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T h e F a t h e r s K n o w B e s t
THREE DISTINCT PERSONS
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This Rock
Volume 8, Number 4
 April 1997 
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The doctrine of the Trinity is encapsulated in Matthew 28:19, where Jesus instructs the apostles: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."
In this passage the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are said to share one name (notice that the term "name" is singular, not plural), and that name is almost certainly Yahweh, the personal name of God in the Bible. We know this because the name Yahweh is applied to both the Father and the Son in the New Testament (cf. the Old Testament parallels to citations such as Acts 2:30–36 with Ps. 110:1 and Phil. 2:10–11 with Isa. 45:19–24).
Jesus himself declares that he is Yahweh ("I AM"). In John 8:58, when quizzed about how he has special knowledge of Abraham, Jesus replies, "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM." His audience understood exactly what he was claiming about himself. "So they took up stones to throw at him; but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple" (John 8:59).
The parallelism of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit is not unique to Matthew’s Gospel; it appears elsewhere in the New Testament (e.g., 2 Cor. 13:14, Heb. 9:14), as well as in the writings of the earliest Christians, who clearly understood these verses in the sense that we do today—that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are three divine Persons who are one divine Being (God).
The Didache
"After the foregoing instructions, baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, in living [running] water. . . . If you have neither, pour water three times on the head, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit" (Didache 7:1 [A.D. 70]).
Ignatius
"[T]o the Church at Ephesus in Asia . . . chosen through true suffering by the will of the Father in Jesus Christ our God" (Letter to the Ephesians 1 [A.D. 110]).
Justin Martyr
"We will prove that we worship him reasonably, for we have learned that he is the Son of the true God himself, that he holds a second place, and the Spirit of prophecy a third. For this they accuse us of madness, saying that we attribute to a crucified man a place second to the unchangeable and eternal God, the Creator of all things, but they are ignorant of the Mystery which lies therein" (First Apology 13:5–6 [A.D. 151]).
Athenagoras
"The Son of God is the Word of the Father in thought and actuality. By him and through him all things were made, the Father and the Son being one. Since the Son is in the Father and the Father is in the Son by the unity and power of the Spirit, the Mind and Word of the Father is the Son of God. And if, in your exceedingly great wisdom, it occurs to you to inquire what is meant by ‘the Son,’ I will tell you briefly: He is the first-begotten of the Father, not as having been produced, for from the beginning God had the Word in himself, God being eternal mind and eternally rational, but as coming forth [from the Father] to be the model and energizing force of all material things" (Plea for the Christians 10:2–4 [A.D. 177]).
Theophilus
"It is the attribute of God, of the most high and almighty and of the living God, not only to be everywhere, but also to see and hear all, for he can in no way be contained in a place. . . . The three days before the luminaries were created are types of the Trinity: God, his Word, and his Wisdom" (To Autolycus 2:15 [A.D. 181]).
Irenaeus
"For the Church, although dispersed throughout the whole world even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and from their disciples the faith in one God, the Father Almighty . . . and in one Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who became flesh for our salvation, and in the Holy Spirit." (Against Heresies 1:10:1 [A.D. 189]).
Tertullian
"Keep always in mind the rule of faith which I profess and by which I bear witness that the Father and the Son and the Spirit are inseparable from each other, and then you will understand what is meant by it. Observe now that I say the Father is other [distinct], the Son is other, and the Spirit is other. This statement is wrongly understood by every uneducated or perversely disposed individual, as if it meant diversity and implied by that diversity a separation of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" (Against Praxeas 9 [A.D. 216]).
"Thus the connection of the Father in the Son, and of the Son in the Paraclete, produces three coherent Persons, who are yet distinct One from Another. These Three are one essence, not one Person, as it is said, ‘I and my Father are One’ [John 10:30], in respect of unity of Being, not singularity of number" (ibid., 25).
