And you shall make a menorah of pure gold. The menorah shall be made of hammered work; its base and its stem, its goblets, its knobs, and its flowers shall [all] be [one piece] with it. (Exodus 25:31)
It is arguably so that one of the most important aspects of our avoda (service of God) as Jews and humans being in general is our ability to comprehend God's absolute Oneness. While God takes care to relate His Oneness to us in explicit terms in the Torah, it nevertheless seems that humanity has historically struggled to fully accept and apprehend this concept.
The above verse is an interesting and useful metaphor to aid us in understanding the correct way to ascertain God's absolute Oneness, perhaps even a meditation. When God instructed Moses to build the original Menorah to be placed in the Mishkan (tabernacle), He said that it must "be made of hammered work." Rashi explains "hammered work" to mean that it must be constructed entirely from one block of gold, without constructing each piece individually and then assembling them together into a unified whole.
Rashi explains that Moshe Rabbeinu found it difficult to understand how to build the Menorah from one piece of gold. It is curious that a prophet on the level of Moshe's caliber found it difficult, and impossible, to construct the Menorah according to God's specifications.
Nevertheless, God promptly solved the problem by telling Moshe to throw the gold into the fire and that He Himself would form it into its required shape. This is evidenced by the Torah's use of the passive verb (it shall be made - תֵּֽיעָשֶׂ֤ה) in contrast to the active verb (you shall make - וְעָשִׂ֨יתָ) used earlier in the chapter, indicating that Moshe did not make it on his own.
Perhaps Moshe's struggle to understand how to construct the Menorah from one piece of gold speaks to the majority of humanity's struggle to understand God's absolute Oneness. The human mind tends toward complexity, being a complex object itself composed of many separate domains. And nevertheless God reveals His true nature to use as a unified whole Who cannot be correctly apprehended as an assembled composite of separate elements.
As with Moshe, the solution to this conundrum required him to throw the gold into the fire, and God Himself constructed the Menorah in its correct unified form. We must likewise resist the temptation to form our understanding of God as a complex unity. We can do this by subjecting our finite understanding to the purifying fire of God's superior understanding, and He will produce for us the correct understanding of His absolutely unitary nature.
As a side note, notice the eerie similarity between the method used to construct both the Golden Calf and the Menorah. In Exodus 32:24, Aharon says to Moshe, "I said to them, 'Who has gold?' So they took it [the gold] off and gave it to me; I threw it into the fire and out came this calf.'" Both were made by throwing gold into a fire, indicating the apparently thin line between an incorrect and correct understanding. The people were convinced that they were doing the right thing, but alas, they were in error.
If you find yourself struggling with God's Oneness, recall His reassurance to Isaiah, "'For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,' says the Lord." (Isaiah 55:8) It is as if God is saying, "Just as you may seek to understand Me as you would from the perspective of a finite and complex human, recall that I am an Infinite and Simple Being."
If God were one Person, could He still achieve everything that the three Persons do individually? If you intuitively want to answer "yes" then you're sensing that the concept of the Trinity is redundant. If He can, then the Trinity divides between His abilities and assigns them to separate centers of consciousness.
For example, God can run the world, can forgive people, and can inspire them without delegating them respectively to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
This divine delegation "weakens" God because it means that He must assume three Persons to cover the full range of activity required of Him. If it is not due to weakness this means that God arbitrarily chose three instead of any other number. This leads to the question; why is three God's natural state, especially when Deuteronomy 6:4 (the Shema) says that "Hashem is our God, Hashem is One."
Speaking of "one," the Shema's formulation is actually quite strange. The first part makes sense - "Hashem is our God," but what does the second part mean - "Hashem is One"? If Hashem is our God, that means that only Hashem is our God and no other deity. But if the part means that only Hashem is our God, what meaning does the second part add?
If I may, we may break this verse down into two different fundamental concepts.
The first part means that no other gods exist, while the second part means that God's nature is completely unified. In other words, "Hashem is our God" refers to quantity, while "Hashem is One" refers to quality. Jews and Christians agree on God's quantity, i.e., that there are no other deities, but we do not agree on God's quality. Jews posit that God's quality is utterly unified and seamless, while Christians hold that His quality is essentially three-fold.
Perhaps the time-honored Shema is in fact a good, clear, and simple source for the long-held Jewish position that God is exclusive both in His existence and in His nature.
Does The Word Echad Mean A Simple or Complex Unity?
As of late some Christians have made the argument that the Hebrew word echad, meaning "one," actually connotes a "complex unity." "Complex unity" refers to something that is one in essence, but is comprised of separate parts. This is in contrast to the word yachid, which they claim refers to a "simple unity," meaning something that is one unified whole not composed of any parts. The purpose of this claim is to show that the Trinity is found in the Tanakh, which they maintain is the true meaning of the Shema in Deuteronomy 6:4:
Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God; the Lord is one.
This is largely taken to be based on the first two instances of the word echad in the Torah, Genesis 1:5 and Genesis 2:24, as well as other verses. These verses refer to particular things or people that are composed of several parts, but are nevertheless one thing, such as the first day being composed of "evening" and "morning."
The following are examples of the word echad used in the Torah:
Genesis 1:15 - And God called the light day, and the darkness He called night, and it was evening and it was morning, one day.
Notice that the day is composed of two elements; evening and morning. In this way Christians argue that the word echad refers only to things that are made up of more than one element. This argument is used as the central proof for the Trinity - if the Torah refers to God as echad, then He must be a compound unity.
Genesis 2:24 - Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother, and cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
Numbers 13:23 - They came to the Valley of Eshkol and they cut a branch with a (one) cluster of grapes. They carried it on a pole between two [people] and [they also took] some pomegranates and figs.
Ezekiel 37:17 - And bring them close, one to the other into one stick, and they shall be one in your hand.
While the above is a good observation, all four examples are used as descriptions of created things that exist in the environment, and not to the uncreated God, Who does not exist in the environment. Because God is fundamentally different than anything else that exists, the descriptions in the above verses cannot be used to describe God.
Further, the examples above refer to things that were initially separate entities that were joined together; the evening and night were joined to create the first day, and Adam and Eve joined together to create "one flesh." This joining of separate entities is not the Christian view of the Persons of God, who are said to have existed together eternally in hypostasis. Therefore this application of the word echad in the Torah may accurately describe several finite things, but does not apply to God.
In fact, the word echad is also used in Genesis in one place to indicate simple unity, the opposite of joining, as in Genesis 2:10:
And a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it separated and became four heads. The name of one (echad) is Pishon; that is the one that encompasses all the land of Havilah, where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good; there is the crystal and the onyx stone. And the name of the second river is Gihon; that is the one that encompasses all the land of Cush. And the name of the third river is Tigris; that is the one that flows to the east of Assyria, and the fourth river that is the Euphrates.
