By Sonny Hernandez
"...and now the Lord GOD, and his Spirit, hath sent me" (Isaiah 48:16, KJV, emphasis mine)
Some professing Christians, admittedly or not, will foolishly denigrate the biblical doctrine of the one true God—who exists in a plurality of persons—by arguing that the Old Testament (OT) major and minor prophets did not know the Trinity because of progressive revelation.
Sadly, many pastors, not all, focus most of their attention on the New Testament (NT) to defend or declare the Trinity but won't highlight all of the OT texts pointing to the glorious and blessed Trinity. This practice is a blatant disregard for the entire Bible because both the OT and NT highlight the Tripersonality of God.
Some scholars believe the NT reveals the Trinity with examples like the Triadic formula in Matthew 28:19 or Paul's apostolic benediction in 2 Corinthians 13:14. Yet, many theologians don't believe the OT fully reveals the Trinity and will cite Warfield's arguments below to justify their point:
It would seem clear that we must recognize in the Old Testament doctrine of the relation of God to His revelation by the creative Word and the Spirit, at least the germ of the distinctions in the Godhead afterward fully made known in the Christian revelation. And we can scarcely stop there. After all is said, in the light of the later revelation, the Trinitarian interpretation remains the most natural one of the phenomena which the older writers frankly interpreted as intimations of the Trinity; especially of those connected with the descriptions of the Angel of Jehovah no doubt, but also even of such a form of expression as meets us in the "Let us make man in our image" of Gen. 1:26, for surely verse 27: "And God created man in his own image," does not encourage us to take the preceding verse as announcing that man was to be created in the image of the angels. This is not an illegitimate reading of New Testament ideas back into the text of the Old Testament; it is only reading the text of the Old Testament under the illumination of the New Testament revelation. The Old Testament may be likened to a chamber richly furnished but dimly lighted; the introduction of light brings into it nothing which was not in it before; but it brings out into clearer view much of what is in it but was only dimly or even not at all perceived before. The mystery of the Trinity is not revealed in the Old Testament; but the mystery of the Trinity underlies the Old Testament revelation, and here and there almost comes into view. Thus the Old Testament revelation of God is not corrected by the fuller revelation which follows it, but only perfected, extended and enlarged.1
At first glance, Warfield's argument that "The mystery of the Trinity is not revealed in the Old Testament" concerns men who take the Trinity seriously. However, there are two reasons why pastors or theologians who appeal to Warfield's arguments above have failed to prove that the OT did not reveal the Trinity.
First, Warfield is not the ultimate standard to determine if the OT reveals the Trinity. God's Word alone is the only sufficient, inerrant, infallible rule of faith and practice that shows Bible-believing Christians the absolute truth and how to discern falsehoods.
Second, people—who have read Warfield's work on the Trinity—know he highlighted some OT texts on the Tripersonality of God. Therefore, Warfield's arguments above do not mean he believed there were no Trinitarian intimations in the OT.
Bottom line: The OT and the NT fully reveal the biblical doctrine of the Trinity. The video below (1 hour and 33 minutes) explains why Bible-believing Christians must also appeal to the OT because the entire Bible defines, defends, and declares the multipersonality of God.
[1.] Benjamin B. Warfield, "The Biblical Doctrine of the Trinity," in Biblical Doctrines, The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield, vol. 2 (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1932; reprint, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2003), 141-142, emphasis mine.
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