Originally posted by Living for Him
I need any scriptures you have about the existence of the trinity.
Hey Lori! Hope these help:
Acts 5:3,4
But Peter said, "Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart
to lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back part of the price of the land for yourself? While it remained, was it not your own? And after it was sold, was it not in your own control? Why have you conceived this thing in your heart?
You have not lied to men BUT TO GOD."
Also Christ prescribed baptism "in the name (singular: one God, one name) of the Father
and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit" - three Persons who are the one God to whom Christians commit themselves:
Matt. 28:19
Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the
name (it doesn't say names) of the Father
AND of the Son
AND of the Holy Spirit
Note: (italicized portion above is my addition for clarity's sake)
The blessing of 2 Cor 13:14 is trinitarian,:
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
as is the prayer for grace and peace from the Father, the Spirit, and Jesus Christ in Rev. 1:4,5:
Grace to you and peace
from Him who is and who was and who is to come,
AND from the seven Spirits who are before His throne,
AND from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler over the kings of the earth. To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood,
As you can see here, it calls for the grace and peace of "Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood." Obviously, that wasn't the Father, that was Jesus, who is also God, from whom all grace and peace originate.
In this verse from Revelations it is important to note that John includes the Spirit between the Father and the Son only because he teaches that the Spirit is divine in the very same sense as are the Father and the Son.
The three personal "subsistences" (as they are called) are coequal and coeternal centers of self-awareness, each being "I" in relation to two who are "You," and each having the full divine essence of God, the specific existence that belongs to God alone.
God is not one person who plays three separate roles; this is the error called "modalism." Nor are there three gods who only seem to be one because they always act together; this is "tritheism."
The theologian B. B. Warfield put it simply: "when we have said these three things, then - that there is but one God, that the Father and the Son and the Spirit is each God, that the Father and the Son and the Spirit is each a distinct person - we have enunciated the doctrine of the Trinity in its completeness."
God bless.