The Incoherence of the Incarnation

    In an earlier post on this blog, I argued that the doctrine of the Trinity is ultimately incoherent; all of the existing interpretations of this doctrine are contradictory, so it has no determinate meaning. But what about the doctrine of the Incarnation — that Jesus is both fully human and fully divine? This doctrine was developed throughout the 5th century AD, and centers around the claim that Jesus has two natures (physeis), a human one and a divine one. Many unitarians argue that the Incarnation, like the Trinity, is contradictory and incoherent. Is that right?

    The incoherence of Christ’s two natures

According to ‘orthodox’ Christology, the single person Jesus is both fully divine and fully human at the same time. On its face, this seems to imply multiple contradictions, because fully divine persons have certain attributes (such as omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence) that are incompatible with the limited attributes of fully human persons. This was recognized in the early church; for example, the Council of Nicaea II in 787 declared, “the one and same Christ [is] both invisible and visible lord, incomprehensible and comprehensible, unlimited and limited, incapable and capable of suffering, inexpressible and expressible in writing.” Thus, every orthodox theologian must affirm at least five apparent contradictions:

1. The one and same Christ is both invisible and visible.
2. The one and same Christ is both incomprehensible and comprehensible.
3. The one and same Christ is both unlimited and limited.
4. The one and same Christ is both incapable and capable of suffering.
5. The one and same Christ is both inexpressible and expressible in writing.

Is this as contradictory as it appears? It’s tempting for unitarians like myself to just stop here and claim that the Incarnation is incoherent, but that would be intellectually lazy. When reading a text, it’s generally considered charitable to avoid attributing contradiction to the author(s) at all costs, so we should see if there’s any way to make these claims internally consistent.

    Historically, this apparent contradiction has been explained by the idea that Jesus has two natures (Gk: physeis), a fully divine nature and a human nature. His divine attributes are held qua his divine nature, and his human attributes are held qua his human nature. This is how Christ’s attributes are explained, for example, in the Tome of Leo, a fifth-century document written by Pope Leo I, which was affirmed at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 as the correct basis of the two-natures doctrine. Leo’s Tome says that it was Jesus’ human nature which wept, hung on the cross, was pierced, and said, “The Father is greater than I” (John 14:28), while his divine nature resurrected Lazarus, turned day into night, opened the gates of paradise, and said, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30).

    What exactly is a “nature” (physis)? This has been understood in one of two ways: either as an abstract set of attributes held by a thing, or as a concrete thing which exists by itself. If the abstract interpretation of “nature” is correct, then to say that Jesus has a fully divine nature and a fully human nature simply means that he, as a person, has a full set of divine attributes and a full set of human attributes. This clearly doesn’t solve the contradiction between divine and human attributes, it just restates it in different terms.

    For this reason, the concrete interpretation of “nature” has been used more by orthodox theologians. This can be seen in the Tome of Leo itself; only a concrete, existing thing can weep, hang on a cross, raise the dead, and speak. Timothy Pawl has defended orthodox Christology along this very line of reasoning — the apparent contradiction between “unchangeable” and “changeable,” for example, can be reconciled if the term “unchangeable” is interpreted to mean “has a concrete nature that is unchangeable” (and the same for “changeable”). [1] Christ, as the only person with two concrete natures, can therefore have two conflicting attributes that would only be contradictory if applied to a person with only one concrete nature.

    However, a problem with this account arises if we consider other attributes. God is necessarily omniscient, and the man Jesus did not know all things (cf. Mark 13:32; Luke 2:40; John 8:40); God can’t be tempted, and Jesus was tempted in every way like us (cf. Matt. 4:1-11; Heb. 2:18; 4:15; Jas. 1:13). Knowledge and temptation aren’t had by impersonal concrete natures, but by persons (what would it mean for an impersonal nature to “know” or be “tempted” by something?). If both of Jesus’ natures have such attributes, it seems that Jesus is two persons, which is the ‘heresy’ of Nestorianism, incompatible with ‘orthodox’ Christology. Pawl argues that Jesus’ human nature would have been limited in knowledge and temptable if it were a separate person, which resolves the problem. [2] However, this fails to grapple with the Scriptural data, which say that Jesus was really unaware of certain facts and was really tempted like us (Mark 13:32; Heb. 2:18; 4:15).

    In summary, the idea that Christ (a single person) has two natures, because of which he can have inconsistent attributes without contradiction, appears to be incoherent. If we interpret “nature” as an abstract set of attributes, then it does nothing to resolve the apparent contradictions. On the other hand, if we interpret “nature” as a concrete, existing thing with its own attributes, then it seems that we have two persons in Christ, because the two natures differ in knowledge and temptability (attributes that are held by persons rather than impersonal natures).

    The incoherence of Christ’s consciousness

We’ve now seen how the idea of “two natures” in Christ leads to incoherence. However, this isn’t the only problem with ‘orthodox’ Christology. If we consider how Christ experiences the world, the Christology of the creeds appears to affirm an inconsistent triad. In logic, an inconsistent tetrad is a set of four propositions that lead to a logical contradiction if taken together; therefore, one or more of the propositions must be denied. The inconsistent tetrad implied by the Incarnation is:

1. God is necessarily omnipresent and omniscient.
2. Jesus is only one person (i.e., has one first-person perspective).
3. Jesus has a human first-person perspective.
4. Jesus is God (i.e., has a nature that is divine in the same way as the Father).

First, let’s see why all these propositions are inconsistent. To briefly define our terms, a “first-person perspective” is a way that an entity experiences the world, and a “person” is something that has a first-person perspective. The way that a human experiences the world is through one’s senses (some combination of sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste) mediated through one’s body. Based on all our experience, it appears that the human first-person perspective is necessarily limited; although it’s plausible that God could allow someone to have an ‘out-of-body experience’ where they perceive things outside of the range of their body (e.g., 2 Cor. 12:1-4), such OBEs are still seen from a single point of view. If, for the sake of argument, every human has a soul that can exist apart from their body (contra Genesis 2:7), the human first-person perspective is still a single, limited POV.

