God in Three Persons - Part 3

Tritheism Denies That There Is Only One God

Is God one or three?

A final possible way to attempt an easy reconciliation of the biblical teaching about the Trinity would be to deny that there is only one God. The result is to say that God is three persons and each person is fully God. Therefore, there are three Gods. Technically this view would be called “tritheism.”

Few persons have held this view in the history of the church. It has similarities to many ancient pagan religions that held to a multiplicity of gods. This view would result in confusion in the minds of believers. There would be no absolute worship or loyalty or devotion to one true God. We would wonder to which God we should give our ultimate allegiance. And at a deeper level, this view would destroy any sense of ultimate unity in the universe: even in the very being of God there would be plurality but no unity.

Although no modern groups advocate tritheism, perhaps many evangelicals today unintentionally tend toward tritheistic views of the Trinity, recognizing the distinct personhood of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but seldom being aware of the unity of God as one undivided being.

The Importance of the Doctrine of the Trinity

Why is the church so concerned about the doctrine of the Trinity?

Is it really essential to hold to the full deity of the Son and the Holy Spirit? Yes it is, for this teaching has implications for the very heart of the Christian faith. First, the atonement is at stake. If Jesus is merely a created being and not fully God, then it is hard to see how he, a creature, could bear the full wrath of God against all of our sins. Could any creature, no matter how great, really save us? Second, justification by faith alone is threatened if we deny the full deity of the Son. (This is seen today in the teaching of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who do not believe in justification by faith alone.) If Jesus is not fully God, we would rightly doubt whether we can really trust him to save us completely. Could we really depend fully on any creature for our salvation?

Third, if Jesus is not infinite God, should we pray to him or worship him? Who but an infinite, omniscient God could hear and respond to all the prayers of all God’s people? And who but God himself is worthy of worship? Indeed, if Jesus is merely a creature, no matter how great, it would be idolatry to worship him—yet the New Testament commands us to do so.

Philippians 2:9–11 ESV

9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Fourth, if someone teaches that Christ was a created being but nonetheless one who saved us, then this teaching wrongly begins to attribute credit for salvation to a creature and not to God himself. But this wrongfully exalts the creature rather than the Creator, something Scripture never allows us to do. Fifth, the independence and personal nature of God are at stake: If there is no Trinity, then there were no interpersonal relationships within the being of God before creation, and without personal relationships, it is difficult to see how God could be genuinely personal or be without the need for a creation to relate to. Sixth, the unity of the universe is at stake: if there is not perfect plurality and perfect unity in God himself, then we have no basis for thinking there can be any ultimate unity among the diverse elements of the universe either. Clearly, in the doctrine of the Trinity, the heart of the Christian faith is at stake. Herman Bavinck says that “Athanasius understood better than any of his contemporaries that Christianity stands or falls with the confession of the deity of Christ and of the Trinity.” He adds, “In the confession of the Trinity throbs the heart of the Christian religion: every error results from, or upon deeper reflection may be traced to, a wrong view of this doctrine.”

Distinctions Between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit?

Are there truly differences between the persons of the Trinity?

After completing this survey of errors concerning the Trinity, we may now go on to ask if anything more can be said about the distinctions between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. If we say that each member of the Trinity is fully God, and that each person fully shares in all the attributes of God, then is there any difference at all among the persons? We cannot say, for example, that the Father is more powerful or wiser than the Son, that the Father and Son are wiser than the Holy Spirit, or that the Father existed before the Son and Holy Spirit existed, for to say anything like that would be to deny the full deity of all three members of the Trinity. But what then are the distinctions between the persons?

Each Person has Different Primary Functions

What are their functions?

When Scripture discusses the way in which God relates to the world, both in creation and in redemption, the persons of the Trinity are said to have different functions or primary activities. Sometimes this has been called the “economy of the Trinity,” using economy in an old sense meaning “ordering of activities.” (In this sense, people used to speak of the “economy of a household” or “home economics,” meaning not just the financial affairs of a household but all of the “ordering of activities” within the household.) The “economy of the Trinity” means the different ways the three persons act as they relate to the world and (as we shall see in the next section) to each other for all eternity.

We see these different functions in the work of creation. God the Father spoke the creative words to bring the universe into being. But it was God the Son, the eternal Word of God, who carried out these creative decrees. “All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3).

John 1:3 ESV

3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.

Moreover, “By him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him” (Col. 1:16).

Colossians 1:16 ESV

16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.

The Holy Spirit was active as well in a different way, in “moving” or “hovering” over the face of the waters, apparently sustaining and manifesting God’s immediate presence in his creation.

Genesis 1:2 ESV

2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

In the work of redemption there are also distinct functions. God the Father planned redemption and sent his Son into the world.

John 3:16 ESV

16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

Galatians 4:4 ESV

4 But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law,

Ephesians 1:9–10 ESV

9 making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ 10 as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

The Son obeyed the Father and accomplished redemption for us.

John 6:38 ESV

38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.

God the Father did not come and die for our sins, nor did God the Holy Spirit. That was the particular work of the Son. Then, after Jesus ascended back into heaven, the Holy Spirit was sent by the Father and the Son to apply redemption to us. Jesus speaks of “the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name” (John 14:26), but Jesus also says that he himself will send the Holy Spirit, for he says, “If I go, I will send him to you” (John 16:7),

John 16:7 ESV

7 Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.

and he speaks of a time “when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth” (John 15:26).

