Introduction

As an evangelical high school and college student, I took my faith seriously.

Aware that many disagreed with Christian teachings, I consumed apologetics
radio shows, books, and magazines, so as to “Always be prepared to give an
answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you
have...”[1] I didn’t know much about the Trinity, nor did this idea play a
central role in the lives of the evangelical churches I grew up in. I was
vaguely proud of it, as the unique Christian discovery about God, and was
assured that it could easily be deduced from the Bible. Only dastardly,
pseudo-Christian cults denied it. As a graduate student, though, I slowly
began to realize that I didn’t really know what this “historic Christian
doctrine of the Trinity” was. Were these three divine “Persons” God’s
personalities? His aspects? Parts? Or were they three full-blown divine
selves? And if this last, how was this not three gods?
​The first scholar I read who carefully laid out a position on the whole
meaning of it all was the leading Christian philosopher Richard Swinburne.[2]
He gave interpretations of the official creedal documents, and argued for an
understanding of the Trinity that many readers have critiqued, fairly or not, as
tritheism. With a few interested friends, I read through this book as a PhD
student in the late 1990s, and was nearly convinced. And in the bowels of the
Brown University library I discovered an impressively thorough early
modern book on the topic by a man I’d heard of, the standout Christian
philosopher and apologist Samuel Clarke (1675-1729), a younger associate of
the famous scientist Sir Isaac Newton.[3] Clarke’s book focused on
interpreting the New Testament correctly, with help from the “church
fathers” of the first three centuries. This interpretation of the Trinity was
somewhat different than and incompatible with Swinburne’s. Soon I realized
that several other brilliant Christian philosophers had offered up their
interpretations, ones which clashed in crucial points with Swinburne’s and
Clarke’s. I discovered that despite the popular apologists’ bravado, among
well trained, serious, and brilliant Christian thinkers, it was a matter of
ongoing dispute just what “the” doctrine of the Trinity was. Their similar
language masked serious theological disagreements.
​Reading some theologians, I found many asserting that different
interpretations of “the” doctrine really differ only in emphasis or flavor or in
exact preferred language or in preferred analogies – at any rate, not in any
way that really matters. But of course, truth really matters, and the Christian
philosophers’ (analytic theologians’) discussions in the 1990s and 2000s
made clear that there are truly different theologies, different theories in play
here, and that most pairs of them are logically contrary (i.e. such they can’t
both be true). In general, I recognized a lot of bad philosophy in the
theologians’ unclear, overly abstract discussions of “the” doctrine. Many
were eager to “celebrate” and “revive” it, while being none too clear about
just what “it” is.
​What to do? I became obsessed with the topic. I rolled up my sleeves and
plunged into recent philosophers’ theories and historical writings and
controversies. I was continually driven back to the issue of how to properly
interpret the Bible. Eventually, thank God, I figured out what I think about
these issues. I neither hide nor parade my views here, because my purpose in
writing this book is to equip you to figure out what you think about it all. In a
subject which is often heavily obscured by personal speculations, I try to
avoid those here, sticking with foundational, understandable, and indisputable
points. Some of these are points of history, others belong to logic,
philosophy, or theology. If you carefully read and think through this book,
you will have dispelled some of the thick fog which surrounds this subject.
Along the way, I footnote dozens of sources, in case you want to explore
these issues further. I say much more about my own views, and about various
recent philosophers’ theories in a scholarly book which I’m still writing. That
book is geared towards philosophers and theologians.
​But this book is meant for you, the curious Christian, whatever your level
of education. If you’ve got this far, you can surely read and profit from it.
However you settle your mind on these matters, this book will surely help
you to understand what some of the main options are. If we philosophers are
not very good at arriving at consensus, we are at least helpful in clearly
laying out maps of the various routes you can take. The purpose of this book
is to equip you with some basic insights, so that you can navigate your way
through the relevant theological, biblical, and historical issues.
​These territories can be navigated, so keep going. I can tell you from
experience that thinking about the Trinity is not futile. My long labors have
strengthened and clarified my faith, and have given me a new perspective on
what the Bible teaches about God. May the God who created the masterpiece
of the human mind bless you as you stretch, exercise, and exert yours.
​My thanks to Daryl Brautigam, David Mitchell, Terence Mosher, Ben
Nasmith, and Ashley Shetler for their helpful feedback on various drafts of
this book.
 1 Don’t be Afraid to Think about God

How does one separate enemy from friend? One way is shown in this
ancient incident recorded in Judges 12:

…Jephthah gathered all the men of Gilead and attacked the men of
Ephraim and defeated them. Jephthah captured the shallow crossings of
the Jordan River, and whenever a fugitive from Ephraim tried to go
back across, the men of Gilead would challenge him. “Are you a
member of the tribe of Ephraim?” they would ask. If the man said, “No,
I’m not,” they would tell him to say “Shibboleth.” If he was from
Ephraim, he would say “Sibboleth,” because people from Ephraim
cannot pronounce the word correctly. Then they would take him and kill
him at the shallow crossings of the Jordan. In all, 42,000 Ephraimites
were killed at that time.[4]

​ ased on this passage, the English word “shibboleth” now means some
B
word, saying, belief, or practice which is regarded as distinctive of some
social group. To say that a word or sentence is a “shibboleth” suggests (but
doesn’t require) that its users don’t know what it means, so that the
shibboleth is only a marker of group membership. Thus, in the realm of
American politics a Democrat may gripe that “small government” is a
shibboleth for Republicans, while Republicans may complain that
“inclusiveness” is a shibboleth for Democrats.
​For many, phrases like “the Trinity,” “God is triune,” “Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit,” or “the doctrine of the Trinity” serve as markers of Christian
identity. Those who approvingly use such phrases are considered in the
group, while those who don’t, or who use them without approval are seen as
outsiders, as non-Christians.
​Trinitarian theological formulations are generally understood as more
than mere shibboleths; they are supposed to be believed, not merely said. In
other words, trinitarian truths are to be knowingly and sincerely confessed,
not merely recited. If you teach your talented pet parrot to say, “Government
should be small,” you don’t thereby make him a Republican. Just so, standing
up in church and reciting the Nicene Creed does not make one a trinitarian.
Clearly, a faithful Christian is supposed to be more than a parrot. But how
does one advance beyond the ability to pronounce the words?
​The answer is simple: one tries to understand what they’re supposed to
mean, what they’re supposed to express. This isn’t just any old subject-
matter, but concerns the one God. According to Jesus, God’s most important
commandment is:

Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the
Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all
your mind, and with all your strength.[5]

​ otice the last two elements with which we are to love God: mind and
N
strength. When was the last time you exerted some serious effort towards
understanding the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? When was the last time you
read a challenging, serious book on the subject, or compared scripture with
scripture, or really wondered about why this isn’t a teaching of three gods, if
indeed it isn’t? When was the last time you listened to someone’s story who
converted from Christianity to Islam in part because the Trinity made no
sense to him or her? Did you write down their objections, separate the serious
from the superficial, and dig into scripture and tradition to find out how they
should be answered? Have you looked deeply into past or present disputes
between serious, informed, believing Christians about the meaning, truth, and
biblical or creedal bases for belief in a tripersonal God?
​If you’re like most Christians, you’ll say “No” to all of the above. The
merely cultural Christian thinks little about any theological subject. But what
is more startling is that serious, mature, thoughtful Christians often devote
little thought to the Trinity. I have even known life-long Christian
intellectuals who haven’t. Why?
​One reason is fear. There’s an irrational dread that hangs over this topic,
expressed in this little chestnut of “wisdom:”

The Trinity: Try to Understand It and You’ll Lose Your Mind. Try to
Deny It and You’ll LOSE YOUR SOUL!
 ​ asically, you can’t understand it, and if you look into it, you risk coming
B
to think it is false, in which case, you’ll go straight to Hell.
​Really? This is a remarkable claim. Or is it a threat? Is one’s sanity
(“Lose Your Mind”) really at stake in this? As to the threat of Hell, this is
famously asserted by the baffling “Athanasian creed,” which starts with such
a threat, gives a famously unclear summary of what “the Trinity” is all about,
and then reiterates the threat:

He therefore that will be saved must thus think of the Trinity.[6]

Think how? The creed announces that

…we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in unity, without either
confusing the persons or dividing the [divine] substance…

Each of the three is said to be uncreated, infinite, eternal, and almighty,

and so,

...the Father is God, the Son God, the Holy Spirit God; and yet there
are not three Gods, but there is one God.[7]

Evidently, the three of them just are one and the same god. But then
we’re told that the three of them differ from one another.

The Father is from none… The Son is from the Father… The Holy
Spirit is from the Father and the Son…[8]

We gather that eternally, the first is without any origin or source, while
the second has one origin, and the third has two origins. It seems to follow
that that they can’t be the same anything, much less the same god. One god
couldn’t eternally lack and also eternally have an origin. Is the teaching then
that there are three gods which “are coeternal with each other and coequal”?
[9] No. The creed explains,

… just as we are obliged by Christian truth to acknowledge each

person separately both God and Lord, so we are forbidden by the
Catholic religion to speak of three Gods or Lords.[10]
 This explanation falls short, though. It seems that the subject has been
changed from how we are to think to how we are to speak. Each of the three
must be called “God” and “Lord,” and the Christian is not to say “three
Gods” or “three Lords.” But why these rules, if indeed each of the three “is
God” and they truly are three? This famous creed leaves us wondering.
​Imagine meeting a new neighbor who introduces you to the two women
at his side.
​“Hi neighbor! This is my wife Alice. We’ve been married for exactly five
years.”
​“Pleased to meet you.”
​“And this is my wife Betty,” he says, pointing to the other woman.
“We’ve been married exactly three years.”
​“I’m pleased to meet you and your two wives,” you reply. “I’ve never
met anyone who was married to two women.”
​“Oh no, neighbor, we don’t say ‘two wives’ or ‘two women.’ In truth, I’m
married to just one woman; I have just one wife. True, Alice is one person,
and Betty is another; but we neither confuse the persons nor divide the
wifehood.”
​This exchange would leave you confused (not to mention uncomfortable).
You can see that Alice and Betty are two different beings, and their husband
has told you of their different wedding dates. But you’ve been told that
they’re a single wife, even though each alone is a wife, and you’ve been told
not to say “two wives” or “two women” about them. You might wonder if
this man has some idiosyncratic way of counting wives![11]
​If the Trinity simply can’t be understood, and if disbelieving it results in
loss of salvation, then people conclude that we should just unquestioningly
believe it - whatever “it” is! It’s not clear, though, that this is real belief:
mouthing some trinitarian sentences and thinking that one believes whatever
it is that those sentences mean.
​Many Christians instinctively reject the damnatory clauses of the
“Athanasian Creed.” The confusing statements of this creed seem incapable
of expressing some beliefs which are required for salvation. People are often
baptized without any quiz on the contents of this creed. And sometimes
children, the mentally handicapped, or the illiterate are saved, and it is not at
all clear that they have signed onto its paradoxical language or its odd
language rules.
 ​ nfortunately, some turn these insights into an excuse not to think about
U
these matters. “If it’s not necessary for salvation,” they reason, “it’s not
important for me to think about.” But this is poor reasoning. Many things are
important to think about, for various reasons, which are not required beliefs
for salvation.
​Simple human laziness also plays a role, as does poorly done theology,
often incorporating or inspired by poorly done philosophy. A good theorist
entices the student further into the subject, making the confusing less
confusing, and encouraging the enquirer to move farther along. A bad theorist
piles confusion atop confusion in tottering heaps, and generously frosts the
whole production in a thick layer of learned, abstract terminology. This thick
word-frosting bedazzles the listener, making her think that the speaker is
uttering profundities for which human language is inadequate. If you’ve read
some of this literature, this may be why you have little to no interest in
thinking hard about the Trinity.
​Is the subject impenetrable? Maybe.[12] But maybe you’ve mostly heard
from people who have no interest in penetrating it, as their image is better
burnished by their repeating, riffing on, and reveling in confusions. Flee any
theologian who is more interested in endlessly posing as the most humble,
reverent, learned dealer in divine mysteries, than he is in helping you to
clearly understand this subject. A reliable sign of such a bad theorist is
gassing endlessly about how unique and important and wonderful and earth-
changing this doctrine of the Trinity is, without clearly telling you just what
that doctrine is and is not, and without giving you solid reasons for thinking it
is true.
​It turns out that the “Athanasian Creed” isn’t, or long wasn’t, an official
expression of trinitarian theology for most Christians. It is rather, an attempt
to express “the” doctrine based on the writings of the ancient catholic bishop
Augustine (354-430).[13] Yet part of the creed (“without either confusing the
persons or dividing the [divine] substance”) points us towards what has long
been the official statement, at least for creed-focused Christian groups. This
is the creed from the council of Constantinople in 381. In chapter 3, we’ll
look at its precursor, the creed composed at Nicea in 325. In chapter 5 we’ll
learn how these creeds came about, and in chapters 6 and 7 we’ll sort through
competing interpretations of them.
​In my experience, most Christians are confused about this subject, so that
they must mentally jump back and forth between different and incompatible
ways of thinking about the Trinity. For example, one may say that the Trinity
are three parts of God, three personalities of God, three appearances of God,
three successive or eternal roles God plays, three aspects of God, or three
gods. Some know that they’re confused on this subject, but unfortunately,
many do not. Sometimes a confusion is more apparent to outsiders than it is
to insiders. In this case, apologists for Islam or Judaism are all too happy to
point out the confusions.
​But why should a Christian settle for confusion? Hasn’t God self-revealed
in the lives of Christians, singly and in groups, in dreams and visions,
prophecies and inspired writings, instructing us on how to think about him?
Our God is not a mumbling trickster or a heartless inquisitor, eager to leave
you baffled or to catch you out in a mistaken judgment. Nor isof he a bully
who demands that you confess to believe what in fact you do not.
​The followers of Christ “are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy
nation, God’s own people”,[14] destined to rule the earth under Christ.[15] If
you are one of these, then Jesus has hidden none of the riches of his wisdom
from you; “I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my
Father.”[16] Do you think Jesus was confused about the Trinity? If he was
not, and he’s left all his wisdom to his followers, why should we be mired in
permanent confusion about the Trinity?
​Maybe the subject is impenetrable, but maybe God allows us to construct
traditions which needlessly confuse and obscure, even while sufficient truth
is available. As the wise king Solomon said,

It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to

search things out.[17]

You, Christian, are a brother or sister, and even a friend, of “the faithful
witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.”[18]
It is not for you to be afraid of thinking hard about the God who is love, and
who delights in self-revealing to those who seek him. It is for you to spend
your mental strength gladly and expectantly. Don’t stand shivering on the
shore with the timid; jump in with both feet. The water is deep, but you can
swim.
 2 Formulas vs. Interpretations

While there have long been standard terms and sentences relating to the
Trinity, there is not and has never been any clear and universal consensus
about how to understand these. There is agreement about what the sentences
do or don’t imply (Tritheism? No. Monotheism? Yes. Different levels or
kinds or degrees of divinity among the three? No.) But there is not an
interpretation of the sentences themselves which is held in common by all.
Interpretations of formulas range from more to less traditional. It was the
council of Nicea in 325 that invented what has become the most traditional
trinitarian language.

We believe in one God the Father all powerful, maker of all things
both seen and unseen. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the
only-begotten begotten from the Father…[19]

So far, so good. This is all basically New Testament language, and would
probably be agreed to by all Christians. But it continues to qualify
“begotten,”

…that is from the substance [Greek: ousias, Latin: substantia] of the

Father…

“Substance”? So, the Son is “begotten” from… God? God’s essence? The
stuff or material that composes God? From God’s individual essence or
nature? For various reasons, these all seem to be problematic claims. And the
creed doesn’t tell us how to interpret itself here. But it continues describing
the Father and Son as

…God from God, light from light, true God from true God…
 How many gods are described here? It certainly sounds like two, two
“true Gods,” where one is in some sense “from” the other.
​But the creed began by affirming just one God, the Father Almighty.
What gives? In any case, we’re told that the Son is

…begotten not made

What is meant by “begotten,” and how does this differ from being made,
being created, or being caused to exist? Again, the document leaves us to
wonder.
​Its most famous claim is that the Son is

…consubstantial with the Father,[20]

This claim is and was baffling. The term “consubstantial” had never been
used before in any broadly popular theological statement, and its meaning
was unclear. Is the claim that the Father and the Son are one being? That
they’re the same god? Or are they two gods, but sharing an essence, an
ousia? Or is the Father the only god here, while his Son is divine (god-like)
because he is “from” the Father? And if this essence is supposed to be a
property, a feature, is it supposed to be a universal property, like humanity or
horseness, in which case, it would seem that Father and Son are two gods, or
was it supposed to be an individual essence like being Socrates, in which
case, Father and Son would be numerically one? (An individual essence is by
definition unshareable.) Either way, it looks bad! Or is the claim rather that
Father and Son are composed of one spiritual quasi-matter, as it were, made
of the same stuff? Or is the point merely that Father and Son are importantly
similar? The creed doesn’t answer such questions. Its most famous claim, the
claim around which its partisans eventually rallied, and which many still
wave like a banner, is very ambiguous; it might mean several things.
​The creed finishes its claims about the Son,

…through whom all things came to be, both those in heaven and
those in earth; for us humans and for our salvation he came down and
became incarnate, became human, suffered and rose up on the third
day, went up into the heavens, is coming to judge the living and the
dead.[21]
 In light of previous catholic theologies c. 150-325, we read this as
claiming that the pre-human Jesus, or the divine element in him, was the
direct agent of creation, God being the indirect and ultimate source of
creation. In other words, God created by having this being – called “the
Word” in John 1:1 – do it on his behalf, so that only the latter, as it were, got
his hands dirty. This can be contested on scriptural and philosophical
grounds, but at the time it was widely held, having been promoted by many
for both biblical and philosophical/theological reasons since the time of
Justin Martyr (c. 150).
​“Became incarnate” is unclear. Did this eternal spirit (the Word)
somehow control or combine with a complete man? Or did he become the
soul of a certain human body? Or did this spirit somehow form one person
with both a body and a normal human soul? Or were there two selves in
Jesus, the man, the human self, and this eternal spirit, the direct creator, the
two of them somehow cooperating in what looked like the earthly life of one
self? This creed doesn’t answer such questions.[22]
​And finally,

And in the holy Spirit.[23]

But where does this Spirit fit into what went before? Is it or he also
“consubstantial” with the Father? It doesn’t say either way.
​This new language proved to be enough, in the year 325, to expel Arius,
and later the so-called “Arians” from fellowship with the bishop-ruled
mainstream of churches. (To the “Arians” it made the Son too much like God
to say that they’re “consubstantial,” and it bothered them that the term was
neither scriptural nor traditional.) But the creed did not clearly express any
shared insight at the time. It led to much bitter controversy, until the language
was re-affirmed, expanded, and enforced by the might of imperial decree in
381. (More on this in chapter 5 below.)[24] In this way, the statements we’ve
been reviewing came, eventually, to be unquestionably accepted by most
Christians as expressing what the faith of the Church had always been.
​But for all this, we still wonder what many of these sentences mean.
Why? Because it’s only after you understand what claim a sentence expresses
that you can go looking for evidence for and against that claim. And it’s only
after you understand what claim a sentence expresses that you can judge that
the sentence well captures what the scriptures teach. In this case, various
theologians assert that the “consubstantial” claim (whatever it is!) is implied
by scripture, or at least that it best explains what scripture says and doesn’t
say. To evaluate such assertions, we must understand what “it” is – not that
we have to perfectly understand it, or be able to explain it. We can
understand truths that we can’t explain, and understanding can be partial.
​Until one admits there is a problem, it can’t be solved. Here, we must
admit that we don’t have any clear, widely agreed on interpretation of official
catholic language about the Trinity. If we’re going to talk about “the doctrine
of the Trinity” we should keep in mind that there is, for most churches, a
fairly standard set of formulas (sentences), but not any fairly standard set of
claims (interpretations of those sentences). We should set aside the
apologists’ habit of making confident assertions about “the” doctrine.
​Some present-day statements are less traditional, less bound to the old
creedal language. For example, here’s part of the required creed at the
American evangelical university I attended:

There is one God, eternally existing and manifesting Himself to us in

three Persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.[25]

This is intended to mean the same thing as the older creeds, though it is
unclear whether it does, because both the original statement and the
newfangled simpler statement are very ambiguous. Each of the three named
is affirmed to be a “Person,” but we’re never told what that is. Some
theologians take a “Person” in this case to be something like a way God
intrinsically and essentially is, something like a personality God always and
necessarily lives in. But others take a “Person” to be a self, a being capable of
thought, desire, and friendship. Others will strongly insist that what “Person”
means in this context can’t be understood. This formula seems to assume that
God (“Himself”) is a self, and that seems right. Many thousands of singular
personal pronouns referring to God in the Bible seem like strong evidence
that the writers assume God to be a “him,” and not an “it” or a “them.” But in
the whole Trinity, how many selves are there? Four? Three? One? None? (Or
shall we refuse to answer, rejecting the question as a bad one?) Again, we
have a formula which doesn’t wear its meaning on its sleeve.
​Similarly ambiguous is the statement of the largest Protestant
denomination in the United States:
 The eternal triune God reveals Himself to us as Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit, with distinct personal attributes, but without division of
nature, essence, or being.[26]

