How is God, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus the same person?
2024-05-28 00:28:57
Do you have questions about theology, the Bible, or the church that you’re too afraid to ask? Tired of pastors and scholars using unfamiliar language or overly complicated explanations? Curiously, Kaitlyn is a weekly podcast hosted by author and theologian Kaitlyn Schiess that tries to make theology accessible, meaningful, and fun. Each week, you’ll hear a kid ask a theology question–sometimes serious, sometimes silly–and Kaitlyn will interview a scholar to help answer it (without all the academic jargon). Together, Kaitlyn and her guest discover that this one simple question opens up big theological ideas that can impact our lives, shape our view of God, and understand Scripture in a new way. Whether you're reminiscing about your own childhood curiosities or simply seeking a refreshing take on faith, tune in and rediscover the joy of learning with "Curiously Kaitlyn.”
Welcome to Curiously, Caitlyn, a podcast where we try to make theology make sense. I'm Caitlyn Schess, and every week on this show you will hear a kid's question about God, theology, or the Bible, and then I'll talk with a scholar who will try to answer it.
I don't know.
That doesn't make any sense.
Dr. Fred Sanders, thank you so much for joining me today.
It's good to be here, Caitlyn.
This is Dr. Fred Sanders. He's a theologian who teaches in the Torrey Honors College at Biola University, and he has written many books, including many about the Trinity, including The Deep Things of God, How the Trinity Changes Everything, and The Triune God. All right, let's hear our kid question. How is God, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus the same person?
I already just love the Holy Spirit. Very cute. Let's just start out with, what's your initial reaction to this question? How is God, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus the same person?
God, the Father, Jesus, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are the same God,
but they're three distinct persons. So, just to jump right into the terminology, I know it's sort of like, let me fix that question, but even just practicing using the word person to describe what they're three distinct things of in God.
We'll get back to this whole persons thing in a minute, if you're confused about what we mean by that.
It really goes a long way. It kind of sets you up if you memorize those categories. And I think, if a kid's asking about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, or the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, then obviously they're already saying some things they've learned from biblical language. You know, Father, Son, Spirit, Matthew 28,, 19,. that's a formula given to us by Jesus, and we learn it and say it.
And yeah, so here you're getting a child reflecting on that learned language.
Yeah, I love that. And I wondered if our initial conversation would start with person, because it is an important word. So let's get into that. It's an important word that she used, but also a word that is tricky. We use this when we're talking theologically about the Trinity, but it's also a word that can kind of confuse us, because even in the kid's question, right, they're saying they're sameness.
here. There's like something, you know, all three of these are God, but also this is the language I know to talk about distinct beings is persons, or, you know, sometimes little kids say persons. Most of us adults say people, talking about a group of people. But can you talk a little bit about what that word person means in the context of how we talk about the Trinity? Because I remember being in seminary and first taking a Trinitarianism class and thinking, why have we chosen this word?
Like it's confusing. It does lead people to think the Trinity is like a committee, like there's three people and we worship three people and then we immediately go, okay, well, no, that must not be right. But why is this word person important and what does it mean in the context of the Trinity?
Yeah. And I love the way you're, I can't think I can hear you touching base there by saying what's given to us in scripture is these names, father, son, and spirit. We then, we, the Christian tradition at large, while trying to think about what it means for the one God to be father, son, and spirit, came up with a non-biblical word. I'm not saying it's disallowed on that basis. I'm just trying to sort things out and say, well, what's primary text is father, son, spirit.
Commentary is the very helpful word person, which we thought of as a way of describing what these three are. And of course, it's got some ups and downs, you know, as a, as a human interpretive invention, to try to describe what there's three of in God.
Some of us grew up in traditions that would get kind of nervous about what Dr. Sanders is saying here. We might even get nervous about the concept of theology, because it's a human invention. But what Dr. Sanders is saying here is that we receive the text of the Bible from the church, and from the very beginning of the church, we have asked questions like this kid is asking, wait.
I'm seeing a father, a son, and something called the Holy Spirit here, but it seems pretty clear and important that we worship one God. What's up with that? And so we've looked across the whole of the Bible, seen what the story is, how the pieces come together and come up with language that helps us describe what's already there in the Bible. And thankfully, as Dr. Sanders has pointed out, we don't have to come up with language and concepts all on our own.
The church has handed down tried and true language to help us understand how Scripture describes God.
The downside in our current context is every person we know, you would pluralize that people, right? And every person we know is a distinct being. And so if you just apply that to God, then three persons equals three beings, and you have the error of tritheism.