Hippolytus
"The Word alone of this God is from God himself, wherefore also the Word is God, being the Being of God. Now the world was made from nothing, wherefore it is not God" (Refutation of All Heresies 10:29 [A.D. 228]).
Origen
"No, rejecting every suggestion of corporeality, we hold that the Word, the Wisdom, was begotten out of the invisible and incorporeal God, without anything corporal being acted upon . . . the expression which we employ, however, that there was never a time when he did not exist, is to be taken with a certain allowance. For these very words ‘when’ and ‘never’ are terms of temporal significance, while whatever is said of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is to be understood as transcending all time, all ages, and all eternity" (The Fundamental Doctrines 4:4:1 [A.D. 225]).
"For it is the Trinity alone which exceeds every sense in which not only temporal but even eternal may be understood. It is all other things, indeed, which are outside the Trinity, which are to be measured by time and ages" (ibid.)
Novatian
"For Scripture announces Christ is also God, as it announces God himself is man. It has described Jesus Christ to be man, as it has also described Christ the Lord to be God. Because it does not set forth him to be the Son of God only, but also the Son of Man; nor does it only say, the Son of Man, but it has also been accustomed to speak of him as the Son of God. So that being of both, he is both, lest if he should be one only, he could not be the other. For as nature itself has prescribed that he must be believed to be a man who is of man, so the same nature prescribes also that he must be believed to be God who is of God . . . Let them, therefore, who read that Jesus Christ the Son of Man is man, read also that this same Jesus is called also God and the Son of God" (Treatise on the Trinity 11 [A.D. 235]).
Pope Dionysius
"Next, then, I may properly turn to those who divide and cut apart and destroy the most sacred proclamation of the Church of God, making of [the Trinity], as it were, three powers, distinct substances, and three godheads. . . . Therefore, the divine Trinity must be gathered up and brought together in one, a summit, as it were—I mean the omnipotent God of the universe. . . . It is blasphemy, then, and not a common one but the worst, to say that the Son is in any way a handiwork [creature]. . . . But if the Son came into being [was created], there was a time when these attributes did not exist, and, consequently, there was a time when God was without them, which is utterly absurd" (Letter to Dionysius of Alexandria 1–2 [A.D. 262]).
"Neither, then, may we divide into three godheads the wonderful and divine unity . . . Rather, we must believe in God, the Father Almighty, and in Christ Jesus, his Son, and in the Holy Spirit and that the Word is united to the God of the universe. ‘For,’ he says, ‘The Father and I are one,’ and ‘I am in the Father, and the Father in me’" (ibid., 3).
Gregory Thaumaturgus
"There is one God . . . There is a perfect Trinity, in glory and eternity and sovereignty, neither divided nor estranged. Wherefore there is nothing either created or in servitude in the Trinity nor anything caused to be brought about, as if at some former period it was non-existent and at some later period it was introduced. And thus neither was the Son ever wanting to the Father, nor the Spirit to the Son; but, without variation and without change, the same Trinity abides ever" (Declaration of Faith [A.D. 265]).
Augustine
"All the Catholic interpreters of the divine books of the Old and New Testaments whom I have been able to read, who wrote before me about the Trinity, which is God, intended to teach in accord with the Scriptures that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are of one and the same substance, constituting a divine unity with an inseparable equality; and therefore there are not three Gods but one God, although the Father begot the Son, and therefore he is the Father and is not the Son; and the Son is begotten by the Father, and therefore he is the Son and is not the Father; and the Holy Spirit is neither the Father nor the Son, but only the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, himself, too, coequal to the Father and to the Son and belonging to the unity of the Trinity" (The Trinity 1:4:7 [A.D. 408]).
Sechnall
"Hymns, with Revelation and the Psalms of God [St. Patrick] sings and does expound the same for the edifying of God’s people. This law he holds in the Trinity of the Sacred Name and teaches one Being in three Persons" (Hymn in Praise of St. Patrick 22 [A.D. 444]).
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