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Our major task in this chapter is to examine the primary moments of God’s saving deeds recorded in the New Testament and to see and hear the revelation of the Trinity in the act of redemption.  So we shall look at the conception, baptism, death, and resurrection of Jesus, along with the descent of the Holy Spirit and the arrival of the New Jerusalem.  In doing so we shall see the truth of the observation made at various points in the preceding chapters – that the revelation of the Trinity had to wait for the completion of the saving acts of the Trinity.

Here we need to bear in mind three sets of facts before we look at the narratives in Matthew 1 and Luke 1.  In the first place, Jesus did not exist before he was conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary.  The existence of Jesus began nine months before his birth in Bethlehem.  Secondly, considered as divine, the Son of God (or the Word of John 1:1) existed before Mary existed.  In the third place, Mary conceived Jesus without the introduction into her body of any male semen. She conceived by the Holy Spirit.

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What the narratives tell us in their differing ways and emphases is that (1) the Father sent his Son into the created order; (2) the preexisting Son of God took human nature in Mary’s womb, and (3) this act of the Son of God occurred because of the act of the Holy Spirit upon and in Mary, who in glad submission to God conceived "by the Holy Spirit."

(1)  Matthew tells us that Joseph discovered before their actual marriage and during their betrothal that Mary was pregnant.  As he considered what to do, "an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream."  This heavenly messenger from YHWH said to him, "Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit; she will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins" (1:18-21).  We are not told how Joseph understood this remarkable communication.  All we know is that he took it at its face value and acted accordingly.

Matthew, who describes Mary as "with child by the Holy Spirit," also declares that her unique conception fulfilled prophecy (Isa. 7:14) and provided the basis for the essential truth concerning Jesus, who is Emmanuel (God with us).  Throughout the narrative of Matthew 1 it is understood that this Incarnation occurs because it is the will of YHWH, who sends both his Son and his Holy Spirit to Nazareth.

(2)  Luke weaves the accounts of the conception and birth of John the Baptist and Jesus together so that we see God’s purposes in greater relief.  Thus it was after Elizabeth had been pregnant six months that Mary was visited by the messenger from heaven whose name was Gabriel.  Naturally the young virgin of Nazareth was taken aback by the angel’s visit, but he comforted her and gave her the message from YHWH that she would become pregnant without knowing a man.

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Mary knew enough about human sexuality to ask how she could conceive when she did not as yet have a husband. Gabriel replied:

The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God (1:35).

Here we have "God," "the Most High," and "the Lord God" referring to YHWH as "the Father."  Then we have the Incarnation of "the Son of the Most High," who is "the Son of God"; this becoming man is because of the unique presence and action of "the Holy Spirit," who is "the power of the Most High."  Though the preexistence of the Son is not specifically stated, the difference in the conception of John by Elizabeth and of Jesus by Mary points to this preexistence.  John is conceived by normal means in an unexpected way through "the power of the Holy Spirit" working through the laws of nature.  In contrast, Jesus is conceived "by the Holy Spirit" alone, for his (eternal) Father is God.  Thus Elizabeth described the pregnant Mary as "the mother of my Lord" (1:43).

It is important to note that the Nicene Creed declares that "the only-begotten Son of God was incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary."  The Apostles’ Creed declares that Jesus Christ, the only Son of the Father Almighty "was conceived by the Holy Spirit."  The modern translation of these Creeds (as used, for example, by Roman Catholics and Episcopalians at the Eucharist) contains the added words "power of."  Thus, Mary is said to have conceived "by the power of the Holy Spirit" not "by the Holy Spirit" (as in the original Greek/Latin).  Such an erroneous translation is intended to remove the uniqueness of the conception by Mary, the virgin.

Only when John the Baptist was engaged in his public ministry of calling the Jews to repentance did Jesus leave Nazareth to identify with John, with his own people the Jews, and to begin his ministry of proclaiming the arrival of the kingdom of YHWH.  Each of the Synoptic Gospels provides an account of the baptism

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of Jesus (Matt. 3:13-17; Mark 1:9-11; Luke 3:21-22), and the Gospel of John assumes it took place (1:24-34).

Since Mark’s account is generally regarded as the earliest, we shall examine it.

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.  And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens opened and the Spirit descending upon him like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, "Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased" (Mark 1:9-11).

