One and Three: Introducing the Trinity

I’ve been working on a book on the Trinity, the most complex and wonderful concept in the Christian faith. Below is the first chapter as it currently stands.

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This is a book about God—the most pure, most powerful, most enduring, most transcendent, most lofty, most lowly, most joyful, most loving being in or outside of the universe. If God is good as many believe, he must be the ultimate source of all the goodness we have ever experienced. In the words of Athanasius (c. 296–373), “For God is good—or rather, of all goodness He is Fountainhead, and it is impossible for one who is good to be mean or grudging about anything.”[1] Obviously, this topic is far beyond any of us. As King David exclaims, “Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom” (Ps 145:3).

In particular, this is a book about the Christian view of God, which asserts that God is revealed in the life of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the New Testament. And the God we see in Jesus is triune or tri-personal. This means the one and only God has three distinctions within himself, known as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit

Divine Distinctions

What are these divine distinctions? Many have settled on the word person. After all, in Scripture each of the three speak and hear, and have desires and emotions. And at least for two members, we have something analogous to a close human relationship—Father and Son.

However, when we use the word person in relation to God, we do not mean the exact same thing as a human person. Humans are mortal, sinful, and separable from one another. God is eternal, pure, and the members of the Trinity are inseparable because God is one. This qualification even creates a challenge for the number three because numbering items involves grouping together independent things and coming up with a total. And whatever is grouped together can also be ungrouped. But ungrouping doesn’t work with the Trinity, because the members are eternally linked. In fact, they even indwell each other. Jesus said, “I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (Jn 14:11) and he breathed out the Holy Spirit on his disciples (Jn 20:22). Referring to the three as “subsistences,” John of Damascus (c. 675–749) writes,

The subsistences dwell and are established firmly in one another. For they are inseparable and cannot part from one another, but keep to their separate courses within one another, without coalescing or mingling, but cleaving to each other. For the Son is in the Father and the Spirit: and the Spirit in the Father and the Son: and the Father in the Son and the Spirit, but there is no coalescence or commingling or confusion. And there is one and the same motion: for there is one impulse and one motion of the three subsistences, which is not to be observed in any created nature.[2]

The three distinctions don’t merge with or blend into each other like salt dissolving in water. They are “firmly established in one another” but “keep to their separate courses within one another.” The three are intertwined but each retains its distinctiveness.

The divine entities seem to have the properties of persons yet they are fully united so there is one essence, one will, and they move with one motion. Persons like this don’t exist on earth. Julian of Norwich (c. 1343–after 1416) says it simply, “Where Jesus is spoken of, the blessed Trinity is always to be understood as I see it.”[3] If the doctrine of the Trinity is correct, one member cannot be eliminated. It’s a package deal. God equals Father, Son, and Spirit. These three have always and will always be together, and they are perfectly united in essence and will. If they weren’t fully united, God would be in conflict with himself in some sense and we would have to choose which of the three to follow. Hence, Christians affirm the tri-unity or the Trinity, which means we are trinitarian monotheists. Fully comprehending the Trinity is impossible, but we can clear away confusion.

Avoiding Tritheism and Modalism

The discontinuity between divine and human persons led Karl Barth (1886–1968), one of the most famous theologians of the twentieth century, to avoid using the word person for the members of the Trinity. The difficulty for Barth was the modern concept of personality, which includes self-consciousness. He thought viewing each Trinitarian member as an individual center of self-consciousness leads to tritheism—the belief in three gods. Barth has a point. God is three persons, but they are not three independent centers of self-consciousness because they eternally indwell each other.

What was Barth’s solution? Instead of using the word person, he proposed “modes of existence” or “modes of being.” Barth did not use these phrases as an affirmation of modalism—the teaching that asserts the Father, Son, and Spirit are three successive divine modes, meaning God was first Father, then changed into Son, then became Spirit. By negating the three eternal distinctions within God, modalism destroys the possibility of mutual relationships between the Father, Son, and Spirit.[4] This makes modalism anti-trinitarian.

Could one member of the Trinity have come into being after the others? For example, could the Father be eternal while the Son had a point of origin? If so, reversing the video into the distant past would reveal a God who was all alone and who was not a Father. And if the Son was created, he could not be divine. The doctrine of the Trinity claims that God was always a relational being as Father, Son, and Spirit.