    In contrast, God, because he is necessarily omnipresent and omniscient (according to Claim 1), experiences everything in the universe all at once. The divine first-person perspective, therefore, is incompatible with the human first-person perspective; the former has an infinite and unlimited POV, whereas the latter has a single, limited POV. One person (i.e., an entity with a single first-person perspective) cannot have both a divine and human first-person perspective. Therefore, if Jesus was one person (Claim 2), he cannot have a human first-person perspective (Claim 3) in addition to a fully divine first-person perspective (Claim 4). The tetrad of claims is inconsistent; logically, all four cannot be true at the same time, because they entail a contradiction.

    How can Incarnation Christology get around this inconsistent tetrad? Anyone who adheres to orthodox Christology must deny one or more of these claims for their position to be logically coherent. Claim 1 can’t be denied by any monotheist, because it follows from the fact that the God of monotheism is the ground of all being who sustains all existence. Nothing can live or exist apart from him, as confirmed in the Scriptures (e.g., Job 12:7-10; 34:13-15; Ps. 104:29-30; Acts 17:25-28), and assumed by all the early church theologians. Because nothing can exist apart from God, he must exist where anything else exists (omnipresence), and must have maximal knowledge about everything (omniscience).

    Claim 2 could be denied by an orthodox theologian, though not without some difficulty. The Council of Chalcedon in 451 explicitly affirmed that Jesus is only one person and not two persons (“our Lord Jesus Christ... [is] one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son”). There’s some ambiguity here, as the later Council of Constantinople III in 681 declared that Jesus has two wills (divine and human), the latter of which perfectly submits to the former. This could be taken to mean that Jesus has two centers of consciousness, as argued by Richard Swinburne and Thomas Morris. However, this view is only consistent with the creeds in a “restricted” form, where Jesus has one stream of consciousness, one first-person perspective, shared by two minds (a modified affirmation of Claim 2). [3] The fact that Jesus is only one person (i.e., has one first-person perspective) should also be self-evident from the Scriptures, which consistently portray Jesus as a single person with singular pronouns.

    Claim 3 has been denied by some orthodox theologians, such as Athanasius, who claimed that Jesus’ consciousness was fully omnipresent and omniscient even while “existing in a human body, to which he himself gives life” (On the Incarnation 17). But it’s not clear how this can be distinguished from Docetism, the belief that Jesus merely appeared to be a man, which was explicitly denied by the authors of the New Testament (e.g., John 1:14; 8:40; Rom. 5:15-19; 1 Cor. 15:20-22, 45-49; 1 Tim. 2:5; 1 John 4:2; 2 John 7; Heb. 2:6-9, 14-17). If Jesus was omnipresent and omniscient, not experiencing the world through his body but merely puppeteering that body, then in what sense did he “become man,” as the creeds require every orthodox theologian to affirm? And if that is “becoming man,” how did God not “become man” when he previously manifested in a human body (e.g., in Exodus 24:9-11)? Furthermore, the 381 Council of Constantinople and 431 Council of Ephesus affirmed that Jesus’ human nature includes a “human rational soul,” against the Apollinarians who claimed otherwise.

    Finally, as should be obvious, no ‘orthodox’ theologian can deny Claim 4. The claim that Jesus has a fully divine nature, to the same extent as the Father is divine, is implied by the trinitarian interpretation of homoousios (“same essence”) that was asserted about Jesus and the Father at the 381 Council of Constantinople and every ecumenical council afterward. Unlike the claim that Jesus is a man (Claim 3), this claim is not made anywhere in the Scriptures; at most, this claim is barely implicit in the Bible, and was only decided after three hundred years of debate in the proto-orthodox church. [4]

    Thus, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to deny any of the claims of the inconsistent tetrad and remain within the bounds of ‘orthodoxy.’ The only claims that could potentially be denied are Claim 2 and Claim 3. The denial of the former is nearly or fully Nestorian, as it means that Jesus had two first-person perspectives (which implies that he/they was/were two persons). [5] The denial of the latter is nearly or fully Docetic and/or Apollinarian, as it means that Jesus was merely puppeteering his body, without adding anything to God’s first-person perspective, like in the theophanies of the Old Testament (e.g., Exodus 24:9-11). [6]

    But what if the tetrad of claims isn’t inconsistent after all? Some orthodox theologians insist that Jesus had one (human) first-person perspective, and his divine ‘mind’ was merely in his subconscious, although his (human) conscious mind may or may not have been able to access it at will. [7] This might seem to resolve the inconsistent tetrad, but in reality it amounts to a denial of either Claim 1 or 4. As the ground of all being, God actively sustains the existence of all things (Acts 17:25-28); he’s not merely potentially omnipresent and omniscient (which would be a denial of Claim 1), but actually so. The orthodox theologian may object that the Father continues to sustain all things while Jesus is incarnated as human; however, this means that Jesus is not fully divine in the same way as the Father (denial of Claim 4). The tetrad of claims continues to be inconsistent. In order to affirm Claims 1, 3, and 4, it must be said that Jesus actively has two streams of consciousness, which amounts to a denial of Claim 2 (that Jesus is one person).