Jesus was given a vision of the heaven of heavens, the dwelling place of YHWH opened.  From there he saw the Holy Spirit descending upon him as though a dove in flight.  This was an objective vision through which genuine, divine communication occurred.  Jesus experienced the arrival of the Holy Spirit to anoint/clothe him and to fill him; further, he heard the voice of YHWH, the Father, from heaven.

"Thou art my Son" is not the conferring of a messianic title.  Rather, it is the confirming of a filial consciousness which Jesus already had.  "Beloved" can either be taken with "Son" ("my beloved Son") or stand alone ("my Son, the beloved").  The Father is well pleased with his (incarnate) Son because he has dedicated himself to the vocation of the Servant of YHWH by his full identification with his people in John’s ministry.  What is said by the Father to the Son is, as we would expect, made up of phrases from the Old Testament – Psalm 2:7 and Isaiah 42:1.

In terms of the revelation of the Trinity, the Father is present as the One who addresses his Son; the beloved Son is present as the One who has the vision, receives the Holy Spirit, and hears the voice of the Father; and the Holy Spirit is present as the One who is sent by the Father from the heaven of heavens to his Son who is the Servant-Messiah.

Immediately following the baptism, Jesus, the Son, was driven by the Spirit to be tested by the Father through the temptations brought by Satan.  Forty days later, in communion with the Father and led by the Spirit, the Servant Son returned to Galilee to proclaim the kingdom of God in word and deed (Mark 1:12-14).  He went into the synagogue at Nazareth, where he had

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lived, and, as the Son of God, declared that the Spirit of YHWH, his Father, was upon him (Luke 4:16-21).

Later in Mark’s Gospel there is the account of the amazing Transfiguration of Jesus (9:2-8; cf. Matt. 17:1-8; Luke 9:28-36), where again the Father speaks from heaven to the disciples telling them that Jesus is "my beloved Son" to whom they are to listen!  Probably we are to understand this event, wherein the true glory of Jesus is revealed, as an anticipation or prolepsis of his future resurrection and the Parousia.  The fact that the Holy Spirit is not mentioned here should not surprise us – he is the invisible One anointing and filling Jesus the Servant-Son and causing his raiment to glow with divine glory.  (A comparison of Luke 9:34-35 and Luke 1:35 suggests the presence of the Spirit at the Transfiguration.)

Six days before the Transfiguration, Jesus had asked his disciples who they thought he really was.  Simon Peter had confessed, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."  In reply Jesus said, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona!  For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven" (Matt. 16:16-17).  Again, while the Spirit is not mentioned, his presence and activity is surely understood as being the means of the revelation from the Father in heaven.

To read the accounts of the Passion and Crucifixion of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels is to be aware of the filial consciousness of Jesus.  The Father was always there and very real to him. According to Mark, in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus uttered the memorable words, "Abba, Father, all things are possible to thee; remove this cup from me; yet not what I will, but what thou wilt" (Mark 14:36).  Then, as Jesus breathed his last on the Cross, the Roman centurion exclaimed, "Truly this man was a (the) Son of God" (15:39).  Luke reports that Jesus cried with a loud voice from the Cross saying, "Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit!" (23:46)

In John’s Gospel, the last recorded words of Jesus (who is always conscious that he is the unique Son of the Father) were, "I thirst," and then, after sipping the wine, he said, "It is fin-

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ished" (19:30).  Following these final words, we read that Jesus "bowed his head and gave up his spirit" [lit. "he handed over the spirit"].  Then a little later we are told that there came forth from his side "blood and water" (19:34).  In his comment upon these events Sir Edwyn Hoskyns wrote:

If it be assumed that the author intends his readers to suppose that the Beloved Disciple and Mary, the Mother of Jesus, remain standing beneath the cross, the words He bowed his head suggest that He bowed His head towards them, and the words, He handed over the Spirit are also directed to the faithful believers who stand below.  This is no fantastic exegesis, since verses 28-30 record the solemn fulfillment of vii. 37-39 [where Jesus spoke of the Spirit in terms of rivers of living water].

Hoskyns proceeds to explain what he has in mind.

