 | Reverend Terry G. Fox is Senior Pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church. He is Chairman of the North American Mission Board, member of its Executive Committee and the FamilyNet Broadcast Communications Committee, as well as numerous other subcommittees. He's listed on the Who's Who Among Outstanding Corporate Executives. He is a sought after speaker and has traveled and ministered in many places in the United States, Latin America and Southeast Asia. Rev. Fox and his wife Barbara have three children. You may contact him at Immanuel Baptist Church, 1415 South Topeka, Wichita, Kansas, 67211; phone (316) 262-1452; or Fax (316) 262-4704. |
Religion
2005-04-01 10:50:00
Why no mention of Jesus and the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament?
QUESTION: I have been taught the Trinity is made up of three persons in one God; and that God always was and always will be. Therefore the Trinity must have always been and always will be. My question then is why wasn't Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, and the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, ever discussed in the Old Testament?
***image1:left***QUESTION: I have been taught the Trinity is made up of three persons in one God; and that God always was and always will be. Therefore the Trinity must have always been and always will be. My question then is why wasn't Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, and the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, ever discussed in the Old Testament?
ANSWER: The doctrine of the Trinity refers to the inner life of the one true God, who reserved that particular knowledge about Himself to be taught by the Son of God, when He became a man.The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews commences his treatise by observing that: "in the past God spoke to our ancestors many times and in many ways through the prophets; but in these last days He has spoken to us through his Son. (This Son) is the one through whom God created the universe." What all this means is that God revealed Himself and his truth "to our ancestors" only gradually, not all at once from the beginning. Our ancestors in the faith are the Jewish patriarchs and prophets, the people from whom we gentiles, and all peoples, gradually received our faith in the one true God. Only gradually, through the course of history, did God reveal knowledge about Himself and His will to Adam, then to Noe, then to Abraham and the patriarchs, then to King David and Solomon and the prophets. Two thousand years ago God sent the final revelation of Himself, when He sent his Son in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Even then God's revelation remains only partial. As St. Paul observes: "Our gifts of knowledge and of inspired messages are only partial; but when what is perfect comes, then what is partial will disappear. . . . What we see now is like a dim image in a mirror; then we shall see face-to-face" (1 Cor 13:9-10,12). The fullness of God's revelation is reserved until the end of the world and the final judgment, with the resurrection of the dead. Then we shall learn so much more about God, as much as He wills to inform us, and as much as we are capable of receiving!
The doctrine of the Trinity is the highest and most difficult mystery of the Christian faith. While we can talk about it, we cannot understand it! Always it remains a mystery! Our faith, received from Jesus, informs us that, with the Jews, we believe there is only one God. But somehow in this one God there are three distinct personalities, to which Jesus referred as "the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit." Christians are baptized "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." Note that Christians are baptized in the name (singular) of these individual persons, not in their names (plural). This primary article of the Christian faith has been handed-down from Jesus to the Apostles and their successors, as the fundamental doctrine of faith: so that, in order to be a Christian, a person must believe in the Holy Trinity. This doctrine is not taught as such in the Old Testament because God, for reasons he knows, had reserved it for the Christian dispensation. We can find hints of this doctrine in obscure passages of the Old Testament, e.g. the three mysterious angels, who visited Abraham & Sarah in Genesis 18, and traces of this truth in His creation (e.g. the Irish shamrock). This central Christian belief was taught in the Apostles' Creed, handed down from one generation to the next, and solemnly canonized by all the bishops of the Church at the first ecumenical Council held at Nicea in the year 325. Every Sunday thereafter this Creed has been sung or recited during Christian worship in every part of the world. Further the Holy Trinity is invoked in each of the Church's prayers and formulae of blessing.
The Trinity is a mystery of faith, in the strict sense, a mystery which is hidden in God and cannot be known unless it is revealed by God. Knowledge of God's innermost being is inaccessible to reason alone, and even to the Jewish faith before the incarnation of God's Son Jesus, and His sending of the Holy Spirit: to continue his mission of teaching human beings about God.
Mohamet and some other false teachers misunderstood this teaching as belief in three gods, and therefore accused Christians of being pagans, who worship a plurality of gods. But Christians endeavor to make clear that we believe in only one God, who is eternal in three persons. Each person in God is equal to the others; nevertheless there is only one God, not three gods. This is THE mystery!