Dr. Sanders explained this a little bit, but it's important. The word tritheism means three gods, and it's one of the mistakes we can make in our theology of the Trinity. There are two big ditches we can fall into on either side of the Trinitarian road. We can deny the three persons of the Trinity, either by saying that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are not fully God, or that nothing really distinguishes the three persons.
Or we can forget we worship one God and end up thinking of the Trinity like three different gods. Most of the heresies about the Trinity that have popped up over church history fall into one or the other of these ditches.
And then you have God as a committee of three distinct gods who collaborate, and that's a disaster. That doesn't help you understand what the Bible is saying. The reason we coined this word person, and, you know, in multiple cultures and in multiple language. over multiple centuries, we've stuck to some form of this word person. We could do the Greek and Latin here, you know, but it's just in languages older than the one you and I are speaking right now.
Something like the word person has been considered helpful. And you can see why, especially if, and kids are great at this, if you try to say what the three in God are, you'll almost always, the first word you'll reach for is parts. And students, my college students, you know, small children will say, well, the father part of God and the son part of God. And I always let them run with it, because I think, well, you can either make up your own words here and try to work towards understanding, or you could say back the inherited words and then work towards understanding. Part of me prefers that people would memorize from catechism, the correct terms and say them back.
But I don't think we've reached our goal at that point. That's just that they're using the traditional terms to get the understanding.
Some of us might not be familiar with the word Dr. Sanders uses here, catechism. In general, a catechism is a summary of beliefs, sometimes given in the form of questions and answers. Christians also sometimes use this word just to mean training or instruction in the faith. But some parts of the church more regularly use formal catechisms, like the Westminster Catechism, which you might've heard of.
It famously starts with the question, what is the chief end of man? and gives the answer to glorify God and enjoy him forever.
So when someone offers parts, the father part of God and the son part of God, I'll usually let them know, you can keep saying part as long as you don't mean it, because if you mean it, you're going to have to specify for me what percentage of the whole, what section of God, as distinct from another section of God, do you think is the father part of God? And then you have to admit, oh, I certainly don't mean like God, is 33% father. That's not what I meant by part. And I said, yeah, great. Then you're using part in a light, loose way and you don't mean part.
In case it's not clear, the idea that each person of the Trinity takes up a part of the whole of God is a heresy. There are lots of Trinitarian heresies we can talk about in future episodes. But I love Dr. Sanders' approach here. When I started seminary, I was so scared I'd accidentally do a heresy.
But now I know that you definitely can accidentally do a heresy, but then you keep learning. We shouldn't let our fear of being wrong keep us from asking questions, trying things out and learning more when we make mistakes.
And so at least you've got some noun, for pity's sake, we need some noun, some abstract noun to use to say what Father, Son, and Spirit each are. Since we know that if we say being or entity or something like that, then we're talking about the one God and then we're not distinguishing.
Yeah. I appreciate that you said, I mean, that we sometimes we just have to learn the words and then we come to a place of understanding. because I think sometimes, especially Sunday school teachers, parents, et cetera, are like, I don't have good words to describe this to you. But I've even seen in my own Sunday school class, like the kids learn the words first. They learn the Lord's Prayer.
They learn, even this. last Sunday for Pentecost, our children's director was asking the kids in front of everyone in the service, what do we know about the Holy Spirit? And one of the kids said, well, he was born of the Virgin Mary, which is not true, but they learn the creed. They learn the words of the creed. They were picking something that was familiar to them.
So they don't quite have understanding.
They picked a line very close to the right thing. Very near it.
Yes. Which sometimes that's just. what we have to do is learn some words first, and then we understand what they mean. And what I also hear you saying about person is that we just need words. We need a word to talk about the fact that there is Father, Son, and Spirit, but we don't want to use a word like being, because then we would be talking about the Godhead, God in general.
So let's talk, before we get into some things, about why this matters, because this kid is not just asking an abstract question, this is really important for us in understanding lots of other things about our faith. Why, what is so wrong with most of the Trinity analogies we use with kids? Because I'm imagining someone listening to this and thinking, oh, when a kid in my Sunday school class asked, well, wait, I thought Jesus was God. I thought the Father was God. That's usually how the question comes to me is like, I'm confused about, you know, what's going on here.
We reach for analogies, I think, because we're nervous and don't know what to say. Why can that be helpful, but also unhelpful?
Yeah, well, it's helpful in that it's scratching the itch, which is just a natural itch of the mind to understand. And one main way of understanding is, well, what's that like? And so, you know, analogical thinking, that mode of thinking is really helpful. And it's just the mind trying to understand, which is a great and wonderful thing. The downside, of course, is that what we're trying to describe is something that there's nothing like.
