What Is the Doctrine of the Trinity? - Doctrine Matters with Kevin DeYoung

Summary

Doctrine Matters with Kevin DeYoung: Episode Summary Title: What Is the Doctrine of the Trinity?
Release Date: March 4, 2025
Host: Pastor Kevin DeYoung
Publisher: Crossway

Introduction to the Doctrine of the Trinity

In this episode of Doctrine Matters, Pastor Kevin DeYoung delves into the profound and often perplexing doctrine of the Trinity. Recognizing that many Christians find the Trinity to be a challenging “math problem” of three in one, DeYoung emphasizes its paramount importance within Christian theology. He underscores that despite its complexity, the Trinity is foundational, as evidenced by its prominence in Jesus' final teachings and the early creeds of the Church.

“The doctrine of the Trinity is perhaps the most important doctrine, period, and it's almost certainly the most important doctrine that most Christians don't think nearly enough about.”
— Kevin DeYoung [05:30]

Biblical Foundations of the Trinity

DeYoung meticulously outlines the biblical basis for the Trinity, presenting seven clear, scriptural statements that form the backbone of Trinitarian orthodoxy:

There is only one God.
The Father is God.
The Son is God.
The Holy Spirit is God.
The Father is not the Son.
The Son is not the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is not the Father.

He references key biblical passages, such as the Shema in Deuteronomy and affirmations of Jesus' deity in the Gospel of John, to support each statement.

“There are scores of texts that prove the deity of Jesus Christ the Son... and there are texts that assume the deity of the Holy Spirit...”
— Kevin DeYoung [12:45]

DeYoung also highlights the Great Commission in Matthew 28:19, where Jesus instructs His disciples to baptize “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” reinforcing the triune nature of God.

“He tells his disciples that they are going to baptize people in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”
— Kevin DeYoung [10:20]

Theological Definitions and Terms

To articulate the Trinity’s intricacies, DeYoung introduces essential theological terminology:

Consubstantial: Sharing the same essence or substance.
Coeternal: Existing together eternally without beginning or end.
Coequal: Holding the same status and authority.

He references the Westminster Confession, which states, “In the unity of the Godhead there be three persons,” emphasizing that the three persons are distinguished by their personal properties but unified in substance.

“The three persons of the Trinity are not three existences, strictly speaking. There is no analogy... the three persons are consubstantial, coeternal, coequal.”
— Kevin DeYoung [22:10]

DeYoung explains the personal properties of each person of the Trinity:

Father: “Of none, neither begotten nor proceeding.”
Son: “Eternally begotten of the Father.”
Holy Spirit: “Proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son.”

“The Father is of none. He is not begotten of another. He does not proceed from another.”
— Kevin DeYoung [18:05]

Historical Context and Rejected Heresies

DeYoung provides a historical overview of early Church debates surrounding the Trinity, clarifying what orthodox Trinitarianism rejects:

Adoptionism: The belief that Jesus was adopted into divinity at His baptism, denying His inherent divinity.
Monarchianism: Specifically Modalism, which posits that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are different modes or manifestations of a single person, rather than distinct persons.

“Modalism... believes that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are different names for the same God, acting in different roles or manifestations.”
— Kevin DeYoung [28:15]
Arianism: Proposed by Arius in the 4th century, this view asserts that only the Father is truly God, making the Son and Holy Spirit subordinate and not fully divine.

“Orthodox Trinitarianism says all three persons share same rank, power, glory and being.”
— Kevin DeYoung [30:40]
Tritheism: The belief in three separate gods, which is contrary to the monotheistic foundation of Christianity.

