I have a deep belief in one God—the Creator of all things. Every morning, I get on my knees and surrender myself to this higher power. This practice has been a source of comfort and strength for me.
However, I've recently been exploring Christianity and have encountered a challenge that I'm struggling to reconcile. Within Christianity, there is an emphasis on believing in Jesus. I'm grappling with the concept of Jesus being God, and how that aligns with my own belief in one God.
In my heart, I feel that if Jesus is God, then it should be the same thing as believing in one God. But I can't seem to fully grasp this concept, and I'm unsure of how to approach my faith from this perspective. It feels like a contradiction, yet I know that many Christians find harmony in this belief.
I'm hoping that some of you might be able to share your experiences and insights on this matter. How have you reconciled your belief in one God with the teachings of Christianity? Is there a way to understand Jesus as God that still aligns with my belief in a singular Creator?
Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated. I'm on a journey of self-discovery and spiritual growth, and I'm eager to learn from others who have faced similar challenges.
The answer to this question is the Christian belief in the Trinity.
The doctrine of the Trinity can be, admittedly, difficult to wrap one's head around.
I think it may be helpful to provide some foundation before diving right into the technicalities of Christian Trinitarian theology.
The best place to start is right at the beginning of the Christian movement. We have a growing community expanding all over the ancient world, as followers of Jesus are bringing the message of Jesus to cities as they travel around. This Good News (Gospel) of what God has done through Jesus. And basically right from the beginning we see this awareness among the early Christians that Jesus is unique. He's not just unique because He's the Messiah/Christ, though that is certainly unique. But that Jesus shares identity with the God of Israel in some way.
We see this throughout the writings of the New Testament. For example in the letters of St. Paul we see a number of instances where Paul will quote or reference passages from the Old Testament that are talking about the God of Israel (YHWH) and applies them to Jesus. Paul will, also, speak in great lofty language about Jesus, where Jesus is said to be "the fullness of Deity in bodily form", or is straight up called "God". It's not just in Paul's writings either, in the Gospel according to John it begins by opening up by saying of Jesus, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God ... and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us". In the same Gospel Jesus is recorded as saying things like, "Before Abraham was, I Am" which seems to be a rather implicit if not explicit reference to what God said to Moses, "I AM that I AM", in fact the response to Jesus saying that was people wanting to stone Him for blasphemy for claiming Divinity.
So from the beginning of Christianity there was this understanding that Jesus, though human--He was born, He grew up, He spoke to people, He had disciples, He experienced emotion, He was arrested, beaten, crucified, died, and rose from the dead--was also somehow God. That Jesus shared identity with the God of Israel. And it is right there in the New Testament that we see a three-fold name or way of speaking about God. For example Jesus told His followers that when they baptize, to baptize "in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit". Now, it doesn't say "names of" but rather "name of" singular. We see this triadic formula used a lot throughout the New Testament and early Christians.
That there is God the Father, Jesus Christ His only-begotten Son, and the Holy Spirit. Three. And yet there is only one God.
By the end of the 2nd century the biggest Christological debates Christians were having were not whether Jesus was Divine or not, but rather how was Jesus Divine.
Some, like Paul of Samosata, said that Jesus became Divine by God's power, a view known as Adoptionism or more formally Dynamic Monarchianism. More popular, however, was a view held by people like Sabellius, Praxeas, and Noetus whose argument was that Jesus was, in fact, God the Father in the flesh. That "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" were actually three faces, or "masks" which God could wear, and that Jesus was simply God the Father in human form. This view is sometimes called Sabellianism after Sabellius, or called Modalism, but more formally Modalistic Monarchianism.
Both of these views were, however, rejected by most Christians. And so most Christian theologians and bishops argued two points:
1) There is only one God, therefore if Jesus is Divine it can't be because He became a god.
2) There is actual distinctiveness and relationality between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Jesus, therefore, isn't the Father, He's the Son. And thus Jesus has a real relationship with God the Father, they aren't the same "Person"
And that is what sets the stage for the next, and largest theological battle in early Christianity: The Arian Controversy.
Arius was a presbyter (elder or priest) from Alexandria in Egypt. As the story goes, Arius was listening to his bishop, Alexander, preaching. In his preaching Alexander said that the Son was of the same Being as the Father; that is, Jesus is God even as the Father is God.
Arius' responded to this by criticizing Alexander, because he thought what Alexander was saying sounded a lot like what the Modalists had been saying. Arius argued that's no good, because the Modalists were heretics.
But as Arius was going around bad-mouthing Alexander, it eventually led to the various bishops of Egypt coming together and, ultimately, they decided to ban Arius from his office of preaching. Arius decided, instead of doing that, he would leave Egypt and went to Palestine, and began preaching to anyone who would listen there. And he gained a rather big following in places in Caesarea.
