Why Only Three Persons In The Holy Trinity?

            The doctrine of the blessed Trinity is indeed complicated and construed as mysterious. This is not to say that the Trinitarian doctrine cannot be understood entirely.

            Rather, the complication, in my opinion, is this: it is an ongoing effort of our incorporeal (immaterial) mind dwelling in our corporeal (material) body and the universe, which constantly experiences an intellectual struggle while trying to comprehend the underlying schema of two opposing architectures (Corporeal vs. Incorporeal) inasmuch to understand the fullness of an uncaused, maximally great, incorporeal being, namely God, who is wholly Trinitarian in nature. However, this intellectual struggle could be conquered with the help of God Himself, who indwells us (cf. John 14:23).

            Thomistic philosopher Ed Feser offers a positive outlook, “...when Trinitarian theologians refer to the doctrine of the Trinity as a “mystery,” they do not mean that it is self-contradictory or unintelligible. Nor do they mean that there are no rational grounds for believing it. What they mean is that while it is perfectly consistent and intelligible in itself, our minds are too limited fully to comprehend it. And while, for that reason, the doctrine cannot be arrived at “from scratch” by purely philosophical arguments, we can be rationally justified in believing it on the basis of testimony, viz. the testimony of Jesus Christ, whose reliability is demonstrated by His resurrection...Furthermore, while human reason cannot fully grasp the Trinity even after it has been revealed, it can show that no attempts to prove the doctrine self-contradictory are successful...”¹

            Notwithstanding this backdrop, we can still contend with questions related to the Blessed Trinity. One such question is ‘Why are we limited to only three persons in the Trinity?’ Why can’t there be one, two, four, or more?   

            Medieval Christian philosopher Thomas Aquinas posited the following:

            1. Argument from ontology: It is ontologically impossible to have more than three persons in the Godhead of the Blessed Trinity:²

            “First, the usual way you get multiple things from one thing is by cutting it into pieces, as you might produce a temple's worth of marble pillars from a single slab of marble. But that's not how we get the three Divine persons: we aren't cut God into pieces. God is a single substance, and by His essence has no pieces; that was determined by Thomas' initial argument for the existence of God. So how do we get multiple persons? Here's Thomas' summary:

There cannot be more than three persons in God. For the divine persons cannot be multiplied by a division of their substance, but solely by the relation of some procession; and not by any sort of procession, but only by such as does not have its term in something outside of God.”

            God is an uncaused immaterial being. So God, eternally, is composed of three persons. Since God cannot change, and since God is perfect, it would be metaphysically impossible for God to have less or more than 3 persons.

            2. Argument from Perfection: Since God is perfect, HE lacks nothing. Hence, the presence of three persons in the Blessed Trinity construes perfection and since perfection lacks nothing, the Blessed Trinity has no need for less or more persons:³

             “Thomas now makes an argument from perfection: a thing is perfect of its kind if it lacks nothing that would make it more itself. Half-an-apple is half an apple; part of it is missing. And if a thing's nature is perfect, then there can't be more than one of it: the one thing of that kind must perfectly express its nature. This is true of the Son and the Spirit, so we can't have more than one of each.

Again: the perfect is that beyond which there is nothing. Hence a being that would tolerate anything of its own class to be outside itself, would fall short of absolute perfection. This is why things that are simply perfect in their natures are not numerically multiplied... But both the Son and the Holy Spirit must be simply perfect, since each of them is God, as we have shown. Therefore several Sons or several Holy Spirits are impossible.”

            So to conclude, the blessed Godhead (the Blessed Trinity) can only have three persons.

Endnotes:

¹http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2010/02/trinity-and-mystery.html ²https://www.patheos.com/blogs/crywoof/2015/11/todays-aquinas-why-a-trinity-why-not-a-quaternity/

³Ibid.

Websites last accessed on 30^th December 2021.

