aqwsed12345

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  228

  The point of existence and how it refutes the Trinity

  by slimboyfat in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  rowan williams, the former archbishop of canterbury gave an interesting answer to the somewhat stark question, what’s the point of us existing?

  as a christian, my starting point is that we exist because the most fundamental form of activity, energy, call it what you like, that is there, is love.

  that is, it’s a willingness that the other should be.

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  aqwsed12345

  You mean, apart from you and your one-man "church"? There are a several Arian groups whose writings I follow, Biblical Unitarians, Church of God, Christadelphians and several YouTubers / Bloggers, and some non-mainstream Messianic Jews, etc.
• 
  228

  The point of existence and how it refutes the Trinity

  by slimboyfat in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  rowan williams, the former archbishop of canterbury gave an interesting answer to the somewhat stark question, what’s the point of us existing?

  as a christian, my starting point is that we exist because the most fundamental form of activity, energy, call it what you like, that is there, is love.

  that is, it’s a willingness that the other should be.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  aqwsed12345

  @slimboyfat

  Many modern Arians, like Jehovah’s Witnesses, claim that early Christian thinkers like Justin Martyr denied the full divinity of Christ and instead viewed Him as a lesser god, or even a created angel like Michael. In particular, they appeal to Dialogue with Trypho 56, where Justin refers to “another God and Lord subject to the Maker of all things” who “is also called an Angel.” They allege this proves Justin taught subordinationist or semi-Arian theology. However, this interpretation collapses under close scrutiny — grammatically, contextually, and theologically. When we read Justin in full and in light of the developing tradition of the Church, we find a consistent affirmation of the Son's true divinity, pre-existence, and distinct personhood within the one divine essence.

  First, let’s clarify Justin’s vocabulary ("Theos kai Kyrios heteros"). In Dialogue with Trypho 56, Justin writes:

  "There is, and there is said to be, another God and Lord subject to the Maker of all things, who is also called an Angel..."

  The Arian reading fixates on the phrase “another God” and concludes that Justin believed in a second, lesser divine being — a created god in the mold of Michael the Archangel. But this distorts Justin's meaning in several ways.

  The Greek phrase “theos kai kurios eteros” does not imply a separate nature or essence. Rather, Justin is using the language of relational distinction, not ontological separation. In context, he is explaining to a Jewish interlocutor how the Old Testament's theophanies — appearances of "the Lord" distinct from “God Most High” — are to be understood. He is not saying Jesus is ontologically different from the Father, but that He is a distinct divine Person within the Godhead. "Another" (eteros) refers to another person, not another being. The Son is distinct from the Father not in nature (essentia), but in relation. This is precisely what Trinitarian theology would later clarify using the language of "hypostasis" and "ousia": one essence, three persons. Justin is expressing the real personal distinction of the Logos, in a time before the Church had developed precise metaphysical vocabulary.

  Yes, Justin says the Son is “subject” (hupotagmenos) to the Maker. But this is not a statement of ontological inferiority. Classical theology distinguishes between order and essence. In the Trinity, the Son is from the Father (as begotten), and so we can speak of an order or relation of origin. But He shares the same divine substance. Thomists recognize this as the basis for the doctrine of eternal generation. Even Thomas Aquinas teaches that the Son is from the Father, but not less than the Father: "In God, to be from another does not imply inferiority, but only distinction of origin." (ST I, q.42, a.4) So when Justin says the Logos is subject to the Father, he is speaking in terms of personal distinction, not inequality in nature.

  Much confusion stems from Justin’s use of the term angelos (ἄγγελος, “angel”) to describe the Son. But to conclude that Justin thought Jesus was ontologically an angel — a created, subordinate being — is simply false. Justin is explicit: the Son is called an angelos because He announces the will of the Father, not because He is a creature:

  "...who is also called an Angel, because He announces to men whatsoever the Maker of all things... wishes to announce." (Dialogue with Trypho, 56)

  This is "angel" as function, not as nature. The term “angelos” here simply means “messenger,” and Justin applies it in this sense to Christ because He is the Logos — the revealer of the Father’s will. This is consistent with biblical usage (e.g., Malachi 3:1 — “the Messenger of the Covenant”), not with Arian or JW theology which conflates messenger with created angelic being. Jesus Christ is true God and true man, in the unity of his divine person. Not an angel, but the eternal Son, made flesh.

