“Hear O Gentiles, the LORD your God, the LORD is (Three in) One.”

Or, Three is One and One is Three

To listen to this teaching on a podcast, click here.
 

Does “The LORD our God, the LORD is one” mean that the LORD is “three-in-one”?

“The Shema” is the statement found at Deuteronomy 6:4:

שְׁמַ֖ע יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל יְהוָ֥ה אֱלֹהֵ֖ינוּ יְהוָ֥ה אֶחָֽד

 

“Hear, O Israel: YHVH our God, YHVH is one”

Or, “YHVH (is) our God, YHVH is one”.

 

Jesus said this was “the first (or greatest) of all commandments (Mk.12:29). Cf. Deut. 4:35, 39, 5:6, Zeph. 3:9, Zech. 14:9.

That the God of the Bible, YHVH is one, is a difficulty for Trinitarianism. In about AD 530 the Christian Byzantine Emperor Justinian even banned the recitation of the Shema since he considered it to be a denial of the Trinity. But modern Trinitarianism takes a different approach, claiming that “one” can mean three because “one” can mean a compound unity. Three things together can make up one of something else.  A couple of biblical examples are put forward. For instance, in Genesis 1:5 evening and morning are one day. A husband and wife become one flesh (Gen. 2:24). The spies came back with one (echad) cluster of grapes" (Num. 13:23). Let’s take a closer look at the “compound unity”, “three-in-one” claim.

1.      The Trinitarian, deity of Christ “compound unity” claim is not a biblical claim (compare the claim that God is a mystery, or that God is a mysterious unity). No one in the Bible says, “one means a compound unity”, or “one can be three as a compound unity”. The claim is post-biblical. Someone after the Bible came up with this claim. And, it’s obvious that the claim is an attempt to reconcile the contradiction, indeed embarrassment that there are three who can be called God, yet there is only one God.

I don’t know who the first person on record is to claim that “one Yahweh” means "three-in-one-Yahweh”. If somebody knows who first made this claim, please let me know. If you are a Trinitarian, you should find out. Most likely, the claim is no earlier than the late 4^th century AD – more than 300 years after Jesus lived in Israel - because that’s when Gentile “Christians” first started to say that their “one God was three persons”. Before that even Gentile Christians insisted that they were monotheists by emphasizing the superiority of the Father; that is, the Father is the one God. Even the Nicene Creed of AD 325 starts out by declaring: “We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible.” So, if you are a Protestant and believe the Scriptures are your sole authority for belief and practice, you should be troubled by the fact that the claim that “God is three-in-one” is not a something the Bible claims. The claim comes from after the New Testament was written.

 

2.      Let’s put the shoe on the other foot. Suppose I say I believed that God, YHVH, is one individual (or one self, one person), but you showed me a Scripture where Jesus declares the greatest commandment is, "Listen...YHVH our God, YHVH is three." But I confidently look you in the eye and say: "Well, sure, three substances but one person."  Would you think my claim is a good one or would you laugh? You could see my explanation is just an attempt to dodge the obvious. You could see that I was just making things up to try to fit my own presupposition into the Scripture. This is what Trinitarians are doing when they interpret the greatest commandment that declares that YHVH God is one, but then they say, “Well, sure three persons but one essence”. (Point #2 comes from a soon to be published book, Why Some People Don’t Believe in the Trinity, by Forrest Maready).

 

3.      The “three-persons-in-one” claim involves a clever word trick. And the word trick is a glaring error. Trinitarians want to tell us that "The Father (by himself) is God. Jesus (by himself) is God. The Spirit (by himself) is God." But in their supposed “compound unity” claim, only the combination of all three together would be “one God”. Let’s take the “evening and morning, one day” example from Genesis 1:5.  Evening by itself is not “day” or one day.  Morning by itself is not one day. The plural idea is in the word “day”.  A day can be broken down into parts, but the parts themselves are not “day”. We need both morning and evening to make “one day”. One evening together with one morning, make one day.

But Trinitarians want to use the word “God” and the name YHVH to mean both an individual and a group. That would be like claiming that evening by itself is day. “Jesus (by himself is) God.” “The Spirit is God”. Note how Trinitarians would not like to say, “Jesus is one God.  The Father is one God. The Spirit is one God. But together they are one God.” Because in their declaration of how God is one they need the group, all three together are required to make “one God”.

