Why Can Theologians Explain the Trinity Doctrine?
Many people assume that the Holy Spirit, along with God the Father and Jesus Christ the Son, form what is commonly known as the Trinity. The doctrine of the Trinity expresses a belief in one God who exists in three distinct but equal persons. Is the Holy Spirit truly a third divine person, along with the Father and Jesus? In spite of these assumptions, the word Trinity doesn’t appear anywhere in the Bible. In fact, it did not come into common use as a religious term until several centuries after the last books of the Bible were completed. Notice this admission in the New Bible Dictionary: “The term ‘Trinity’ is not itself found in the Bible. It was first used by Tertullian at the close of the 2nd century, but received wide currency and formal elucidation [clarification] only in the 4th and 5th centuries” (1996, “Trinity,” emphasis added). The dictionary goes on to explain that “the formal doctrine of the Trinity was the result of several inadequate attempts to explain who and what the
