One God, Three Persons: Genesis, Moses, and the Mystery of the Trinity
Nathan (00:01.144)
Hello and welcome to Thinking Out Loud. I'm your co host Nathan Rittenhouse.
Cameron (00:04.394)
And I'm your co host, Cameron McAllister.
Nathan (00:06.858)
And today we're going to take a question from one of our younger listeners. And we do have several of those. and we're going all the way down to a 10 year old's question who is asking a question that is thousands of years old. So we're gonna go way back and try to walk through this in a way that makes sense to us all, or at least lays out some gr framework, groundwork, something work for how we want to discuss the question. So here it is. and this is the the mother was sending me this. So she was saying,
Cameron (00:31.148)
Patchwork.
Nathan (00:36.14)
we were reading Genesis one through two, and our ten year old daughter asked how and why we say there's only one true God, but it says, Let us make man in our image, and how and why with one true God we believe in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I was so blessed and challenged by her curiosity and have tried answering it, but I thought it might I might ask how you and or Cameron would answer that for a precocious ten year old. Well, since Cameron, you and I are parenting in that age range, we better get this right.
Cameron (01:04.0)
I think so.
How would I
Nathan (01:07.714)
I I'm sure you can do this in one sentence and go.
Cameron (01:10.976)
I would want to s okay, here's my one sentence. I would want to sit with attention for a moment. I think all too often we want to provide very clear cut answers, especially when it comes to s well, when it comes to scripture. There is there's pressure to be as clear as possible, especially with children, because after all, we think these are the words of life. This is sacred scripture. So we need to make sure that we impart truth immediately.
Nathan (01:12.651)
Yeah.
Cameron (01:41.549)
But the prerequisite to reading any book well and to reading scripture well is to trip over some of the language. When you're reading any challenging book, whether it's so whether it's poetry or a novel or a work of history, whatever it is, you're going to if if you're not going to pause and
Ask the questions you're being a lazy reader. I know this because I've been a lazy reader.
Nathan (02:15.054)
Well, and if you don't get good at this in the Old Testament, Jesus is really going to throw you for a loop.
Cameron (02:21.228)
So this is really going to be an invitation to to parents, to us as parents, to just just know getting around it, having long, long and very meandering conversations, and some of which are are difficult. So we'll we'll get to how we would answer it, but I want to begin by saying tripping over the words is a good thing. People have tripped over the these this these particular words for a long time, as you mentioned, Nathan.
And this is this is necessary to really try to seek understanding in scripture. It's necessary to deepen our sense of devotion. And it's it's really it's necessary for us to to to actually move toward becoming more mature readers of the Bible.
Nathan (03:13.25)
but but this is all very exciting. This this is this is this is not ambiguity for the sake of confusion. This I think sets us up for some fun conversation here. So yeah, when we're when we're doing this, yeah, it it's our practice actually, in fact, we've run into so many questions reading scripture together as a family that we now sit for at least sixty seconds in silence after finishing the reading so that the kids can kind of work through answers to their own questions before immediately jumping into
asking somebody else, and it's interesting what they can come up with in that little pause. But Cameron, let me just ask it to you this way. So let's take the the most traditional conservative read on this, which is that you have Moses as the author of Genesis. So let's start with that. We'll just assume that's where we're going from. And you definitely have Moses being one receiving the law on Sinai, the Shema hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. What in the world is Moses doing
making plural references to God. I'm so I I guess all I'm saying is he could have not done this. There there would be a way. Like this isn't necessary grammatically. and and it's not just here in let us it's that Elohim is plural. So you have a plural reference to God off and on different times. L is the singular Elohim.
Cameron (04:22.232)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (04:41.87)
Hello the so that I am ending makes it plural. cherubim, cherub, cherubim, singular plural, Elohim plural. so he could have not done this, I guess is what I'm saying. So it's it's a it's it's intentionally the way that it is for a reason. And I would ask so I guess my question coming back to you then is if if we go from this being the starting point, was
Cameron (04:56.728)
Mm-hmm.
