There is an increasing awareness amongst evangelical Christians that the doctrine of the Trinity is foundational to what it means to be a Christian. One way that can be discerned is in the evangelistic materials produced in recent years. Rather than beginning with an affirmation of God as creator and ruler, as evangelistic tracts of old may have done, many evangelistic resources now begin with the triune nature of the Christian God as a key distinctive of the Christian message.
This is, in the main, a very welcome development. Since we are baptised into the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, it is clear that God’s triunity is basic to Christian discipleship and teaching. Yet, precisely because the triune nature of God is foundational, it is important to make sure we are being accurate and faithful in the way we think about it and express it. A mistake made in the foundations can lead to the whole building collapsing in the future.
A few years ago, when teaching on the doctrine for my church, I came across an evangelistic course which stated that “God is a united family”, “a loving community” and that the three persons “together form the one God.” This kind of explanation has become an increasingly prevalent way of thinking about the Trinity. Another popular level account of the Trinity explains that the “Father is the outgoing head of an outgoing family.” This description of God as a “family” seeks to emphasise, rightly, the relational nature of the Godhead. It also seems to have the advantage of negotiating the tricky relationship between threeness and oneness in God because the oneness emerges from the threeness, just like the oneness of a family emerges from the union of three (or more) distinct individuals. Therefore, if three persons make up one united family then the mystery of how threeness and oneness relate in God is solved. That makes the Trinity much easier to understand and, therefore, to discuss with non-Christians. What had seemed like an embarrassing theological knot has now become something to share confidently.
I fear though that, in the end, this approach, sometimes called “social trinitarianism”, is fraught with dangers, dangers which, if left unchecked, could lead us to lose our grip on the orthodox, Christian, doctrine of God that the church has held for centuries. Here’s why:
Fidelity to Scripture
The first thing to point out is that the idea of “God as a united family” is not taught in Scripture. This may seem counter-intuitive because after all, we are given two familial names, “Father” and “Son”, for the first two persons of the Godhead.
Doesn’t this suggest that “God is a family” is the logical conclusion of those names? After all, the Bible also doesn’t use the word Trinity, but we deduce the idea from the various elements of the Biblical witness. Isn’t “God is a united family” also a kind of “necessary consequence” from the teaching of Scripture? Well, no. Because, crucially, the third name in the baptismal formula that Jesus gives us in Matthew 28:19 is “Holy Spirit” which is not a very familial name at all. The third person is “Spirit” not “Mother” or “Brother”. In addition, the Scriptures use other metaphors to describe the relations of the persons that are more like the relations within one individual soul than between three people. The most famous example would be John’s use of the name “Word” to describe the Son. But also, the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 2:11 explains that “For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.” The Spirit, Paul explains, is internal to God just like our spirits are internal to us. So, on one hand we have the familial names of Father and Son, but we also have the names “Word” and “Spirit” which are more like aspects of human psychology. Now, it is true that whenever we teach a Biblical doctrine we have to draw strands together, and we will naturally emphasise certain aspects of the Biblical teaching over the others. But it is vital to note that, while the Scriptures do use the familial names of “Father” and “Son”, God deliberately uses names like “Spirit” that prevents us from using the word “family” straightforwardly to describe the Godhead. The point is not that we must never use any metaphor or analogy not included in Scripture, but merely that the absence of this particular metaphor should give us pause to ask whether there are any theological reasons why God Himself does not use it in His word. As we will see, there are significant drawbacks to the idea that “God is a united family”.
‘God is a united family’ risks robbing the persons of their deity.
It may seem strange that an approach that starts with the three persons, rather than the one divine essence, would diminish the status of those persons but, if we think the matter through, this is the surprising result of saying that God is a united family. In locating God at the level of the oneness, the three are subtly relegated to less than God. In his discussion of the Trinity, Augustine writes: “Nor because He is three must we think of Him as triple, or three by multiplication; otherwise the Father alone or the Son alone would be less than the Father and the Son together.” Augustine is quick to point out that because the persons have relational names, it is difficult to think of the Father alone, “since the Father is always and inseparably with the Son and the Son with the Father”.
{Saint Augustine in His Study} by Sandro Botticelli, 1480, Florence. {{Source: Wikipedia}}
Nevertheless, his point is that if we think of God as a corporate entity, which is formed by the three persons, as the evangelistic course would have it, we are saying that the Father and Son together are greater than the Father and Son alone. This means that the Father as Father is not God, He is only God when He is combined with the Son and the Spirit. Augustine concludes: “In God, therefore, when the equal Son cleaves to the equal Father, or the equal Holy Spirit to the Father and the Son, God is not made bigger than each of them singly, because there is no possibility of His perfection growing. Whether you take Father or Son or Holy Spirit, each is perfect, and God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit is perfect, and so they are a three, a triad or a trinity rather than triple or three by multiplication.”
