The Extent Of The Plurality Within God
THE EXTENT OF THE PLURALITY WITHIN GOD
Now that we have established the fact of a plurality within God, we must ask a crucial question. How far does this plurality extend? Is it merely a matter of different functions? Or does it also involve different manifestations? Or does it even entail different persons?
Different Functions.
It is immediately obvious from the Scriptures that there are different functions within God. For example, we see different functions within God as He brings about salvation.
• God the Father planned salvation: For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life (John 3:16).
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love 5 He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, 6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. (Ephesians 1:3-6).
• God the Son executed this plan: For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly (Romans 5:6).
• God the Holy Spirit reveals this plan to men: I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. 13 But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. 14 He shall glorify Me; for He shall take of Mine, and shall disclose it to you. (John 16:12-14).
There are different functions within the Godhead even as there are different functions within my own life. I am a father and a husband and an employee and a teacher, yet I am one. This brings us to a question. Can we explain the plurality within God only in terms of function? Or is there more?
Different Manifestations. The Scriptures also indicate that God has manifested Himself to man in a variety of forms. He appeared to Moses in a burning bush. To Elijah He was a still, small voice. In the form of Jesus, He was manifested in the flesh. And by common confession great is the mystery of godliness:
He who was revealed in the flesh,
Was vindicated in the Spirit,
Beheld by angels,
Proclaimed among the nations,
Believed on in the world,
Taken up in glory. (1 Timothy 3:16). A great many of the Greek manuscripts show a textual variation in the personal pronoun. Instead of, “HE who was revealed in the flesh,” they read, “GOD was revealed in the flesh.” In either case, the context refers to God and teaches that God was revealed in the flesh. The use of the aorist tense indicates a point in time when this came about. It means that there was a time when God was not flesh and then He became flesh. We have already seen this same truth expressed in John's Gospel. And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14). Could this be the extent of the plurality of God? Is it merely that the One God has been revealed in different ways to me? Or is there even more? I think that there is.
Different Persons. The primary aspect which indicates that the plurality within the Godhead is made up of different persons is the Bible's description of the interaction which takes place between those persons. For example, when we examine the prayer of Jesus in John 17:1-26, we find Jesus interacting with the Father.
“And now, glorify Thou Me with Thyself, Father, with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was.” (John 17:5).
Don't miss this! Here we have the Son speaking to the Father about the personal relationship which they enjoyed before the creation of the world. In John 17:24 there is even more.
“...for Thou didst love Me before the foundation of the world.” (John 17:24 b). This is the language of relationship. And a relationship implies two distinct persons. One does not have this kind of relationship with himself. The implication is that the Father and the Son were loving each other long before the Son was manifested in the flesh. They existed as distinct persons long before God was revealed to man in any form. They existed as distinct persons before man was even created. They have always existed as distinct persons. The different actions of God can be explained by a difference in function. The mention of different members of the Godhead can be explained by a difference in manifestations. But the various interactions which take place among the members of the Godhead can only be satisfied by the existence of different persons within that Godhead.
Christians have struggled in all sorts of ways to describe this doctrine of the Trinity. They have come up with a variety of illustrations, all of which fall flat. C.S. Lewis makes this observation:
We must remind ourselves that Christian theology does not believe God to be a person. It believes Him to be such that in Him a trinity of persons is consistent with a unity of Deity. In that sense it believes Him to be something very different from a person, just as a cube, in which six squares are consistent with unity of the body, is different from a square. (Flatlanders, attempting to imagine a cube, would either imagine the six squares coinciding, and thus destroy their distinctness, or else imagine them set out side by side, and thus destroy the unity. Our difficulties about the Trinity are of much the same kind.) — C.S. Lewis.
It is commonplace today to find those who agree to the existence of a deity, but who want to reject the idea of a personal God. Lewis agrees that God is not merely a person, but that He is supra-personal. He is not less than a personal God; He is more than a mere personal God. He is multi-personal.