The trinity and unitarianism debate in Christian theology

¶ … theological questions in Christianity is the nature of God and whether He is a single being or entity -- the unified God of the Unitarians, in other words -- or an entity that is three-in-one, the trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. This point has been passionately debated over the centuries and remains a point of difference among contemporary Christian sects. But while it remains a point of difference, the question of the nature of God in terms of trinity or unity has cooled dramatically. It is no longer at the center of the Christian world as it has been at other historical times, perhaps because much of the essential questions have already been debated, perhaps simply because the nature of the modern church is so very different from that of the church before the Reformation.

Indeed, the question of God-as-Trinity or God-as-Unity can be seen in some sense as the quintessential and formative question of the pre-Reformation church. The shift to the acceptance of the Trinity (not that is universally accepted within Christianity, of course, but it is of course very widely accepted as a part of modern Christian belief and practice) can be seen, I believe as an important element in the process by which the early church distinguished itself from Judaism. The God of the Jews is certainly a more unified God -- perhaps the word "homogeneous" might even be accurately used -- than the God of the New Testament. And so I believe that in some sense the shift to a firmer grounding in the concept of the Trinity can be seen as the maturation of the Christian church away from God as conceived of by Moses or Abraham. (Although I will discuss below some possible precursors in the Old Testament of the Christian Trinity.)

In this paper I take up this question of whether God is better understood in Trinitarian terms or in one of the Nontrinitarian forms -- most commonly Unitarianism but also Binitarianism (the belief that God exists as two persons in one deity). I shall explore both the historical and theological background of the different perspectives of this debate providing scriptural support for my contentions. I should note at the beginning that I personally believe in the Trinitarian nature of God. However, I also understand that those who have taken differing positions throughout time have also held their beliefs sincerely and should not be considered heretical in their beliefs. (Although they have been considered to be such during many times in the history of the early church.)

In order to begin to answer the question of whether it is accurate (although that word rings a little oddly in the current context) to conceive of God in Trinitarian form, it is essential to understand the nature of "person" as it was used in initial descriptions of the Trinity. For if we conceive of the Trinitarian nature of God in terms of modern definitions of personhood then we will be lead into an inaccurate understanding of the possible ways in which God can be understood to encompass three different persons.

A Unified Godhead

Trinitarian doctrine teaches that there are three persons -- the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit -- within the Godhead. We are as Christians to hold simultaneously the idea that these are actually three distinct persons (or personae) and the idea that they are irrefutably the same essence. In the modern West (one might in fact refine that to say in the post-Freud West) a "person" is considered to be a separate being, an entity that has free will and consciousness, a creature that is in itself fully complete (Letham 41). One might even use the word "perfect" in conjunction with this concept of personhood because this secular, modernist view of humanity is predicated on the idea that humans remain themselves even if they are not connected to God, even if they are not connected to each other. In this perspective persons are something of an island.

But a better understanding of the way in which "person" can be interpreted from a Trinitarian perspective is to consider both etymological and cultural roots of the word in the classical world. (The problems with doing this, of bringing in classical sources will be discussed below.) The idea behind "person" can perhaps most clearly be conveyed by the Greek word "hypostasis," which can be translated as "that which stands beneath" (Williams 112). It thus means something that is between an archetype and a manifestation. "Hypostasis" can be contrasted to the idea expressed by "ousia," which is similar to the English word "essence" (Williams 114). Thus God can be described in these terms as being "three hypostases in one ousia." This is a concise and elegant translation of the orthodox concept of the Trinity and can be seen to connect smoothly with the Trinitarian concept as set out in John 20:19-23. (The following comes from the King James Version):

19 Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you.

20 And when he had so said, he shewed unto them his hands and his side. Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the LORD.

21 Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.

22 And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost:

23 Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.

This formulation of "three hypostases in one ousia" (which was standardized by the Cappadocian fathers, a group of fourth-century church officials who were instrumental both in developing and consolidating Christian theology) was distrusted by others in the early Western church both because they believed that it connected Christianity too closely to the classical, pagan world. Early Western church thinkers were also concerned that this concept was linked it to a suspect concept within Eastern Christianity. Some early Western Christian leaders made the claim that there existed within Eastern Christianity an understanding of "three hypostases in one ousia" as actually referring to three separate substances -- the doctrine of Tritheism (Williams 187). This idea of "tritheism" is both interesting and important not because of its actual theology value but rather because it helps illuminate the ways in which concepts of God's unity (or unity-in-trinity, if I may play a little loosely with traditional terminology here) have historically been used.

As the etymology of the word suggests, tritheism is simply the belief in three distinct and separate gods who work together to conduct the affairs of the world. No Christian sect has ever adhered to such a belief (which can be seen to be fundamentally at odds with core Christian beliefs). Rather the attribution of a belief in or adherence to tritheism is essentially an accusation that different Christian groups use to defame each other. Each of the major Christian sects considers to be the idea a heretical one, and so have at times used the idea to claim that other Christian traditions are heretical ones. (This practice, of course, has been common around a number of liturgical and theological issues, not simply discussions of the Trinity.)

Other early Church officials were suspicious of the concept of the Trinity that I have been describing here as being the same as the error of consubstantiality, which is the idea that while the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are unified, there is a temporal element to this Trinity, with the Holy Spirit preceding the Father, who is turn precedes the Son (Arendzen 36-7). This is something of a simplification of the concept, which is both highly metaphorical and highly metaphysical. The important point here is that consubstantiality can be opposed in important ways contrasted with orthodox concepts of the Trinity. As such, accusations of consubstantiality are parallel to accusations of tritheism.