  Far from viewing Christ as a created spirit being, Justin teaches:

  • The Logos always existed in God as His Reason (λόγος ἐνδιάθετος) and was begotten into personal existence (λόγος προφορικός) without division (Trypho 61).
  • The Logos is God Himself: “This same one who was begotten by the Father… is very God.” (Trypho 63)
  • The Logos is worshipped, alongside the Father and Spirit (1 Apology 6). Justin knew well that worship is due to God alone.

  These statements are utterly incompatible with Arianism. A created being — no matter how exalted — is not due latria (divine worship). That Justin includes the Son in Christian worship is a powerful testimony to his belief in Christ’s full divinity.

  When Justin speaks of “another God and Lord,” he is not teaching polytheism or henotheism. In Trypho 61, he explains that the Logos is begotten from the Father “not by abscission, as if the essence of the Father were divided,” but by communication of the same essence. Justin here refutes any materialist or literalistic notion of begetting that would imply separation or inequality. Thus, Justin’s “another God” should be read in light of the Johannine “the Word was with the God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). The Son is distinct in person, but consubstantial in essence. Justin affirms the same truth in pre-Nicene language. Even critical scholars who are not Catholic agree with this reading. Denis Minns, O.P., writes:

  “Justin affirms the real personal distinction between the Father and the Son, while insisting on their shared divinity… this is not Arian subordination, but the seed of Trinitarian faith.” (Justin Martyr: Philosopher and Martyr)

  A favorite Arian talking point is Justin’s statement that the Son occupies “second place” to God (1 Apology 13). But again, this speaks to order, not essence. St. Thomas Aquinas writes similarly: “The Son is second to the Father in order of origin, not in nature or dignity.” (ST I, q.42, a.4 ad 3) Even modern Trinitarian theology maintains the taxis (order) within the Trinity: the Father is unbegotten, the Son begotten, the Spirit proceeds. This order does not entail subordination in essence.

  Conclusion: Justin Is No Arian

  • He affirms the eternal pre-existence of the Logos
  • He identifies the Logos as God and Creator
  • He says the Logos is to be worshipped
  • He calls the Logos “begotten,” not “created”
  • He affirms that the Logos shares in the same divine nature
  • He uses “angelos” functionally, not ontologically
  • He distinguishes persons within the divine essence

  Thus, Justin Martyr is not an Arian precursor. He is a pre-Nicene Trinitarian in seed form, articulating the mystery of Father, Son, and Spirit using the philosophical tools and terminology available to him. His theology anticipates the Nicene Creed, and cannot be harmonized with Arian heresy. To claim Justin believed Christ was a created angel like Michael is not only inaccurate — it is a gross distortion of one of the Church’s earliest defenders of Christ’s deity.

  St. Justin Martyr, pray for us, that we may defend the deity of Christ with courage and clarity.
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  65

  The unending and fruitless argument on Trinity

  by Longlivetherenegades in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  those who say they are christians or follow christianity needs .

  1. father .

  2. jesus .

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  aqwsed12345

  Yes, God’s essence is ultimately incomprehensible to us in this life. Yes, the terms like “person,” “essence,” and “Son” need to be carefully defined. And yes, no one is saved merely by passing a theological exam on the Trinity. But that does not mean that the doctrine is irrelevant to salvation.

  Let’s begin with the principle: Veritas fidei est de necessariis ad salutem — “The truth of faith is necessary for salvation.” Now, not every truth must be explicitly believed by every individual in order to be saved (e.g., the identity of Melchizedek), but some truths are essential because they touch the very nature of the one in whom we believe — namely, God Himself.

  Faith, is not mere trust or sincerity. It is a supernatural habit infused by grace, by which we assent to divinely revealed truths because God, who is Truth itself, has revealed them. Therefore, the object of saving faith is not merely the idea of “God in general,” nor even “Jesus as Savior” in an undefined sense — but the real God as He has revealed Himself to us. The more essential the truth is to God's identity, the more closely it pertains to the virtue of faith.

  This is why the Trinity matters. God has revealed Himself not merely as a solitary monad, nor merely as acting through Jesus, but as one God in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. To knowingly reject this is not merely to reject a theological formulation; it is to reject the very God who has made Himself known. It is not a question of passing a theological test but of assenting to God as He is. If one were to say, “I accept God, but not the God of Abraham, or not the God revealed in Christ,” that would not be true faith, no matter how sincere.

