Paul Copan
IS THE TRINITY A LOGICAL BLUNDER? GOD AS THREE AND ONE
Paul Copan
Any Christian who has interacted with Muslims or Jehovah's Witnesses will eventually hear questions such as: How can God be three and one? Or, If Jesus was God, to whom was He crying out from the cross, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matt 27:46).1 Unfortunately, in our age of vanishing biblical literacy, the average Christian's understanding of the Trinity is minimal or even heterodox. This ignorance is tragic for several other reasons: many fail to recognize Christianity's unique doctrine of God; they are therefore unable to defend Christian orthodoxy; and they perhaps are not being assisted within the Christian community to worship God “in…truth” (John 4:24). First, trinitarianism distinguishes the Christian faith from other versions of theism—namely, Judaism and Islam, which are unitarian; many Christians seem unaware of this unique and central tenet of their faith in the triune God as Father, Son, and Spirit. Second, Christians tend to be inept at responding to the antitrinitarian thought and argumentation of Muslims, Jehovah's Witnesses, or Mormons; many are incapable of articulating an effective doctrinal response to alternate theological perspectives, not to mention defining and appreciating their own. Third, the Christian's worship is often uninformed and misguided because of this doctrinal ignorance; I have heard elders and even pastors thank the Father for dying on the cross or refer to the Holy Spirit as “It.”
Challenges exist not only within the church but also outside it. In our post-September 11 world, we commonly hear the slogan, “Christians and Muslims worship the same God.” Yes, Arab Christians used the term Allah for the triune God long before the time of Muhammad, and many of them still do! However, these two Abrahamic faiths diverge sharply regarding the nature of God: Muslims reject the tri-unity of God as heretical and blasphemous; this is shirk—ascribing partners to God.
The New Atheists have taken their potshots at Christian doctrine and the concept of God. Richard Dawkins, for instance, seems to have little patience with (or, I might add, understanding about) Trinitarian discussions in church history:
Rivers of medieval ink, not to mention blood, have been squandered over the “mystery” of the Trinity, and in suppressing deviations such as the Arian heresy. Arius of Alexandria, in the fourth century, denied that Jesus was consubstantial (i.e. of the same substance or essence) with God. What on earth could that possibly mean, you are probably asking? Substance? What “substance”? What exactly do you mean by “essence”? “Very little” seems the only reasonable reply.2
To add to such challenges, popular Western culture tends wrongly to assume that “God” refers to a supreme person. Not a few Christian philosophers—I won't mention any names—have referred to God as “a person.” This is misleading. Three persons—Father, Son, and Spirit—fully share in the one true God's identity. From eternity there has existed not one solitary person but a God-in-relation, three divine persons fully loving and enjoying one another. Personal relationships did not come into existence when God created finite personal beings (angels and humans). Relationship has always existed in this triune divine family. Christians should not think of God apart from His self-revelation as triune, and this should inform us in our worship of God and in our life in the world. Unlike many philosophical conceptions of God as “wholly Other,” an “Unmoved Mover,” “First Cause,” or the “Ground of all being,” the Christian understanding rejects such nonrelational abstractions in favor of a God who is personal, intrinsically relational, and history engaging. This tri-personal God, though “over all” (transcendent), is also “in all” (immanent) and “not far from each one of us” (Acts 17:27).