    The incoherence of Christ’s death

We’ve already seen that orthodox Christology implies a contradiction about Christ’s consciousness. Jesus, who is one person, cannot have both a fully human and fully divine first-person perspective, as the two are incompatible. In fact, another set of inconsistent claims about Christ is implied by orthodox Christology, this time about his death:

1. God cannot die.
2. Jesus died.
3. Jesus is God.

This is simple enough, but let’s define our terms just to make sure there’s no equivocation. By “God,” I mean any person with a nature that is fully divine to the same extent as the Father. No such person can die (Claim 1), and Jesus is such a person (Claim 3). By “Jesus,” I mean the composite person made up of an unmixed fully divine and human nature (according to ‘orthodox’ Christology). That person died (Claim 2), and that person has a fully divine nature (Claim 3). By “die,” I mean the cessation of normal life functions. [8] This cannot happen to a person with a fully divine nature (Claim 1), and it did happen to Jesus (Claim 2). Now that we’ve confirmed this triad of claims has no equivocation, it’s easy to see how it implies a contradiction — Jesus cannot die (from Claims 1 and 3), yet Jesus did die (Claim 2).

    Claim 1 shouldn’t be denied by any monotheist, because it follows from the belief that God is the ground of all being who sustains all existence. This view of God is confirmed throughout the Scriptures (e.g., Job 12:7-10; 34:13-15; Ps. 104:29-30; Acts 17:25-28). God can’t cease to exist, nor can his normal life functions (i.e., sustaining all things, having all knowledge, being all-powerful) cease, because then everything else would stop existing. God’s experience of omnipresence and omniscience didn’t change, even for the three days that Christ was dead, because everything continued to exist — if God’s experience doesn’t change, this can’t be called “death” without making the term utterly meaningless. Finally, the claim that God cannot die is explicitly stated in the Bible (e.g., Job 9:32; 10:5; 33:12; 34:14-15; Ps. 90:2; 102:25-27; 1 Tim. 1:17; 6:16; Rev. 1:4, 8; 4:8).

    Claim 2 can’t be denied by any Christian, because the belief that “Christ died for our sins” is essential to the gospel (1 Cor. 15:3). It would be pointless to cite every time the New Testament says that Christ died for us, because that message is found all across its pages.

    Most orthodox theologians will attempt to get around Claim 1 or 2 by appealing to the idea that the one person, Christ, has both a fully divine and a fully human nature. It’s said that he died according to his human nature, while his divine nature remained essentially immortal. For example, Cyril of Alexandria wrote to Nestorius,

...by nature the Word of God is of itself immortal and incorruptible and life and life-giving, but since on the other hand his own body by God’s grace, as the apostle says, tasted death for all, the Word is said to have suffered death for us, not as if he himself had experienced death as far as his own nature was concerned (it would be sheer lunacy to say or to think that), but because, as I have just said, his flesh tasted death.

Likewise, the Tome of Leo, affirmed at the 451 Council of Chalcedon, states:

To pay off the debt of our state, invulnerable nature was united to a nature that could suffer; so that in a way that corresponded to the remedies we needed, one and the same mediator between God and humanity the man Christ Jesus, could both on the one hand die and on the other be incapable of death.

Once again, this runs into the problem of what it means to say that two contradictory attributes can be held qua two different natures.

    If the two natures are understood as abstract sets of attributes that are held by a single person, then this simply mean that Jesus (as divine) could not die and (as human) died, which is an obvious contradiction. If the two natures are understood as concrete things, one of which could not die and one of which died, it seems that we have two persons here, because “death” is something that happens to a person, not an impersonal nature. If they are understood as two different types of attributes, such that Jesus ‘human-died’ but did not ‘divine-die,’ what does this mean? Does it just mean that his bodily functions ceased, while his conscious experience (omnipresent and omniscient) remained exactly the same? If so, this can’t be understood as “death” without making the term meaningless. This latter view is hard to distinguish from Docetism, as it means that Jesus was only ‘human’ insofar as he puppeteered a human body.

    Finally, what if we deny Claim 3, that Jesus has a nature that is fully divine to the same extent as the Father? Ironically, this is the only one of the three claims that can’t be denied by any orthodox theologian (because it’s explicitly affirmed by the creeds), as well as the only claim that isn’t explicitly affirmed in the Scriptures (at best, it’s an inference which took three hundred years to discover). The orthodox theologian is therefore faced with a trilemma. They must either affirm the creeds and deny Claim 1 and/or 2 (which are explicitly affirmed by the Scriptures), affirm Claims 1 and 2 in agreement with the Scriptures and deny the creeds, or show how the triad of claims is somehow consistent (which so far has proved fruitless).

    The mysterian objection

What if, as some orthodox theologians do, we simply say that the Incarnation is a mystery that can’t be understood by humans? Of course, there are some things that we can never understand about God, because his ways are far above ours (Isa. 40:28; 55:8-9; Rom. 11:33-36; 1 Cor. 2:11). This is much different than the claim that our faith may include true contradictions. Most people will agree that contradictions, by definition, cannot be true, and with good reason: we know from classical logic that a contradiction, if true, would entail the truth of every single proposition (known as the “principle of explosion”). [9] Even if it were possible for God to create a contradiction, such as a square circle or a married bachelor, this would break reality in a way that we know from experience has never happened.

    For this reason, mysterian theologians typically shy away from the claim that the Incarnation implies a true contradiction. (For a mysterian account which does argue that the Incarnation is truly contradictory, and that contradictions can be both true and false, by applying a non-classical system of logic, see Jc Beall’s The Contradictory Christ.) Instead, they argue that even though the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation haven’t yet been interpreted in a way that’s non-contradictory, there may be a non-contradictory interpretation out there that we simply don’t yet (or can’t) understand. [10] Therefore, unitarians and other detractors of these doctrines aren’t justified in claiming that they’re contradictory.

    However, as I argued in my article on the incoherence of the Trinity, this approach ends up destroying the very doctrine that it seeks to save. If the doctrine of the Incarnation can’t be understood by anyone, then those who affirm it are merely repeating a shibboleth that has no determinable meaning, just because the church says that they must, and ‘heretics’ like unitarians are shut out just for the crime of failing to believe a meaningless statement! We can’t even know whether this doctrine is taught in the Scriptures, because we don’t know what it means! Thus, the measure of true faith becomes one’s willingness to blindly follow authority and repeat a statement that is utterly void of determinate meaning. I have a hard time believing that God expects this of us.