 

An Introductory Defense Of The Blessed Trinity

The Bible reveals the distinctive and an essential Christian doctrine of the blessed Trinity. The Christian worldview makes this unique claim that God is one and yet there are three who are God.

Although Natural Theology could posit God’s existence and HIS attributes, Trinity, however, belongs to revealed theology. Trinity is a unique nature of God, which can only be comprehended when God reveals HIS nature to man, else man cannot comprehend the unique nature of God.

Since our mind is limited to comprehend the doctrine of Trinity, this doctrine should be honestly and diligently studied. Trinity is denied by Jehovah’s Witnesses, Islam and the likes. Hence, Christians dialoguing with the proponents of other worldviews ought to justify and defend the doctrine of the blessed Trinity.

While striving to understand the nature of God from the Bible, especially when there is no explicit mention of the Trinity, all the passages referring to this particular theme ought to be recognized and systematically interpreted. Thus the doctrine of Trinity is an entailment of a diligent hermeneutical enterprise; an exercise in Systematic Theology.

FORMULATION OF THE DOCTRINE OF TRINITY

The word “Trinity” is not found in the Bible. However, the term “Trinity” describes a doctrine that is implicit in the Bible. But the doctrine of Trinity is based on the several explicit teachings found in the Bible.

The following statements form the core of the doctrine of Trinity:1

1. The Father is God.

2. The Son is God.

3. The Holy Spirit is God.

4. The Father is not the Son.

5. The Father is not the Holy Spirit.

6. The Son is not the Holy Spirit.

7. There is exactly one God.

EVIDENCE FROM THE BIBLE

Trinity is plausible only if the Bible asserts the following three aspects of the Godhead:

(1) The oneness of God.

(2) The three persons who are God.

(3) The three-in-oneness of God.

The Oneness of God is taught in the following passages of the Bible: Exodus 20:2-3, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. “You shall have no other gods before me” (Emphasis Mine). The Hebrew translation of “before me” means literally “to my face.” Deuteronomy 4:35 says, “You were shown these things so that you might know that the Lord is God; besides him there is no other” (Emphasis Mine). The Shema in Deuteronomy 6 says, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one” (v4, Emphasis Mine).

Moreover, God has commanded HIS people to love HIM and no-one else (Deuteronomy 6:5) and fear and serve HIM and no-one else (Deuteronomy 6:13).

Verses revealing the oneness of God are not limited to the Old Testament. The New Testament also emphasizes the oneness of God (1 Corinthians 8: 4, 6; 1 Timothy 2:5-6; James 2:19).

The Bible teaches that there are three distinct persons in the Godhead with three sets of cognitive faculties.

The Father is God (John 6: 27; Galatians 1:1; 1 Corinthians 8:4, 6; 1 Timothy 2:5).

The Lord Jesus Christ’s deity is affirmed in the Bible (Isaiah 9:6-7; John 1:1, 20:28-29; Philippians 2: 5-11; Hebrews 1: 3a, 8; Titus 2:13; 2 Peter 1:1; Colossians 1:15-20, 2:9). Christ was placed on an equal footing with God (Matthew 28:19). Christ claimed to forgive sins (Mark 2: 8-10), for which HE was accused of blasphemy by the ardent Jews, for only God can forgive sins. Christ spoke of the angels as HIS angels (Matthew 13:41). He regarded the Kingdom of God (Matthew 12:28, 19:14, 24, 21:31, 43) and the elect of God as HIS own (Mark 13:20). Christ also claimed the power to judge the world (Matthew 25:31-33) and reign over it (Matthew 24:31; Mark 14:62). Significantly, Christ did not deny HIS deity before Caiaphas, “And the high priest answered and said to Him, “I put You under oath by the living God: Tell us if You are the Christ, the Son of God!” Jesus said to him, “It is as you said…” (Matthew 26:63-64, NKJV, Emphasis Mine). Last but not the least, Thomas addressed Christ as HIS God (John 20:28).