Again, there would seem to be at least one self here – “God… Himself.”
But what of the “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit”? We’re told that each has
“distinct personal attributes” – but mere personalities, full-blown selves, or
even something-we-know-not-whats might be thought to do that. Evidently
“nature, essence, or being” are meant as synonyms, words used with the same
meaning, but it’s unclear what this is! The obvious questions raised by the
325 formulas remain.
​Apologists often seem to work under the simplifying but false assumption
that all Christians have always believed one Trinity doctrine. For their part,
many academic theologians talk vaguely of “the” doctrine developing,
changing, and growing, and of different Christians groups understanding one
and the same doctrine with “different emphases.” Both approaches prevent
careful delineation of competing interpretations of the language. In contrast
to apologists and theologians, recent Christian philosophers have plunged in
and explored what on the face of it are clashing, logically incompatible
interpretations of the standard Trinity language that we’ve just surveyed.[27]
​To thoroughly sift through these would take a book, one which explains
all of the fancy philosophical machinery these analytic theologians apply to
this issue.[28] But whether or not you ever work your way through this
material, you, the thinking Christian, need a place to settle your mind. The
only alternatives would seem to be confusion or avoidance. (More on this in
chapter 8 below.) Can you find some interpretation of official creedal
language which is understandable, and which best makes sense of the whole
of scripture? Or will you feel compelled to go farther, questioning the
legitimacy of the formulas themselves? The book you’re holding sticks
rigorously to relatively uncontroversial logical, historical, and biblical points,
so as to help you navigate through the options.
​A Trinity doctrine is supposed to be a great truth which is to be believed.
A parrot can repeat formulas, but a Christian is supposed to be more than a
repeater, namely a believer in divinely revealed truths. But what claims,
exactly, are here revealed? The authorities who’ve transmitted the formulas
to us have not also transmitted any one way to interpret them. Consequently,
intelligent and informed defenders of the formulas are defending different
and incompatible interpretations, insofar as they have intelligible
interpretations to offer. In truth, many defenders (notably, many apologists)
are defending only the formulas, only the language, having only vague ideas
about what they mean. They expect you not to ask too many questions about
what they mean. Their age and prestige are supposed to exempt them from
critical examination.
​Do you agree? If so, you should put the book down and slowly back
away. But if you want to be a good Berean,[29] continue on. The chapters that
follow will equip you with some understandable distinctions and information
which will prove useful as you test various theological claims against the
scriptures.
​In this chapter, you’ve already learned one such distinction, between
sentences and what they assert, between trinitarian formulas and the claims
they express. Unfortunately, there is more agreement about the sentences
than about the claims.
​Now we need to clarify a key term: “Trinity.”
 3 Trinity vs. trinity

Once upon a time, three lawless ruffians roamed the land: a giant, a long-
haired man, and a swordsman. They wrought such havoc that their legend
long survived them; generations passed down tales about “The Triple
Threat,” as they came to be called.
​As time passed, however, the legend was oddly transformed; the “Triple
Threat” was now supposed to be a giant, long-haired swordsman – one man
rather than three. Whereas earlier story tellers had used “The Triple Threat”
as a plural referring term (a way of picking out the giant, the long-haired
man, and the swordsman) later tellers used the phrase as a singular referring
term, picking out (so they supposed) a giant with long hair and a sword.
​Something similar happened in the case of the Trinity. At first, there was
no such word in the Christian vocabulary. “Trinity” (Greek: trias) was coined
some time in the second half of the second century. We don’t know who
coined it, but the earliest surviving mention of it is by Theophilus, bishop of
Antioch (late 2nd century). Commenting on the Genesis days of creation, in
his remarks on the fourth day, he says that

…the three days which prior to the luminaries [i.e. the stars], are
types of the triad, of God and his Logos and his Sophia.[30]

The translator here correctly renders triados as “triad” rather than

“Trinity.” This helps the reader to avoid anachronistically importing the later
idea of a tripersonal god into the passage. This triad or trinity is just a
threesome, a group of three somethings. It is not implied that these three are
of the same kind or status, or that they are parts of any whole. God himself,
Theophilus thinks, is the oldest and the primary, founding member of that
threesome, that trinity. Theophilus doesn’t betray any hint here that he’s
introducing a novel term, which leads us to think that he or someone else in
his circles has previously introduced it. But he tells us what this trinity is:
God, God’s Word (i.e. the logos of John 1), and God’s “wisdom” – evidently
the Holy Spirit.
​This is the plural referring usage of trias (and the Latin trinitas) that
ancient mainstream Christian (“catholic”) authors like Origen, Tertullian,
Irenaeus, and Novatian always use. One ancient priest, theologian, and
martyr writing in defense of Origen’s theology announces after his
explanation:

This is Origen’s faith concerning the highest realities, that is,

concerning the Holy Trinity.[31]

Note the plural “realities.” He means Origen’s teaching about the trinity,
the triad which has God as a member.
​When it comes to Christian sources in the first three centuries, we should
translate terms like trias and trinitas as “trinity” or “triad.” These English
words are naturally read as plural referring terms, picking out Father, Son,
and Spirit – whatever precisely those are, and however exactly they’re related
to one another. We can then reserve “Trinity” for the one God in three
“Persons” which catholic Christianity made mandatory in the last two
decades of the fourth century.
​If all Christians distinguished between “trinity” (or “triad”) and “Trinity”
much confusion would be eliminated. Our habit of using “Trinity”
ambiguously, for either the Trinity or the trinity, continually confuses. Some
theologians like to say that “The Bible is all about the Trinity.” Here, the
ambiguity of “Trinity” matters a great deal. This claim is false if the word
“Trinity” is being used as a singular referring term. The Bible doesn’t
mention any tripersonal god as such. All occurrences of the words translated
“god” or “God” or “Lord” refer to the Father (a.k.a. Yahweh, “the Lord”), or
to Jesus, or to a spirit, a foreign deity, a ghost, a man, or an idol, and arguably
once or twice to God’s own Spirit (or spirit). But if “Trinity” in the “The
Bible is all about the Trinity” is a plural referring term, so that it’s saying that
the Bible is all about God, God’s Son, and God’s Spirit, this is surely true!
The Old Testament focuses on God, and the New Testament on God’s Son
and on the workings of God’s Spirit (or spirit). Yes, the Bible is, so to speak,
all about the trinity, the triad.
​How about: “It has always been that nearly all Christians believe in the
Trinity.” “Trinity”? False. We don’t see believers in a tripersonal God
containing three equal “Persons” in the first three centuries.[32] But “trinity”?
True. All Christians have always believed in God, in God’s Son, and in
God’s Spirit (whoever or whatever this last is).
​How are you using the term “Trinity”? Are you using singular or plural
pronouns, adjectives, and verbs to go with the term? If singular, then you
mean Trinity. (For example: “The Trinity is the one God.”) If plural, you
mean trinity. (For example: “The trinity cooperate together in all they do.”) If
“the Trinity” are supposed to be a “they,” you mean trinity. If “the Trinity” is
supposed to be a “he/He” or an “it,” you mean Trinity.
​Should a trinitarian, a believer in the Trinity, even talk of “the trinity”?
There is no inconsistency in so doing. Three beings can also be mentioned as
one, if the three in some sense compose one. But it gets confusing, because
unitarian (non-trinitarian) Christians have sometimes spoken of “the Trinity”
(meaning the trinity). When they do, trinitarians hear “Trinity,” and think
those unitarians agree with them. But this is not so.
​Are unitarians such as John Biddle (1615-1662) being tricky or
deliberately misleading when they talk of “the Trinity”?[33] We can say this
much: they want to emphasize their agreement with other Christians. Both
unitarian and trinitarian Christians believe in the trinity, but only trinitarians,
following catholic tradition (and many would add, the Bible rightly
understood) believe in the Trinity. Christian unitarians think there is no such
being, no tripersonal god. They think that the Father is the one true God. Still,
they are happy to emphasize the agreement of all Christians on the reality of
the triad, even though this ignores somewhat different understandings of each
of the three, most seriously in the case of the spirit/Spirit.
​For trinitarians, “trinity” refers to the Three as such, and “Trinity” refers
to the one tripersonal God. For unitarians, “trinity” refers to the Three as
such, and “Trinity” doesn’t refer.
​Some unitarians would rather be rid of both “Trinity” and “trinity,” but I
don’t see why this must happen, given the pre-trinitarian usage of “trinity,”
(c. 185 – c. 380) and the fact that this plural-referring usage is still common.
There is no problem with using non-biblical words (as all English words are)
in theology so long as they are on the whole useful. The word “trinity” has
been a useful plural referring term since the late 100s, and “Trinity” is useful
for referring to God as conceived by trinitarians.
​There is a temptation, yes, for trinitarians (particularly apologists) to pull
a bait and switch here. They point out, correctly, the universal Christian
belief in the trinity, and then act as if this shows universal Christian belief in
the Trinity. But this doesn’t follow.
​Many people sense a need for a plural referring term in this area, so the
term “Godhead” has come to be used, in English, as a plural referring term,
meaning trinity. But this recent practice, I think, is confused and confusing.
“Godhead” is the traditional English translation for words like the Greek
theiotes and the Latin divinitas, and should mean the same thing as “the
divine nature” or “deity.” (The King James Version may be the culprit here; it
uses “Godhead” three times.) So no, properly, “Godhead” doesn’t mean the
same thing as “trinity.” “Godhead” is a singular referring term for God’s
nature, or just God, whereas “trinity” is a plural referring term. Really,
“Godhead” in English is an archaic term that we should retire; translators of
more recent Bible versions are correct in avoiding it.
​In sum, the trinity or triad is God (aka the Father), God’s Son, and the
Spirit of God, without prejudice as to whether or not they share a nature or
are one god. (Some will use these terms presupposing such commitments,
others not.) In contrast, the “Trinity” is the tripersonal god of trinitarian
theology. The word “trinity” is a plural referring term, while the word
“Trinity” is a singular referring term. Capital letters are useful; let us fully
exploit this technology for the sake of clarity and mutual understanding.
​Further, linguistic reform is possible. In my little fiction above, we can
imagine later historians untangling the confusion that eventually entered into
the tales of “The Triple Threat.” These historians could just choose to reserve
the proper-name-ish phrase “The Triple Threat” for the later one legendary
man (the giant, long-haired swordsman) and to reserve the phrase “the triple
threat” to refer to the actual three ruffians. What the historian can do, the
Christian can do.
​Finally, we should note the honorific use of capital letters. Some
Christians think that piety requires capitalizing pronouns when they refer to
God (“He,” “Him,” “His”). Thus, some atheists try to express their impiety
by taking away capitals, so that “God” is now “god.” (Take that, God!)
Similarly, some critics of Trinity doctrines will express their disapproval by
stealing away the capital “T.” And some trinitarians insist on capitalizing
even the adjective, writing “Trinitarian.”
​In my view, this tit-for-tat war of capital letters is silly and confusing, and
I don’t participate. I strive for clarity and good style, but do not ever award
capitals as prizes for the worthy, or take them away to express my
disapproval. I use them only to signal importantly different uses of words.
​Here is how I will always employ capitals in this book:

“God” is a title, similar to a name, a singular referring term for

the unique deity taught by monotheistic religions, while “god” is
the common noun.
“Catholic” is short for “Roman Catholic,” while “catholic” has
to do with the mainstream, bishop-ruled churches, especially before
the split between the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox movements.
“Trinity” refers to a tripersonal God, whereas “trinity” refers to
God, God’s Son, and God’s Spirit (or spirit), however those are
understood.
God’s “Spirit” is a “Person” of the Trinity like the other two,
while his “spirit” is an aspect, attribute, or action of God.
“Person” refers to one of those three which are supposed to be
in or somehow compose the triune God, however those are
understood, whereas a “person” is a self, a personal being, a
someone, a being for whom one must use personal pronouns.
“Unitarian” relates to historically unitarian denominations or
churches, while “unitarian” refers to theologies on which the one
God just is the Father alone. This latter is merely a descriptive term
to form a pair with the contrary adjective “trinitarian.”
One could use “trinitarian” to refer to belief in the triad (trinity)
and “Trinitarian” to refer to belief in the Trinity, but I think it’s less
confusing to simply reserve the term “trinitarian” for belief in the
Trinity.
Although I love and fear God, I don’t express this by
capitalizing “he,” “him,” or “his” when these refer to God (or to a
divine “Person” or self.) I think it’s not good, current English style
to do this.
 4 The “deity of Christ” vs. the Trinity

I was new to town and wanted to fit in. I reasoned that sports would be my
way to connect with the locals. But soon after I publicly declared my fandom,
someone asked me if I believed in “the leadership of Mike.”
​“Yes?” I muttered unconvincingly. But I didn’t know what I believed. I
was new in town, and had never lived in a place with such zealous basketball
fans. The season hadn’t started yet, so I’d never seen the team play. But the
fans were already working themselves up into a frenzy.
​Our team was the Wisconsin Way. I knew that much. And I knew that the
team captain, the lead player, was named “Michael.” I also knew that the
team had a star player, an overwhelming talent, whose name was “Mike.” If
this wasn’t confusing enough, sometimes when a fan got excited, he or she
would yell something about “Mikey.” I couldn’t fathom who they meant!
Was this yet a third player? Or was it Michael, or Mike, or both? And if it
was both, still, were they one player or two?
​I wanted to fit in with my fellow fans, so when people asked me if I
believed in Mike’s leadership, I learned to say, “I absolutely do.” But I still
didn’t know what I was professing.
​Was the point that Mike just is Michael, that they are one and the same?
Or was the point that Mike truly is a leader, that he has that quality? If the
latter, I realized that Michael and Mike might be one or two. Again, I was
sure that Mike was the true star of the team, a future hall-of-famer, and I was
sure that Michael (whether this was just Mike or not) was the team captain.
But I wasn’t sure how the two (?) of them were related. This abstract
expression “the leadership of Mike” just confused me.
​Finally, I saw the Way play. “Who’s that?” I said, pointing to a tall,
muscular black player.
​“Well, that’s Mike, obviously,” said the kid sitting next to me. I’d been
too embarrassed to ask an adult.
​“And who’s that?” I pointed at a much shorter white player.
 “​ That’s Michael, the leader of the team. You believe in the leadership of
Mike, don’t you?” The kid was testing my loyalty.
​“Yes, yes I do,” I said. I realized that this just meant the belief that Mike,
by his star play, would lead them to victory. Of course, Michael was still the
team captain, the leader of the players. And then it dawned on me, as I
listened to shouts of my fellow fans, that both Michael and Mike were
nicknamed “Mikey.”
​“Go Mikey!” I cheered, as Mike drove down the court.
​“Pass it to Mikey,” yelled the kid. Finally, this team made sense to me.
​In my parable, God is Michael, Jesus is Mike, “Mikey” is the phrase “the
Lord” in the New Testament, and the fans are evangelical Christians, their
saying being not “the leadership of Mike” but rather “the deity of Christ.”
​What is this thesis of “the deity of Christ”? Some understand it to be the
claim that Jesus just is God himself, that they are one and the same,
numerically one. In other words, Jesus and God are related as anything
whatever is to itself, so that “Jesus” and “God” are co-referring names, like
“Samuel Clemens” and “Mark Twain.”
​Evidently, some Christians thought this in the early 200s, that God just
was Jesus (and vice-versa). They were mocked by the ancient catholic
philosopher, theologian, apologist, and polemicist Tertullian (d. c. 225). He
called them “patripassians,” that is, people who believe that the Father
suffered, which Tertullian and most other ancient catholic theologians
thought absurd. Jesus suffered on the cross. If he just is God (aka the Father),
then that is to say that God suffered on the cross. Is it absurd that God should
suffer? Many theologians nowadays think that both sides of the question can
be argued.
​But in any case, a barrier to this interpretation of the “deity of Christ”
(that Jesus and God are one and the same) is that it seems that the two of
them have differed and do differ from one another. For instance, according to
the New Testament, Jesus stands at the right hand of God. (You can pick
whether to take this literally or metaphorically; it doesn’t affect the present
point.) But God doesn’t stand at his own right hand. Again, God sent his one
and only Son to save us. But Jesus didn’t send his one and only Son to save
us. At one point in the story Jesus doesn’t want to go to the cross, but it
seems that God does want Jesus to do that.[34] Jesus prays to his god, but God
neither prays to anyone nor is subject to any god.[35] We all know that one
being can’t be and not be a certain way, at the same time and in the same
way. It would seem, then, that Jesus and God are two.
​The mainstream ancient interpretation of “the deity of Christ” was not a
statement of identity between the deity (God) and Christ, but rather a
statement about how Christ is, a qualitative claim about Christ, that he is
divine, that he has the quality of deity.[36] And this was eventually expressed
by saying that he was one “person” with (or “in”) two “natures,” a human
nature and a divine nature. To believe in “the deity of Christ” was to believe
that he also had, in addition to his human nature (like yours or mine), a divine
nature.
​What does all of this have to do with the Trinity? Maybe less than you
think! Present-day evangelicals tend to focus on “the deity of Christ,”
vacillating between the two interpretations just sketched, Jesus as God
himself, and Jesus as having the quality of divinity, and other interpretations
too, such as that Jesus is something like a part of God. In many minds, the
“deity of Christ” issue is the same as “the Trinity.” These both oppose the
idea that Jesus was “just a man,” just another spiritual and admirable person,
a guru and “spiritual leader” if you like, but not the unique “Son of God,” not
in any sense the one best revelation of who God is. But that God is
tripersonal and that Christ is divine are not the same claim!
​You might think that this is a picky point. Don’t all acknowledge the
deity of the Father? Now add to this the deity of Jesus. We’re two-thirds of
the way to the Trinity, right? Just add in the deity of the Holy Spirit, and we
have the Trinity.
​But no, we don’t, not if the Trinity is a triune god, a tripersonal god.
There have been many Christians who have believed in the deity of the
Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, but have not believed in a
tripersonal god. Some of these are modern day “Oneness” Pentecostals. They
stoutly deny traditional trinitarian claims (belief in the Trinity), yet they
affirm the deity of all three. But they think those are just three names for one
self, for one unipersonal god. Some of the ancient catholics who historians
now call “monarchians” believed something similar.
​Other Christians have believed in the deity of Father, Son, and Spirit, but
identified the one true God not with the Trinity, but instead with the Father
alone. Famous examples include the learned Anglican minister and
philosopher-theologian Samuel Clarke (1675-1729) and the towering
intellectual of third-century catholic Christianity, the philosopher-theologian-
apologist-biblical-scholar Origen of Alexandria (c. 185 - c. 254).
 ​ ow could they believe in the deity of each of the three, and yet be
H
monotheists? Again, they held the one God to be the Father only. The Son
and Spirit were seen as divine in lesser ways or degrees than the Father.
​Do you think that each member of the Trinity must be divine to the same
degree, or in the same way? Or do you think that deity/divinity doesn’t come
in different kinds or degrees? Clarke and Origen would deny both claims, as
they firmly believed that it would be a contradiction for another being to also
be divine in the way that the Father (aka God) is divine. They would also
point out that in the Bible angels and saved humans are described as divine,
as “gods,” or as “Sons of God,” though this doesn’t put them on a par with
Yahweh (the Father, the unique God) or even with the Son (Jesus).[37]
​The point is this: the “deity of Christ” is not the same claim or set of
claims as “the Trinity.” The best way to understand each is and has always
been in dispute. But we know this: people like Origen believed in the deity of
Christ long before anyone believed in a tripersonal God (latter 4th century).
And after there were doctrines about how God is tripersonal, still some
learned Christians, like Clarke, didn’t believe those, but did believe in the
deity of Christ. The Trinity implies the deity of Christ (that is, that Christ has
a divine nature), but the deity of Christ (that Christ has a divine nature)
doesn’t imply the Trinity, however the Trinity is understood. If both are
important doctrines, then it is crucial to see that proving the deity of Jesus
doesn’t thereby prove the Trinity, but only takes a first step towards doing so.
The next steps would be showing that Jesus is divine in the same sense as the
Father and the Spirit, and that these three in some sense are or are in the one
God.
 5 Get a Date

Some say that Christians have always believed in the Trinity. This claim is
misleading at best. Christians have always believed in the trinity (God, his
Son, and his Spirit), but we need to look at the historical record carefully to
discern how far back we can find belief in the Trinity (God as tripersonal,
with Father, Son, and Spirit as equally divine “Persons” within him). We’ll
see that the elements of this sort of theology arose gradually, with belief in
the Trinity lagging behind belief in the trinity.
​Christians have always believed in one God, but in all mainstream creeds
of the first three centuries, the one God is the Father, not the Trinity or trinity.
For instance, Irenaeus (c. 135-200) asserted in the 180s that all Christians
have always believed in

…one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven, and earth, and
the sea, and all things that are in them.[38]

Even the creed from Nicea in 325 continues this tradition:

We believe in one God the Father all powerful…[39]

​ s we saw in chapter 3, talk of the trinity (triad) enters into catholic

A
tradition in the late second century, but this doesn’t imply belief in the Trinity
(triune God); as their creeds and other writings show, mainstream Christians
c. 150-370 continued to identify the one God with the Father only.
​How early do we find Christians confessing belief in a Trinity, in a
tripersonal god, in whom there are three equally divine, or essence-sharing
“Persons”? An obvious sign of such belief would be talking about the one
God as the Trinity, and not, as earlier, the Father. For instance, the bishop
Augustine (354-430) writes in the year 393 that
 …this Trinity is one God, according as it is written, ‘Hear, O Israel,
the Lord your God is one God.’[40]

In Augustine’s view, the one god Yahweh just is the Trinity, and vice-
versa.
​What’s the earliest such usage of “Trinity,” meaning the one God? The
earliest I have found so far is by Gregory of Nyssa in 385.[41] But the idea of
the one God as the Trinity is implied in many works of the 370s and 380s.
Somewhere around that time, partisans of the 325 Nicene Creed started
interpreting its claim that the Father and Son are “one essence” as implying
that they are the same god. They also began to argue that the Spirit too must
be “one essence” with the Father and Son, so that he too must be the same
god which they are. Thus, the Trinity is none other than the one God, and the
“Persons” are somehow within him, so that none just is him.
Early on, Christians did not call the Holy Spirit “God,” nor did they
worship or pray to the Holy Spirit. Why? Worship and prayer to the Holy
Spirit are not found anywhere in the New Testament.[42] And how to
understand talk of “the holy spirit” there has long been disputed.[43] In a
famous incident in Acts, the apostle Peter confronts Ananias and then his
wife Sapphira about their lies. To the husband, Peter says,

“Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have
lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money…
You have not lied just to human beings but to God.”

