Introduction
There is not one single description of God, biblical or otherwise, that completely and fully tells us all there is to know about God. He is a complex Being and in so many ways unlike us members of humankind that we can only describe Him in part—by focusing on His different attributes and descriptions. This complexity of His nature is the reason for the different doctrines concerning Him. As mankind focuses on His different attributes and descriptions, some will emphasize others over the rest, giving different schools of thought concerning His Being and the constitution of His Being.
For the Christian and, somewhat, the Jew, one might think that this should not be the case because God has revealed Himself through inspired writings. However, as not all schools of Christian thought concerning the nature of the Godhead give equal weight to all that the scriptures say concerning the revelation of Himself that God has put down in those writings, different views have come into being. Depending on a person's view, one or the other of these views will be given acceptance and the others being regarded as unorthodox or heretical. All of these views claim to be from a biblical foundation, so they can all pull out verses to support them. Few of us, after having decided on one view over the others, rarely, if ever, consider whether that view of the nature of the Godhead is really consistent with the entirety of the Bible. This fact is altogether more pertinent when we consider that most make up their minds to support one view over the others with very limited knowledge of the various points of view and most often without unbiased teaching and understanding of what the competing views actually believe and teach. This is further complicated by the fact that none of the main schools of thought are completely homogeneous—each has its offshoots of varying degrees of refinements of the core teachings of its own point of view. This is true even of those who most closely adhere to the biblical revelation God has given of Himself—the apostles' doctrine.
Finally, the issues are complicated by the use of language and languages. We do not always make clear exactly what we mean by the words we use. Words have meaning, but the meaning often varies from one school of thought to another and from individual to individual. Sometimes, a person will use the same word to denote different meanings in different contexts. Words can be used in a general and a specific sense and the context does not always make that clear without deliberate concentration of the use of the word in question. This is true of the writers of the Bible as well. In our day, we can have sincere and honest debate about what a word means in any given passage or verse because of this fact. That this revelation was written and transmitted to us in a language (well, really three languages) that is no longer used without experiencing the natural evolution that languages undergo, only further complicates the matter.
In spite of these difficulties, it is the aim of this treatise to explore the revelation God has given us of Himself. It is obvious to any inquiring mind that God wanted to be known, because He has taken the time and energy to reveal Himself to us—not only to the fact of His existence and His purpose in revealing Himself, but also to the facts of the nature of His being, His Godhead.
Why God had to reveal Himself
The natural place to start is in the existence of God as He was/is before He started to reveal Himself. This is, however, impossible. It is only from His revelation of Himself and what He says about Himself that we can know anything at all about Him. He does, thankfully, tell us these things about Himself.
Being a people who know that God has revealed Himself, modern Christians tend to forget or to downplay the fact that God is transcendent. He is in some sense above all of His creation and removed from it. In the most obvious sense, this has to do with matter—that of which He created all creation. He is in some ways unknowable. We can only know Him in part and understand His nature through His self-revelation. It is not for us to know how His Being can be be without atoms constituting it. We can only accept that He is and not know how it can be so.
God is a Spirit
A spirit has no corporeal body. A spirit is not made of flesh and bone. In spite of the common notion of the visibility of ghosts and other spirit beings, this is not what the totality of the Bible means in the description of God as a Spirit. God, in His Spirit-nature, has no visible form. He is invisible and without form or body. It is necessary to God to have this transcendent nature for Him to be omnipresent. Were he composed of any sort of matter, He would immediately be limited in time and space to some extent.
It is possible to conceive with the human mind a being that is able to move from place to place and time to time so fast that he could to our perception be considered to be in two or more places at once. Let's say this being could be with you in your home in the present moment and in a nanosecond move to be in, say, Lhasa in Tibet on December 2, 1811. In the next nanosecond, this being moves back to be with you in the present. Every nanosecond this being makes this switch of time and location. You would never perceive the motion, because your eyes and other senses are not capable of that fine of a distinction. Neither would the people this being interacts with in the other time and location be able to tell.
