D. Glenn Butner, Jr.
A perennial theological question set before the church is whether the doctrine of the Trinity is rooted in the Bible. While Arianism, Socinianism, and other forms of anti-trinitarianism were the most significant historical threats to the belief that the doctrine of the Trinity is rooted in Scripture, more recently concerns have arisen from historical-critical scholarship on several fronts.
For one, critics might doubt that biblical passages that seem to speak of the full divinity of Christ were actually intended to signify such divinity in the historical context in which they were originally written. Further, skeptics might argue that the clearest biblical presentations of the divinity of Christ are found in John’s gospel, typically taken to be among the latest writings of the New Testament. Perhaps this suggests that high Christology was a later development that does not reflect the convictions of the earliest Christians or, more concerningly, of Jesus Christ himself. Finally, the fact that the doctrine of the Trinity was expressed in the early church in the language of Greek philosophy has led some scholars to argue that the doctrine abandons purportedly Jewish biblical categories and replaces them with purportedly non-biblical Hellenistic categories.
Within this context, biblical scholar and theologian Brandon Smith has released a recent trio of books that helpfully demonstrates the scope that should characterize a successful biblical trinitarianism. His monograph The Trinity in the Book of Revelation (IVP, 2022) focuses on the Trinity in Revelation with academic rigor, yet with surprising accessibility. An edited volume, The Trinity in the Canon (B&H, 2023) compiles essays from numerous scholars and includes chapters on major portions of the New Testament plus practical and historical dimensions of the Trinity in Scripture. Finally, Smith’s smallest work, The Biblical Trinity (Lexham, 2023), presents the doctrine in a devotional form easily accessible to all Christians.1 Combined, these works teach valuable lessons to anyone who might seek to further the case for the Trinity’s basis in Scripture.
The recent trio of books robustly engages recent biblical scholarship in a manner that shows the necessity of a multi-pronged defense of the biblical foundations of the Trinity. Smith’s The Trinity in the Book of Revelation, for example, draws heavily on the worship of Jesus and the shared identity of the Father and the Son evident in their sharing a common throne or common names. In this way, Smith’s approach represents the best of biblical scholars like Larry Hurtado and Richard Bauckham, who took a similar approach before him.2 Smith’s project as a whole is more expansive than that of either scholar, though, insofar as he works to link patristic insights and dogmatic concepts with exegetical analysis.
Further, The Trinity in the Canon in particular displays a far wider range of methods than earlier works on the divinity of Christ by other scholars. Madison Pierce’s chapter, for example, surveys prosopological exegesis, redoublement, theological interpretation of Scripture, and analysis of larger biblical patterns in addition to the thought of Bauckham and Hurtado.3 With these methods combined, there is a strong cumulative case for the biblical basis of trinitarianism that a single method alone might not provide. Additionally, this more expansive list of methods better incorporates the Holy Spirit into discussion.
Smith does well to make this point in dialogue especially with James McGrath, a noted critic of Hurtado’s claim that Christ is incorporated into cultic worship in a manner that demonstrates his divinity.4 McGrath argues that sacrifices are the distinguishing line between God and other exalted figures, not cultic worship. He points to examples of reverence and worship given to non-divine figures in second temple Judaism, arguing that in historical context, New Testament texts might not be read as calling Jesus divine. Smith argues that the cumulative evidence in Revelation of shared divine titles, the Son’s reception of worship, his similar actions with the Father, and his sitting on the throne, apparently eternally (for there is no enthronement scene), make for a cumulative case that does not “require a divine ontology” though the pressures of the text certainly point in that direction.5 While it is possible that these cumulative incidents are an unusually high frequency of identification of a non-divine figure with God, it certainly would have also been a reasonable conclusion for a first century reader to understand John as proclaiming the divinity of Christ.
If Smith’s works have offered strong evidence that the Bible could reasonably be understood to support the divinity of Christ in historical context, one might still wonder whether the Johannine literature, which includes Revelation, might be of such a late date that it would not reflect the beliefs of the earliest Christians, or of Jesus himself. In other words, one might follow the sort of claim found in Bart Ehrman that Jesus was gradually exalted over time by his followers, but that Nicene claims of his consubstantiality would be far different from Jesus’s views of himself.6
Admittedly, I think Smith’s trio of books addresses this question the least. In part, this is likely due to Smith’s tendency to lean toward the theological interpretation of Scripture more than toward historical Jesus studies. Nevertheless, his project is still comprehensive enough to illustrate one aspect of what a complete biblical trinitarianism must be: a canonical treatment that includes the earliest New Testament texts.
In The Trinity in the Canon’s chapter on Mark, for example, Matthew Emerson directly addresses the challenge posed by Ehrman, noting several important features of Mark that point toward trinitarianism. Notably, Emerson can point to the ways that prosopological exegesis, shared divine actions, redoublement and divine relations, and shared divine identity can all be glimpsed in Mark.7 Certainly, more must be said to fully address Ehrman’s argument, yet Smith’s project, with the aid of co-authors, is expansive enough to point toward what a full response must be. A robust biblical trinitarianism must show roots in the earliest stages of Christianity, it must demonstrate that biblical texts would be understood to imply the divinity of Christ in a first century context, but it must also move beyond mere discussion of the divinity of Christ to consider all aspects of trinitarian doctrine.
Smith’s works situate the debate about the biblical basis of the Trinity firmly within the bounds of the church. This is true in two senses: first, any analysis of the Trinity in Scripture must be attentive to the historical traditions worked out in Christian communities as guided by ecclesial authorities and preserved especially in the great ecumenical creeds of the early church. The doctrine of the Trinity is not merely the claim that Father, Son, and Spirit are one God yet eternally distinct from one another. Rather, the doctrine of the Trinity is the elaboration of this basic conviction through the use of various technical concepts meant to clarify the unity and distinction of the Godhead.