The verses above indicate that a river flowed out of Eden and broke into four separate and smaller rivers. Notice that the cardinal word "one" is used for the first river, and the ordinal words "second," "third," and "fourth" are used for the rest. This is reminiscent of the usage of the cardinal number for "Day One" and the ordinal numbers for the rest of the days (day one, second day, third day, etc...). If echad means complex unity, that word should have been used to describe the group of four rivers, but not to describe one of the rivers in that group.
In other words, the word echad in this verse is used very differently from its use to describe the first day. In Genesis 1:15, the word echad indicates two elements coming together to form one thing. In Genesis 2:10, the word echad is used to indicate something that is not composed of many parts, and stands alone. While we know that rivers are certainly composed of many elements, for the sake of the argument we are not focusing on what we know of rivers, but of what the Torah tells us in this particular verse. This use of the word echad demonstrates an example of echad used to show simplicity instead of complexity.
Interestingly, some Christians make the argument that the word echad is to be distinguished from yachid, only the latter of which means a simple, inseparable unity, while the former indicates complexity:
The following are examples from the Tanakh of the word yachid:
Genesis 22:2 - And He said, "Please take your son, your only one (yechidchah), whom you love, yea, Isaac, and go away to the land of Moriah and bring him up there for a burnt offering on one of the mountains, of which I will tell you."
Genesis 22:12 - And he said, "Do not stretch forth your hand to the lad, nor do the slightest thing to him, for now I know that you are a God fearing man, and you did not withhold your son, your only one (yechidchah), from Me."
Genesis 22:16 - And he said, "By Myself have I sworn, says the Lord, that because you have done this thing and you did not withhold your son, your only one (yechidchah)...
Judges 11:34 - And Jephthah came to Mizpah, to his house, and behold, his daughter was coming out towards him with timbrels and with dances, and she was an only (yechidah) child, he had from her neither a son nor a daughter.
Jeremiah 6:26 - O daughter of My people, gird yourself with sackcloth and roll in ashes; make yourself a mourning [as] for an only (yachid) child, a bitter lamentation, for suddenly the plunderer will come upon us.
The above examples are used to demonstrate that when God sought to describe simple unity, He used word the word yachid. Notice that every instance of the word yachid above indicates simple unity; in none of these examples does the word describe something that is composed of many parts. It can therefore be reasoned that God uses the word echad to describe a complex unity.
However, this distinction is not as simple as we may think. Note that Genesis 22:2 actually includes both the words yachid (your only son) and echad (one of the mountains), indicating that both words can mean "one" in the simple sense. The word echad here refers to one mountain; it does not refer to one mountain formed of many elements as in "day one" formed of evening and morning. This teaches us that the word echad does not have a fixed, formulaic meaning as some Christians advance, but that the word is in fact used in different contexts to describe either simplicity or complexity.
The above argument also overlooks the high volume of verses in which the word echad is used strictly to describe simplicity, discussed in the next section.
There are many places in the Torah where the word echad is used in the traditional sense of meaning one, undivided or indivisible thing. The following list shows the 29 instances of the word "one," echad, in Genesis alone. Out of those 29 (orange), only 13 (green) can be understood as indicating a complex unity, or one referring to a grouping of other items:
Genesis 1:9 - And God said, "Let the water that is beneath the heavens gather into one place, and let the dry land appear," and it was so."
Genesis 3:22 - Now the Lord God said, "Behold man has become like one of us, having the ability of knowing good and evil, and now, lest he stretch forth his hand and take also from the Tree of Life and eat and live forever."
Genesis 4:19 - And Lemech took himself two wives; one was named Adah, and the other was named Zillah.
Genesis 10:25 - And to Eber were born two sons: one was named Peleg, because in his days the earth was divided, and the name of his brother was Joktan.
Genesis 11:1 - Now the entire earth was of onelanguage and uniform words.
Genesis 11:3 - And they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and fire them thoroughly"; so the bricks were to them for stones, and the clay was to them for mortar.
Genesis 11:6 - And the Lord said, "Lo! [they are] onepeople, and they all have onelanguage, and this is what they have commenced to do. Now, will it not be withheld from them, all that they have planned to do?
Genesis 19:9 - But they said, "Back away." And they said, "This one came to sojourn, and he is judging! Now, we will deal even worse with you than with them." And they pressed hard upon the man Lot, and they drew near to break the door.
Genesis 21:5 - And the water was depleted from the leather pouch, and she cast the child under one of the bushes.
Genesis 22:2 - And He said, "Please take your son, your only one, whom you love, yea, Isaac, and go away to the land of Moriah and bring him up there for a burnt offering on oneof the mountains, of which I will tell you."
Genesis 27:38 - And Esau said to his father, "Have you [but] one blessing, my father? Bless me too, my father." And Esau raised his voice and wept.
Genesis 32:9 - And he said, "If Esau comes to onecamp and strikes it down, the remaining camp will escape."
Genesis 33:13 - And he said to him, "My master knows that the children are tender, and the flocks and the cattle, which are raising their young, depend upon me, and if they overdrive them one day, all the flocks will die.
Genesis 34:16 - Then we will give you our daughters, and we will take your daughters for ourselves, and we will dwell with you and become onepeople.
Genesis 37:20 - So now, let us kill him, and we will cast him into one of the pits, and we will say, 'A wild beast devoured him,' and we will see what will become of his dreams."
Genesis 40:5 - Now both of them dreamed a dream, each one his dream on the same night, each man according to the interpretation of his dream, the cupbearer and the baker of the king of Egypt, who were confined in the prison.
Genesis 41:5 - And he fell asleep and dreamed again, and behold, seven ears of grain were growing on onestalk, healthy and good.
Genesis 42:11 - We are all sons of one man. We are honest. Your servants were never spies."
Genesis 42:13 - And they said, "We, your servants, are twelve brothers, the sons of one man in the land of Canaan, and behold, the youngest is with our father today, and oneis gone."
Genesis 42:16 - Send oneof you and let him fetch your brother, and you will be imprisoned so that your words will be tested whether truth is with you, and if not, as Pharaoh lives, you are spies!"
Genesis 42:19 - If you are honest, your onebrother will be confined in your prison, and you, go bring the grain for the hunger of your households.
Genesis 42:27 - The oneopened his sack to give fodder to his donkey at the lodging place, and he saw his money there it was, in the mouth of his sack.
Genesis 42:32 - We are twelve brothers, the sons of our father; one is gone, and today the youngest is with our father in the land of Canaan.
Genesis 42:33 - And the man, the lord of the land, said to us, 'With this I will know that you are honest; leave one of your brothers with me, and [what is needed for] the hunger of your households, take and go.
Genesis 44:28 - The onewent away from me, and I said, "He has surely been torn to pieces, and I have not seen him since."
Genesis 48:22 - And I have given you one portion over your brothers, which I took from the hand of the Amorite with my sword and with my bow."