Cameron (05:07.341)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (05:11.36)
Was Moses a monotheist?
Nathan (05:16.492)
And this seems like a a a trickier question than we would like to grapple with sometimes.
Cameron (05:19.105)
It is.
Cameron (05:22.924)
So I think it begs another question too. So was Moses a monotheist? So obviously let's just spring way ahead and give a Sunday school answer just for a second, just to settle everybody. And we would say, well, now Christians would say this is, you know, because God is Trinity. This is a Trinitarian statement. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. All right. We got now yeah, I was gonna say, now we got that out of our system. Now let's go back and let's get back to the difficulty of this. The difficulty is is again, I think
Nathan (05:35.006)
You're right.
Nathan (05:43.372)
Okay, but not yet.
Cameron (05:53.251)
Helpful here. It's we should we should spend a little bit of time on why it's helpful to sit in the tension, why it's helpful to re to wrestle with the difficulty. Part of the an answer to that would be that this is this is to help put ourselves in in a more ancient mindset. It is to look at the Bible as something that was actually written by real human beings.
So that's why I like your question a lot. Was Moses a monotheist?
Another question behind that would be, did Moses understand what he was writing when he said that in the fullest sense? Or in the did did Moses understand those words as we understand them today? And I'm gonna go ahead and put my cards on the table here and say no, but he didn't need to understand it in the full sense. So can I just back up for a second and give a picture that will sound a little strange to
Nathan (06:40.194)
Well I
Cameron (06:53.74)
To those of us who are Protestants, but I think is actually really helpful here. So John Baer, who I believe teaches at the at University of Aberdeen right now, but he he is he has a long-standing campaign. He wants to, and he knows he's going to be unsuccessful, but he wants to get us away from saying Old Testament. And the reason he wants to do that is because when we say old testament, it automatically
Predisposes us, so he argues, to kind of see it as mainly history, sort of the lead up until we get to the New Testament and Jesus shows up. The reason he wants to resist that is because he says, first of all, is Jesus absent from the Old Testament? And he says, No, of course, he's he's all over the Old Testament. And then
How does how do how does Jesus refer to the Old Testament? He doesn't call it the Old Testament. Of course, he calls it the scriptures. It's simply the scriptures.
Nathan (07:52.501)
Mm. Or the low on the profits, yeah. Yeah.
Cameron (07:54.519)
The law and the prophets. This is how we, this is how, by the way, some of us will validate the the law and the prophets. But he also points out so we're talking about Moses here was was was Moses Moses a a mon a monotheist? Yes. But did he fully understand the implications of what he what he was saying? Similarly, would do the prophets understand when they say a virgin will give birth? Do they understand exactly, do they understand that this is going to be
Jesus of Nazareth, and he will one day free the people of Israel, just like Moses freed the people from, you know, led the people out of Egypt by the hand of God, but that he will do so not by conquering Rome under his heel, but instead will go to the cross. Well, no, I don't think so. We're we're still we're dealing with human beings who have received a revelation. Yeah. Yeah, who have received a revelation.
Nathan (08:47.755)
Yeah. But well no, and but we're dealing with revelation. But you're also saying revelation, yeah. That's that's what's happening here.
Cameron (08:53.836)
But do they grasp the full implications of it and have their their minds wrapped around every every bit of it? No more so, I think, than than than any of us do. I mean, even in the in the New Testament, you know, we have Peter who received a revelation about the Gentiles being included, goes to the house of Cornelius, is is seems to me a little bit grumpy about it. But
then later on in Galatians has to be called out by Paul for his problems with, you know, dining with the circumcision party and turning his nose up at certain other people because it's still still a human being. So part of what I'm that all of that, that's a very long kind of winding answer, elliptical answer to to your question. Was was Moses a a monotheist? I think yes. Did he did well
Nathan (09:16.386)
Yeah.
