This doctrine has been disputed since the early days of the church, when people began to oppose the ideas that Jesus was wholly God, or that the Holy Spirit was a being in and of Himself. In fact, it was not until the First Council of Nicaea in AD 325 that the doctrine of the Trinity was officially formulated, the Trinity consisting of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. However, it is the central belief to majority of Christians, and also one of the most misunderstood. What many people do not realize is that while Jesus is not God the Father, God the Father is not the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit is not Jesus, each one in turn is God, completely and perfectly.
Perhaps the most obvious example in the proof of God the Father is in the very first verse of the Bible, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." God made not only this world, and not only the universe, but he also created the angels, hell, and heaven out of nothingness. God also is all powerful and all knowing. Since he was in existence before time, he was not created. Some people ask who made God, but the question is redundant, like asking to whom a bachelor is married. Everything that has a beginning is made, and because God did not have a beginning, he was never made.
Jesus Christ is also God. This is proved in Scripture both by his own mouth and by the words of others. In John 1:3, it says, "Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made." He created everything, including the stars, animals, even the angels. However, it is important to see that He did not create the Holy Spirit or God the Father, as they were never made, they simply are. Again in John 8:58, Jesus tells the people that "before Abraham was, I AM." I AM is the name that God called himself in the book of Exodus when talking to Moses. By saying this to the people he was claiming God's attributes. He casted aside all doubts to whether he was simply a man or truly God.
The Holy Spirit is also fully God, having the full attributes of God, being eternal (Hebrews 9:14), all-powerful (1 Corinthians 2:10-11), all-present (Psalm 139:7) and all-powerful (Luke 1:35). 1 Corinthians 2:12, which says, "We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God," perhaps best describes to us and shows us that the Spirit is of God and is God.
The Father, while being God, is a person unto himself, separate from Jesus and the Spirit. In Matthew 11:27, it says that " No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him." God is separate from Jesus, and yet he and Jesus have an intimate connection in which their thoughts and desires for the world are one in the same.
Jesus, in John 10:30, says that He and the Father and one. However, the word "one" is ambiguous in English. The word in Greek, hen, does not mean a physical unity, but one interest and one desire. When Jesus prays for his disciples in John 17:20, he prays that they will be one in the same way that He and God the Father are one, again using the word hen in Greek. This word in Greek is only used when talking about two different things that are alike. The word echad, however, means a single thing.
The Spirit is also clearly differentiated from God the Father and from Jesus in Matthew 28:19. This passage of Scripture is when Jesus is telling his disciples to go into all the world and preach the Gospel "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." Jesus also tells his disciples that until he leaves, the Father will not send the Spirit, showing us that the Spirit is different from Jesus, because one is absent while the other is present.
It is important to note that the New Testament never uses the word "Trinity", nor does the Old Testament, but its foundation is made in the New Testament. The passage of Scripture that perhaps most concerns the Trinity is Matthew 28:19, which says, "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." Another verse that speaks of the Godhead (Father, Spirit, and Son) is 2 Corinthians 13:14, "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy spirit be with you all."
