Bible Trivia on God and the Trinity

What attribute of God refers to His absolute moral purity and being wholly set apart from sin?

ARighteousness
BHolinessCorrect
CGoodness
DSovereignty

Answer: Holiness

Isaiah 6:3 · ESV

The seraphim in Isaiah 6 do not say God is good three times or just three times. Holiness is the attribute Scripture triples, and it carries both senses at once: God is utterly separate from everything he made, and utterly without moral stain. That is why Isaiah's first reaction to the throne is not admiration but ruin over unclean lips.

Isaiah 6:3-5

Why not this one. Righteousness is the obvious runner-up, since both concern God's moral perfection. Righteousness names how God acts, always in accord with what is right; holiness names what he is, set apart in purity before any action comes into view.

Open theism, rejected by confessional Protestants, denies which of the following?

AThat God exhaustively knows the future free choices of his creaturesCorrect
BThat God is personal rather than an impersonal force
CThat God created the world out of nothing
DThat God is one in essence

Answer: That God exhaustively knows the future free choices of his creatures

Isaiah 46:9-10 · ESV

Open theism holds that the future free acts of creatures are not yet there to be known, so God learns them as they happen. Scripture speaks otherwise: God declares the end from the beginning, names Cyrus generations early, and Jesus tells Peter what he will do before dawn.

Isaiah 46:9-10; Isaiah 44:28; Psalm 139:4, 16; Matthew 26:34.

Why not this one. Open theists insist strongly on God's personhood; their departure is at the point of his exhaustive knowledge of the future, not his personality.

The Granville Sharp rule of Greek grammar is most often cited to show that which verse calls Jesus our great God and Savior?

ATitus 2:13Correct
BRomans 9:5
CColossians 1:15
DJohn 1:18

Answer: Titus 2:13

Titus 2:13 · ESV

The rule concerns a Greek construction in which one article governs two singular personal nouns joined by and, so that both describe one individual. In Titus 2:13 that construction makes God and Savior a single description of Jesus Christ, whose appearing believers await.

Titus 2:13; the same construction is usually seen at 2 Peter 1:1.

Why not this one. Romans 9:5 is also read as calling Christ God, but the question there is one of punctuation in the Greek text rather than of this grammatical rule.

In the upper room discourse, what title does Jesus repeatedly give the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in his name?

AThe HelperCorrect
BThe Mediator
CThe Shepherd
DThe Firstborn

Answer: The Helper

John 14:26 · ESV

Jesus calls the Spirit the Helper, a word other versions render Comforter or Advocate. The title is personal throughout: this Helper teaches, reminds, bears witness and is spoken of as he, not it. He is also called another Helper, which places him alongside Christ himself rather than below the disciples' need. The Spirit is a person sent by the Father in the Son's name, not an impersonal energy.

John 14:16, 14:26, 15:26 and 16:7, spoken on the night Jesus was betrayed.

Why not this one. Mediator is a title of Christ, the one mediator between God and men in 1 Timothy 2:5, not a title Jesus gives the Spirit here.

The theological term ‘immanent Trinity’ refers to what?

AGod’s active involvement and nearness to His creation
BThe roles each person of the Trinity plays in the history of salvation
CGod’s inner life and eternal relations among the three persons apart from creationCorrect
DThe way the Trinity is revealed progressively through redemptive history

Answer: God’s inner life and eternal relations among the three persons apart from creation

John 1:1–2 · ESV

The immanent Trinity is God considered in himself, the eternal life the three persons have with one another whether or not anything else exists. It is what John 1:1-2 reaches back to describe, the Word already with God before the beginning. Theologians also call it the ontological Trinity, and it is the ground of the economic Trinity, since God acts in history as the God he eternally is.

John 1:1-2; John 17:5

Why not this one. That is divine immanence, a different word from the same Latin root, and the overlap trips up nearly everyone at first. Immanent here means remaining within God himself, which is close to the opposite of nearness to creation.

Which error holds that the Son is divine but subordinate in essence — not merely in role — to the Father, making them unequal in being?

AEconomic subordinationism
BOntological subordinationismCorrect
CAdoptionism
DSabellianism

Answer: Ontological subordinationism

John 10:30 · ESV

Ontological subordinationism says the Son is God in some lesser degree, a second-rank deity whose being is derived and inferior. That is a claim about essence, and it is what Nicaea excluded with the word homoousios, of one substance. When Jesus says in John 10:30 that he and the Father are one, the response is a stoning charge of blasphemy, because his hearers heard a claim to equality of being rather than a junior partnership.

