Lorenzo Palon

The Trinity in the Bible does not begin as an abstract philosophical problem about how three persons can somehow be one God. The earliest Christians began somewhere else entirely. They began with Israel’s uncompromising confession that there is only one God. Then they found themselves compelled by the life, death, resurrection, and exaltation of Jesus, together with their experience of the Holy Spirit, to speak about that one God in an astonishing new way.

The Trinity in the Bible Begins With Israel’s One God

Israel’s confession was expressed most famously in the Shema: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4). Christianity did not emerge by rejecting this confession. Jesus Himself affirmed it, and the earliest followers of Christ remained thoroughly committed to the belief that the God of Israel alone is the true God.

This issue matters because the Trinity cannot be understood properly if we begin by imagining three divine beings who somehow have to be fitted into one God. The biblical starting point is the opposite. There is one God. The question raised by the New Testament is how Jesus and the Holy Spirit belong within the identity, presence, and saving work of this one God.

Why Echad Does Not Prove the Trinity

Christians have sometimes tried to find the Trinity hidden within the Hebrew word echad, translated “one” in Deuteronomy 6:4. Because Genesis 2:24 says that husband and wife become “one flesh,” it is often claimed that echad means a “compound” or “plural” unity.

But the argument asks too much of the Hebrew word. Echad is simply the ordinary Hebrew word for “one.” The plurality in Genesis comes from the husband and wife who become one flesh, not from some hidden plurality within the word itself.

This correction does not weaken the doctrine of the Trinity. It actually frees us to see a much stronger biblical argument. The early Christians did not discover the Trinity by analyzing the grammar of the word “one.” They found themselves speaking about Jesus and the Spirit in ways that forced them to rethink how the one God of Israel had made Himself known.

The Father Is God—and Jesus Changes the Question

The Father is God. This was never in dispute. Jesus prayed to the Father, called Him “the only true God,” and taught His disciples to pray, “Our Father in heaven.” The God of Israel remained the Creator, covenant Lord, and source of all things.

Yet the earliest Christians did not speak about Jesus merely as another prophet or even as the highest of created beings. John says that the Word was with God and was God. Thomas addresses the risen Christ as “My Lord and my God.” Jesus forgives sins, exercises authority over creation, receives worship, shares the Father’s glory, and participates in the work of creation and redemption.

And here an important clarification is necessary. Saying that Jesus belongs to the identity of the one God does not mean that He somehow became divine after His resurrection or was later elevated into God’s identity by the church. The New Testament presents Christ as preexistent. John declares, “In the beginning was the Word.” Jesus speaks of the glory He shared with the Father “before the world began.” Paul speaks of Christ existing in the form of God before taking the form of a servant, while Colossians declares that He is “before all things.”

The resurrection revealed and vindicated who Jesus was. It did not transform a merely human Messiah into the eternal Son.

The Preincarnate Christ and the Old Testament

Traditional Christian theology has often appealed to the appearances of God in the Old Testament as evidence of the preincarnate Christ. The “Angel of the LORD,” for example, sometimes speaks as God, bears divine authority, and yet appears distinguishable from God. This has led many Christians through the centuries to identify such appearances as Christophanies—manifestations of the Son before His incarnation.

That interpretation is possible and has a long history, but we should distinguish it from what Scripture explicitly states. The Old Testament itself does not normally say, “This was the second person of the Trinity.” Nor does the New Testament identify every Old Testament theophany as an appearance of Jesus.

The stronger biblical claim is not that we can confidently identify Jesus behind every divine appearance in Genesis or Exodus, but that the Son truly existed before Bethlehem and that the New Testament repeatedly places Him within the identity and activity of Israel’s God.

Paul even speaks of Israel in the wilderness and says that “the rock was Christ” (1 Corinthians 10:4). Whatever the precise meaning, Paul clearly rereads Israel’s story in light of Christ. The preincarnate Son is therefore not a later theological invention. What requires greater caution is the attempt to identify every mysterious Old Testament figure as Jesus.

