In the Community, For the Community, To the Glory of God
Trinity
God is three-yet-one in His identity as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Believers are commanded to be baptized into all three names of the Trinity (Matthew 28:19), and although God is three distinct persons (Matthew 3:16-17, 28:19, 1 Corinthians 12:4-6), Christianity is a decidedly monotheistic faith, worshiping one God (Deuteronomy 6:4, 1 Timothy 2:5, James 2:19). Each member of the Trinity is fully divine and by nature God (Exodus 20:2, John 5:17-18, Acts 5:3-4), and each is spiritual and personal in nature (John 4:24). Scripture expresses a paradox between the unity and distinctiveness among the members of the Trinity, and this paradoxical nature of God is mysterious to human understanding (1 Corinthians 2:7, 1 Peter 1:2).
Creation
God created the entirety of the known universe (and parts which are yet unknown to human observation) out of nothing (Jn. 1:3, Heb. 4:3), and out of His wisdom and pleasure (Isa. 40:12-14, Jer. 10:12-16). Scripture is clear that God is the author of creation (Gen. 1:1-2:25), although the precise means by which He accomplished this feat are not described in minute detail.
God’s Revelation of Himself
God makes Himself known to human beings through two categories of revelation: general and specific/special. General revelation enables finite mortal humans to conceive that a transcendent deity exists, and is accessible via the glory of nature (Ps. 19, Rom. 1:19-20), His hand in history’s course (Job 12:23, Acts 14:16-17), the image of God uniquely manifest in humans (Gen. 1:26-27, Col. 3:10), and the moral capacity for judgment unique to that image (Rom. 1:18-32, 2:14-16).
Specific/special revelation goes beyond the revelation of an anonymous deity/set of deities and involves God’s manifestation of Himself to particular persons at particular times and places, enabling those persons to enter into a redemptive relationship with Him. The most important method of specific/special revelation was the incarnation of one of the Trinity members in the form of the man Jesus of Nazareth (Jn. 14:9). God has revealed Himself personally to humans throughout history (Ex. 3:14, Acts 9:1-9), and the Bible is God’s specific/special revelation of Himself via the processes of inspiration and illumination (Eph. 1:17-18, 2 Tim. 3:16, Heb. 4:12). The Holy Spirit also indwells believers (Ezek. 36:27, Rom. 8:9-11) and reveals God/Himself to believers through that individual mystical union as another form of specific/special revelation (1 John 2:27).