    Conclusion

The doctrine of the Incarnation, as described in the ecumenical councils of ‘orthodox’ Christianity, is incoherent in several ways. First, it explicitly attributes at least five pairs of contradictory attributes to Christ, and tries to reconcile this via the idea of Christ’s ‘two natures.’ However, if we interpret each nature as an abstract set of properties, it fails to resolve the contradiction, and if we interpret them as concrete things instead, it implies that there are two persons in Christ. Second, it also implies a contradiction about Christ’s consciousness, by requiring us to affirm an inconsistent tetrad of claims about how Jesus experiences the world. Finally, it also requires us to affirm the inconsistent triad that (1) God cannot die, (2) Jesus died, and (3) Jesus is God.

    Rather than accepting an incoherent and meaningless doctrine solely on the basis of church authority, it would be better for Protestants, if not also Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, to return to the Scriptures and see if it really requires us to affirm this doctrine. Fortunately, it doesn’t. The New Testament never explicitly says that Christ has a nature that is fully divine to the same extent as the Father — this view took centuries for the early church to develop after the NT was written. On the contrary, it presents Jesus as “a man attested by God” who was “made Lord and Messiah” (Acts 2:22, 36); the perfect, sinless, human Lamb who was exalted to become Lord of the universe because of his obedience to his God. [11]

______________________________

[1] Timothy Pawl, In Defense of Conciliar Christology: A Philosophical Essay (Oxford: OUP, 2016); note that although Pawl’s account isn’t strictly contradictory, I believe he is (unintentionally) changing the subject, as the councils state that it’s “the one and same Christ” who has these attributes, rather than one or another of his concrete natures.

[2] Dale Tuggy, interview with Timothy Pawl, Dr. Timothy Pawl’s In Defense of Extended Conciliar Christology – Part 2, Trinities, podcast audio, 14 October 2019, 22:10.

[3] Tim Bayne, “The inclusion model of the Incarnation: problems and prospects,” Religious Studies 37 (2001): 125-141.

[4] For the history of development of Christian theology in the 1st through 4th centuries, see my blog post series about “The evolution of early Christian theology.” See also R.P.C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy 318-381 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark Ltd., 1988) for a great scholarly treatment of how trinitarianism emerged from the theological upheavals of the 4th century AD.

[5] Nestorianism is the belief that Jesus is two persons, which was officially condemned by the catholic church at the 451 Council of Chalcedon.

[6] Docetism is the belief that Jesus merely appeared to be human, which was condemned by the creedal declaration that Jesus “became man.” Apollinarianism is the belief that Jesus was merely a divine soul within a human body, completely replacing the human soul, which was condemned by the catholic church at the 381 Council of Constantinople.

[7] For an explanation and defense of this view, see Andrew Loke, “The Incarnation and Jesus’ Apparent Limitation in Knowledge,” New Blackfriars 94 (2013), 583-602.

[8] Although I believe that death is the cessation of existence, this is supposed to be an inconsistent triad implied by ‘orthodox’ theology, and ‘orthodox’ theology believes that the soul continues to exist after death. On the other hand, everyone agrees that death is the cessation of normal life functions, otherwise death is literally meaningless.

[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_explosion

[10] Dale Tuggy, “Trinity [4.1],” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 20 November 2020, accessed 5 May 2024, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/trinity/#NegMys.

[11] To see what the Scriptures actually teach about the nature of God and Jesus, see my blog post, “The Biblical Case for Unitarianism.”

The Incoherent Metaphysics of the Trinity

    The Trinity is a doctrine that has been believed by most Christians since the 4th century AD. This doctrine teaches that God is one, while also being three in a different way. God is one ousia, or “essence,” or “nature,” or “being,” while being three hypostaseis, or “persons.” These are metaphysical terms, drawn from the Greek philosophy that existed when the doctrine of the Trinity was formulated. What happens if we examine the doctrine of the Trinity according to the metaphysical basis on which it rests? Can it help to elucidate what the Trinity actually means, or does it further obfuscate it, or even show it to be utterly contradictory? In this post, we’ll try to find the answer to that question.

    The relationship between ousia and hypostasis

In 4th-century Greek metaphysics, ousia was a term that can mean two things: either a type of nature (e.g., “human nature”) or a particular instance of that nature (e.g., a human). This distinction was called by Aristotle the “primary ousia” (i.e., individual) and “secondary ousia” (i.e., genus/species/nature). Hypostasis could also mean a type of nature, but from the Council of Nicaea onwards began to be used solely as a term for a concrete instance of a nature (e.g., a human is a hypostasis of “human nature”). The terms ousia and hypostasis were actually used synonymously by many 4th-century writers, like Athanasius and Epiphanius. [1] So what does it mean that God is one ousia and three hypostaseis?

    If we interpret ousia as “secondary ousia” (i.e., genus/species/nature), then it means that God is one nature and three particular instances of that nature. This was the view held by two of the Cappadocian Fathers, who helped to formulate the doctrine of the Trinity. According to Basil of Caesarea, “The distinction between ousia and hypostasis is the same as that between the general and particular; as, for instance, between the animal [i.e., humanity] and the particular man” (Epistle 236.6). Gregory of Nyssa held the same conception, as is clear from his work On “Not Three Gods”.

    The title of that work notwithstanding, this view does imply the existence of three gods. In this formulation of the Trinity, ousia refers to a particular nature, like human nature; but the existence of a single human nature doesn’t change the fact that 8 billion instances of “human nature” are still 8 billion humans. Therefore, three concrete instances of a divine “secondary ousia” would just be three gods. Gregory of Nyssa argues against this (in On “Not Three Gods”) by claiming that three human persons should actually be called “one human” because they all have a human nature, but this is a clear abuse of language, as shown by the fact that this concept of humanity is not found other than in obscure philosophical writings like Gregory’s. This interpretation of the Trinity thus leads to a contradiction, as it postulates the existence of both one God and three gods.