Paul, the Shema, and 1 Corinthians 8:6

Paul provides us one of the clearest examples of how early Christians understood Jesus within Jewish monotheism. While discussing idols, he affirms that “there is no God but one,” and then writes:

“Yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live” (1 Corinthians 8:6).

This is extraordinary because Paul has not abandoned the Shema. He remains a Jewish monotheist. Yet he speaks of the “one God” as the Father and the “one Lord” as Jesus Christ. In the Greek Scriptures familiar to Paul, “Lord” was also the usual way of representing the divine name YHWH.

Paul is therefore not simply adding Jesus as another god beside Israel’s God. He is speaking of Jesus within the identity and activity of the one God Israel has always confessed.

Notice also what Paul says about Christ: “through whom all things came.” Jesus is not placed among created things. Everything comes from the Father and through the Son. The one God is confessed in a way that includes Jesus in the divine work of creation itself.

This argument is much stronger than trying to prove the Trinity from the grammar of echad.

The Holy Spirit as God’s Personal Presence

The New Testament then speaks of the Holy Spirit in equally remarkable ways. The Spirit is not presented merely as an impersonal force or divine energy. The Spirit teaches, guides, speaks, sends, intercedes, gives life, distributes gifts, and can be grieved.

The Spirit dwells within God’s people as God’s own presence, continuing the work of the risen Christ and bringing the life of the coming age into the present. Christians therefore experienced God not only as the Father who sends and the Son who reveals and redeems, but as the Spirit dwelling within them.

Again, the church did not respond by saying there must therefore be three gods. The confession remained that God is one.

Why the Church Needed the Doctrine of the Trinity

The Christians of the New Testament found themselves holding several truths together at once: the Father is God, the Son existed before the incarnation and belongs within the identity of the one God, the Spirit is God’s own personal presence, and yet God remains one.

The doctrine of the Trinity arose because the church refused to surrender any of these biblical realities.

Later theologians used terms such as “one essence” and “three persons” to protect this confession. That language did not create the biblical reality. It developed because Christians needed a way to speak faithfully about what Scripture had already compelled them to believe.

This is why the Trinity should not first be approached as a mathematical puzzle in which Christians somehow insist that three equals one. The question is not how three beings can be squeezed into one God. The deeper question is how the one God of Israel has revealed Himself through the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

The New Testament Gives Us the Story; the Creeds Give Us the Grammar

The New Testament does not begin with philosophical definitions of divine essence and personhood. It provides us the story of the Father who sends, the eternal Son who enters history and redeems, and the Spirit who gives life. The church’s later creeds supplied theological grammar intended to protect that story from distortion.

This approach also helps us appreciate the Old Testament more carefully. We can accept that the preincarnate Christ possibly appeared in certain Old Testament scenes. But neither do we need to make every theophany a Christophany to defend the Trinity. The stronger biblical foundation is that the Son existed before the incarnation, shares in the divine work of creation, bears the identity and authority of Israel’s God, and enters the world in Jesus Christ.

Perhaps this approach is the most helpful way to understand the Trinity. Christians did not invent three persons and then try to fit them into one God. They encountered the Father, Son, and Spirit within the biblical story of creation, Israel, incarnation, redemption, resurrection, and new creation, and discovered that Scripture would not allow them to surrender any part of that confession.

The Father is God. The Son eternally belongs within the identity of the one God. The Spirit is God’s own personal presence. Yet God remains one.

The mystery remains, but it is no longer merely a mathematical puzzle. It is the mystery of the one God who has made Himself known as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Further Reading

• Ayres, Lewis. Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. OUP Academic
• Bauckham, Richard. Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament’s Christology of Divine Identity. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2008. Eerdmans Publishing Co
• Fee, Gordon D. Pauline Christology: An Exegetical-Theological Study. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2007.
• Wright, N. T. “Jesus and the Identity of God.” Ex Auditu 14 (1998): 42–56.

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