From the Work
Most readers of this essay grew up under one of two pictures of Yahuah (God), and neither one matches what scripture is actually doing.
The first picture is the mainstream Christian one. Three co-equal persons in a single Godhead. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, equal in essence, distinct in person, eternally arranged in a trinity that the church has been refining as a doctrine since the fourth-century councils. The reader who grew up in institutional Christianity learned to recite this picture at confirmation, in catechism, in creeds. He may never have asked whether the picture matched scripture; the picture was scripture, as far as he knew.
The second picture is the reactive one. The reader who left institutional Christianity, saw the Greek philosophical scaffolding under the Trinity doctrine, and concluded the answer must be the opposite. He collapsed Father and Son into one undifferentiated being. Yahusha (Jesus) is the Father wearing a different hat. The Spirit is just another mode the same being takes. There are no real distinctions. The Trinity was wrong; therefore, no trinity. Modalism is the technical word, and it is as wrong as the Trinity, in the opposite direction.
Both pictures miss what scripture is actually carrying. The Trinity collapses the formless source into a co-equal person. Modalism collapses the real, eternal relationship between the Father and the Son into one undifferentiated being. Scripture refuses both.
What scripture carries is the Formless and the Formed. This essay walks the picture.
Open the older covenant and listen to how Yahuah (God) names himself. I AM THAT I AM (Exodus 3:14). Not one of three. Not the first person of the godhead. I AM. The naming is a refusal to be cataloged. The Father is the source from which all things proceed, beyond all form, beyond all reduction. He is not “a god” — he cannot be put on a list of beings of his kind. He is not one person in a trio — he cannot be subdivided. He is the source the Word came out of, and he holds the position scripture gives him: above all, before all, the One in whom all things consist.
No man hath seen Elohim (God) at any time. That is the Father. The formless infinite. He hath declared him — meaning the Son is the declaration of the Father, the formed expression of the formless source.
The eternal one. Not in time. Not bounded by location. Not reducible to a single human-shaped figure on a throne. The throne images in scripture are accommodation to our limited sight; the Father himself is the formless source the throne points to.
This is the picture the Trinity doctrine collapsed. By making the Father one of three persons, the doctrine downgraded the formless source to a being of the same kind as the Son. They became three of a kind. The structure scripture carries — formless source giving rise to formed expression — was lost in the Greek philosophical architecture. The church has been wrestling with the consequences ever since.
From within the Formless, a portion drew itself into form. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with Elohim (God), and the Word was Elohim (God) (John 1:1). The Word is the formed one. He had a voice. He spoke creation into being. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made (John 1:3).
The Word looked within himself to do the will of the Formless and said let us make man in our image (Genesis 1:26). The plural in let us is not three co-equal persons in a Greek-trained godhead. The plural is the relationship. The Formless and the Formed in eternal communication, the Formed expressing the will of the Formless, the us being the relationship rather than the count.
The Formed is the Elohim (God) who walked through the older covenant. The one who appeared to Abraham at the oaks of Mamre. The one who wrestled with Jacob at Peniel. The one who spoke from the bush to Moses. The one who led Yashar’el (Israel) through the wilderness in the cloud and the fire. The one who gave the Torah at Sinai. The one who stood as captain of Yahuah (God)’s host before Joshua. The one Daniel called the Ancient of days and one like the Son of Adam in the same vision (Daniel 7:9, 13) — both in the same chapter because the Formless and the Formed are in eternal relationship, and the prophet sees the relationship operating.
He is also the one of whom John writes: and the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth (John 1:14). The Formed entered creation in the womb of Mary and walked the land in the body the prophets had named. That is Yahusha (Jesus).
The line that lands the picture, said as plainly as it can be said: Yahusha (Jesus) is Elohim (God), and he has a Father. Both lines are scripture’s. Holding both lines together is what the framework requires.
He says it himself. To see Yahusha (Jesus) is to see the Father, because the Formed expresses the Formless. The one who looks at the Son sees what the Father is. He is the Father’s image, the Father’s expression, the Father’s Word made flesh.
He is the image of the invisible Elohim (God). The invisible Elohim (God) is the Formless. Yahusha (Jesus) is the visible image of the invisible source. He was drawn from the Father and remains in the Father; the Father is in him.
One. The Formed and the Formless in unbroken unity. He is not separate from the Father. He is of the Father. He has always been in the Father. The unity is real and is what John 1 was naming when it said the Word was Elohim (God).
But also:
The Son says this. About the Father. Greater. The Formed has always submitted to the Formless. The submission is eternal, not just a temporary condition Yahusha (Jesus) took on in the flesh.
The glory was with the Father, before the world was. The Son has always been with the Father. The Son has always glorified the Father. The relationship is what scripture has been showing all along.