Just as more than one grape is required to make “one cluster”, the plurality is in the word “cluster”. One grape is not one cluster. But for the Trinitarian, one person is God and three persons are God. That would be like saying one grape is a cluster and three grapes are a cluster. Or one person is a family and three persons are a family. Or, to use the so-called “compound unity” from Genesis 1:5: “Evening is one day. Morning is one day. Evening and morning together are one day.”

Would you believe me if I said, “Zach is my son. Isaiah is my son. Eitan is my son.  Zach, Isaiah and Eitan are one son.”

The Trinitarian use of the word “God” is a word trick, saying that God and YHVH can be both one self and three selves. If so, my son can be three selves.

 

4.      A compound unity means the members are only parts or components. We must have all the parts to make a whole. Robert Bowman, Trinitarian author of a book called Why You Should Believe in the Trinity, says this:

“For something like 35 years, as a Trinitarian and a biblical scholar, I have been explaining to people that the argument that echad means a compound unity is a bad argument, for two reasons.

a.       It just isn't correct. The word echad simply means "one." To read anything more into it is a mistake.

b.      In classic Trinitarian theology, God is *not* a compound unity! That would mean that the Trinity is three separate beings, none of which is God, but collectively they combine to constitute God. That isn't what the doctrine of the Trinity teaches.” 

    (Bowman’s comments from Trinities Facebook group, July 3, 2021

    https://www.facebook.com/groups/trinities/permalink/2948101898843090/).

Bowman is right. If Trinitarians want to say that God is one as a compound unity, then none of the individual persons are God by themselves. The different persons are only parts, components of the one God. None would be “God” by themselves. You must have all three to have God.
 

5.      The Trinitarian claim is a denigration of the Father, since the “compound unity” claims that the Father is only one of three persons who makes up the one God.  A tri-personal God and the Father alone can’t both be the one God. One of them is an imposter.

 

6.      The Trinitarian claim is in direct explicit contradiction to New Testament Scripture: Jesus declared the Father is the only true God (John 17:3). The Apostle Paul says “As for us there is one God, the Father…” (1 Cor. 8:6). In the New Testament, the one God is the Father, not the Trinity.

 

7.      If YHVH is a “compound unity”, meaning more than one person, then YHVH יהוה is not a person, but a group, or a family. A group or family is a an "it", a “what”, not a person. As Trinitarian apologist James White says, “We dare not mix up the what and the who’s” (The Forgotten Trinity, p. 24). The Trinitarian “compound unity” claim therefor makes YHVH God an "it", a “what”, a substance, an essence – one essence.
 

8.      Low view of Biblical Revelation. Back to the Bible. Should we really think that Moses was either so uninformed, so lacking in knowledge, or so ineffective a teacher that he couldn't have told Israel that YHVH is a compound, mysterious unity of three persons? If Jesus preached that God is one because he is three persons in one essence, this should have been front and center in the Sermon on the Mount. Were Jesus and Paul so ineffective teachers of the truth that they were unable to communicate that God is three persons, and instead left it up to later interpreters to assemble clues that God is indeed made up of more than one person? 

9.      No opposition. Not only is there absolutely no presentation in the Bible that “YHVH is one” means that God is three-in-one, but there is NO argumentation or opposition to such a claim.  The total silence of presentation and opposition in the New Testament to the supposed #1 essential new revelation of who God is should be the end of believing that the New Testament proclaims that God is a three-person being. Jesus was opposed for interpretation of Torah passages concerning the Sabbath. Are we to suppose that his opponents were silent about a declaration that YHVH is three persons?  Are we to suppose that the Jewish opponents of the Peter and Paul raised no opposition to the apostles declaring that YHVH was a three-person being?
 

10.  God’s personal name YHVH and the title Elohim in the Hebrew Scriptures, and Theos in the Greek New Testament, are referred to 10s of thousands of times with singular pronouns, singular verbs, and singular adjectives.

But Trinitarians, like social leftists, change the meanings of pronouns. Trinitarians constantly refer to their God as “he, him” when their god is really “they, them”. “He, him” are pronouns that refer to one person, not three. Since the Trinity is more than one person, Trinitarians should refer to their god with plural pronouns, “they/them”. Or, whenever Trinitarians refer to God with a singular pronoun, each time they should be clear concerning which of the individual persons is intended (the Father, the Son, or the Spirit).
 