Genesis 49:16 - Dan will avenge his people, like one, the tribes of Israel.
If the word echad is used in the simple sense in the majority of its uses in Genesis, we can expect a similar pattern in the rest of the books of Tanakh, such as the following;
Joshua 17:14 - And the children of Joseph spoke to Joshua, saying, "Why have you given me one lot and one portion for an inheritance, seeing I am a numerous people, forasmuch as the Lord has blessed me thus?"
2 Samuel 13:30 - And I, where shall I lead my shame? And [as for] you, you shall be like one of the profligate men in Israel. And now I beg of you to speak to the king, for he will not withhold me from you.
2 Samuel 17:12 - And we shall come upon him in some place where he is found, and we shall light upon him, as the dew falls on the ground; and there shall not be left of him, and of all the men that are with him, even one.
Zechariah 14:7 - And it shall be one day that shall be known to the Lord, neither day nor night; and it shall come to pass that at eventide it shall be light.
Ecclesiastes 4:8 - There is one, and there is no second; yea, he has neither son nor brother, and there is no end to all his toil; neither is his eye sated from wealth. Now for whom do I toil and deprive my soul of pleasure? This too is vanity and an unhappy affair.
What is also telling is that Genesis 1:26, held by Christians as a reference to the Trinity, does not use the word echad, instead opting to use "Us" and "Our."
Genesis 1:26 - And God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and they shall rule over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the heaven and over the animals and over all the earth and over all the creeping things that creep upon the earth."
If God wanted to tell us that the word echad is a complex unity, that word would have been very hard to deny used in Genesis 1:26, the context of which is supposedly the Trinity. Imagine Genesis 1:26 as follows:
"And God said, 'I am One. Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness...'"
That would have added fuel to Christianity's argument, although still not explicit. Because Genesis 1:26 is not written in this way we can safely assume that its intent was not to refer to the Trinity.
In a world of separation and classification, it is more awe-inspiring that God can be completely and seamlessly unified than being a complex unity, which wouldn't make Him very different from the created world. Interestingly, William Lane Craig, “an American analytic philosopher and Christian theologian, apologist, and author" and "Professor of Philosophy at Houston Baptist University and Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology,” describes God as a simple Being, which contradicts the view that He is a complex unity.
Admittedly, Craig is referring to God's lacking any physical components, but his argument can be applied to God's nature as well. Further, God's taking a physical form as a man therefore introduces complexity into an otherwise simple Being by Craig's own reasoning.
Craig says, "When you reflect on the idea that God is an immaterial entity - a spirit, He is a mind without a body - then God is a remarkably simple entity, because He has no parts. There's no composition in God's Being. An unembodied mind is an entity that is startlingly simple in its nature."
If God's being immaterial is the condition that makes Him simple, His assuming a material form must make Him complex. "Becoming Jesus" turned God from a simple into a complex being, His human form fragmenting His otherwise perfectly simple nature.
Zechariah 14:9 - And the Lord shall become King over all the earth; on that day shall the Lord be one, and His name one.
According to Blue Letter Bible, "The things that God revealed to humanity were not all given at once. His revelation was given in stages." This essay addresses four issues with the concept of progressive revelation. The first is that there are no indications of progressive revelation occurring within the Torah. The second is that progressive relation prevents people from knowing the truth in the present. The third is that the Trinity, a product of progressive revelation, is too similar to polytheism for comfort. The fourth is that once such a claim is made, it is repeatedly claimed by subsequent religions.
Issue 1 - One Does Not Observe Progressive Revelation In The Tanakh
It's easy to believe that progressive relation occurs as one crosses over from the Jewish Scriptures to the Christian Scriptures; this is exactly the argument you would expect somebody to make to authenticate their own scriptures. But progressive revelation indicates that it occurred either gradually or at certain intervals, with the Christian Scriptures being the final stage. That would mean that one would be able to identify progressive revelation occurring within the Tanakh, of which there are no genuinely satisfying examples.
The Blue Letter Bible says that the Tanakh is incomplete because it contains prophecies that remain unfulfilled: "In addition, the Old Testament records predictions that were still to be fulfilled. For example, the Old Testament ends with the promise of the coming of Elijah who will prepare the way for the promised deliverer - the Messiah." The unfulfilled status of the Tanakh's prophecies does not mean that it is flawed, it just means that those events have not occurred yet, and that their occurrence will not be canonized in the Tanakh. This is like saying that a teenager isn't perfect because they haven't reached maturity yet.
Out of a genuine respect for the Jewish Scriptures, the Blue Letter Bible assures us that being incomplete is not synonymous with being less true: "Progressive revelation does not mean to say that the Old Testament is somehow less true than the New Testament. The progress was not from untruth to truth - it was from less information to more full information." While this is a gracious nod to the Tanakh, equating "more" with "more correct" is nevertheless not always true. Sometimes less is more: "Do not add to the word which I command you..." (Deuteronomy 4:2)
Issue 2 - It Prevents People From Knowing God In The Present
If God seeks people to know Him, why would He keep His true nature from His people and from the entire human race until a relatively late point in history? One explanation provided by Catholic.com relates the advice given to the author by a college professor: "A college professor of mine once said to be leery of someone who tells you everything about himself in the first five minutes you know him. Jesus did not do this, and neither has the Father."
While this may be true of strangers that you meet on the street or in the doctor's office, it isn't true of people with which you have a serious and intimate relationship. Nominally speaking, it's critical to discover the most important aspects of a person before, say, getting married to them. Insofar as the relationship between God and the Jews is like a marriage, it would be critical to have an accurate conception of God's Nature before going to the chuppah, which was Mount Sinai. It would be highly unfortunate to discover ten years into the marriage that your spouse was schizophrenic. Isaiah 55:8 says, "'For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,' says the Lord."The way human beings do things is not necessarily the way that God does them.
Issue 3 - The Trinity Is Too Similar to Polytheism
Perhaps God withheld the Trinity from the Jews due to the concern that they would confuse it with polytheism. This is another explanation advanced by Catholic.com: "In the Old Testament God needed to establish monotheism for the Jews to make them stand apart from all the polytheistic religions that abounded. Monotheism was almost unheard of, and if Yahweh had tried announcing that he is three Persons the people of the day might have misunderstood it as Tritheism, which is a heresy."
It does not evince much confidence in the Trinity to suggest that the Jews (or anybody else) would have mistaken it for polytheism. Surely the Jews had enough experience with said transgression, both from observing it all around them in a variety of forms, and from experiencing it first hand, to know the difference between polytheism and genuine monotheism. It is patronizing and insults peoples' intelligence to suggest that "God needed to establish monotheism for the Jews to make them stand apart from all the polytheistic religions" only to invite them into a relationship that was almost just as scandalous. If polytheism is prostitution, the Trinity is an escort service.