But such a being is not everywhere present. This is not a description of how God does it. The Bible says we live, move and have our being in Him. He is in heaven, in hell and on earth—all at the same time, not some minute fractional part of a second apart. In each and every moment, God is everywhere present—even outside of time. He is never far from each and everyone of us in a sense, but is far removed from us in our perception of that part of His Being Who is “where” our atoms are.
God is invisible. Unlike the spirit beings He created, He cannot be seen at all, ever. He has no hands, eyes or feet, etc. Such anthropomorphic descriptions are for our benefit that we may understand the workings of God in terms that make some kind of sense to us. To interact with His creation God had to make Himself a visible form. In other words, because He is transcendent, God had to manifest Himself—become immanent to relate with His creation.
The first part of creation
Before God started creating the creatures and matter of His creation, His Word tells us He first made Himself a visible (immanent) form. This was not another being. It was God, but in a specific form He used. His manifestation of Himself did not have a separate will.
It is like the difference between your body and your soul. They are you. They can be said to be parts of you and spoken in the plural when distinguishing your parts, but they are the same being that constitute you. It cannot be said that your body and your soul possess a separate will. Nor can it be said that your body is in a different place or time than the life-force that animates your body. This is where the analogy (as all analogies must) differs from God. He can be and is in places and times where His visible form is not. But nowhere in the Bible are we told that God “appears” in two different places at the same time.
The beginning of the biblical account starts with the creation of the visible, physical universe. However, we know God created before that creation account. It says that the angels rejoiced as He created the universe. Clearly, He created the angels before Genesis 1:1. It says, “In the beginning...” (and that is the name of the book of Genesis in the Hebrew Tanakh) which some take to mean that this was the first of all creation that was created. If it is so, it poses some serious contradictions with other scriptures. It is the beginning, however, as far as mankind is concerned.
We immediately find God using a specific manifestation of Himself to the very first of mankind—Adam and Eve. They had disobeyed Him and when they heard His voice walking in the garden in the cool of the day, they hid themselves from Him. Now tell me, how do you hide from an incorporeal voice? I am not saying God was using a human body here—only that He was manifesting Himself in some specific form. Voices do not walk. We can interpret this as anthropomorphism, but that also creates the problem of how do you hide behind some vegetation from God? Adam and Eve obviously had some form to look upon and hide from. If this were not the case in other Bible passages, it would be easily dismissed as such here, but God shows Himself throughout the history of mankind in specific times and places in a specific form that men could see, hear, talk to, etc.
The Yahweh-Angel
The Bible tells of quite a few events where the Angel of the LORD appears and interacts with people.
| Passage | Person(s) | Event or Place |
| Gen 16:7-14 | Hagar | Well of Beelahairoi |
| Gen 18 | Abraham | Oaks of Mamre, destruction of Sodom & Gomorrah |
| Gen 22:11-18 | Abraham & Isaac | Sacrifice of Isaac |
| Gen 31:11-13 | Jacob | Dream: “I am the God of Bethel” |
| Gen 32:24-31 | Jacob (Israel) | Penuel, wrestled God |
| Gen 48:15:16 | Mentioned by Israel | Blessing of Joseph's sons |
| Exod 3:1-6, Acts 7:30 | Moses | Sinai, burning bush |
| Exod 14:19 | Children of Israel | Leads thru the Red Sea |
| Exod 23:20 | Mentioned to Moses | Leads thru the wilderness |
| Exod 32:34, 33:2, Isa 63:9 | Moses | Angel of His Face |
| Josh 5:13-15 | Joshua | Before battle of Jechico |
| Judge 2:1-5 | Children of Israel | Bochim |
| Judge 6:11-23 | Gideon | Winepress of Ophrah |
| Judge 13 | Manoah & his wife | Zorah, prophecy of Samson |
A close reading of these will reveal that the Angel of the LORD—Yahweh Angel—is worshiped, sacrificed to and given all reverence that would be given to God Himself. In some cases He is referred to as a man and others as an angel and then mixed in, switching back-and-forth, spoken of as Yahweh (Jehovah) Himself.
