The Larger Catechism

Question 9: How many persons are there in the Godhead?

Answer: There be three persons in the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one true, eternal God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory; although distinguished by their personal properties.

The New Testament church was not long in existence when it ran into problems in trying to formulate its teachings concerning Jesus Christ. Since Jesus was evidently a man, there was no difficulty in confessing him as such. But since he claimed to be God, it was necessary to formulate a theology which would do justice to this aspect of his teaching. How, for example, were that manhood and deity related to each other, and how could they be affirmed while at the same time doing justice to the fact that Jesus was (and is) one person, and not two?

In addition, how could this primitive christology be related to the monotheism of the Old Testament -- and, indeed, to the monotheism of Jesus himself? What was his relation to God? And how could Jesus's talk of his being the Son of God, and God as his Father -- with evident elements of inequality and subordination -- be related to the doctrine that there is one God, and that he and the Father are one?

For the first five hundred years of the Christian church, such questions dominated the discussion. The doctrine which came to be confessed by the church is that formulated in the ninth question of the Larger Catechism. Having established that there is only one God (in question8), this particular question reminds us that there is a plurality in God, identified with the three persons of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

It has to be emphasised, first, that this formulation is trying to do justice to all the various strands of biblical revelation regarding the character and the being of God. There is a consistent emphasis in the Scriptures on the fact of God's unique, sovereign, being. He brooks no rivals and tolerates no other gods. He will give his glory to no other, and will give his praise to no graven image (Isaiah 42:8). At the same time, there is a hint of plurality in God as far back as Genesis, where the Hebrew name for God is elohim, which is a plural form and literally means 'gods'. In addition, when God creates man he addresses himself as a plural -- "let us make man in our image" (Genesis 1:26). The trinitarian language of the Catechism, therefore, is an attempt to bring together the various strands of biblical revelation and teaching concerning the being of God.

Secondly, the Catechism treads cautiously, conscious of the mysteriousness of this doctrine. Any attempt to do justice to biblical themes runs the risk of erring on either side of a biblical teaching. Consequently, unity and plurality must be held together, not as twin doctrines, but as twin components of the one doctrine about God. The language in which the Catechism couches its teaching on the nature of God reflects the sense of limitation and mystery in all our responses to the God of the Bible.

What, then, are the salient features of the Catechism's theology?

First, there is the use of the word Godhead to speak of the sovereign God of the Bible. This word is found three times in the Authorised Version of the Bible to translate three different (though related) Greek words. The usages are as follows:

Acts 17:29 -- "we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone" (ESV has "the divine being")

Romans 1:20 -- "the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead..." (ESV has "divine nature")

Colossians 2:9 -- "in [Jesus] dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily" (ESV has "deity").

The word 'Godhead', therefore, describes the essence of God's divine being. As B.B. Warfield puts it, in an article entitled "Godhead" relates the word to the word 'godhood':

The fundamental meaning of 'Godhead' is ... no less than that of 'Godhood', the state, dignity, condition, quality of a god, or, as monotheists would say, of God. As manhood is that which makes a man a man, and childhood that which makes a child a child, so Godhead is that which makes God, God.

(Selected Shorter Writings Vol 1, ed. J.E. Meeter, p76).

Warfield suggests that perhaps the word "Deity" is the best word by which to understand the concept of 'Godhead'. It is all that makes God, God -- the being, essence and nature of God are all bound up in this concept. And just as the being of God has qualities which mark Him apart (such as holiness, justice, love etc), so that being has personal elements without which God would not be God.

The usages of the term in the King James Version remind us that the essential nature of God makes him the sole object of worship (Acts 17:29), is revealed in the glory and majesty of the creation (Romans 1:20), and is manifested in a bodily form in the incarnate Christ (Colossians 2:9).

Second, there is the identifying of the three persons of the Godhead. God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Perhaps the clearest statement of this doctrine is in the Great Commission of Matthew 28:19-20, where the baptism formula of the primitive Christian Church includes baptism "in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost", where the word "name" is singular, and is predicated of three distinct persons.

The same phraseology is used in 1 John 5:7 -- "there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one". Some modern translations omit this verse on textual grounds, although there are also sound textual arguments for its being part of the original Scriptures. But even if it were not, the fact that it appears in several manuscripts identifies the teaching with that of the primitive Christian church, and it therefore remains a strong argument for the trinitarian orthodoxy of the New Testament believers.

Another important biblical reference is the baptism of Jesus (see Matthew 3:16-17), where Jesus (the Son) is baptised, God the Father speaks from Heaven, and God the Holy Spirit descends upon the Saviour in order to equip him for the work before him. Similarly, the benediction of 2 Corinthians 13:14 is trinitarian in its nature: Paul prays that the believers will know the love of God, the grace of Christ and the communion of the Spirit.

The doctrine of the Trinity is implicit in the Old Testament, and explicit in the New. The personal properties of the Father, Son and Spirit is the subject of catechism 10, and their unity and equality is the subject of catechism 11.

Third, there is the emphasis on the unity of God as being expressed in the equality of the three persons. They are "the one true, eternal God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory".

Again, the Catechism is reminding us that we must take care in our formulation. God's essence is not divided between three persons: three persons consist of that essence in all its fulness, in a manner which does not injure the doctrine of the unity of God. The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. But there is only one God. None has greater power than any other, and none greater glory than any other.

This has important implications for our worship. One phrase which is often used to sum up the essence of the Gospel is that we come to the Father by the Son through the Spirit. But we must also do justice to the fact that as a triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit are properly the object of our worship. We worship the Father. We worship the Son. We worship the Spirit. We worship, in other words, the one, unique God of the Bible. This is made explicit in catechism 11.

Fourth, there is the fact, to be further explored in a subseqent catechism, that each of the Persons of the Godhead is distinguished by properties which are unique to them individually.

The Bible teaching means that while we must never separate the three Persons in a way which will lead to tritheism, we must nonetheless distinguish them from one another. The Father is God in a unique way, as is the Son and the Holy Spirit. This, in a sense, is the blueprint for our fellowship in the Gospel -- "that they may be one, as you, Father, are in me, and I in you" (John 17:21). We are all unique, yet our lives interpenetrate one another in the same way as the Persons of the Godhead manifest unique qualities yet so interpenetrate one another that the uniqueness of God's numerical oneness is never compromised.