Cameron (09:40.548)
Did he have Trinitarian language at his disposal? Well, no. Trinitarian language doesn't is not even in scripture. That doesn't come along until we have church fathers putting their heads together and we have the Apostles' Creed. Yeah. And so and if you want I mean, I've I've often said, you know, a place where your neat little categories can go to die is history, a place where your neat little theological categories can go to be challenged.
Nathan (09:54.135)
saying how do we want to talk about this? Yeah.
Cameron (10:06.999)
And if you're if if you're immature about it, they'll die. If you're if you're if you're mature about it, they'll be challenged would be doctrinal development. But so there that's that's that's the stab I would start with. Probably not great for talking to a ten year old. Yeah.
Nathan (10:14.722)
Yeah, well okay. So so let
So let me jump in there. I don't know if we're hit I I don't know. I'm gonna I'm gonna give the ten year olds a lot of credit here. But let me let me give a couple of vocab words here that might be helpful. Yeah, that's right. We're we're leaning heavy on the pregotions. so let's do a little vocabulary here and then introduce some kind of world religion categories. So vocab wise, we often think about monotheism, mono one, one god, and then polytheism, poly meaning many, many gods.
Cameron (10:27.033)
She said precocious. So mm-hmm.
Nathan (10:47.746)
But there's an in-between category here that I think the Old Testament or the Hebrew scriptures or however you want to work this out plays with and isn't quite sure what to do all the way through, which is called henotheism. So in henotheism, you accept the reality of multiple gods, but you believe that there's one supreme God who's more powerful than all the rest of them.
And there are a lot of elements in this, and you look at like showdowns with the prophets, or a lot of the mocking that the prophets do of the gods of the other you know, even up in and and so to the degree to which you want to say you believe in the existence of other gods or deities or how you want to define gods, like Jesus doesn't dismiss the idea of there being d demons and demonic powers. Pharaoh's magicians and sorcerers could pull off several of the tricks, you know.
air quotes tricks here that Moses did to talk about divine power. And so you do seem to have a a comparative tension throughout the prophets and even within the the way in which, so think for example, the idea that you had gods that were regional. So you had the God of this mountain, or the God of this river, or the God of this nation. And so there was kind of this exciting idea that the God of Israel was still the God of Israel and the Jewish people, even when they were captured in Babylon.
That their God was still with like the that the gods, like there was a God who was over all of the earth rather than just over a specific little region. And so I think there's some cu curiosities going in there with with the audience to whom the Bible was written for, who would have assumed that the prophets of Baal and the showdown with Elijah were communicating with real gods. And so it's it's not a question of whether or not they existed, it's which one's more powerful. That's often what's going on in that conversation. Now, I don't think those are gods that
Cameron (12:10.073)
Mm-hmm.
Cameron (12:30.777)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (12:39.561)
what I'm referring to like what we refer to as Yahweh was consulting with in the beginning of Genesis. And I know there's a ton of conversation happening right now about the idea of divine counsels out of Job and Psalm eighty four and all kinds of other things that I think we're maybe reading a little bit too much into there. But if you're looking at who was who was receiving the information and what was the framework that they were working with, it was a question of, yeah, there are a bunch of guys and which one's the most powerful. so a lot of the old test
Cameron (12:48.057)
Mm-hmm.
Cameron (12:57.849)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (13:08.669)
Knowing that helps with a lot of understanding a lot of Old Testament passages. Still doesn't help us with what Moses thinks is happening in Genesis chapter one, but that does iron out some of the wrinkles in the rest of the prophets, I think.
Cameron (13:23.115)
Yes. I mean I think part of the faithful, worshipful reading of scripture over down the ages has involved people doing their their best to make sense of what they what they find there and to best honor it.
Nathan (13:41.795)
Well, okay, but but that's but that's not unique just theologically, because I said vocabulary and then so let's talk about progressive revelation here a second, also, Cameron. I had this distinct memory when I was seven years old of looking into a little pond, and all of a sudden this thing popped up in front of me that was kind of like a snake, but it definitely wasn't a fish, and it definitely wasn't a snake, and then it like spun and swam down, and I saw a little flash I mean it was mostly black and I saw a little flash of yellow.
