The Trinity for Kids Trivia Quiz

Answer: He was moving over or upon the waters.

The Holy Spirit is sometimes called simply the Spirit or the Spirit of God. Genesis, chapter 1, verse 2, states that the earth was formless and void, and the Spirit of God was moving upon or over the waters. So, clearly we have reference to the Holy Spirit in the creation account, but what about the Son (Jesus) and the Father? Well, according to Genesis, God SAID and things came into existence. He spoke the sun, moon, ocean, trees, etc., into existence. The New Testament claims that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was the Word whom God used to create the universe. Henry M. Morris of the Institute for Creation Research states it as the following: "The Father planned the work of creation, the Son did the work ('all things were made by Him'--John 1:3), and the Spirit energized it ('the Spirit of God moved')."

In case you were wondering, the Holy Spirit apparently did form the baby, human Jesus inside Mary's womb, based on the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. However, that answer is incorrect for this question. I didn't base the other two choices on the Bible at all.

Answer: The Son

In the Old Testament, God used the plural pronouns "us" and "our" to refer to Himself. Please see Genesis 1:26, in which God said "Let us make man in our image", and also Genesis 11:7, which states that God said, "Let us go down and confuse their language". This cannot be denied, but people debate over what it means. Many Christians use such verses to argue for the plurality or Trinity of God--not more than one god, but one God consisting of more than one person--within not just the New Testament, but the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible as well. The Hebrew name for God, "Elohim", while referring to one God, is also the plural of "El". Christians also use Elohim to argue for the Trinity, but Jews don't believe in the Trinity and interpret such things differently than Christians do.

The Word is the Son, Jesus. According to the New Testament, the Word of God, who was with God the Father and the Spirit, and was also God Himself, became flesh. This means He became a human being. Christians believe that Jesus was born from a human mother, but not a father. Therefore, He didn't inherit the sinful nature from a human father.

Psalms chapter 33, verse 6 affirms that the Lord created from His word.

Answer: Isaiah

Isaiah, chapter 48, verses 12 and 16, New American Standard Bible:
"Listen to Me, O Jacob, even Israel whom I called;
I am He, I am the first, I am also the last. . .
. . . Come near to Me, listen to this:
From the first I have not spoken in secret,
From the time it took place, I was there.
And now the Lord God has sent Me, and His Spirit."

So, here we seem to have God saying that God and His Spirit sent Him, or that God sent both God and His Spirit.

The speaker of Isaiah 48:12-15 is clearly God. Please note that verses 13, 14, and 15 aren't quoted here, but quiz players may easily look them up online. He mentions how He, among other things, called the people of Israel and created the heavens and the earth. Yet verse 16 is interesting; did a non-triune or unitarian (one-in-one) God send Himself, or did the Father send the Son? I personally favor the trinitarian latter. Perhaps some might argue that the speaker switched from verse 15 to 16; that verse 16's speaker is a mere human being like Isaiah or King Cyrus of Persia. But if one reads several Bible translations, including Young's Literal Translation, the speaker doesn't appear to change.

What the speaker states in these Isaiah verses is almost identical to statements that Jesus makes in the New Testament. In Revelation, chapter 22, verse 13, Jesus states that He is the first and the last; the beginning and the end. In the Gospels, Jesus said "I am He" to the Samaritan woman and to the soldiers who came to arrest Him. Furthermore, Jesus frequently claimed that the Father sent Him. He even tried to reach out to Israel, but most of them rejected Jesus.

Answer: Dove

Matthew 3:16-17, New American Standard Bible:
"After being baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened, and [H]e saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove and lighting on Him, and behold, a voice out of the heavens said, 'This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased'."

Trinitarian Christians believe that these verses strongly suggest the doctrine of the Trinity, because each one is presented as distinct from the others. The Son was the man being baptized, the Spirit landed on the Son in the form of a dove, and the Father's voice came from heaven.

By the way, the dove is a symbol of the Holy Spirit. The lion and lamb are symbols of Jesus. The serpent and dragon symbolize Satan, the enemy. I'm actually not aware of any biblical animal symbols for the Father. Maybe if anyone has any ideas, they can message me!

Answer: The Father

Jesus declared that no human being, with the exception of Himself, has ever seen the Father; other verses in the Gospel of John state the same message. One verse states that nobody has ever seen God. In the Old Testament, certain people like Abraham, Moses, and Samson's parents saw God. To the trinitarian, this "problem" or "contradiction" has a solution: the Old Testament people saw God, but not the Father. They most likely saw the pre-incarnate Jesus, the Word or the Son.