DeYoung emphasizes that orthodox Trinitarianism maintains the unity of God while acknowledging the distinct personhood of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

“They are not created beings... they are one essence, held in common by Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”
— Kevin DeYoung [35:50]

The Trinity’s Practical Implications and Mysteries

Acknowledging the doctrine's complexity, DeYoung admits that human analogies fall short in fully capturing the nature of the Trinity. He references Gregory of Nazianzus, who eloquently stated:

“No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the splendor of the Three. No sooner do I distinguish them than I am carried back to the One.”
— Gregory of Nazianzus (Quoted by Kevin DeYoung [40:00])

DeYoung encourages believers to embrace the mystery of the Trinity, recognizing that while it transcends human understanding, it is essential for a correct grasp of God’s nature and our relationship with Him.

“When we think of him as one, we ought to be pulled along to think of him as three... and to think of him as one essence, three persons.”
— Kevin DeYoung [42:15]

He also touches on the interconnectedness of Trinitarian doctrine with other theological areas, such as Christology, highlighting how the two natures of Christ further illustrate the mystery of God’s being.

Conclusion and Key Takeaways

In wrapping up, DeYoung reiterates the significance of the Trinity in Christian faith and theology. He urges listeners to deepen their understanding of this doctrine, as it is central to comprehending who God is and how He interacts with the world.

“The Doctrine of the Trinity... as we think about God as one, we ought to be pulled along to think of God as three... the Doctrine of the Trinity is central to our understanding of God.”
— Kevin DeYoung [45:30]

He also points listeners to further resources, such as his book Daily Doctrine and encourages engagement with the broader theological tradition to appreciate the “riches and the beauty of God's word.”

Final Thoughts

Pastor Kevin DeYoung’s comprehensive exploration of the Trinity provides listeners with a robust framework for understanding one of Christianity’s most profound doctrines. By grounding his discussion in Scripture, historical context, and theological precision, DeYoung makes the complexities of the Trinity accessible and relevant to contemporary believers.

For those seeking to deepen their theological knowledge, this episode serves as an invaluable resource, bridging the gap between ancient doctrine and modern understanding.

Resources Mentioned:

Daily Doctrine by Kevin DeYoung
Westminster Confession of Faith
Works of Francis Stirton and Gregory of Nazianzus

Further Listening: To continue exploring systematic theology and other foundational doctrines, subscribe to Doctrine Matters on Crossway or visit Crossway.org.

Transcript

A (0:05)