Of particular interest is the fact that the Bible says that Moses saw the Yahweh Angel in the bush burning and it is in conversation with this Angel that Moses receives the revelation of the name of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—the I AM WHO I AM—which we render as Yahweh or Jehovah.
Because of the use of the term angel, (mal`ak, in Hebrew) which is translatable as 'messenger', some say that the Angel of the LORD is not God Himself but an angel He dispatched to represent Him. This interpretation, however, smacks against the fact that the Angel of Yahweh allowed sacrifices to and worship of Himself. An event that God's angels disallowed and which is counter to the commandments of not worshiping any but God.
A much more likely interpretation is that God showed Himself in a form that was very much like that which the angels possess. Nothing is impossible for God and He could have manifest Himself in any form He chose, but for Him to choose a form similar to the angels and which is close enough to be mistaken as a human form demonstrates a particular identification with His creation. He was not appearing to dogs or cats, after all. Plus, His intention was to reveal Himself and His will—not to create another that might receive worship. By appearing in the form similar to an angel, He accomplished that and retained a sense of the supernatural for the people involved.
Further, if we extrapolate the descriptions of the worship and attendance of the angels back before the creation of this world, we have another dilemma—angels in the presence of an everywhere God. Unless we want to interpret these events as symbolic or allegory, these visions have to be describing what literally takes place in heaven. The depictions are of God on a throne—in a specific place—with the angels holding the throne and flying around Him singing His praises continually. If these events are more than an allegory of heaven, then it makes sense that God is manifesting Himself to the angels just as He has done to men. The Being on the throne has to be Yahweh. He said He rules all by Himself and will not share His glory with another (being of any sort). If we take this literally, which I believe we should, then God is appearing in a form similar to the angels for them and the resurrected saints.
Within the context of all the Bible says about His appearing, God's visible form is similar to the angels. It is not an angel or another being that He inhabits or uses. It is the first-born of all creation—God Himself in a manifestation of His transcendent nature.
Now some would say that God is the same yesterday, today and forever and that He does not change. This has to be true. The Bible proclaims it plainly. So then the question is can God manifest Himself in various ways in different times to diverse audiences and retain His unchangeable Self? Yes, He can—in His transcendent nature. His manifestations do not have to change Who or What God is in His very essence. He is not limited as we are. Even when He chooses to show Himself in a specific form in a specific time and place, He is still the transcendent Being He has always been even before He created any beings to reveal Himself to. He does not have to empty His omnipresence to show Himself in a visible form.
The Logos
God's visible manifestation has more than one descriptive name. Besides being referred to as the Yahweh-Mal`ak. 'Mamre' in Hebrew and 'Logos' in Greek, the Word is also referred to in a variety of terms that we translate as 'Wisdom'. All of these serve the same purpose in the revelation of God to mankind. Just as His manifestation of Himself as the Angel of the LORD, the Word is God Himself revealing Himself—making Himself manifest.
The apostle John plainly and clearly states this. “The Word was with God and the Word was God.” Just as was stated earlier in the analogy of the human body and soul. The body is with the soul and the body is the same being as the soul it is with. So God in His manifested form is with His transcendent nature and, at the same time, the same Being as that transcendent Being—only a specific form of Him. With this all of the Bible writers agree.
This is the apostles' doctrine. Great is the mystery of the Godhead that God Himself was manifest in the flesh. God was justified in the Spirit. God was seen of angels. God was preached to the Gentiles. God was believed on in the world. God was received up into glory. He did all of this through the man Jesus Christ, who John was plainly telling us is the Word. He said the Word was made flesh and that the apostles saw His glory. He later said in one of his letters that the apostles heard Him, looked on Him with their own eyes and handled the Word of Life.
A problem comes in after the apostles died and the Apologists identify the Word John spoke of with a pagan concept of the word as being an emanation from the unknowable God of Plato. While there are distinct similarities, there are also distinct differences, which those early “Church Fathers” clearly downplayed and ignored. Namely, Plato's emanation was not identical to the indescribable god, the one. Most of the similarity was in the limitations of the choice of words in the Greek language to describe these two very different concepts. As a means to present Christian concepts to pagan Hellenistists, it met with limited success. It was much more successful at moving Christianity from purely biblical descriptions of God.
