Admittedly, the doctrine of the Trinity is complicated. Therefore, the only way to accurately discern what a professing Christian believes about the Trinity is to talk with people directly and hear what they actually believe.
We must not fall into the heritage of fundamentalism and condemn people based on secondhand reports or their associations. Arianism was an early heretical teaching about the identity of Jesus Christ, founded primarily on the teachings of Arius. The central characteristic of Arian thought was that because God is one, Jesus could not have also been truly God. In order to deal with the scriptural testimony to the exalted status of Christ, Arius and his followers proposed that Jesus was the highest created being of God.
So although Christ was fully human, he was not fully God. This group teaches that there is no biblical basis for the doctrine of the Trinity. They teach that there is one solitary divine being from all eternity.
This divine being is Jehovah God, the creator and preserver of the universe and all things. Thus, Jesus is the archangel Michael, who is mentioned in the Old Testament.
Neither is the Spirit divine but rather more of a cosmic force of Jehovah. Tritheism teaches that the Trinity consists of three equal, independent, and autonomous beings, each of whom is divine. Tritheism stresses the plurality of the Godhead. One ancient view was that the divine nature is divided into three parts, analogous to a lump of clay cut into three pieces. Another view, from the late 11th century, considered the three divine persons as three independent beings who, it could be said, were three gods.
In contrast, the church has consistently taught that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three persons in that each is aware of the others, speaks to the others, and loves and honors the others while sharing divine attributes such as omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence.
Unitarianism essentially maintains that God is only one divine person the Father and denies that Jesus Christ is God in that sense. Historically, the term has been used in reference to Socinianism — a form of non-trinitarianism that emerged around the time of the Protestant Reformation, holding the view that Jesus was merely human. Modalism — the belief that there is one God in substance and person, and that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three successive functions, or modes, of that God but not distinct persons.
In Old Testament times, God appeared as the Father. At the Incarnation, He showed up as the Son. Modalism teaches that these modes are consecutive, never simultaneous.
Sabellianism — another way of expressing a modalistic view of God. Sabellius, a third-century priest, argued that God is like an actor wearing several masks — first, the mask of the Father, then the mask of the Son, and finally the mask of the Holy Spirit. But behind these masks is just one person.
Craig wants to say, for example, that each of the three is all-knowing, and also that God is all-knowing, in that God has parts which are all-knowing. But Howard-Snyder objects that,. According to Trinity monotheism, a thing can exemplify the divine nature without itself being a self.
Nor can divinity include properties which require being a self, e. He is personal in the sense of having personal parts. As to the charge of polytheism, Craig accuses Howard-Snyder of confusing monotheism with unitarianism , i. Finally, Craig argues that the issue of whether or not the Three count as parts of God is unimportant — Stephen Layman has constructed a similar and arguably better developed three-self Trinity theory.
Motivated by the New Testament, Layman says that the three Persons of the Trinity are three selves — God the Trinity is literally a social entity, a concrete, primary substance which is strongly analogous to a living thing, and which like a living thing is a self-maintaining event — Layman answers that social entities are concrete, not abstract, and can intentionally act — Intentionally acting requires having intentions, but social entities may have these, even though they are not selves or even subjects of consciousness.
Social entities may have intentions because their parts i. Like Craig, Layman argues that the Trinity can be omnipotent, perfectly good, and omniscient because its persons are Why then is the Trinity not a fourth divine person see section 3. Layman concedes that the Old Testament does. But because they believe in progressive divine revelation, Christians should read the Old Testament as corrected by the New Testament.
The account is not polytheism because only the Trinity is God, and because of the necessary unity of the three , How can the Son and Spirit be fully divine if each is caused by the Father and so does not exist a se? The qualities of omnipotence, omniscience, eternality, perfect goodness, and necessary existence are sufficient to guarantee the worship-worthiness of the Persons ibid.
Like Swinburne and Craig, Layman argues that a God who is a single self is impossible. A solitary divine Person would be lacking this glory; but presumably a divine Person must have glory.
The limit of divine Persons to three, in his view, can only come from the Bible —8. Christopher Hughes suggests a theory much like the Constitution theory section 2. On this picture,. An objection is that the one God of Christianity is not supposed to be a portion of matter. Hughes replies that perhaps it is orthodox to say that God is a very unusual kind of matter They are consubstantial because they both bear this other relation to a third, substantiating thing.