  Now, regarding the claim that there’s “no command” to believe in the Trinity — this is true only in a very superficial, proof-texting sense. The Scriptures themselves present the triune reality of God — not in scholastic formulae, but in revealed form. The Father sends the Son; the Son is begotten, not made; the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son; and all three act with divine authority, receive divine worship, and share divine glory. The formula of Matthew 28:19 — baptizing in the name (singular) of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — is a liturgical summary of a deeper metaphysical truth: the unity of divine essence, and the real distinction of persons.

  We must distinguish between what is comprehended and what is believed. No one can comprehend God’s essence. But to be saved, one must believe in God as He is — and if He is triune, then faith must eventually conform to that truth. A person in invincible ignorance who trusts God sincerely may be saved through implicit faith. But once the Trinity is clearly proposed and understood, to reject it knowingly is to reject the true God.

  You also raise a valuable point about terms. Indeed, the debate often fails because the metaphysical terms are undefined or misunderstood. According to the classical theology:

  • A “person” is a subsistent relation in an intellectual nature (Boethius' definition, refined by Aquinas).
  • “Essence” refers to what something is — in God, essence is identical to existence (ipsum esse subsistens).
  • “Son” implies origin, not inferiority. In God, the Son proceeds by generation, not as a creature, but as the perfect intellectual expression of the Father — the eternal Word.
  • “Fully God” means possessing the whole divine essence, which is simple, indivisible, and not shared by parts.
  • “Death” for Christ refers not to the death of His divine nature, which is impassible, but to the separation of His human soul from His human body.

  When we speak of Jesus as the "Son of God," it’s essential to recognize that this is not a biological or temporal statement in the same sense that “son of John” would be. The phrase “Son of God” is not meant to imply a separate and (ontologically) subordinate being who came into existence after the Father, or who is of a different nature. Rather, in biblical language, especially in the Hebrew mindset, the term “son of…” often describes identity, nature, or role, not merely biological descent.

  For example:

  • "Sons of disobedience" (Ephesians 2:2) does not mean people literally born from a parent named “Disobedience,” but that they embody disobedience.
  • "Son of perdition" (John 17:12) refers to Judas Iscariot — not because Perdition is his father, but because his destiny and character are destruction.
  • "Sons of light" (Luke 16:8) describes those who live in and reflect the truth of God.
  • "Son of death" in Hebrew idiom means someone who is destined to die.
  • Barnabas is called “Son of Encouragement” (Acts 4:36), not because “Encouragement” is a person, but because that quality defines his nature.

  So, when Jesus is called the "Son of God," it does not mean He is a separate being from God, any more than calling someone a "son of peace" means they are separate from peace. It means that He shares the very nature of God — divinity itself.

  This is confirmed by John 5:18, where the Jews understood that Jesus, by calling God His own Father, was making Himself equal with God. They did not misunderstand Him — Jesus does not correct them. He intensifies the claim in the verses that follow.

  Jehovah's Witnesses, and others like them, make a category mistake: they assume “Father” and “Son” refer to a relationship of origin in time, and thus subordinate the Son. But if that logic were consistent, then for Jesus to be God, He would have to be “His own Father” — an absurdity that reveals the flaw in their reasoning.

  But the relationship between the Father and the Son is eternal and ontological — it has to do with who God is in Himself, not a temporal event. The Father is unbegotten, the Son is eternally begotten, and the Spirit proceeds eternally — this is not mythology or "three gods," but the inner life of the one true God, as revealed by God Himself.

  Furthermore, in Hebrews 1:3, we are told that the Son is the exact representation (charaktēr) of God’s being (hypostasis) — not merely a reflection, not a similar image, but the exact imprint. A person who is “the exact imprint of God's nature” is God.

  To summarize:

  • "Son of God" in reference to Jesus does not imply lesser deity, temporal origin, or inferiority.
  • In biblical language, "son of" often denotes nature, destiny, or identity — not physical lineage.
  • Jesus is called God (John 1:1; John 20:28; Titus 2:13), worshipped as God, exercises the works of God, and claims the name and authority of God.
  • Therefore, calling Jesus the "Son of God" is a declaration of His divinity, not a denial of it.

  You are right that many arguments collapse into proof-text ping-pong. Classical theology avoids this by carefully analyzing the nature of God, the logical structure of Scripture, and the principles of metaphysics. The Church did not "invent" the Trinity; only offered a rational and precise explanation of what had already been revealed and believed. The goal is not to reduce mystery, but to approach it rightly — with reason obedient to faith.