And to the wife,

“How could you conspire to test the Spirit of the Lord?”[44]

Does Peter here presuppose that to pneuma hagion (“the holy spirit”), that
is, to pneuma kuriou (“the spirit of the Lord”), is a Person within the triune
God? Frankly, that is an anachronistic projection back into the text; it is like
claiming that George Washington said something about the Internet. We can
instead read such phrases as a way of referring to God, the God who is active
and present in Peter. This is the one, God, to whom they have lied (in
addition to Peter and the other apostles).
​Logically, for Christians to be trinitarian in the sense defined at
Constantinople (381), they have to believe certain things. One is that the Son
is divine, and just as divine as the Father (“true God from true God”), not in
some lesser way. Another, relatedly, is that Son is eternal, that he never came
into existence, never began to exist. The same two points must hold regarding
the Holy Spirit. He must be fully divine, as the Father is divine, and he must
always have existed (or must exist timelessly); he can’t have come into
existence.
​Mainstream, non-monarchian, catholic theology c. 150-225 fails all four
conditions.[45] Because of this, it undeniably fails to be trinitarian (to teach a
Trinity), even though it does talk of the trinity.
​A leading champion of catholic orthodoxy at the end of this era was
Tertullian of Carthage (c. 160-225). Arguing against the gnostic teacher
Hermogenes, Tertullian explicitly asserts that the Father is older, nobler,
stronger, more powerful, and “much more elevated in rank” than the Son.[46]
Quoting Proverbs 8, he insists that

...the very Wisdom of God [i.e. the pre-human Jesus] is declared to

be born and created, for the especial reason that we should not suppose
that there is any other being than God alone [i.e. the Father] who is
unbegotten and uncreated. For if that which from its being inherent in
the Lord was of Him and in Him, was yet not without a beginning, – I
mean His wisdom, which was then born and created, when in the
thought of God It began to assume motion for the arrangement of His
creative works…[47]

This is what the patristic scholar Wolfson calls a “two stage” logos
theory, which is typical for non-monarchian theologians in this era.[48]
Eternally, God is wise, so his attribute of wisdom is eternal. But a finite time
ago, when it was time to create, the theory is that God “uttered” his “word” or
“wisdom,” that is, he, as it were, made his eternal wisdom to be a helper,
through whom he will create.[49] This is to say, if by the logos/Word/Wisdom
you mean a divine self, this came into existence a finite time ago, though God
has always had Wisdom (etc.) as a property within himself. This scheme is
pretty clear in all of Tertullian’s works.[50] The point is that for this major
champion of catholic theology in the years 197-225, the Son is neither eternal
nor as divine as the Father. Nor is Tertullian an anomaly. Again, the two-
stage logos theory is standard in this era, aside from “monarchian” dissenters.
​The person who changed the emerging catholic mainstream from two- to
one-stage logos theory was the massively influential Origen. He holds the
divine logos and Spirit to exist eternally, but because of God. In eternity, God
(the God, in Greek ho theos), aka the Father, causes (“begets”) his logos
(Word), a second god (deuteros theos).[51] In so doing he imparts a degree of
divinity to the logos. The logos in turn eternally gives a degree of divinity to
the Holy Spirit.[52] But for Origen, the Son and Spirit are not divine in the
same way as the Father, so as to make them the Father’s equal in power,
knowledge, goodness, and so on. Only the Father is divine independently of
any other being and to the highest degree. In second place is the logos, who
gets his second greatest degree of divinity from God. In third place is the
Spirit, who gets his yet lesser divinity from the Son.[53]
​In one book Origen goes so far as to argue that

…we should not pray to anyone begotten, not even to Christ Himself,
but only to the God and Father of all…[54]

In a later writing, though, Origen backs off this prohibition and allows
prayer to Christ, who as high priest will

…bear our prayer, when it has reached him, up to his God and our
God and to his Father and the Father of people who live according to
the word of God.[55]

​ hen did mainstream, non-monarchian Christians come to hold that the

W
Son and Spirit never came into existence? No earlier than around the time of
Origen’s On First Principles (c. 216-32). Earlier logos theorists all seem to
presuppose that the logos came into existence a finite time ago, when it was
time to create.[56]
​How early did mainstream Christians come to insist that the Son is not
subordinate to the Father, so that the Son is neither less great nor less divine
than him? The first major step in this direction was the creed at Nicea in 325.
This creed rebukes the Alexandrian presbyter Arius, who basically insisted
more loudly than most on the subordination of the Son and Spirit to the
Father. Before this dispute, most mainstream Christians held that the Son was
in various ways less than God his Father. Against this, Nicea claimed that the
Son is “true God from true God,” i.e. that the Son is eternally from the
Father, so as to make him also “true God.”
 ​ till, this language was resisted for decades. Multiple later meetings of
S
bishops rolled back its innovations of calling the Son “true God” and of
calling Father and Son “same ousia.”[57] The most extreme of these said
about ousia that “…there ought to be no mention of this at all,” and added
that

There is no question that the Father is greater. No one can doubt

that the Father is greater than the Son in honour, dignity, splendor,
majesty, and in the very great name of Father, the Son himself testifying,
He that sent me is greater than I. [John 14:28] [58]

In the end, however, the various anti-Nicea elements were over-ruled, as

we’ll see.
​When did catholic theologians first insist on this same fully divine status
for the Holy Spirit? The first such official statement is the creed of
Constantinople in 381. But some “pro-Nicene” partisans had argued for this
view in the preceding few decades.[59] These were theologians who insisted,
against many other catholic Christians, on the language about Father and Son
introduced in the Nicene creed of 325. (We’ll consider the significance of this
in chapters 6 and 7 below.)
While all of these stop short of saying the Spirit to be one essence with or
consubstantial (homoousios) with the Father and the Son, this was their view.
At that time, it would have been viewed as too new, too innovative, to
express it that way. So at first they were careful not to explicitly state it. After
all, the innovation of saying this about the Father and Son had led, after a
pause, to decades of bitter, empire-upsetting disputes.[60]
While these bishops agree that the Holy Spirit is as divine as the Father
and Son, we mustn’t forget that they were arguing strenuously against many
other mainstream Christians who held different views. As Gregory of
Nazianzus tells us around 379,

Amongst our own experts, some took the Holy Spirit as an active
process, some as a creature, some as God. Others were agnostic on this
point out of reverence, as they put it, for Scripture, which has given no
clear revelation either way.[61]

Gregory also tells us that his catholic opponents taunted him:

 But what do you say… about the Holy Spirit? Where did you get this
strange, unscriptural ‘God’ you are bringing in?”[62]

​Consider some views which in our day will get you declared a heretic on
the Trinity: that Jesus and/or the Holy Spirit is less divine than the Father,
and that Jesus and/or the Holy Spirit is not eternal. Hold to any of these, and
they will say that you are not a trinitarian, or at least not a good, orthodox
one. But in the year 200, you might have been a fully catholic Christian in
good standing, even a bishop, while holding all those views. You might even
have expressed these views as a leading, mainstream apologist, to the
applause of your peers.
​Suppose that you hold such views now, but you don’t want to be rejected
as a heretic. One option is for you to change those views. Another option is to
obtain a time machine and to travel back to the year 200. There, you will be
safe.
​Here’s another use for a time machine. If you think it is obvious that the
Bible teaches the eternality and full divinity of both Jesus and the Holy Spirit,
you can jump into that time machine, go back to the year 200, and solve a
great mystery. Why did erudite Christian writers then – bishops, theologians,
apologists – not perceive these (allegedly) obvious teachings in the Bible?
​For whatever reason, they had to wait until 380, when the Christian
emperor Theodosius I decided that the pro-Nicene side was correct. In
January or February of 380, Theodosius decreed that

It is Our will that all peoples ruled by the administration of Our

Clemency shall practice that religion which the divine Peter the Apostle
transmitted to the Romans… we shall believe in the single deity of the
Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost under the concept of equal majesty
and of the Holy Trinity. We commend that persons who follow this rule
shall embrace the name of catholic Christians. The rest, however, whom
We judge demented and insane, shall carry the infamy of heretical
dogmas. Their meeting places shall not receive the name of churches,
and they shall be smitten first by Divine Vengeance, and secondly by the
retribution of hostility which We shall assume in accordance with the
Divine Judgment.[63]

Technically, this was not yet an enforceable law, but only a declaration of
imperial policy. But the writing was on the wall. Theodosius arrived in
Constantinople in November of 380 and promptly deposed the bishop and
many lesser clergy who would not get on board with the pro-Nicene cause.
He forcibly installed Gregory of Nazianzus as bishop, then in May of 381,
Theodosius assembled a meeting of 150 eastern bishops to, as one historian
says, “ratify the new order.”[64] This they did, from May to July of 381. But
in January of that year, the emperor had already begun to enforce his
religious policy, and this continued with further orders after the synod as
well. In 451, a council assembled by a later emperor retroactively elevated
this 381 synod to authoritative status, as being an ecumenical council. But at
the time, as one historian observes, “No one could call this a full council of
the Church, nor did it see itself as such.”[65]
​In propagandists’ hands, this 381 meeting was, at that time, a valid
council, and it merely re-affirmed the 325 creed, which merely expressed
what mainstream Christians had always believed. Never trust propagandists
with fine points of history! Thanks be to God, we have the help of real
historians on all of this.
​Gregory of Nazianzus, who’d ended up presiding over the 381 council
(though he quit in exasperation before it was done) bitterly wrote afterward
that he’d

…never seen a good outcome to any synod, or a synod which

produced deliverance from evils rather than the addition to them…
rivalries and maneuvers always prevail over reason.[66]

In thinking about the Trinity, 380 and 381 are perhaps the most important
dates to remember.
​By this time, had the pro-Nicene side triumphed in argument? No doubt
their leading lights would say so. But many of their brethren remained
unconvinced, whether laymen, bishops, or theologians who rejected the
relatively new language of Nicea and its extension to the Holy Spirit. Some
of these, banned from worshiping in the churches of Constantinople,
reportedly worshiped outside its walls in the open air for some years after.[67]
The argument never came to a natural completion, such as (most of) one side
just agreeing with the other, or the sides agreeing to a compromise position,
or just agreeing to disagree while retaining fellowship. Secular power forced
a “win” for the Nicene side, but what was won was not so much the doctrinal
argument as the ecclesial power struggle. This became a pattern when
something similar happened at the 451 council.[68] What went undone was
any careful, clear exposition of how to interpret the revised Nicene creed of
381. As it was the language which was enforced, the precise meaning of it
wasn’t the primary concern. From time to time, in the centuries that followed,
some thoughtful trinitarian would venture to clarify what the statements must
mean, but was typically denounced and condemned as a heretic by his fellow
trinitarians.[69] Sometimes another would step forward with a rival
exposition, only to be denounced in turn.[70] Some were actually executed
because of their theological convictions, notably unitarian Christians in what
historians now call the “Radical” wing of the Reformation in the 16th and 17th
centuries. Their killers were both Protestants of the “Magisterial” wing of the
Reformation and Roman Catholics. Both persecutors followed traditions
established in the late fourth century of using governmental power to strong-
arm “heretics.”[71] In modern times, happily, executions, imprisonment, fines,
and confiscation have disappeared.
​Most educated Christians assume, I think, that the doctrinal statements
issuing from the early councils represent the collective mind of mainstream
Christians, at least through their representatives (the bishops), after a full and
fair, no-holds-barred discussion. This is one reason why, despite the history
we’ve just surveyed, most are unwilling to entertain that the mainstream
could have gone wrong in this matter. As we’ve seen, though, the emperor
stopped the arguments short. It was he who decided the winner. But neither
he nor anyone else sufficiently clarified just how the winning language
expressed a winning theology.
​How then are the creedal sentences to be understood? If we’re to believe
them, their meanings must enter our minds. It turns out that this is fairly
difficult, since trinitarian theologians differ on the meanings of the key terms
“Person” (hypostasis) and essence (ousia). In the next two chapters, we’ll
examine some options, and try to figure out what the bishops in 325 and in
381 must have meant, or at any rate, how a trinitarian should understand
statements such as “God is a Trinity of three Persons in one essence.”
 6 “Persons”

Standard formulations of trinitarian theology say that there is only one God
“in three Persons.” But what does this mean? How do these “Persons” relate
individually or collectively to the one God? How exactly are they “in” him?
More fundamentally, what is meant by “Person” here?
​To this last question, some trinitarians answer: basically, nothing. The
famous North African bishop Augustine, probably the most influential
“Western” catholic writer on the Trinity, said around the year 420,

So the only reason, it seems, why we do not call these three together
“one person,” as we call them “one being” and “one god,” but say
“three persons” while we never say “three gods” or “three beings,” is
that we want to keep at least one word for signifying what we mean by
“trinity,” so that we are not simply reduced to silence when we are
asked three what, after we have confessed that there are three.[72]

And in a controversy about the Trinity among London Anglicans in the

1690s, Anglican theologian John Wallis asserted that

The blessed Trinity is three somewhats; and these three somewhats

we commonly call “Persons,” but the true notion and true nature of that
distinction is unknown to us.[73]

Can this be the great discovery of Christian theology: that within the one
God there are three “somewhats,” three something-or-others?
​But it would seem that most trinitarians disagree, even trinitarians who
loudly emphasize our inability to understand God, or what these “Persons”
are. When you look at their speech and practice in unguarded moments you’ll
perceive that they think of the “Persons” in one of the ways outlined below,
so that a “they” or a “he” is meant.
 I​ n current English “person” often means “human being.” But this is not
what anyone means in the context of trinitarian theology; no one has ever
asserted that there are three human beings within God. These uses of
“person” are related, though. It is easy for any normal human to move beyond
the concept of a human person to the more abstract concept of a personal
being. A “person” in this sense is a someone, possibly a “he” or a “she,”
possibly a user of pronouns like “I” and “me,” and the adjective “my.” This is
the concept of a living being who can have a first-person perspective on the
world, which is to say, a being who can be conscious. But even worms,
probably, are conscious. A person is also capable of friendship and
intelligible communication. If there were to be an intelligent alien, like “E.T.”
in the famous movie by that name, he would be a person – not a human
person, but a “person” in the sense of a personal being, someone who can
give and receive communication, and even be a friend. Many mythical
creatures are supposed to be persons, such as gnomes, sprites, fairies,
leprechauns, spirits, angels, demons, and deities.
​In my view, this concept of a personal being is built into the human
species, and is found without exception in all times and places in human
history. Because in trinitarian theology theorists are wont to insist on some
special meaning for “Person,” I have labeled this universal concept as the
concept of a “self.” I think of me, the referent of my name, as a self, and so
did anyone in ancient China, or medieval Africa. We humans think of
ourselves as intelligent, conscious, living beings, capable of communication
and friendship.
​Of course, one’s culture may intervene, and cause a person to deny that
humans really are so many selves. In the earliest Buddhism, a central
teaching was that there really are no selves, though there appear to be. You
and I, in this teaching, dissolve under careful analysis. We turn out to be no
more than a huge mass of momentary mental and physical events.[74] And in
some varieties of Hinduism, it is taught that there is really only one self (the
ultimate reality, Brahman), though there appear to be many selves. Both
views, I suggest, cut against common sense, which acknowledges that you’re
one (real) self, and that I’m another self.
​It is impossible to ignore that prominently in the New Testament, two
members of the trinity/Trinity interact in I-Thou, Me-You ways, as person to
person, self to self. Thus, Jesus prays to his Father, and sometimes, the Father
speaks about or to Jesus. This seems to presuppose that both Father and Son
are selves. And in a few passages, “the Holy Spirit” is said to speak,
intercede, testify, or to grieve – things which arguably only selves can do.[75]
​Recent “social” trinitarians of the last fifty years or so have come up with
a new theme previously unheard of: the Trinity (or the trinity?) as a loving
community, a happy collective of friends, eternally enjoying one another.
These trinitarians are thinking of the three Persons as so many selves, that is
to say, as three personal beings or persons. This seems to accommodate the
New Testament portrayals of friendship and cooperation between the
“Persons,” but only at the cost of tritheism, a high price indeed. Isn’t
monotheism a non-negotiable, as far as the Bible is concerned? Doesn’t the
very of idea of a god in any sort of monotheism presuppose the absolute
impossibility of more than one?[76] Further, what has become of the idea of a
tripersonal god? Is the Trinity, the triune god, a mere group of deities, a
quasi-family, or a whole composed of deities which is not itself a deity, not a
god? How can the triune God not be a god?
​Against these three-self trinitarians, probably the larger group of
trinitarians in recent times have asserted that the “Persons” of the Trinity are
“not persons in the modern sense.” This tells us what they are not, but doesn’t
tell us what they are. It can mean as little as that the three selves are not
“separate from” one another, as they have perfect access to one another’s
thoughts, desires, feelings, and experiences. Or it can mean that the “Persons”
of the Trinity are not much like the “minds” or souls discussed in Western
philosophy since the work of René Descartes (1596-1650). In other words,
they are not non-physical selves.
​But what else might these eternal, divine “Persons” be, if they are not
selves? In general, non-social trinitarians consider them to be something less
than selves, that is, things which might exist in, or dependent upon a self. The
prominent 20th century trinitarian theologians, Karl Barth (1886-1968) and
Karl Rahner (1904-84) suggested, respectively, that “modes of being” or
“manners of subsisting” might be a better term for what God is three of. Why
did they say this? They were concerned to keep their theology monotheistic,
that is, presenting one and only one god. If the “Persons” are merely ways the
one god is, then to confess “three Persons” is not to confess three gods. On
this view, the “Persons” are not selves, but ways the one divine self is. I call
this one-self trinitarianism.
​What is a god? A divine being. What is a divine being? One popular
answer is that a divine being is one who has (and can’t lack) the divine
attributes. What are those? According to the Bible and later Christian
tradition, these include moral perfection, perfect freedom of action, unlimited
knowledge, and the greatest sort of power to intentionally act. It seems self-
evident that each attribute just named is the sort of feature only a self could
have.
​Also, notice the way Christians relate to God. Made for fellowship with
him, we have offended him, and so need to be reconciled to him. We need his
forgiveness. We talk to him, and sometimes through dreams, visions, or
written sources, God speaks back. When he does, he says, “I,” “me,” and
“my.” He’s a someone, a self. And not just any old self, but a divine one, the
only divine self, the only god. For Christians, “God” is not a force, a mere
idea, or a something-or-other. Our “God” is a someone, a “who” and a “he,”
to be compared to an ideal human parent, the heavenly “Father” taught by
Jesus and his apostles.
​We can’t, in the view of these theologians, posit three divine selves, for
those would be three gods, which is two too many. Yet, catholic tradition
insists that the three “Persons” of the Trinity are equally divine. They must
be, the thought goes, three ways that the one divine self is, three of his
modes.
​Lest someone object that this is “Sabellianism,” a view attributed to the
obscure third century theologian Sabellius, and repeatedly denounced since
then, these modern theologians have a reply: these modes are eternally
concurrent, not one-after-the-other, and each is essential to God. Basically,
they think that God lives in these three ways which we call “Father,” “Son,”
and “Holy Spirit.” Just what this amounts to is variously explained.
Sometimes these are compared to personalities or personas which may be
multiple within a single human person. In any case, in their view, we have
one divine self who lives his life as three “Persons,” and so we have precisely
one god, God.
​But what, we wonder, happened to that prominent New Testament theme
just mentioned, the interpersonal relationship between Father and Son? Can
this be understood as a friendship (or “friendship”) between two modes of
one divine self? Was the man Jesus a “mode” of the one God, and not a being
in his own right, a human self, which is to say, a living human being?
​Who is right? It looks like a tough dilemma. Either you give up real
interpersonal friendship between the “Persons,” or you compromise
monotheism, with three “fully divine” selves, each seemingly a god.
 ​ ight there by another way? Should we decline to say either that God is
M
more than one self, or that God is exactly one self? Is this a position we can
actually believe and practice? Could we in good faith maintain such a
silence? Some, loving paradoxes, may affirm both only one god and three
gods, or only one self and exactly three selves here, calling it a “holy
mystery.” But this is about as effective as deciding to call your pimple a
“beauty mark.” We consider an explicit (or obvious but implicit)
contradiction to be a theoretical failure in any other area. It is no achievement
to assert that God is and is not a single self, for this is to make a claim which
in principle can’t be true.
​These sorts of problems are widely avoided in recent academic theology.
Unable to pick, many theologians self-comfort with the falsehood that these
differences about the number of divine selves are merely differences of
emphasis. While there are differences of emphasis between various trinitarian
theologians, there are also substantial disagreements, as we’ve seen, on this
core issue of interpretation. One might say that in the realm of politics there
are differences of emphasis between an advocate of monarchy and an
advocate of democracy. No doubt this is true, but it’s not their main or only
difference. The monarchist asserts that one should rule, while the democrat
thinks many should rule.
​Another device used to put these disagreements out of one’s mind is to
talk loudly and often about “the” doctrine of the Trinity, as something agreed
on by all Christians, or nearly so. But the reality is more complex. The
Trinity is either a self or not. It’s a matter of logic that these can’t both be
true: there’s exactly one divine self, and there are exactly three divine selves.
​Until we decide what is meant by “Person” in the statement that “God is
three Persons” we’ll be unable to even search for reasons for or against, or to
decide whether the claim (which claim?) fits or misfits the Bible. One can’t
agree or disagree with an uninterpreted sentence. You may find such a
sentence in your church’s or denomination’s creed, something like:

The eternal triune God reveals Himself to us as Father, Son, and

Holy Spirit, with distinct personal attributes, but without division of
nature, essence, or being.[77]
“Himself.” So, the triune God is a single self, not a “they.” But also, each
of the three has his own “personal attributes.” Are there then four divine
selves here – God, Father, Son, and Spirit? Or do the three turn out to be
ways the one divine self is? Or, despite the capitalized pronoun, is the triune
god really not a self, but rather a group, community, or collective of selves?
Are we to flee here to contradictions or to obfuscation? The statement is
indeterminate; it’s vague enough to generate an unruly mob of clashing
interpretations.
​To their credit, analytic theologians (theologians trained in or at least
adept in the methods of recent analytic philosophy) do recognize that there is
a real, substantial disagreement here.[78] But no consensus has yet been
reached. A minority thinks that a wrong turn was taken, and that the catholic
language just needs to be set aside. After all, Christianity seemed to do rather
well before the fourth century. It has in various ways flourished since then,
but one must ask whether this is because of widely agreed catholic formulas,
or despite them.
​As we saw in chapter 5, the core of trinitarian theology (the theology of
the Trinity) was first officially affirmed in 381, that the Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit are three different “Persons” but the same in ousia. We’ve seen that
“Persons” can be understood as selves, or as mere ways a self is. We now
need to inquire about the meaning of this latter term ousia, usually translated
as “essence” or “substance.”
 7 “Substance” Abuse?