The thirst of the believers is assuaged by the rivers of living water which flow from the belly of the Lord, the author having already noted that this referred to the giving of the Spirit.  The outpouring of the Spirit here recorded must be understood in connection with the outpouring of water and blood (v. 34).  The similar association of Spirit and Water and Blood in 1 John v. 8 (There are three who bear witness, the Spirit, and the water and the blood: and the three agree in one) seems to make this interpretation not only possible, but necessary.¹

Raymond E. Brown summarized this way of reading John 19 in these words: "the symbolism here is proleptic and serves to clarify that, while only the risen Jesus gives the Spirit, that gift flows from the whole process of glorification in the ‘hour’ of the passion, death, resurrection and ascension"²

So we find that in the Crucifixion of the incarnate Son of the Father there is (in John’s presentation) the handing over of the Spirit who has anointed and filled Jesus the Servant-Son.  In the darkness of the Crucifixion, which for John’s Gospel is the first stage of the glorification of Jesus, there is the Revelation of the Father, of his Son, who is being glorified, and the Holy Spirit

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who is the gift of the Father and the Son to the disciples, represented by Mary and John.

In Hebrews the author compares the sacrifice of animals under the old covenant with the unique sacrifice of the incarnate Son inaugurating the new covenant:

For if the sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls and with the ashes of a heifer sanctifies for the purification of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify your conscience from dead works to serve the living God (Heb. 9:13-14).

Christ, who is the Son, offers the sacrifice; the sacrifice of the Son is received by the Father in and through the Holy Spirit.  Thus redemption is the work of the Holy Trinity.

The Gospel proclaimed by the apostles was the good news that God the Father had raised his incarnate Son, Jesus Christ, from the dead in and by the Holy Spirit.  However, as exalted into heaven and away from earth Jesus was not, as it were, absorbed into the realm of Spirit – losing his own independent existence in exaltation.  In the Book of Acts the resurrection of Jesus is usually said to be by the Father – "God raised Jesus from the dead" (2:24, 32).  This, of course, leaves open the possibility that the Father acted in and by his Spirit.

Paul begins his letter to Rome by referring to the Gospel of God concerning his Son, who was declared or designated Son of God "in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead" (Rom. 1:4).  Later in the same letter he wrote to the Christians: "If the Spirit of him [God the Father] who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit which dwells in you" (8:11).  However, Paul does not often attribute the actual bodily resurrection of Jesus to the Spirit and his reason was probably so as not to give the impression that Jesus in being raised in a transformed body was absorbed into the Spirit.  As we saw in the previous chapter,

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though there is a vital and close relation of the Spirit and the Lord Jesus, they are not to be identified.

Certainly the Lord Jesus is presented in the narratives of his resurrection appearances as speaking of his Father and of the Holy Spirit.  This is especially true of John 20. Jesus told Mary: "I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God" (v. 17).  He commissioned his disciples as he said: "As the Father has sent me, even so I send you"; and then he breathed upon them and said: "Receive the Holy Spirit" (vv. 21-22).

At the end of Matthew the resurrected Lord Jesus is with the eleven apostles on a mountain and they worship him – but apparently with some doubts.  He then is reported as saying to them these remarkable words.

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age (28:18-20).

Jesus presents himself as the exalted Son of Man who has received from the Father the universal and eternal dominion promised to him in Daniel 7:14.  Because he actually has such authority he commands his apostles to go forth and make disciples in all the world, promising that he will always be with them.

Many commentators suppose that the trinitarian formula was not original at this point in Matthew’s Gospel since there is no evidence anywhere else in the New Testament of such a formula.  They point out that baptisms were performed "in the name of the Lord Jesus" (Acts 2:38; 8:16) in the early days of the church.  So they suggest that the formula used by the church toward the end of the first century of performing baptism in the threefold Name was placed on the lips of the resurrected Lord Jesus by the evangelist.  However, another way of looking at the evidence is to say that "in the name of the Lord Jesus" is Luke’s summary of the longer "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."

What is noteworthy, however, is this. Whether or not Jesus

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The Gospel of Luke, which is continued in Acts, presents Jesus as telling his disciples that they were witnesses of his death and resurrection and then saying, "I send the promise of my Father upon you; but stay in the city, until you are clothed with power from on high" (24:49).  The reference is of course to the events described in Acts 2, to which we turn in the next section.

In Luke’s account of the Ascension (Acts 1:6-11) the last words of Jesus to his disciples were: "You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit is come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth" (v. 8).  So the disciples waited in Jerusalem for the promise to be fulfilled.  And it was – at the Feast of Pentecost, ten days after the Ascension.

The Trinitarian character of this event – a great saving and revealing act of YHWH – is obvious to the careful reader of Acts 2.  The arrival of the Holy Spirit in ways and with characteristics already known in the descriptions of the theophanies of YHWH under the old covenant (see chaps. 4 and 5) is central for all that follows.  The disciples are anointed and filled with the Spirit.