So why did the apostle John choose the word 'Logos'? Beyond inspiration, it was a natural choice of wording. The only Greek Bible in his day was the Septuagint (LXX) and it used the Greek word 'logos' to translate the Hebrew word 'mamre' which we also translate as 'word'. So John was not identifying the God of the Old Testament and His manifestation as the Word with the pagan Platonic monotheism and its accompanying concepts. Such would have been unthinkable for John—or any of the other apostles. They believed in the Holy One of Israel and His supremacy to and separateness from all other gods—Plato's included. The God of the Christian apostles was none other than the God of the Jews Who showed Himself in the form of a man Jesus Christ. It would be over a hundred after the death of the last apostle before the Christian God would be any different from the Jewish concepts of God, except for the coming of the Messiah.
Hypostasis or Hypostases
The separation of God into three of His descriptions comes from a very shallow reading of the Bible and interpretation of verses to contain meanings they were never meant to convey. Classical Trinitarianism comes from the same source as the quasi-bitheism of Arianism. Ever since the Apologists starting using Greek philosophical terminology to describe God, there has been a constant struggle against the separation of the Godhead into completely and totally separate gods. In all fairness, most Trinitarians do not believe in more than one God. But throughout history and into the present day, their description of the Godhead has caused confusion. This confusion is represented in their art and iconography, which often shows three beings.
The Bible does speak of the person or hypostasis of God. There is only one mention of it in that specific terminology and it is singular. Hebrews 1:3 states that Jesus Christ is the express image or exact representation of the person of God or of God's essence or substance. It is singular. It is hypostasis not hypostases. The context plainly shows that it is the singular hypostasis of God and not one of a multiplicity of hypostases. In other words, it is not talking about the hypostasis of the Son, but that the Son is a representation, expression, manifestation of the only hypostasis God has. To interpret it otherwise is to remove all meaning from the apostle's statement. The Trinitarian interpretation that Jesus is the express image of God the Son would not have been received by the Hebrew Christians that the book was written to. The historical context alone prevents the Trinitarian interpretation.
The Name of Jesus
That the apostles could not have believed in three hypostases (persons) in one ousia (substance) is plain to see when one gives an open mind to what the Bible has to say about the name of Jesus. It is a name above every name. Are we to believe that Jesus received a name above the name of God the Father? Where is the co-equality of the persons of the Godhead in that?
It was in the name of Jesus that healing was done. It was in the name of Jesus that demons were cast out. It was in the name of Jesus that baptisms were performed. We do not find one single example of the phrase "in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost (Spirit)" being used in the Bible as it has been in the Catholic churches and their descendant churches since the fourth century. It took about a hundred years to convert the historical church over to the use of the Trinitarian phrase from the biblical use of the name of Jesus. In fact, it took over fifty years just to hammer out the formulation of the Trinity dogma!
The only clear statement of the use of the phrase “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost (Spirit)” is in Matt 19:28. To use those exact words is a plain example of superficial reading of the Bible, because the apostles who heard this commandment from Jesus with their own ears did not do it. He commanded them to baptism all nations (notice the 'all'?) in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. But how did those apostles baptize? In the name of Jesus.
There is only one way to reconcile these two biblical facts. The name of the Father has to be Jesus. The name of the Son has to be Jesus. The name of the Holy Ghost has to be Jesus. If this is not true, then we have made the apostles disobedient to the commandment of Christ in His giving the Great Commission.
Some are so shallow as to say, “I would rather obey Christ than the apostles, because He is the greater witness.” This smacks of the purely ludicrous. We know nothing of Jesus Christ and His teachings except what the apostles transmitted to us! If we make an interpretation that pits one against the other, we are saying there is no reliable witness of Jesus Christ. It is the apostolic generation who put the words of Christ down for us to have. They surely did not put words in Christ's mouth that they did not agree with. No, it is the Trinitarian interpretation that causes the disagreement.
