I will not compromise on this: Christianity—true, historical, orthodox Christianity, is trinitarian. Nicene Christianity, which comprises over 95% of contemporary professed Chrisitans, is authentic and apostolic, which contributes to why it’s accepted by over 95% of contemporary professed Christianity. While it may be true that increasing numbers of Christians unwittingly hold heretical views, they still marginally hold to these basic tenets. I accept and affirm the proclamations of the great councils from Nicaea down that all declared the triunity of God and the theanthropism of Christ as most foundational.
Now, having said this, let me clarify that I do understand the notion of the Trinity, at face-value, can be a complicated thing. This is especially highlighted in how difficult it is to provide a proper analogy for it that can effectively dumb it down. One common analogy utilizes the three phases of water: solid, liquid, and gas. While these phases are all essentially water they still take different forms. However, this constitutes modalism, which, as its name implies, posits that there’s one God Who manifests in three separate modes: Father, Son, and Spirit. As Haydn Lea of Christianity Today explains:
Well the issue is, the water analogy is akin to the heresy of Modalism. Modalism, or Sabellianism [in Eastern Christianity], denies the three distinct Persons of the Trinity and claims that God is one Person who appears in different ‘modes’ at different times—in the Old Testament He appeared as the Father, in the Gospels He appeared as the Son, and from Pentecost onwards He appears as the Holy Spirit.
Similarly, in our aquatic analogy, water can appear in three different modes, depending on the environment, but the three are not co-existing. H2O can only ever be one form at a time. Scripture however, doesn’t depict God this way. For instance at the baptism of Christ, the Father, Son and Spirit are all distinctly present and interacting.
While it might certainly seem okay, its main error resides in emphasizing the oneness rather than the triunity of God. It’s trying to explain how the one Godhead is Three rather than how the Three are one Godhead. Another common analogy is attributed to Saint Patrick, who is said to have taught the Trinity to the pagan Celts by means of the three-leaf clover. The clover is one plant, yet it has three leaves, therefore it’s three leaves in one clover. The issue with this analogy is that it collapses into partialism, the belief that each Person of the Trinity constitutes a “part” of the Godhead (which is why Patrick, being a smart guy, probably never actually used it). The whole point of the Trinity is that there is threeness as well as oneness, but a clover is just a clover, its leaves merely being parts of the whole. It reduces the Trinity to a matter of semantics, because leaves aren’t distinct from their plant in any substantial way.
The fundamental issue with the analogizing of the Trinity I believe lies in its method, insofar as the attempt is to “dumb it down.” To be dumb is to be feeble and small-minded to the point of speechlessness (since, extending from this basic meaning, one’s intelligence would be so vanishing comprehending anything would render him speechless). Dumbing something down, then, requires the imposition of errors, since a dumb person misunderstands the things around him. However, when it comes to critical theological doctrines the presence of errors can’t be tolerated, both because it does the neophyte an injustice (by telling him errors, which can confuse him down the line when you attempt to catechize him further) and the doctrine an injustice (by knowingly misrepresenting and debasing it). The Holy Trinity deserves more than to be “dumbed down.”
How can we make sense of it to people? Well, the best way is to follow the Holy Spirit’s pedagogical example, which is of progressive revelation. As Gregory Nazianzen taught in his oration on the Holy Spirit:
For this reason, he acts like a schoolmaster or doctor, taking away some ancestral customs, allowing others. He yields on some trifles which make for happiness, just as physicians do with the sick to get the medicine taken along with the sweeter ingredients artfully blended in. … No, God meant it to be by piecemeal additions, “ascents,” as David called them, by progress and advance from glory to glory, that the light of the Trinity should shine upon more illustrious souls.1
It’s not that everything is dropped on a student all at once, or they are fed basic falsehoods that are corrected by intermediate truths (which are both plainly wrong, the latter per my argument above). As it happens in literally any classroom, basic truths are correctly stated, and then as the class progresses and more lessons are given the teacher shares and clarifies more knowledge and the students absorb it. Pedagogy is maieutic, as Socrates put it, intent on gradually guiding and revealing students to truth(s). In remarkable resonance, Peter implored the saints to “yearn like newborn infants for pure [milk from the Word], so that by it you may grow up to salvation,” (1 Pet. 2:2), with Paul agreeing in telling the Corinthians that he had “fed [them] milk, not solid food, for [they] were not yet ready” (1 Cor. 3:2). Peter and Paul agree that catechesis is a process, a gradual development from point A to point B to point C, always focused at all times, however, on acquiring a full and proper understanding.
I digress from this little aside on pedagogical methodology (as a hopeless Socratic). However, what this lets us know is how we should approach explaining the Trinity. It should not be by means of “dumbing it down,” but by introducing a most basic aspect of it and then, in time, clarifying and expanding that nugget. This will help us avoid misleading and confused analogies and infantilizing the new-born in Christ. By presenting an understandable portion of a concept and then proceeding to explain and clarify this portion it can become more understandable. This can also help resolve the biggest perceived issue with the Trinity, which is the assertion that it constitutes a blatant logical contradiction, which complicates any attempts by Christian theologians and apologists in asserting that there are reasons to believe the Gospel (for how can there be a rational superstructure if the foundation is irrational?).
