Trinity in Genesis
When I was a child, I did not understand how God could be Jesus and the Holy Spirit at the same time. I had questions as to how Jesus could pray to his Father in Gethsemane and on the cross while being in Heaven as God. I would sometimes ask my mother questions that were confusing to me at the time because this notion was hard to understand. One day, she explained it to me in a manner that helped me to understand the concept of the Trinity even into my adult years. Let’s take an ordinary egg. When a chicken lays an egg, it is laid as one unit and sold in a carton at the store. When you get ready to cook the egg, rather that is by frying or boiling, there are three distinct parts. There is the shell that keeps the inner contents protected, the yoke that is yellow, and then the white part of the egg that surrounds the yoke. Although this is still one egg, there are three separate parts where each has a unique function. Bakers can usually attest to this whenever they bake a German Chocolate cake that asks for the yokes to be used in the batter by themselves, and the whites are to be used separately when making the icing.[1] The shell is usually disposed of unless the baker has a garden and uses it for a natural fertilizer. Therefore, this was how my understanding concerning the Trinity began and how I still use that analogy to this day to help simplify this teaching to both children and adults in the very beginning of their learning.
The Children of Israel may have understood God (Elohim) as being One and that the Ruah would have only meant the Spirit of God in terms of His abilities to act.[2] This is due to God trying to help the Israelites to understand that He was the only God unlike that of their heathen neighbors who believed in there being more than one god.[3] Nevertheless, we have the ability to apply both an exegetical and eisegetical to what we read in the proper context that is true to the original author’s intent ultimately being that of God.[4] Because we know that God is purposeful in what He says, we can know that each word that He chose to use was with the intent that we would be able to understand their meaning throughout future generations. Genesis 1:1 lets us know that God (Elohim) created the heavens and the earth in the beginning. The support that we have to let us know that Elohim would have meant more than one comes from numerous texts in the New Testament that attest to Jesus being with the Father from the very beginning of time.[5] Therefore, when Schaeffer in his book Genesis in Space and Time says that various New Testament passages support there being more than one in the Godhead, he is absolutely correct with this assumption and in so doing, allows for the texts to support the existence of the Trinity.[6]
Genesis 1:2 lets us know that the Spirit of God (Ruah) was moving. If reading from the Children of Israel’s point of view, we may have well read this as just describing the actions of God when forming the world instead of it pertaining to the Spirit being the One to move about.[7] Due to Ruah having more than one translation in the Hebrew (wind or spirit), it could be translated as such. Therefore, this can be read eisegetically from what is taken from the New Testament texts as well adding not our own interpretation per se, but what is taken from texts that the Children of Israel would have read exegetically as speaking of just God himself.
Genesis 1:26 may make the strongest argument in defense of the Trinity in that God desires to make man in their image with the use of the word we know in English as our. God could have said, “I will make man in my image,” for the author writes that He uses the word our, which means more than one. Schaeffer draws attention to the Gospel of John and his description of the Word being in the very beginning which supports the doctrine of the Trinity.[8] With understanding who the Word was in John give credence to support the beliefs of the Trinity.
Longman in his book How To Read Genesis writes that the Children of Israel may not have understood the text in Genesis 3:15 regarding its alluding to Jesus coming to save mankind from their sins.[9] Nevertheless, this is another area in the Bible that supports there being more than one person of the Godhead for we know that God was not speaking of angels being sent down to die for mankind and that Jesus would have been the only One who could have been offered as the ultimate sacrifice for man. Therefore, there are numerous scriptures in both the Old and New Testaments that support the doctrine of the Trinity which has been a debate for many over the centuries.
Sometimes, we tend to read through our own cultural interpretation of things and forget that the authors and original ordinance did not see things through western eyes. We have been privileged to have both Old and New Testaments for our understanding whereas the characters in the Old Testament did not have access to both. Therefore, they had to learn by what they were taught from the priest and other religious leaders as well as their own studies of the Torah in their understanding of God. And yet, they were not under any undue disadvantage because God often spoke to them directly and/or through His prophets as He still does today.
[1] "Mama's German Chocolate Cake," MyRecipes, last modified September 15, 2011, https://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/mamas-german-chocolate-cake.
[2] John H. Walton, The NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids, Mich: Zondervan, 2002), 74.
[3] Ibid., 77.
[4] Tremper Longman, How to Read Genesis (Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press, 2005), 18.
[5] Francis A Schaeffer, Genesis in Space & Time; The Flow of Biblical History (Glendale, Calif: Regal Books, 1972), 16-17.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Walton, NIV Commentary, 74-75
[9] Longman, Read Genesis, 112-113.
No comments:
Post a Comment