  In sum, the Trinity is not a theological accessory. It is the name of the true God. To believe in God savingly is to believe in this God — not a mode, not a creature, not a generic deity. Thus, while invincible ignorance may excuse, obstinate rejection of the Trinity once clearly understood is not compatible with saving faith. As Aquinas puts it: "It is impossible to believe explicitly in the mystery of Christ without faith in the Trinity, because the mystery of Christ includes the mission of the Son and the giving of the Holy Spirit." (ST II-II, q.2, a.8)

  Therefore, the Trinity is not an arbitrary dogma — it is the deepest reality of God’s inner life, into which we are invited, by grace, through Christ, in the Spirit.
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  65

  The unending and fruitless argument on Trinity

  by Longlivetherenegades in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  those who say they are christians or follow christianity needs .

  1. father .

  2. jesus .

  1. 
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  3. 
• 

  aqwsed12345

  @Vanderhoven7

  That's a clever line — the "17 heresies in 5 minutes" joke is a classic, and it captures the reverent caution theologians have when approaching the Trinity. But while the mystery of the Trinity is indeed deep and easily misunderstood, that doesn’t mean it’s optional to the Christian faith — especially if we affirm, as you do, that Jesus is fully God.

  In fact, if Jesus is fully God, then we are already inside the logic of the Trinity — because if the Father is God and the Son is also fully God, yet there is only one God, then the question of how this unity-in-distinction is possible becomes unavoidable. The doctrine of the Trinity is the Church’s Spirit-guided attempt to articulate and safeguard that very truth: not to explain God exhaustively, but to protect the boundaries of what Scripture reveals — namely, the full deity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, along with the indivisible unity of God.

  You're right that Scripture doesn’t frame salvation as contingent on understanding advanced Trinitarian theology. But it does require faith in the real Jesus — and that Jesus is the eternal Word made flesh, not a creature or lesser being (John 1:1, 14; John 8:58; Col 2:9). That implies an implicit faith in the triune God, even if one doesn’t use the philosophical vocabulary of "essence," "hypostasis," or "consubstantiality."

  The early Church Fathers didn’t invent the Trinity because they wanted to complicate the faith — they articulated it because the full divinity of Christ and the Spirit, proclaimed by the apostles and worshiped in the liturgy, demanded theological clarity. The moment you affirm “Jesus is fully God,” you’ve already stepped into the mystery that the Trinity explains.

  So yes — God’s inner life surpasses our understanding, but God has graciously revealed just enough for us to worship in spirit and truth. The Trinity is not an optional metaphysical bonus; it’s the structure of the Gospel itself: the Father sends the Son, the Son accomplishes our redemption, the Spirit applies it to us. As the early Church prayed:

  Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
• 
  228

  The point of existence and how it refutes the Trinity

  by slimboyfat in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  rowan williams, the former archbishop of canterbury gave an interesting answer to the somewhat stark question, what’s the point of us existing?

  as a christian, my starting point is that we exist because the most fundamental form of activity, energy, call it what you like, that is there, is love.

  that is, it’s a willingness that the other should be.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  aqwsed12345

  @slimboyfat

  JWs and other Arians frequently attempt to co-opt early Christian sources in support of their heretical Christology, particularly their belief that Jesus is actually Michael the Archangel. Now you cite Justin Martyr’s First Apology, chapter 6, where Justin refers to the Father, the Son, and "the host of the other good angels." You suggest that this proves Justin thought of Jesus as one of the angels, perhaps even identifying him with Michael. However, this interpretation distorts both the grammar and theology of the passage and misrepresents Justin’s own clear Christology throughout his works. The original Greek text reads:

  ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνόν τε καὶ τὸν παρ’ αὐτοῦ υἱὸν ἐλθόντα καὶ διδάξαντα ἡμᾶς ταῦτα, καὶ τὸν τῶν ἄλλων ἑπομένων καὶ ἐξομοιουμένων ἀγαθῶν ἀγγέλων στρατόν, πνεῦμά τε τὸ προφητικὸν σεβόμεθα καὶ προσκυνοῦμεν...

  A literal translation:

  "But Him [the Father], and the Son who came forth from Him and taught us these things, and the host of the other good angels who follow and are made like to Him, and the prophetic Spirit — these we venerate and worship."