Old Testament Precedents of the Trinity

It is noteworthy that there exists what might be seen as both a theological and semantic antecedent to the concept of the divine Trinity in the Old Testament. While some sects of Christianity are what seems to me as dismissive of the Old Testament, I do not believe that this is a productive or authentic approach. There are important links between the Old and New Testaments; furthermore, I believe that whatever tools are at hand that allow one better to understand the nature of Christian teachings should be used. While some Christians speak as if they wish they could cast off the Old Testament in the same way (and for much the same reasons and with the same speed) that would cut off a gangrenous limb, I believe that a full understanding of Christian faith, belief, and practice can all be informed by a careful perusal and reading of the Old Testament.

In this line, I would like to note that there are Old Testament references to the Wisdom, Word, and Spirit of God, which can in some important ways be seen as a precedent to the underlying concept of the Trinity (Letham 81-6). I would also argue that there is a connection between the Trinity and Abraham's encounter with the three men in Genesis 18:

1 The LORD appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day.

2 Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed low to the ground.

3 He said, "If I have found favor in your eyes, my lord, [a] do not pass your servant by. 4 Let a little water be brought, and then you may all wash your feet and rest under this tree. 5 Let me get you something to eat, so you can be refreshed and then go on your way -- now that you have come to your servant." "Very well," they answered, "do as you say.

Likewise, the divine messenger that appears in several Old Testament passages has also been interpreted by some people as support for the Holy Spirit as an aspect of a Trinitarian God (Erickson 31).

Among these passages are Genesis 16:7 ("The angel of the LORD found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur.); Genesis 21:17 (God heard the boy crying, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, "What is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid; God has heard the boy crying as he lies there.); and Exodus 3:2 (There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up). Another passage that suggests strongly at the complex nature of divinity without being explicit about the Trinitarian nature of God comes in Leviticus 9:4: "And an ox and a ram for a fellowship offering to sacrifice before the LORD, together with a grain offering mixed with olive oil. For today the LORD will appear to you."

I believe that passages such as the above (there are other similar passages that I am not citing here since they are very similar to those above) do provide a theological basis to what will develop into the completed concept of the Trinity. Not only do these concepts seem to me to be spiritually (as well intellectually and emotionally) attuned to the Christian concept of the Trinity, but I believe the fact that the concept of the Trinity was already essentially present in the Old Testament explains in part what to me has always been a somewhat puzzling aspect of the importance of the Trinity to Christian orthodoxy: The idea (and reality) of the Trinity is never made explicit in the New Testament (Erickson 21).

It seems to me to be possible that such an omission might be based on the fact that the idea was already current. Let us consider the possibility that early Christians were familiar with the idea of God as a complex personhood from their familiarity of the nature of the divine from Jewish practice. If we begin with this perspective, then it becomes possible and even something close to probable) that members of the early Christian church might have been inclined to discuss (and revere) the Trinity in more implicit terms. If the first Christians were already inclined to think in trinitarian terms (although not Trinitarian terms), then they might not have felt the requirement to discuss the Triune nature of God in explicit terms. It might have been something that was (to some extent) simply expected (and accepted) among early Christians.

(I should note here that I am, of course, not arguing that Old Testament ideas that suggest at a more-than-unitarian nature to the divine are not very different from the Christian Trinity. Nor am I suggesting that there is a direct connection between the ideas behind the passages cited above and the fully developed concept of the three-in-one God (Erickson 49). I am positing not so much direct connections as indirect links. If Jewish thought was not as absolutely and purely monotheistic as it is generally seen as being, (or at least not as purely so for all Jews) such a fact might have made it easier for the earliest Christians to make the shift from their original faith and practice of Judaism. Indeed, it would be fascinating to know if the Jews who first became followers of Christ were those who were most receptive to a less monotheistic view of the divine. (Not that this would have been the only allure of Christ's teachings, but it is intriguing to speculate how much this one fact might have affected their overall attraction to Christianity.)

Scriptural Basis for the Triune Nature of Divinity

Even for one, such as myself, who believes in the Trinitarian nature of God must be satisfied with the fact that the scriptural evidence of the Triune nature of God is indirect, or at least less than completely explicit. For example, Matthew 28:19 is relatively direct, but the language of naming God as the Trinity is still absent. ("Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.") (It is perhaps important to note that this is the only New Testament reference to this Trinitarian language being used in the context of baptism.) (Letham 145).

Other passages are more implicit but -- I believe -- still offer clear evidence of the authenticity and correctness that the only proper reading of the nature of the divine is a Trinitarian one. Among these are 2 Corinthians 13:14 (May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.) and 1 Corinthians 12:4-6 ("4 There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. 5 There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. 6 There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men."). One can find reassurance in such passages, but it is (still) at the same time hard not to want a more direct message. But then one may simply look at the lack of direct, explicit scriptural evidence of the Trinitarian nature of God as one more arena in which faith must take the lead.

In the early centuries of the church, the question of the nature of God's divinity and being was fiercely -- and often even bloodily -- debated. Personally I look at these early debates with a good dose of ambivalence. In some ways I can see them as essential to the development of the church and as having been able to allow for the truth of Christian teachings to emerge. And yet these debates did in fact do real harm and produce martyrs to both false doctrines and true ones. One of the resounding questions -- for both the history of Christianity and of human history in general -- is why we cannot find and hold on to the truth without bloodshed.