Of course, from a Jewish perspective, they believe that people did see the Father, because they only believe in the Father. They don't believe in the deity of Jesus and the Holy Spirit is merely considered the power or breath of the Father.

Answer: Father

Matthew 12:46-50 state that Jesus was speaking to a crowd and a man told Him that His mother and brothers were waiting to talk to Him. Jesus then pointed to His disciples or followers and proclaimed that they were His spiritual mother, brothers, and sisters.

I remember once when I was in a church (or perhaps it was my school's chapel) the preacher said something like, "Jesus created His own mommy! How many kids can say that?"

Answer: His disciples

According to Luke 24, Jesus said this to His disciples after His resurrection from the dead and shortly before His ascension into heaven. Basically, Jesus ascended into heaven to be with His Father and sent the Holy Spirit to be a comforter (see John, chapter 14, verse 26 for more details).

Please note that I sometimes like to read and quote from multiple translations. The New American Standard chooses to capitalize pronouns associated with Jesus, and I usually choose to do this as well. However, several other translations, like the New Living, don't capitalize the pronouns.

Answer: 1 John

The book is 1 John, the chapter is 5, and the verse is 7. This verse certainly seems to prove the Trinity, but non-trinitarians argue that the verse is inauthentic. It apparently wasn't included in some of the Greek manuscripts of the Bible, and therefore some people claim that someone corrupted the Bible to include this verse in it, in that someone's effort to prove the Trinity. But there are proponents of the verse who indeed believe that the disciple John wrote it, and their reason it disappeared from some copies is the exact opposite of what the other group argues. The proponents argue that someone, a believer in Sabellianism, also called modalism, removed the verse because he didn't agree with it. Modalism is the belief that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the same person (kind of like how the same exact man can be a husband, a dad, and a brother) instead of three distinct persons of the Godhead, as the Trinity asserts. Most Christian denominations consider modalism to be a false doctrine/heresy.

The Holy Ghost, which appears in the King James but not modern translations, is another term for the Holy Spirit.

Exodus and the Song of Solomon are Old Testament books. The Gospel of Peter isn't in the Bible at all, actually. The Gospels are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Answer: They saw Jesus as blasphemous, for claiming to be God.

John 5:17 states that Jesus told the Jewish religious leaders, "My Father is always working, and so am I" (quoted from the New Living Translation). This statement greatly offended them. Verse 18 goes on to say, "So the Jewish leaders tried all the harder to find a way to kill him. For he not only broke the Sabbath, he called God his Father, thereby making himself equal with God."

There are many other examples of the Jews accusing Jesus of blasphemy because He claimed to be God--not His Father, but equal to or of the same nature as His Father. In John chapter 10, Jesus proclaimed that He and the Father were one, which caused the Jews to want to stone Him. He then told them that they could believe Him because He performed the Father's work by His miracles, and they tried to arrest Him for saying that, but He was able to escape.

Ultimately, however, the Jewish authorities did arrest Jesus. In my opinion, one of the most powerful parts of the Bible can be found in Mark, chapter 4, verses 60-64. They tell of Jesus's trial shortly before the crucifixion.

"Then the high priest asked him,
'Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?'

Jesus said, 'I AM. And you will see the Son of Man seated in the place of power at God's right hand and coming on the clouds of heaven.'

Then the high priest tore his [the high priest's] clothing to show his horror and said, 'Why do we need other witnesses? You have all heard his blasphemy. What is your verdict?'

'Guilty!' they all cried. 'He deserves to die!'" (New Living Translation).

According to the New Testament, Jesus is both the Son of God and the Son of Man. When Jesus said "I AM", He was alluding to Exodus, chapter 3, verse 14, when God told Moses that He was "I AM". The other sentence Jesus said is an allusion to Daniel, chapter 7, verses 13-14, which states that a son of man will come with the clouds of heaven and be presented before God (the Father).

Answer: The name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit

Again, the Trinity is the belief that God is three-in-one. There have been various examples used to try and explain the Trinity, but since we aren't God, we can never explain it perfectly. One example is the apple. The apple has three parts, the core, the flesh, and the peel, but it is still one apple. St. Patrick used the example of a shamrock, in which one stem has three leaves. Some Christians have suggested that a human, created in the image of God, has a body, soul, and spirit. Yet another example is scientific: space, time, and energy, all important to the universe.

I actually think the concept of a word and letters is a great explanation. Take the word "the", for instance. "The" is a three letter word, but it is one word. If you take away even one of the letters, you no longer have the word "the", because all three are essential to the one word. The three-letter word is like the Trinity's monotheism (the belief that there is one god), as opposed to three separate words, "the", "cat", and "sat", which would be like polytheism (the belief in multiple gods). By the way, this is my own example of the Trinity.