  You imply that the phrase "the host of the other good angels who follow and are made like to Him" implies that Jesus is also an angel. However, this is a misreading. The phrase does not say that Jesus is one of the angels. It says the good angels follow Him and are made like to Him — clearly distinguishing Christ from the angels, not identifying Him as one of them. You don't follow or become like someone if you're already ontologically the same as them. The angels are other beings who imitate Christ. If Justin had meant to classify Christ among angels, he would not have placed the Son distinctly before mentioning the angels nor described them as followers of Him.

  Your implication hinges on the term “other” (ἄλλων), suggesting that angels are grouped with the Son as a class. But again, Justin writes of “the host of the other good angels who follow Him and are made like to Him”. The "other" applies to angels, not to the Son. It assumes the existence of one being whom the others follow and imitate — the Son — and places the angels in the category of “other” than Him. In other words: if A is imitated by B and B is called “the other,” then A is not part of the same group as B.

  Though Justin occasionally calls Christ the Angel of the Lord (as in Dialogue with Trypho, chapter 56), he does so in the biblical sense of “messenger” (from angelos) — not to assert that Christ is a created spirit being like Michael. In fact, Justin is clear that Christ is God Himself in multiple places:

  • “He is called God, and Lord of hosts, and Jacob saw Him as man.” (Dialogue with Trypho 61)
  • “We reasonably worship Him, having learned that He is the Son of the true God Himself.” (Dialogue with Trypho 63)
  • “Therefore these words testify explicitly that He is both God and Lord of hosts...” (Dialogue with Trypho 126)

  Far from suggesting that Christ is a created angel, Justin explicitly identifies Him with the pre-existent God who appeared in the Old Testament — the same one called Lord and God. Justin writes in 1 Apology 6:

  “But both Him [the Father], and the Son... and the prophetic Spirit, we worship and adore…”

  To worship the Son is to recognize Him as God, not a created being. Arians deny that worship is due to Jesus, but Justin affirms it boldly. If Justin thought Jesus were an angel like Michael, this would be blatant idolatry — which is unthinkable in a Christian apologetic work aimed at defending the faith before pagan authorities. Also, note: Justin distinguishes between worship due to God and honor given to angels elsewhere:

  “We do not honor with worship those who are only angels, but we honor only the God who is above all…” (Dialogue with Trypho, 6)

  Even critical scholars who analyze Justin’s theology — including those not aligned with Catholic orthodoxy — acknowledge that Justin believed in Christ’s pre-existence and divinity. He refers to the Logos (Word) as:

  • "God" (θεός)
  • "Begotten before all creation"
  • "Agent of creation" (cf. Trypho 62)

  Justin does use subordinationist language, typical of the second century (prior to the full Trinitarian clarification at Nicaea). But subordination in role or order, not essence, was common in pre-Nicene theology and does not imply inequality in nature. Justin’s vocabulary is developmental, not heretical.

  The claim that Justin Martyr taught that Jesus is an angel, or that he identified Christ with Michael, is baseless and misrepresents his theology. Justin:

  • Clearly distinguishes Christ from created angels
  • Teaches the worship of Christ
  • Identifies Him as God, Lord of hosts, and the Logos who appeared to the patriarchs
  • Asserts His pre-existence and divine mission

  Justin is a witness to Christ’s divinity, not a proponent of the Watchtower’s demotion of Christ to a created archangel.

  Bonus: What Do Other Church Fathers Say?

  • “He is Himself in His own right, God and Lord and Eternal King, the Incarnate Word.” - Irenaeus (Against Heresies 3.3.4):
  • “The Son is God of God, and the Word of the Father.” - Tertullian (Against Praxeas):
  • “Do you not understand that this is the God who appeared to Abraham?” - Hippolytus (Against Noetus 10)

  None of these Fathers believed Christ was “just” an angel. The patristic consensus is clear: Christ is true God, consubstantial with the Father, not a created being.
• 
  65

  The unending and fruitless argument on Trinity

  by Longlivetherenegades in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  those who say they are christians or follow christianity needs .

  1. father .

  2. jesus .

