The Trinity in the Old testament
Christian and Tariq chat over tea after dinner at Tariq’s home, the conversation turns to faith. Tariq raises the popular claim that the Trinity was ‘invented at Nicaea’ and is really three gods. Rather than reaching for philosophy or analogies, the Christian takes him further back than any council - to the Prophets, to Moses, to the first page of Genesis - to show one God who reveals himself as Father, Word/Presence and Spirit, always acting as one.
Tariq: Can I be honest with you, now we’ve eaten? Something has always stopped me with the Christian faith. This idea that Jesus is God and the whole Trinity thing - it wasn’t even original, was it? It was voted in. Didn’t the Emperor Constantine call the Council of Nicaea in 325 and basically invent it? Seems to me like three gods dressed up as one, to hold his empire together. To me that’s shirk, the unforgiveable sin of associating partners with God (
Quran 4.48,
Quran 4.116). How do you square that?
Quran 4:48Lo! Allah forgiveth not that a partner should be ascribed unto Him. He forgiveth (all) save that to whom He will. Whoso ascribeth partners to Allah, he hath indeed invented a tremendous sin.
Quran 4:116Lo! Allah pardoneth not that partners should be ascribed unto Him. He pardoneth all save that to whom He will. Whoso ascribeth partners unto Allah hath wandered far astray.
Christian: I love that you’ve raise this question, Tariq - this is such an important question to me. Can we do something? Forget Nicaea for a moment, even Paul, or the New Testament even… Let’s go all the way to Moses and the first page of Genesis. Because here’s what many don’t understand - the Trinity isn’t the result of Greek philosophy, and it isn’t a clever analogy with shamrocks or eggs or water. Forget all of that; it never helped anyone. It is the most ancient revelation of the one living God - as basic to Moses as it ever was to that council. Can I show you, from the Scriptures themselves?
Tariq: Go on. But the Shema says it: ‘Hear O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one.’ One. Even your Old Testament says God is one. (
Deuteronomy 6:4)
Christian: Tariq, I believe that with everything in me - the LORD is one. We’re not arguing about whether God is one; we both say he is. The question is what kind of oneness, and what that one God is like within himself.
Tariq: ok, I see that… Where did you want to start?
Christian: Let’s start at the very beginning. Let’s look at the first thing God says about making us: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’” (
Genesis 1:26). Notice is says, ‘us’ and ‘our’, not ‘me’ and ‘my’. And then in very next verse: ‘So God created man in his own image’ - singular. Plural and singular in one breath. Who is the ‘us’?
Genesis 1:26God said, “Let’s make man in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
Tariq: That’s the royal ‘we’ - like a king saying ‘we decree.’ Or God speaking to the angels.
Christian: Both fair guesses - and both are problematic. The royal ‘we’, or the ‘plural of majesty’, didn’t exist in ancient Hebrew; that’s a much later European way of talking - you won’t find a single king in the Hebrew Bible speaking that way. And angels? Look at what’s actually said: ‘in OUR image.’ Are we made in the image of angels? Do angels create? No - only God makes man, and man bears God’s image, not an angel’s. So the ‘us’ is somehow within God. And it isn’t a one-off, elsewhere God says, “‘Come, let us go down and there confuse their language.’” (
Genesis 11:7) and “‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’” (
Isaiah 6:8). Note, it the same pattern, from Genesis right through to the prophets - the one God who somehow says ‘us.’
Genesis 11:7Come, let’s go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.”
Isaiah 6:8I heard the Lord’s voice, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am. Send me!”
Tariq: Alright, the ‘us’ is interesting, I’ll grant you. But that’s a long way from three persons.
Christian: Agreed - on its own it’s one thread. So let me pull the next. All through the Hebrew Bible there’s a figure who is sent by God and yet is called God. The Angel - the Messenger - of the LORD. The Word of the LORD. The Presence of the LORD. Notice how often ‘the LORD appears’ to people, as if the God no one can see and live somehow stands before them in a form they can. In
Genesis 18:1-2, for example, the God no one can see somehow stands in front of Abraham and shares a meal. The Jews had a name for this sent-One: the Angel of the LORD - but this ‘angel’ receives worship, forgives sin, and speaks as God in the first person. He is God, and he is sent from God.
Genesis 18:1-2The LORD appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day. He lifted up his eyes and looked, and saw that three men stood near him. When he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed himself to the earth,
Tariq: Sent from God…? so he’s a separate being. A creature. Not God himself.
Christian: But that’s the thing, we do see one sent by the LORD, and yet is the LORD. Listen to these two verses carefully. When God judged, Sodom, we read that, “the LORD (who was with Abraham) rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulphur and fire from the LORD out of heaven.” (
Genesis 19:24) and then in the Psalms, David says, “The LORD says to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand…’” (
Psalms 110:1). Literally, ‘Yahweh’ speaks to ‘my Lord,’ seated at God’s right hand - two Lords in one sentence. Jesus put that very verse to the scholars of his day and they had no answer (
Luke 20:41-44).
Genesis 19:24Then the LORD rained on Sodom and on Gomorrah sulphur and fire from the LORD out of the sky.
Psalms 110:1A Psalm by David. The LORD says to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool for your feet.”
Luke 20:41-44He said to them, “Why do they say that the Christ is David’s son? David himself says in the book of Psalms, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet.”’ “David therefore calls him Lord, so how is he his son?”
Tariq: ok, so that is two, I guess you are suggesting these two are Father and Son, but what about the third?