Hello, I'm Kevin DeYoung, pastor at Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina, and you are listening to Doctrine Matters. Each week on Doctrine Matters, we explore the rich doctrine of the Christian faith. We'll pull from the church's long history, complex debates, and over the course of the year, the hope is that we'll begin to frame out what is a clear, accessible, systematic theology, be looking at different Christian doctrines and their relationship to each other. And the hope, Lord willing, is we will grasp more and more the riches and the beauty of God's word. Thanks for listening. Let's turn to this week's Doctrine Matters. We've been looking at the topic of theology proper, the doctrine of God. And having looked at his incommunicable and communicable attributes, we now turn to the nature of God or the being of God. We've looked at what God is like, his attributes. Now we want to turn to study. Who is this God? This God is triune. That's what we want to talk about. The Trinity. The doctrine of the Trinity is perhaps the most important doctrine, period, and it's almost certainly the most important doctrine that most Christians don't think nearly enough about. It often strikes people as a difficult kind of math problem. You have three and one, and how does that work out? But as Sinclair Ferguson has pointed out, it is remarkable that in John's Gospel, when Jesus is facing betrayal, facing arrest, facing crucifixion, death, facing the wrath of God, and he knows what is coming, he spends his last hours with his disciples on earth in the upper room, doing what he talks to them about the Trinity. And then in a high priestly prayer, it is unfolding the mysteries, the inner workings of the Father and the Son. Surely it says something about the importance of the doctrine of the Trinity that Christ would spend his last hours with his disciples. I mean, we would think, what's the most important thing you need to know before the Messiah leaves you? He's going to send his spirit to be with him. That's part of what he teaches. So he won't leave them. In one sense, he teaches them about the Trinity. Of course, we need to know who God is. Many Christians are very poor in their understanding, poorer in their articulation of this doctrine, and poorest of all in understanding how the doctrine really matters. And yet it is front and center in the great creeds and confessions of the Church. The Apostles Creed is divided into three sections based on the Trinity. I believe in God the Father. I believe in Jesus Christ his only Son. I believe in our Lord, or I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life. The Athanasian Creed says, this is the Catholic faith, that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in unity. The belgic confession, just to take one from the Reformation, says, in keeping with this truth in the Word of God, we believe in one God who is one single essence in whom there are three persons really, truly and eternally distinct according to their incommunicable properties, namely Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Or think about Jesus, his last words before his ascension. We know the Great Commission. He tells his disciples that they are going to baptize people in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. How then ought we to understand the doctrine of the Trinity? Well, it is incredibly complex and deals with some of the most difficult doctrines. Francis Sturotin, who, who was no slouch when it came to theology, said at one point that the two most difficult doctrines are the one God in three Persons, the Trinity, and then with Christology, the one Person of Christ and the two natures, because both of those lead us into certain ineffable mysteries. But before we get to some of those terms, we can think biblically and lay out the doctrine of the Trinity in a series of statements. Seven statements. There is only one God. The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is not the Father. You may have seen this sort of diagram before, with God written in the middle, and then Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and a line saying each of them is God, and then a line going around the outside that each of those persons is not the other person. So these seven statements can be shown manifestly from Scripture. There is one God. There's lots of passages, The Shema to First Timothy 1, lots of passages that talk about there is one God, and there is this God is one. Then there are a myriad of passages which demonstrate that God is Father. That's rather obvious. And then scores of texts that prove the deity of Jesus Christ the Son. The Word was God. Jesus said before Abraham was I am in him the whole fullness of deity dwells. And then there are texts that assume the deity of the Holy Spirit, calling him the eternal Spirit, or using God interchangeably with Spirit. And then the shape of trinitarian orthodoxy is rounded off by texts that hint at the plurality of persons in the Godhead from Genesis 1:2 to 1 Corinthians 8:6. Many other passages that have triadic formulas of Christ, Spirit, God or Spirit Lord, Father, that operate with the assumption that we are talking about three persons who are distinct. In other words, then the doctrine of the Trinity. Before we get to all of the important philosophical theological nuance, the doctrine of the Trinity can be outlined by these seven clearly manifestly biblical statements. There is one God, the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Spirit, the Spirit is not the Father. You take those seven statements and everything else we're talking about is trying to explain. How can these seven statements, each of which can be shown from texts in the Bible. How can all of this be true at the same time? Well, that's where we need to introduce some trinitarian terms. And the most important is the one and the three. Here's the Westminster Confession. In the unity of the Godhead there be three persons. So you get three persons of one substance, power and eternity. