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.
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.
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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.
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.
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| 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."
This next point is easier to understand if we are able to look at the diagram of the Athanasian Creed, shown below.
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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.
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.
For more information on how the Trinity operates, see The Trinity - Theological Refraction.
2 comments:
The belief in a divine trinity is an idolatrous concept, since it is a belief that God (or according to some, a second separate divinity) has characteristic features, and the characteristics of a body (the Divine Code by Rabbi Moshe Weiner, Ask Noah International, 2011, p 195).
While some Christian sects claim to be unitarian, traditional Christian doctrine has always been trinitarian, as proved by Matthew 28:19. I suggest reading the excellent online article "Heretics United: A Defense of the Textual Integrity and Trinitarian Interpretation of Matthew 28:19 - Part 1a" which confirms this.
I'm going to have to read that book.
I think that missionaries can take advantage of the literal, technical meaning of the word "idolatry" by explaining that they do not make idols of Jesus, and therefore are free of idolatry. This is a deceptive argument (to themselves and to others) that capitalizes on a "loophole" in the definition. In other words, there is a distinction between idolatry and polytheism, the latter which they claim to not be guilty of by claiming that Jesus was God.
To this end I seek to clarify to them (and those who may be convinced by this argument) that idolatry was often (not always) the final product of belief in other gods. This means that polytheists who created idols would not necessarily believe that the idol was their deity, but that it represented their deity. This partially explains the prohibition in Exodus 20:4-5, which can be understood as a prohibition not just of making and worshiping idols, but of imagining God as anything found in nature.
You can find that post here: https://hashemisbeautiful.blogspot.com/2020/12/is-worshiping-jesus-idolatry.html
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