The innovative and (then) controversial formulation introduced at a meeting

of catholic bishops in the year 325 was that the Father and the Son are
homoousion, “same ousia.” But what is an ousia? This question continues to
haunt trinitarian theology. Until we understand the meaning of a sentence, we
can’t agree or disagree with it, or even go looking for evidence for or against
it.
​Previously, the word ousia was a technical term in Greek philosophy,
with a number of somewhat related meanings. In English it is usually
translated as “essence” or “substance,” sometimes as “being.” Starting at the
325 council at Nicea, and continuing through a long series of bitter
controversies right up through the council in 381, a certain party of catholic
bishops took a philosophers’ word and made it the centerpiece of their
theology. Their approach was then enforced by church and state as the one
permitted confessional standard.
​Laying aside issues of procedure, the problem with this is that it wasn’t
clear then, and it isn’t clear now, how we should interpret that key term, and
thus the key claim. To reduce our confusion about the Trinity, we must
consider the various possible meanings of the term ousia, and decide which
the bishops meant, or at any rate, which is the relevant meaning for
trinitarians today.
​Rather than lecture you on Greek philosophy, I’ll now explain nine
potential interpretations, nine candidate meanings of “ousia.” For each, first
I’ll give you a plausible philosophical claim which employs the word ousia in
that meaning. This will supply us with a distinct interpretation of the claim
that Father and Son are the “same ousia.” Finally, I’ll mention one or more
obvious problems with a Christian affirming Father and Son to be one ousia
in that sense. I focus mostly on theological or biblical problems, although in
many cases the interpretation just considered assumes the truth of some
controversial philosophical theory.[79]
 1. Same individual entity. Meaning: You are the numerically same
ousia (individual being, particular entity) as yourself. Anything there is, of
course, is the same being as itself. A certain electron will be the same being
as itself, just as you are the same being as yourself.
​Interpretation: The Father and Son are the same being / entity.
​Problem: The Father and Son have qualitatively differed from one
another. But it is self-evident that nothing can, at one time, or eternally,
qualitatively differ from itself.[80] This proves that Father and Son are not
numerically identical, i.e. one and the same being/entity. For instance, as
Jesus prayed in Gethsemane, he did not want to be crucified, but at that same
time the Father did want Jesus to be crucified.[81] Again, God sent his only
Son to be the savior of humanity,[82] whereas Jesus doesn’t have any unique
Son.
2. Same universal essence. Meaning: You are the same ousia
(universal essence) as me. All humans are or have the same ousia, which is
humanity. Similarly, all dogs share caninity, and all gods (were there to be
many) would share divinity.
​Interpretation: The Father and Son are both divine; each has the universal
essence divinity.
​Problem: to be divine is to be a god. Thus, given that they are not
numerically identical to one another, the Father and Son are two different
gods. But the Bible explicitly insists that there is only one god, so that God is
unique. This is who the New Testament calls “the Father.”[83]
3. Same individual essence. Meaning: Although you and I have the
same universal kind essence, we do not have the same individual kind ousia.
You have your own individual humanity, and I have my own humanity. In
principle, an individual kind essence can’t be shared by two. Anyone with
your individual kind essence just is you (i.e. is numerically identical to you).
​Interpretation: The Father and Son have one individual essence of
divinity between them.
​Problem: This implies that the Father just is the Son, and vice-versa (i.e.
that Father and Son are numerically one). But this clashes with the fact that in
both scripture and in later Christian traditions, the Father and Son have
actually differed. (See 1 above.)
4. Same haecceity. Meaning: You have the same ousia (haecceity) as
yourself, which is the property of being you, the individual entity that you
are, or the property which explains why you are the individual that you are.
​Interpretation: The Father and Son share the property being the one God
himself.
​Problem: The Father and Son share a haecceity, a property which implies
that they are the same individual being / entity. This implies that the Father
just is the Son, and vice-versa (i.e. that Father and Son are numerically one).
See the Problem under interpretation 1 above.
5. Same kind of matter. Meaning: A pure gold ring is the same ousia
(i.e. is constituted by the same kind of matter) as a pure gold idol. That is,
they’re formed of the same sort of matter, namely gold.
​Interpretation: Father and Son are constituted by the same kind of matter.
​Problem: Are the Father and Son both material beings / entities, that they
are both constituted by any sort of matter at all? Most traditions say that the
Father is not constituted by any type of matter, so that he can’t share matter
with anyone.
6. Same portion of matter. Meaning: Imagine the Greek Parthenon,
which features pillars shaped like maidens. Consider one such item. One may
think that there are actually two co-located objects there, a statue of a maiden
(which wouldn’t survive being sanded smooth), and a pillar (which would
survive being sanded smooth). If there are two such objects in the same space
at the same time, it is plausible that both are one ousia in the sense of being
constituted by the same portion of matter, i.e. a certain portion of marble.
​Interpretation: The Father and Son are constituted by the same portion of
matter.
​Problem: Are the Father and Son both material beings? Again, tradition
firmly says no.
7. Same parts. Meaning: You’ve built a small tower out of Lego bricks
A, B, and C. Those bricks are one ousia in the sense that they are beings
which are parts of one whole being. The whole tower is composed of A, B,
and C.
​Interpretation: The Father and Son are parts of a whole, i.e. two of the
three parts of the Trinity, the third part being the Holy Spirit.
​Problem: Historical trinitarian traditions firmly deny that the triune God is
composed of any proper parts. Traditionally, many theologians have accepted
the metaphysical theory that God must be simple, absolutely without parts of
any kind.[84] But aside from this difficult and controversial thesis, trinitarian
theologians always want to say that each “Person” of the Trinity is “fully
God,” not one third of God.
8​ . Similar beings. Meaning: Imagine that you meet your
“doppelganger,” i.e. a person unrelated to you who looks almost exactly like
you. You and this person are one ousia (one being, as it were) in the sense
that you are similar in some respects, in this case visual appearance. If you’ve
seen one, you’ve seen the other, so to speak.
​Interpretation: The Father and Son are very qualitatively similar. This
leaves it as an open question whether they share any essence, or whether or
not they’re numerically one, though usually when we observe the similarity
of things we’re presupposing that they are indeed two, not the same thing
observed twice.
​Problem: While this seems to be a straightforward New Testament
teaching, that the Son of God is qualitatively like the god whose son he is, in
respect of character and action,[85] this does not imply the trinitarian claim
that they are “equally divine,” or even that the Son is literally divine in any
way beyond being in some sense God’s unique “Son.”
9​ . Self and his action. Meaning: Famous American civil rights leader
pastor Martin Luther King Jr. was, at most times and in most ways, an
ordinary African American man of his era. But given the occasion to speak
publicly, he morphed into Preacher Man, a passionate and poetic character
who preached loudly and in a certain moving cadence. Someone who knew
King as a child might, upon encountering Preacher Man, suppose that this
can’t possibly be the Martin that he used to know. But that would be a
mistake. Preacher Man is a different persona than Martin as he is at home
with his wife and children, but he’s not a person in addition to Martin. He is
Martin. Or more properly, he’s a way that Martin is sometimes; he’s Martin
when Martin does his preacher thing. Between Martin and Preacher Man,
there is only one ousia, one being, namely Martin. Preacher Man is a thing
Martin does on certain occasions; “he” is just Martin acting in a certain way.
​Interpretation: The logos (the “Word” of John 1:1, understood as the
divine element in Jesus) is just God acting in a certain way to create and
redeem. This logos “became flesh” (John 1:14) in the sense that that he
somehow gained or united with a human body, and it is this logos who is the
one self, the one person in the life of Jesus. He’s simply God, living and
interacting with us by means of a human body. Between the Father and the
Son there is but one person, namely the Father.
​Problem: The Son of God is understood by all Christians to be a self, a
person, and truly human. But how can an action of God together with a body
amount to a person who can love and obey the Father, a someone who has a
human life which he can freely choose to let others take? Wouldn’t this
instead just be God puppeteering a human body? Moreover, on this scheme
how could the Father and Son enjoy the interpersonal relationship we see in
the New Testament, in which they talk to one another, and cooperate
together? [86] Further, the New Testament teaches that the risen and exalted
Son serves as an intermediary between God and (other) humans.[87] But God
acting in a certain way in principle could not be an intermediary, a third
party, between the worshiper and her God. If you are to serve as a mediator
between me and him, you can’t be him!
​We see nine options here. I’m not sure that these are all the options, but
I’m sure that these are different options. And we should not think that this
just a matter of individual taste, like picking a favorite flavor of ice cream, or
that we’re dealing merely with different emphases. No, each claim is
different, although the claims are related to each other in various ways.
​But which of these did the ancient bishops actually have in mind? Both
history and logic are of help here. As to logic, we must observe that some of
possible interpretations of ousia logically imply others, most notably the
problematic 1. Options 3 and 4 imply 1 (though not vice-versa). That is, if
Father and Son share one individual essence (3) or one haecceity (4), this
implies that they are numerically one entity (1). Such properties are defined
as being in principle unshareable; they can only be had by one entity. About
the “not vice-versa” above: if Father and Son are one entity, consistent with
this there may be no such things as individual essences or haecceities. This is
why it is not obvious that option 1 implies either 3 or 4. That there are entities
is undeniable; that there are individual essences or haecceities can be denied,
and is denied by philosophers who are convinced that there is no need to
posit these sorts of attributes.
These implications are important, because option 1 should be unacceptable
to any Christian. The New Testament clearly assumes and implies that there
have been and indeed are differences between the Father and the Son. All of
the bishops we’re trying to interpret would have been aware of these
scriptural basics. Thus, we should be wary of attributing such claims to them.
We should avoid, if possible, supposing that they thought Jesus and the
Father to be numerically one and yet to have differed at some time. This
would be to claim that something is and isn’t some way at a single time, an
obvious falsehood.[88]
​Happily, the bishops’ own words lead us away from this uncharitable
interpretation. They start by professing belief in

…one God the Father all powerful… And in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the Son of God…[89]

That “and” seems important; these are two objects of Christian faith. As
with Paul, we are to believe in one God and in one Lord.[90] It seems they did
not suppose the Father and Son to be numerically the same, that is, to bear the
relation to one another that you bear only to yourself.
​Further, their official statement clearly implies differences between the
Father and the Son. The Son is “the only-begotten begotten from the Father,
that is from the substance of the Father,” but the Father, they are surely
assuming, is not begotten at all, much less from himself, or from his own
ousia, whatever that could mean. They go on to describe the Son as “true
God from true God, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father.” Note
that there are two here being described as “true God,” and the assertion is that
eternally, somehow, one is from the other. The second “true God,” they go on
to say, became human, suffered (on the cross), was raised from the dead and
exalted, and is destined to be our judge. They assume here that the first “true
God” never did these things.
​All in all, it is clear that they assume differences between the Father and
Son. Only the Son was eternally begotten, became human, died, and was
raised and exalted. Only the Father, in contrast, was unbegotten, remained
non-human, and never died, rose, or was exalted by himself. Even though
these bishops weren’t metaphysicians, we must charitably assume that their
central claim that Father and Son are one ousia doesn’t have a meaning that
implies the numerical identity of Father and Son. Thus, we should rule out
option 1, as well as options 3 and 4, because these plainly imply 1. This
leaves only options 2 and options 5-9.
​Which of these might those bishops have meant, in deciding to renounce
the christology of Arius in 325? They must have meant at least option 8, that
Father and Son are very similar, specifically (against Arius) that both are
eternal and uncreated. Surely both are called “true God” because of their
similarities. These bishops assume both to be eternal, and they say both are
incapable of “change or alteration.” (This raises obvious problems in the case
of the Son, but let those slide for now.) Are these similarities properties
which the Father and Son just so happen to possess, or are they essential,
defining properties? It would seem the latter, as there’s a background
assumption in the philosophy of this era that what is divine (“true God”) is so
by its very essence or nature. Thus, they seem to commit not only to option 8,
but also to option 2. Presumably, they don’t mean the Son to be “true God”
using those words non-literally. And I suggest that they don’t mean him to
have this status non-essentially either. Rather, they mean the Son to be
essentially divine, to have a divine essence (ousia), just like his Father, and
this because of his Father, because of his Father’s mysterious act of eternally
begetting him. This is why the Son can’t change; divine beings can’t change
in any way. This was a popular philosophical-theological assumption at the
time.[91]
​What about options 5 and 6? Would they add that the divine beings are
composed of the same sort of matter, or even very same portion of matter?
Presumably not. It is true that some earlier catholics like Tertullian held God
to be composed of a spiritual sort of matter, and that he generated the Son by
sharing a portion of his matter with him, so that it simultaneously constituted
the Son and partially constituted the Father.[92] But this view of God and the
other members of the triad as material beings had been vigorously opposed
by the leading teacher Origen.[93]
​It is also true that Athanasius, the tireless polemicist on behalf of this
Nicene creed, often talked as if he had in mind an analogy with human
reproduction. At the time this was understood to involve the man introducing
the matter necessary for a fetus into the woman, who provided only a suitable
environment for it to develop into a new human body. Similarly, Athanasius
seems to imagine that God eternally produces the Son not ex nihilo (out of
nothing) but rather from his own substance (stuff?), making him to be a “true
Son” of his Father.
​But these bishops probably also assumed that anything composed of
matter was subject to change, whereas God was unchangeable. And given the
influence of Platonism, and its assumption that the ultimate reality is utterly
simple, without parts or different components in any sense, I don’t suppose
that most of them would have thought the Father has any sort of matter at all.
This same assumption of divine simplicity rules out God having the Father
and Son as parts (interpretation 7). Thus, they could not have been asserting
7. I suggest then that they could not have been asserting any of options 5-7,
and that the majority would deny all three if given the chance. But these
points were not at issue between the majority and the minority “Arian” party.
​One motive of the “Arians” was the preservation of monotheism. They
accomplished this by asserting the numerical identity of (only) the Father
with the one God, emphasizing that the Son is not divine in exactly the same
way as the Father is divine. How, then, is this anti-Arian Nicene creed
monotheistic? Their statement features two “Gods,” that is, two who are each
called “God” and “true God.” By itself, this is compatible with monotheism.
Monotheism is the claim that there’s only one god, not the claim that only
one being can be properly addressed or described as “a god” or “God” or
even “true God.”
​If I’m right that not only option 8 but also 2 was meant, then we also have
two beings who are by their essence divine, which is to say two gods. They
seem to be implying that the Father is a god, and the Son is another god.
​But they explicitly say, “We believe in one God the Father all powerful,
maker of all things…” whereas the Son is only the one “through whom all
things came to be.” After a series of “canons” (official rulings on practical
questions) they end their official document with:

Pray for us all that our decisions may remain secure through
almighty God and our lord Jesus Christ in the holy Spirit, to whom is the
glory for ever and ever. Amen.[94]

The “to whom” here at the end is singular. Why? Furthermore, what
about our option 9?
​History helps here; recent work illuminates how many thought of the
theological options in 325. Most accepted that the logos, the “Word” of John
1:1 is the divine element within Jesus Christ. But they did not understand this
in the same way. Going back to the late 100s, some “monarchian” catholics
understood God’s logos, by which he created all things (John 1:3), as an
action of God. In eternity, this Word or thought was internal to the being of
God. But in order to create, God “spoke out” this thought, externalized it. But
it isn’t another being; it’s just God acting. This view had some popularity in
the Western, Latin-speaking portion of the empire from at least the late 100s
through at least the first three quarters of the 300s. A leading exponent was a
bishop named Marcellus of Ancyra (d. c. 374), who was present at and
possibly influential at Nicea in 325. Recent historians call this
“miahypostatic” theology, meaning a view on which God and his logos are
one hypostasis, which in this period simply means entity, individual being.[95]
On this outlook, if you say “God and his logos” you’ve named only one
being, first directly (“God”) and then again by way of his action (logos)
which resulted in the cosmos.
​In contrast, the sort of view which was dominant in the Eastern, Greek-
speaking portion of the empire is now described as “duohypostatic.” Here
God and his Word are two entities, two beings. In eternity God exists
independently of anything else, but also in timeless eternity, he causes the
logos/Word to exist. This Word is like him and divine. But unlike God, his
existence depends on another (i.e. God). Thus, although divine, this logos is a
lesser being, a subordinate deity. Some refused to call this Word “eternal,”
thinking that this implies that he’s eternal and independent like God, but in
this period most think that there’s no time when this Word doesn’t exist. This
is often expressed by saying that he was “begotten” by God “before the
ages.”[96] In chapter 5 we saw this sort of view in the very influential Origen,
who died in the middle of the third century. In early fourth century, this sort
of view is defended by the famous church historian and bishop Eusebius of
Caesarea (c. 260-340), the influential bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia (d. 342),
and many others, as reflected in a number of councils (also called synods)
held between 341 and 360.[97]
​Here’s how the history is relevant to interpretation 9, where the logos is
just God acting. After the fact, to many proponents of duohypostatic
theology, the Nicene Creed of 325 sounded like an assertion of the
miahypostatic view. The reason was that ousia (“substance”) could be a
synonym of hypostasis (“being”). Thus, their assertion that God and his logos
or Son were “one ousia” could be read as an assertion that there was but one
entity between them, as in our interpretation 9. Again, Marcellus was at the
325 council and may have been influential there. In any case, in the 340s he
began to promote its creed as a standard of what he considered to be
orthodoxy. But this clashed with the longstanding and widespread
duohypostatic theories. Many associated Marcellus with the 325 creed, and in
their eyes both were basically latter-day versions of monarchian heresy.
Eventually, Marcellus’s distinctive take on John 1 was condemned by both
Western and Eastern councils, and he probably modified his views away
from monarchianism. This eventually enabled wider acceptance of the 325
formulas.[98]
 ​ hy then the singular “to whom” at the end of the creed? This could be
W
read in two ways. A duohypostatic theologian could read it as referring back
to the Father, the ultimate recipient of glory given to others, to the Son and
Spirit.[99] But just as easily, a miahypostatic theologian could read it as
assuming there is but one “who” between the Father, Son, and Spirit, and this
is the Father himself, the one God. It would be anachronistic, incidentally, to
read the “to whom” as referring to the Trinity, to a god who is supposed to be
tripersonal. There’s no mention of such a being anywhere here in this creed
from 325. The point is that at its beginning and at its end, this council’s
statement could be read as asserting a miahypostatic theology.
​Some critics of Nicea also thought they detected a whiff of our material
interpretations (5 or 6) in that creed, in its newfangled assertion that the Son
(logos) was begotten (i.e. eternally generated) from God’s “substance,”
which might mean his stuff or matter.[100] However, most historians now
think that this is not likely what most of them meant.
​These two sides had clashing ways of making their Christian theology
monotheistic. The duohypostatic side followed a long tradition, going back to
Justin Martyr (d. c. 165) of emphasizing the unique status of the Father. He’s
the one true God. The “second god,” the Word, is in a sense divine, but is not
great enough to be an additional god. In contrast, the miahypostatic
theologians made sure that the logos was not a second deity by making clear
that he’s not a being in his own right. He’s just the Father, the one God,
acting in certain ways. There aren’t two gods in this picture because a god is
a certain sort of entity, and there’s only one entity (hypostasis) between God
and his Word, and that’s God, in other words, the Father.
​Which side is this creed on? In agreement with both sides, it asserts the
identity of the one god with the Father only, the only “Almighty,” and the
unique ultimate source of all else, including the Son. But the creed seems,
unclearly, also to imply that the Son too is by his essence divine
(interpretation 2), which is to say that he is not only called “God” but is in
truth a god. But is he the same god as his Father, or is he a second god?
Miahypostatic theologians could read this creed in accordance with their
theory that the eternal, uncreated Word is in eternity an attribute, and then an
action of God. Preacher Man is just as human as Martin Luther King Jr. Just
so, this Word may be understood as divine, because it’s just God acting to
create and redeem.
​On the other hand, nothing in the creed demands that the Word is just a
way God is or acts. If he’s a being in his own right, numerically distinct from
God (because eternally begotten by him), then if he’s divine, he must be
another god. Polytheism, then, seems to be implied, unless we back off on 2
(same universal essence) and read the creed as only asserting 8 (similarity).
And the creed seems to allow this interpretation. After all, here the Son is
“the only-begotten… from the Father,” but the Father is not from any other.
Maybe, then, even though each can be called “true God,” the Father is divine
in a way in which the Son is not. Isn’t radical independence of anything else
(later called aseity) a divine attribute? This reading is a stretch, perhaps, but
seems to have been available to duohypostatic theologians at the council.
We must remember that the main purpose of this meeting was to reject the
distinctive teachings of Arius. To get an overwhelming vote against Arius
and his few supporters, the document had to be vague enough for people with
clashing theologies to sign on to, with perhaps a little pressure from the
emperor who summoned them. Even seeing the ambiguities, they could hold
their nose and sign it, never imagining that it would later become the central
statement of Christian belief, the all-important dividing line between
orthodoxy and heresy when it comes to the triad.
​This elevation of the Nicene creed didn’t happen right away, and it is
beyond the scope of this little book to describe its changes of fortune between
325 and 381. It was at various times and places, forgotten, denounced,
replaced, and passionately defended. A lot of additional theorizing was done
in these years, amidst quite a lot of political maneuvering. As we’ve seen,
this creed describes a trinity, but no Trinity is mentioned, assumed, or
implied there. Its main thrust is the similarity of the Word and God, and this
is seemingly a matter of their having one universal essence. What is implied
about the number of gods is unclear, although it explicitly asserts the
traditional view that the one God is the Father.
​The 381 council in Constantinople re-affirmed the 325 creed. It also
revised it, omitting the claim that the Son was begotten from the ousia of the
Father, and considerably expanding Nicea’s account of the Spirit. The 325
creed ends with the seeming afterthought

