In the name of Allaah, Most Beneficent and Most Merciful
Christians claim to be monotheists but their doctrine of trinity proves problematic. In this short work, we shall begin by defining the terms ‘trinity’ and ‘monotheism’ and subsequently, state the ‘Trinitarian problem’ and some of the attempts of reconciling it with monotheism by some representatives of Christianity and then present our conclusions.
The Trinity
The trinity is a fundamental of Christianity affecting virtually all areas of Christian thought and praxis. It delineates what Christians believe to be the nature of God. The doctrine states that God is one but from all eternity consists of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit- who are the Persons of the trinity. Each person is fully God and yet there are not three gods but one God because the Father, Son and Spirit are co-equals that share the same divine ‘substance ’, nature or essence but are yet distinct. They differ only in that the Father is the one who eternally begets the Son, thus He is called the Father, the Son is the Son as he is begotten from all eternity from the Father, and this is the only significance of the term, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from all eternity from the Father only, according to the eastern orthodox churches or the Father and the Son, according to the western churches.
Monothesim
Monotheism is the belief in only one god, thus He is properly ‘God’ and not a god. Monotheism contrasts with the belief in many gods [polytheism] and the belief in the non-existence of God or gods [atheism]. God is radically unique with no equal, or opposite or sharer in divinity. Nothing may be compared to Him. Everything other than Him is considered to be His creation and completely dependent upon Him.
The Trinitarian Problem
The problem has two aspects: logical incoherence and implications of tritheism. The doctrine of the Trinity seems to be logically incoherent as it states that the Godhead is composed of three separate and distinct Persons who are each fully God and yet there are not three gods but only one God. The Father is not the Son or the Spirit and is fully God, the Son is not the Father or the Spirit and is fully God, and the Spirit is not the Father or the Son and is fully God but God is not the Father nor the Son nor the Spirit in isolation but is the Trinity of all three.
This seems to contradict what logicians term the Law of Identity [A = A] which is the fundamental bedrock of rational thinking [Scruton: 44]. This may be illustrated by replacing the Trinitarian terms with more mundane ones:
X [who is not y or z] is fully the headmaster of school a, y [who is not x or z] is fully the headmaster of school a, z [who is not x or y] is fully the headmaster of school a, however there are not three headmasters of school a, but only one.
This is valid only if x, y and z are synonymous terms for the same identity/ entity but not if, like the Persons of the Trinity, they refer to separate identities/ entities. Secondly, by positing three instances of the Godhead, it seems to lead inevitably to tritheism and not monotheism.
Resolving the Problem: Understandings of the Trinity
Since the doctrine was finally established as orthodox by the decision of the Council of Constantinople in 381 AD to affirm the divinity of the Holy Spirit, numerous attempts have been made to solve the dilemma by providing understandings of the Trinity.
The Analogies of Augustine
The main vehicle by which Christians have sought to establish the rationality and truth of the doctrine is by adducing various analogies from instances where a unity may be said to be composed of three aspects. The explanations of the Trinity by the ‘father of the Western church’ Augustine of Hippo [AD 354-430] were the most influential and we shall examine two representative ones.
Augustine attempted to show how a ‘psychological trinity’ exists within the human mind that mirrors God’s supposed trinity. His approach may be said to be truly Christian as is took the centrality of the act of loving as its basis – love being the central value of Christianity as the Christian assertion is the ‘God is love’ [I John 4:16]. His thesis may be summarised thus: the human mind in self-contemplation loves its own attribute of knowledge and consequently one has a trinity within oneself of the essence of the mind itself, the mind as knower and the mind as lover- yet there are not three different minds but one mind. God similarly may be described as essence [the Father], knower [the Son], and lover [the Holy Spirit] yet there is only one God [Usmani: 14-15].
Another example on similar lines is the relationship between remembering, understanding and willing. Augustine writes, “I remember that I possess memory and understanding and will; I understand that I understand, will and remember. I will my own willing, and remembering and understanding, yet memory, understanding and will constitute one life, one mind, one essence” [quoted in Armstrong: 143].