Each of the three persons is perfect, since they are divine, and their perfections are not increased in their oneness, any more than it is diminished in their threeness. The persons are not 33.333% God who become 100% God in combination. This is, of course, harder to understand, and to explain, than the idea that God is a united family, but it has the advantage of entailing that when the Apostle Paul said that Christ possessed the “fullness of deity” in Colossians 2:9 he was speaking the truth.
‘God is a united family’ risks making God less relational.
The impetus for much of this kind of theological language is to emphasise God’s relational nature. Families are all about relationships and, therefore, if God is a family then God must be very relational. Now, it is true that God is relational, and that is a very important truth about Him. It is ironic, therefore, that this approach which seeks to highlight God’s relational nature, actually renders him less so. How? Because if God is a corporate entity which emerges from the unity of the three persons then God, as such, is an impersonal being. A few years ago, during the US Presidential campaign, Mitt Romney (pictured), running for the Republican nomination, was mocked for saying that “corporations are people too”. His point was that taxes on corporations are eventually paid by people. Now, even if one might agree with Romney economically, semantically he was wrong. Corporations are not people. We might say that “The Such-and-such family really care for us”, but really the Such-and-such family doesn’t care for us, the care comes from Mr and Mrs Such-and-such and their five lovely Such-and-such children. Corporate entities, whether families, football teams, insurance companies or elephant herds aren’t really relational. Their relational characteristics emerge from the persons contained with them. So, if God is a united family, a corporate entity, then ultimate reality, for that is what God is, is fundamentally impersonal. In this construction, while the persons might be able to know, to love, to act, etc, God as God is unable to do any of these things. God as God is simply the product of the actions and relations of the three. If we want to locate relationship at the heart of reality, then God cannot be a corporate entity.
This is why as theologians reflected on the Trinitarian mystery they insisted that the unity of the Father, Son and Spirit is not a corporate unity like a family, but a numerical one. That means that it is not that the Father, Son and Spirit come together to “form” God but that each them share the very same, one, infinite divinity. The Father’s “Godness”, if you like, is the very same “Godness” possessed by the Son and the Spirit. This is unlike the way you and I share our human nature. In a sense, since we our both human beings, you and I (for I am not an AI chatbot) have the same humanity, you are just as human as I am and visa versa. However, our humanity is generically the same rather than numerically the same. If you and I were in a room together there would be two human beings in that room. When I was at primary school, one my teachers would always correct a pupil if they said that someone was wearing the same jumper as them. “Similar, you mean” she would say because the two classmates were not squeezing both their heads through the same collar of the same jumper – it was just that the two jumpers had similar designs. My teacher may have been grammatically pernickety, but she was well equipped to be a Trinitarian theologian. When we say that the Father, Son and Spirit possess the same nature, we don’t mean it in the way you and I have the same human nature or the way two primary school children are wearing the same jumper. We mean that they each possess the exact same numerical nature so that when we count the number of Gods, the only number we reach is “one”. As the Athanasian Creed puts it: “The Father is almighty, the Son is almighty, the Holy Spirit is almighty. Yet there are not three almighty beings; there is but one almighty being. Thus the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God. Yet there are not three gods; there is but one God.”
How does this help secure the relational nature of God? It means that the thinking, acting, willing and loving of God is not done by component parts of God but by God Himself. The one divine nature that the three persons are is one that knows and thinks and loves and yet one that does so as Father, Son and Spirit. It is strange to talk and think this way, we’re not used to doing so, but then we should expect that thinking and talking about the ultimate, infinite reality would require a kind of strangeness outside of the ordinary confines of creaturely speech. And it’s important to recognise that when we talk about God, it is ultimate reality that we are discussing, that leads us on to our next point…
‘God is a united family’ is tacitly atheistic.
It may seem strange, but to say that “God is a united family’ implies that really there is no such thing as God, or at least that nothing really possesses what the Bible attributes to God. I realise this may seem the least intuitive of my points, so I’ll try and explain how I come to this conclusion. Let’s say that to be God is to be absolute and infinite. God is absolute in that He is the final explanation of existence, He is the one who gives being to all things and receives being from none, there is nothing behind God that explains Him. God is infinite in that nothing restricts Him, there is nothing at His level of reality that curtails Him. To say that God is absolute and infinite is to say that God is qualified by nothing other than Himself. Now, we have good Scriptural warrant for affirming this because God reveals Himself to Moses as “I am who I am” in Exodus 3:14, the one whose existence is unqualified by another. Now, here’s the question: does saying that “God is a united family” dovetail well with God’s self-description in Exodus 3:14? If God is a united family, then, as we discussed earlier, the three persons are individually not God; God only emerges from the unity of the three. But this means that the three are not infinite since they only become God in combination with each other. They do not possess unqualified infinite being in themselves. On the other hand, at the level of oneness, God as a united family, God does not possess absoluteness. God is no longer the absolute explanation of His existence, since behind God’s oneness sits the three persons who are the cause of the oneness of God, just as a father, mother and child are the cause of the family. So, we have three who are not infinite and a one who is not absolute, since he (or, really, it) emerges from the three. We are forced to conclude therefore, that there is no such thing as an absolute and infinite being. Nothing, either at the level of threeness or oneness fits with the definition of deity given in Exodus 3:14 (and in many other places of Scripture). Therefore, ultimately, there is no God, at least as defined by the Scriptures.
