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Abstract
Table of Contents
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI
Part VII
Part VIII
Part IX
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Vol.5: The Virgin Birth and the Incarnation
Part V
THE TRINITY IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1. The Significance of the Pronoun
"Us" in the Old Testament
Chapter 2. The Use of the Term "Lord" for
the Trinity in the New Testament
Chapter 3. The Appearance of the Lord Jesus in the Old
Testament
Chapter 4. The Evidence of Two Persons in the Old Testament
Chapter 5. Jesus as Jehovah
Chapter 6. The "Angel of the Lord" and the "Voice
of the Lord"
Chapter 7. Specific Old Testament References to the Trinity
Chapter 8. Some Conclusions
Appendixes
Publishing history:
1959: Doorway Paper No. 42, published privately by Arthur
C. Custance
1977: Part V in The Virgin Birth and the Incarnation,
vol.5 in The Doorway Papers Series, Zondervan Publishing
Company
1997: Arthur Custance Online Library (html)
2001: 2nd Online Edition (design revisions)
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There is but one living
and true God,
everlasting,
without body, parts, or passions;
of infinite power, wisdom, and
goodness;
the Maker, and Preserver of all
things both visible and invisible.
And in unity of this Godhead there
be three Persons, of one substance, power, and eternity.
Article
I, Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England.
Preface
IN EVERYDAY
speech we use some words that, although they are full of meaning,
are almost impossible to define. How can one define the word
"wonderful," for example? Though pure wonder may often
be seen in the face of a child, as we grow older the faculty
seems to be corrupted by being directed toward the wrong things.
We tend to wonder more and more at the things of man and less
and less at the things of God. Yet in the truest sense the Incarnation
was full of wonder. The wonder of it lies in the true identity
of Jesus.
However, besides being wonderful,
the Incarnation is a matter of supreme importance in Christian
Theology. If Jesus Christ was merely a perfect man, and no
more, His sacrifice could be applied vicariously for some
sinful man, but only one sinful man, for this is the principle
of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But because the
Lord Jesus Christ was God made man and because the life
of all men collectively has been derived from God, His sacrifice
was sufficient for all men -- not just for one. It is
as though in payment of a debt, the Benefactor did not merely
write a cheque to cover a particular sum: He wrote a blank cheque,
redeemable out of the inexhaustible account of the sacrifice
of God Himself. And because He was the eternal Son of
God, it was as though this cheque was left undated that it might
never become invalid. The identity of Jesus Christ as God is
thus supremely important, and this involves His pre-incarnate
existence.
When God the Son died for our sakes,
God the Father raised Him from the dead. If there had not been
at least one other such Lord in heaven when the Lord on earth
died, the universe would have come to an end. There must be more
than one Person in the Godhead. But the existence of three Persons
in the Godhead is not proved by argument from necessity. It is
revelation that clearly shows that this is a fact.
This Paper, however, is not a theological
dissertation, but a Bible study. It will require close attention,
but I believe it is well worth the effort. The writing of this
Paper was a sheer delight, because of the wonder of it all. May
the Lord rejoice the reader's heart as He rejoiced ours in the
contemplation of these things.
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INTRODUCTION
WE WERE sitting
around a wood stove. It was well on into the fall and just nicely
cold. It was the kind of day that old-fashioned heating systems
serve the peculiarly happy duty, by reason of their very inefficiency,
of drawing people together. This was a student conference and
we were discussing the first chapter of John. Having the privilege
of leading the discussion, I was underlining John's statement
that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God. God with God. And John says, All things
were made by Him. And subsequently John adds that the Word was
made flesh and dwelt among us.
By drawing attention in a slightly
different way to these words, a sudden realization came to one
of the students, a native of India and not a Christian, that
Jesus of Nazareth was God, the Creator, and had shared eternity
with God the Father. To him this new insight became a source
of great wonder, and several times during that weekend conference
he came back to me and expressed his amazement. This was a new
discovery and to his philosophic mind the implications of it
were tremendous.
While we understand by faith something
of what John meant, how many of us have realized how much the
Old Testament has to say about the pre-incarnate existence of
the Lord Jesus? I often used to wonder how it could be said that
no man has seen God at any time (John 1:18), when it seems clear
that men repeatedly saw the Lord in Old Testament times. Of course,
the marginal explanations tended to leave one with the impression
that men did not really see the Lord at all, but only a kind
of ethereal something, the awfulness of which clearly signified
the presence of God. But then I got to thinking about the story
of Eden. Is this what Adam and Eve experienced, or did
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they really speak with
God face to face? Can one suppose they would have hid themselves
from some brilliant cloud, imagining that bushes would conceal
them? Does not their action indicate that a Person was indeed
walking in the Garden "in the cool of the day" (Genesis
3:8)?
The Jewish people had a very spiritualized
apprehension of God's Person. They did not feel that He would
deal directly with physical things. They believed that God dealt
indirectly with the universe through an agency which they called
The Word. It is generally held that John adopted the terms he
did because of Greek influences, but actually the use of this
title for the Agency by which God created the worlds is quite
native to Hebrew thought. The Hebrew verb "to speak"
or "to say" is amar, and from this root form
was derived the noun memra, an Aramaic form. This word
means "word." In the Targums they used this noun in
many places where it seemed to them that God was spoken of as
having direct and concrete dealings with the physical world.
In the Targum of Onkelos it is used, for example, in Genesis
3:8, 10 and 24. In verse 8 the text reads, "And they heard
the voice of the Word (memra) walking in the Garden in
the cool of the day." Even more striking in this Targum
is the rendering of Deuteronomy 33:27 in which the words "underneath
are the everlasting arms" are replaced by the words, "and
by His Word was the world created." This is, of course,
exactly the thought in John 1:10. Altogether this term is substituted
for the name of the Lord about 170 times in the Targum of Onkelos.
Similarly, the Targum of Jerusalem
substitutes "Word" for "God" in Genesis 1:27
(the creation of man); Genesis 3:9 (where Adam is sought in the
Garden), and in Genesis 3:22 (where a conversation in heaven
is revealed in which it is decided that Adam and Eve must be
expelled from the Garden). This particular Targum employs this
title for God nearly 100 times.
In the Targum known as Pseudo-Jonathan
the word "memra" is employed over 300 times,
the first occurrence being in Genesis 2:8 where it is written,
"And the Word planted a Garden eastward in Eden, and there
He put the man whom He had formed." (See further on this
in Appendix 1).
One wonders how it came about that
this understanding of the meaning of Scripture was lost by the
Jewish people. Most of us, I think, have been under the impression
that the existence of more than one Person in the Godhead was
not really clearly revealed until New Testament times. But I
believe it was, and I should like to present some of the evidence
for the existence not merely of more
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than one Person in the
Godhead -- evidence which is familiar enough to many readers
-- but to draw attention to a number of passages which quite
clearly point to the Trinity, and indeed the relationship (in
so far as it is stated in anthropomorphic terms for our sakes)
between the Persons within that Trinity.
This, then, is more of a Bible
study than a theological dissertation, and I believe that anyone
who will read Scripture carefully with the clues which will be
presented here will find many other passages besides those which
we shall consider. But this will be true only if the reader takes
the Word of God very seriously and assumes that God meant to
say exactly what He did -- not approximately, but exactly.
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Copyright © 1988 Evelyn White. All rights
reserved
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