What mystery, the Father, Son, and Spirit

Ice, water, and vapor are not three different kinds of substances, but one substance in three forms. In our hymnal, we have this line: "What mystery, the Father, Son, and Spirit, / In person three, in substance all are one" (Hymns, #608, stanza one). There is one God in three persons, yet His substance is one. We must never have the thought that the Son is separate from the Father and that the Son is separate from the Spirit. The Son is the embodiment of the Father, and the Son is the Spirit.

[Editor's note: The hymns referred to in the following letter are Hymns, #837, 608, 501, and 499, respectively.]

Certain ancient teachers of the Bible used the word hypostases to refer to the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Other theologians spoke of the three hypostases as denoting the three persons of the Godhead. This use of the word person has led some into the error of tritheism, the doctrine that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are three Gods. As we have pointed out a number of times, W. H. Griffith Thomas has said that we should not press the word person too far, lest we have the doctrine of tritheism. Thus, it is not entirely safe to use the word person in this way. Nevertheless, we may need to use it temporarily. For instance, we use it in one of our hymns (Hymns, #608): "What mystery, the Father, Son, and Spirit, / In person three, in substance all are one." But even if we use this term temporarily, we wish to make it emphatically clear that we have only one God, the unique God. Nevertheless, God is triune: the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. The term hypostases is an attempt to convey the truth of the three-one God.

The second great accomplishment of Christ in resurrection is His becoming a life-giving Spirit. First Corinthians 15:45 says, "The last Adam became a life-giving Spirit." Christ; who is eternally God, became flesh to be the last Adam. Then this last Adam went to the cross to die, resurrected after three days, and became a life-giving Spirit. According to the teaching of traditional theology, the three persons in the Godhead should not be confounded: The Father is the Father, the Son is the Son, and the Spirit is the Spirit. Moreover, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are three-in-one; there should be no confounding of the three, and the "body (substance)" is one and cannot be divided. However, the Bible clearly says that Christ as the last Adam, that is, as the Son, became the Spirit. Therefore, we do not want to be restricted by traditional theology's doctrine concerning the Trinity. Instead, we declare that God is three yet one: the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are distinct but not separate, and They coexist in coinherence. This is according to the Bible. This is described in Hymns, #608: "The Father, Son, and Spirit, / In person three, in substance all are one." We are not denying the Bible and taking theology as our authority; we take the Bible as our unique standard. In resurrection Christ as the last Adam in the flesh became a life-giving Spirit. Not only did His divine Spirit cause His body to be resurrected, but even more, in His body He became the life-giving Spirit so that He can impart life to man. This life-giving Spirit is the Holy Spirit; He is not another Spirit, a Spirit apart from the Spirit of God.

The Spirit is the transfiguration of Christ. In resurrection Christ was transfigured from the flesh into the Spirit. Hence, the Spirit is Christ in another form. We can use the example of raw rice being boiled and becoming cooked rice. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit are three persons, and although the three are distinct, They are not separate but are one intrinsically. This mysterious God is described in a hymn: "In person three, in substance all are one" (Hymns, #608). Christ is God, and Christ is the Spirit. God is embodied in Christ, and Christ was transfigured in order to enter into us as the Spirit. We should be clear that the Spirit is the transfiguration of Christ.

To know the hymns we have to know some of the crucial points of the contents of the hymns. First, we must know some of the hymns on the blessing and experience of the Triune God. The word blessing is used here not to refer to the good things the Triune God has given us but to the praise, the blessing, we offer to Him. An example of a good hymn on the blessing of the Triune God is #7—"Glory, glory, to the Father!"—and an example of a good hymn on the experience of the Triune God is #608—"What mystery, the Father, Son, and Spirit." We also need to know hymns in the categories of the praise of the Father and the praise of the Lord.

Our God today is not merely the Creator revealed in Genesis 1:1. He is the processed God, as revealed in Matthew 28:19. Matthew 28:19 is more complicated than Genesis 1:1. Genesis 1:1 simply says that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. But Matthew 28:19 tells us to baptize people "into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." This verse speaks of the one name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. The name of God here is Father-Son-Spirit. Due to the poverty of our language, we may be forced to use the term "person" in speaking of the Father, Son, and Spirit, referring to Them as the three Persons of the Trinity. We have done this in the opening lines of one of our hymns (Hymns #608):

What mystery, the Father, Son, and Spirit, In person three, in substance all are one.

However, we should not press this term too far, lest we unintentionally endorse the doctrine of tritheism, the belief that the Father, Son, and Spirit are three Gods. We definitely do not believe in tritheism; we believe in the one true God, whose name, according to Matthew 29:19, is Father-Son-Spirit. This is the processed God into whose name we are to baptize people.

"All that the Father has" is truly rich and exceedingly vast! Consider for example His economy, His good pleasure, and His plan. Hymns, #608 has five stanzas: the first stanza concerns the Father, the Son, and the Spirit generally; stanzas 2, 3, and 4 are on the Father, the Son, and the Spirit respectively; and stanza 5 tells of our experience. Stanza 2 says that the Father as the source is rich, that His wealth is inexhaustible, and that He is indeed a treasure-store. All these riches and wealth are actually the "all," which has been given to the Son.

The chorus of Hymns, #608 says, "The Triune God has now become our all!" This hymn clearly explains how the Triune God has become our blessed portion and how He is dispensing Himself into us. In Ephesians 3:8 the apostle Paul said, "To me…was this grace given to announce to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ as the gospel." Here to announce means not only "to preach" but also "to transmit." This means that Paul received a commission from God to transfuse the unsearchable riches of Christ into the Gentiles so that they all would have the Triune God in them. In this way they could become the members of Christ and, aggregately, the Body of Christ (v. 6). The revelation in Ephesians concerning the Body of Christ and the members of Christ is very complete and thorough.

Instead of saying, "In person three, in substance all are one," it would be better to say, "In substance three, in essence all are one." We may say that God has three substances, but only one essence. In the three substances of the divine Trinity, the Holy Spirit, or the Spirit of God, is the third one. He is the consummated One, and this consummated One is the consummation of the Triune God. When the Triune God was consummated, He was revealed in the way that we who believe into Christ can be baptized into Him. This indicates that we, the believers of Christ, can have an organic union with the consummated Triune God.