A little Hebrew lesson. Hebrew pronouns (like NT Greek pronouns) have gender and number.  The masculine singular pronoun “you” in Hebrew is אתה a-tah, and the masculine singular possessive pronoun “your” is “cha”.

Which singular person is being addressed in the thousands of verses like Psalm 83:18:

     וְֽיֵדְע֗וּ כִּֽי־אַתָּ֬ה שִׁמְךָ֣ יְהוָ֣ה לְבַדֶּ֑ךָ עֶ֜לְי֗וֹן עַל־כָּל־הָאָֽרֶץ

 

“They will know that you (second person, masculine, SINGULAR, 2ms), your (2ms) name is YHVH, you (2ms) alone, are the Most High over all the earth.”

 

In Hebrew (and Greek) verbs have number, too. Who is “You” and  the subject of these singular verbs in these passages?

Psalm 74:13-17 

¹³ אַתָּ֤ה פוֹרַ֣רְתָּ בְעָזְּךָ֣ יָ֑ם שִׁבַּ֖רְתָּ רָאשֵׁ֥י תַ֜נִּינִ֗ים עַל־הַמָּֽיִם׃

 ¹⁴ אַתָּ֣ה רִ֭צַּצְתָּ רָאשֵׁ֣י לִוְיָתָ֑ן תִּתְּנֶ֥נּוּ מַ֜אֲכָ֗ל לְעָ֣ם לְצִיִּֽים׃

 ¹⁵ אַתָּ֣ה בָ֭קַעְתָּ מַעְיָ֣ן וָנָ֑חַל אַתָּ֥ה ה֜וֹבַ֗שְׁתָּ נַהֲר֥וֹת אֵיתָֽן׃

 ¹⁶ לְךָ֣ י֭וֹם אַף־לְךָ֥ לָ֑יְלָה אַתָּ֥ה הֲ֜כִינ֗וֹתָ מָא֥וֹר וָשָֽׁמֶשׁ׃

 ¹⁷ אַתָּ֣ה הִ֭צַּבְתָּ כָּל־גְּבוּל֣וֹת אָ֑רֶץ קַ֥יִץ וָ֜חֹ֗רֶף אַתָּ֥ה יְצַרְתָּם׃

 Seven times 2nd masculine SINGULAR (2ms) nominative pronoun (אתה), three times 2ms possessive pronoun, nine times 2ms verbs. Total: 19 times in 5 verses that God is referred to as masculine singular.

 

Psalm 76:8, Eng. 76:7

 אַתָּ֤ה נ֥וֹרָא אַ֗תָּה וּמִֽי־יַעֲמֹ֥ד לְפָנֶ֗יךָ מֵאָ֥ז אַפֶּֽךָ׃  “You are awesome, you. Who can stand before your when you anger comes?”

Four times in one verse the God of Jacob is referred to with masculine singular pronouns.

 

11.  In the New Testament, the word "God" theos occurs some 1320 times. It never means more than one person, never a “compound unity, never “three-in-one”. When referring to the one true God, theos in the New Testament means the Father.

 

12.  The “YHVH is three-persons-in-one” claim is a denial of the humanity of Jesus. Trinitarians insist their god is one because the Father, Son and Spirit are one compound unity, one essence, one nature shared by three persons. But then they think you’re not looking when they turn around and say it is essential to believe that God took on a 2^nd nature, a human nature, so now God has two natures, two essences. So, how many natures or how many essences does the Trinitarian god have, one or two? Regarding a compound unity, the Trinitarian, deity of Christ mantra should really be “God is two. Three persons in two natures.” Well, actually two persons in one nature and one person in two natures. But all this trickery about the Trinitarian god being one, because they are one essence or nature, denies the humanity of the man Christ Jesus. This is the spirit of anti-christ.
 

13.  The Trinitarian “three-in-one” claim also denies that the human person Jesus of Nazareth ever existed. Otherwise, there would be four persons in the Trinity: God the Father, “God the Son”, “God the Spirit”, and the human person Jesus of Nazareth. Most modern Christianity talks like there are four persons in two essences. Where is that in the Bible?
 

So, what is a person to do when he or she realizes the claim that YHVH is “three-in-one” is not a biblical claim?  Repent. Change your mind. Return to the clear, simplicity of the Gospel declaration that the one God is the Father, and that Jesus is the Messiah who was put to death but raised from the dead by God.

#trinity, #deityofchrist, #biblicalunitarian, #billschlegel