The Church of Jesus Christ

Trinitarians point to the ‘one in substance’ argument, but that is a human notion that is troubling on more than one front. What substance? Would not the feeble human analogy of triplets being of one substance yet distinct be accurate? If you have a set of identical triplets, they are literally of the same substance, and distinct. Applying this picture to the Trinitarians view, they would have us believe that the triplets are one person. Yet, distinction clearly means separation. Do we see a separation at all in the Godhead?

Modalism sees God existing in numerical oneness:

• The Old Testament affirms the numerical oneness of God.

The following Old Testament passages affirm the numerical oneness of God[1]:

• “See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand. Deut. 32:39
• Therefore you are great, O Lord God. For there is none like you, and there is no God besides you, according to all that we have heard with our ears. 2 Samuel 7:22
• For you are great and do wondrous things; you alone are God. - Psalm 86:10
• “Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me.” Isaiah 43:10b
• “I, I am the Lord, and besides me there is no savior.” - Isaiah 43:11
• Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts: “I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god. - Isaiah 44:6
• My glory I will not give to another. - Isaiah 48:11b
• I will also praise you with the harp for your faithfulness, O my God; I will sing praises to you with the lyre, O Holy One of Israel. - Psalm 71:22

The Old Testament is replete with references not to a unified Godhead, but to a single God. It was why Israel stood out among all other nations in the ancient earth, because they alone worshipped one God. Jewish monotheism was protected and tightly bound by such statements as the Shema. “This sublime pronouncement of absolute monotheism was a declaration of war against all polytheism . . . In the same way, the Shema excludes the trinity of the Christian creed as a violation of the Unity of God.”[2]

Edmund Fortman (The Triune God) tells us,

“To the Old Testament writers God is a God of life, love, wisdom, and holiness, a God of righteousness. a God both immanent and transcendent, a God of power, glory, and majesty, the one and only God, the creator and lord of the universe. Sometimes they call Him Father, especially of Israel. They give the title ’son of God’ not only to Israel collectively but also to the king; to the judges, to the upright Jew, and perhaps to the Messiah. There is no evidence that any sacred writer even suspected the existence of a divine paternity and filiation within the Godhead. They write of the word of God and regard it as revelatory and creative, as instructive and illuminative. If at times they seem to show a slight tendency to hypostatize the word of God, nowhere do they present the word of God as a personal divine being distinct from Yahweh. They write much of the wisdom of God that was ‘created before all things’ and is the ‘worker of all things.’ But to the people of the Old Testament the wisdom of God was never a person to be addressed but only a personification of an attribute or activity of Yahweh. The spirit of Yahweh is a creative force, a saving power, a spirit of judgment, a charismatic spirit, a spirit of life and of inward renewal, a prophetic spirit. Although this spirit is often described in personal terms, it seems quite clear that the sacred writers never conceived or presented this spirit as a distinct person. Many of the sacred writers spoke of a Messiah who was to be Yahweh’s agent in establishing the kingdom of Yahweh in the messianic age. However, they regarded the Messiah not as a divine person but as a creature, a charismatic leader, a Davidic king. Thus the Old Testament writings about God neither express nor imply any idea of or belief in a plurality or trinity of persons within the one Godhead. Even to see in them suggestions or foreshadowings or ‘veiled signs’ of the trinity of persons, is to go beyond the words and intent of the sacred writers. Perhaps it can be said that some of these writings about word and wisdom and spirit did provide a climate in which plurality within the Godhead was conceivable to Jews. However, these writers definitely do give us the words that the New Testament uses to express the trinity of persons, Father, Son, Word, Wisdom, Spirit. And their way of understanding these words helps us to see how the revelation of God in the New Testament goes beyond the revelation of God in the Old Testament.”

If we are to follow what the Bible tells us, and what the Apostle Paul in 1 Co. 4.6 commands us, then we should not go beyond what is written and apply theology to words found in the any portion of the Bible that the writer’s themselves would not have implied. Mr. Fortman is correct in saying that no sacred writer had any intention of a ‘trinity’, and yet too many times, Trinitarians use the prophets to point a creation of a formula not even in the minds of Peter and Paul, and for sure not in the mind of Christ. Nor should be go beyond what is written and apply creeds or words not found in the Scriptures.