The Holy Trinity

How can God be one and yet Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? Is the Trinity taught in Scripture, or read into it?

Bible verses on Holy Trinity

29 verses are cited on this page. Each one links to its chapter in the Greek text.

The Holy Trinity debate

Unitarian / Jehovah's Witness / MuslimGod is one, as Scripture says from the Shema onward, and the word Trinity appears nowhere in the Bible. Jehovah's Witnesses hold that Jesus is a created being and the Holy Spirit an impersonal active force. Oneness Pentecostals hold that Father, Son, and Spirit are three modes of one person. Muslims hold that God has no partner and that calling Jesus God's Son is the gravest error. All agree the doctrine was a later development, formalized at Nicaea in the fourth century.
CatholicGod is one in being and three in persons. This is not three gods, and the Church confesses the oneness of God as absolutely as any Jew or Muslim. The doctrine was not invented at Nicaea; it was defined there because Scripture calls the Father God, the Son God, and the Spirit God while insisting God is one, and the Church had to state how all of these are true together.

The questions, and the texts on each side

Is God one?

The Lord thy God is one Lord.Mark 12:29

Christ himself puts the Shema first among all the commandments. Christian faith begins in the oneness of God, not in a departure from it.

...there is no God but one.1 Corinthians 8:4

Paul states monotheism without qualification.

Thou believest that there is one God. Thou dost well: the devils also believe and tremble.James 2:19

Belief in one God is right, and assumed throughout.

One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in us all.Ephesians 4:6

Oneness confessed in the same passage that names one Lord and one Spirit (4:4-5).

Are Father, Son, and Spirit each called God?

...that they may know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.John 17:3

The Father is God, which no party disputes.

Thomas answered, and said to him: My Lord and my God.John 20:28

The risen Christ receives the confession and does not correct it. See the deity-of-christ hub for the full treatment.

...thou shouldst lie to the Holy Ghost... Thou hast not lied to men, but to God.Acts 5:3-4

Peter identifies lying to the Spirit as lying to God.

...the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.1 Corinthians 2:10-11

The Spirit knows God's own depths as a man's own spirit knows his mind.

Are the three distinct from one another?

...he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove... And behold a voice from heaven, saying: This is my beloved Son.Matthew 3:16-17

All three appear at once and are distinguished: the Son in the water, the Spirit descending, the Father speaking. They cannot be three modes of one person here.

...baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.Matthew 28:19

One name, singular in the Greek, borne by three who are named separately.

But when the Paraclete cometh, whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceedeth from the Father.John 15:26

The Son sends, the Father is the source, the Spirit is sent. Three, related and not interchangeable.

And now glorify thou me, O Father, with thyself, with the glory which I had, before the world was, with thee.John 17:5

The Son addresses the Father as another, and speaks of a shared glory before creation.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the charity of God, and the communication of the Holy Ghost be with you all.2 Corinthians 13:13

An apostolic blessing naming all three together as one source of grace.

Was the doctrine invented at Nicaea?

I have yet many things to say to you: but you cannot bear them now. But when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will teach you all truth.John 16:12-13

Christ himself indicates that understanding would deepen under the Spirit's guidance. Development of doctrine is not invention. A textual note, which the Church states plainly: the verse most often quoted as an explicit proof, 1 John 5:7 in the Douay-Rheims ("there are three who give testimony in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost. And these three are one"), is the Johannine Comma. It is absent from every early Greek manuscript and from the Greek text of this app, which reads only "there are three who give testimony." It should not be used as evidence, and Catholics who cite it are rightly corrected. The doctrine does not rest on it and never did; the argument here uses no disputed text.

The answer

Scripture never uses the word Trinity, and no single verse sets out the doctrine as the creeds state it. That is granted at the outset. What Scripture does is leave three facts that cannot be surrendered: God is one (Mark 12:29; 1 Corinthians 8:4); the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are each called God and do what only God does; and the three are genuinely distinct, so that the Son prays to the Father and the Spirit is sent by both. The doctrine of the Trinity is simply the refusal to drop any of the three. It is not three gods, which would deny the first; it is not three masks of one person, which would deny the third; and it is not a Father with two creatures, which would deny the second. The First Council of Nicaea (325) confessed the Son as one in being with the Father, and the First Council of Constantinople (381) confessed the Spirit as Lord and giver of life, adored and glorified with them. The councils did not invent the mystery. They fenced it, because men were explaining it away.

The Greek words behind this debate

Read the Greek New Testament