You might have heard some of these analogies before. The Trinity is like an egg, like a shamrock, like the three states of water. I didn't have Dr. Sanders go through all of those, but, spoiler alert, they're not great.
So when you think about the entire doctrine of the Trinity, we think about the one God who is Father, Son and Spirit. And you ask, what's that like? It's sort of like saying, you know, define God and give me a couple examples. Like, well, I can't give you a couple examples. And this is true of all sorts of things we do in theology.
If I say, the creator, God, made everything out of nothing.
There's a fancy theological term for this idea that God created everything out of nothing. Because there's always a fancy theological term. Creation ex nihilo. We can come back to this in another episode.
You know, not out of himself, not out of pre-existing material, but not out of anything, out of nothing. And you say, well, what's that like? Okay, I understand, analogical thinking is going to help us answer this basic question. What's that like? The thing is, it's the creation of all things from no.
pre-existing thing is not like anything. So if you're, if you have a really low bar, if you're easily satisfied by analogical exercises, I can say, well, this morning I made a bowl of cereal. You know, when I went to the kitchen, there wasn't a bowl of cereal. I performed an almighty act of creation. And after that, there was a bowl of cereal.
out of nothing. You know, and if, at a great distance, you can say, oh, I see. And that's kind of how God made the world. But obviously, as soon as you start digging into it, no, I just went to the cabinet and found a box of cereal that somebody else made. So it's a, it's a little, it's a little hint at what creation from nothing would be, but it's a perfect illustration of the heresy of creation from pre-existing material.
Trinity stuff is always like that. It's a little hint of what it must be like for there to be one God who eternally exists as father, son, and spirit. But it's, most analogies are perfect illustrations of false understandings of God. And so you've got to, if you use one, and I always try not to use one. I always try to set up reflection on what the Bible itself says as where we're going to make progress.
Yeah, that's so helpful. And I think probably in some future episodes, we'll deal with maybe some particular heresies around the Trinity that will, that, you know, inevitably pop up in our churches. As Dorothy Sayers says, those heresies come from humans asking questions and trying things out and being wrong. Yeah. But going back to the Bible, you've already referenced, right, we get at least just this language of God, the Father, God, the Son, God, the Holy Spirit from scripture.
And we get some places where the three are listed together. But a question that I get asked a lot, not typically by kids, but maybe as they get a little older, they start asking this, but definitely by adults who maybe didn't grow up in the church or did, but, you know, weren't taught really robustly in church, is, you said this earlier, but like, it's just made up, right? It doesn't come from the Bible. The word Trinity is not in the Bible. Where do we see that?
in scripture? outside of, or maybe including, places where the three persons are listed together? But is it just that? Is it like we found a few places where these three are listed and we've kind of spun a whole doctrine out of that?
Yeah, I always start with the big biblical storyline, you know, that if you want to tell the good news, one way to tell it is that in the fullness of time, God, the Father sent the Son, and the Father and the Son sent the Holy Spirit. And this is not just, you know, happens to be my favorite little story. I also like the one about Elisha and the bears, you know, but I like, let's also tell this story about the Father sending the Son and the Spirit. You know, this really is the main plot line. This is what the Bible's about.
I know there's all the other details. I'm radically oversimplifying, especially the whole Old Testament. But the basic point is the promise and then the sending of the Son and the Spirit from the Father as the way that salvation was going to be brought about. And so you have a three character, to use a non-biblical word, like a three character story, which describes the work of the one God in salvation. Now, from there, then, you can kind of do a, like.
once you've done a cover to cover, entire Bible overview and got the big picture in mind, then you can go in and say, oh, there are these tripartite passages in the New Testament. There actually are 75 of them.
So we've name checked the most important one, Matthew 28 and 19,, which says the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. That's got a unique place at the end of the long gospel of Matthew, that kind of, if you're reading Matthew and missed the point, let me give you the moral of the story, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit baptized in this name. And, by the way, one word name there, it's not these three names, but the one name of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. So you can kind of feel that. to use two other non-biblical words, you can feel that three and one going on there, right?
When I say non-biblical, what I mean is we got the primary data, and then, as we start to think about it, we say, oh, so, there's one God in three persons, of course, the word three is not in Matthew 28 and 19,, but you're allowed to count to three. And then, once you're dealing with that interpretive problem, or problematic, that interpretive situation, now you've got this three and one abstraction to kind of put together. It's a totally legitimate abstraction, but it's not given by the text. Nowhere does the Bible ask you, how can three be one? It's a question we come up with as we're reading it.