Furthermore, take notice of Luke's telling of the same event. In Luke 24:47 he says that repentance and forgiveness of sins was to be preached in the name of Jesus to all nations beginning at Jerusalem. This is not a contradiction of the account given by Matthew. No, rather it is the same. The use of different wording simply tells us the intention (meaning) of the words as the apostles understood it. This is not the Trinitarian conception of the meaning of the words of Christ in Matthew's version of the Great Commission. It stands in direct opposition to it. When we go to Peter's sermon on the day of Pentecost we find that these two version of the Great Commission were speaking of the same thing.
Peter ties it all together when speaking to the Jews who were in Jerusalem for the feast. He relates repentance and remission of sins to baptism and adds the little detail that it should be in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
All of the apostles who heard Jesus give the commandment were there—including Matthew. They all heard Jesus give the commandment and they all heard Peter explain it to the crowd. In fact, it would be years after the day of Pentecost that Matthew would write his gospel. He knew how the apostles (himself included, no doubt) baptized. His rendering of the Great Commission did not in any way contradict the previous apostolic practice. Are we to think Matthew did it differently? Changed his mind between Pentecost and when he wrote his gospel? None of that is consistent.
The apostles understood that God revealed Himself as one person (hypostasis) in Jesus Christ. Some of them saw Him transfigured before them when Jesus' whole body radiated light like the face of Moses did when he saw the back of God. John said that Christ had the Holy Spirit without measure. That is the same as saying that Jesus is God. There is only one way to have the Spirit (which God is) without limitation and that is to be the embodiment of that Spirit—the manifestation of God, His incarnation. Matthew and Isaiah called Him Immanuel, God with us.
Not a person of the Godhead with us, but all of God with us. In fact, in every instance when the formulation of the Trinity could easily have been inserted into the biblical account, it is sorely lacking. In other cases, if we are to superimpose the understanding of the Trinity on scripture, it creates an irreconcilable contradiction in the Bible.
Trinitarians would have us believe that their dogma is necessary for the Deity of Christ. If viewed against Arian bitheism, this argument carries some small weight. It would have much greater weight if Arianism were the only competing explanation of the Godhead. However, the apostles were not Trinitarian nor Arian. It took over two hundred years for the necessity of developing the dogma of the Trinity to become evident. During that development it was against constant bickering with the Arians in order to try to formulate it in a way that both sides of the debate would find it acceptable. Why did they even try? Because at the heart of the debate was the agreement on the same error—that Jesus was a different being than God the Father.
If either side had stuck with the biblical revelation of God in Jesus Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, there would have been no basis for a compromise to be tried to be worked out. If they had said to Christ, “My Lord and my God” with the same understanding of the nature and person of God that Phillip had, there would have been no basis to hash out the details of the difference between them. Phillip knew of only one God and that was the Father. When He said those words to Jesus, He was saying that Jesus is that God. The Jews who took up stones to hurl at Jesus because they thought He blasphemed understood the same thing—that making Himself equal to God is the same as saying He is God the Father. He did not try to explain to them that He was another hypostasis of God apart from the Father with the same eternal substance. Nor do we find Jesus making this explanation to His disciples.
Instead we find that Christ was understood by the apostles to be the One and Only hypostasis of God in the flesh. The phrase 'God the Son' does not appear in the Bible. The Son of God is Christ's reference to His parentage by the Holy Ghost. It speaks of His fleshly body. Just as Israel, as a nation, is the son of God after the flesh, so Christ is the Son of God because He was born of a woman by the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost. The Jews would never have used the term 'Son of God' in an individual sense. They considered that, in and of itself, blasphemy. However, unlike Israel, Jesus is the manifestation of God (God was manifest in the flesh.) and just as His other manifestations were not a different Being, so the indwelling Deity in Christ was not a separate hypostasis of God. His flesh was the expression of that hypostasis—the transcendent, invisible God becoming visible to mankind and His children the nation of Israel.
It is significant that while Christ walked on earth there is no mention of the Yahweh-Mal`ak appearing before men. If we take the term 'mal`ak' in its literal meaning of messenger, or one being sent, we find out why. The apostles tell us in various ways—even through the words of Christ Himself—that Jesus was sent by God. Just as God sent His Yahweh-Angel in the Old Testament, He now sent Himself as a man.