Thus, e. On this alternate view, though, what does it mean to say that God is the substance of a divine Person? Hughes suggests that the case is analogous to material objects. Hughes ends on a negative mysterian note see section 4. Leftow objects that this theory features four things which are divine, which is at least one too many.
He takes from Frege the idea that number-properties are concept-relative. There is no privileged way of conceptualizing [this portion of reality] in terms of which we can explain the other way.
Both ways are equally legitimate. Some think identity is of necessity a one-one relation, although others allow there can be many-many identity; for instance, it may be that the three men who committed the robbery are identical to the three men who were convicted of the robbery. Those who believe identity can be one-many typically do so because they accept the controversial thesis that composition the relation of parts to a whole they compose should be understood as identity.
For example, we can recognize a certain human body to be identical to a certain plurality of head, torso, two arms, and two legs. And we can recognize that a pair of shoes is identical to a plurality of shoes Rather, orthodoxy requires that the one God is identical to the Three considered as a plurality. And might the divine portion of reality equally well be conceived as seventeen? Joseph Long objects that the theory is unorthodox because it requires a type of thing which is divine and yet which is neither the Trinity nor any divine Person.
Sheiva Kleinschmidt argues that theories on which composition is explained in terms of identity are of no use to the trinitarian, for such theories add no significant options to the options the trinitarian already has Kleinschmidt Chad McIntosh formulates a Trinity theory which is similar to three-self theories except that it adds God the Trinity as a fourth divine self.
This theory is inspired by recent work by philosophers on group persons. This is particularly useful, e. But some philosophers have argued for group agency realism, the thesis that some groups of persons are themselves literal persons, with interests, knowledge, freedom, power to intentionally act, and moral responsibility — On this account the Persons of the Trinity are intrinsicist persons, while God the Trinity is a functional person McIntosh argues that since moral responsibility implies personhood of some kind , and it is clear that the Trinity must be praiseworthy, e.
As Leftow objects to another theory,. McIntosh replies that the tradition demands that there are exactly three Persons Greek: hypostases which share the divine nature or essence, which is captured by his claim that there are exactly three intrinsicist persons. This account does not claim that God is a fourth hypostasis, a fourth intrinsicist person.
Rather, God is a functional person, a person not by his essence, but rather who exists as a person because of the unified functioning of the Father, Son, and Spirit McIntosh argues that the theory neatly sidesteps a number of common objections to three-self theories: here, God is a self and not merely a group or a composite object which is less than a self.
In contrast with three-self theories, as a literal self, personal pronouns may be literally used of him. See sections 2. Following some Old Testament scholars, McIntosh claims that ancient Israelites recognized many groups, including their own nation, as literal group, functional persons. This one God is neither simple nor timeless, but is a temporally extended self with shorter-lived temporally extended selves as his parts. At any given time, only one self bears this relation of temporal-stage sharing with God.
How can any of these selves be divine given that they are neither timeless nor everlasting? Each of these non-eternal selves, then, counts as the continuation of the previous one, and is everlasting in the sense that it is a temporal part of an everlasting whole, God. The obscure traditional generation and procession relations are re-interpreted as non-causal relations between God and two of his temporal parts, the Son and Spirit 13—4.
In a later paper, she argues that any trinitarian may and should accept this re-interpretation Baber But the Persons in this theory are not mere modes; they are truly substances and selves, and there are at least three of them, though each is counted as the continuation of the one s preceding him. It is unclear whether the theory posits only three selves 10—1. This theory is notable in being a case not of rational reconstruction, but of doctrinal revision Tuggy a.
In a later discussion Baber argues that some form or other of Sabellianism about the Trinity is theoretically straightforward and fits well with popular Christian piety.
Further, such theories can survive the common objections that they imply that God is only contingently trinitarian, and that they characterize God only in relation to the cosmos. While some Sabellian theories do have those implications, Baber argues that a trinitarian may just accept them , —8.
Alternately, Baber develops a structuralist approach to the Trinity which doesn't imply anything about how many selves it involves. Koons holds that even everyday objects imply the existence of such intentional objects, i. Thus, we can distinguish Trump-qua-husband from Trump-qua-President; while these are real objects of thought, they both amount to being properties of Trump, which Koons thinks of as metaphysical parts of Donald Trump.
