The question of whether Genesis 18 refers to the Trinity is based on an analysis of the following verses:
- Now the Lord appeared to him in the plains of Mamre, and he was sitting at the entrance of the tent when the day was hot. And he lifted his eyes and saw, and behold, three men were standing beside him, and he saw and he ran toward them from the entrance of the tent, and he prostrated himself to the ground. (Genesis 18:1-2)
- And he said, "I will surely return to you at this time next year, and behold, your wife Sarah will have a son." And Sarah heard from the entrance of the tent, and it was behind him. (Genesis 18:10)
- Is anything hidden from the Lord? At the appointed time, I will return to you, at this time next year and Sarah will have a son." (Genesis 18:14)
- And the Lord remembered Sarah as He had said, and the Lord did to Sarah as He had spoken. (Genesis 21:1)
The context of Genesis 18:1-2 is right after Abraham performed his own circumcision, and right before God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. Three angels visit Abraham at this point, one of which tells him that Sarah will become pregnant at the same time next year. Some Christians claim that this particular angel was an incarnation of God (as the Second Person in the Trinity). They make this claim because of something interesting that this angel says - "I will surely return to you at this time next year, and behold, your wife Sarah will have a son." The angel speaks of returning in the first person (I will surely return to you, not the angel will surely return to you...), indicating that this angel is in fact an incarnation of God.
There are, however, a few issues with this, perhaps the main one being that God often has angels speaking in His Name when He seeks to relate some important information. See the following examples:
- And the angel of the Lord said to her, "I will greatly multiply your seed, and it will not be counted for abundance." (Genesis 16:10)
- And he said to him, "Behold I have favored you also as regards this matter, that I will not overturn the city that you have mentioned. (Genesis 19:21)
- And he said, "Do not stretch forth your hand to the lad, nor do the slightest thing to him, for now I know that you are a God fearing man, and you did not withhold your son, your only one, from Me." (Genesis 22:12)
In the first example the angel promises something that it does not possess the power to perform (I will greatly multiply your seed), and we must therefore understand that the angel is speaking as an emissary of God and not that the angel is God Himself. This verse is a reference to the angel telling Hagar that she will give birth to Ishmael.
In the second example the angel responds to Lot's plea (19:20) and agrees not to destroy the small city to which Lot plans to escape to. In this verse the angel speaks of destroying the city in the first person, yet we see that when it came to destroying the city that it was destroyed by God:
And the Lord caused to rain down upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire, from the Lord, from heaven. (Genesis 19:24)
Now, even if we accept that the angel speaking in 18:10 and 18:14 was God, it cannot be that the angel speaking in 19:24 was also God, because both of these angels appeared to Abraham together. In other words, even if we accept the notion that God incarnated Himself we cannot accept the notion that He incarnated Himself as two different and simultaneous incarnations of the Second Person in the Trinity that appeared to Abraham together (along with a third angel).
As a brief tangent, some Christians point to the fact that 19:24 mentions "the Lord" twice. "And the Lord caused to rain... from the Lord..." This is taken to be a reference to two different Persons of the Trinity, the first of which "caused to rain down upon Sodom and Gomorrah," but which was sent "from the Lord, from heaven," which is a separate Person of the Trinity, who remained in Heaven while this was occurring. This indicates that the first "the Lord" refers to the Person that descended to earth, while the second one remained in Heaven while this was occurring.
What this overlooks is the simple reading of the verse, which simply speaks of God in the third person, which is a much plainer reading of the text. For example, it is possible, although a bit awkward, to say, "Daniel went to the store and Daniel bought eggs" while fully intending to speak about the one-and-only Daniel. It would be a much greater stretch of the imagination, "straining out a gnat," to describe this sentence as grammatically referring to two different aspects of Daniel, the first of which went to the store, and the second of which bought the eggs, yet ultimately both of which did each because Daniel exists in two different forms, each of which is him.
In the third example the angel says, "and you did not withhold your son, your only one, from Me." It is evident that Abraham was not intending on sacrificing Isaac to an angel, which as well makes it clear that the angel was speaking as an emissary of God. And just in case we have any doubt as to the identity of this angelic speaker, see the preceding verse:
And an angel of God called to him from heaven and said, "Abraham! Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am." (Genesis 22:11)
This verse explicitly tells us that this was an angel of God, not God in the form of an angel. If we are free to interpret "angel of God" as an implicit reference to "God in the form of an angel" then words cease to convey any inherent meaning in the first place. If "cat" means "dog," and if every time I say "cat" you assume that I'm referring to a "dog," then assigning meaning to words is useless.
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