RC Sproul
Response to R.C. Sproul’s Pamphlet What Is the Trinity? published by Ligonier Ministries, ligonier.org, 2011.
The Trinity as “Non-negotiable”
Well-known Christian writer and theologian R.C. Sproul is a staunch apologist for the Trinity Doctrine. In his booklet What Is the Trinity? he proclaims the Trinity to be “a non-negotiable article of Christian orthodoxy” (p. 1). In other words, people who question the Trinity Doctrine are heretics. That’s what he is saying; so, if you are a Christian, you may want to protect yourself by not reading this article any further. Sproul has raised the spiritual intimidation factor to the highest possible level.
Yet none of the Bible writers—Paul, Peter, Luke, Matthew, James, Mark, John—spoke of the Trinity. If we could ask them, “Do you believe in the Trinity?” they would answer, “What is that? Never heard of it.” As Sproul would acknowledge, the Bible is God’s word; God is the ultimate author. If a teaching were so fundamental, so necessary to understanding God as Sproul claims the Trinity is, wouldn’t God have revealed it to his servants as they wrote his words? Wouldn’t God reveal it clearly to all his believers?
Greek Philosophy
Sproul, like many Trinity apologists, says we must look beyond scripture to Greek philosophical thinking in order to understand the Trinity. He says, “We have to go back to Greek thinking” (p.47). What he is really saying is that we have to consult Greek philosophy to understand the Christian God. The Bible does not stand on its own (he implies), but requires input from pagan philosophy. But Sproul has heard this objection before, and is not put off by it. “It [the Trinity] is said to represent an invasion of abstract Greek categories into New Testament Christianity” (p.59). He shrugs his shoulders and continues: “We hear these kinds of comments all the time, as if the Holy Spirit could not use the Greek language as a medium of communicating truth.”
For such an intelligent man, this is (if I may say so) a bone-headed statement. The real issue (as he himself already said) is not the Greek language; it is Greek thinking; it is Greek metaphysics being superimposed on spiritual truth. What’s more, to incorporate Greek thinking into Christian doctrine is to defeat a part of God’s purpose for his people. Through the prophet Zechariah, God promised,
I will brandish your sons, O Zion,
over your sons, O Greece,
and wield you like a warrior’s sword (Zechariah 9:13).
The sword of the Word of God is meant to come against and defeat the words and thoughts of pagan Greece, not incorporate them into Christian thought. Spiritual truth, revealed from heaven by the Holy Spirit, is meant to confront and defeat philosophical “truth,” as defined by the minds of men.
A Schizophrenic God
According to Sproul, scripture speaks of the “tri-personality of God” (p.60). Those are Sproul’s words only; they occur nowhere in scripture. Sproul has made God into a schizophrenic, a God with a split personality.
Scripture, by contrast, makes it very clear that God is one, not three—and not “three in one.” Every Bible student knows the words of the shema: “Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God is one LORD,” or alternatively, “Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4). In this statement, the name LORD (in uppercase) stands in for the sacred name Yahweh—the name which God revealed to Moses, the name by which God’s people might address him. To emphasize my point: God reveals his name as Yahweh (LORD). His name is not Jesus; his name is not Holy Spirit; his name is Yahweh. Yahweh is God, and Yahweh is one. That is the self-identification of God to Moses and to all God’s people, and it could not be any clearer. The Trinitarian teaching that God has a “tri-personality” goes directly against God’s own self-description.
Sproul teaches that the Trinity is “non-negotiable” teaching. It seems he may have to negotiate with the Lord God Almighty (Yahweh) himself someday.
“Godhead”
Sproul, like many Trinitarians, frequently resorts to using the odious word “Godhead.” Godhead is the name Trinitarians have given to the combination of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit (except, they call them, “God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit”) into one single entity. This, obviously, renders God the Father as a one-third part of something even greater than himself—the Godhead. The positing of something greater than God himself is what Sproul should be labeling heretical! God the Father is the one eternal, infinite God, and there can be none other beyond him or greater than him.
Incomprehensible Use of Words
Sproul says, “Throughout the ages, the church has said that God is one in essence, being, or nature, and three in person” (p. 33). Then in the very next sentence he says that Christ is “one person with two natures.” In other words, according to Sproul, the Trinity is three persons, all of one nature, but one of those persons has two natures. What kind of nonsense is this? Oh, but we’re not allowed to ask questions, because this has been church doctrine “throughout the ages.”
And what does it mean for one “essence” or “being” to be shared by three separate persons? In normal parlance, a living being is a single person. That’s just what the word means. But now, in Trinityville a “being” can be three separate persons, and we’re not allowed to question the idea because it has been held by Christians “throughout the ages.”
And in normal parlance an “essence” is perceived as aromatic molecules floating in the atmosphere so we smell them as a pleasing aroma. But now, in Trinityville there is some mystical essence of God which floats among three separate people so that we can say they are all the same God. And how do we know they are all God? Perhaps because they all have the same aroma? Would that be the Godhead aroma? In Trinityville, words cease to mean what they mean.
“Deity of Christ”
Like all Trinitarian theologians, Sproul uses the phrase “the deity of Christ” as synonymous with “Jesus is God.”
It seems unbelievable, but Sproul actually quotes 1 Corinthians 8:6 as a prooftext for the Trinity. In that verse Paul says, “For us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist”. Sproul says Paul is ascribing “deity to Christ. … Paul is equating the Father and the Son in terms of Their divinity” (p.21) (Notice the uppercase “T” for “Their.” Do you get it? “Their” is Sproul’s pronoun for the Godhead.) According to Sproul, since all things were made “through” Christ, therefore Christ assumes a characteristic of divinity; and if we can ascribe divinity to Christ, then that implies that Jesus is God and must be a coequal member of the Trinity.
It’s all a rather weaselly chain of verbiage. But all one has to do is calmly read what Paul says, and simply take him at his word. Paul clearly says that there is one God, who is the Father, and there is also Jesus, who is Lord. God is the Father, but God is not Jesus; God and Jesus are not the same thing. That is what Paul is saying. Paul is not affirming the Trinity; he is contradicting it!
The ”I Am” Statements
Sproul points out that Jesus makes a number of “I am” statements in the gospel of John. For example, Jesus says, “I am the bread of life,” “I am the door,” “I am the way,” and so forth. The words “I am,” notes Sproul, are also the words which God gave to his people in the Old Testament to use as God’s name (transliterated into English as Yahweh). Therefore, Sproul concludes: “Jesus, then, by using this construction for Himself, is equating Himself with God” (p. 22).
So then, if I said, “I am a house painter,” I would be equating myself with God? It seems that when it comes to talking about the Trinity, normal rules of language are suspended.