THE DOCTRINE’S REVELATIONAL GROUND The word “Trinity” does not occur in the Bible, and neither do the expressions “sameness in substance” and “distinctness in subsistence.” Nevertheless, the church from the third century on found such expressions helpful when explicating the teaching of Scripture on the tripersonality of the Godhead, being convinced, as Benjamin Warfield states in a somewhat startling fashion, that “it is better to preserve the truth of Scripture than the words of Scripture.”5