The Biblical God is incomprehensible
It is easy to see the attraction, as an idea, of God as a united family. In an evangelistic setting we want to make the central claims of Christianity as accessible and reasonable as possible and not only is the idea of a family accessible, it is also attractive, since all of us having longings for a happy family life. But there is a hidden danger here, that in our effort to make God familiar we may domesticate Him. This was the concern of Gregory of Nazianzus, one of the famous Cappadocian Fathers, who was involved in the fiercest theological battles of the late fourth century over the doctrine of the Trinity. For Gregory, and the other church fathers who defended the full deity of the Son and the Spirit, it was vital to affirm that God is incomprehensible: “No one has yet discovered or ever shall discover what God is in His nature and essence”, he says. Why? Because “deity must be delimited if it be mentally comprehended, for comprehension is one form of delimitation”. What Gregory is saying is that any God that can be comprehended, any God that can be easily understood, is not infinite, is not the boundless God of the Bible. Or as Augustine put it more pithily: “If you understand it, it is not God”.
It is true, of course, that God has revealed Himself, but He has revealed Himself as incomprehensible, as one who dwells in “unapproachable light”, as Paul tells us in 1 Timothy 6:16. If we teach or preach anything less than this then we offering a distorted and diminished picture of the God who is. This applies to explanations of God’s triune nature as much as to anything else. If we do not communicate God’s unlikeness to any created reality then we have miscommunicated the truth about the incomparable God. This is why God teaches us about His triune nature in ways that defy our created categories. The Son is a Son to the Father, but He is also His Word. The Spirit is as internal to God as our spirits are to ourselves, but He is also a distinct person who speaks and acts. This is what makes speaking about God difficult, but it is in that very difficulty that we learn that He is the infinite creator, “high and lifted up” beyond our capacity to grasp, and thus fit to receive our worship.
Conclusion
None of the books that use the metaphor of a divine family, quoted above, are academic or technical works seeking to offer a full-blown account of the Trinity. We must be careful that, in our desire for theological accuracy, we do not become paralysed in speaking about God’s triune identity. Indeed, to decide that the risk of Trinitarian error implies that we should be silent about the Trinity would be the worst possible outcome. We are, thank God, saved by the Trinity, not by our explanations of the Trinity. The renewed emphasis on the triune nature of God, in both discipleship and evangelism, is a very welcome development.
Nevertheless, evangelistic zeal or warm affections do not absolve us of the task of fidelity to God’s revelation of Himself in Scripture. After all, the old adage that whatever you win them with, you win them to, is true and the doctrine of the Trinity is no mere detail. It must be held by, as the Athanasian Creed has it, “whosoever will be saved”. We must, therefore, take care that in our explanations, even at the most introductory level, we do not distort, even unwittingly, the Biblical testimony about God with disastrous consequences. Most of us now know, due to one particularly amusing YouTube video, that the image of the three-leaf clover is not a helpful one in explaining how God is one and three. I have argued above that the idea that God is a family should be viewed in a similar way. It does not do justice to Scripture, it detracts from the deity of the persons, it makes God into a corporate entity rather than a living, speaking, willing being and, perhaps most seriously of all, it actually makes it impossible to affirm the Biblical definition of God consistently. The problem with the idea of God as a family is that it is too familiar, it does not grapple with the fact that our created minds cannot grasp the divine existence so easily.
How then, should we speak of the Trinity? This would require another article or ten! The good news is that the Holy Spirit has not left us bereft of resources. We have the testimony of the Scriptures, the drama of redemption crystallised for us in the creeds affirmed by the Church of England, the Nicene, the Athanasian, and the Apostles’ Creed. Of course, we need to summarise this in a way appropriate for whatever audience we have or setting we are in. But whatever we say, if it is faithful to Scripture, it will have the uncanny strangeness that pertains when creatures speak of their creator and when finite minds try to wrap their minds around infinite truth. The Athanasian Creed’s teaching that “The Father eternal, the Son eternal: and the Holy Ghost eternal. And yet they are not three eternals: but one eternal” is paradoxical and strange to us, but yet we must affirm it if we are to capture the mystery that God reveals to us in His Word. Augustine writes in his “On the Trinity” that in Trinitarian theology, “nowhere else is a mistake more dangerous, or the search more laborious, or discovery more advantageous.” Offering a simple analogy like a united family may seem a straightforward way of explaining the truth, but it risks short-cutting the labour necessary to truly enjoy the advantages of discovering the sublime truth that the God we worship is Father, Son and Spirit. “As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. Amen.’