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, the Father. Now listen to this language from Westminster. What we have here are called the personal properties. That is what is proper to each person and each person alone. What can be said of one person, but not the other persons? What distinguishes one person of the Trinity from another? That's what Westminster is giving to us. So it said, the Father is of none, neither begotten nor proceeding. And there are fancy theological terms for that. But I like the way the confession puts it. That's what we're saying. When we mean the Father, how is the Father not the Son? Well, because the Father is of none. He is not begotten of another. He does not proceed from another. And then it says the Son is eternally begotten of the Father. So that's the personal property of the Son. That makes sense. A Son is one who is begotten of a Father. Now it says eternally begotten to tell us that this takes place outside of time, that this is not a human begetting. He is not the first creation, he's not a created being, but he is eternally begotten, God the Father communicating his essence to God the Son, and then the Holy Ghost eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son. Now, there's many other complicated, even more complicated definitions. Aquinas has one of the most famous, but we can see here from Westminster this basic outline. The three persons of the Trinity are not three existences, strictly speaking. That is, they are not three independent being beings. So this is very hard. There's no analogy. Water, ice, vapor, doesn't work. That's, that's modalism. An apple having, you know, seeds and the, the red skin and then the, the white stuff inside, that doesn't work. There's no human analogy that is going to work to describe the ineffable mystery of the Trinity. So the three persons are not independent beings. You don't want to think of Father, Son and Holy Spirit as, you know that, that old song, it really is one of my favorite songs. American pie by Don McLean and then the last verse. And the three men I admire most, they caught the, the last train to the coast. Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Now these are not three guys who can ride a train together. They are three subsistences, meaning each person hypostasis shares the same essence and can be identified equally as God. These three persons are distinguished by their personal properties, that is by how each person relates to the other two. This is what the Westminster Confession is teaching us. The Father is of none. He is the begetter of the Son. The Son is the begotten of the Father and the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. It may be easier to explain what we mean here by talking somewhat about what we don't mean. So orthodox Trinitarianism, that's what we're outlining here. What the, what the Church has believed from the beginning and then finding its careful articulation in the fourth and fifth centuries. Orthodox Trinitarianism rejects adoptionism, which believes that the power of God came upon Jesus at his baptism, thereby adopting him into the Godhead, deifying his humanity. So we're not saying that orthodox Trinitarianism rejects Monarchianism. So mono there, meaning one arche is a word for power or authority. So Monarchianism believes there's only one supreme divine Person and maintains that the Son and the Spirit subsist in the divine essence as impersonal attributes. So not distinct divine persons. That's a heresy that was rejected in the early Church. Orthodox Trinitarianism also rejects modalism, sometimes called Sabellianism after its most famous proponent Sibelius. Modalism believes that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are different names for the same God, acting in different roles or manifestations. This is the well intentioned but misguided water ice vapor analogy. Those are different modes of being. The same chemical properties that exist in different modes of being. That's not what we're talking about. Like the Father puts on, you know, one kind of clothes and then he, he comes out, he's the Son and then he goes into the phone booth like Clark Kent. And he takes that off and he comes out as the Father and then does another costume change and he comes out as the Holy Spirit. Those are modes of being. That's not what we mean. Orthodox Trinitarianism rejects Arianism and all forms of ontological subordinationism that deny the full deity of Christ. Arius was a theologian in the 4th century. It was his teaching that prompted the Council of Nicaea in 325. In Arianism, the full divine essence is only identified with the Father, so that then the Son and the Spirit are separate entities, do not share in the divine nature, they're subordinate. In fact, in famous poem or hymn from Arius, he says that they share in unequal glories. Was the language of Arius, No. Orthodox Trinitarianism says all three persons share same rank, power, glory and being. They are not created beings, they are rather uncreated. They are eternal. And finally, orthodox Trinitarianism rejects all form of tritheism, which is, when you dig into Mormon theology, really how they understand the Trinity, that the three members of the Godhead are three distinct beings, they will use the language of personages, which are really three separate gods. In orthodox Trinitarian theology, then, God is one and the Divine Essence is held in common by Father, Son and Holy Spirit. To put some theological terms, we can say they are consubstantial, co inherent, co equal, co eternal. They are distinguished with respect to their personal properties, but they do not differ in authority, rank, power or glory. Gregory of Nazianzus, 4th century Cappadocian Father put it memorably, no sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the splendor of the Three. No sooner do I distinguish them than I am carried Back to the 1. Such a great sentence to describe the doctrine of the Trinity that as we think about God as one, we ought to be pulled along to think of God as three Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And when we think of him as three, or to quickly be drawn in to think of him as one, One Essence, Three Persons the Doctrine of the Trinity thanks again for joining us on doctrine matters. I'm your host, Kevin Deyoung. Our hope and prayer is that this has been helpful to you as you look at Scripture and try to understand the best of our theological tradition as Christians, please consider subscribing to doctor Matters, and if this has been encouraging, consider passing it on to others. If you'd like to learn more about this week's doctrine, you can ask your pastor for good resources or check out my year long mini systematic theology book called Daily Doctrine. It's available in print or audio from Crossway.org the Doctrine Matters podcast is produced by Crossway. To learn more, visit Crossway.org.