John 15:26 ESV

26 “But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me.

It is especially the role of the Holy Spirit to give us regeneration or new spiritual life (John 3:5–8), to sanctify us (Rom. 8:13; 15:16; 1 Peter 1:2), and to empower us for service (Acts 1:8; 1 Cor. 12:7–11). In general, the work of the Holy Spirit seems to be to bring to completion the work that has been planned by God the Father and begun by God the Son.

So we may say that the role of the Father in creation and redemption has been to plan and direct and send the Son and Holy Spirit. This is not surprising, for it shows that the Father and the Son relate to one another as a father and son relate to one another in a human family: the father directs and has authority over the son, and the son obeys and is responsive to the directions of the father. The Holy Spirit is obedient to the directives of both the Father and the Son.

Thus, while the persons of the Trinity are equal in all their attributes, they nonetheless differ in their relationships to the creation. The Son and Holy Spirit are completely equal in deity to God the Father, but they are subordinate in their roles.

Moreover, these differences in role are not temporary but will last forever: Paul tells us that even after the final judgment, when the “last enemy,” that is, death, is destroyed and when all things are put under Christ’s feet, “then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all” (1 Cor. 15:28).

1 Corinthians 15:28 ESV

28 When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.

The Meaning of Monogenēs: Is Jesus God’s “Only Begotten” Son?

Only, or Only Begotten?

In John 3:16, Jesus is said to be God’s “only begotten Son” in three Bible translations: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16 NASB; KJV and NKJV also have “only begotten”).

But most modern translations do not say “only begotten Son.” All of the other widely used English translations simply say “only Son” or “one and only Son,” with no notion of begetting: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16 ESV; similarly, RSV and NRSV, while CSB, NET, NIV, and NLT all have “one and only Son”). The difference in translation is due to different understandings of the underlying Greek word monogenēs, which occurs here and in four other verses.31 Historically, the word was understood to mean “only begotten,” with mono meaning “only” and genēs as an adjective related to the verb gennaō, “to beget, to bear,” a verb commonly used to refer to the father’s (or less commonly the mother’s) role in the birth of a child.

in 2017, substantial new evidence came to light. Charles Lee Irons published a significant essay, “A Lexical Defense of the Johannine ‘Only Begotten.’ ” Irons reported that he had found many hundreds of examples of monogenēs in the early church fathers who wrote in Greek. He then pointed to B. F. Westcott’s 1886 commentary on the epistles of John as the earliest support for the meaning “unique” rather than “only begotten.” Westcott was followed by other publications, and eventually the meaning “only” appeared in these five verses in the RSV in 1946, and other Bible translations followed.

In response to the ‘ “only, unique” view, Irons argues that the difference between single and double n in genos and gennaō has no significance since both words ultimately share the same root and the doubling of n is a common spelling variation in Greek.

Significantly, Irons found “at least 145” words in ancient Greek that are built upon the -genēs stem. By far the largest number of them have the idea of being born or produced. These include thalassogenēs (“sea-born”), neogenēs (“newborn”), patrogenēs (“begotten of the father”), proterēgenēs (“born sooner, older”), and purigenēs (“born in or from fire”). He says, “Fewer than 12 of the 145—genēs words involve meetings related to ‘kind’.”

Irons does not claim that monogenēs always means “only begotten,” because there are numerous clear examples where it does mean simply “only, unique, one-of-a-kind.” But Irons is claiming that many hundreds of examples prove that it certainly can mean “only begotten,” and that “monogenēs is used most basically and frequently in reference to an only child begotten by a parent, with the implication of not having any siblings.”

Irons then explains that “this basic meaning gets gradually extended in ever new nonliteral, metaphorical directions,” including the meaning “only legitimate child or heir” and eventually the meaning “only one of its kind.”

Finally, Irons considers the meaning of monogenēs in the New Testament. John 1:14 is especially significant: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth”. The problem is that the word son (Gk. huios) is not in the Greek text, which just says doxan hōs monogenous para patros. If we translate monogenēs as “only,” we end up with the nonsense phrase, “glory as of the only from the Father.” When Bible translations such as the ESV and NIV have to insert the word “Son,” Irons says, they show that monogenēs cannot mean simply “only” in this case but that the notion of being a child or being begotten was part of the meaning signified by the word monogenēs itself. By contrast, the translation “glory as of the only begotten of the Father” is a coherent idea.

Clearly, the authors of the Nicene Creed understand monogenēs to mean “only begotten,” not just “only, unique,” because they use the verb gennaō (“beget”) twice to explain what monogenēs means: (1) it is an eternal begetting that never had a beginning because Christ was “begotten (gennēthenta) of the Father before all ages,” and (2) it does not mean that the Son was created, for the Son was “begotten, not made” (gennēthenta, ou poiēthenta).

Grudem “The evidence and arguments produced by Irons have convinced me that monogenēs when used of God the Son in the New Testament means “only begotten.”

Grudem, W. (2020). Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Second Edition, p. 296). Zondervan Academic.