Systematic Theology: God is the Sovereign Creator and Sustainer of All Things [9], and God Is Simple

 God isn’t made up of parts. God doesn’t possess attributes, God is divine [attributes]. Each divine attribute extends to each other attribute.

Systematic Theology: God is the Sovereign Creator and Sustainer of All Things [8], and God Is Understood According to Incommunicable Divine Attributes

God is simple, self-existent, self-sufficient, infinite, immutable, transcendent Spirit. These attributes are definitional of God; they cannot be transferred to God’s creatures.

Systematic Theology: God is the Sovereign Creator and Sustainer of All Things [7], and God is Triune

[The following is edited from material that I originally put together for a devotional group that met before our shift, when I worked at UPS. The meeting where we were focused on the Trinity took place in June 2010. Some of the guys who met for that group were from Muslim backgrounds, so I thought consideration of the Trinity was especially important.]

Summary of the biblical doctrine of the Trinity:

Within the one being that is God, there exists eternally three co-equal and co-eternal Persons: namely, the Father (Matt 6:9), the Word or Son (John 1:1-2; 17:5; Col 2:9), and the Holy Spirit (John 14:26; 15:26; Acts 8:29; 13:2), each with distinct personal attributes (Isa 48:16; Matt 3:16-17; Rom 8:26-27; Heb 9:13-14), but without division of nature, essence or being (John 10:30; 14:9; Acts 5:39).

Examples of Triadic passages:

Matt. 28:18-19
II Cor. 13:14

Origin of the doctrine of the Trinity:

C.S. Lewis notes that the Church’s understanding of the Trinity first started to become clear due to the experiences of Jesus’ early followers: The disciples knew of God in a vague way, they met Jesus Christ, and they found God living in them (i.e., the Holy Spirit).

Similarly, Bruce Ware notes that the Church’s understanding of the Trinity first started to become clear due to the Person and Work of the Lord Jesus Christ: The nature of Jesus’ claims and His actions verifying those claims drives us to the inevitable conclusion of His deity [see Mark 2:1-12], yet He is shown as distinct from the Father by His prayers and human nature.

Biblical evidence of the Trinity:

Our knowledge of God comes from what He has revealed about Himself in Scripture.
We know that the Father and the Son [also called God and the Word] are two distinct Persons, yet one God, due to Bible passages such as John 1:1. In John 1:1, we see:

1. The Word was with God: language describing a face-to-face relationship (indicating intimacy and distinction).
2. The Word was God: language indicating identity.

The Old Testament focuses on the LORD as one in His being, as we see from passages like Deuteronomy 6:4, though the Old Testament also points forward to Jesus Christ by prophesies and types. The New Testament focuses on the Person of Jesus Christ. Therefore, we have less direct information about the Holy Spirit. But we do see that the Holy Spirit is considered a distinct Person– in Matt. 28:18-19 and II Cor. 13:4 as already noted, and in passages such as John 14:26 and 16:7, which are extremely important for other theological reasons as well– and He is considered to be God, as we see, for example, in a comparison between passages such as I Cor. 2:11 and Rom. 11:33-34.

The importance of the doctrine of the Trinity:

We must believe in God as He has revealed Himself to us, not inventing a God from our own imaginations, for that would be idolatry. Though non-Trinitarian presentations of God sometimes seem to make sense considered in themselves, the doctrine of the Trinity is the only understanding of God that reflects all the Bible has to say concerning the nature of God. The doctrine of the Trinity is not something that could have arisen based on human reasoning alone; we only know God as Triune based on what He has revealed. And so the doctrine of the Trinity, properly understood, drives us to faith in His Word.

Systematic Theology: God is the Sovereign Creator and Sustainer of All Things [6], and Hints of Plurality

In context, Elohim in Genesis 1 (and in other passages where Elohim refers to YHWH) must be understood as singular rather than plural. However, Elohim is indeed a plural noun form. Also, Genesis records God using plural pronouns when it reveals divine internal speech (that is, God says “us/our/let us” in verses like Genesis 1:26; 3:22; 11:7 although God also often uses first person singular verbs to describe divine action [as in Genesis 1:29-30; 3:11, 15-17]). Given the teaching of God’s self-revelation as a whole, we must always affirm that there is only one God. However, God’s use of a plural noun and plural pronouns in the early chapters of the Bible should begin to raise questions about what the one true God is like. With subsequent revelation, the faithful reader begins to see there is a specific sense in which our relationship to God (and God’s internal relations) involve more than one divine person.

Systematic Theology: God is the Sovereign Creator and Sustainer of All Things [5], and God is One

“God” in Genesis 1 is a translation of the Hebrew word Elohim. The –im ending is the usual way that Hebrew makes masculine nouns plural. In some contexts, elohim is properly translated as “gods” (see, for example, Psalm 82:6). However, in Genesis 1 Elohim takes singular verbs, demonstrating that in that passage the term is to be understood as “God” in the singular. Also, beginning in Genesis 2:4 Elohim is identified with the personal [singular] name YHWH. Explicitly, in Deuteronomy 6:4 we read that “YHWH [is] our Elohim, [and] YHWH is one.” Also, in Isaiah 45:5 YHWH strongly declares, “I am YHWH and there is no other; there is no Elohim besides Me.” (See also: Isaiah 46:9.)

The New Testament is consistently clear in passages like John 17:3, Romans 3:30, 1 Corinthians 8:6, 1 Timothy 2:5, and James 2:19 that whereas there may be many false “gods”—demonic entities or people trying to assume the place of God—there is only one true God.