News of this began to spread throughout the entire eastern half of the Roman Empire. And soon bishops and clergy were all writing letters, and talking about this. According to the contemporary historian, Eusebius of Caesarea, one couldn't even go to the marketplace to buy bread without getting into an argument about what Arius was teaching.
So what was Arius teaching? Well according to Arius there was only one uncreated God, the Father. However the Father, in order to create the material universe, wanted a divine agent, a "Second God". So the Father begot and created the Word, His Son, and it is the Word and Son that then created the universe. So according to Arius there were, in fact, two Gods. The uncreated and eternal God (the Father), and a lesser second God (the Son, aka Jesus). So it isn't that Arius thought Jesus wasn't Divine, wasn't God, but rather Arius believed Jesus was a second God in addition to God the Father. Some of Arius' writings have survived, and we even have creeds drawn up by followers of Arius that explain all this.
The controversy got so heated that the Roman emperor, Constantine, got involved. And so Constantine asked that the various bishops gather together at the city of Nicea to hash everything out, and make an official statement about what Christians actually believe. That's a very simplistic way of telling it, but still.
At Nicea around 320 bishops gathered together, most of them were from the eastern half of the Roman Empire, the bishop of Rome for example wasn't able to make the trip because he was old and the trip was too far, so there were two representatives in his place.
The Council of Nicea, which met in the year 325 AD, through much debate and argument ultimately came on the side of Alexander and his disciple Athanasius, which is to say, Arius' teachings were rejected. And a creed, or confession of faith, was written up and 318 of the bishops who were there signed on and agreed that this was a faithful confession of Christian teaching.
It's not that the Council changed anything, or adopted something new, it's that the Council rejected Arius' views as being inconsistent with the historic faith of the Christian Church.
What did the Creed of Nicea say? Well specifically, concerning Jesus, it said,
"We believe ... in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten, begotten of the Father before all ages. Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten not made, of the same Being as the Father"
In other words what was affirmed at Nicea was two things:
1) Jesus is not the Father, but is distinct, as the Son of the Father.
2) It is as Son of the Father that He is God, because He has the same Being as the Father.
One Being, but two distinct "Persons".
The Council of Nicea in 325 didn't have much to say about the Holy Spirit, because that wasn't the focus. However, decades later, another theological controversy would show up, this time about the Holy Spirit, and another gathering of bishops happened, this time in Constantinople, which would re-affirm the Nicene Creed as well as expand on the Holy Spirit.
This confession of faith known as the Niceno-Constantinoplian Creed (usually just called the Nicene Creed for short), remains the standard confession of faith of almost all Christians today. From Roman Catholics, to Eastern Orthodox, to Lutherans, to Methodists, to Presbyterians, et al. Basically Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestants of all stripes accept and most use the Nicene Creed as a true statement of Christian faith.
Now, the word "Trinity" isn't used anywhere in the Creed. Rather the term "Trinity" was actually first used much earlier in the debates against the Modalists.
So what's the summary of all this?
Here's the take-away I want to give: When the Christian calls Jesus "God", it is because we understand that Jesus is of the same Being as God the Father. He is not a second god, He is not a quasi-divine being. Jesus really is God, He is God even as God is God. While He is distinct from the Father, He nevertheless is One with the Father substantially.
So there is only one God, and yet there are Three who are that one God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
A later Christian confession of faith, known as the Athanasian Creed, says it like this:
"The [Christian] truth is this ... we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither confusing the Persons, nor dividing the Being."
The other take-way I want others to have is this: The doctrine of the Trinity didn't just show up one day, rather it is a position that is ultimately a way of trying to maintain the central beliefs of the Christian Church:
1) There is only one God.
2) The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God.
3) The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct "Persons".
The only way to maintain all three of these is what we call the doctrine of the Trinity. It affirms the unity of God as well as the trinity of Persons. I have attempted to explain the alternative (and rejected) views of the early centuries as a way of showing how what we are actually saying is less "We understand God" and more "We don't understand God, but here is how God has shown Himself to us anyway".
The doctrine of the Trinity is, in a sense, our way of trying to say the least wrong thing about God. It isn't about our understanding God, but precisely that we don't know; but we can speak of the ways God has shown Himself and spoken about Himself. The experience of God we have through Jesus, the way that Jesus tells us about the Father, and yet, is One with the Father. That somehow God relates to God, as Father and Son and Holy Spirit. One God, and yet Three Persons.
So, therefore, Jesus is God, because He and His Father are One, and yet He isn't the Father, He's the Son. And even still, the Holy Spirit is One with the Father and the Son, yet He isn't the Father or the Son, the Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit. We know God as the Three-in-One. One God, Three Persons, Holy Trinity.
-CryptoLutheran
