Philosophy Discussion Forums

So I recently come across the the claim that the trinity solves the problem of the one and the many.

The problem is the people who have made this claim to me are both notoriously incompetent and openly dishonest.

I suspect they don't even understand the argument they attempt to prove.

The claim goes like this more specifically:

All classically monotheistic Gods will ultimately reduce to one thing or many things.

If they are one thing the all distinction is a illusion, if they are many ultimately then unity doesn't exist.

The trinity is immune to this problem because the trinity says God is both ultimately one and many

I have researched the origin of such claims and it apparently this goes back to Cornelius Van Till.

Below are my immediate concerns:

1. Its unclear how the trinity solves the problem of the one and the many as simply saying God is both one and many doesn't explain how that state of affairs can be the case. The problem of the one and the many is simple "How can things be related but different to each other?" so it seems that solving the one and the many with the trinity would require to explain why the trinity is the way it is.

2. It seems that if the one and the many was solvable by just claiming the foundation of the universe was fundamentally one and many then we would see more people of various worldviews attempting to say this. This makes me suspect there is some horrible side effect to claiming "both" as a answer.

3. Claiming that God is ultimately one and many seems like its violates the law of the excluded middle, since it seems like by "ultimately one or many" they mean "How many things are identical with God" .

Does anyone know if my concerns are well founded?

You are not the first person to object to the idea of the trinity. Here are the words of Robert Ingersoll in "The Foundations of Faith":

Christ, according to the faith, is the second person in the Trinity, the Father being the first and the Holy Ghost the third. Each of these three persons is God. Christ is his own father and his own son. The Holy Ghost is neither father nor son, but both. The son was begotten by the father, but existed before he was begotten—just the same before as after. Christ is just as old as his father, and the father is just as young as his son. The Holy Ghost proceeded from the Father and Son, but was equal to the Father and Son before he proceeded, that is to say, before he existed, but he is of the same age of the other two.

So, it is declared that the Father is God, and the Son God and the Holy Ghost God, and that these three Gods make one God.

According to the celestial multiplication table, once one is three, and three times one is one, and according to heavenly subtraction if we take two from three, three are left. The addition is equally peculiar, if we add two to one we have but one. Each one is equal to himself and the other two. Nothing ever was, nothing ever can be more perfectly idiotic and absurd than the dogma of the Trinity.

How is it possible to prove the existence of the Trinity?

Is it possible for a human being, who has been born but once, to comprehend, or to imagine the existence of three beings, each of whom is equal to the three?

Think of one of these beings as the father of one, and think of that one as half human and all God, and think of the third as having proceeded from the other two, and then think of all three as one. Think that after the father begot the son, the father was still alone, and after the Holy Ghost proceeded from the father and the son, the father was still alone—because there never was and never will be but one God.

At this point, absurdity having reached its limit, nothing more can be said except: "Let us pray."

Aside from this, there are issues regarding what people regard as "monotheism" versus polytheism. At first blush, nothing, it would seem, could be more clear than the idea of one god versus multiple gods. However, many "monotheists" believe in angels and demons and such things, which very much resemble the gods of traditional polytheistic religions (think, for example, of the ancient Greek religion, with Zeus and the others). What is an angel but a lesser god?

According to the Bible, there is no Trinity. It was invented from the Catholic Church 325 ad. Even Wikipedia says that. The pagans didn't want to give up their costumes of worshiping more than one God and so they just adapted their old beliefs to Christianity. Jesus is not God. He is the Son of God. He said it himself and never claimed anything else. And the Spirit of God is simply the Spirit of God. The Bible even says that God is spirit. Very simple.