Other attempts have followed Augustine’s example but are far cruder. Thus, a human being is composed of body, intellect and soul; yet they compose one individual who cannot be conceived as being divisible. The sun is light, heat and rays, yet is one sun [Chishti: 23]. Just as a lawyer martials all arguments to further his case, Augustine also succumbed to these types of analogies from the natural world, such as, ‘the spring, the river and the cup of the same substantial water’ [Stacey: 178].
The analogies have never been taken to be proofs of the Trinity and their formulators understood this. They are unsuccessful because the Trinitarian Persons are said to have a real existence that is distinct from each other, whilst the existence of the mind of knower, willer and understander etc is not a separate existence from the mind qua mind. Knowledge, will, understanding loving etc should properly be understood as attributes predicated of the one mind. There are not separate minds within a person for each phenomenon. The oneness of the mind in the analogy is real and its multiplication is metaphoric, whilst the Trinitarian doctrine asserts that the Trinity’s oneness and threeness are real [Usmani: 13-15].
The Social Trinitarian Approach
The German theologian, Jurgen Moltmann, in his ‘The Trinity and the Kingdom of God’ [SCM, 1981] presents a theology that supposedly takes the threeness of God seriously. His approach is to begin with the ‘historical trinitarianism’ of God’s self disclosure and then to proceed to relate this to His unity [Lane: 205] rather to adopt the more common western Christian approach of affirming the divine unity and then explaining how this could be understood in Trinitarian terms.
He states that, ‘the unity of the Trinitarian Persons lies in the circulation of the divine life which they fulfill in their relations to one another’ [Moltmannn: 175]. This is termed as perichoreisis. Another metaphor he uses is that ‘the unity consists of an eternal life process that takes place… through the exchange of energies’ [ibid: 174]. This perichoretic unity is described thus: ‘the Father exists in the Son, the Son in the Father, and both of them in the Spirit, just as the Spirit exists in the both the Father and the Son. By virtue of their eternal love they live in one another to such an extent, and dwell in one another to such an extent, that they are one. It is a process of most perfect and intense empathy’ [ibid: 175].
The trinity as a social unity of mutually loving Persons is nothing more than tritheism and an abandonment of the attempt to establish the oneness of God. This approach accepts that His unity is not the unity of a single unity but the fuller unity of a group of united individuals. This conception of the Trinity uses the term ‘God’ like the use of such terms as ‘trade union’ or ‘family’. This is in complete contradiction to monotheistic statements as ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone’ [Deuteronomy 6:4] and ‘Say He God is One’ [Quran 112:1]. The ancient Israelites and the first Muslims did not take these words as issuing from three separate Persons acting with one voice, but rather from one unique Person with one centre of consciousness, will and activity which they denoted as God.
Conclusion
We have presented the doctrine of the Trinity and discussed some of the arguments that have been used to reconcile it with monotheism. We have found the defences of the doctrine to be wanting and we believe that the Trinity fatally compromises Christian’s claim to be monotheists. The overriding impression gained from the literature has been one of intelligent persons wrestling with belief in a dogma that they know to be irrational. Consequently, some hide behind meaningless statements of the incredulity vis how are we to take as rational the following quotations of one of the eminent contemporary Christian theologians?
‘The doctrine of the Trinity is only possible as a piece of baffled theology’ [Ratzinger: 122, italics mine].
We shall quote Jurgen Moltmann who is quite open in the disapproval of what he terms ‘philosophic monarchical monotheism’: “but once it [strict monotheism] is introduced into the doctrine and worship of the Christian church, faith in Christ is threatened. . . the Christian church was right to see monotheism as the severest inner danger [Moltmann: 133].
We conclude by quoting their Creator Most High:
“Say, ‘People of the Book! Come now to a word common between us and you, that we worship none but God, and that we associate none with Him, and that some of us should not take others as Lords apart from God.’ And if they turn their backs say: ‘Bear witness that we are Muslims’” [Quran 3:64].
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Article by: Shaykh Shazad Khan (As-Suffa Institute)
27 March 2009
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