This site also argues that today "we have enough trouble trying to get people to believe in the one true God, let alone many. Thus the New Testament was a better time for God to have revealed his true nature, now that the danger of a polytheistic misunderstanding had been eliminated." What this ignores is that while polytheism is arguably not in fashion today, it was abundant in the era in which the New Testament was written and in the places that the Roman Empire occupied. The Trinity found itself in good company during that era and region and didn't overtly conflict with polytheism as Judaism did.
How do we know that progressive revelation has stopped on the Christian Scriptures? While Jews contend with Christians over the impossibility and error of progressive revelation into Christianity, Christians contend with more than one group, namely Muslims and Mormons. While the Muslim claim precedes Mormonism, Mormonism claims to be the correct understanding of Christianity. Each of these groups advances the notion that progressive revelation continued after the Christian Scriptures into their own scriptures; the Book of Mormon or the Q'uran. There is an old joke that Jews like to tell; Why did God create Mormons? So Christians would know how Jews feel.
According to the Mormon site The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, "'The Book of Mormon is another witness of Jesus Christ and confirms the truths found in the Holy Bible. Far from undermining the Bible, the Book of Mormon supports its testimony of Jesus Christ. One passage says that the Book of Mormon “shall establish the truth” of the Bible “and shall make known to all kindreds, tongues, and people, that the Lamb of God is the Son of the Eternal Father, and the Savior of the world; and that all men must come unto him, or they cannot be saved' (1 Nephi 13:40)."
According to Islamweb.net, "Allah, The Almighty, revealed the Quran to be His last, all-embracing Scripture containing the final manifestation of the Divine Law. This necessitates that it has to be safeguarded from the mischievous hands of men and from all corruption. This protection has been a reality from the time the Quran was revealed until today and will remain so forever." It also says that the "'Islamic Law is lasting, remaining suitable for every place and time, and embracing the goodness of the previous manifestations of the Law. Allah Says (what means): “And We have revealed to you, [O Muhammad], the Book in truth, confirming that which preceded it of the Scripture and as a criterion over it.' [Quran 5:48]"
The above explanations sound structurally similar to Christianity's description of the relationship between the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. According to Christianity.com: "The religion of the Old Testament is the embryo of Christianity. The Old Testament is the gospel in the bud. The New Testament is the gospel in full flower. The saints in the Old Testament saw many things through a glass darkly. But they all looked by faith to the same Savior and were led by the same Spirit as ourselves." It also says, "The relation between our Lord's teaching and that of the Old Testament is cleared up by our Lord in one striking sentence. He says, 'Don't think that I came to destroy the law, or the prophets. I didn't come to destroy, but to fulfill' (Matthew 5:17)."
What does the Torah say about this matter? Deuteronomy 4:2 says, "Do not add to the word which I command you, nor diminish from it, to observe the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you." While Christians, Muslims, and Mormons all understand this verse as a prohibition of adding to their own own scriptures, Jews see it in its original context of not adding anything to the Torah.
A religion claiming to have received an updated vision will by definition reject all of its predecessor's objections. It rejects their objections on the grounds they were not the recipients of the new revelation. If they had received the new revelation then they would have no objections to it. This is a circular argument designed to prevent people from analyzing the contents of a prophecy critically.
There is therefore no good way to prevent new religions from forever claiming that they have received a new revelation, but there is a good way to prevent people from believing them. God explicitly inoculated the Jews against this form of deceit in two verses: Deuteronomy 13:1 through 6 and Deuteronomy 18:20: "Now if you say to yourself, 'How will we know the word that the Lord did not speak?' If the prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, and the thing does not occur and does not come about, that is the thing the Lord did not speak. The prophet has spoken it wantonly; you shall not be afraid of him."
In the latter verse, God legitimizes the Jews' suspicion that a prophet may be lying. This is demonstrated by the fact that He provides them with the criteria for distinguishing between true and false prophets. Claiming to have received prophecy to substantiate prophecy is considered to be an illegitimate means of verification. The only legitimate means of verification is empirical. In contrast to the Jews' complaining and rebelling against God in the desert, He does not see this question as a sign of stubbornness or rebellion, but as a sign of their willingness to follow Him.
There is another issue in Genesis 18 that prevents us from believing that it is a reference to God in the form of an angel. That is the word "and," which is used in different ways in the text of the Torah. What we often see in the verses is that the word "and," which is "ve" (ו) in Hebrew, is used first as an introduction to a particular set of events, and then switches to being used as subsequent steps in a sequence. The first place that we see this in the Torah is at the very beginning (no pun intended) in Genesis:
In the beginning of God's creation of the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was astonishingly empty, and darkness was on the face of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the water. (Genesis 1:1-2)
We see here that the word "ve," which I said means "and" in Hebrew, is translated as "Now the earth was..." It is translated this way because it introduces to us a set of events, and if you check the Hebrew you will see that it is in fact the word "ve," which is a word written as one letter, the letter "vav. (ו)" The second and third instances of this word in verses 1-2 are translated as "and," but they are describing the next steps in the sequence, they are describing "Now the earth was astonishingly empty" and what was already occurring at this stage in time.
Immediately following this the word "and" kicks into "subsequent steps" gear and begins describing what happens after verses 1 and 2 in chronological order:
And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. And God saw the light that it was good, and God separated between the light and between the darkness. And God called the light day, and the darkness He called night, and it was evening and it was morning, one day. (Genesis 1:3-5)
We see above that the word "and," the same word "ve," introduces each next step in the sequence:
And God said... and there was light... and God saw the light... and God separated... And God called the light day, and the darkness He called night... and it was evening... and it was morning..."
This usage of the word "and" continues for the majority of the entire chapter.
This usage of the word "and" appears to be the same one in Genesis 18:1-2 when the angels visit Abraham:
Now the Lord appeared to him in the plains of Mamre, and he was sitting at the entrance of the tent when the day was hot. And he lifted his eyes and saw, and behold, three men were standing beside him, and he saw and he ran toward them from the entrance of the tent, and he prostrated himself to the ground. (Genesis 18:1-2)
We first have the word "ve" being translated as "Now" to introduce the set of events. For the record, this occurs again in Genesis 18:11 when the chapter introduces a new set of events separate from 18:1-10:
Now Abraham and Sarah were old, coming on in years; Sarah had ceased to have the way of the women. (Genesis 18:11)
Back to verses 1 and 2, we see that every instance of "and" is the next step in the sequence (except for the first, which introduces the set of events and doubles as the first event):
Introduction/Event 1: Now the Lord appeared to him in the plains of Mamre, and he was sitting at the entrance of the tent when the day was hot.
Event 2: And he lifted his eyes…
Event 3: and saw…
Event 4: and behold, three men were standing beside him…
Event 5: and he saw…
Event 6: and he ran toward them from the entrance of the tent…
Event 7: and he prostrated himself to the ground.