Christian: Well, let me read this to you - the speaker is the LORD, the first and the last who is the Lord according to the Bible and the Quran actually, (
Isaiah 44:6 cf,
Quran 57.3) then listen to this carefully: “…And now the Lord GOD has sent me, and his Spirit.”
Isaiah 48:16 In that passage, you have three, who in a single breath are called the Lord - the speaker, who is the LORD, sent by the Lord GOD, together with his Spirit who is also God.
Isaiah 44:6This is what the LORD, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, the LORD of Armies, says: “I am the first, and I am the last; and besides me there is no God.
Quran 57:3He is the First and the Last, and the Outward and the Inward; and He is Knower of all things.
Isaiah 48:16“Come near to me and hear this: “From the beginning I have not spoken in secret; from the time that it happened, I was there.” Now the Lord GOD has sent me with his Spirit.
Tariq: I’ve honestly never been shown these verses. We’re always told it’s only the New Testament, or really only Paul’s ideas.
Christian: And that’s the very thing I want you to hear - the Trinity is older than Nicaea or Paul. It’s Moses. Let me give you one last picture, and it’s the clearest, because here God drew it for his people. When he told Moses to build the tabernacle - the tent where he would dwell - the first things made, before anything else, were three pieces of furniture, every one of them covered in gold.
Tariq: Furniture? What does furniture have to do with God being three?
Christian: Everything - because the tabernacle is God’s own diagram of himself. Three golden pieces. First, the Ark of the Covenant: a golden throne with two angels facing each other over it. Where is the Father’s throne? In heaven, surrounded by angels. The Ark is that throne brought down to earth. God said to Moses: “There I will meet with you… from between the two cherubim that are on the ark.” (
Exodus 25:22)
Exodus 25:22There I will meet with you, and I will tell you from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim which are on the ark of the covenant, all that I command you for the children of Israel.
Tariq: "That's a striking picture, I'll grant you - even we speak of God's throne above the heavens. But a throne is only where a king sits; one golden box doesn't add up to three of anything. So where do the other two come from?"
Christian: Well, second, the Table of the Presence - and on it, always, twelve loaves called the Bread of the Presence, the bread of God’s face. In the Scriptures the Presence - the Face - of God is that sent-One, the Angel of his Presence we just read in
Isaiah 63:9. This refers to Jesus who later stands up and says, ‘I am the bread of life, the bread that came down from heaven’ (See
John 6:25-59). The Son is always symbolically tied to the bread.
Isaiah 63:9In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them. In his love and in his pity he redeemed them. He bore them, and carried them all the days of old.
John 6:25-59When they found him on the other side of the sea, they asked him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” Jesus answered them, “Most certainly I tell you, you seek me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. Don’t work for the food which perishes, but for the food which remains to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For God the Father has sealed him.” They said… read full verse
Tariq: Hm. Part of me wonders whether you're just reading Jesus back into Moses' furniture - a loaf is a loaf. But I'll admit the pattern is harder to brush off than I expected. Go on, then - what's the third piece?"
Christian: Third, we have the Lampstand - pure gold, seven branches, burning with olive oil. And the Bible tells us plainly what the oil and the light mean. The Prophet Zechariah is shown this very lampstand and told: “‘Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the LORD of hosts.” (
Zechariah 4:6) And then John, in Revelation, sees seven burning lamps before God’s throne and is told they are the seven Spirits of God. Oil and lamplight - the Holy Spirit. So, before God builds anything else, he makes three golden things: a throne, the bread of the Presence, and a lamp of oil, symbolising his very nature, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, all divine but One God.
Zechariah 4:6Then he answered and spoke to me, saying, “This is the LORD’s word to Zerubbabel, saying, ‘Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the LORD of Armies.
Tariq: …That is a completely different way of reading it than I’ve ever heard. I started by asking about a council in 325, and you’ve taken me back to Moses.
Christian: Because that’s where it’s all rooted, brother. When you tell me the Trinity is three gods dreamed up by Greeks, I understand why - that’s how it’s often badly explained. But the Hebrew Scriptures you and I both honour give us one God who says ‘us,’ who comes as his own Word and Presence, who acts by his own Spirit - and never once as three gods. It isn’t shirk. It’s the one living God showing us his own face. Will you read these for yourself this week -
Genesis 18,
Psalms 110,
Isaiah 48 - slowly, just asking who is who?
Genesis 18The LORD appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day. He lifted up his eyes and looked, and saw that three men stood near him. When he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed himself to the earth, and said, “My lord, if now I have found favour in your sight, please don’t go away from your servant. Now let a… read full verse
Psalms 110A Psalm by David. The LORD says to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool for your feet.” The LORD will send out the rod of your strength out of Zion. Rule amongst your enemies. Your people offer themselves willingly in the day of your power, in holy array. Out of the womb of the morning, you have the dew of your youth. The LORD has sworn, and will not change his mind:… read full verse
Isaiah 48“Hear this, house of Jacob, you who are called by the name of Israel, and have come out of the waters of Judah. You swear by the LORD’s name, and make mention of the God of Israel, but not in truth, nor in righteousness— for they call themselves citizens of the holy city, and rely on the God of Israel; the LORD of Armies is his name. I have declared the former things from of old. Yes, they went out… read full verse
Tariq: …Yeah. I’ll read them. This isn’t the conversation I expected to be having at my own kitchen table.
Christian: The best ones rarely are. If you’ve got a Bible, I’ll bookmark the verses before I go - and next time you have me round, you can tell me what you found. Thank you for dinner, brother.
Tariq: Any time. And… thank you. Genuinely.