Smith does well, therefore, to include in the first section of The Trinity in the Canon a chapter by Gerald Bray on the biblical trinitarianism of the early church.8 Church tradition cannot merely be a preamble to biblical exegesis, nor is it a mere postscript noting the reception history of the canon. Rather, if the doctrine of the Trinity is biblical, then the conceptual apparatus within which the basic Christian conviction is expressed must follow as a good and necessary consequence of Scripture.
Smith ably shows that key aspects of trinitarian dogma are biblically based. One central dimension of the patristic doctrine of the Trinity is the concept of inseparable operations, which claims that because the Father, Son, and Spirit share one single nature and essence, they have one singular power by which all three work inseparably in all acts toward creation. Smith argues that this logic is found in Revelation 3:1–6, for example, where the Son has the book of life (3:5)—the Father’s prerogative in Exodus 32:31–33—and where the Son has the seven spirits (which represent the Holy Spirit). Revelation appears to express something like the doctrine of inseparable operations, where the Son does the works of the Father through the Holy Spirit.9
Perhaps the most robust essay on this question in The Trinity in the Canon is Scott Swain’s contribution on the Gospel of John. Swain tabulates evidence of perichoresis, inseparable operations, eternal relations of origin, and consubstantiality, though never named with such later technical terms.10 As Smith insists, there can be no dichotomy between Hellenistic and Jewish thought, for the two modes of thinking were culturally intertwined.11 A “trinitarian reading” of Scripture is therefore able to admit that creedal expressions come later—trinitarian reading is “not terminologically identical to the Later Christian creeds”—while insisting that an “incipient trinitarianism” is present in the text.12 The doctrine of the Trinity is not an abandonment of a pure Jewish biblicism but an elaboration of Judeo-hellenic biblical concepts.
Smith’s project is ecclesial in that it is situated in the great tradition of the church, but looking at his books comprehensively, it is also ecclesial in a second sense: it presents the biblical content in a manner that serves the local church. The Trinity in the Canon includes helpful chapters on worship, preaching, and apologetics. As Daniel Lee Hill remarks in his chapter, “Christian worship is a responsive act to the triune God’s self-revelation in redemptive history, upheld by the sanctifying and intercessory work of the Son and Spirit, that anticipates the culmination of redemption history.”13 Thus, it is necessary to ground worship in the Trinity, so Smith serves the church by ensuring numerous clear connections between his work and the worship of the church.
Most notably, The Biblical Trinity is written in a style and with chapter lengths that would be ideal for devotional use in a church context. This brief text helpfully makes the sorts of arguments found in the more substantive books available to a wide audience. Each chapter includes a prayer, which incorporates one of my favorite aspects of Smith’s recent trio of books: a modification of a typical way of concluding prayer.
Where we might be accustomed to conclude, “In Jesus’s name, Amen,” Smith ends each prayer “In Jesus’s name, by the Spirit we pray. Amen.”14 This subtle change incorporates the Trinity into worship. If one of the arguments in defense of the claim that New Testament texts identified Jesus as fully divine even in historical context is that Jesus was incorporated into cultic worship, then one key task of the contemporary church is to preserve this conviction through a more trinitarian worship. This conclusion to a prayer, like the accessibility of Smith’s works as a whole, results in a trinitarian theology in service of the church.
The quality of Smith’s work serves the church indeed, and for that we can pray in thanks to the Father, in the name of the Son, by the power of the Spirit.
D. Glenn Butner. Jr. is Associate Professor of Theology and Christian Ministry at Sterling College (KS). He has written The Son who Learned Obedience: A Theological Case Against the Eternal Submission of the Son (Pickwick, 2018), Trinitarian Dogmatics: Exploring the Grammar of the Christian Doctrine of God (Baker Academic, 2022), and Jesus the Refugee: Ancient Injustice and Modern Solidarity (Fortress, 2023).
Image: Jacobo Vignali, Saint John the Evangelist on Patmos
- Full bibliographic citations for these works are: Brandon D. Smith, The Trinity in the Book of Revelation: Seeing Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in John’s Apocalypse (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2022); Brandon D. Smith, ed., The Trinity in the Canon: A Biblical, Theological, Historical, and Practical Proposal (Brentwood, TN: B & H, 2023); Brandon D. Smith, The Biblical Trinity: Encountering the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in Scripture (Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2023).[↩]
- In fact, about the only names listed in the index more than Bauckham and Hurtado are patristic sources like Athanasius, Origen, and Irenaeus. See Smith, Trinity in Revelation, 213–15.[↩]
- Madison Pierce, “The Trinity in Modern Biblical Scholarship,” in Smith, Trinity in the Canon, 35–57.[↩]
- See James F. McGrath, The Only True God: Early Christian Monotheism in Its Jewish Context (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2009).[↩]
- Smith, Trinity in Revelation, 126–27.[↩]
- See Bart D. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee (New York: HarperCollins, 2014).[↩]
- Matthew Emerson, “Mark,” in Smith, Trinity in the Canon, 115–48.[↩]
- Gerald Bray, “Biblical Trinitarianism in the Early Church,” in Smith, Trinity in the Canon, 5–34.[↩]
- Smith, Revelation, 108.[↩]
- Scott Swain, “John,” in Smith, Trinity in the Canon, 177–218.[↩]
- Smith, Revelation, 70–76.[↩]
- Smith, Revelation, 17.[↩]
- Daniel Lee Hill, “Worship and Liturgy,” in Smith, Trinity in the Canon, 420.[↩]
- For example, Smith, Biblical Trinity, 19.[↩]