There are two issues with the claim that the angel was God.
The first is the unnatural way, according to the belief that one of the angels was God, that the Torah reports that they were "standing beside him." The first verse says, "Now the Lord appeared to him..." If one of the angels in Event 4 was God in the form of a man, it should not have said, "three men were standing beside him," it should have said, "The Lord and two angels were standing beside him." The reason for this is that Event 1 says only that God appeared to him, but made no references to the angels. However, all appear to him together, which either means that all three appeared in Event 1 (even though the angels aren't mentioned), or that all three angels appeared to Abraham in Event 4 and that the Lord that appeared to him in Event 1 is not one of the angels!
Further, Event 4 says, "three men were standing beside him," not the three men, indicating that these men were altogether different ones than any of the beings that appeared in Event 1. For example, if I say "the eggs are cold," you know which eggs I'm referring to because you have already seen them, or I've already made reference to them. But if say "eggs are cold" you don't know which eggs I'm referring to.
If the angel was God in the form of a man the verse should have read something like the following:
"Now the Lord appeared to him in the plains of Mamre, and accompanying him were two angels, and he was sitting at the entrance of the tent when the day was hot. And he lifted his eyes and saw the three men were standing beside him, and he saw and he ran toward them from the entrance of the tent, and he prostrated himself to the ground."
More simply put, the word "and" in Event 4 indicates that something new happened, which is that the three men suddenly appeared to him in addition to God's appearing to him in Event 1.
Secondly, in Event 5 we get what seems like an incomplete thought, "and he saw." What did he see? His very next action was running towards the angels. Rashi explains according to the plain reading of the text that he saw that they were standing in one place away from him, i.e., that they were not coming any closer to him. He therefore runs toward them.
Further, we said that events 2 through 7 describe Event 1. However, we see that Abraham was in different locations in Event 1 and Event 6; in Event 1 he is "at the entrance of his tent," and in Event 6 he is away from the entrance of his tent near the angels, to whom he had to run given that they were standing some distance away. Event 6 can only be a description of Event 1 if it gives us more information about Event 1, but not if it contradicts Event 1. Take Genesis 1:1-2, which explain how the earth was "astonishingly empty."
In the beginning of God's creation of the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was astonishingly empty, and darkness was on the face of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the water. (Genesis 1:1-2)
If the verses said, "Now the earth was astonishingly empty, and darkness was on the face of the deep, and the people were building a tower," we would know that it was not really astonishingly empty. In this case verse 2 contradicts verse 1, indicating that the people built a tower after the earth had been astonishingly empty. And this is exactly the relationship between Event 1 and Event 6 in Genesis 18. When the Torah says that Abraham "ran toward them from the entrance of the tent," he did so only (a few steps) after God appeared to him at the entrance of the tent, indicating that neither of the angels or men were incarnations of God.
And an angel of the Lord appeared to the woman, and said to her, "Behold now, you are barren, and have not borne; and you shall conceive and bear a son. (Judges 13:1)
Some Christians claim that this angel was as well an incarnation of God according to the following verse:
And Manoah said to his wife, "We shall surely die, because we have seen God." (Judges 13:22)
However, this overlooks two major points. The first point is the one that we have been discussing until now, which is that the Torah often refers to visions of angels as visions of God. The second point is explicitly in all of the verses in this chapter preceding verse 22 (the phrase "an angel of God" appears ten times), all of which repeatedly refer to this being as "an angel of God." In addition, several of these verses explicitly distinguish between God and the angel:
And God hearkened to the voice of Manoah; and the angel of God came again to the woman, and she was sitting in the field, and Manoah her husband was not with her. (Genesis 13:9)
And Manoah said to the angel of the Lord, "Let us take you in now, and prepare for you a kid goat." And the angel of the Lord said to Manoah, "If you take me in I will not eat of your bread, and if you will make a burnt-offering, you must offer it to the Lord;" For Manoah did not know that he was an angel of the Lord. (Genesis 13:15-16)
Some Christians argue, however, that Manoach and his wife only thought that it was an angel, but it was really God. Further, the only reason that the angel continues to accept being referred to as the angel of God is to avoid causing Manoach and his wife to mistakenly commit "idolatry in their hearts" by offering a sacrifice to an angel, which is the reason that it tells them to offer the sacrifice to God.
However, there are two issues with this as well. Manoach did not say that he intended to offer the goat to the angel as a sacrifice, but rather believing that it was a human being, like Abraham he offered to prepare food for him. Secondly, if the angel was really God, and God sought to reveal Himself as a Trinity, it would have simply said, "No, I am God in the form of an angel, so you may prepare the sacrifice to Me." For some odd reason God chose to keep his true Nature as a Trinity hidden, which is why I say that the apparent references to the Trinity in the Torah are implicit and not explicit, as Christians claim them to be.
They in fact are not references of any kind. Instead, Christians sought to find references in the Tanakh to the Trinity in order to authenticate and bolster their claims against its plain reading.
Instead, the Torah says exactly what it should have said if it was an angel, which is, "No, offer the sacrifice to God," i.e., not to me.
The question of whether Genesis 18 refers to the Trinity is based on an analysis of the following verses:
Now the Lord appeared to him in the plains of Mamre, and he was sitting at the entrance of the tent when the day was hot. And he lifted his eyes and saw, and behold, three men were standing beside him, and he saw and he ran toward them from the entrance of the tent, and he prostrated himself to the ground. (Genesis 18:1-2)
And he said, "I will surely return to you at this time next year, and behold, your wife Sarah will have a son." And Sarah heard from the entrance of the tent, and it was behind him. (Genesis 18:10)
Is anything hidden from the Lord? At the appointed time, I will return to you, at this time next year and Sarah will have a son." (Genesis 18:14)
And the Lord remembered Sarah as He had said, and the Lord did to Sarah as He had spoken. (Genesis 21:1)
The context of Genesis 18:1-2 is right after Abraham performed his own circumcision, and right before God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. Three angels visit Abraham at this point, one of which tells him that Sarah will become pregnant at the same time next year. Some Christians claim that this particular angel was an incarnation of God (as the Second Person in the Trinity). They make this claim because of something interesting that this angel says - "I will surely return to you at this time next year, and behold, your wife Sarah will have a son." The angel speaks of returning in the first person (I will surely return to you, not the angel will surely return to you...), indicating that this angel is in fact an incarnation of God.
There are, however, a few issues with this, perhaps the main one being that God often has angels speaking in His Name when He seeks to relate some important information. See the following examples:
And the angel of the Lord said to her, "I will greatly multiply your seed, and it will not be counted for abundance." (Genesis 16:10)
And he said to him, "Behold I have favored you also as regards this matter, that I will not overturn the city that you have mentioned. (Genesis 19:21)
And he said, "Do not stretch forth your hand to the lad, nor do the slightest thing to him, for now I know that you are a God fearing man, and you did not withhold your son, your only one, from Me." (Genesis 22:12)
In the first example the angel promises something that it does not possess the power to perform (I will greatly multiply your seed), and we must therefore understand that the angel is speaking as an emissary of God and not that the angel is God Himself. This verse is a reference to the angel telling Hagar that she will give birth to Ishmael.