    What if the one ousia is a “primary ousia,” that is, a particular instance of a nature? In this case we have another clear contradiction, because a hypostasis is also a concrete instance of a nature. This view, therefore, postulates that God is both one thing and three of the same thing, a logical impossibility. Such an incoherent view of the Trinity was held by the Cappadocian father Gregory of Nazianzus, as well as the later theologian John of Damascus. [2] Both Gregory and John admitted that thinking about the Trinity led to a logical contradiction, but they believed that it was necessary to affirm what the Church taught, so one must simply avoid thinking logically about God. [3] This view will be critiqued later in my post.

    Finally, we could interpret ousia as a concrete instance of a nature, while interpreting hypostasis as a term synonymous with prosōpon, referring to a personality or mode. This takes us into modalism, which, although formally condemned as a heresy, has been popular in Western Christianity as a one-self theory of the Trinity. [4] The view that God is one self, and his three hypostaseis are modes of that self, was held (probably) by Augustine of Hippo as well as more recent influential theologians like Karl Barth and Karl Rahner. [5] This interpretation of the Trinity holds that God is a single self who eternally acts in three different ways (as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) relative to himself.

    The problem with this view is that it implies that each hypostasis cannot be called “God,” because a part of a thing can’t be equal to the whole, whereas trinitarian theology insists that they are each fully God. For example, although you might be able to refer to “happy Andrew” and “sad Andrew” (modes of myself) by my name, my happiness and my sadness are plainly not identical to me, and cannot be called “Andrew.” A classical theist would object that God’s attributes are simply identical to himself (divine simplicity), and so each of God’s modes can be called “God.” But then we’re left with the same incoherent claim as before, that God is both one thing and three of the same thing, because each of God’s modes are just identical to God!

    Where does this leave us? We can’t interpret ousia as a nature or a concrete instance of a nature, as both lead to logical contradiction. Nor can we interpret the three hypostaseis as three modes or parts of the one ousia, because this either conflicts with trinitarian theology or leads to logical contradiction. There are only so many ways that one thing can relate to three things, and the Trinity conflicts with all of them. The doctrine of the Trinity, therefore, is a logically incoherent mess, according to the metaphysical language which it is based upon.

    “Unitarians are just rationalists who use philosophy”

A trinitarian might object (as many trinitarians do) that unitarians are simply bringing in philosophy where it doesn’t belong, futilely trying to understand everything about God from a rationalist perspective. The fact is, though, that unitarians aren’t the ones who brought in philosophy and metaphysics to explain God. It was trinitarians themselves who introduced the metaphysical terms ousia and hypostasis to explain their doctrine! The difference is that unitarians simply follow the trinitarian metaphysical logic through to its incoherent conclusions.

    In fact, the unitarian conception of God requires much less metaphysical speculation than trinitarianism. Unitarians believe that God is one person, the Father alone, who is perfect in knowledge and power; that Jesus is his unique Son, the ideal human Messiah who perfectly reveals his will and was exalted to become Lord of the universe; and that the Holy Spirit is the powerful presence of God (the Father) acting in the world. This requires no metaphysical concepts to understand (unless “God” is considered to be a metaphysical concept). Unitarians accept that there are many things about God that we can’t understand (Isa. 40:28; 55:8-9; Rom. 11:33-36; 1 Cor. 2:11), but we deny that God expects us to believe anything that is logically impossible.

    It’s possible that trinitarians could formulate a Trinity theory that avoids the pitfalls of metaphysics. Something like this has already been attempted by Beau Branson, who recognizes that existing Trinity theories are inadequate. [6] Branson argues that “God” refers properly to the Father, while the god-ness of the Son and Holy Spirit are ontologically derivative from God (the Father), and that this was the view held by the earliest trinitarians. [7] It’s not clear how this is substantively different from subordinationist unitarianism; most unitarians would agree with this, while perhaps disputing the precise nature of the Son and the Holy Spirit (e.g., that the former is eternally begotten and uncreated).

    Furthermore, if any trinitarians completely do away with the metaphysical language of ousia and hypostasis, they would end up just as untethered from Church tradition as unitarians. The creeds which promulgate the doctrine of the Trinity also demand that we say God is one ousia and three hypostaseis. Until any trinitarians do come up with a purely phenomenological (non-metaphysical) explanation of the Trinity, the accusation that unitarians are more “rationalistic” than trinitarians is unfounded.

    “But the Trinity is just a mystery that can’t be understood”

When pressed into a corner on the logical incoherence of the Trinity, some trinitarians will resort to “mysterianism,” the position that the Trinity simply can’t (and shouldn’t) be understood. [8] Indeed, most Christians simply avoid thinking about the details of the Trinity altogether. After all, God’s ways are far beyond our understanding (Isa. 40:28; 55:8-9; Rom. 11:33-36; 1 Cor. 2:11); of course there are things about him that we can’t know! Does this rescue the doctrine of the Trinity from its own logical incoherence?

    No, it doesn’t. The unitarian claim isn’t that everything about God can be understood, but that this particular doctrine about God leads to a logical contradiction. Unless the trinitarian is willing to admit that true contradictions about God can exist — which, unlike the claim that God’s ways are beyond ours, isn’t found in the Scriptures — mysterianism does nothing to rescue trinitarianism. Furthermore, if we can’t even know what the doctrine of the Trinity means, how can anyone affirm it? The language of “one God in three persons” then becomes nothing more than a shibboleth to distinguish ‘true’ and ‘orthodox’ Christians, who blindly follow the authority of the Church, from ‘heretics’ whose only crime is their failure to affirm a meaningless statement!