Unlike most of the other theories in this entry, Koons builds his on the foundation of divine simplicity, traditionally understood. According to this, God is numerically identical with his nature, his one action, and his existence. God has no accidental non-essential properties and no proper parts, and he just is any essential property of his. In sum, God has no parts or components in any sense The divine nature just is any divine attribute, e.
Following Aquinas, Koons says that God a. Thus, the divine nature implies the existence of three relational qua-objects, which are the Persons of the Trinity. Each of these four things—God the divine nature , the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—has the divine nature as its one metaphysical component, and each has all the divine attributes Each of those four is numerically distinct from each of the three others The theory requires more than the relation of absolute numerical sameness or identity.
Like identity, this relation is reflexive and symmetrical, but unlike identity it is neither transitive nor Euclidian such that if any x is related to some y and to some z then this implies that y and z are related in that same way. Thus, real sameness is not an equivalence relation , n. But no Person here is really the same as any other Person; all three are really distinct from one another. To summarize: there are four divine realities on this model of the Trinity. The three Persons are so many qua-objects, while God is not.
None of these four is really distinct from God; all are really the same as him. Yet none of the four is identical to any of the others One may ask why there should be only three qua-objects here, when objects like a human person or an apple, having many properties, might imply hundreds or thousands of qua-objects. The answer is that not every qua-object of God is a divine Person. Many such, Koons says, are contingent, e. God-as-creator, or God-as-friend-of-Abraham; such would not have existed had God not created.
And any qua-object of God which involves only an essential property of his, e. God-as-omnipotent, is numerically identical to God This last condition is meant to prevent the proliferation of divine qua-objects —6. Koons argues that this account explains why there are exactly three divine Persons. So if the Father loves the Son, this implies that they are numerically distinct non-identical. It also implies that they are really distinct and not really the same.
In specifying what he means by real distinctness Koons writes,. The distinction between these qua-objects Father and Son is intrinsic to their ultimate base, God the divine nature because he is the intrinsic yet relational property of love —9. Koons argues that this theory has many advantages over some rivals. Against the constitution based three-self theory of Brower and Rea see section 2. And their theory requires three different odd and hard to explain personal attributes Koons recognizes that many will object that this theory is tetratheism; it features four realities, each of which is divine; prima facie, these would be four gods.
Koons believes that the real sameness of each of the Persons with God should rule out any polytheism and rule in monotheism. He offers this definition of monotheism:. Thus the meaning of this definition can be restated as:. Put differently, one may count things by identity. One may wonder here how the four realities can be equally divine. It would seem that whereas God the divine nature would not exist because of any other, and so would exist a se , each of the qua-object persons would exist because of God, their base.
Again, on this account each of these four is intrinsically and essentially divine, yet the Persons can love, while God can not. How then can all four be omnipotent? Some will judge this theory to inherit all the problems of the traditional divine simplicity doctrine it assumes.
Others will consider its fit with simplicity to be a feature and not a bug. Koons points out that it also assumes constituent ontology, a Thomistic account of thought, and the claim that the divine nature is an intentional relation The view is that God, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are all improper parts of one another, while none is numerically identical to any other.
This is shown in the following chart; the lines represent the symmetrical and transitive improper parthood relation. He argues that this change is not merely theologically motivated, but may be applicable to other issues in metaphysics —3. Molto discusses a problem for the model which arises from the transitivity of parthood and the axiom that things which are improper parts of one another must have all their proper parts in common. In response, he adds three further elements to the model, as shown here:.
As before, the lines with arrows on each end represent the symmetrical improper parthood relation. In this illustration the one-arrow lines represent the asymmetrical proper parthood relation. Thus, the divine nature of the Son and the human nature of the Son are proper parts of the composite Son, and the human body is a proper part of the human nature and thus, also of the composite Son.
Molto leaves it up to theologians whether this sort of theory is orthodox —7. His suggestion is only that this may be a simpler and less controversial solution to the logical problem of the Trinity, that is, to showing how trinitarian claims do not imply a contradiction. Mysterianism is a meta-theory of the Trinity, that is, a theory about trinitarian theories, to the effect that an acceptable Trinity theory must, given our present epistemic limitations, to some degree lack understandable content.
In this extreme form, mysterianism may be a sort of sophisticated position by itself—to the effect that one repeats the creedal formulas and refuses on principle to explain how, if at all, one interprets them.
More common is a moderate form, where mysterianism supplements a Trinity theory which has some understandable content, but which is vague or otherwise problematic. Thus, mysterianism is commonly held as a supplement to one of the theories of sections 1—3.