Then we coin the word trinity, which just means threeness, and there is threeness in Matthew 28 and 19,, but there's not the word three. And anyway, that's where we start spinning off. Most of the questions that immediately come to mind, and that we immediately speak, kind of in a church context, they seem really simple and straightforward to us, but they're actually questions put together from abstractions, based on what's in scripture. How can three be one? How is the one God, three persons?
Great question. Not exactly the way scripture itself delivers the information to us.
Yeah, that's so helpful. And I'd love to hear you say more about not just, okay, there's this abstract question that we inherit, I've heard people ask this question, I've read books where people ask this question, which is different than how we stumble upon the trinity in scripture. But there's also the difference between how this question can get asked as a kind of apologetics question or a logical question. And then there's the question of what this is doing, why this is important for our whole understanding of our faith. And I know you have written about this.
Can you talk a little bit about why this matters for the gospel, how this relates to the gospel? You started doing that, but just I'm imagining someone thinking, this is an abstract theological question that gives people like you, who do this professionally, something to write books about and argue with people about. And I don't think it would necessarily be immediately obvious to someone why this is so central to the gospel, they're familiar with the gospel, but they might be missing why this matters for our understanding of the gospel, how those two are so intimately connected.
Yeah. I suppose my life message is that trinity and gospel go together and that the better you understand the trinity, the better you understand the biblical gospel and vice versa. So one thing that means is when you state the gospel in any form, you can state it simply and kind of leave the trinity out of focus, you know, God decisively acted to save us. But as soon as you drill down a little bit or say a little bit more about that, you know, it's good to have a short version of what salvation is. And then someone says, well, what do you mean by that?
Then you want the long version. The longer version, the slightly longer version always gets Trinitarian. So it's not just that God came to us and saved us, it's that the Father sent the Son. And then you say a little longer, the Father sent the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit, or the Father and the Son then sent the Holy Spirit. Well, now you've made contact with the doctrine of the trinity as a way of going deeper into what you mean by the gospel.
I would say this also of experience, the experience of salvation. We can say, God saved me. Or we could say, the Father adopted me as his son through the spirit of adoption.
Those are not two different accounts. One's simpler and one's more detailed. It's when you get the more detailed one that's a more comprehensive biblical answer that you find yourself necessarily reaching out to Trinitarian stuff. And maybe if I could say one more thing about that, the real immediate payoff of kind of populating your mind with Trinitarian truth and getting more comfortable and fluent with talking about Father, Son, and Spirit in biblical ways, you might discover that the word God in the Bible, especially in the New Testament, is usually directing our attention primarily to the first person of the trinity.
In case it wasn't clear, theologians mean the Father when they say first person of the trinity, Jesus when they say second person of the trinity, and the Holy Spirit when they say the third person of the trinity. You know, like that list in Matthew, we've already talked about, Father, Son, Holy Spirit.
Right, so John 3, 16, God so loved the world. Well, how did God love the world? Well, God so loved the world that he sent his son. Oh, so the word God. right there in John 3, 16, it says God, but it means the Father in particular.
And we might have glossed over that, right? So later on, if you haven't read that Trinitarianly, as the Gospel of John invites you to, you might think, I know Jesus loves the world because he came to save us, but what about God? the Father? And you fail to notice, like, no, John 3, 16 already was giving you basic instruction in God, the Father's love for the world. that is the basis of the sending of the Son.
Yeah, that's so helpful. And I appreciate that. as a different answer to what sometimes people ask, which is like, why does this matter for my life? We try and do some sometimes funky things with the Trinity to make it applicable to human social life or things like that. And it's like, well, no, this is already just the Gospel.
This is what's so central to how we understand ourselves in the world. But going back to the question the kid asked, I think all of this has been really helpful. And this kid probably isn't quite thinking this deeply, but already is confused, so maybe they are, so they sound like a really smart little theologian. There is also still just this logical question of like, no, three in one. That's not possible.
I don't know logically how that works. And this goes back to the theologians. finding something fun to argue about. that makes people think, have you just chosen something, some construction, to understand what's happening in Scripture? that's just illogical?
And you won't admit that maybe the Bible contradicts itself, or maybe this doesn't actually make sense. How would you answer the kid who's increasingly learning how logic works and is like, no, this doesn't, on its face, make sense to me?
Yeah. Yeah, so if they're already asking it at that level, then I would go ahead and lean into distinguishing what there's three of and what there's one of. So, for instance, the Doctrine of the Trinity, the traditional churchly way of stating the Doctrine of the Trinity is that there is one God eternally existing in three persons.
