Trinity

The teaching of the Bible makes it clear that God has eternally existed as ‘one God in three persons’ – Father, Son and Spirit. The word ‘Trinity’ has been used by the church to describe this since the earliest days of Christianity. It is formed out of two Latin words – trinus, meaning ‘threefold’ and unitas meaning ‘one’. It conveys that the members of the Trinity are united as one God but they are also distinct in personhood as three equal members of the Godhead. The Father is not the Son nor the Spirit, and so on. The members of the Trinity are mentioned throughout the Bible, from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22 but there are several places where we see them explicitly mentioned together. In Matthew’s gospel we see Father, Son and Spirit working together in Jesus’ baptism (Matthew 3:16-17) and when Jesus sends out His disciples on His Great Commission, He tells them to baptise new disciples in the ‘name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit’ (Matthew 28:19). Both Peter and Paul also refer to all three members of the Trinity in one place (1 Peter 1:2, Galatians 4:6, 1 Corinthians 12:4-6).  (For a more detailed description of each member of the Trinity, see God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.)