Cameron (13:50.456)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (14:10.54)
And I remember running into the house and talking to my parents. I was like, I saw this thing in the pond. This is kind of what it looked like. It wasn't a fish. It wasn't a snake. But I don't I didn't have a category for it. I just had some basic descriptions. Like its head was a little bit like a snake. It was mostly black and slender and had some yellow spots on it. Okay, that's the seven year old Nathan analysis of what I saw. Well, it turns out that we have a thing called creatively the yellow spotted salamander. And they're pretty big. I mean like seven, eight inches long, pretty chubby.
and they're long and black and have yellow spots. But if you've never seen one of those before, and it just pops up out of the water, and you're thinking it's not a snake and it's not a fish, I had some descriptive descriptions of it, but none of them were quite right until I had later in life, I've I've picked them I've played with them, I hauled them around, like I understand this creature now, but my first contact with it was like, what in the world is is this thing? And I think it's not too dissimilar from
The way in which scripture is laying out for us what who is God and what is he like, that you have some of these instantaneous, cause because he's gonna blow all the categories traditionally of what people think of when they think of interacting with a God. And so you get a lot, I think Ezekiel's visions, Isaiah, they have these mind-blowing, whoa, hang on a second, it's not a fish, it's not a snake, there's something here, I don't quite know. And you get these partial descriptions.
Cameron (15:20.985)
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Nathan (15:39.116)
that are not untrue. They're just not all the way fully developed in the way that we would, you know, later have them through God's revelation. Am I creating any heresies there, or is that just kind of the way that humans learn?
Cameron (15:52.95)
No, that's kind of the way humans learn. And so I think if you're squirming in your seat or if you're getting uncomfortable, you may want to think about what it means for the Bible, for the Bible to be inspired and the sufficiency of scripture. We there are other, so sometimes comparison can be helpful here. There are other religions that that basically maintain.
their their central prophet, so the best example here is Muhammad, essentially just dictates precisely the rel the revelation that they have received. So they're ba they're basically just they're just transcribing it. That is not how we Right. It's complete.
Nathan (16:36.108)
Yeah, and it's a once for all definitive
Edgedon, yeah.
Cameron (16:42.221)
Yep, etched in stone, it's complete, it's it's eternal, completely unchanging. We as Christians believe that the Bible was written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. That's right. But it was written by human beings. So human beings, look at yourself. Look at the the bundle of nerves that you are, the mixed motives, all of that.
Nathan (17:05.57)
Yeah, but that doesn't but we're not saying Moses was wrong.
Cameron (17:09.463)
No, no, no. It just means that you have flesh and blood human beings working from the constraints of and the limitations of their their own minds. Now, the revelation is can can, of course, more than meet that challenge and exceed that challenge as it does, but it does mean that there's no major conceptual problem by saying somebody who put something down.
A long time ago didn't have the full level of understanding that later people maybe did be once the once that revelation was made plain. Things in which into which angels long to look, to use scriptural language. Yeah.
Nathan (17:44.889)
Well, okay, but but before people lose their minds, let me just let me Exactly. Yeah, so so the New Testament does that. Hebrews one in the past, God spoke to us through pro prophets. No, now he does it through his son. Yeah, these are the things that the angels long to look into. But also going in the other direction, you have Jesus saying, I have things to tell you and to show you. Basically, you can't handle the truth yet.
And so there we do believe there's more to come and that we're kind of in this. So this is not being wishy washy and saying that the character and the nature of God changes. That's not what we're saying.
Cameron (18:18.893)
Well, hey No no no hold time out here. No no time out. Look, I can point to let's let's let's point to another pertinent example, very fun one to point to 'cause it's easy to pick on Peter. When Peter said thou art the Christ, was he wrong?
Nathan (18:38.532)
yeah.
