Trinity Flashcards
Define the Trinity.
God eternally exists as three persons; Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and each person is fully God, and there is one God.
Define Modalism and explain it’s shortcoming.
There’s only one God, but he works in three different modes. It denies the relationship between the persons of the Trinity as seen in John 17:24 and in all of Jesus’ prayers. It also denies God’s independence and immutability, because without an object to love throughout eternity past, he couldn’t have been eternally loving, so he must have changed.
Define Arianism, Subordinationism and Adoptionism, and explain their shortcoming.
Arianism - The Son and Holy Spirit were created by God before the foundation of the world, and thus inferior to the Father in being or attributes.Subordinationism - The Son and Holy Spirit are eternal, yet still inferior to the Father in being of attributes.Adoptionism - Jesus was an ordinary man, until he became “adopted” by God at his baptism, and he bestowed supernatural powers on him at that time.The atonement is at stake if Jesus is not fully God, or created.It would be idolatry to worship Jesus if he had been created, according to Rom 1:25.It wrongly teaches that salvation came through a creature rather than through God.
Define Tritheism and explain it’s shortcoming.
There are three persons and each is fully God, therefore there are three Gods. (oversimplification of the Trinity)It goes directly against verses all over the Bible about God being one; Deut 6:4 and Gal 3:20.
Give 5 verses to support the doctrine of the Trinity.
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…(Genesis 1:26 ESV) And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”…(Isaiah 6:8 ESV) And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”(Matthew 3:16-17 ESV) 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,(Matthew 28:19 ESV) But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.(Jude 1:20-21 ESV)