    Finally, if we can’t know what the doctrine of the Trinity means, how can we know that it is revealed in the Scriptures? By removing all meaningful content from the affirmation of “one God in three persons,” mysterianism undermines the entire basis for believing in the Trinity, at least for sola scriptura Christians. (For Catholic and Eastern Orthodox mysterians, “one God in three persons” must be affirmed as a meaningless shibboleth simply because the Church demands it.) Thus, Protestants can’t be mysterians if they want to have any basis for their belief in the Trinity. Moreover, this appeal to “mystery” can’t be found in the New Testament, which uses “mystery” to refer to a revealed doctrine.

    A modified mysterian view, argued for by Matthew J. Farrar, is that God is not “a being” but rather the ground of all being, so it’s wrong to apply the same metaphysical logic that applies to physical beings to God. [10] Once again, though, it’s trinitarians, not unitarians, who apply the metaphysics of ousia and hypostasis to God; unitarians just follow this logic through to its (incoherent) conclusions. Furthermore, as argued earlier, how could God expect us to affirm something that is logically impossible to understand, and how could we possibly know that the Trinity is taught in the Scriptures if we can’t even know what it means? Finally, although it’s true that God is the ground of all being, the denial that he is himself “a being” runs the risk of reducing “God” to a brute fact, rather than the rational, relational, utterly personal Being revealed in the Scriptures.

    “But the church has always believed it”

If the doctrine of the Trinity is incoherent (and therefore wrong), why has the Church been in almost 100% consensus about this issue since the 4th century AD? Is it possible that so many learned theologians could have been wrong for so long? And isn’t the doctrine of the Trinity taught in the Scriptures? In fact, this doctrine wasn’t believed by the earliest Christians, but was a later development over the centuries, finally coalescing into what is today considered “orthodox trinitarianism” by the mid-4th century (after the First Council of Nicaea). [10]

    To understand just how much Christian theology has evolved even since the early 4th century, let’s consider briefly how John 1:1, the trinitarian prooftext par excellence, was interpreted at that time. The setting is the 330s AD, several years after the Council of Nicaea. Two very prominent bishops, Eusebius of Caesarea and Marcellus of Ancyra, both of whom were considered orthodox at the time, are debating the meaning of this verse. [11]

    Eusebius argues that because John refers to the Word as “God” (Gk: theos) rather than “the God” (Gk: ho theos), he indicates that the Word was not “the God who is over all,” i.e., the Father. Rather, the Word is “an image of the God” who was “made like, in the closest way possible, to the archetypal divinity of the Father” (ET 2.17.1-3). “For there is but one true God... ‘and the Word was God,’ but not the one true God” (Eusebius, Letter to Euphration). According to Eusebius, those who declare that the Word is “the Most High God himself” are “strangely confounding things most widely different” (Oratio 11.16).

    Marcellus of Ancyra, on the other hand, believed that there is only one God who is a single person because he uses singular pronouns to define his uniqueness (Fragment 91-92, 97). Thus, he argued, the word of God cannot be a second god or Demiurge, but is the literal reason and spoken word of God, similar to a human’s reason and spoken word (Frag. 67, 87-89, 99). It is a “power” (Gk: dynamis) of the Father, rather than a separate person (Frag. 70). God’s word is what animated the human flesh of Jesus, controlling it like a puppet, which is how “the word became flesh” (Frag. 5, 7, 73, 104-105).

    Neither Eusebius nor Marcellus held to the trinitarian interpretation of John 1:1, which is that “the Word was God” (Gk: theos ēn ho logos) refers to a second person in the one God. This view, which today is the hegemonic interpretation of the verse, doesn’t even seem to have crossed their minds. This incident serves to demonstrate just how much Christian theology has evolved (and narrowed) even since the First Council of Nicaea. How did this happen? There were many theological controversies throughout the 4th century, finally ending when the pro-trinitarian Roman emperor Theodosius I simply outlawed all other views in AD 380:

According to the apostolic teaching and the doctrine of the Gospel, let us believe in the singular Deity of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, in equal Majesty and in a Holy Trinity. We order the followers of this law to embrace the name of Catholic Christians. But as for the others, since, in our judgment they are demented and insane, we decree that they shall be branded with the ignominious name of Heretics, and shall not presume to give to their assemblies the name of churches. They will suffer in the first place the chastisement of the divine condemnation, and in the second the punishment of our authority which, in accordance with the will of Heaven, we shall decide to inflict. (Edict of Thessalonica)

This edict was upheld by a ‘kangaroo council’ the next year, called by Theodosius I, which only trinitarian bishops were allowed to attend. [12] From that point onward, until the Protestant Reformation, non-trinitarians were harshly persecuted and not allowed to lead congregations. The fact is, a consensus arrived at by coercion is no consensus at all. Rather than accept the logically incoherent doctrine of the Trinity simply because it was forced on Christianity by an emperor, we should return to the Scriptures to see if, just maybe, this doctrine is actually not biblical after all. [13,14]

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[1] For an analysis of how the use of these terms changed over time, see G. L. Prestige, God in Patristic Thought (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1952), 157-196.

[2] John of Damascus understood the Trinity in light of the ideas of perichoresis and circumincession, that the persons of God fully indwell each other (loosely drawn from passages like John 14:11). He used the analogy of three suns, which fully overlap each other in all three dimensions to form one sun. Obviously, the issue with this is that three objects which totally overlap each other don’t continue to be three objects, but become only one object. Thus, perichoresis and circumincession fail to solve the contradiction that arises from the claim that God is one thing and three of the same thing.

[3] Gregory Nazianzen, Oration 31.33; John Damascene, An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith I.14.11; cf. Charles C. Twombly, Perichoresis and Personhood: God, Christ, and Salvation in John of Damascus (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2015), 12-16.

[4] Dale Tuggy, “Trinity [1.1-3],” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 20 November 2020, accessed 5 May 2024, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/trinity/#OneSel.