John 10:30-33; Philippians 2:6

Why not this one. The overlap in wording makes this the easy miss. Economic subordination describes the incarnate Son's willing submission in the work of redemption, and it leaves equality of being untouched. The error is moving that submission out of mission and into essence.

Which of the following best describes God’s sovereignty as taught in Reformed theology?

AGod has foreknowledge of events but does not determine their outcome
BGod intervenes in history only when humans invite Him through prayer
CGod rules over all creation and providentially governs all events according to His willCorrect
DGod limits His power so that human free will may operate independently

Answer: God rules over all creation and providentially governs all events according to His will

BF&M 2000, Article II · ESV

Sovereignty here is not a general claim that God is very powerful; it is that he actually rules, governing every event by his will rather than reacting to it. The BF&M calls him Creator, Redeemer, Preserver, and Ruler of the universe. Joseph's brothers and the crucifixion both show one act that is genuinely sinful in the creature and genuinely purposed by God.

BF&M 2000, Article II; Genesis 50:20; Acts 4:27-28

Why not this one. This keeps God's knowledge intact while handing the steering to the creature, and it can sound like humility about human freedom. But foreknowledge that only observes leaves God's purposes hostage to outcomes he never ordained, which is less than Ephesians 1:11 claims for him.

According to Exodus 34:14, what name does the LORD give himself when he forbids the worship of another god?

AJealousCorrect
BFaithful
CRighteous
DMerciful

Answer: Jealous

Exodus 34:14 · ESV

God's jealousy is not envy but the refusal of the only God to be treated as one option among many. Because he alone is God, his claim on the worship of his people is exclusive, and Scripture makes that claim part of his very name.

Exodus 34:14; the same jealousy grounds the first and second commandments at Exodus 20:5.

Why not this one. God proclaims himself merciful and gracious a few verses earlier in the same chapter, but the name given in the warning against other gods is Jealous.

Which council formally defined the full deity and full humanity of Christ in two natures — which also bears on Trinitarian doctrine — against both Nestorianism and Eutychianism?

AThe Council of Nicaea (AD 325)
BThe Council of Constantinople (AD 381)
CThe Council of Chalcedon (AD 451)Correct
DThe Council of Ephesus (AD 431)

Answer: The Council of Chalcedon (AD 451)

John 1:14 · ESV

Chalcedon gave the church its two-natures formula: one person in two natures, without confusion, change, division, or separation. That answered Nestorius, who was heard as splitting Christ into two persons, and Eutyches, who fused the natures into a single blended one. It bears on the Trinity because it keeps the Son fully divine and fully human without either nature swallowing the other.

John 1:14; Council of Chalcedon, AD 451

Why not this one. Ephesus did condemn Nestorius and affirmed Mary as Theotokos, God-bearer, so half of the question's description fits it. But Eutyches came afterward, and it was Chalcedon twenty years later that produced the actual definition of the two natures.

According to BF&M2000 Article II, how many persons are there in the one God?

AOne
BTwo
CThreeCorrect
DFour

Answer: Three

BF&M 2000, Article II · ESV

The article holds two things at once. There is one and only one living and true God, and that one God is eternally Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each with distinct personal attributes, yet without division of nature, essence, or being. Three counts persons, not gods. The unity lies in what God is; the threeness in who the persons are, distinguished by their eternal relations of origin rather than by any difference in divinity.

BF&M 2000, Article II; Deuteronomy 6:4 with Matthew 28:19

Why not this one. One is right about the essence and wrong about the persons. Reduce the three to one person appearing in successive roles and you have modalism, which the article rules out when it calls the personal attributes distinct.

Theologians divide God's attributes into communicable and incommunicable. What does that distinction mark?

AWhether creatures can reflect the attribute, as with love and wisdom, or cannot, as with aseityCorrect
BWhether the attribute is revealed in Scripture or known only by reason
CWhether the attribute belongs to the divine essence or only to one of the three persons
DWhether the attribute is exercised toward creation or only within the Godhead

Answer: Whether creatures can reflect the attribute, as with love and wisdom, or cannot, as with aseity

Communicable attributes have a creaturely likeness: men can be loving, wise, just and truthful in a derived measure. Incommunicable attributes have none, because they belong to God as God, such as self-existence, immensity and eternity. The line is one of likeness, not of importance, and even the communicable ones belong to God infinitely.

The categories are theological rather than scriptural terms; compare Ephesians 5:1 with Exodus 3:14 and Psalm 90:2.

Why not this one. No attribute belongs to one person only. Every divine attribute is possessed wholly by Father, Son and Spirit; only the relations of origin distinguish them.