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Some people think that the doctrine of the Trinity means that Christians believe in three gods. This is the idea of tritheism, which the church has categorically rejected throughout its history.
For instance, I once had a conversation with a man who had a PhD in philosophy, and he objected to Christianity on the grounds that the doctrine of the Trinity represented a manifest contradiction—the idea that one can also be three—at the heart of the Christian faith.
When we confess our faith in the Trinity, we affirm that God is one in essence and three in person. Thus, God is one in A and three in B.
Ousia and person
Hegel’s followers also applied these evolutionary ideas to the development of religious concepts. They worked with this assumption: All spheres of creation, including religion, follow the pattern of evolution we see in the biological realm, which is evolution from the simple to the complex. In the case of religion, this means that all developed religions evolved from the simple form of animism.
Henotheism is belief in one god (the prefix hen comes from a Greek word for “one,” a different word from mono), but the idea is that there is one god for each people or nation, and each one reigns over a particular geographical area.
However, while the name Elohim has a plural ending, it always appears with singular verb forms. So the writer was saying something that could not be interpreted to mean “many gods.”
Later in the Pentateuch, we find a striking statement of monotheism. It appears in the Shema, ancient Israel’s confession of its belief in one God: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one” (Deut. 6:4).
In the prophetic books, we see an almost constant diatribe against the false gods of other religions.
We have to understand that the distinctions in the Godhead do not refer to His essence; they do not refer to a fragmentation or compartmentalization of the very being of God.
Augustine once wrote, “The New [Testament] is in the Old [Testament] concealed; the Old is in the New revealed.”
When we look into the Scriptures, we see what we call in theology “progressive revelation.” This is the idea that, as time goes by, God unfolds more and more of His plan of redemption.
Progressive revelation is not a corrective, whereby the latest unveiling from God rectifies a previous mistaken revelation. Rather, new revelation builds on what was given in the past, expanding what God has made known.
But in the Christian faith, all diversity finds its ultimate unity in God Himself, and it is significant that even in God’s own being we find both unity and diversity—in fact, in Him we find the ultimate ground for unity and diversity.
# God's triunity is unity in diversity
This is the basis of knowledge. In him we live and move and have ur being. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. If God created the universe, this diversity cme from him.
The New Testament picks up on this and talks about Jesus simultaneously being David’s son and David’s Lord. This psalm also provides another hint to the multiple dimensions of the being of God when it declares that God’s Son will be a priest forever, an eternal priest after the order of Melchizedek (v. 4).
Here Paul affirms the bedrock tenets of classical Jewish monotheism—one God who made all things and from whom everything derives.
Acts17:23-31
He distinguishes between the Father and the Son, and he notes that all things are “from” the Father and “through” Christ, and that we exist “for” the Father and “through” the Son. Clearly, Paul is equating the Father and the Son in terms of Their divinity.
1 Cor 8:1-6
In John’s gospel, Jesus makes a number of “I am” statements: “I am the bread of life” (6:48), “I am the door” (10:7), “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (14:6), and others. In each of these statements, the wording in the Greek New Testament for “I am” is ego eimi. These Greek words also happen to be the words with which the essential name of God, Yahweh, is translated from the Hebrew. Jesus, then, by using this construction for Himself, is equating Himself with God.
did not say, “Before Abraham was, I was.” Rather, He said, “I am.” In doing so, He made a claim to eternality and deity. What many people miss in our day, the first-century contemporaries of Jesus caught rather quickly.
John does not tell us whether Thomas ever actually probed Jesus’ wounds, but he does say Thomas fell on his knees and cried out, “My Lord and my God!” (v. 28). That is significant. In the book of Acts, we are told that people on one occasion were so amazed by a miraculous healing that they wanted to worship Paul and Barnabas, but they rebuked the people immediately (14:11–15). Elsewhere in Scripture, when people see the manifestation of angels and begin to worship them, the angels prevent them, saying that they are not to be worshiped because they are creatures. But Jesus accepted Thomas’
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By the command of Christ, people are to be baptized in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit (Matt. 28:19).
The apostles also speak of the Father, Son, and Spirit cooperating to redeem a people for Themselves (2 Thess. 2:13–14; 1 Peter 1:2).
In fact, heresy historically has forced the church to be precise, to define its doctrines and differentiate truth from falsehood.
Nearly every Christian community in the world today affirms the assertions of the so-called ecumenical councils of church history, the two chief of which were the Council of Nicea in the fourth century and the Council of Chalcedon in the fifth century.
Monarchianism, then, was the attempt to preserve the unity of God, or monotheism.
The idea behind modalism was that all three persons of the Trinity are the same person, but that they behave in unique “modes” at different times.
The chief proponent of modalism was a man named Sabellius. According to one ancient writer, Sabellius illustrated modalism by comparing God to the sun. He noted that the sun has three modes: its form in the sky, its light, and its warmth.
A second form of monarchianism that appeared was called “dynamic monarchianism” or “adoptionism.” This school of thought was also committed to preserving monotheism, but its adherents wanted to give honor and central importance to the person of Christ. Those who propagated this view held that at the time of creation, the first thing God made was the Logos, after which the Logos created everything else. So the Logos is higher than human beings and even angels. He is the Creator, and He predates all things except God. But He is not eternal, because He Himself was created by God, so He is not
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Modern day Mormons and JW's?
These views prompted the first of the ecumenical councils, the Council of Nicea, which met in AD 325. This council produced the Nicene Creed, which affirms that Christ is “the only begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds,” and that He was “begotten, not made.”
With these affirmations, the church said that scriptural terms such as firstborn and begotten have to do with Christ’s place of honor, not with His biological origin. The church declared that Christ is of the same substance, being, and essence as the Father. Thus, the idea was put forth that God, though three in person, is one in essence.
The term monophysite consists of the now-familiar prefix mono, meaning “one,” and physite, which comes from the Greek phusis, meaning “nature.” So the word monophysite literally means “one nature.”
In fact, the monophysite heresy sees Christ as neither God nor man, but as something more than man and less than God. He represents a kind of deified humanity or a humanized deity.
Nestorius basically said that one person cannot have two natures; if there are two natures, there must be two persons. Therefore, since Christ had both a divine nature and a human nature, He was a divine person and a human person co-existing.
If I distinguish a person’s body from his soul, I do no harm to him, but if I separate his body from his soul, I not only harm him, I kill him. By not grasping the difference between distinguishing and separating, Nestorius essentially destroyed the biblical Christ.
The unity was still there, but the change that had taken place was within the human nature, not the divine nature. That’s very important to understand.
Therefore, following the holy fathers, we all with one accord teach men to acknowledge one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body; of one substance with the Father as regards his Godhead, and at the same time of one substance with us as regards his manhood; like us in all respects, apart from sin; as regards his Godhead, begotten of the Father before the ages, but yet as regards his manhood begotten, for us men and for our salvation, of Mary the Virgin, the God-bearer;
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“truly God and truly man” (Vera Deus, vera homo).
Unfortunately, many people who should know better say that Chalcedon affirmed that Jesus was fully God and fully man. That is a contradiction. If we say that His person is completely and totally divine, then He must have only one nature. We cannot have a person who is completely divine and completely human at the same time and in the same relationship. That is an absurd idea.
In reality, Chalcedon affirmed that Jesus has two natures, one of which is divine. His divine nature is fully divine; it’s not just semi-divine, it is completely divine. The divine nature of Christ possesses all of the attributes of deity, lacking none of them.