[5] On Augustine, see Dale Tuggy, “History of Trinitarian Doctrines [3.3.2],” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2020, accessed 5 May 2024, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/trinity/trinity-history.html#Aug; Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics Volume I: The Doctrine of the Word of God (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956), 1; Karl Rahner, The Trinity (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1997 [1967]), 101-102.

[6] Beau Branson, “No New Solutions to the Logical Problem of the Trinity,” Journal of Applied Logics 6, no. 6 (2019): 1051-1092.

[7] Beau Branson, “One God, the Father: The Neglected Doctrine of the Monarchy of the Father, and Its Implications for the Analytic Debate about the Trinity,” TheoLogica 6, no. 2 (2022).

[8] Dale Tuggy, “Trinity [4.1-2],” https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/trinity/#Mys.

[9] Matthew J. Farrar, “Why the Trinity Just Doesn’t Make Sense to Christadelphians,” dianoigo (blog), 27 August 2018, https://blog.dianoigo.com/2018/08/why-trinity-just-doesnt-make-sense-to.html.

[10] For the history of development of Christian theology in the 1st through 4th centuries, see my blog post series about “The evolution of early Christian theology.” See also R.P.C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy 318-381 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark Ltd., 1988) for a great scholarly treatment of how trinitarianism emerged from the theological upheavals of the 4th century AD.

[11] Maurice Wiles, “Person or Personification? A Patristic Debate about Logos,” in The Glory of Christ in the New Testament: Studies in Christology in Memory of George Bradford Caird (Oxford: OUP, 1987), 281-289; for a longer analysis of the beliefs of Eusebius, Marcellus, and their contemporaries, as well as a history of the post-Nicene period, see posts five and seven in my blog post series, “The evolution of early Christian theology.”

[12] Socrates, Ecclesiastical History 5.8.5-10; Sozomen, Ecclesiastical History 7.7.2-5.

[13] To be sure, I’m not saying that all trinitarians believe in the doctrine of the Trinity just because the Church teaches it. (That’s certainly not why most Protestants believe it.) Most Christians believe it because that’s how they’ve been taught to interpret the Bible, so as to rule out all other views as heresy. But their belief in the Trinity can ultimately be traced back to when this doctrine was forced upon most Christians in a coercive, top-down fashion, in AD 381.

[14] To see what the Scriptures actually teach about the nature of God and Jesus, see my blog post, “The Biblical Case for Unitarianism.”

Reasons to Believe's Argument for the Trinity

    While doing research for my upcoming series of posts about interpreting Genesis 1-11, I came across an article from the old-earth creationist ministry Reasons to Believe, about “How to Persuade a Skeptic That God Must Be Triune.” This article advances a purely philosophical argument for the Trinity, meant to convince skeptics (both theists and atheists) that certain facts about the consistency of the natural world are best explainable by the existence of a triune God. Similar arguments have been made by other trinitarians, from the medieval theologian Richard of St. Victor to the modern Christian apologist William Lane Craig. I don’t think I’ve responded to this argument before on my blog.

Q: I was talking to a skeptic who wouldn’t subscribe to the possibility of the Christian God being 3-in-1. I gave an analogy of a person being mind, body, and soul, and although this intrigued her, she offered that the mind was actually an extension of the soul. Do you have any thoughts or references that I could access to clarify my position?

A: Most Christian theologians conclude, and I would agree, that it is not possible to separate the soul and the spirit of a human. However, standard Christian doctrine asserts that the earthly body of a human is separable. When a human dies having committed his or her life to Christ, the soul and spirit depart from the body to be with the Lord in heaven. Thus, the body, soul, and spirit of a human is not a good analogy for the Trinity. Every member of the Triune God—Father, Son, and Spirit—have always existed and will continue to always exist.

    This is also a bad analogy because, biblically, the soul is an emergent property that exists when a body and spirit are joined (Gen. 2:7). Furthermore, each of these three aspects (body, soul, and spirit) only make up a single human person, so it doesn’t correspond to the belief that the one God is three persons. [1]

As to how we can better argue for and establish the existence of the Triune God, I have found by experience that one of the best ways is to show people how science makes sense only if God is Triune. One example would be to point out that love is not possible unless there are at least two persons to express and receive love. The problem with strictly monotheistic religions like Islam and Judaism is that a nonloving entity supposedly created beings that give and receive love. How can the lesser create the greater? To put it another way, in strict monotheism, God must create in order to have any possibility of giving or receiving love. If God is a single person, he is unfulfilled until he creates. For the Trinitarian God, creation is an option. It is not a need.

    This philosophical argument is often made by social trinitarians, who believe that the three persons of trinitarian theology are three selves in principle capable of interpersonal relationships. [2] Their reasoning may be summarized as follows:

1. Necessarily, God is perfectly loving (premise).

2. Being perfectly loving implies actually loving another (premise).

3. God was free to create or not to create (premise, based on God’s aseity).

4. Therefore, if God necessarily loves another, this other must be within himself (from 3).

5. Therefore, God loves another within himself (from 1-2, 4).

6. Therefore, God is multi-personal (from 5).

The weak point of the argument is premise 2. Trinitarians who use this argument are being inconsistent in how they apply this premise. If we make an almost identical argument, but for another attribute of God (his perfect forgiveness), it leads to a clear absurdity: [3]

1*. Necessarily, God is perfectly forgiving (premise).

2*. Being perfectly forgiving implies actually forgiving another (premise).

3. God was free to create or not to create (premise, based on God’s aseity).

4*. Therefore, if God necessarily forgives another, this other must be within himself (from 3).

5*. Therefore, God forgives another within himself (from 1-2, 4).