In the second example the angel responds to Lot's plea (19:20) and agrees not to destroy the small city to which Lot plans to escape to. In this verse the angel speaks of destroying the city in the first person, yet we see that when it came to destroying the city that it was destroyed by God:
And the Lord caused to rain down upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire, from the Lord, from heaven. (Genesis 19:24)
Now, even if we accept that the angel speaking in 18:10 and 18:14 was God, it cannot be that the angel speaking in 19:24 was also God, because both of these angels appeared to Abraham together. In other words, even if we accept the notion that God incarnated Himself we cannot accept the notion that He incarnated Himself as two different and simultaneous incarnations of the Second Person in the Trinity that appeared to Abraham together (along with a third angel).
As a brief tangent, some Christians point to the fact that 19:24 mentions "the Lord" twice. "And the Lord caused to rain... from the Lord..." This is taken to be a reference to two different Persons of the Trinity, the first of which "caused to rain down upon Sodom and Gomorrah," but which was sent "from the Lord, from heaven," which is a separate Person of the Trinity, who remained in Heaven while this was occurring. This indicates that the first "the Lord" refers to the Person that descended to earth, while the second one remained in Heaven while this was occurring.
What this overlooks is the simple reading of the verse, which simply speaks of God in the third person, which is a much plainer reading of the text. For example, it is possible, although a bit awkward, to say, "Daniel went to the store and Daniel bought eggs" while fully intending to speak about the one-and-only Daniel. It would be a much greater stretch of the imagination, "straining out a gnat," to describe this sentence as grammatically referring to two different aspects of Daniel, the first of which went to the store, and the second of which bought the eggs, yet ultimately both of which did each because Daniel exists in two different forms, each of which is him.
In the third example the angel says, "and you did not withhold your son, your only one, from Me." It is evident that Abraham was not intending on sacrificing Isaac to an angel, which as well makes it clear that the angel was speaking as an emissary of God. And just in case we have any doubt as to the identity of this angelic speaker, see the preceding verse:
And an angel of God called to him from heaven and said, "Abraham! Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am." (Genesis 22:11)
This verse explicitly tells us that this was an angel of God, not God in the form of an angel. If we are free to interpret "angel of God" as an implicit reference to "God in the form of an angel" then words cease to convey any inherent meaning in the first place. If "cat" means "dog," and if every time I say "cat" you assume that I'm referring to a "dog," then assigning meaning to words is useless.
Does Genesis describe the Trinity as most Christian apologists claim it to? There are two verses in Genesis that seem demonstrate that this is not the case:
Genesis 1:26: And God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and they shall rule over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the heaven and over the animals and over all the earth and over all the creeping things that creep upon the earth."
Christian apologists point out that the word "us" in this verse is a reference to the Trinity, or more specifically, to the Persons in the Trinity speaking among themselves.
The first proof that Genesis 1:26 is not referring to the Trinity is the following verse, Genesis 1:27, which says:
And God created man in His image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
Note that although God says Let us make man in our image, when it comes to actually creating Man the Bible does not use the pronoun us, but He.
Ask yourself the following question; if us signifies the Trinity, why does Genesis 1:27 switch to using He? If Genesis 1:26 refers to the Trinity, then it is describing the Persons of the Trinity in the planning stages of creating Man. This also indicates that all three of them created Man as Man is created in the image of all three Persons.
This is confirmed by the following excerpt from the Christian website, Answers in Genesis, which says that "All three Persons are the Creator," as shown below:
"But now, O LORD, You are our Father; We are the clay and You our potter; And all we are the work of Your hand." (Isaiah 64:8)
"He (Jesus) is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist." (Colossians 1:15–17)
"The Spirit of God has made me, And the breath of the Almighty gives me life." (Job 33:4)
If so, then Genesis 1:27 should say "And God created man in Their image; in the image of God Theycreated him; male and female They created them." In this context "They" would refer to all three Persons of the Trinity.
The Resolution
The Jewish commentators deal with it as a statement made to the administering angels, which can be seen as an act of humility and a model for us to build partnerships with others to embark on our missions, as opposed to "going it alone." God involved them in theory in order to maintain peace in the Heavens, as Job 25:2 says:
"Dominion and fear are with Him; He makes peace in His heights."
This is explained by Rashi as follows:
"When the constellations ascend, each one thinks, 'I will ascend first,' and because he does not see what is before him, he is not envious. So I heard. [Tanchuma Buber ad loc.] Another explanation: 'He makes peace in His heights' - Fire and water are mixed, and the water does not extinguish the fire; I did not hear this."
Genesis 3:5
The second proof can be seen by comparing the following two verses:
Genesis 3:5 in which Satan says to Eve: For God knows that on the day that you eat thereof, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like angels, knowing good and evil.
Genesis 3:22 in which : Now the Lord God said, "Behold man has become like one of us, having the ability of knowing good and evil, and now, lest he stretch forth his hand and take also from the Tree of Life and eat and live forever."
Both of the verses above include the phrase "knowing good and evil." The first verse clearly identifies that this refers to the angels. However, the more ambiguous second verse uses it in reference to "us." Without this phrase, one might assume 3:22 as a reference to the Trinity also (like 1:26). However, the phrase in 3:22 "knowing good and evil" explicitly identifies "us" as the angels.
This may be the reason why Christian apologists say that 1:26 is a reference to the Trinity, but not 3:22.
See below for Jews for Judaism's Rabbi Michael Skobac's answer according to four traditional Jewish approaches:
The first and most basic answer is that God did not explicitly reveal the Trinity in the Torah.
What Christians claim to be God's explicit revelation of the Trinity in the Torah are in fact implicit references to what they assume to be explicit revelations. There is a difference between the words "explicit" and "implicit." God explicitly tells the Jews that His Nature is Unified. He explicitly tells them that He expects them to keep His commandments, and explicitly tells them what will happen if they do not. He does not explicitly tell them that He is a Trinity. When God wants to make something understood clearly and imminently He explains it in an explicit fashion so as to remove any possibility of doubt of what He is referring to. He does not leave it up to conjecture or interpolation. This does not mean that the Torah is low on mystery or enigmatic passages, for any student of the Tanakh knows it contains many. Instead, those passages tend to be found in association with particular details related to narratives and not when describing His true Nature, or His expectations of the Jews or humanity.
The question becomes, if God wanted to reveal Himself as a Trinity why did all Jews up until the first century fail to realize that God had revealed Himself as such?