The prophecy of Isaiah confirms this when he told the nation of Judah that a child would be born to us, that a son would be given to us, that the government would rest on His shoulders and that His name would be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father and Prince of Peace. The Son would be the same as the Eternal Father, the Mighty God of the Old Testament. The name 'Wonderful' in Hebrew is 'Pele`' it comes from the same root word ('pala`') as the answer that the Yahweh-Angel gave to Manoah when He told him His name was secret ('pil`iy'). If I knew more about Hebrew, I would not be surprised to find this is the same word in a different inflection—not a different word as the KJV translation seems to indicate. (Even the word 'wonderful' as used in the KJV is not as we use it today, a more modern rendering would probably be 'awesome'.)
Jesus has a secret name that nobody but He knows (see Rev 19:12) and that will not be revealed until the end of time. The Angel of the LORD told Manoah that He had a secret name. It was a name that would not be revealed until the fullness of time was come and the Angel of the LORD appeared in a dream to Joseph the carpenter. Isaiah was not given the wonderful (secret) name of the Son Who he was given to prophesy about.
Notice, also, that the Angel of the LORD did not appear directly to Joseph, but came to him in a dream. (We see where the Yahweh-Angel appeared in the same manner to Jacob telling him to leave Laban's house.) It is significant, in the case of Joseph the carpenter, because the Angel of the LORD was at that time in the womb of Mary, growing in the human body He would use to appear to mankind. That is, the Logos, the Word, the eternal part of Christ Jesus, the visible image of the invisible, transcendent God was in a visible form at the moment—although out of human sight in Mary's womb.
As the Son, Jesus was not yet born. He was forming, but not yet given to us. But just as God did before He created anything else, He was creating His visible form all over again—this time out of flesh instead of out of the “light body” that He made the angels. Also, just as the Angel body was not another hypostasis, so the body of Christ was none other than God Himself in a human “container”. That body was the way the hypostasis of God would express Himself to His creation.
Jesus was fully man and fully God. This explains the totality of the mystery of the Godhead. There is no need to resort to the terminology of Plato and his heirs in Greek philosophy to explain the Godhead. Beside adding contradiction to the Bible, it is plain misleading as to how God revealed Himself to mankind. The Trinity dogma says that there are three hypostases with one ousia, the so-called hypostatic union, but God says He has revealed His hypostasis in the person of the God-man Jesus Christ our Lord. The Arians, if they admit Jesus had any Godhood at all, will say He is a lesser god than God the Father—an angel or somewhere between the angels and God Himself. The Holy Spirit, with the witness of the apostles, claims that He was in the man Jesus, not another hypostasis separate from the hypostasis of God the Father.
It is telling that the Trinitarians with all of their claims that the Holy Ghost is co-equal and co-eternal with God the Father and God the Son—the third hypostasis of the same substance—virtually ignore Him as working in mankind until the Pentecostal revival brought His working to the forefront in the 20th century. They scarcely gave Him any more attention than the Arians who figured the Holy Ghost to be no more than the power of God in action. In stark contrast to the attention the Holy Ghost received during the lifetime of the apostles, he was for centuries relegated to the back woods of theological thought, deserving of only an occasional mention in passing.
It comes as no big surprise then that there is a direct correlation between the lack of attention of the Spirit of Truth and the acceptance of pagan concepts to explain the Godhead. It should not, therefore, be shocking that as the Pentecostal revival of the 20th century placed a greater focus on the personal work of the Holy Ghost in the lives of believers that the greatest challenge to the errors of the Trinity and Arianism should also see revival. When The Comforter is come, He will lead you and guide you into all truth. The promise was found to be just as valid in modern times as it was in the first-century church...
(hypostasis) comes from two other Greek words: 
(hypo) which means by or under
(histemi) which means to stand, to make firm, to set, to establish, to sustain, to fix, to uphold, to hold up, to make a foundation, or to keep intact.
(character) of His