How is the Trinity not tritheism?
Christian teaching says that the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God — and then insists, in the same breath, that there is only one God. The obvious objection is that this is simply three Gods with a single label, so the question is what the writers mean by "one" and what they mean by "person."
The Claim Itself
The confession is not that God is one thing and also three of the same thing. The distinction is deliberate:
A J PollockThis clearly shows that while Scripture affirms that there are three distinct Persons in the Godhead, yet there are not three Gods, but one; not a trinity of Gods, but a triune God.
Why "Person" Misleads Us
Most of the objection comes from importing our ordinary sense of "person" into God. Applied to human beings, the word carries separateness — and that is exactly what must not be carried over:
A J PollockIn human language when we speak of a person, we think of separate entity, separate existence, separate will, different characteristics, thoughts and plans peculiar to each person, not shared with any others. Carry that human thought into the subject before us, and the truth of the Trinity is entirely perverted and lost. Instead of the Trinity—Father, Son and Spirit, ONE God—we should have three Gods, an absolute impossibility, for there can only be one God, unique and incomprehensible.
The word is kept anyway, because nothing better exists for One who sends and is sent. Darby was frank about its limits:
J. N. DarbyNow, I have no better word than "person" for one who is sent, who wills, who distributes, who sends, and so on. It cannot give me that limited idea of "person" which the word applied to man does (for then one existence excludes another); but I have no reason whatever to impose the limits of my manner of being on God's, but rather the contrary.
One Nature, Not Three Shares
Three Gods would mean three separate divine natures, or one nature split three ways. The writers deny both. The Godhead is not divided into portions:
VariousThe nature of the Son is the same with that of the Father; and the nature of the Spirit the same with that of the Father and the Son; and this nature, which They in common partake of, is undivided; it is not parted between Them, so that one has one part, and another a second, and another a third; nor that one has a greater and another a lesser part, which might distinguish Them, but the whole fullness of the Godhead is in each.
Nor is the unity merely a matched set of qualities:
VariousThere are not three independent units side by side, on a level with each other, each almighty, each eternal, each finding in Himself the source of His own life. The unity of the three blessed Persons is not a similarity of character and qualities and powers … three Beings each of Whom is a God. … The life of all three is one and the same life, and it has but one source, not three.
One Will, Distinct Acting
Three Gods would mean three wills that could, in principle, disagree. Darby draws the line precisely — the distinction lies in the acting, not in the willing:
J. N. DarbyThey have not the same counsel but one counsel, mind, purpose, thought; yet they act distinctly in the manifestation of that counsel. The Father sends the Son, and the Son the Spirit. Yet when the Son comes, He is not thereby separate from the Father. … There is unity in all that constitutes oneness when we speak spiritually — not unity as one by arriving at the same things, or union, or by being united, as we are by having only one Spirit dwelling in all, but — by being one in eternal being.
Relationship Is What Rules Out Three Gods
Take away the eternal relationship of Father, Son and Spirit and the safeguard collapses:
E. C. HadleyThis truth of the eternal relationship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit is vital. To have three beings coequal in deity without relationship would be three Gods, not one Triune God.
Scripture Guards Both Sides
The point is not a later invention patched onto the Bible. Pollock notes that Israel's great statement of God's oneness itself carries a plural word for God — the older wording read "the LORD our God is one LORD":
A J PollockHere in the very assertion that there is one God, care is taken to show that the UNITY of the Godhead embraces Three Persons—One in substance, power, will, wisdom, knowledge and counsel. No mind of man, however acute, can fathom this mystery. We know the truth of it from revelation alone.
The baptism command makes the same move in the opposite direction — three named, one name:
Frederick W GrantThis baptizing is "unto the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." The name, not the names, of the Triune. This is the Christian revelation of God; and what is not done in this way is not Christian.
Summary
- Three, not three Gods. The confession is a triune God, not a trinity of Gods — the distinction Pollock draws is the whole answer in one line.
- The word "person" is borrowed. It is kept because there is no better word for One who sends and is sent, but its human sense of separate existence must be stripped away.
- One undivided nature. The Godhead is not shared out in portions; the whole fullness is in each, and the life of the three is one life with one source.
- One counsel, distinct acting. They do not agree on a plan; they have one plan, and act distinctly in carrying it out.
- Relationship is the safeguard. Equal deity without eternal relationship would be three Gods — and Scripture protects both truths at once: a plural name inside Israel's confession of one God, and one name over three at baptism.