About Jesus    Steve Sweetman

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The Old Testament, as we have already noted, presents
a picture of God as being One, where there is none other
besides Him. Beyond this point however there are
"indications of plurality" within the Godhead. Taking it
one step farther, Trinitarians believe that there are
actual hints of the Trinity in the Old Testament.

It seems to me that the revelation of God, who He is
and what He desires, has come in stages to us during our
history. The Old Testament revelation is that there is
only One True God and Lord of all there is. With the
birth of Jesus we receive an updated version of this
ongoing revelation of the God we had seen in the Old
Testament. Then still once more after Jesus left this
world the Holy Spirit came to us, giving us yet another
updated version of the progressive revelation of God. I
use the word "progressive" carefully here. By it I mean
that God in His Inspired Word has revealed Himself to us
in stages. I do not intend to suggest that personal
revelation of the nature of God is anywhere close to the
importance of the Written Inspired revelation. The idea
of "personal progressive revelation" has lead many astray
over the years.

Let's look at some Old Testament scriptures that
suggest fairly clearly the idea of plurality of the
Godhead. The first group uses plural pronouns while the
second uses plural nouns to describe God.

Gen. 1:26
"...let us make man in our image and in our likeness."

Gen. 3:22
"And the Lord God said, Man has become like one of us,
knowing good and evil..."

Gen. 11:6-7
"If as one people speaking the same language they have
begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be
impossible. Come let us go down and confuse their
language..."

Isa. 6:8
"Then I heard the voice of the Lord say, Whom shall I
send and who will go for us."

You note the words "us" in the verses above, as in,
"let us make man". The question obviously is, who is us?
Could "us" be angels? Then God continues, "in our image".
What does "our" mean? A logical look at the next verse
can clue us in on what these words mean. Verse 26 once
again says, "let us make man in our image". Verse 27
says, "so God created man in His own image". The former
verse says, "our image" and then the latter in
clarification says "His image". You may need to stop and
think this one through. Simply stated, "our image" means
"His (God's) image". Thus the words us and our refer only
to God, not to angels. This is traditional thinking to
prove plurality within the Godhead.

More could be said about plural forms of Hebrew words
used in the above scriptures but I will not get into that.
I will say only that in Gen. 11:7 where it says. "let us
come down", the verb "come" is plural. I am not a Hebrew
scholar so I can't comment too much on this point, but
the idea here is, because the word "come" is plural
theologians suggest that God is acting in union with
someone. They say this someone is Himself. They say God
sends angels, but never acts in union with them. The word
"us" in Gen 11:7 refers to the plural nature of the
Godhead.

Gen. 1:1
"In the beginning God created..."

Gen. 20:3
"But God came to Abraham in a dream one night..."

Gen. 48:15
"Then he blessed Joseph and said, May the God before
whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has
been my Shepherd all my life to this day,..."

The point to be made in these above verses is that the
word God in Hebrew is Elohim. This word is a plural noun.
Thus the conclusion can be made for plurality in the
Godhead due to this fact.

Gen. 19:24
"Then the Lord (Jehovah) rained down burning sulfur on
Sodom and Gommorah - from the Lord (Jehovah) out of
heaven."

Hosea 1:7
"Yet I will show love to the house of Judah, and I
will save them - not by bow ... but by the Lord (Jehovah)
their God."

Let me remind you that the things I am saying are
traditional proofs for the doctrine of the Trinity that
have been put forth by theologians over the years.
Theologians tend to be real thinkers. So in order to
understand this you may need to reread and rethink these
things through.

The thinking in these two verses is that Jehovah is
distinguished from Jehovah. The former verse says that
Jehovah rained down sulfur from Jehovah. The later verse
says that "I (Jehovah) will save them by Jehovah." By
duplicating the word Jehovah they say this suggests
plurality. The first verse could have easily said,
"Jehovah rained down sulfur". But it didn't. It puts in
the word Jehovah once again at the end of the clause.
Thus there is a distinction between two Jehovahs,
suggesting plurality.

Remember at this point we are still only demonstrating
plurality, not Trinity.

Ps. 2:7
"I will proclaim the decree of the Lord. He said to
me, You are my son, today I have become your Father."
The "You" in this verse refers to Jesus. Jesus is
called the Son of God in John 3:16 (He gave His only
begotten Son). The fact that Jesus is God's son is
obvious, yet this is one Old Testament verse showing this
truth. It is said that Jesus was a Son before He was
given to the world. Isa. 9:6 says, "for unto us a Son is
given..." Also Micah 5:2 says, "...out of you will come
for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins
are from old, are from ancient times". The words "ancient
times" can also be translated "from days of eternity".
This could suggest that though Jesus was begotten, He also
had no beginning. That sounds like a contradiction, yet
all so-called Biblical contradictions in light of the
general tenor of scripture can be intelligibly brought
together. The point of plurality may be somewhat obscure
in this verse but it is a traditional text, though in my
thinking has its limitations.

Isa. 9:6
"For to us a child is born, to us a son is
given,...and He will be called,... the Almighty God, the
Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace..."

This scripture does, in my opinion show clear
plurality, as well as unity of essence. It is clear, and
it is traditional thinking that Jesus is the one whom
this verse is speaking about. Thus Jesus is the "Almighty
God", and He is the "Everlasting Father".

Gen. 1:1-2
"In the beginning God created...and the Spirit of God
was hovering over the waters."

Gen. 6:3
"My Spirit will not contend with man forever..."
Here we see a distinction made between God and His
Spirit, thus another source for plurality. One might
suggest that we as mankind have a spirit as well yet we
don't call ourselves plural people. Yet what theologians
are doing with these scriptures and others are building
their case. Each verse becomes a building block and when
all the blocks are in place you hopefully will see the
totality, which in this case is Trinity.

Isa. 6:3
"...holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, the
whole earth is full of His glory."

This verse too, although I feel it's a long shot, is
another building block. It is suggested that because
there are three "holy's" used here that this may suggest
Trinity. The theological word for this is called, the
"Triasgia of Scripture".

Before moving on to some New Testament scripture we
should note the phrase, "the angel of the Lord" (Jehovah)
which appears often in the Old Testament. Trinitarians
say that this angel of the Lord was in fact the
pre-incarnate Word of God in angelic form.

Gen. 16:7
"The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in
the desert..."

This is just one example of where the angel of the
Lord appeared to someone in the Old Testament. He appears
to: Abraham (Gen. 22:11-18), Jacob (Gen. 31:11-13), Moses
(Ex. 3:2-5), Israel (Ex. 14:19), Balaam (Num. 22:22-35),
Gideon (Judges 6:11-23), Manoah (Judges 13:2-25), David
(1 Chron. 21:15-17), Elijah (1 Kings 19:5-7), 185,000
Assyrians (2 Kings 19:35), Joshua (Zech. 3:1ff).

Before leaving the Old Testament I would like to make
one comment on the word "one" as seen in Deut. 6:4 where
it says that the Lord our God is one. The word one here is
the Hebrew word, eehad. If you look at this word throughout
the Old Testament you will see that this word basically can
mean "one among many". There is a Hebrew word that could
have been used that means, "one among one", but it was not
used. Simply stated, Duet. 6:4 can be said to suggest plurality
even when using the word one.