6. Therefore, God is multi-personal (from 5).

This reductio ad absurdum shows that, if we apply premise 2 to God’s forgiveness (premise 2*), it implies that God has an eternally sinful person within himself, whom he eternally forgives. To avoid the absurdity, the trinitarian must show that premise 2* is sufficiently different from premise 2, which is difficult or impossible to do on purely philosophical grounds, since the two premises are almost identical.

    Of course, the trinitarian could appeal to 1 John 4:8 (“God is love”) to show that God is perfectly loving in a different way than his other attributes. But then the argument moves from pure philosophy to an argument from revelation, and a claim that the New Testament is best interpreted in a trinitarian way. This certainly won’t convince any non-Christian skeptic, nor will it convince anyone familiar with unitarian arguments about the New Testament and early church history. The New Testament clearly teaches and assumes that God just is the Father alone, and trinitarianism was not widely believed in the early church until the 4th century, which is hard to explain if it’s truly taught in the New Testament. [4] Even in the case of 1 John 4:8 (“God is love”), the context establishes that “God” refers to the Father, separate from the Son and the Spirit (4:9-16), so this philosophical argument (if true) would prove that the Father is multi-personal.

    What then does it mean to say that God is perfectly loving, or that “God is love”? It means that, given the existence of another person, God will unfailingly love that person. It doesn’t guarantee the necessary existence of that person, any more than God’s perfect forgiveness guarantees the necessary existence of a sinful person. It’s possible to imagine a world where God never created another person, in which case his perfect love would still exist but wouldn’t be expressed, just as it’s possible to imagine a friendly person living alone on an island (he has no friends, but if he did meet anyone, he would befriend them).

The problem with polytheistic faiths is that the multiple gods possess different creation plans and goals. Thus, in polytheistic religions like Hinduism, there is the expectation that the natural realm will be inharmonious and filled with inconsistencies and unresolvable anomalies. However, centuries of scientific research reveal the opposite. The more we study the record of nature the greater level of harmony and consistency we see and the longer the list becomes of resolved anomalies.

    Reasons to Believe (RtB) now explains why monotheism (i.e., the existence of a single perfect God) is the best explanation of the consistency we see in the natural world. This argument may well be true, for in most (all?) polytheistic religions, there are stories about the gods disagreeing and fighting over how to run the world. I’m not sure how effective this would be at convincing an atheistic skeptic, as RtB hasn’t yet argued for the existence of any gods in this article — could the consistency of the natural world be equally well explained given the existence of no gods? In any case, this argument is irrelevant to the Trinity now that we’ve debunked the claim that a single perfect God must be multi-personal.

Science, therefore, establishes why God in some sense must be uniplural, as the Hebrew word for God (Elohim) used in Genesis 1 implies. The uniplurality of God also explains why both singular and plural pronouns are used for God in Genesis 1:26–27.

    These claims are very tenuous, and aren’t agreed on even by most trinitarian scholars. I debunked them at the beginning of this blog post. The fact is that plural titles like Elohim were used as majestic titles, not just for God, but also by the Canaanites for their own gods, for other humans in the Bible, and also for the Father and Jesus as individual persons (Ps. 45:6-7; cf. Heb. 1:8-9). As for the plural pronouns in Genesis 1:26-27, this is almost certainly referring to the divine council which was with God in the beginning (1 Kgs. 22:19; Job 15:8; Psa. 89:7; Dan. 7:10, 26). The divine council’s decrees could be spoken of interchangeably as God’s own decrees, as shown by Daniel 4:17, 24.

One question that remains is why three Persons and not two, four, or more. Both creation and the redemption of billions of humans reveals a division of labor that points to three Persons. Also, John in his first epistle explains that God’s spiritual light in the world has three components: life, love, and truth, wherein the Son takes responsibility for bestowing life, the Father takes responsibility for bestowing love, and the Holy Spirit takes responsibility for bestowing truth.

Psychologists point out that when two people isolate themselves from the rest of humanity, they frequently become codependent in their relationship. A third person breaks the codependency. This need for three persons is illustrated in marriage. The bride and groom unite to become one, where the bride and groom become an ezer (essential military ally) for one another. However, for this alliance to truly build an increasingly loving relationship and an increasingly productive ministry, the married couple must completely embrace God as their ezer.

    This argument for three persons is incredibly selective, and it shows that RtB is starting with their conclusion and trying to find premises to justify it. Psychologists also point out that good relationships involve respect for boundaries and giving the other person space if they need it. Does this prove that there’s a place where the Father doesn’t exist so that the Son can have alone time, which means God isn’t omnipresent? Psychologists point out that good relationships involve accepting each other’s shortcomings. God doesn’t have shortcomings, so does this mean that the Father and the Son can’t be in a good relationship and therefore aren’t perfectly loving? Clearly, RtB is simply assuming that God is three persons and looking for arguments to back it up.

In conclusion, the universe, its life, and God’s plan revealed both in nature and Scripture for the redemption of billions of human beings reveals the work of three supernatural Persons who are one in essence, character, purpose, and plan.

    While there may be an effective argument for this, RtB certainly hasn’t made it. At the most, all they’ve shown is that the consistency of the natural world is better explained by monotheism than polytheism, which unitarians shouldn’t have an issue with. As for me, I’ll stick to the clear teaching of scripture that there is one God, the Father alone, and Jesus is his human Son, the Messiah, and our Lord (John 8:40; 17:3; 1 Cor. 8:4-6; 1 Tim. 2:5).

______________________________

[1] For more on these three aspects of a human person, see my blog post, “Body, Spirit, and Soul.”

[2] For other Trinity theories, see the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on the Trinity.

[3] Dale Tuggy, “Antiunitarian Arguments from Divine Perfection,” Journal of Analytic Theology 9 (2021): 264-266.

[4] See my series of blog posts on the history of unitarianism and trinitarianism in the early church; for a more academic treatment of the data, see R. P. C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God (Edinburgh: T&T Clark Ltd., 1988).