesus’ obedience, but also it speaks of His equality with the Father.
I found an embarrassing misquote in the Witnesses booklet. It reasons that if Jesus were God, and He was dead (in between the crucifixion and the resurrection) for parts of three days, “then Habakkuk 1:12 is wrong when it says: “O my God, my Holy One, you do not die.”(4) I was astonished when I looked up the verse in my own Bible to see that a very important word in the verse was radically different! My Bible (Amp) reads, “Are You not from everlasting, O Lord my God, my Holy One? We shall not die. O Lord, You have appointed…(emphasis added)” This is no minor discrepancy! Who is it that doesn’t die? All of my translations read the same, using “we” instead of “you”.
The Witnesses also view the Holy Spirit as God’s “Active Force”, not divine, and definitely not a “person” of any sort of ”Godhead”. There are many different interpretations of various passages of Scripture. The line seems to be between the idea that the Spirit is “from” God or “of” God, and the idea that the Spirit “is” God, or a “person” of the Godhead. I think a powerful passage for the deity of the Holy Spirit is Acts 5:3-4, which reads (NLT), “You lied to the Holy Spirit, and you kept some of the money…like this. You weren’t lying to us but to God.” First of all, I don’t logically know how a person can “lie” to a “force” or “power”. Second, the thought of lying to the Holy Spirit is extended logically to the fact that the lie was to God. Many passages refer to the Spirit as “he”, which suggests the “person-hood” of the Spirit. The original Greek word that is translated “he” in most Bibles (except probably the New World Translation), is ekeinos (Strong's Greek #1565). It is a demonstrative pronoun that can mean “that”, “he”, or “those” as well as others. The Jehovah’s Witnesses would love for all of these passages to render the term the impersonal “it”, but only once in the entire New Testament is it rendered this way (1 John 5:16 -  If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for it. KJV). In addition, the booklet states that “when the neuter Greek word for spirit (pneu’ma) is used, the neuter pronoun ‘it’ is properly employed.” I looked up the term “pneu’ma” in my Strong’s Greeks concordance and it simply labeled the term as a noun, not neuter. It seems that the context does and should suggest the rendering of the terms. And the context of many passages about the Holy Spirit imply that the Spirit has “authority”, “will”, a “name”, “feeling” etc. All these should lead a translator to render the term as “he”.
For every suggestion from Scripture that Jesus or the Holy Spirit is a “person” of the Godhead, the Witnesses have a “different” hermeneutic. For every direct attribution of “personhood” or deity, they have a different or “better” translation for the word used. As I mentioned earlier, the “language barrier” is difficult to scale.
The next group is not as “abrasive” as the Witnesses. They include themselves within evangelical Christianity, although their modalistic view of the nature of God may have serious implications.
Put simply and possibly offensively, modalists believe that God is like a chameleon in that He can “change costumes” between all of the persons of the traditional Trinity. Sometimes He is/was the Father, then also He is/was Jesus the Son, and also sometimes He is the Spirit. Here is a belief statement from T.D. Jakes’ church, The Potter’s House: “There is one God, Creator of all things, infinitely perfect, and eternally existing in three Manifestations: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” (1)
At first read, this may sound just like the traditional Trinity. But there is a language barrier here as well. In Modalism, the “manifestations” are not coequal, coeternal or distinct from one another. This is not only different from the traditional definition of the nature of God, but it is also hard to swallow in light of passages such as Matthew 26:14 where Jesus prays to the Father, which couldn’t happen unless the persons of the Trinity are eternally distinct. This is not the only example of relationships within the Godhead. The Son loves the Father, the Father loves and is pleased with the Son (Matthew 3:17), the Father sends the Son (John 3:16), the Father sends and gives the Spirit (John 14:25), the Spirit testifies of the Son (John 15:26), etc.
One can feel quite “worn-out” after tromping through the battlefield of biblical terminology and semantics. Next, and lastly, I want to summarize and support what I feel the New Testament says about the nature of God.
Why the Trinity? The One and Only God wanted to reveal Himself. That is what it’s all about: The way in which God chooses to reveal Himself to humanity. Three persons. Forever distinct. Forever equal in nature. Forever God. Christopher Hall quotes Gregory on the Father: “The Father is the begetter and the emitter; without passion, of course, and without reference to time, and not in a corporeal manner.” (3) Seeberg summarizes various “apologists” concerning the Son: “…they thought of Him as God, in God, and with God, and hence selected a term such as ‘Logos’…” (5) Last but not least, I love the way Tillich addresses the deity of the Holy Spirit. “It is the Spirit in whom God ‘goes out from’ himself, the Spirit proceeds from the divine ground. He gives actuality to that which is potential in the divine ground and ‘outspoken’ in the divine logos…. The divine life is infinite mystery, but it is not infinite emptiness. It is the ground of all abundance, and it is abundant itself.” (6) I’ve also heard it said that the Father initiates, the Son implements and the Spirit empowers. Sounds good, huh?
In closing, I’d like to quote Hank Hanegraaff (Christian apologist). “We can never ‘comprehend’ the Trinity, but we can ‘apprehend’ it from Scripture.” As far as what my opinion on the study of the nature of God is: it is wonderfully complex.

Index of Supporting Scriptures
Matthew 26:14 Matthew 3:17
1 John 5:16 John 14:25
Acts 5:3-4 (NLT) John 15:26
Habakkuk 1:12 (Amp)
Philippians 2:6-8 (NKJV)
Luke 23:46
John 3:16
Bibliography
1. Belief Statement. (n.d.). Retrieved November 19, 2003, from http://thepottershouse.org/PH_beliefs.html
2. Strong, James LL.D., S.T.D. (2001) The strongest Strong’s exhaustive concordance of the Bible. Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
3. Hall, Christopher A. (Christopher Alan). (2002) Learning theology with the church fathers. InterVarsity Press. Downers Grove, Illinois
4. Jehovah’s Witnesses Publication. (1989) Should You Believe in The Trinity? Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania. Brooklyn, New York.
5. Seeberg, Reinhold. (1952). Textbook of the History of Doctrines (Charles E. Hay, Trans.). Baker Book House. Grand Rapids, Michigan.6. Tillich, Paul. (1951). Systematic Theology: Volume I. The University of Chicago Press. Chicago, Illinois.