Barth was a classical Trinitarian who was searching for a way to convey the uniqueness of the Trinity, but “modes of being” did not gain traction, probably because it is too esoteric.

Others have struggled with the word person in relation to the Trinity. Anselm (c. 1033–1109) called the divine trio, “tres nescio quid (three I don’t know whats).”[5] So how should we proceed? Augustine (354–430) explains,

Yet, when the question is asked, What three? Human language labors altogether under great poverty of speech. The answer, however, is given, three “persons,” not that it might be [completely] spoken, but that it might not be left [wholly] unspoken.[6]

Augustine concludes it’s better to use the word person than to say nothing. The divine three certainly have personal characteristics while also transcending anything we know of human persons. I will follow Augustine’s example by using the word person throughout this book but keep the qualifications in mind.

One Person God

Why can’t God be monopersonal? Imagine a god who was all alone prior to the existence of anything else. How could that god be called good or loving? Are goodness and love possible with a single solitary being in the middle of nothingness? Appealing to the support of the church fathers, Dumitru Stǎniloae says,

A monopersonal god would be neither a person nor God. He would lack perfection, for his omnipotence would not be united with goodness or with love. . . . love is not possible in a monopersonal existence. Love implies communion with others. [7]

Moreover, if a monopersonal God proceeded to create the relational world as we know it, how do we know that he wouldn’t walk away from it one day and go back to his solitude? After all, complete isolation would be his foundational environment.

Many Person God

Is there a reason why we have three divine members and not 25, 77, or 107? Here we are entering more speculative territory. Stǎniloae contends,

If the divine being were in a single person, it would not be good or loving from eternity, which would mean it was not divine. But if it were in many persons who were deserving and capable of infinite love, their value would be relativized, and this crowd of people would not be divine either. The divine essence is only divine when hypostasized in three Persons, because these three have a value and a relationship between Them that deserves and is capable of absolute love.[8]

The word hypostasized means actualized or made a concrete reality. Stǎniloae gives three reasons why God cannot be a crowd of divine persons. First, “if it were in many persons who were deserving and capable of infinite love, their value would be relativized.” What does this mean?

Think of a 100-person god—to invent a word, a Centurinity instead of a Trinity. In what way would each of the 100 persons be unique and serve a distinct role yet still be divine and deserving of infinite love? As gods multiply, their individual value decreases. They become sovereign over smaller and smaller spheres: trees, rocks, rivers, grain, stars, etc. How could gods over limited realms deserve infinite love?

Later, he gives a second reason, “these persons would be circumscribed and would not be able to encompass everything in each person.”[9] In other words, the limited nature of these gods means they would not be able to completely inhabit all the others, so they could not be fully united.

Third, the number of divine persons must be small so that absolute love can flow between them, allowing each person to give their full being to the others, resulting in complete unity. He concludes, “Thus God can neither be a single person (for then He would lack the communion of love) nor a multitude of persons.”[10]

Three Person God

How many divine persons exist? We wouldn’t be able to figure this out on our own, but the Bible reveals the number to be three. If you are looking for the Father, Son, and Spirit in specific passages in the New Testament, you will see them all over the place. For example, at Jesus’s baptism, the Son is baptized, the Father speaks, and the Spirit rests on the Son. And before Jesus ascended to heaven, he said, “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” (Matt 28:19). One name; three Persons. This was a key point in the debate about the Spirit’s divinity in the fourth century. Those who refused to accept the Spirit as the third member of the Trinity were called Pneumatomachi, meaning “fighters against the Spirit.” Basil of Caesarea used Matthew 28:19 to refute their arguments.

the Spirit is spoken of together with the Lord in precisely the same manner in which the Son is spoken of with the Father. The name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost Matthew 28:19 is delivered in like manner, and, according to the co-ordination of words delivered in baptism, the relation of the Spirit to the Son is the same as that of the Son to the Father.[11]

Here are a few more passages that mention the divine triad:

May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. (2 Cor 13:14)

Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” (Gal 4:6)

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. (Eph 3:14–17)

There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. (Eph 4:4–6)