And in the holy Spirit.[101]

In contrast, the 381 creed credits the Spirit with playing a role in the
Incarnation of the logos,[102] and adds:
 And [we believe] in the Spirit, the holy, the lordly and life-giving
one, proceeding forth from the Father, co-worshipped and co-glorified
with Father and Son, the one who spoke through the prophets…[103]

The bishops stop short here of saying that the Spirit is also the same ousia
as the Father, lest they touch off another long controversy. However, I
believe that they do mean to imply it.
​As best I can tell, by this 381 meeting, a majority assumed that being “the
same ousia” implied that Father, Son, and Spirit were (or were “in”) the same
god. That is, the triad is now understood as the Trinity. The one god is triune,
the three “Persons” somehow within him. This is the first really trinitarian
(Trinity-implying) catholic creed. If I understand them correctly, the bishops
in 381 meant “same ousia” in the sense not only of our interpretations 8 and
2, similarity and same universal essence, but also in the sense of
interpretation 3 or 4, same individual essence or haecceity. They need
something like 3 or 4 to get the implication that the Three are the same god.
But then, it is mysterious how they thought they could avoid interpretation 1,
which would collapse the “Three” into one self-identical entity!
​Shortly after this meeting, we see writers like the very influential
Augustine (354-430) confidently asserting that the one God Yahweh is the
whole Trinity, and that this is what the catholic movement has always taught,
since it is obviously (!) implied by scripture.[104] In his famous book The City
of God Augustine writes,

There is, then, a Good which alone is simple, and therefore alone
immutable, and this is God. By this Good all other goods have been
created; but they are not simple, and therefore not immutable.
‘Created,’ I say: that is, made, not begotten. For That Which is begotten
of the Simple Good is Itself simple, and is the same as That of Which It
is begotten. These two we call the Father and the Son, and both,
together with the Holy Spirit, are the one God. …But the Holy Spirit is
another person than the Father and the Son, for he is neither the Father
nor the Son. But I say ‘another person,’ and not ‘another thing,’
because He, like them, is simple, and, like them, He is the immutable
and co-eternal Good. This Trinity is one God: it is simple even though it
is a Trinity.[105]
 Here, we see that catholic theology has developed far beyond the creed of
325. Both the 381 creed and Augustine’s assertions bristle with problems.
What is a “Person” if not a certain being? How then can Father and Son and
Spirit be different “Persons” while being the same being? Hasn’t it just been
implied that the “three” of them are really one and the same, numerically one,
one ousia in the sense of our option 1 above? If so, how could “they”
eternally differ from one another? Wouldn’t this amount to a single entity in
eternity being and not being the same way? Isn’t that impossible? And how
can God be both triune and utterly simple, that is, devoid of parts, and of any
sort of inner complexity?
​In my view, Augustine has no clear answers.[106] In recent times analytic
philosophers have suggested that Father and Son can be the same god without
being the same being/entity (that is, without being numerically identical).
Some, for philosophical reasons we can’t go into here, dismiss our concerns
about option 1, and a few others now stump for trinitarianism now being
understood in sense 6 above, where the members of the trinity share one
portion of something like matter, whatever may have been meant in 325 or
381.[107]
​As observers of the United States Supreme Court know, legislation may
be passed under the assumption of one interpretation, yet a new and different
interpretation may later be imposed on it and made into the official, enforced
meaning of the older language. Once born, a law has a life of its own. But a
country’s laws must be given some understandable interpretation or other, so
that they can be applied and enforced.
​In contrast, when it comes to official trinitarian formulations, some will
celebrate them as either uninterpretable or interpretable only in incoherent
ways. Perhaps a good Christian ought not presume to understand the
formulas at all, but should only humbly receive and repeat them, embracing
the Trinity as a holy “mystery.” We now turn to such “mysterian”
approaches.
 8 Mystery Mountain

Equivocal terms are the enemy of clear thinking. It is common to hear that
the Trinity is “a mystery.” But what does “mystery” mean here?
​Sometimes all that is meant is that the triune God is a great, wonderful,
complicated reality, a reality greater than we can adequately or fully
understand. Call this the honorific sense of “mystery.” It’s not unlike calling
a book or movie “profound” or “deep.” The non-trinitarian Christian will
agree with the trinitarian that God is a “mystery” in this sense. Such
statements usually occur in a context of worship or religious exhortation, not
in theological controversy.
​Second, sometimes “the Trinity is a mystery” means that the triune God
can’t be fully understood. The non-trinitarian Christian will agree with the
trinitarian that God is a “mystery” in this sense. To fully understand him
would require knowing all the contents of his future plans, which none of us
does.
​Third, sometimes “the Trinity is a mystery” means that the triune God
can’t be fully explained. The non-trinitarian Christian will agree with the
trinitarian that God is a “mystery” in this sense. To fully explain God would
be to explain the timing and method of all that he does, which none of us can.
​Fourth, sometimes “the Trinity is a mystery” is a way of stopping the
conversation. It’s being asserted that the difficulty at hand, whatever it is, is
insurmountable, something our best efforts cannot resolve. This is both an
understandable and a ridiculous claim. Of course, it is reasonable to bring any
conversation to an end at some point, and often some issue will be left
unresolved. And it is often reasonable and humble simply to admit that for
now, we can’t resolve some difficulty in our theory. But what’s ridiculous is
to claim that no one else could – that the difficulty is unresolvable, something
that the human race, or the Christian community, must just accept and learn
to live with. From our own theoretical failure, we should be hesitant to infer
that no living person could do better. This is to suppose that we are more
competent and/or better informed and/or more diligent than all others. Are we
really all that?
​It doesn’t help to wave our arms and intone that some of humanity’s
greatest minds have tried and failed to solve this difficulty. That may be so,
but humanity’s greatest minds, and even Christianity’s greatest theologians,
are most likely not in agreement when it comes to this difficulty of ours, and
in general, about the Trinity (or the trinity). Again, some past and present
Christians, who seem to be fully informed and generally intelligent, do not
accept any Trinity theory, holding that the one God is the Father alone.
Further, most likely some brilliant, trinitarian, present-day Christian
philosophers, rightly or wrongly, think that our difficulty is solvable. While it
has become familiar and comfortable to us, perhaps this difficulty is a price
that a trinitarian need not and should not pay. Yes, maybe our difficulty has
resulted from our flying too close to the sun, up to the point where its
brightness blinds our eyes. Or, it could be that it is a flashing red light,
showing that we’ve driven up to a theoretical dead end, and we need to turn
around.
​Fifth, sometimes “the Trinity is a mystery” means that the doctrine of the
Trinity is unintelligible, or nearly so. Some ancient “church Fathers” hold
that the doctrine of the Trinity can’t be literally understood, so that we’re
forced to use analogies to describe it, all of which are very bad analogies.
But, they seem to think, piling bad analogy upon bad analogy can, somehow,
yield a small degree of understanding of this doctrine − at least, enough to
inspire us to pursue this triune God.
​Here we are neck-deep in controversial claims. Why think we can only
understand this doctrine by using multiple, admittedly bad analogies? Why
think that piling up admittedly bad analogies leads to any positive
understanding of what the Trinity is?
​Some trinitarians actually propose literally understandable models of the
Trinity, urging that it means there are three divine selves who function as
one, or one divine self who eternally lives his life in three different ways.
​Other learned trinitarians propose what they say are fairly apt analogies,
comparing God to a family, or to a being, his mind, and his love, a man who
plays three roles in his life, an animal with three heads and three minds, or a
mental patient with multiple personality disorder. Some suggest that while
such analogies are not wholly adequate, even so, some of them are usable
enough, and some are better than others.
 ​ ne must suspect flim-flam in the claim that an all-important doctrine
O
pretty much can’t be understood. If it is important for us to believe that “God
is one ousia in three Persons,” we must not only be able to pronounce
sentences like that, but must also grasp their meaning. It’s not enough here to
point at the alleged experts, and say that we mean whatever they mean. And
it can’t merely amount to claiming that God is one in some way and three in
another way. Theologians point out that this would leave heretical
“modalism” as an option. There are many important truths which we ordinary
laypeople can’t understand without some tutoring. Let the experts come forth
then and answer this question: exactly what is this important truth conveyed
by sentences like “God is one ousia in three Persons”?
​Our problem is that the experts do not agree. Some expound the Trinity as
a community of loving selves, and others as a single self living in three
different ways. And some tell us that if we think we understand it, we don’t
understand it. They seem, then, to be urging us to just obediently mouth the
trinitarian sentences, whether the ancient creeds, or the simplified ones found
in current Protestant statements of faith. But this sort of thing would strike us
as bizarre, and maybe even abusive, were we to observe it in some other
religious setting.
​Imagine that a guru named Opi tells his disciples to believe that “Opi is
the dopi.” When questioned about the meaning of this, suppose he stonewalls
them. We would feel bad for his disciples; it would seem that their master is
not treating them like intelligent adults. How do they know that what they’re
saying isn’t false? After all, while mouthing the sentence, they literally don’t
know what they’re saying.
​Or perhaps he merely tells them some implications of it; he says that it
implies that he’s not an egg, and that he’s not an elephant. Still, they’re none
the wiser about what it does mean. Or perhaps he tells them that it means that
Opi is like a lightning storm, but also like photosynthesis. And that he’s like
fire, but also that he’s like ice. And their guru is a pond and a desert, a
meatball and a bowl of soup. Perhaps he tells them that there’s no good
analogy to explain the meaning of “Opi is the dopi,” nor can it be understood
apart from any analogy. Such disciples will start to suspect that he doesn’t
know what it means either!
​But maybe he does. When not pontificating on the ineffability of “Opi is
the dopi” he acts like he understands it. One of his disciples wonders aloud
whether it’s right to worship Opi, and Opi tells him that it is right, because
Opi is the dopi. A reporter asks, isn’t this guru fallible, given his apparently
false predictions about world events, and the guru replies that because he is
the dopi, he knows all. The same reporter asks him about being sued by ex-
disciples, and Opi replies that “None can oppose the dopi; his will is of
infinite force.” An elderly student asks how it could be that Opi knows so
much, given that he’s only 50, and Opi replies, “You forget that I am the
dopi; the dopi is never born, but is even before the Big Bang.”
​You’re starting to get an idea what he thinks it is to be “the dopi,” aren’t
you?
​Opi is having it both ways. His mantra has enough meaning to guide the
thoughts of his disciples towards him, but it is simply out of bounds to
question the guru about this teaching. He gets to ask the questions. Your role
is to listen and repeat, and to agree with whatever he says is implied by “Opi
is the dopi.” You must know your place, my child. It is a mystery.
​So it is with those who claim that the doctrine of the Trinity is a holy
mystery in the sense that it has no or almost no intelligible content. Observe
that in unguarded moments, they act like they understand it rather well! You
will know them by their fruits.
​Now imagine that our guru Opi changes his strategy. He now tells his
disciples that “Opi is the dopi” means that Opi is eternally the uniquely
smartest teacher, and also that eternally, there is a teacher smarter than Opi.
Here, he teaches them to believe an apparent contradiction, that eternally, Opi
is and is not the smartest teacher.
​But is it a real contradiction, and so false? After all, sometimes an
apparent contradiction turns out to be only apparent. If Sally says “I’m tall
and I’m not,” what she says may be true after all, if what she means is that
she’s somewhat tall but not very tall. Or perhaps she means that she’s tall
relative to some people, but not tall relative to others.
​So the sentence “Opi is eternally the uniquely smartest teacher, and also
eternally, there is a teacher smarter than Opi” may actually be coherent and
true, if there is at least one equivocal term in it, a term with more than one
meaning. For instance, perhaps “Opi” refers to one man in the first clause,
and to a different man in the second clause. Or maybe “smartest” has to do
with one sort of intelligence, and “smarter” has to do with another sort. But
let’s suppose that our guru refuses to clarify, refuses to show his disciples
that at least one term is equivocal.
​It seems they ought to conclude that what he says is incoherent, and so
false. They’re pretty sure that the two parts can’t both be true. Are they more
sure than this, that each one is true? It would seem not!
​This scenario illustrates the sixth meaning of “the Trinity is a mystery.”
One may mean that the Trinity doctrine is apparently self-contradictory
(incoherent), and not just at first glance, but whenever one thinks long and
hard about it. Like our imagined guru Opi, they won’t and can’t tell us where
there is any equivocation in trinitarian sentences, so that they may turn out to
be coherent after all. At least in modern times, in part due to the profundities
and perplexities of modern physics, this way of defending trinitarian belief
has struck some intelligent Christians as a reasonable procedure. I call this
“positive mysterianism” about the Trinity.
​But it seems more reasonable in the abstract, where one doesn’t actually
say what apparent contradiction one has in mind. For instance, these three
claims appear, about as clearly any three do, to be an inconsistent triad – a set
such that if any two of them are true, the remaining one must be false.

1. Jesus just is God.

2. The Father just is God.
3. It is not the case that Jesus just is the Father.

“Just is” means “is numerically the same as” in all three claims. If you
must believe all three, then you must knowingly believe at least one false
claim, even if you’re not sure which it is. Still, this may strike some as an
exercise of epistemic humility. However, 1 and 2 clearly imply this:
4. Jesus just is the Father.
How? Things numerically identical to the same thing (here, God) must
also be numerically identical to one another. This is self-evident. Now pair 4
with 3:
3. It is not the case that Jesus just is the Father.
4. Jesus just is the Father.
Agreeing to both 3 and 4 doesn’t seem at all clever, humble, or
sophisticated, does it? Their logical form is, respectively, not-P and P. You
would be simultaneously affirming and denying the same claim. Someone
who asks you to affirm 1-3 is in effect asking you to affirm both 3 and 4. The
thing seemed reasonable so long as you overlooked 4. But now you can’t
unsee it.
​“But it could be a merely apparent contradiction.”
 I​ n some sense of “could,” yes. But no matter how many times you re-
examine 3 and 4, they seem to be contradictories (statements such that one
must be true and the other false). If the contradiction were merely apparent,
there would have to be an equivocation somewhere in their terms, but you
can’t find any. You’re stuck with thinking that this contradiction is real.
​When a contradiction is gestured at from afar or obliquely, you think, “I
can learn to live with that.” But when it’s dragged into the cold, harsh light of
day, it’s just a bad old stinking contradiction, a sure sign that your theorizing
has gone astray somewhere.
​The humble thing is to admit that you must have made a mistake
somewhere in your reasoning, and then to diligently try to find and correct
that mistake. When you come to a dead end in your journey, you put the car
in reverse and find another way. You don’t get out of the car and celebrate,
pretending that this was your destination all along.
​For a few of the most serious and clever among us, mystery-mongering
dies hard. They will stubbornly resist this attack on positive mysterianism
about the Trinity, kicking back hard. They may say:

I knew all along that the Trinity was going to be mysterious. And so
now that I’ve discovered one way in which it is mysterious, well, I do
celebrate it. You can rub my face in the apparent incoherence all you
want, but it smells just fine to me. I celebrate the mystery of God and
don’t try to explain it away. You want to know whether in the New
Testament, Jesus is numerically identical with or numerically distinct
from his Father? The scriptural answer is: yes! I mean, yes to both. It’s
not my fault if you don’t like the scriptural answer.

What this last part ignores is that it is uncharitable to any author, human
or divine, to attribute a contradiction to him. Incoherent readings of a text
should be a last resort, and the less likely we think it is that an author is
confused, the more reluctant we should be to attribute a contradiction to him.
We must be sure we’ve really discovered “the scriptural answer,” rather than
foisting our own confusion onto the text. For example, suppose that someone
read this passage and thought that “Paul” and “Apollos” were names for one
and the same man.

Even now you are still not ready, for you are still of the flesh. For as
 long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not of the
flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations? For when one
says, “I belong to Paul,” and another, “I belong to Apollos,” are you
not merely human? What then is Apollos? What is Paul?[108]

Such a reading would be refuted by the text that immediately follows.

(Note the plural form of the first noun.)

Servants through whom you came to believe, as the Lord assigned to

each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither
the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God
who gives the growth. The one who plants and the one who waters have
a common purpose, and each will receive wages according to the labor
of each. For we are God’s servants, working together; you are God’s
field, God’s building.[109]

Paul clearly presupposes that he and Apollos are two different leaders and
two different men. That they are two is confirmed by other passages in which
they are clearly distinct characters.[110] It won’t do, confronted with this
information, to insist that Paul and Apollos are and are not the same man.
That is an uncharitable reading, attributing confusion to at least two New
Testament authors. An author might be confused, but we should exhaust
coherent interpretations before concluding this, all the more, the more we
respect an author. We must first suspect ourselves of confusion, taking care
not to project our confusions, imagining that we “discovered” them in what
we’re reading.
​Some will reply that because God is so great, God will have to speak in
apparently contradictory ways, if he’s to self-reveal to any significant degree.
[111]
​ ny monotheist will agree that God is too great to be fully understood by
A
humans. But it is by no means obvious that if God self-reveals, God will be
forced into saying apparently contradictory things to us. The idea is that our
conceptual scheme is too crude. We’re unable to make certain distinctions,
and if we made them, then pairs of statements like “It is not the case that
Jesus just is the Father” and “Jesus just is the Father” would turn out to be
consistent with one another after all.
​But for all we know, God has purposely avoided overwhelming us with
information about him, revealing only what will seem coherent to our limited
minds, like a parent who explains to his toddler that babies are made when
“Mommies and daddies love each other very much and kiss and snuggle.”
Witnessing sexual intercourse, or having it described to him in detail may
well overwhelm the little tot, both emotionally and conceptually. (“Daddy’s
hurting mommy… but he’s not!”) Thus, he gets the dumbed-down kiddie
explanation, and it’s good enough for the time being. This makes enough
sense to him, and does not strike him as incoherent. For all we know, God
has gone only this far in self-revealing.
​Some will object that surely God loves to humble us. He assaults our
pride by revealing what can’t be understood, forcing us to trust in him, and to
walk away from the demands of our sinful, damaged minds.
​I reply that inevitably, with things as they are, there will be plenty of
God’s actions and omissions that “can’t be understood” in the sense that we
can’t explain them, because we don’t know or even can’t grasp some of his
relevant motives. A small child doesn’t understand much of what his parents
do and say. But revealing what can’t be understood in the sense of telling the
child something which for all the child can tell is incoherent… that seems
rather cruel, and so seems wrong. I’d like the mysterian to tell us just where
scripture says that God actually does this, as it seems like something a perfect
being wouldn’t do.[112]
​“OK, never mind why,” the mysterian may reply. “Perhaps we can’t
know God’s motives here. But in fact, God has revealed paradoxes to us.”
​But this just ignores that for every single paradox which the mysterian
claims that the texts force on us, other Christians – serious, dedicated, honest,
well-trained, and fully informed ones – think those texts admit of various
non-paradoxical (i.e. seemingly coherent) readings. These will enjoy a great
advantage over the mysterian’s apparently incoherent readings, namely, that
they do not strongly appear to be false! Of course, there’s no simple formula
for discovering the overall best interpretation of a text, and it is conceivable
that in some case we’re forced to accept a seemingly incoherent reading.
​My parting shot against positive mysterianism takes the form of
observing what it takes, practically speaking, to be a mysterian. Positive
mysterians ought to consider how their views work in practice. Consider any
paradox or mystery of the form P and not-P.[113] At any point in your thought
life, you’re in one of four mental positions, when it comes to this particular
paradox; you’re somewhere on what I call “Mystery Mountain.”
 Position 1. Thinking that P and thinking that not-P. (This is the
stance the mysterian thinks God demands of you.)
Position 2. Thinking that P (and not thinking that not-P).
Position 3. Thinking that not-P (and not thinking that P).
Position 4. Not thinking that P and not thinking that not-P.
(Either you’re thinking about something else, or you’re not
thinking at all.)