There are biblical references that identify the Holy Spirit as God (Psalm 139:7-10; Acts 5:3-4). The Holy Spirit is described as having the qualities of God and performing HIS works (John 3:8, 16:7-11; 1 Corinthians 3: 16-17, 6: 19-20, 12: 4-11). The Spirit is also placed on an equal footing with God (Matthew 28:19; 2 Corinthians 13:14; 1 Peter 1:2). Mark 3:29 states that blasphemy against the Spirit of God is an unforgivable sin.

The three-in-oneness of God is also taught in the Bible:

Matthew 28: 19-20 links the three persons of the Godhead and places them in equality. It is imperative to note that the word “name” is singular while describing the three persons, “…baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…”

The Pauline benediction also places the three persons of the Godhead in unity and equality (2 Corinthians 13:14).

John’s gospel provides the strongest evidence of a coequal Trinity (1:33-34, 14:16, 26, 16:13-15, 20:21-22 cf. 1 John 4:2, 13-14).

The oneness of the Father and the Son (John 10:30, 14:6-11), the Son and the Spirit (Romans 8:9) and Father and the Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:11) is also taught in the Bible.

Although the Bible does not explicitly state the three-in-oneness of God, adequate data is found in the Bible (as mentioned above), which suggests the unity of the three persons of the Godhead.

TRINITY & THE LAW OF NON-CONTRADICTION

The doctrine of Trinity is not self contradictory, “Some attempt to argue against the Trinity by asserting that the concept is in violation of the law of non-contradiction. How can God, they ask, be both one and three at the same time? The law of non-contradiction asserts that something cannot be ‘a’ and ‘non-a’ at the same time and in the same sense. I do not think the Trinity violates this principle, however, since the doctrine maintains that God is one in a sense and three in a different sense. He is one in substance or essence but not one in person…”2

THE PLAUSIBILITY ARGUMENT

Dr. William Lane Craig argues for the plausibility of the Trinity from the perspective of love, “God is by definition the greatest conceivable being. As the greatest conceivable being, God must be perfect. Now a perfect being must be a loving being. For love is a moral perfection; it is better for a person to be loving rather than unloving. God therefore must be a perfectly loving being. Now it is of the very nature of love to give oneself away. Love reaches out to another person rather than centering wholly in oneself. So if God is perfectly loving by His very nature, He must be giving Himself in love to another. But who is that other? It cannot be any created person, since creation is a result of God’s free will, not a result of His nature. It belongs to God’s very essence to love, but it does not belong to His essence to create. So we can imagine a possible world in which God is perfectly loving and yet no created persons exist. So created persons cannot sufficiently explain whom God loves. Moreover, contemporary. [sic] cosmology makes it plausible that created persons have not always existed. But God is eternally loving. So again created persons alone are insufficient to account for God’s being perfectly loving. It therefore follows that the other to whom God’s love is necessarily directed must be internal to God Himself.

In other words, God is not a single, isolated person, as unitarian forms of theism like Islam hold; rather God is a plurality of persons, as the Christian doctrine of the Trinity affirms. On the unitarian view God is a person who does not give Himself away essentially in love for another; He is focused essentially only on Himself. Hence, He cannot be the most perfect being. But on the Christian view, God is a triad of persons in eternal, self-giving love relationships. Thus, since God is essentially loving, the doctrine of the Trinity is more plausible than any unitarian doctrine of God.”3

ENDNOTES:

1http://edwardfeser.blogspot.in/2010/02/trinity-and-mystery.html, last accessed 18th February 2017.

2http://crossexamined.org/the-trinity-defended/, last accessed 18th February 2017.

3http://www.reasonablefaith.org/a-formulation-and-defense-of-the-doctrine-of-the-trinity, last accessed 18th February 2017.

All Scripture references are from NIV, unless otherwise mentioned.

This article was written for the Christian Apologetics Alliance and was first published at http://christianapologeticsalliance.com/2017/02/18/an-introductory-defense-of-the-blessed-trinity/