Again, it may serve as a supplement not to a full-blown theory i. See section 3. Unitarian views on the Father, Son, and Spirit are typically motivated in part by hostility to mysterianism. But the same can said of many of the theories of sections 1—3. Mysterians view their stance as an exercise of theological sophistication and epistemic humility. Some mysterians appeal to the medieval tradition of apophatic or negative theology, the view that one can understand and say what God is not, but not what God is, while others simply appeal to the idea that the human mind is ill-equipped to think about transcendent realities.
It is most common for theologians to combine the two views, though usually one or the other is emphasized. Sophisticated modern-era mysterians include Leibniz and the theologian Moses Stuart — Antognazza ; Leibniz Theodicy , 73—; Stuart , 26— The negative mysterian holds that the true doctrine of the Trinity is not understandable because it is too poor in intelligible content for it to positively seem either consistent or inconsistent to us.
The Persons of the Trinity, in this way of thinking, are somewhat like three men, but also somewhat like a mind, its thought, and its will, and also somewhat like a root, a tree, and a branch. Some recent studies have emphasized the centrality of negative mysterianism to the pro-Nicene tradition of trinitarian thought, chastising recent theorists who seem to feel unconstrained by it Ayres ; Coakley ; Dixon The practical upshot of this is being content to merely repeat the approved trinitarian sentences.
Thus, after considering and rejecting as inadequate multiple analogies for the Trinity, Gregory of Nazianzus concludes,. Opponents of this sort of mysterianism object to it as misdirection, special pleading, neglect of common sense, or even deliberate obfuscation. They emphasize that trinitarian theories are human constructs, and a desideratum of any theory is clarity.
Negative mysterians reply that it is well-grounded in tradition, and that those who are not naively overconfident in human reason expect some unclarity in the content of this doctrine.
That is, the doctrine seems to contain explicit or implicit contradictions. So while we grasp the meaning of its individual claims, taken together they seem inconsistent, and so the conjunction of them is not understandable, in the sense explained above. The positive mysterian holds that the human mind is adequate to understand many truths about God, although it breaks down at a certain stage, when the most profound divinely revealed truths are entertained.
Sometimes an analogy with recent physics is offered; if we find mysteries i. Orthodox belief about the Trinity, Anderson holds, involves believing, for example, that Jesus is identical to God, the Father is identical to God, and that Jesus and the Father are not identical. Similarly, one must believe that the Son is omniscient, but lacks knowledge about at least one matter.
These, he grants, are apparent contradictions, but for the believer they are strongly warranted and justified by the divine testimony of scripture.
He argues that numerous attempts by recent theologians and philosophers to interpret one of the apparently contradictory pairs in a way that makes the pair consistent always result in a lapse of orthodoxy , 11— A stock example is a man viewing apparently red objects. The man then learns that a red light is shining on them.
In learning this, he acquires a defeater for his belief that the items before him are red. Anderson argues that it does not, at least, if she reflects properly on the situation. Nor is it clear that God would be motivated to pay the costs of inflicting apparently contradictory divine revelations on us. Moreover, Anderson has not ruled out that the apparent contradictions come not from the texts alone, but also from our theories or pre-existing beliefs.
In a reply, Anderson denies that divine incomprehensibility is trivial, while agreeing that many things other than God are incomprehensible While Tuggy had attacked his suggestions about why God would want to afflict us with apparent contradictions, Anderson clarifies that.
As to whether these apparent contradictions result from the texts rightly understood, or whether they result from the texts together with mistaken assumptions we bring to them, this is a question only biblical exegesis can decide, not any a priori considerations In contrast, some theologians have held that doctrines including the Trinity imply not merely apparent but also real contradictions, but are nonetheless true.
Such hold that there are exceptions to the law of non-contradiction. While some philosophers have argued on mostly non-religious grounds for dialetheism , the claim that there can be true genuine, not merely apparent contradictions, this position has for the most part not been taken seriously by analytic theologians Anderson , —26 For a recent exception, see Beall They do this by suggesting models of the Trinity, intelligible and arguably coherent interpretations of most or all of the traditional language.
But in recent work the tools of analytic philosophy have been applied to several closely related issues. The first usage goes hand in hand with the claim that the one God just is the tripersonal God, the Trinity. This God, it is assumed, does not merely happen to be tripersonal, but must be so; on such a view, it looks like tripersonality will be an essential divine attribute. Some Trinity theories embrace this section 2. See section 2. Thus, some Trinity theories eschew a thing which is tripersonal, while affirming three divine Persons whose divinity does not require tripersonality sections 2.
