Our Triune God

Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all recognize monotheism as teaching this sovereignty of one God behind all events. Judaism and Islam, however, take the extra step of seeing in monotheism a “psychoanalysis” of God’s inner nature. Christianity does not find this further deduction compelling.

nature. As one writer summarized, “Nothing is more evident in the Old Testament than the fundamental oneness of God. Yet . . . the Old Testament reveals the unity of God to us as a differentiated oneness.”17 This Old Testament witness is an important part of the Church’s confident confession of faith in the triune nature of God.

On the other side of the door a happy surprise awaits the one who believes and enters. For from the inside, anyone glancing back can see these words from Ephesians written above the door: “Chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world” (1:4). Election is best understood in hindsight, for it is only after coming to Christ that we can look and know that we have been chosen in Christ. Those who make a decision for Christ find that the triune God made a decision for them in eternity past. In the words of an anonymous hymn from the nineteenth century

Since election is in Christ, it is usually best understood after one becomes a Christian. In fact, the doctrine of election is sometimes referred to as a “family secret” (although it is not really a secret to anyone who knows the Bible). While we are still outside God’s family, we may not hear about predestination at all; if we do, it hardly seems to make any sense. Once we are in the family, however, it makes the most perfect sense in the world. Indeed, it is the kind of fact that helps us make sense of everything else

For all its complexity, the biblical doctrine of the Trinity can be stated in seven simple propositions:

1. God the Father is God.
2. God the Son is God.
3. God the Holy Spirit is God.
4. The Father is not the Son.
5. The Son is not the Spirit.
6. The Spirit is not the Father.
7. Nevertheless, there is only one God.