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There is the praise of God in a variety of languages.  Peter’s citing of the prophecy of Joel to explain the amazing turn of events identifies the Spirit and his relation to heaven and to Yahweh-Elohim.  God, himself, has sent his Spirit to dwell with his people under the new covenant, the new epoch, and the new order.  And his arrival and presence really make a difference!

But why has God sent his Spirit at this time?  Peter has a very clear answer.  It is because God has raised up Jesus from the dead and exalted him into heaven and there declared him to be both Lord and Christ.  The Spirit descends because Jesus ascended as the victorious Messiah.  In fact, the Lord Jesus, who is himself the recipient of the Spirit, joins with the Father in sending the Spirit (2:33).  When sinners repent and believe the Gospel of God concerning Jesus the Lord then they receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, who is to them the Spirit of the exalted Lord Jesus.

There is a close relation between the Holy Spirit and the Father – the Spirit is sent by the Father from heaven.  Also there is a close relation between the Spirit and the Lord Jesus Christ – the Spirit is sent both for the sake of Jesus and by Jesus so that he may dwell and work in those who belong to Jesus on earth and are continuing his mission. And, of course, there is a close relation between the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who is "exalted at the right hand of God" (2:33) sharing the divine throne and name.  Obviously Acts 2 does not present a developed Trinitarian picture; the Holy Trinity is encountered in an implicit and functional way rather than an explicit and ontological way.

There is also the account of the giving of the Spirit in John's Gospel – sometimes called "John’s Pentecost" and to which we made reference in chapter 9.  This account is decidedly Trinitarian in character. Jesus, the Son, said to the disciples, "As the Father has sent me, even so I [his Son] send you."  Then breathing out upon them the Life-Force within him – that is, his personal Spirit – he said, "Receive the Holy Spirit" (John 20:21-22).

A VISION OF THE NEW JERUSALEM

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tion of John there is a vision of the life of the age to come.  The grand, theological finale of the book is in the description of "the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband" and of the glorious declaration from the Throne, "Behold, the dwelling of God is with men.  He will dwell with them and they shall be his people" (21:1-3).  To know God is to know the Holy Trinity.

Then he [the Spirit through one of the seven angels] showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb, through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.  There shall no more be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and his servants shall worship him; they shall see his face, and his name shall be on their foreheads.  And night shall be no more; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they shall reign for ever and ever (22:1-5).

Here in rich symbolic language drawn from the Old Testament and the tradition of the Gospel there is a portrayal of both the Holy Trinity and of the beatific vision.  There is one throne – the throne of both God (the Father) and the Lamb (the crucified, exalted Son).  Earlier in chapter 21 it had been made clear that the Father and the Son are so close that both are "the One who sits upon the throne" (21:5).  At the throne and flowing from the throne is the Holy Spirit – presented here (as in John 7:38-39) as a river of living water.  Already in 2 1:6, the Lamb had promised that "to the thirsty I will give water without price from the fountain of the water of life."  The Spirit fills the city which is the church of the saints.  And (in, through, and by the Holy Spirit) the dwellers in the New Jerusalem enjoy the beatific vision – "they shall see his face" (cf. Matt. 5:8; 1 John 3:2).

In this passage (and in the whole section 21:1–22:5) the scriptural revelation of the Holy Trinity reaches its zenith.  The vision presented to the reader heralds for the saints a holy, glorious, progressive discovery – a growing in vital knowledge in

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the life of the age to come of the Three who are One and the One who is Three, YHWH-Elohim.

The "Trinity" is an abstract noun which has one and one meaning only for theology – it designates the concrete reality of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  In chapter 2 we noted how they came to be called "Three Persons" (Latin, persona).  Here it will be useful to see how St. Augustine dealt with this word which he received within the tradition of the church.

Writing in his treatise, De Trinitate, Augustine faced the problems with using the word persona.

When then someone asks: what are these Three [i.e., the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit]?  Three what?  We are hard put to find a specific or a generic noun that will cover these Three [haec tria] but none comes to mind, for the transcendence of the divinity exceeds the resources of our normal vocabulary.  When dealing with God, thought is more accurate than discourse, and the reality is more accurate than thought....  Where there is no difference in essence there is need of a specific name common to the Three, but we do not find one.  Person is a generic term since it can be applied to man, even though there is such a distance from man to God.³

Augustine’s difficulty was that he could not find a word to apply to each of the Three and to the Three alone – one without any possible reference to creatures.  He accepted and used the word "Person," but he was not entirely happy to do so.