First, let me explain the laws of logic (or thought). These laws are axiomatic principles foundational to the whole art of logic, and by extension, philosophy, for without them no subsidiary logical formulations can be grounded. These laws have been understood since the time of the ancient Greek philosophers and continue to ground logical reasoning today. The three laws, as traditionally and commonly enumerated, are the law of identity, the law of noncontradiction, and the law of the excluded middle. While these are all important and I have important things to say about them (in the near-future),2 for our present purposes we need to only focus on the law of noncontradiction. The law of noncontradiction is typically formulated as ¬(p∧¬p), which can be expanded into “it cannot be the case that P is true and P is not true.” This is axiomatic, self-evident, and irrefutable.
Bringing this back around to the matter of the Trinity, those who are uncertain or skeptical about it believe that the doctrine fundamentally asserts that ⊤(1⇔3), or “it is true that 1 is the same as 3.” Clearly, this is a nonsensical statement that violates the law of noncontradiction. Any Christian would accept this, because noncontradiction is axiomatic, but the thing is so would any Christian theologian, even knowing the Trinity. The objection is true only insofar as △⇒(⊤(1⇔3)), with △ meaning “Trinity.” This is where it’s important to have a basic and simple understanding of the Trinity to supply, rather than a dumbed one, for the edification of the neophyte or inquirer. Ever since the blessed days of the Cappadocian Fathers, ancient Christianity’s preeminent scholars of the Trinity, the Church has agreed on the simple formulation that God is “three hypostases in one ousia,”3 commonly expressed in English as “three Persons in one Being.”4
What this formulation demonstrates is that the doctrine of the Trinity isn’t saying that 3 is the same as 1. In fact, the 3 and the 1 are separate categories and are not being equated. To return to logical notation, here is what Trinitarian theologians are actually saying: △⇒(¬(P⇔E))(⊤(P≔3)(E≔1)),5 with △ meaning “Trinity” (as before), P meaning “Person,” and E meaning “essence.” In other words, the Trinity draws a distinction between the Persons of the Godhead and the essence of the Godhead (¬(P⇔E)), not equating them. The distinct Persons are three and their communifying essence is one. This is why Christians are able to say they’re monotheists rather than tritheists, because the divine essence (Godhead), that which makes God God, is singular (monos), but this singular essence unites three distinct Persons (Father, Son, and Spirit).
Once more, to clarify. “Three is one” is contradictory because it posits that I is the same as III, which is self-evidently wrong. The Trinity, however, posits that three distinct Persons are communified by one distinct essence. The Trinity isn’t some mystery hidden by the powerful and demagogic clergy, and these realities have always been acknowledged and discussed by the Church. As the medieval Shield of the Trinity demonstrates (a version of which is the main photo for this article) this important 3-in-16 clarification has always been paramount. This does open the door to exactly explaining what a hypostasis and ousia are, how an ousia can be trihypostatic, what it means to be a person, how the hypostases are related and distinguished, and so on. But this just points us toward the pedagogical model outlined above, of moving from simple basic truths to further clarification and more advanced truths. As it stands presently, however, the fundamental concept of the Trinity is logical, for it doesn’t conflate 1 with 3 but carefully distinguishes as well as relates the two with each other, contrasting the 1 as the single divine essence and the 3 as the threefold divine persons.7
In conclusion, I leave you with the wise and ancient words of the Nicene Creed:
I believe in one God, Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all ages; Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten, not created, of one essence with the Father through Whom all things were made. Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became man. He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered and was buried; And He rose on the third day, according to the Scriptures. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father; And He will come again with glory to judge the living and dead. His kingdom shall have no end.
And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Creator of life, Who proceeds from the Father, Who together with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified, Who spoke through the prophets.
In one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.
I confess one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the age to come.
Amen.
Gregory of Nazianzus, On God and Christ, 136, 137.
I hope to write an article reconstructing the laws of logic upon a trinitarian Christian metaphysical basis, and explaining how exactly they’d function in such a form. The only reason why I wish to do this, rather than taking the established work of many logicians, is because the present basis and formulation of the laws aren’t trinitarian, and all things must be to be genuinely Christian. As they stand, the laws can reduce into self-relational and monistic absurdity. See Treydon Lunot, “Pavel Florensky on the Law of Identity.”
Justo González, A History of Christian Thought, vol. 1, 307.
“Three Men in one Being” would be the purely Anglic formulation, although ever since the introduction of the Latin noun persona into English “man” has become increasingly gendered and particularized, losing its original and more general sense of “human being” and “person.”
Literally, “Given the Trinity, it is not true that a person is equivalent to an essence, but it is true that a person is equal to 3 and an essence is equal to 1.”
While “three-in-one” is a common simplification of the Trinity I believe “three-of-one” might be even better: three Persons of one essence.
This article has primarily constituted an exercise in logic and philosophical theology. On the biblical theology of Trinitarianism, perhaps the most intense fighting ground, there are a number of worthwhile resources. I recommend Brandon Smith’s The Biblical Trinity, Wesley Hill’s Paul and the Trinity, Michael Heiser’s lecture “The Jewish Trinity,” Arthur Wainwright’s The Trinity in the New Testament, and Glenn Butner’s Trinitarian Dogmatics.