Godhead Statements by Well-known theologians

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Dr. Frank Stagg, retired professor of New Testament interpretation at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. The following quotes are from the first chapter of his book, The Holy Spirit Today. The chapter is titled, “The Holy Spirit and the Oneness of God.”

The New Testament is content to know God as the eternal Father, as the Word made flesh in Jesus of Nazareth, and as the abiding nearness of the Holy Spirit. It does not attempt to work out a formal doctrine of trinity. This is the work of later generations of Christians....

It was first in the second century that the “trinitarian question” was raised as such. The word “trinity” does not appear in the New Testament, and it is to be recognized that there is no formal doctrine of trinity in the New Testament....

The formal doctrine of trinity was rounded out in the fourth century, but its roots are older. Tertullian (A.D. 160?-230?) is credited with coining the word “trinitas,” the Latin for “trinity” ... But what began as insistence upon tri-unity eventually became an emphasis upon the threeness and increasing jeopardy to the belief in oneness.2

To the term trinity were soon added the terms “persons,” “three persons,” “three persons of the Godhead,” and even the ranking of the persons as first, second, and third. Thus trinitarianism was fast on the way to tritheism, a de facto belief in three distinct gods. This the New Testament never anticipated and does not support.3

Dr. Stagg’s “attempted restatement”:

Jesus Christ is God uniquely present in a truly human life, but he is not a second god nor only one third of God. Jesus Christ is the Word made flesh (John 1:1). The Word which became flesh was God, not the second person of the trinity. John does not say, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was the Second Person of the trinity” (1:1). He says that “the Word was God.” Jesus Christ is more than “the Second person of the trinity”; He is Immanuel, God with us. Immanuel does not mean “the Second person of the trinity with us.” Immanuel is God with us.4

In reference to the Holy Spirit, Dr. Stagg affirms:

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God, not the Spirit of the third person of the trinity. The Holy Spirit is God in his nearness and power, anywhere and anytime, the very divine presence incarnated in Jesus Christ now present in his people. He is not a third God nor one-third of God. He is God himself relating to us in judgment, guidance, strength, redemption, or otherwise.5