English transcript

This is the Trinity explained like you've never heard it. Check this out.

The Father is called Yahweh God, the Spirit is called Yahweh God,

and Jesus is called Yahweh God. There's only one Yahweh.

How do we figure this out?

So what they do is eventually they come up with this language of being and person.

Being describes what you are, person describes who you are.

This chair has being. It's what philosophers called ontological status.

But it doesn't have personhood. I didn't ask its permission to sit on it.

Right.

But it does exist. And so being is what you are.

God is Yahweh. And we see this.

Jesus tells his disciples to go baptize in the name.

And then he says of the Father, Son, the Holy Spirit.

So he says the singular name, but then he describes three persons.

And so this is the question the early church is wrestling through.

And they say, OK, Jesus is given the honors, the attributes,

the names, the deeds and the seat of God. It's an acronym of hands.

The Spirit is given the honors, the attributes, the names,

the deeds and the seat of God.

And the Father is given the honors, the attributes, the names,

the deeds and the seat of God.

There's only one God. How do we understand this?

Now, the ancient Jews actually already had a concept of this in that

they weren't Unitarian fully.

God can rule and reign in heaven.

And yet the Ark of the Covenant could still have God's presence.

Before Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham is met by three individuals,

two that are identified as angels and one that is identified as Yahweh God.

The angels go off to Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham dialogues with Yahweh.

Eventually, Abraham leaves.

And then in chapter 19, in Genesis 19,

it says that Yahweh on earth rains fire brimstone from Yahweh in heaven.

Now, you only have one Yahweh. So what's going on there?

Well, we would say within like a Christian framework,

this is the pre-incarnate Christ.

He is not enfleshed in who Jesus is, but this is the complex unity.

And the Jews understand this.

And even early on in rabbinical Judaism,

there's also this idea of the Shevrot,

which are like the presence and spirit of God all throughout the earth.

So in that sense, ancient Judaism, sometimes it's called the two powers in heaven.

I don't love that kind of articulation, but in academia, that's what it's called.

That God is ruling and reigning in heaven and still has a presence on earth.

Only one God.

But there's something else going on there that maybe we don't fully understand.

But that God lives in a set of living, loving relationships.

He has existed eternally in relationship and in love.

But that's what John says in 1 John.

God is love.

God does not need to create in order to experience anything.

Creation is an outpouring of his love.

This is different than, say, a unitarian monotheistic faith like Islam.

In Islam, in one sense, philosophically, God does need to create to experience love.

Because love requires an object and a subject.

And so, in order to feel love,

the unitarian God of something like Islam needs the object in order to feel that.

That's not true for Christianity.

The Father has been loving the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit forever.

The early Christians are wrestling through these things

in order to formulate the language of this.

Eventually, they come up with this idea, one being in three persons.

Being describes what you are.

Persons describe who you are.