Some Christians like to make the claim that appearances of particular angels throughout the Torah are in fact appearances of the Second Person in the Trinity before he manifested himself as Jesus. Some common examples are Genesis 18 (and 21) in which three angels visit Abraham's tent, and another is Judges 13, each of which will be examined independently.
The word simple is defined as “composed of a single element; not compound,” and is the opposite of complex, which means “consisting of many different and connected parts.”
Which one of the above definitions do you think more accurately describes the nature of God? Is He a single entity void of composition, or does He consist of several different and connected parts?
According to William Lane Craig, “an American analytic philosopher and Christian theologian, apologist, and author" and "Professor of Philosophy at Houston Baptist University and Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology,” God is a simple Being.
The segment below shows Craig addressing Richard Dawkin’s misunderstanding of the word “simple” when applied to God (3:54-4:31):
Craig certainly does not need my approval or blessing, but I cannot help but comment on how accurate his description of God’s simplicity is. Not to mention, this description is virtually identical to the Ramchal’s in the book Derech Hashem:
It is likewise necessary to know that God is absolutely simple, having no parts to Him. At the same time, all types of perfection are present in Him, contained in His Being, without being separate parts of It.
I therefore have genuine difficulty understanding how a person with Craig’s view can nevertheless believe in the doctrine of the Trinity, which states that “The Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Spirit, the Spirit is not the Father, but each is God individually and yet they are together the one true God of the Bible (see Athanasian Creed).” When I reflect on it, the doctrine of the Trinity seems to be advocating a complex conceptualization of God.
It is noteworthy that many Christians explain the enigma of the Trinity as itself being the strongest argument for its validity. Because God is fundamentally unique, it is explained, a viable analogy of His Nature would undermine his Uniqueness. While I have to agree with that, an explanation of God's Uniqueness cannot violate presuppositions of God's Oneness. In other words, there have to be practical limits in describing God, limits which are provided to us in the revelation of His Word (the Torah). Without those limits we are free to describe God in any way that we please, which is of course an untenable position for a believer.
What am I missing? Can somebody please correct me?
What we need to seek to understand when thinking about the Trinity is how it works on a psychological level. In this I will not be appealing to scriptural proof texts from the Christian Bible because it is already clear to believers that Scripture is a valid source of information. I am therefore more interested in the psychological mechanisms that take place as a means to understanding and believing in a particular theological formulation, in this case the Trinity. How does an individual understand the concept that God is One and yet three Persons?
Although I respect Christianity I feel compelled to say that the Trinity seems like a theological aberration. Given the potentially complex nature of trying to speak about such a thing, I think the best way to approach this is with a metaphor.
Let us consider a mirror, for a moment. It is possible for a single individual to create three reflections of himself by positioning himself at the right angle in front of three mirrors. This process of refraction seems to be the one taking place at the center of the belief in the Trinity.
The most disturbing thing about this metaphor is that I can't really have a relationship with God. In effect I am having discussions with the reflections while my back is to the person who is speaking to me. I may not even know that he exists because all I know of him are his reflections, which I take to be real. Imagine my shock were I to turn around and see a single individual as the source of the voice speaking to me! I would feel embarrassed and foolish for having spoken to a three-way mirror my entire life!
However, this process of converting God to elements occurs on the psychological and meta-level; God is not actually describing Himself in this way. It is a product of human reflection in the realm of theology and not the product of Divine revelation. For the record, the Trinity is but a mild form of theological refraction compared to the literal polytheism described in the Torah and anthropological studies. It is a huge step in the right direction from polytheism, but has not quite made it.
An equally useful, but cruder, example is that of a fractured mirror. Looking into a mirror that has a great crack right in the middle creates a bunch of “small mirrors” around the crack. Each pane of broken glass faces in a slightly different direction, creating its own reflection of the object in front of it at a slightly different angle. The result is several similar images of one object.
Extended to the theological understanding of God as One, the multiple or broken mirrors represents a mental mechanism whereby God is presented at several different angles at once through different perspectives. And just as these reflections are not for all intents and purposes real, the Persons in the Trinity are not real. The reflections are real insofar as they really do reflect the object in front of them, but they do not actually multiply that object. Practically speaking, the reflections are illusions; they are images that depict all visual aspects of a three dimensional object on a two dimensional surface. This is why just as reflections have the illusion of depth, the Trinity as well produces an illusion of depth – they reflect shadows and spaces perfectly, but they are ultimately not real.
In the ancient world, Judaism's pervasive conflict with other religions was centered on whether the One God existed alone or whether a number of other deities co-occupied the ephemeral strata of existence. In other words, how many gods were there? When Christians today are flummoxed by what seems like the stubborn obstinacy of (religious) Jews to accept or tolerate the Trinity, they fail to realize that Jews are acting out of the same motivations that moved their ancestors to resist polytheism in all of its forms in the past.
The Trinity is problematic even though it has associated itself in name with God. If we described the Trinity as a vehicle we could say that the body of car was designed to look, for example, American, but that the motor, the carburetor, and the valves were imported Japanese products. Now if a car that was designed to look American is full of Japanese parts it will operate like a Japanese car. Further, such a car cannot be accurately described as being an American car because the operational components belonging to any thing define what that thing is. It is very easy to see how this example applies to the Trinity.
How Does the Trinity Work?
But let us take a look under the hood and see what parts we find. The cornerstone of the Trinity is something called the Athanasian Creed, which states that “The Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Spirit, the Spirit is not the Father, but each is God individually and yet they are together the one true God of the Bible.” This is the official description that both Catholics and Protestants accept and use regarding the Nature of God.
A Diagram of the Athanasian Creed
This explanation may be a bit confusing so we will try to break it down to its component parts. The idea behind this is that there is One God, but that He exists eternally as three Persons. Christians are familiar with the term "Persons," but most religious Jews are not so we will take a moment to describe it.
The term "Persons" does not mean "human beings." Jews are likely to recoil at this term because it sounds like a description of God as a person. The term "Persons" actually alludes to the three eternal expressions of God’s nature. These Persons are understood as being co-eternal, which means that all three of them existed forever. They are also described as being co-substantial, which means that they are all composed of the same "spiritual substance." The Trinity also avoids describing God as being composed of separate parts by explaining that these three elements exist in total harmony with each other in a state known as “hypostasis.”
Now that we have an accurate description of the Trinity we can take a deeper look.
What Are the Issues with the Trinity?
The issues with the Trinity begin when we consider that God is not only One in quantity, but that He is One in quality. This is the meaning of the verse in the Torah, "The Lord our God, the Lord is One," (Deuteronomy 6:4) and so it is essentially a theological statement. The idea that God is One in quality means that He is a simple entity; the word "simple" is the opposite of "complex" and refers to something that has no parts. With this description in mind it automatically becomes clear that the Trinity implies that God is not simple. In other words, even though the three elements are harmonized and synchronized, they can nevertheless be observed in distinction from each other. This is by definition complexity.
