Most errors fall into one of three categories. First, they deny that God exists in Trinity or diminish the Persons to such an extent that it becomes a practical Unitarianism. Second, they either explicitly state that there are three separate Gods or stress the differences so much that they essentially demote one or more of the Persons from full deity. Third, they use overly human conceptions to explain the divine, thus attempting to recreate God in their own image. (This often leads back to one of the other categories.)

“Let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me…” (Jeremiah 9:24a)

That verse captures the goal of Trinitarian theology: to know the amazing God that we worship. It is a task in which we must confess our impotence, for we are limited by both our own fallible reason and the extent of God’s self-revelation. We see through a glass darkly, and though the knowledge provided about God in Scripture is sufficient to meet our spiritual needs, we will always long for more.

Our desire to know God is admirable, yet we must not mistake our own misconceptions for true knowledge. In the history of the Church, there are few things that have created such seismic upheavals as our doctrine of God, and not without good reason. Many errors have crept in, some of them crossing into the realm of heresy. Here we must acknowledge that not every way of thinking about God is valid, but only that which is true: the very Word of God confessed by the Church for centuries.

Most errors fall into one of three categories. First, they deny that God exists in Trinity or diminish the Persons to such an extent that it becomes a practical Unitarianism. Second, they either explicitly state that there are three separate Gods or stress the differences so much that they essentially demote one or more of the Persons from full deity. Third, they use overly human conceptions to explain the divine, thus attempting to recreate God in their own image. (This often leads back to one of the other categories.)

The first error is known as Modalism or Sabellianism and was condemned as a heresy by the Church Fathers. The second includes views such as Arianism, which was formally declared a heresy at the Council of Nicea. As these heresies are old and well documented, there are few within orthodox Christianity who would openly assert them. Indeed, to hold to them would place one outside the bounds of orthodoxy. However, that third category is more difficult to define, and as such it tends to flourish even among respectable Christians. The tendency to explain God in purely human terms or to bend doctrine to fit our own perceived needs is the chief Trinitarian error of our age.

There are some things about the Trinity that can be known with certainty. The God we serve has invited us to know and commune with Him, and not only with one Person of the Trinity, but all three. Nevertheless, we must keep in mind two principles that have been critical in the formulation of historic Reformed theology: the Creator/creature distinction and the sufficiency of Scripture.

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