Throughout section three of God in Three Persons – A Contemporary Interpretation of the Trinity, Erickson offers comprehensive and compelling scriptural evidence for the Trinity as a way to understand the identity and interwoven roles of each member. Each in a single essence as God, they together and separately work from distant history to first century and contemporary activity through God incarnate as Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit within the new covenant context. Recorded historical accounts of various events and narratives involving God in different forms of persons and pluralities bring a fuller understanding of the nature of God’s unity. Still today, through the work of the Holy Spirit, God’s involvement in a new covenant context from the first century to the present and future fulfillment of promises, there is a reconciliation evident as a continuum of combined effort.
Through a plurality of presence, as God manifests in Spirit and observed corporeal reality from the Old Testament, there is a continuing thread of literary witness accounts of what occurred as a matter of course. The fulfillment of prophecies and historical events factually confirmed assembled in Scripture to involve God at work in the lives of people point to covenant promises kept. During that progression of time, it revealed the essence and nature of God’s unity and plurality to carry meaning formative to what He does to redeem people and build His kingdom. The presence of the Trinity in the Old Testament is communicated as divine truth to offer concrete interpretive recognition of both states of plurality and unity. Story after story involves nature or Being to produce the highest confidence in the doctrine of the Trinity.
It is also trustworthy as accurate the correspondence of Christ’s witness to what and who God is. The New Testament and especially the gospel of John is replete with writings that attest to the same manner of recognition about how to view God as Creator, Spirit, and Incarnate Word. Historical, biblical, and extracanonical writings offer a significant depth and range of rationale concerning triadic references important to developing Christianity down through the centuries. Whether from the synoptic gospels, Pauline texts, or other books and letters of Scripture, numerous triadic passages of interest involved many people firsthand. Corroboration from affected societies, cultures, individuals, synagogues, and churches that were immersed in the time of Jesus, James, Peter, Paul, John, and later others produced a way of recognizing who God was and how He was made evident by what was accomplished.
It was not by happenstance that the gospels were written with a commonality of meaning meant for consistent interpretation of the triadic nature of God’s existence. There is a certain sense of security and relief in recognizing Trinity’s meaning as “persons.” The Father bestows everything upon the Son and Holy Spirit except for being the Father. Likewise, the Son and Holy Spirit everything to each without yielding identity is a form of interrelated communication and mutual communion. The interrelated nature of God as a society of persons is together shared love and not an exclusive one-to-one arrangement; as Erickson wrote love, to be love must have both a subject and an object. The triadic expression of unconditional love and interrelated selflessness further explains the nature of God as love. As presented in Scripture (1 John 4:16), God is love, yet distinct individual beings not separate or isolated from one another.
To the extent that separation is impossible within the Trinity, the Son took on flesh to become incarnate God, fulfill the triadic work on Earth, and return to His position ascendant in a resurrected and glorified body to become the firstborn of the dead. A new Adam to fulfill the Genesis 3:15 covenant where the love of triune God becomes shared with humanity.