Ascending to the summit of mystery mountain, Position 1, is a difficult

task. Some can do it, but it is unnatural, and it hurts. Soon, one half gives out,
and you slide back down to 2 or 3. But if you arrive at 2 or 3, you’re
disobeying God’s demands. Thus, you must push back up to 1. But it’s too
hard to stay there. Repeat a few times, and you’re exhausted. You must
retreat to 4, and spend most of your time there, camping at the base.
​Many, taught mysterian theology, will simply dwell at 4, hardly ever
trying to climb. But the theologically-inclined will choose to think about
God. Getting up a head of steam, they ascend to 1. But every time, they soon
find themselves back on 2 or 3. But 2 or 3 are an embarrassing place to be. 2
and 3 go against each other, and each goes against 1; standing at either 2 or 3
is a double failure. Eventually, one slides back down to 4. Mystery Mountain
is a treacherous climb!
​Self-deception is an option now. Actively assure yourself that you’re at 1
(that’s where you mean to be, after all) though you are in fact almost always
at either 2 or 3. But this too is hard for most to maintain. Thinking as a
mysterian, then, is painful and ever-shifting, and always tends to slump down
in defeat, settling into 4.
 Beyond mere thinking, what about actual believing? About P and not-P,
you can believe both, one but not the other, or neither. In all, there are four
belief stances you can be in:

Stance 1: Believe that P and believe that not-P

Stance 2: Believe that P (and don’t believe that not-P)
Stance 3: Believe that not-P (and don’t believe that P)
Stance 4: Neither believe that P nor believe that not-P.

Unlike thinking, believing is not directly voluntary; one’s beliefs are

determined by one’s perceived evidence. So long as the evidence seems both
strong and evenly balanced, one will believe that P and that not-P. But this
strongly seems false, as it seems to be a contradiction, and it seems that all
contradictions are false! Something must give. Soon one is pushed from
Stance 1 down to either Stance 2 or Stance 3.
​Here’s the interesting thing. Given that you have significant evidence,
you will have a settled belief about this subject, even when you’re not
actively thinking about it. Stance 4 is not an option for the theologically
tutored. But Stance 1 can’t be sustained for long. So generally, your belief
will be at Stance 2 or 3. Which? One may alternate. But at any given time,
one will find within oneself whichever generally seems to have the stronger
evidence. And that may shift depending on which scripture you’re reading at
the moment, or what you’re thinking about at a given time.
Speaking is different than believing and thinking, and speaking can hide
these mental agonies from others. A mysterian can put up a good front,
consistently saying both P and not-P. Granted, this will sound ridiculous to
many Christians, and she may not be able to get away with it in some
Christian settings, depending on just what P is. But at least in the mysterian
crowd, she can consistently say P and not-P, thereby displaying her
(apparent) obedience to the Word of God, which (she thinks) demands the
paradoxical beliefs. But her speech most often masks that her belief-state is
Stance 2 or 3.
This is what you sign up for, if you decide to be a mysterian about the
Trinity: your mind has nowhere to rest. Some are willing to declare this
double-think to be normal, even to celebrate it. Thus, a Reformed apologist
says
 [Gregory of Nazianzus wrote] “I cannot think of one without quickly
being encircled by the splendor of the three; nor can I discern the three
without being straightaway carried back to the one.” This is the glory of
the Christian God – our minds are commanded, when we think of him,
incessantly to move from the one to the three to the one. This should [in
John Calvin’s words] “vastly delight” every true Christian.[114]

What’s the alternative? One breaks out of the confusion by re-examining

the matter until one’s view of the evidence shifts, making either P or not-P
stand out as the true one; then, you deny the other. In this way, speaking,
believing, and thinking are restored to unity, and the mountain shrinks down
to a friendly, accommodating plain. The mysterian will tell you that this can’t
or shouldn’t happen, but a great number of Christians will tell you that to the
contrary, the plain is quite nice.
 9 What’s a “God”?

What sort of being is “God” supposed to be? Your answer to this will
constrain your options when it comes to thinking about the Trinity. The
“Trinity” (in the primary sense of the term, as we saw in chapter 3) is
supposed to be none other than the triune God, the tripersonal God of
officially catholic traditions since the late 4th century. In other words, the
Trinity and God are supposed to be one and the same, numerically one
reality, referred to in different ways. But then, whatever is true of one must
be true of the other. Let us again count the options.
1​ . God the idea. If you hold, like radical Anglican theologian Don
Cupitt, that God is “the mythical embodiment of all one is concerned with in
the spiritual life,” you believe God to be a certain human idea.[115] Thus, if
you’re also a trinitarian, you will hold that the Trinity too is a certain idea,
that same one. For you, questions about the Trinity are questions about the
thought-lives of humans, not about reality apart from human thought or
imagination. For you, theology is a branch of psychology or mythology.
2. God the something-or-other. More popular are philosophical
traditions which mean by “God” an “ineffable” ultimate reality, sometimes
called “the Real” or “Being Itself.” This sort of “God” is such as to satisfy no
human concept, so that no term in any human language literally applies to it,
and we can’t understand this “God” to any significant degree. Maybe we can
say what it is not, and maybe we can express how we indirectly experience it
or its effects. But the core idea is that we’re not able to understand how it
intrinsically is. In itself, it is a blank to even our best minds. If this is what
God is, and one is a trinitarian, then one will hold that the Trinity too, being
God, is a blinding light (and/or an impenetrable darkness), something wholly
beyond our powers of thought, imagination, and ordinary experience.
​This is a hard stance for a Christian to maintain. On the face of it, the
biblical authors think they understand to some degree how God intrinsically
is, by understanding to some degree his will, his desires, and his actions.
Thus, Christians strongly influenced by these philosophical traditions usually
try to mitigate the ineffability of God by holding that no human word or
concept literally applies to God, but some apply analogically to God. By non-
literally describing God, it is hoped, we may understand God to some small
degree, even if this can’t be adequately expressed. This will push us in the
direction of what I’ve called “negative mysterian” approaches to the Trinity.
[116] We see this approach in Augustine of Hippo, and much later the Roman
Catholic philosopher Thomas Aquinas tries to develop a coherent doctrine of
analogy, which says that human words apply to God with meanings similar to
their meanings in mundane discourse.[117] Another approach is to argue that
we only have cognitive access to God’s “energies” but not to “the divine
essence,” that is, to God as God intrinsically is. Thus, any words or concepts
we correctly apply to God do so because of a match with these “energies.”
3​ . God the group of selves. In the New Testament, we read that God
is love.[118] And the best kind of love, we may suppose, is a mutual love
between equals, wherein the lovers cooperate to benefit a third equal, who
also returns their love. This sort of speculation (precise arguments are many)
has led to the conclusion that the one God, as perfect, and so, as perfect love,
must be tripersonal, or at least, not “unipersonal.” Any “unipersonal” God,
like Allah in Islam or Yahweh as Jews understand him, would be lonely,
inadequate, or less than perfectly loving.[119] Their non-trinitarian theologies
are easily seen to collapse into incoherence. They say their god is perfect, but
that god is demonstrably imperfect. To be perfect, the one God must be a
community of love. As such, it has been argued, God (the perfect
community) is a model for human families and societies to imitate.
But who are the members of this community? The view is usually that
these are three beings, each of whom is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent,
perfectly free, omnibenevolent, and an uncreated creator of the cosmos. It
would seem to be a community of three divine beings, which is to say, three
gods. But here speculation hits a wall. Is the “one true God” really a group or
community or quasi-family of three gods? Trinitarian theology is by
definition supposed to include an affirmation of monotheism and a denial of
tritheism; but these seem to have been reversed! Moreover, in Christian
prayer and liturgy, God is always addressed using the second person singular,
never the second personal plural. In churches in the American South, they
pray, “God, we thank you for your blessings,” not “God, we thank y’all for
y’all’s blessings.” Why is this? The reason seems to be this: in the Bible,
“God” is assumed to be a god.
4. God the god, the divine self. What is a god? The Bible uses its
words we translate as “god” in looser and in more strict senses. In the looser
sense, which is common particularly in older parts of the Old Testament, a
“god” is, roughly, a self who is much more powerful than any normal human,
and who can act even apart from or against nature’s normal ways.[120] The
main Hebrew term for this is elohim, which is plural in form, but which can
be singular or plural in meaning, like the English word “pants.” One decides
whether it is being used as singular or plural by looking at the other words in
the sentence, such as verbs and adjectives. A ghost is an elohim, an angel is
an elohim, and the members of God’s court are elohim.[121] Even certain
powerful humans can be described, non-literally, as elohim, “gods.”[122]
Yahweh too is an elohim, a god, although unique among them.[123]
In the stricter use of “god” terms, Yahweh is the only one. The later parts
of the Old Testament, and all the New Testament books, are anxious to
emphasize the uniqueness of Yahweh, and so are reticent to apply god-words
to anyone else, although they occasionally do. Being book-people, they were
well aware of the older, looser usage.[124] One way to clarify matters is to talk
about the one true god.[125] What is this stricter usage of “god” on which
there is only one? It is the concept of a super-powerful and knowledgeable
and good, unique creator of all else, who is uniquely provident over history.
Angels, men, and ghosts fall far short of this, as do the “gods” of the nations,
be they idols or rebellious spirits. Through the prophet God proclaims,

I am Yahweh, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God.

…there is none besides me. I am Yahweh, and there is no other. I form
the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I,
Yahweh, do all these things.[126]

Throughout the whole Bible, the unique God speaks, and is spoken to. A
prodigious user of singular personal pronouns, God is always an “I,” and a
“me.” To others God is always a “he,” and a “him,” never an “it,” “they,” or
“them.” “God” in the Bible refers to one who is a god in both the looser and
the stricter biblical senses of the term. In the New Testament, his uniqueness
is expressed by the main expression for him which we translate as “God,” the
Greek ho theos, literally “the god.” This is none other than the Father, as
shown by the common use of all New Testament authors. For instance, notice
how every letter attributed to Paul begins with his sending greetings and
blessings from God, and also from Jesus.[127] In the New Testament, the
Father is the one “true God,”[128] the only god properly speaking, that is, the
only “god” in the strictest sense, the god who is over every human, even over
Jesus himself.[129]
This Biblical pattern would seem to rule out the conceptions of God as a
community or as an ineffable “Being Itself.” Against this the God-as-
community theorists have only their speculative arguments to fall back on.
[130] The “Being Itself” crowd is often inclined to go on the offensive, tarring
the idea that “God” is a god as anthropomorphism, unreasonably imaging
God as if God were some sort of super-duper human. The idea that God is
literally a god is derided as “theistic personalism,” a theology for the
unsophisticated and uneducated. It is objected that thinking that God is a god
makes God a mere “being among beings,” or puts God on a level with
creatures, making God finite, understandable, and non-mysterious. To the
contrary, they argue, God is beyond being, and so is not a being at all, not
even the greatest being there is or could be.
Seemingly contrary to these speculations are the traditions of thinking
about God as the greatest possible being, the being with the greatest set of
attributes that anything could possibly have, attributes like perfect freedom,
unlimited knowledge, perfect power, and perfect moral goodness.[131] Such
traditions seem to side with those who think that God is a god, and against
those who think that God is a group or an ineffable Something.
One thing to avoid is the fudge of saying that God is “personal.” This
weasel-word is conveniently equivocal, failing to require or to rule out any of
the realistic ways of thinking about God we distinguished above. Does saying
that God is “personal” mean just that God appears to us as if God were a self,
or that God is somewhat analogous to a self, as the “Being Itself” people
would have it? Or does it mean that God is composed of persons, as the God-
as-community people think? Or does it mean that God just is, is numerically
the same as, a certain self, a unique god? It can mean any of those, and so, it
is a cover for confusion, an excuse for ceasing to think hard about all of this.
If remaining adrift at sea is what you prefer, plenty of Christians out there
will drift with you. But here, we’re trying to press on through the fog, in
search of solid ground.
How do you, in your most sober moments, think about God? If you think
that the one God is in the final analysis a community, this fits with a three-
self or “social trinitarian” approach to the Trinity.[132] If you think God is
“Being Itself,” then you will probably have to say that the Trinity is a nearly
completely impenetrable subject for human thought and language. Perhaps
you may find some help in Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox strategies
for nonetheless saying something non-literal which is true about God.
If instead you think of God as a god, as a certain mighty self, and unique
among such, then you must decide whether to be a one-self trinitarian, who
thinks of the “Persons” of the Trinity as something like ways the one divine
Self is,[133] or you can opt for non-trinitarian, unitarian theology, on which
the one God is just the Father himself. Modern day bigshots of theology such
as Karl Barth and Karl Rahner are on the “Persons”-as-ways-God-is side.
Ancient bigshots of theology such as Origen and Tertullian are on the Father-
as-the-one-God side.
They can’t both be correct. If God is a certain Self, who is he? Which self
is he? Is he the Trinity, as fully developed catholic traditions hold, or is he the
Father only, as seems to be assumed in the New Testament?
In my view, tradition is pitted against tradition here, apostles vs. bishops,
and choices must be made. But mine is a minority view. Among Protestants,
arguably a majority assume that what catholic traditions teach just is what is
in some sense “in” the Bible, if less clearly. Is this correct?
 10 Says Who?

One thing that makes disputes about the Trinity intractable is that different
Christians have different views about just where authoritative Christian
tradition is to be found. For Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, the
Church, the organization run by bishops, is the earthly font of authoritative
teaching. It is the Church, they argue, which gave us the Bible, and which has
always taught us how to interpret it. In contrast, for Protestants (at least in
theory and in rhetoric) the Bible alone is authoritative, and other traditions
are to be accepted or rejected as they either fit or clash with the teachings and
practices mandated by the Bible. In practice, though, many Protestant
theologians regard the decisions of the ancient “ecumenical” councils (the
first seven recognized by Catholic and Orthodox traditions) as inviolable.[134]
​One suspects that Protestant reliance on the Bible hides a deeper
disagreement about it. Is our New Testament, only first fully assembled, so
far as we know, in the fourth century, authoritative because the bishops, or
more widely, mainstream traditions say that it is? Or is it authoritative
because, and only to the extent that, it represents the teachings of Jesus and
his apostles, and those in their circles?
About the Trinity, matters can be clarified using an inconsistent triad of
claims. Let’s use “the Trinity” to mean whatever the traditional sentences are
supposed to teach, imagining for the moment that there is such a determinate
set of claims.

T1: The Trinity is taught by authoritative tradition.

T2: The Bible is the only authoritative tradition.
T3: The Bible doesn’t teach the Trinity.

Which should you deny? On the face of it, you ought to deny the one
which you have the least reason to believe. Orthodox Christians and
Catholics typically deny T2, affirming T1 and (generally) T3. Protestants
usually deny T3, affirming T1 and (generally) T2. Christians who hold to a
unitarian theology affirm T2 and T3, denying T1. But who is correct? We
know that only one can be, since these three claims are an inconsistent triad.
(If any two are true, the third is false.)
As we’ve seen, a triune god is taught by official council statements,
arguably starting with the second “ecumenical” council, the one at
Constantinople (381). It’s clearer in later ones, such as Constantinople II
(553), which pronounces an anathema on

…anyone [who] will not confess that the Father, Son, and holy Spirit
have one nature or substance, that they have one power and authority,
that there is a consubstantial Trinity, one Deity to be adored in three
subsistences or persons…[135]

And Constantinople IV (869-70), recognized by Catholics (but not by

Eastern Orthodox traditions) confesses “belief in one God, in three persons
consubstantial.”[136] By the time of the Roman Catholic Lateran IV council
(1215), the older confession of the Father as the one true God has given way
to the confession of “only one true God... Father, Son, and holy Spirit... [the]
holy Trinity...”[137] These assemblies of bishops teach trinitarian theology.
But are they all authoritative (Catholic), or only the first seven (Orthodox), or
are none of them authoritative as such, but only if and to the extent that
they’re expressing biblical teaching (Protestant)?
Whatever we say about T1, what shall we say about T3? It depends on
what it takes for the Bible to “teach” a doctrine. Does the Bible explicitly
assert the Trinity? Absolutely not. There’s no term in the Bible which the
author meant to refer to a tripersonal deity, to a triune god. And the idea of
three “hypostases” or “Persons” sharing a common ousia (“essence”) just
doesn’t belong to first-century Christian thought. As best we can tell, no one
in that century explicitly asserted such a teaching.
Some theologically educated Protestants readily admit this. Conceding that
the term “Trinity” isn’t in the Bible, they urge that the idea of it is. Some
argue that various pre-Christian, extra-biblical, Jewish sources believed in
some sort of plurality in or around or involving God. But of course, not just
any plurality will do; multiple divine properties, actions, manifestations, or
lesser divine servants will not support or provide any real parallel with
Trinity doctrines.
 Others hint-hunt in the Old Testament. Isn’t God called “Holy” three
times?[138] Doesn’t God appear as three (human) persons to Abraham?[139]
Doesn’t the Bible speak of two who are called “Yahweh”?[140] And isn’t this
“angel of Yahweh” in fact the pre-human Jesus?[141] Frankly, zealous
trinitarians will tell you one thing, and sober commenters will tell you
another. Reader beware. The hint-hunters generally disregard the thousands
of singular pronouns and verbs applied to Yahweh all over the Old
Testament.
Sensibly, most Protestant scholars who think that the Bible teaches the
Trinity focus on the New Testament. The alleged Old Testament “hints”
simply did not suffice for anyone to “get it” in B.C. times. If the Trinity is
revealed anywhere in the Bible, surely it must be in the New Testament
writings written in the wake of Jesus’s life, ministry, death, resurrection, and
exaltation. They argue that while trinitarianism isn’t explicit there, it is
implicit.
Imagine a bigoted northerner who is insulting a southerner. “All
southerners are stupid. Sally is from the south, so Sally is stupid.” But our
rude northerner can express the insult just as clearly by saying, “All
southerners are stupid, and Sally is from the south.” We all mentally hear the
conclusion that she intends us to hear. The merely implicit statement is just as
clear, and is more elegant than the explicit one.
But the Trinity can’t be implicit in the New Testament in quite that way, as
seemingly no one made the inference to a tripersonal God until the fourth
century. It must’ve been a tangled chain of reasoning to have remained
tangled so long, beyond the sight of so many dedicated readers.
Against these historical facts, recent apologists claim that the Trinity is
obviously implied by the New Testament. They urge that the following
argument is implicit there:

1. The Father is God.

2. The Son is God.
3. The Spirit is God.
4. Those three are numerically distinct.
5. There is only one God.
6. So, this one God is the three of them together. (1-5)

Unfortunately, this reasoning is demonstrably confused. Premises 1-3 are

ambiguous, and on some interpretations, the whole premise set 1-5 is
incoherent, inconsistent with itself. But for an argument to be sound, its
premises must all be true.[142]
​If “is God” means is numerically the same as God, premises 1-4
constitute an incoherent set of claims, and obviously so. Numerically
different things can’t be numerically identical to the same thing.
​If “is God” means being divine in the sense of being a god, then 1-4
assert there to be at least three gods, while 5 tells us there is only one. If 1-5
can’t all be true, then 1-6 can’t be a sound argument, whatever 6 may mean.
​Notice also that the meaning of 6 is wholly unclear; too many of the
options we explored in chapters 6-9 are left on the table. But if we don’t
know what claim the conclusion 6 is, how can we know whether or not it
follows from premises 1-5?
In support of premises 1-3, proof-texts are cited in which (allegedly) three
different ones are each called “God.” But if this is what premises 1-3 mean,
then the conclusion 6 doesn’t follow from 1-5; the argument is invalid. In
other words, it could be that 1-5 are true while 6 is false. How? It could be
that three different beings are called “God” (making 1-4 true), and there is
exactly one God, making 5 true, but this one God is the Father alone. The
other two are called “God” because of their similarity to and derivation from
him. Thus, it could be that 1-5 are true even though 6 is false. This is pretty
much what Tertullian thought in the early third century. But it’s not a
trinitarian theology.
Being properly addressed as “God” or being truly described as “a god”
doesn’t imply being a god as monotheists understand being a god. This is true
even though by New Testament times Jews almost always reserved god-
terms for God.[143] Nor does being called “God” imply that you’re a “Person”
within God.
I don’t think there is any argument of the above sort which shows how the
New Testament implies the Trinity. But observe how short and simple the
chain of reasoning is supposed to be. How could a thing like that remain
untriggered, the trap not sprung, the conclusion not drawn, for hundreds of
years? It would seemingly require that God struck blind the readers of the
New Testament until the time was right for the fullness of trinitarian
revelation. This sounds like a fit with the non-Protestant view that the
apostles’ mantle was passed on to the bishops, through whom God completed
the revelation begun in the times of Jesus, John, Peter, and Paul. If this is
true, then surely we need the Church to tell us how to understand the New
Testament. It was all, unbeknownst to first-century people, heading towards
the culminating declarations of the councils, just as unbeknownst to the
ancient Jews, it was all heading towards the ministry of a self-sacrificing
Messiah. Disturbingly, this places a correct understanding of the one God
beyond Jesus’s apostles, at least as far as anything they said or knew in the
first century. Didn’t these receive “the faith that was once for all entrusted to
the saints”?[144] And didn’t they faithfully pass on Jesus’s theology?
There are many other sorts of arguments from the Bible to the Trinity. But
here’s the thing: scholars who focus intensely on the biblical texts, trying to
understand them properly in their own contexts, discerning the aims and
assumptions of their authors, generally do not make such arguments.
In order to be a trinitarian, a Protestant must derive the Trinity from the
Bible somehow. Some sophisticated theologians have retreated from the
claim that it is implied there, to the claim that trinitarian theology best
explains what is and is not said there. In so doing, they recognize that
trinitarian ideas are foreign imports which the latter-day reader brings back to
the ancient scriptures in order to better understand them, and not something
discovered in the texts themselves. The issue, then, is what makes a good
biblical theology, and how exactly does a trinitarian one constitute a better
explanation of what is and isn’t said in the Bible? The battle here will have to
be fought by trained theorists, and the result is not obvious in advance!
Most Protestant trinitarians are not eager to enter into such trench warfare.
It will be much easier to defend trinitarian theology if we can help ourselves
to later authorities, as we’ve seen. Others prefer to wave their hands and
intone that the Trinity isn’t taught in any one scripture, but is to be observed
(by the spiritual) in the scriptures as a whole.
Are they right? Now that you understand the difference between trinitarian
and unitarian theologies, ask yourself the following questions. What would I
expect the scriptures to say, and what would I expect them not to say, if they
in some sense teach that God is a Trinity? What would I expect the scriptures
to say, and what would I expect them not to say, if they in some sense teach
that the one God is none other than the one Jesus calls “Father”? I suggest
that you actually make a list for each.
Now, study the scriptures as a whole, with help from leading scholars of
various loyalties: Jewish, Christian, Protestant, Catholic, believing,
unbelieving, trinitarian, non-trinitarian. Now, what do you see? Does it
confirm or disconfirm claim T3 in our inconsistent triad? Again, this is:

T1: The Trinity is taught by authoritative tradition.