So for example, imagine that you looked down into a pool of water. There is no way to discern where "different regions" of water start and end. As far as you are concerned the water in the pool is one contiguous, undivided region of water. Now let use a different example. A phenomenon that is known to occur in large bodies of water, such as oceans, is the division of pockets of fresh water from salt water. Because salt water is denser than fresh water it sinks down while the fresh water floats upward. The result is a captivatingly beautiful image that looks like an ocean within an ocean, but I digress.
A Weird Jog on the Beach
The point is that while both pockets of water are composed of water, they are discernible from each other, i.e., an observer can tell the difference between them with his naked eye. The whole purpose of the idea that God is One is that He is completely simple; there is no way to observe any separation within Him.
However, a Christian may be quick to point out that in the example above, the water described is not pure water. In other words, the fresh water is pure, but the salt water contains salt, which is why it is denser, and this does not fit the definition of "co-substantial" (made of the same substance). If you were to extract the salt from the water they would be of equal density. This, a Christian may argue, is a more accurate description of the Trinity; imagine three pockets of fresh water in the same ocean. The division between them is unperceivable to the naked eye, so there is still no way to observe any separation within Him even though He is three Persons.
However, the idea that God is One is that He is One in every conceivable way. So for example, He is not only One insofar as observing Him is concerned, but He is One in terms of the operations that He carries out, or the functions that He affects. So for example, when God carries out His myriad responsibilities over the Creation, we as human beings cannot know "what element" of Him is responsible for each one. He surely knows, but as far as we are concerned all of His actions and interactions with the Creation emanate from one "place" within Him. For example, both life and death come from God. While life and death are (to human beings) different things we cannot say that within God there is a component, or an element, or a Person, that creates life and another that creates death. All things that God does emanate from one indivisible source, which is simply God Himself.
Looking at it this way we can now apply this idea to the Trinity. God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Each of these Persons has its own function within the Godhead.
This position is affirmed by the Crosswalk website, which explains that each Person has a specific eternal and fundamental role in Creation:
The way of redemption showcases these roles in a clear manner. The Father designed and organized how mankind would be redeemed (Galatians 4:4-5). He set into motion a complex set of events, actions, and prophecies which culminated in the life and death of a Savior. The Son carried out the plan (John 6:37-38). He followed the Father's instructions to come to earth, even though that meant He would have to die. The Holy Spirit sees to it that every person feels a call toward God's saving grace (John 14:26, John 16:8; Romans 1:19-20). Furthermore, He transforms the lives and hearts of those who receive salvation through Jesus Christ.
God's being omnipotent means that He has all power at His disposal and has no limitations. It also means that He can oversee all responsibilities without what seems to be internal delegation. If so, and He is not subject to external pressure from anybody to be as they will Him to be, then He can perform the functions of all three Persons in the type of unified state that we have been trying to describe. To say that He exists in a unified state even though He is three Persons defeats the purpose of believing in the Oneness of God in the first place. If true, it seems that the Trinity is a completely arbitrary understanding borne of necessity more than being borne out of God's self-description. Further, as long as this is true then there is no end to the number of elements or Persons that can be recognized within the Godhead. Indeed, this is a classical theological formulation used within Hinduism as well, which will be described at a later date.
As a caveat, note that God exercises not three, but an infinite number of functions while overseeing the world. So while the description of the Trinity above identifies three main functions belonging to the Father, Son, and Spirit each, these are in reality not functions, but function sets each conceivably including within them a number of other, more precise functions. This leads to the startling conclusion that there may be no way to stop this process, further leading us to divide them according to increasingly detailed levels of granularity, coming close to what seems like infinite granularity.
This is perhaps the process by which a system such as Hinduism can declare that there is One God while believing in billions of deities and avatars. According to hinduwebsite.com, "Hinduism is unique because it is essentially a monotheistic faith which acknowledges polytheism as reflective of the diversity in God's creation." According to an article about Brahman on the same site, "When God wakes up from His sleep He becomes Saguna Brahman, Brahman with qualities... As the creator, sustainer and destroyer of the worlds, He is also the Trinity, Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesa. They are but one though they appear differently to the mortal world."
Where is God in the Trinity?
This next point is easier to understand if we are able to look at the diagram of the Athanasian Creed, shown below.
A Diagram of the Athanasian Creed
Notice that the Father, Son, and Spirit occupy the corners of diagram. This represents the formulation that the Trinity includes three Persons. Notice also that "God" is the center of the diagram. This represents the formulation that the entire Trinity is God.
Now, suppose that I wanted to relate to God without relating to either of the three Persons. Do I really feel that I am experiencing a face-to-face relationship with God when I am aware of three different personas that He possesses? For example, pretend that you were trying to have a discussion with a person while he was wearing a three-sided mask, or a person with a Siamese twin. This interaction would lack a certain indescribable sense of privacy and intimacy that can only exist between two parties.
Now even though the Trinity is described as God, the finite human mind finds difficulty in having a one-way relationship with a Being that possesses three different forms of consciousness. The very fact that each Person has its own role means that my relationship with God forces me to engage each of them in a fundamentally different way. For example, pretend that my brother was a married man that practiced Law. In other words, he was a husband and a lawyer. Now let's say that the following dialogue occurred when I visited him at his house while sitting at the table:
Me: Hi Tim.
Tim: Hi, how's it going?
Me: Fine, thanks. Can I ask you a legal question?
Tim: [Silence...]
Me: Tim?
Tim: Yeah, what's up?
Me: I just asked you a question.
Tim: No you didn't.
Me: Yes, I did.
Tim: No, you asked the lawyer a question. I am not your lawyer, I am your brother. Do you want me to get the lawyer for you?
The point of this dialogue is to illustrate that the Father cannot help me with the jurisdiction of the Son or the Spirit, the Son cannot help me with the jurisdiction of the Father or the Spirit, and the Spirit cannot help me with the jurisdiction of the Father or the Son. Because I have to send my messages to three different addresses, it cannot be fully clear in my mind that I am speaking with one individual. And even if he really is one individual, that makes very little difference to me if I cannot relate to him as one. We all know how annoying it is when you go to some place, like the Post Office, and the clerk won't help you because it's not her department. Something about the itemized roles of the Persons in the Trinity comes off like a Divine bureaucracy.
Conclusion
The description of the Trinity that we have been considering is not like Judaism's description of all actions performed by God as coming from one indistinguishable place. Each action or function is assigned strictly to only of the Persons in the Trinity and not to any of the other Persons. This means that we can recognize a difference between them, and as long as we can recognize a difference between different elements of God, we have not fully come to appreciate the concept that God is One. That God has chosen three different Persons to achieve three different goals indicates that the Trinity is a misunderstanding of God's True Nature.