Cameron (18:39.713)
No. I mean, he was he was speaking, and and what does Jesus say? Flesh and blood did not reveal this to you. And so he's he's speaking the truth. Does he grasp the full implications of that statement? Clearly not. Not even close. Because yeah, we're gonna let's like it's a safe bet to say no, because we know pretty soon Jesus is gonna say, get behind me, Satan to him. Why? Well, because Jesus says, Well, you know, I go to Jerusalem to suffer. No, no, no, no, no, no, Lord. May it never be.
Nathan (18:55.15)
I'm gonna go with no.
Nathan (19:09.442)
Yeah.
Cameron (19:09.837)
So there all of it is everything that we're talking right of talking about is present in that in that event at that scene. You have you've got divine revelation to a human vessel, Peter. Peter, who will, by the way, will go on to become a hero of the faith. But not yet. He's a work in prog progress. What he says is true. What he says is true. And it's good. There are other examples, by the way, besides just just Peter. There's there are high priests.
Nathan (19:31.146)
Yeah. Yeah.
Cameron (19:41.038)
There are people like Balaam who have revealed to them truth by divine revelation. They don't always grasp the full implications. In fact, they mostly don't. They often don't. And nor are they always necessarily faithful in the long run. Fortunately, with with an example like Peter, he is. But just wanted to, all of all of the tensions that we're pointing to here are.
present there. And I find so I do take the risk and talk in these terms with my with my precocious soon-to-be 10-year-old. I like to bring up these tensions because I like to because part of what I'm trying to do is put flesh and blow f flesh and bones on on Christianity and not just have it as a set of abstract convictions or it beliefs, but also this is a living faith. This is a faith where where people
That involved real human beings, it involved growth, it involved learning, it in it involved people coming along and having to make sense of of some of what just seemed very perplexing. Anyway, I'll stop now.
Nathan (20:47.299)
But yeah, so but if we let's work back to where we started then, Moses got a phenomenal amount, pretty clear. The spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the deep. So okay, so he's seeing the spiritual part, he's God speaking. the concept of the word is going to be picked up pretty heavily, particularly in John and in Jesus' understanding of himself. so there's a lot going on right there in the beginning. And then it's helpful in our our late friend Nabil.
was good at pointing this out that the the Hebrew word for one, ihad, often means like one cluster of grapes. so it's there there's room for plurality within the unity in the vocabulary word that is used there. So the let us, the plural Elohim, the the the margin the the the the expanse within the term one
This is not a this is not a clearly developed Trinitarian theology in the Old Testament, but I mean the foundation was pretty well laid for it.
Cameron (21:48.845)
Say that again. No, no. Say say that again. Say that again though. Because that's right.
Nathan (21:55.991)
Yeah, I'm saying it it's not a clearly developed
Cameron (21:56.289)
It's not a clearly
Nathan (22:02.371)
Yep. It's not a clearly developed Trinitarian theology in the Old Testament, but there's like something's going on here that has to come from Revelation 'cause yeah, 'cause it certainly didn't come from reason.
Cameron (22:08.491)
And that's okay.
Cameron (22:14.103)
No, so you wouldn't let's let's back up here and make a make another larger sort of philosophical theological observation. You would not reason your way to the Trinity. There is no reasoning your way to the Trinity.
Nathan (22:27.48)
And
Yeah. And and in fact Alistair McGrath has a great line on this where he says the Trinity is something that we reason from, not something we reason to. Let me give you that again. The Trinity is something we reason from, not reason to.
Cameron (22:38.295)
Yes. And
Cameron (22:44.163)
So, what if if we don't reason our way to it, how do we know? Well, it's revealed to us by the living God. So, on the basis of that revelation, now when we reason from it, we can see that its explanatory power and scope is unparalleled. But it has to be revealed to us. And it's okay to say that. And so, again, with with scripture, you're what you're dealing with here are also.
Routinely, mysteries are revealed that exceed our capacities, and then but then they are later, they're later later given a clear explanation, especially when we when we come across when we see the gospel and when we see the New Testament, what had previously been shrouded or an enigma is now revealed clearly, and we see it.