T2: The Bible is the only authoritative tradition.
T3: The Bible doesn’t teach the Trinity.
​About the “ecumenical” councils, do you agree that they are authoritative
for any disciple of Jesus? If you’re committed to Catholic or Orthodox
Christianity, you must agree to this. If you’re a Protestant, you should
actually read the results of those councils, and their histories, and see if you
discern the hand of God in all of it. Are they faithfully expounding the Bible,
and drawing out what is implicit in it, or what best explains it? Or are they
adding to it, and sometimes adding things inconsistent with it, or otherwise
objectionable? Has what you learned increased or decreased the plausibility
of T2 in our inconsistent triad above?
When it comes to the Trinity, who’s to say? Do you go with your church’s
official creed? Or must you choose the Bible over that? Or are you convinced
that those two don’t conflict?
I’ve been investigating these things for almost two decades. At the end of
this little book I can only share my conclusions. My study of the Bible with
the help of countless translators and commenters has made me very sure
about T3. And my study of later catholic traditions has confirmed my pre-
existing Protestant belief that catholic tradition has veered perilously away
from apostolic teachings and practices in various ways. I agree with T2, not
because the bishops ratified that exact collection of books, but rather because
at least most of the New Testament comes from the apostles and their
immediate circles, those directly taught by the Lord Jesus, and those directly
taught by them. Listening to him requires listening to them. I don’t take the
Popes or the feuding bishops of the fourth century as seriously, although I’m
glad to receive information from any quarter. By my lights, T1 is the weak
link, and so I deny T1; my theology is unitarian.
In my published work I’ve done what a philosopher can do to try to be
helpful to others on this issue, classifying different Trinity theories, analyzing
arguments from the Bible to the Trinity, tracing the historical origins of the
standard Trinity formulas, and evaluating various theological arguments. Of
course, no Christian should ever adopt a theology because some supposedly
Christian scholar told her so. You must read the sources for yourself, with
mind and spirit open. You must ask the one God to clarify his revelation to
you, and you must be patient through a process that will probably take you
many months, if not many years.
Here are some questions to get you started. Take the New Testament in
hand, and try to answer these questions to your own satisfaction.

1. Does the New Testament in any sense appeal to “mystery”

about the Trinity or the trinity? If so, what is meant by “mystery”
there?
2. Does the New Testament anywhere mention or refer to a
Trinity, or only to a trinity?
3. Does it teach that there are three eternal, equally divine
Persons, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who all together in some
sense “are” the one God, Yahweh?
4. Does it teach that those three Persons share an ousia, and if so,
what would the New Testament authors, in their first century
context, mean by that saying that?
5. Does it teach the absolute equality of the Father, Son, and
Spirit, so that each is eternally unlimited in power, knowledge, and
goodness?
6. Does the New Testament teach or positively portray the
religious worship of: Father? Son? Spirit? Does it teach or show
worship of the three of them together, worship of the triune God as
such?
7. Does the New Testament teach that the only god just is the
Father himself, or does it teach that the Father is but one of three
Persons “in” God?
8. Does the New Testament make catholic bishops the successors
of the apostles, with apostle-level authority to settle questions of
Christian doctrine, working together in official, emperor-convened
councils?

This is the way of a Christian who would be a good “Berean.”[145] There

are no shortcuts, and this book isn’t trying to be one. It’s only giving you
tools to perform the work yourself.
​But perhaps I’m presuming too much. Not every Christian thinks he’s
free to search in that way. A good Catholic takes the Roman Catholic Church
as her teacher. This Church has proclaimed the Trinity as “the central
mystery of the Christian faith.”[146] Moreover, she denies theological
progress. Her Vatican I council threatens the would-be theological
discoverer:

If anyone says that it is possible that at some time, given the

advancement of knowledge, a sense may be assigned to the dogmas
propounded by the church which is different from that which the church
has understood and understands: let him be anathema.[147]

​ ive hundred years ago, Protestantism was born from the insistence that
F
in many areas mainstream Christianity had strayed from the path of apostolic
teaching and practice. Is this topic of the Trinity such an area, as some within
the “Radical Reformation” have claimed, or not?[148] If they’re right, later
traditions clash with the New Testament on this topic. If they’re wrong, they
have strayed from the true faith.
Again, you must judge for yourself. It is you who will have to give an
account for what you believe. I hope this little book has helped to equip you
to work towards a resolution of these questions.
 Epilogue

The issue of the trinity is hard. You must judge why this is so. Is it because
we’ve made it hard by our confused speculations, or is it instead because the
tripersonal God is beyond our understanding? Either way, as a Christian you
do not need to fear seeking increased clarity on this subject. You believe that
God has revealed himself through the life and teachings of the man Jesus, and
through his followers, who continue to function as Jesus’s “body.”[149] The
correct understanding of the trinity, whatever that is, must have been
preserved. Find it. Keep reading. Keep thinking, and asking for God’s
guidance.
As we saw in chapter 4, many confuse the idea of the Trinity with “the
deity of Christ.” In truth, this latter issue is more operative in many
Christians’ lives than is any theology of the trinity (or Trinity). Some readers
will be dying to ask this:

Suppose I agree that the one God is the Father. What, then, does
that make Jesus? What is his precise status? Is he divine, and if so, in
what sense?

These are good questions. What should a Christian believe about Jesus? A
simple answer is: all that the New Testament explicitly says about him. He’s
God’s Messiah, the Son of Man, the unique Son of God, the “lamb of God”
who takes away the sins of the world, the risen and exalted “Lord” who now
sits at God’s right hand and serves as a high priest between us and the one
who is our God and his God. I suggest accepting all those claims, and
whatever they clearly imply. But all of this explicit New Testament language
doesn’t clearly answer all of the metaphysical questions people may have
about Jesus.
Unfortunately, it’s beyond the scope of this book to answer those. I can
only give you a couple of warnings and some helpful sources by some very
brilliant and learned people.
First, having intensively studied what catholic writers said about Christ and
his “two natures” c. 150-787, I can say that very few Christians, and even few
professional theologians and philosophers, really grasp all that the seven so-
called “ecumenical” councils demand that you say and think about Christ. It
goes far beyond simple talk of him as “God and man” or as “the Godman,” or
even just that he has “two natures,” a divine and a human one.
The best exposition of this difficult tradition I’ve seen is by the present-day
Roman Catholic analytic philosopher Timothy Pawl in his book In Defense of
Conciliar Christology.[150] Pawl also carefully builds his own controversial
defense of this conciliar christology as coherent, that is, as seemingly self-
consistent, and objects to various other defenses along the way as unfaithful
to the tradition. I think his solution is problematic, but his book is valuable
for its exposition of all that the “ecumenical councils” demand, as well as for
its hard-hitting criticisms of several rival speculations designed to show how
the two-natures claim is coherent.[151]
These many rival speculations which try to show the coherence of classical
Incarnation theory are expertly surveyed and criticized in a book chapter by
another first-rate philosopher, Richard Cross.[152] These differ on how they
understand the tradition, and deploy a host of controversial philosophical
distinctions and arguments. The full fury of human cleverness is on display in
these, and I mean this in a good way; they’re taking the traditional language
seriously, and trying to show how it can be understood as saying something
true.
Leave behind the many fast-talking apologists, whether evangelical or
Roman Catholic, with their glib assertions about Jesus being “God and man”
and their intellectually lazy appeals to “mystery.” Instead, go to the actual
sources and try to understand how they show that one being could be both
divine and human, with the help of the aforementioned philosophers.
My second warning is this: the average Christian (and again even the
average professional theologian or philosopher) has little understanding of,
and almost no sympathy for the several minority Christian views about
Christ, which either avoid conciliar creeds entirely, or which exit the train
before it reaches a certain station (e.g. Chalcedon in 451). Assuming that a
serious reading of the Bible leads inexorably to views like those expressed in
the ecumenical creeds, most recent theologians pay little to no attention to
minority reports, whether historical or present-day. These typically pit the
Bible (rightly understood) against some of the later catholic traditions. Thus,
those interested in correctly understanding the Bible should, I would argue,
hear out their arguments. The serious truth-seeker runs towards such
disagreements, not away from them. One should hear out the best case one’s
opponents can make; it is unwise to camp out only among those who agree
with you. Unfortunately, this is what many academic theologians and others
do.
On this topic, there is an older source by a (then) leading biblical scholar
and theologian. The English unitarian theologian Thomas Belsham’s A Calm
Inquiry into the Scripture Doctrine concerning the Person of Christ surveys a
very wide range of christologies.[153] A Bible-oriented Protestant, he focuses
not on the official position of the Catholic Church (or of any church which
binds itself to the proclamations of the first seven on the official list of
Catholic-approved councils), but rather on the competing interpretations of
biblical passages relevant to the status of Jesus. He categorizes views of Jesus
as: Unitarian, Arian, Socinian, Low Arian, High-Arian, Semi-Arian,
Sabellian, Swedenborgian, Tritheism, or Trinitarian. The book is guaranteed
to make you think about how you understand scripture, though you will
almost certainly disagree with some of Belsham’s own views. I certainly do,
and I don’t like a lot of his labels for the various christologies, but I consider
the book to be valuable for its wide-angle view of the christological options.
A helpful recent source, by life-long evangelical, former golf pro, and
independent scholar Kermit Zarley, focuses on claims that in the Bible Jesus
is God. Making use of many of the fruits of a wide range of recent biblical
scholarship, he argues in his book The Restitution of Jesus Christ that in fact,
the Bible presents Jesus as God’s Son, a Messiah who is a human being, not
God himself.[154] The book repays serious study, and is valuable both for its
main argument, and the entry it affords into recent biblical scholarship.
Jesus said,

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in

me.[155]

In my view, this is eminently sound advice: we ought to trust both God

and his Son. Perhaps trust in God is more foundational, though. Doing that, a
person can come to see that Jesus is his Messiah, and the best revealer of his
nature and will, and the central player in God’s plan of salvation for all
people. Perhaps a similar point holds for theology. The foundational question
is: Who is the one God? Building on that, you can then get clearer on how
Jesus relates to him.

[1] 1 Peter 3:15, New International Version.

