Jesus Café Ministries - Scripture Squad - What is the Godhead or Trinity?

From: knookie
Please explain to me what the Godhead and Trinity. Thank you and God bless you, forever more.

Dear Knookie,
As you probably know the words Godhead and Trinity are not found in the Bible. However, these concepts clearly come from God's Holy Word. We could write many pages on this subject, but rather we will try to answer your question with a minimum of rhetoric.

The Trinity is the Biblical doctrine of God to which He is three persons in one substance or essence. The doctrine developed in the early church because it was the only way in which the witness to Jesus and to the Holy Spirit could be adequately accounted for.

One of the basic Scripture passages which speak of the Trinity is Matthew 28:19,20 commonly known as the Great Commission. Jesus said, "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." Note that Jesus mentions all three persons of the Godhead or essence of God, God the Father, Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit. Other passages of Scripture that have been used in the construction of Trinitarianism can be found in the Gospel of John, chapters 14 to 16.

The first extensive writing on this subject was done by a church father named Tertullian about the year 200 AD. He argued that there was one God (Deuteronomy 6:5), in whom could be found three persons. Origen, an Eastern church father, working quite independently of Tertullian, arranged the three persons of the Trinity in "a hierarchical order, with the Father as God-in-himself, the Son as His exact image and the Holy Spirit as the image of the Son." (New Dictionary of Theology, Ferguson and Wright, InterVarsity Press, Leicester, England, 1988.) These ideas and others were discussed down through the years. Augustine in the early 400s disagreed with the hierarchical ideas and said that the one God was not the Father but the Trinity. The different persons (in the Trinity) found their cause in an inherently necessary interior relationship with each other.

Although others have put forth modifications of Augustine's writings including day thinking. Knookie, remember that the Godhead is the essence of God, while the Trinity consists of the three persons in the Godhead. Each person is God and each has a role to play.

- The Scripture Squad :
TCCaleb, WMomTCC, RuthCCC & DawnCCC