Holding both lines together is what scripture asks. Yahusha (Jesus) is Elohim (God). Yahusha (Jesus) has a Father. The Trinity tries to hold the first line by making them co-equal persons of the same kind, and loses the structure. Modalism tries to hold the unity by collapsing them, and loses the relationship. Scripture holds both — by carrying the picture of the Formless source giving rise to the Formed expression, eternally in relationship, eternally one.
The Trinity doctrine constructs three co-equal persons in a Godhead. This is Greek philosophical architecture applied to Hebrew revelation. The early councils — Nicaea (325 AD), Constantinople (381 AD), Chalcedon (451 AD) — were trying to defend the deity of Yahusha (Jesus) against various denials, and the categories they reached for were the philosophical categories available to the Roman world they were operating in. The defense of his deity was not wrong. The categories they used to defend it were borrowed from a tradition the prophets had not been operating in.
The Father is not a person co-equal to the Son in the way the Trinity describes. The Father is the formless source from which the Son was drawn. They are not three of the same kind of thing. They are the source and the expression, eternally in relationship. The Holy Spirit is not a third co-equal person of the same kind; the Spirit is the Father’s own breath proceeding from him, the Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit) — the spirit of holiness — the active presence of the Father, sent to fill and lead the saved.
The Trinity is not the framework scripture is carrying. It is the framework Greek philosophy was carrying, and the early councils mapped Hebrew revelation onto it. The mapping is what we set down.
Modalism collapses the Father and the Son into one undifferentiated being. Yahusha (Jesus) is just the Father wearing a different hat. There is no real relationship; there are only modes the same being takes — Father in one age, Son in another, Spirit in a third. This is the inverse error. It tries to protect the unity by erasing the relationship.
But the relationship is real. The Son was with the Father before the world was (John 17:5). The Son was sent by the Father (John 3:17). The Son prayed to the Father in Gethsemane and asked the Father to let the cup pass — not what I will, but what thou wilt (Mark 14:36). The Son said I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me (John 6:38). All of these are real exchanges between the Formless and the Formed, in eternal communication, expressed under flesh in the days the Messiah (Christ) walked the earth.
If Yahusha (Jesus) is just the Father wearing a different hat, every one of those verses is theater. The prayer in Gethsemane becomes a performance. The submission becomes a costume. The sending becomes an illusion. Scripture refuses that reading. The relationship is real.
The Father is the formless source. The infinite. The I AM. The one no man has seen at any time.
Yahusha (Jesus) is the formed expression of the Formless. The Word who had a voice. The one who spoke creation into being. The one who walked through the older covenant — appeared to Abraham, wrestled with Jacob, spoke from the bush, led Yashar’el (Israel), gave the Torah, lorded over his people. The one who entered creation in the womb of Mary. The one who walked the land. The one who bore the curse on the tree. The one who rose. The one who sits at the right hand of the Father. The one who is returning.
Yahusha (Jesus) is Elohim (God), and he has a Father. The Formed has always submitted to the Formless. The submission is eternal. The unity is real. The relationship is real. Both at once. From the same eternal structure.
The Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit) is the Father’s own breath, the active presence of Yahuah (God), the spirit of holiness sent to fill the saved and to write the Torah on the heart (Ezekiel 36:27). He is not a third co-equal person of the same kind in a tri-personal godhead. He is the Father’s living presence at work in the body of the saved.
This picture holds the deity of Yahusha (Jesus) without flattening the Father into a co-equal person. It holds the unity of the Father and the Son without collapsing them into modalism. It is what scripture has been carrying all along.
Most of you reading this were raised on the Trinity. The picture in your head when you read the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is the one you were taught. The picture is not what scripture carries. That is hard to hear at first because it sounds like we are denying the deity of Yahusha (Jesus) or rejecting the Holy Spirit. We are doing neither. We are restoring what scripture carries by setting down the Greek philosophical scaffolding the Trinity doctrine used.
Yahusha (Jesus) is Elohim (God). Plainly. Without compromise. He is the Word made flesh. He is the formed expression of the formless source. He has always been with the Father. He has always been in the Father. The Father is in him. To see him is to see the Father. He is not a creature; he was not made; all things were made by him (John 1:3). The deity is uncompromised. The framework holds it.
And he has a Father. The Father is the Formless. The Father is greater (John 14:28) — not in essence-of-deity, but in the eternal relationship in which the Formed has always submitted to the Formless. The relationship is real. The submission is eternal. The picture is what scripture is showing.
If this is the first time you are hearing this, sit with it. Read John 1, John 17, Colossians 1, Hebrews 1, Daniel 7. Let the verses land in the framework scripture is carrying, not the framework the early councils mapped onto it. The Father is patient. The Spirit walks each of his own at his own pace. Then shall we know, if we follow on to know Yahuah (God) (Hosea 6:3).
Walk the road with the Father.
A deeper dive — if the work has fed you