[2] The Christian God (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).
[3]The Scripture-Doctrine of the Trinity, Wherein Every Text in the New
Testament Relating to That Doctrine is Distinctly Considered; and the
Divinity of Our Blessed Saviour, According to the Scriptures, Proved and
Explained [4th ed.], in The Works of Samuel Clarke, D. D., Late Rector of St.
James’s Westminster; in Four Volumes, Volume 4 (London: 1738 [1712]).
(Reprinted in: The Scripture-Doctrine of the Trinity and Related Writings,
Morrisville, North Carolina: Lulu.com, 2007.)
[4] Judges 12:4b-6, New Living Translation.
[5]Mark 12:29-30, New Revised Standard Version.
[6] J.N.D. Kelly, The Athanasian Creed (London: A&C Black, 1964), 19.
See this same book for an account of the creed’s probable fifth century
origin. It can’t be by Athanasius, who died in 373. The creed and what is
known about it is summarized in my “podcast 2 – the ‘Athanasian Creed’.”
[7] Kelly, Athanasian, 18.
[8] Kelly, Athanasian, 19.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Kelly, Athanasian, 18.
[11] For some recent interpretations of the Trinity which are analogous to
this fiction about the bigamist, see Dale Tuggy, “Trinity,” The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 edition), edited by Edward N.
Zalta, Section 2.1.
[12] In chapter 8 we’ll consider claims that the Trinity is simply a mystery
which we’ll never solve in this life.
[13] Kelly, Athanasian, 27-9, 109-24. This is why the creed can’t actually
be by Athanasius of Alexandria, who died in 373, before Augustine’s
conversion in 387.
[14] 1 Peter 2:9, NRSV.
[15] Revelation 2:26-7; 1 Corinthians 6:2-3.
[16] John 15:15, emphasis added.
 [17] Proverbs 25:2, NRSV.
[18] Revelation 1:5, NRSV.
[19] “First Council of Nicea – 325,” in Norman Tanner, editor, Decrees of
the Ecumenical Councils, Volume I: Nicea I – Lateran V (Washington, D.C.:
Georgetown University Press, 1990), 1-19, 5.
[20] The term “consubstantial” translates the Greek homoousion (“same
essence” or “same substance”). The Latin version reads “unius substantiae
(quod Graeci dicunt homousion),” that is, “one substance (which the Greeks
call homoousion).” (ibid.)
[21] Ibid.
[22] Another council 126 years later did answer, although with more
impenetrable formulas. On this 451 council at Chalcedon see Philip Jenkins,
Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors
Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1,500 Years (New
York: HarperOne, 2010).
[23] Ibid.
[24] A readable account of the controversy leading to the 325 council is
Richard Rubenstein, When Jesus Became God: The Struggle to Define
Christianity During the Last Days of Rome (New York: Harcourt, 1999). This
is dependent on the best scholarly treatment of the whole fourth century
controversy, R.P.C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God:
The Arian Controversy, 318-381 (London: T&T Clark, 1988). Recent
historical scholarship has in many ways corrected earlier, more partisan
accounts. On this see William Hasker, Metaphysics and the Tri-Personal God
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), Chapter 2, or Michel René
Barnes, “The Fourth Century as Trinitarian Canon,” in Christian Origins:
Theology, Rhetoric and Community, edited by Lewis Ayres and Gareth Jones
(New York: Routledge, 1998), 47-67.
[25] Biola University, “Doctrinal Statement.”
[26] Southern Baptist Convention, “The Baptist Faith and Message.”
[27] Daniel Howard-Snyder, “Trinity,” The Routledge Encyclopedia of
Philosophy Online, edited by Tim Crane, (Routledge, 2015). (Preprint.); Dale
Tuggy, “Trinity,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016
edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta; Harriet Baber, “The Trinity,” Internet
Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
[28] I am currently working on such a book, provisionally entitled
Thinking about the Trinity. An important recent attempt at ruling out all but
one interpretation is William Hasker, Metaphysics. Another less developed
treatment is Thomas McCall, Which Trinity? Whose Monotheism? (Grand
Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2010). While both are insightful, unfortunately
both mishandle the issue of monotheism and pay insufficient attention to
biblical theology. On the first book, see my “Hasker’s Quests for a Viable
Social Theory,” Faith and Philosophy 30:2 (2013): 171-87, and my
“Metaphysics and the Tripersonal God: A Review-Essay,” European Journal
for Philosophy of Religion (2017). On McCall’s Whose Trinity? see my
review in Faith and Philosophy 29:2 (2012): 232-6. (Preprint.)
[29] “Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in
Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and
examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.” (Acts
17:11, New International Version)
[30] Theophilus of Antioch: Ad Autolycum – text and translation,
translated by Robert Grant (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), 53 [Book II,
Chapter 15]. The word “triad” here translates the Greek a form of trias.
“God” here means the Father, and not the three of them together. This is clear
from the sentence, and also from the rest of the book, especially Book II,
Chapter 10, which describes the Father’s (the one God’s) “begetting” of the
Son before creation, so as to create through him.
[31] St. Pamphilus: Apology for Origen, translated by Thomas P. Scheck
(Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2010), 81
[Section 85]. Pamphilus (d. 310) was writing in defense of the famous Origen
(c. 185 - c. 254), whose views had become controversial in some catholic
circles.
[32] We’ll look at the period of change in chapter 5. An older source that
helpfully surveys the non-trinitarian theologies in early Christianity is Alvan
Lamson, The Church of the First Three Centuries: Or, Notices of the Lives
and Opinions of the Early Fathers, with Special Reference to the Doctrine of
the Trinity; Illustrating its Late Origin and Gradual Formation, Revised and
Enlarged Edition (Boston: Horace B. Fuller, [1860] 1875). (Reprint: Toronto:
University of Toronto Libraries, 2009.)
[33] One of his books was entitled A Confession of Faith touching the
Holy Trinity. On Biddle’s views see Dale Tuggy, “Unitarianism,”
[Supplement to “Trinity”], The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter
2016 edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta.
[34] Mark 14:32-42.
 [35] John 17; John 20:17.
[36] However, the tradition is complicated. See the discussion of fourth-
century “miahypostatic” theologians in chapter 7 below. Some of these came
close to asserting the numerical identity of God and the eternal logos (the
“divine nature” in Christ), speculating that the logos was an attribute and
action of God, and so not an additional being to God.
[37] For this theme in scripture see Michael Heiser, The Unseen Realm:
Recovering the supernatural worldview of the Bible (Bellingham,
Washington: Lexham Press, 2015), and “podcast 97 – Dr. Michael Heiser on
The Unseen Realm.” On the theme of salvation as deification, see “podcast
60 – Dr. Carl Mosser on deification in the Bible.”
[38] Against Heresies, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume I, edited by
Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and Arthur Cleveland Coxe
(Edinburgh, 1885 [c. 182-8]), 309-567, 330 [Book I, Chapter 10].
[39] “First Council of Nicea – 325,” in Norman Tanner, editor, Decrees of
the Ecumenical Councils, Volume I: Nicea I – Lateran V (Washington, D.C.:
Georgetown University Press, 1990), 1-19, 5.
[40] On Faith and the Creed [De Fide et Symbolo], translated by F.D.S.
Salmond, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Volume III, edited
by Philip Schaff (Edinburgh, 1887 [393]), 315-33, 327 [Chapter 9, Section
16].
[41] “…he who confesses that the Holy Trinity is uncreate enters on the
steadfast unalterable life; while another, who through a mistaken conception
sees only a created nature in the Trinity and then is baptized in that, has again
been born into the shifting and alterable life. For that which is born is of
necessity of one kindred with that which begets.” (Great Catechism, in
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Volume V, edited by Philip
Schaff and Henry Wallace (London, 1892 [385]), 471-524, 507 [Chapter 39].
[42] Notably, in contexts where both God and Jesus are worshiped, we do
not see the Spirit portrayed as a third recipient. (Philippians 2:9-10;
Revelation 5)
[43] The original Greek texts of the New Testament
WEREWRITTENINALLCAPSANDWITHOUTSPACESORPUNCTUATIONJUSTLIKE
Compilers of scholarly critical editions of the Greek New Testament add
punctuation and paragraph breaks as they see fit, and they put all letters in
lowercase, except for the letter starting each paragraph and the first letters of
proper names. The English translation “of the Holy Spirit” for the Greek tou
hagiou pneumatos (Matthew 28:19) reflects the translators’ judgment that a
“Person” is meant; the rendering “of the holy spirit” is just as correct, as far
as the grammar is concerned. Clearly enough, some talk of “spirit” should not
be understood as being about a self in addition to the one whose “spirit” it is.
Your “spirit” is not, we think, someone in addition to you; rather, it just is
you, or is your inner part or aspect. To say that “your spirit is grieved” is just
to say that you are grieved. One may wonder if it is the same with biblical
talk of God’s “spirit” or the “spirit of Christ.”
[44] Acts 5:3-4, 9, NIV.
[45] What ancient sources call “monarchians” were catholics (mainstream
Christians) c. 180-250 who disagreed with the then new logos theories, on
which God first (or eternally) emanated or expressed his logos, and then
created the cosmos through him, the logos being the direct creator. Rejecting
this idea of direct (logos, the pre-human Jesus or the divine nature united to
him) creator vs. indirect creator (the Father, the one God), they insisted on
only one creator, God, and some rallied around the slogan that they upheld
the monarchy of the one God (hence the name given to them). While it is
unclear how many mainstream Christians in this way outright rejected logos
theories, it is likely that for some decades adherents of logos theories were a
minority. See the complaints of two-stage logos theorist Tertullian (Against
Praxeas in Tertullian’s Treatise Against Praxeas, translated by Ernest Evans
(London: Society for Promotion of Christian Knowledge, 1949 [c. 213]),
Chapter 3), and of one-stage logos theorist Origen (Commentary on the
Gospel According to John in Origen: Commentary on the Gospel According
to John Books 1-10, translated by Ronald Heine (Washington, D.C.: The
Catholic University of America Press, 1989), 98 [Book II, Section 16].)
[46] Against Hermogenes, translated by Holmes, in The Ante-Nicene Fa-
thers, Volume III, edited by Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and Arthur
Cleveland Coxe (Edinburgh, 1885 [c. 207-25]), 477-502, 487 [Chapter 18].
Elsewhere, he asserts the Father’s greater knowledge, citing Matthew 24:36.
(Against Praxeas, Chapter 26)
[47] Against Hermogenes, [Chapter 18]. For a fuller explanation of
Tertullian’s views on God, Christ, and God’s Spirit, see my “Tertullian the
Unitarian,” European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 8:3 (2016): 179-99.
A presentation on which this paper is based is available at “podcast 11 –
Tertullian the unitarian.”
[48] Harry Austryn Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Church Fathers:
Faith, Trinity, Incarnation, Third Edition, Revised (Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1970 [1956], Chapter 12.
[49] See Tertullian’s Against Praxeas, Chapters 6-7 for another description
of this.
[50] Tuggy, “Tertullian.”
[51] Origen: On First Principles (Being Koetschau’s Text of the De
Principiis Translated into English, Together with an Introduction and Notes
by G.W. Butterworth (Gloucester, Massachusetts, 1973 [1936, c. 216-32]),
15-6 [Book I, Chapter 2, Sections 1-2], 81 [II.2.1], 314-5 [IV.4.1]; Against
Celsus, translated by Henry Chadwick, in Origen: Contra Celsum (London:
Cambridge University Press, 1986 [1953, c. 246-8), 73 [Book II, Chapter 9],
296 [V.39], 377 [VI.61].
[52] Origen, Commentary, 98-9 [II.17-8], 114 [II.75-7].
[53] On First Principles, 33-4 [Book I, Chapter 3], Against Celsus, 462-3
[Book VIII Chapter 15]. Because of the many corruptions of the former book
in the 390s by its Latin translator Rufinus, it is important to consider the
testimonies to Origen’s original Greek of many passages, as can been seen in
the modern critical edition, cited in note 51 above. On Rufinus’s confessed
corruptions, see my “Rufinus’s corruption of Origen’s On First Principles –
Part 1,” and Rufinus’s own Treatise on the Adulteration of the Works of
Origen, Preface to the Translation of Origen’s Peri Archon Books I & II, and
Preface to the Translation of Origen’s Peri Archon Books III & IV. In brief,
Rufinus’ corruptions were motivated by a desire to bring Origen’s writings
into line with the legally compelled orthodoxy established in 380-1,
explained below. He thought their unorthodoxy must have been due to
corruption by the “Arians” of a few decades before, and so he determined to
“correct” them to what (in his view) they must have originally said. Even
now, many scholars are eager to portray Origen as orthodox by later
standards, or nearly so; they have even recently reprinted the modern edition
of On First Principles with the 20th century editor’s Greek parallel passages
deleted, presenting in English only Rufinus’s professedly corrupted Latin
version! They argue that reports of Origen’s original Greek can’t be trusted,
as the reporters were critics of Origen.
[54] On Prayer, translated by Rowan Greer, in Origen: An Exhortation to
Martyrdom, Prayer, First Principles: Book IV, Prologue to the Commentary
on the Song of Songs, Homily XXVII On Numbers (New York: Paulist Press,
1979), 81-170, 112 [Chapter 15, Section 1].
 [55] Against Celsus, 471 [Book VIII, Chapter 26]. Origen probably has in
mind Jesus’s statement that “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to
my God and your God.” (John 20:17, NRSV)
[56] On the philosophical, Platonic motives for such theories see my
“Metaphysics and Logic of the Trinity,” Oxford Handbooks Online, 2016.
Origen and others distinguish the eternal divine logos from the man Jesus.
Both can be called “Son,” and although they are two and cooperate together,
they can be called “one.” (Against Celsus 73-4 [II.9]) Later catholic
orthodoxy says instead that the divine logos “assumed a complete human
nature,” and therefore is “man” but not a man. If it were a man, their view is
that he would be one too many persons (hypostases) in the incarnate Christ.
(“Second Council of Constantinople - 553,” in Norman Tanner, editor,
Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, Volume I: Nicea I – Lateran V
(Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 105-22, 114-6.)
[57] See the list of synods/councils which either attacked or defended the
new Nicene language at “Conciliar Creeds of the Fourth Century.” I explain
some of these in trinities podcast episodes 113-5 and 172-7.
[58] “The Second Creed (the ‘Blasphemy’) of Sirmium, 357” in Creeds,
Councils and Controversies: Documents Illustrating the History of the
Church, AD 337-461, Third Edition, edited by J. Stevenson and W.H.C.
Frend (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2012), 45-7, 46.
[59] These include Basil of Caesarea (c. 329-379) in his “On the Holy
Spirit” (374), Gregory of Nazianzus (c. 329-390) in his Fifth Theological
Oration “On the Holy Spirit” [=Oration #31], (c. 379), and Gregory of Nyssa
(c. 335-394) in his “On the Holy Trinity” (380) and his Great Catechism
(385).
[60] On these disputes the best source is R.P.C. Hanson, The Search for
the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy 318-381 (Edinburgh,
T&T Clark, 1988). Also useful are the more accessible Richard Rubenstein,
When Jesus Became God: The Struggle to Define Christianity during the Last
Days of Rome (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1999), and Leo
Donald Davis, The First Seven Ecumenical Councils (325-787): Their
History and Theology (Wilmington, Delaware: Michael Glazier, Inc., 1983),
Chapters 2-3.
[61] Oration 31, translated by Lionel Wickham, in St Gregory of
Nazianzus On God and Christ: The Five Theological Orations and Two
Letters to Cledonius (Crestwood, New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press,
2002 [c. 379]), 117-47, 120 [Chapter 5].
[62] Oration 31, 117 [Chapter 1].
[63] Theodosian Code 16.1.2, quoted in Charles Freeman, A.D. 381:
Heretics, Pagans, and the Dawn of the Monotheistic State (Woodstock, New
York: The Overlook Press, 2008), 25.
[64] Davis, The First Seven Ecumenical Councils, 119
[65] Freeman, A.D. 381, 94
[66] Letter 130, quoted in Freeman, A.D. 381, 97.
[67] Freeman, A.D. 381, 92.
[68] The dispute this time was between those who wanted to say that the
incarnate Christ had “one nature” and those who wanted to say he had “two
natures.” In this case, however, in the immediate aftermath of the forced
resolution, each side thought itself the loser! Ambiguous compromise
language was enforced, and further creed-making on this topic was
forbidden. For the whole story see Philip Jenkins, Jesus Wars: How Four
Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians
Would Believe for the Next 1,500 Years (New York: HarperOne, 2010).
[69] For example, consider the fortunes of leading Christian intellectuals
and would-be expounders of trinitarian truths John Philoponus (c. 490-c. 570)
and Peter Abelard (1079-1142). On the former, see Christian Wildberg, “John
Philoponus,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2016
Edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta, Section 4.3. On the latter, see Peter
Abelard: Historia Calamitatum – The Story of My Misfortunes, translated by
Henry Adams Bellows (New York: Macmillan, 1972 [1922, c. 1132], or M.T.
Clanchy, Abelard: A Medieval Life (Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell,
1997), Chapter 13, or my “podcast 3 – making Abelard cry.”
[70] On the interesting and many-sided disputes among various trinitarian
and unitarian Anglicans in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries,
see Philip Dixon, Nice and Hot Disputes: The Doctrine of the Trinity in the
Seventeenth Century (London: T&T Clark, 2003) and James P. Ferguson, Dr.
Samuel Clarke: An Eighteenth Century Heretic (Kineton: The Roundwood
Press, 1976).
[71] The last one in Britain was Thomas Aikenhead, hanged at the age of
20 for blasphemy on January 8, 1697 near Edinburgh, Scotland. (Andrew
Hill, “Thomas Aikenhead,” Dictionary of Unitarian & Universalist
Biography, 2000) For the distinction between the Magisterial and the Radical
Reformation, and for many accounts of religious persecution in relation to
beliefs about the trinity see George Huntston Williams, The Radical
Reformation, Third Edition (Kirksville, Missouri: Truman State University
Press, 2000). On differing Catholic and Protestant ways of understanding
heresy, see my “podcast 85 – Heretic! Four Approaches to Dropping H-
Bombs.”
[72] The Trinity [De Trinitate], translated by Edmund Hill (Brooklyn, New
York: New City Press, 1991 [c.399-426), 228-9 [Book VII, Section 11],
modified.
[73] Quoted in Stephen Nye, Observations on the Four Letters of Dr. John
Wallis, &c., in The Faith of One God (Morrisville, North Carolina: Lulu.com,
2008 [1691]), 8, modernized.
[74] Some Buddhists hold the less extreme view that there are selves but
they are reducible to (are nothing more than) causally-connected series of
momentary mental and physical events.
[75] John 14:26; Acts 5:3, 13:2; Romans 8:16, 26; Ephesians 4:30.
[76] I have argued that it does. While one god and two lesser deities is
arguably a coherent suggestion, it is incoherent to suggest more than one god
(i.e. the sort of deity asserted by any monotheistic religion). On this see my
“On Counting Gods,” TheoLogica, (December 2016): 1-26, and my “Divine
Deception and Monotheism,” Journal of Analytic Theology 2 (2014): 186-
209.
[77] The [Southern] Baptist Faith and Message, Section II.
[78] See the sources cited in note 27 above.
[79] For example, the second assumes the truth of what philosophers now
call realism about universals (a.k.a. universal properties, forms, Platonic
“ideas”). This has always been denied by some Christian philosophers and
theologians, for philosophical and/or theological reasons.
[80] For more on this see my “Simplifying the Indiscernibility of
Identicals.”
[81] Mark 14:32-42.
[82] John 3:16.
[83] Deuteronomy 6:4; Isaiah 44:4, 6; Mark 12:29-30; John 8:54, 17:1-3,
20:17; Acts 2:33; Romans 15:6; 1 Corinthians 8:4-6; Ephesians 1:1-3, 17.
[84] On this see William Vallicella, “Divine Simplicity,” The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2015 edition), edited by Edward N.
Zalta.
 [85] John 14:8-11; Hebrews 1:3.
[86] E.g. Mark 1:11, 14:35-6; John 5:19-20.
[87] 1 Timothy 2:5.
[88] Reader beware: some recent evangelical apologists and theologians
have sown considerable confusion about the “identity” of Jesus and God. For
help in untangling these see my “podcast 124 – a challenge to “Jesus is God”
apologists,” and “podcast 13 – On Bauckham’s Bargain.”
[89] “First Council of Nicea – 325,” Norman Tanner, editor, Decrees of
the Ecumenical Councils, Volume I: Nicea I – Lateran V (Washington, D.C.:
Georgetown University Press, 1990), 1-19, 5, emphasis added.
[90] 1 Corinthians 8:4-6.
[91] It is one which many Christian philosophers and theologians have
since abandoned as clashing with other biblical teachings about God. On this
see R.T. Mullins, The End of the Timeless God (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2016).
[92] Dale Tuggy, “Tertullian the Unitarian,” European Journal for
Philosophy of Religion 8:3 (2016): 179-99.
[93] See the sources cited by Mormon philosopher David Paulsen in his
“Divine Embodiment: The Earliest Christian Understanding of God.” On the
relevant concept of having a body see Benjamin Sommer, The Bodies of God
and the World of Ancient Israel (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2009), 1-2.
[94] “First Council,” 19.
[95] Joseph Lienhard, Contra Marcellum: Marcellus of Ancyra and
Fourth-Century Theology (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of
America Press, 1999), Chapter 2. For an overview of his theology and
historical importance, see “podcast 175 – Marcellus of Ancyra.”
[96] Lienhard, Contra, 39.
[97] For information on the life and theology of the first Eusebius see
“podcast 173 – Eusebius of Caesarea.” On these anti-miahypostatic councils,
see R.P.C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God
(Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988), Chapters 10-12.
[98] Michel René Barnes, “The Fourth Century as Trinitarian Canon,” in
Christian Origins: Theology, Rhetoric and Community, edited by Lewis
Ayres and Gareth Jones (New York: Routledge, 1998), 47-67.
[99] In Philippians 2:11 Paul assumes that all honor given to the exalted
Jesus also, as it were, flows though him, to the God who exalted him. As
Jesus said, if you honor the one sent, you thereby honor the sender. (Matthew
10:40)
[100] “First Council,” 5. This controversial claim was deleted in the
revised creed promulgated by the 381 council.
[101] “First Council,” 5.
[102] They refer to the angel’s statement in Luke 1:35.
[103] “First Council of Constantinople – 381,” in Tanner, Decrees, 21-35,
24.
[104] The Trinity [De Trinitate], translated by Edmund Hill (Brooklyn,
New York: New City Press, 1991 [c. 400-20]), 65-96 [Book I].
[105] The City of God against the Pagans, translated by R.W. Dyson (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1998 [426]), 462 [Book XI, Chapter 10].
[106] For my attempt to untangle just what Augustine’s doctrine of the
Trinity amounts to, see my “History of Trinity Doctrines,” [Supplement to
“Trinity”], The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 edition),
edited by Edward N. Zalta, Section 3.2.2.
[107] For doctrines of “relative identity” see my “Trinity,” The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 edition), edited by Edward N.
Zalta, Section 2.2. On the recent theory that the “Persons” of the Trinity share
one portion of something somewhat like matter, see my “Constitution
Trinitarianism: An Appraisal,” Philosophy and Theology 25:1 (2013): 129-
62. (Preprint.)
[108] 1 Corinthians 3:2-5, NRSV.
[109] 1 Corinthians 3:5-9, NRSV.
[110] Acts 19:1; 1 Corinthians 4:6, 16:12; Titus 3:13.
[111] For the most sophisticated defense of positive mysterianism in
Christian theology, see James Anderson, Paradox in Christian Theology: An
Analysis of Its Presence, Character, and Epistemic Status (Waynesboro,
Georgia: Paternoster Theological Monographs, 2007). I critique this strategy
and compare it to other solutions in my “On Positive Mysterianism,”
International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 69:3 (2011): 205-26.
(Preprint.)
[112] Some will gesture at: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor
are your ways my ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than
the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your
thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9, NRSV) But this neither says nor implies that God
will inflict information on us which can only appear to us as incoherent, nor
even that God intentionally confuses our theological thinking in order to
ensure our humility.
[113] For example, P = Jesus is God himself, not-P = It is not the case that
Jesus is God himself, or P = There is only one true God, not-P = It is not the
case that there is only one true God.
[114] K. Scott Oliphint, “Simplicity, Trinity, and the Incomprehensibility
of God,” in Bruce Ware and John Starke, editors, One God in Three Persons:
Unity of Essence, Distinction of Persons, Implications for Life (Wheaton,
Illinois: Crossway, 2015), 215-35, 225. The author is discussing reformer
John Calvin’s approval of Gregory’s statement (Oration 40 “On Baptism,”
Section 41) in Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion Book I, Chapter
13.
[115] Taking Leave of God (New York: Crossroad, 1980), 166.
[116] On these see my “Trinity,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(Winter 2016 edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta, Section 3.
[117] E. Jennifer Ashworth, “Medieval Theories of Analogy,” The
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 edition), edited by
Edward N. Zalta.
[118] 1 John 4:8.
[119] See Richard Swinburne, The Christian God (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1994), Chapter 8. For criticism see Brian Leftow, “Anti
Social Trinitarianism”, in The Trinity: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the
Trinity, edited by S. T. Davis, D. Kendall and G. O’Collins (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1999), 203–49.
[120] For my complete analyses of the generic concept deity and of the
more specific concept of monotheistic godhood, see my “On Counting
Gods,” TheoLogica, December 2016, 1-26. For a related presentation see my
“podcast 164 – On Counting Gods.”
[121] Samuel 28:13; Genesis 35:7; Psalm 82:1.
[122] John 10:22-39.
[123] 1 Kings 8:23; Psalm 97:9.
[124] John 10:34-35.
[125] John 17:1-5.
[126] Isaiah 45:5-7, NIV, modified.
[127] E.g. Romans 1: 1-7; Galatians 1:1-4; Philippians 1:2; 1
Thessalonians 1:1.
[128] John 17:1-3; 1 Thessalonians 1:9-10; 1 John 5:20. This last text has
long been disputed, as the grammar leaves it ambiguous whether the Father
or the Son is being called “true God.” Many commenters have pointed out
that previous sentence twice refers to the Father as “him who is true.” It is
thus more natural to read the last portion of the verse as “He [i.e. the Father]
is the true God and eternal life,” even though “the Son” is the noun closest to
“He.”
[129] John 20:17; Revelation 1:6; Revelation 3:12; Romans 15:6; 2
Corinthians 1:3; Ephesians 1:17; 1 Peter 1:3.
[130] Worse, such arguments are unsuccessful. For exposition and
evaluation see Dale Tuggy, “On the Possibility of a Single Perfect Person” in
Christian Philosophy of Religion, edited by Colin Ruloff (Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame Press, 2014), 128-48. (Preprint.)
[131] Brian Leftow, “Why perfect being theology?” International Journal
for Philosophy of Religion 69:2 (2011): 103-18.
[132] Tuggy, “Trinity,” Section 2.
[133] On such ideas see chapter 6 and 7 above.
[134] The most catholic of Protestants commit to all seven. Others are
enthusiastic only about the first four, and are ambivalent to hostile to councils
five through seven. For Protestants, the least popular is the seventh (Nicea II
in 787), which ruled in favor of using images (e.g. statues or pictures of
Jesus, Mary, and the saints) in worship.
[135] “Second Council of Constantinople – 553,” in Norman Tanner,
editor, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, Volume I: Nicea I – Lateran V
(Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 103-22, 114
[Anathema 1 against the “Three Chapters”].
[136] “Fourth Council of Constantinople – 869-870,” in Tanner, Decrees,
155-86, 160 [Definition of the holy and universal eighth synod, Paragraph 4].
[137] “Fourth Lateran Council – 1215,” in Tanner, Decrees, 229-71, 230
[Constitutions, Section 1 “On the catholic faith”].
[138] Isaiah 6:3; Revelation 4:8.
[139] Genesis 18.
[140] Genesis 19:24.
[141] E.g. Judges 2:1.
[142] An argument is sound just in case it is valid, and every premise is
true. An argument is valid just in case if all the premises were to be true, then
the conclusion too would be true. For more help in understanding this
common terminology, see “Validity and Soundness,” The Internet
Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
[143] An important first-century exception to this is the earliest Jewish
Christians using “the Lord” (ho kurios) for the risen and exalted Jesus rather
than for God. This was based on Psalm 110:1, understood as a prophecy of
Jesus’s exaltation to God’s right hand. For explanation and evaluation of
recent suggestions that this usage of “Lord” is supposed to teach that Jesus
“belongs to the identity of God” see trinities podcast episodes 13-16.
[144] Jude 1:3.
[145] Acts 17:10-12.
[146] Catechism of the Catholic Church (Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist
Press, 1994), 62, [Paragraph 234]. The writers here are using “mystery” in
the first sense discussed in chapter 8 above.
[147] “First Vatican Council – 1869-1870,” in Norman Tanner, editor,
Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, Volume II (Washington, D.C.: George-
town University Press, 1990), 800-19, 811 [Canon 4 “On faith and reason,”
Section 3]). Compare with 808-9 [“Dogmatic constitution on the catholic
faith,” Chapter 4 “On faith and reason.”) For discussion of some different
theoretical moves in response to apparent theological incoherence see my
“On Positive Mysterianism,” International Journal for Philosophy of
Religion 69:3 (2011): 205-26, Section I. (Preprint.)
[148] The 16th-18th century “Socinians” (a.k.a. The Polish Brethren, the
Minor Reformed Church) are well-known, and oddly, are oftentimes treated
as an outdated anomaly in church history by many today, an odd but
unimportant footnote in modern history. This is uninformed, historically
speaking; various sorts of unitarians were influential in Britain and in the
United States in the 19th century too, and as we saw in chapters 3 and 5
above, mainstream Christians were unitarian until the late 4th century. In the
present day, setting aside the large Jehovah’s Witness sect, there are many
small Protestant groups around holding to some unitarian theology. See, e.g.
the countless articles, books, sermons, and videos, posted on these websites:
21st Century Reformation Online, Church of God and Abrahamic Faith
Resources, biblical unitarian (and Spirit and Truth Fellowship International),
Christian Monotheism (and Restitutio), Christian Disciples Church Online,
Restoration Fellowship, GodWard.
 [149] John 1:17-8; 1 Corinthians 12:27.
[150] In Defense of Conciliar Christology: A Philosophical Essay (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2016).
[151] I had the privilege of interviewing Dr. Pawl about this book. The first
part is “podcast 143 – Dr. Timothy Pawl’s In Defense of Conciliar
Christology – Part 1.”
[152] Richard Cross, “The Incarnation,” The Oxford Handbook of
Philosophical Theology, edited by Thomas P. Flint and Michael Rea (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 452-75. For more accessible surveys
see David Werther, “Incarnation,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and
Robin Le Poidevin, “Incarnation: Metaphysical Issues,” Philosophy Compass
4:4 (2009), 703-14.
[153] A Calm Inquiry into the Scripture Doctrine concerning the Person of
Christ, Second Edition, Corrected (London, 1817 [1811]). (Reprint:
Morrisville, North Carolina: Lulu.com, 2009.) Belsham lived from 1750 until
1829.
[154] Available at: kermitzarley.com. In this interview, Mr. Zarley relates
his spiritual journey and describes how he came to change his mind about
Jesus and God: “podcast 86 – Kermit Zarley on distinguishing Jesus and
God.”
[155] John 14:1, NRSV.