GOD IS ONE NOT THREE?  QUESTIONING THE TRINITY

The Bible says that there is only one God.   It also says that God is one.  That turn of phrase is probably a reaction to some systems that used God as a collective term for a collection of gods or magical beings.  In paganism, there were some philosophers and theologians like Pantheists who were saying that there was one God and many people are manifestations or persons in God.  One God means there is one God.  God is one means that God is an individual.  So God is one person. 

The Bible says that God is the Father.  Christendom says that God is the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three persons.  But the Son is not a Father and neither is the Holy Spirit.  

The argument is that there is no contradiction in this.  They say they mean there is one being who is God.  They also say that there are three differences in God.  They are described as persons in a metaphorical sense.  They are not three individuals.  The Bible of course teaches no such doctrine and in the simple minds of its authors there would have been no distinction between an individual and a person.  Person meant person too.  God is spirit, that is like a being whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.  That is the Catholic doctrine.  The Bible does not teach this abstract and horrid idea of God.  Accordingly, the Catholic God may not be the God of the Bible.  The Bible commands that we must worship the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and they had no ideas about God like that!

The Church says it works out the Trinity from the Bible for it says there are three persons who are God and yet only one God.  So the doctrine is just a human speculation to solve the seeming contradiction of saying God is three and God is one.  They create a whole theology on the idea that the Father is unbegotten and he begets the son and both of them cause the Holy Spirit!   The Bible never says that Jesus was begotten this way but only begotten in his other’s womb by the Holy Spirit.  God being without a cause cannot beget in the sense they mean. 

As we observed, they say that three persons cannot be one person but that God is not three literal persons but the nearest we can get to describing this is by calling it persons.  God is three persons in one being not one person.  They say this avoids the charge of contradiction.  But the Father loves the Son and they both love the Holy Spirit so they must be real persons. 

The true doctrine according to many is that there are two persons in God.  The scriptures, they say, speak of the Father and the Holy Spirit as separate persons but who are God.  

Others prefer the idea that the Father and the Son are God but the Holy Spirit is just a great angel or the power of God.