Jayson & Carrie Whelpley

This first point of the actual statement of faith concerns the question of “Who is God?

1. “There is one true God, eternally existing in three persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – each of whom possesses equally all the attributes of Deity and the characteristics of personality.

Three Persons

In this first point it’s important to notice a couple of things. We are Trinitarian we believe in God as one deity in three persons. I’ve heard it said that God is one What and three Whos. Each member of the Trinity is fully God; the Holy Spirit, when looked at separately, is fully God, the Father, when looked at separately, is fully God, and the Son, when looked at separately, is fully God. The word “equally” is also important; the Son is not inferior to the Father and the Father is not inherently superior to the Son and the Spirit. Each member of the Godhead has the same ontological value, that is they have the same power and glory and majesty as each other member. The relationship, though, is one of voluntary subordination – the Son, from eternity past has chosen to submit to the Father not because Jesus is lesser than the Father or that the Father is, in some sense really God where the Son is not, but because He chooses to defer to Him and give the Father glory.

The first point separates us from the non-orthodox “Christian” religions such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses or the Latter-Day Saints, and from heretical Christian sects such as the non-trinitarian United Pentecostal Church or the Jesus Only Churches.

The Trinity

This also clarifies the orthodox position in relation to misconceptions of the Trinity. It does not allow for modalism (where each member of the Trinity is actually just one God wearing different masks depending on the situation), Tritheism (three gods) or Arianism (where Jesus is a lesser god to God the Father and the Spirit is either a lesser god as well or the Father’s active force).

Why?

Who God is is extremely important and the basis for all other points of our faith. When you get off track here the rest of your faith will be off all the more. It’s similar to firing a gun and aiming just 1 degree off; when you are aiming 10 feet away you’ll only be about an inch off, but when you’re aiming a mile away you’ll be nearly 50 feet off. Since our faith aims at eternity it’s incredibly important to get our beliefs about who God is very precise and faithful to the breadth of scripture.

Next time we’ll look at who the Son is and His life on earth.