So we're not saying there's one being who is three beings, or there's one person who is three persons. And I'll just freely admit, oh, if we said that, that would be a logical contradiction.
And again, if the kid's ready for this, if they're actually like, interested in logic and ready to use it as kind of a tool for understanding, then I would say, saying that there's three, there's one being who is also three beings at the same time and in the same sense, that's just, I can memorize those words, but I can't actually think it. I can't believe it because I can't even put it together in my mind as a thing to be believed. It's like a square circle. I can put the adjective square in front of the noun circle, but I can't actually have a thought corresponding to square circle. There's no concept in my mind, you know, because how many corners does a square circle have?
And are all the points on the perimeter of a square circle equidistant from the center point? And there's just not a thought. All I've done is a trick with language.
And so I like to point out that the basic claim of the doctrine of the Trinity is one being in three persons. That's not a logical contradiction. It may be something that we can't think of, another example of. Yeah. It may be something that we don't fully understand, but it's not merely a logical contradiction.
Yeah. Yeah. That's really helpful. And it goes back to what we said of like, sometimes we start out learning the words and then we ask new questions because we've learned the words and we come to greater understanding. Dr.
Sanders, imagine that you are at church and a small child, I didn't know this actual child, but based on their voice, they sound quite small, has asked you this question, or some version of it, you know, how is this possible? How would you respond in your kind of shortest kid answer?
I would start with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I would say the Father is God and the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, but there's one God.
I would do that when talking to kids. And I do, I'm actually just finishing up a year of teaching the elementary school lesson once a month. It's like a three to five minute lesson to first through fifth graders, which is an impossibly huge range, right? First graders, it's really hard to keep their attention from the front of the room for three to five minutes. Fifth graders are asking serious questions.
And so you're kind of trying to work that. My rule of thumb is always, I want to do the best I can at any given answer when I'm on the spot, at any given question when I'm on the spot. But I also want to acknowledge that this is one moment of input in a long trajectory. So I can get one part of the doctrine this time, and I try not to get greedy and go for the whole thing, because usually their attention span is not as long as mine is on this topic.
So I just answered just that one part of it. I know I can get to the rest later. I know their parents are going to be involved as the main educators.
And what is hard for me, just temperamentally, personality-wise, for me to remember is my self-presentation, and my attitude and my emotional presence in front of the question is about as important as what I'm actually saying when representing it to a child of that age. So if I look unafraid of the topic, I have to remind myself to smile. I'm not a natural smiler. So when I'm asked this question, I have to remind myself, act like you. enjoy considering this question about God, because you love God and you love the Bible, and this is your idea of a good time, and you're only going to talk for two minutes.
I love that. One of my favorite bits of feedback we've gotten from the show is people who have said, oh, this has helped me imagine turning a question my kid asks into a conversation, as opposed to what we often do, which is freeze up a little bit and feel like, oh no, if I don't have the perfect answer, or if they don't seem to understand, that's irreparably damaging their faith. Instead of, I love how you said, this is one piece of a larger discipleship over time, which many people are involved in, and hopefully, across the church, different people are teaching this child. So thank you for the reminder of, if we seem anxious, we are not necessarily teaching what we intend to teach if we seem nervous about it. So thank you, Dr.
Sanders, for taking this question really seriously with me. One of my favorite moments in this conversation with Dr. Sanders is when he shows us how telling the story of the gospel opens up all these other important questions. Sure, we can say, God acted to save us, but how? What did God do?
Okay, well, the Father sent the Son to die on the cross and rise from the dead. Wait, who are the Father and the Son? What's a cross? Someone rises from the dead? When I was in seminary, I remember a student asking why we were spending all this time talking about complicated theological ideas when all we really need to know is the gospel.
The professor did something brilliant. He asked the student to tell him what the gospel was. When the student said some version of, well, Jesus came and died and rose again to save us from our sins, the professor just started asking questions. Wait, who's Jesus? What are sins?
Why did he have to die? Theology is not an abstract academic exercise. theologians do so. we have something to write books about. Theology is us humans fleshing out the meaning of the gospel in all its nooks and crannies.
And theology isn't just good for us so that we can know more information or so that we can apply it to our lives. Theology is good for us because, rightly done, it's beautiful. This one captivating story that we believe opens up so many beautiful pieces. And we get to spend our lives and all of eternity exploring more and more of that beauty.
Curiously, Caitlyn is a production of Holy Post Media. Produced by Mike Strelow. Editing by Seth Corvette. Theme song by Phil Vischer. Be sure to follow us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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