What seemed as a disadvantage to Augustine was later taken as an advantage by Thomas Aquinas because of his doctrine of analogy.  In his Summa Theologica he expounds a notion of Person which can be applied analogically to men, to angels, and to God.  As such it allows us to start from the datum of experience so as to reach in faith an understanding of the Holy Trinity as Three Persons and One God.⁴  All serious exposition of the doctrine of the Trinity since the time of Thomas has had to take account of his exposition of persona and his doctrine of analogy.⁵

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In modern English (as in other European languages) the meaning of "person" has moved a long way from its meaning in scholastic philosophy and theology.  The current, usual meaning of the word is inextricably bound up with notions of personality and the input of psychology in a culture where individualism is dominant.  Therefore, theologians have either to stop using the word "Persons" of the Three or they have to explain what precisely is the technical meaning.  I can see no alternative but to adopt the second option and explain what it means – as I did briefly in chapter 2.  In doing so, I believe that the doctrine of analogy is of great service for it allows us in the modern debate over appropriate language for God to defend with vigor the designation of the Three as Persons as also the naming and addressing of Them as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

In some modern theology (as we noted in chap. 3) God is described as a/the Spirit and as one Person.  Here the word "person" is being used in a modern rather than in the classical sense.  The Dutch theologian, Hendrikus Berkhof, adopted this approach and vocabulary in his book, The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit (1965) but later modified it in his The Christian Faith (1975).  Referring to God’s presence and activity in Jesus and the Holy Spirit, he wrote:

In all this God is Person, acting in a personal way, seeking a personal encounter.  The triune God does not embrace Three Persons; he himself is a Person, meeting us in the Son and in his Spirit. Jesus Christ is not a Person beside the Person of God; in him the Person of God becomes the shape of a human person.  And the Spirit is not a Person beside the Persons of God and of Christ.  In creation he is the acting Person of God, in re-creation he is the acting Person of Christ, who is no other than the acting Person of God.  Therefore we must reject all presentation of the Holy Spirit as an impersonal force.  The Spirit is Person because he is God acting as a Person.  He is a Person in relation to us, not in relation to God; for he is the personal God himself in relation to us.⁶

I have quoted this because it is the kind of thing which has often been said in one way or another when people attempt to

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state the doctrine of the Trinity.  It sounds like and probably in fact is a form of Modalism – a doctrine which constantly appears in the church through history.  In fact, it is an extreme statement of the Barthian position that God is One Person, who has Three Modes of Being.  Despite its attractiveness in apparently simplifying the portrayal of the Holy Trinity, it is a long way from the orthodoxy of the Ecumenical Councils and Protestant Confessions of faith.

It is one thing to claim, as I have done, that we need to retain the language of three personae and hypostaseis; it is another to insist that we understand the meaning of person as applied to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit as identical in each case – that each in the same way is a person as if they are three members of a class.  Is each One a divine person distinctively as the Father and as the Son and as the Holy Spirit?  Much traditional theology has answered "no" claiming that person is used in an identical way of each of the Three.  In challenging such a position Alisdair Heron writes:

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In the next chapter we shall examine this "interlocking complementarity" rather than simple "threefold repetition."  And Augustine On the Holy Trinity, Books 9 to 16, has all the material necessary for those who wish to examine the models developed by the Bishop of Hippo to portray the Holy Trinity as an organic three-dimensional unity.

Augustine. On the Holy Trinity. In Vol. 3 of A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1956.

Berkhof, Hendrikus. The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit. London: Epworth, 1965.

Brown, Raymond E. The Gospel according to John. 2 vols., New York: Doubleday, 1966, 1970.

----- The Birth of the Messiah. New York: Doubleday, 1977.

Heron, Alisdair. The Holy Spirit. London: Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1983.

Hoskyns, Edwyn. The Fourth Gospel. London: Faber and Faber, 1947.

Ramsey, Michael. The Glory of God and the Transfiguration of Jesus. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1949.

Rocca, Gregory P. "Aquinas on God Talk." Theological Studies, 54 (1993): 641–61.

Schaberg, J. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit: The Triadic Phrase in Matthew 28:19b. Chico, Calif.: Scholars, 1982.

Tavard, George H. The Vision of the Trinity. Washington, D.C.: Univ. Press of America, 1981.

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