One-self trinitarians deny 3, and three-self trinitarians deny 1. But Tuggy argues that for scriptural reasons a Christian should deny 2.
See also section 5. Jedwab and Keller , see the fundamental challenge for the orthodox trinitarian as showing how this seemingly inconsistent triad of claims is, rightly understood, consistent:. They argue that this must involve paraphrases, clearer formulations of 1—3 which can be seen as possibly all true.
They compare how the theories of sections 2. These provide materials for a formidable argument against any doctrine that entails those seven claims. Another recent piece compares different approaches to the Trinity by how they respond to an anti-trinitarian argument based on alleged differences between the Father and the Son Tuggy b.
This Latin document is by an unknown author, and is not the product of any known council. Modern scholarship places it some time in the fifth century, well after the life of Athanasius d. Objecting to making it a standard of trinitarian theology, several authors have pointed out its dubious provenance and coherence, and have observed that it has mainly been accepted in the Western realm and not in the East, and that it seems to stack the deck against three-self theories Layman —7, —71; McCall , ; Tuggy b, — But William Hasker argues that rightly understood, the claims of this creed may not be paradoxical, as it is largely concerned with what may and may not be said b, —4.
Baber describes five different foundations for theorizing about the Trinity, endorsing the fourth. It is misguided, he argues, to focus merely on the theoretical virtues of various rational reconstructions of what traditional Trinity language is really supposed to be expressing, as most of these will not plausibly be expressing the historical doctrine. New-fangled accounts, Branson argues, have a burden of showing how they, if coherent, imply that the historical doctrine of the Trinity is coherent, and indeed why the former should even count as a version of the latter Section 5.
Similarly with other theoretical virtues. At any rate, nothing about the project of analytic theology requires the neglect of the crucial historical definers of the Trinity doctrine Section The arguments for this conclusion defy easy summary but see Chapter 7 and Jaskolla In some scholarly circles it is taken as obvious that New Testament teaching is not trinitarian—that it neither asserts, nor implies, nor assumes anything about a tripersonal God see e. But most analytic literature on the Trinity assumes the truth of an orthodox narrative about where Trinity theories come from.
According to this, from the beginning Christians were implicitly trinitarian; that is, they held views which imply that God is a Trinity, but typically did not realize this or have adequate language to express it. But in recent analytic literature on the Trinity there are two counternarratives, both of which see the idea of a triune God as entering into Christian traditions in the last half of the s.
In reply, Tuggy has argued that recent Orthodox theologians seem divided on this point, and that the idea of a triune God the one God as the Trinity is found even in some of the Greek writers Branson claims as exemplars of theological orthodoxy Tuggy Another recent counternarrative sees ancient mainstream Christian theology as changing from unitarian to trinitarian. Tuggy argues that in the New Testament the one God is not the Trinity but rather the Father alone.
The argument moves from facts about the texts of the New Testament to what the authors probably thought about the one God, using what philosophers of science call the likelihood principle or the prime principle of confirmation. Tuggy sees such identification of the one God with the Father dominating early Christian theologies until around the time of the second ecumenical council in C.
Tuggy , Chapter 5. Then, the Son and the Spirit, which in many 2nd to early 4th c. One-self Theories 1. Three-self Theories 2. Four-self, No-self, and Indeterminate Self Theories 3. Mysterianism 4. Beyond Coherence 5. One-self Theories One-self theories assert the Trinity, despite initial appearances, to contain exactly one self. In this eternal begetting of Himself and being begotten of Himself, He posits Himself a third time as the Holy Spirit, that is, as the love which unites Him in Himself.
Similarly, Rahner says that God …is — at once and necessarily — the unoriginate who mediates himself to himself Father , the one who is in truth uttered for himself Son , and the one who is received and accepted in love for himself Spirit — and… as a result of this , he [i. God] is the one who can freely communicate himself. Rahner , —2 Similarly, theologian Alastair McGrath writes that …when we talk about God as one person, we mean one person in the modern sense of the word [i.
McGrath , All three theologians are assuming that the three modes of God are all essential and maximally overlapping. Dole and A. Chignell eds. Alston, W. Anderson, J. Baber, H.
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