But it's still there in the Old Testament. It just hadn't been fully grasped at that time. But it's still there.
Nathan (23:55.407)
Yeah. Yeah. And so I I think seeing Jesus as that fullness, picking up on the Colossians language there in Colossians one fifteen, that's a great passage to go and read. so the the yeah, the framework for the theology is laid out. But let's say something then to the ten year old who has some questions about well, how would I explain my what I mean by there being one God to maybe a ten year old friend? Footnote in here, I reference this a couple times a year.
Just go look up Lutheran Satire, the Trinity, and have Donald and Connell, the cartoon characters, explain this to you in their conversation with Cartoon St. Patrick. It'll s it'll save you a whole number of heresies. But essentially what we're saying here is that God is one. Hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. That's pretty straightforward. But within that oneness, we do see personhood in distinction. So what you'll really want to do if you're extra precocious is
Is go look up the Council of Chalcedon and the statement on the Trinity and the nature of Jesus and how you can have multi. There'll be a good education in substance and essence. We'll put it that way. So those would be some resources to go explore. But it really is helpful if we say this is not something that we made up. We agree that it is complicated. We agree that the word Trinity does not appear anywhere in scripture, but we're looking at
Seven things being taught biblically speaking. And these are the seven. So there's one God, unequivocally. the Father is God, the Son is God, the Spirit is God, the Father is not the Son or the Spirit, the Son is not the Father or the Spirit, and the Spirit is not the Father or the Son. So you have those seven things. Whatever you want to call that, conventionally we've called that the Trinity, seems to be the way in which God has chosen to reveal Himself to us.
Cameron (25:45.997)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (25:49.881)
And I'll throw Tozer in here who says that glory demands submission to mystery. That yes, there is an incomprehensibility because it's God who is wholly other. That means there's no analogy on earth to like what he is like. if you want a neat, tidy God that fits within human reason, you should be a Muslim. Muhammad comes along as like, no, we got to have a God that we can fit in a big black box. and Christians are like, No, we're we're catching a glimpse here and
Cameron (26:09.047)
Right. Yep.
Nathan (26:18.254)
And hoping to know a whole lot more about it in the future, but we know enough about who God is, the goodness of his character, his desire for us to be in relationship with him and his redemptive work that we can live lives that glorify him. But we are we're we are not acting like we have our heads or our hands or our theology or anything else wrapped around the fullness of what it is that God is. And so we we come to God with a sense of reverence and fear and and majesty and holiness.
And then work from that revelation, we are not trying to organize a tidy little God that we can kind of get to do our tricks when we provide the right sacrifices.
Cameron (26:58.467)
Beautifully said. And I think a fitting note note of of conclusion. I can't improve on that. I suspect that this might have been a bit of a challenging episode for for for some of us. So we may revisit the topic a little bit more. But I the reason I think it's I think it might be challenging for some of us is I find that in many of of at least the circles I I w I move in sometimes, people
Don't ask these kinds of questions as often. Well, how did we arrive at the Trinity? How what is precisely the nature of biblical prophecy in the Old Testament? And what does it mean to have human real human beings doing this who are not just directly transcribing? They're important questions, and they don't always have neat, comfortable answers. But a part of what I hope comes through.
Through in these discussions, especially when we're talking with our children, what I want to come through is God is awesome and is a mystery in the sense that He exceeds.
anything that we could we could think about him. Doesn't mean he doesn't reveal him he he he reveals himself to us and we can gain insights. But knowing him is an infinite adventure. I want I want some of that to come through, yeah, in my discussions along these lines. So
Nathan (28:27.78)
What's what's the line I think is another one that Nabu Nabeel used to use and actually going and listening to some of Nabil's debates on the Trinity with Muslims is is really helpful. But the idea of God being one what and three whos, that'll blow your mind. But when you're ten years old, that's enough to keep you up thinking long enough to turn into worshiper. I'm confident.
Cameron (28:38.125)
Mm.
Cameron (28:50.519)
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