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To God’s elect, exiles scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood: Grace and peace be yours in abundance. (1 Pet 1:1–2)

Knowing the biblical revelation, Stǎniloae makes a case from reason for three divine members:

The highest form of love is revealed in the unending love between the one and only Father of a unique Son. This love is shown in its perfection, existing from eternity. Yet throughout eternity the love between the Father and the Son has also been directed toward a third Person who takes joy in the love that each has for the other. The simple fact that there is another Person in addition to the two found in the ‘I-Thou’ relationship adds a new, fruitful note to the love between the two, giving it a new importance. . . . Joy between two people grows when it is joined with the joy of a third, or when the joy of the two lovers lives in the joy that a third person has for them both. . . . We shall see that two Persons do not exhaust love’s possibilities, but that there is need for a third, who is not merely a link, but who is united with the other two. . . . But the third cannot be like the second—He cannot be a Son. That would mean that the Son was not able to attract the full love of the Father. Rather, there must be a Person from another category who, even in the way in which He receives His subsistence from the Father, shows the Father loving the Son and the Son loving the Father.[12]

According to this reasoning, absolute eternal love requires three divine members with the third member rejoicing in the love of the first two.

Analogy

There is no perfect analogy for anything and especially so with the Trinity, but Gregory of Nazianzus (329–390) provides one of the more enlightening comparisons,

the Godhead is, to speak concisely, undivided in separate Persons; and there is one mingling of Light, as it were of three suns joined to each other.[13]

Three suns, “one mingling of Light.” Three divine persons, one divine essence or nature. Gregory has a delightful way of playing with the idea of light. Earlier in the same treatise, he writes,

And now we have both seen and proclaim concisely and simply the doctrine of God the Trinity, comprehending out of Light (the Father), Light (the Son), in Light (the Holy Ghost).[14]

The word “mingling” in relation to light is intriguing because John of Damascus seems to say the opposite,

For they are inseparable and cannot part from one another, but keep to their separate courses within one another, without coalescing or mingling, but cleaving to each other.

According to this statement, the divine persons don’t coalesce or mingle. But didn’t Gregory say they do mingle—“one mingling of Light”? Both writers are actually affirming the same things. First, the divine persons are distinct from each other. Gregory says they are “separate Persons.” John agrees—they “keep to their separate courses within one another, without coalescing or mingling.” Second, the divine persons share an unbreakable connection. Gregory says they are “undivided in separate Persons.” John agrees, “they are inseparable and cannot part from one another.” Gregory’s “one mingling of Light,” then, is an attempt to illustrate the oneness or unity of the three not their merging into each other. They don’t lose their individual distinctiveness. (I hesitated to use the word individual because, as we have seen, they are not isolated individuals.) So we have a mingling of love and unity but not a mingling of personhood.

Summary

The Trinity is a complex concept. How can God be one and three? The answer is God is three in one sense and one in another sense—three in person, one in love and one in essence. The classical Christian view of God avoids tritheism (three independent gods) and modalism (one God who transforms into Father, then Son, then Spirit). The God revealed in Jesus is a completely loving and unified interpersonal being who desires a relationship of love with humans. Now it’s time to explore the biblical basis of the Trinity.

Notes

[1] On the Incarnation, 1.3. https://ccel.org/ccel/athanasius/incarnation/incarnation.ii.html

[2] On the Orthodox Faith, 1.14. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/33041.htm

[3] Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, trans. by Clifton Wolters (New York: Penguin Books, 1966), 66.

[4] This summary of Barth’s views comes from D. M. Baillie, God Was in Christ: An Essay on Incarnation and Atonement (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1948), 135–138.

[5] Bishop Robert Barron, What Christians Believe: Understanding the Nicene Creed (Elk Grove Village, IL: Word on Fire, 2025), 100.

[6] On the Trinity, 5.9. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/130105.htm

[7] Dumitru Stǎniloae, The Holy Trinity: In the Beginning There Was Love (Brookline, Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2012), 17, 44.

[8] Ibid., 17.

[9] Ibid., 21.

[10] Ibid., 21.

[11] On the Holy Spirit, 17.43. www.newadvent.org/fathers/3203.htm

[12] Stǎniloae, 55–57.

[13] Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 31, XIV.

[14] Oration 31, III.