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
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  aqwsed12345

  Defending the Doctrine of the Trinity: A Thomistic Perspective

  Introduction

  The doctrine of the Trinity – that the one God exists as three coequal, coeternal Persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) – stands at the heart of Christian theology. From a Thomistic perspective (drawing on St. Thomas Aquinas’s metaphysics and theology), the Trinity is a revealed mystery beyond the full grasp of unaided reason, yet it is not irrational or self-contradictory (Fr Gilles Emery on the Trinitarian Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas). Indeed, Aquinas and his followers have sought to show that faith in the Trinity is “not contrary to reason” but is intellectually coherent, consistent with God’s unity and simplicity (Fr Gilles Emery on the Trinitarian Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas). This article undertakes a detailed defense of Trinitarian doctrine through the lens of Thomistic thought, addressing classic objections from Arian theology and Islamic monotheism. It will explain the foundations of the doctrine in Scripture and tradition, articulate the Thomistic account of distinction of Persons within one divine essence, and show why the Trinity does not compromise divine simplicity or true monotheism. In fact, far from undermining the oneness of God, the doctrine of the Trinity upholds it while illuminating God’s inner life of knowledge and love. The inadequacy of Arian subordinationism and the Islamic critique of any plurality in God will be examined, demonstrating that the Catholic doctrine stands as the “highest point of truth” between opposite errors. Throughout, we will draw on the insights of St. Thomas Aquinas and 20th-century Thomist Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange (especially his work The Trinity and God the Creator) to reinforce the argument.

  Foundations of Trinitarian Doctrine

  Christian reflection on God’s triune nature began with the revelation of God in the New Testament. The Bible maintains uncompromising monotheism – “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one” (Deut 6:4) – yet also speaks of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit each as divine. The Gospels present Jesus as the Son of God, one with the Father (cf. John 1:1, 10:30), and the Paraclete Spirit as sent by the Father and Son, sharing in the divine works of sanctification. Early Christians, guided by Scripture, thus faced three essential truths: (1) God is one, as affirmed in the Old Testament; (2) Jesus Christ the Son of God is divine, yet not simply identical to the Father; and (3) the Holy Spirit is also divine and personally distinct. These truths cannot be reconciled without the distinction and the consubstantiality of the three divine persons. In other words, only a Trinitarian understanding – one God in three truly distinct, consubstantial Persons – allows Christians to affirm both God’s unity and the full divinity of Son and Spirit. Alternatives in the early centuries tended to destroy one truth or the other: Sabellianism (or Modalism) preserved divine unity at the cost of denying real distinctions (treating Father, Son, and Spirit as mere modes of one person), whereas Arianism acknowledged some distinction but at the cost of denying the full divinity and equality of the Son (and Spirit) with the Father. The Church rejected both errors, defining at the Council of Nicaea (AD 325) that the Son is homoousios (of one substance) with the Father, and later likewise affirming the Spirit’s consubstantial divinity. The Nicene Creed thus professes belief “in one God, Father almighty… and in one Lord Jesus Christ… true God from true God… consubstantial with the Father… and in the Holy Spirit.” This creedal formula enshrines the two pillars of Trinitarian doctrine: unity of essence (one God) and trinity of Persons.

  While reason alone could never have discovered the Trinity, once God reveals himself in this way, theology seeks to understand and defend the doctrine’s coherence. St. Thomas Aquinas emphasized that the Trinity, though a mystery, contains no contradiction. We do not say “three Gods in one God” or “three persons in one person,” which would be absurd. Rather, we say three persons in one essence or substance. The term “person” in classical Christian usage (following Boethius and the Church Fathers) means a distinct subsistent identity – in God’s case, a distinct relational identity – whereas “essence” or substance answers what God is. According to Aquinas, when we carefully distinguish person and essence, we avoid the trap of tritheism (which would mistakenly treat the three divine persons as three separate gods) while also avoiding the opposite error of collapsing the persons and negating all distinctions (Modalism). The Church Fathers often described the Trinity as three who’s and one what – three “persons” (Father, Son, Spirit) who each equally are the one God. This nuanced understanding, rooted in Scripture and developed by thinkers like St. Augustine and St. Thomas, safeguards both divine unity and the genuine personal distinction. It shows that Christianity, no less than Judaism or Islam, upholds monotheism: one God, and only one, is to be worshipped, even though that one God is eternally Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in his inner life.

  Thomistic Metaphysics and the Triune God

  St. Thomas Aquinas brought a profound metaphysical clarity to Trinitarian theology. Building on Aristotle’s philosophy and the patristic tradition, Aquinas introduced conceptual tools – especially the notions of procession, relation, and person – to explain how real distinctions exist in God without compromising His unity. In Aquinas’s account, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinguished by their relations of origin: the Son is begotten of the Father, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father (and Son) as from one principle. These processions are internal and eternal, analogous (though not identical) to the processes of intellect and will in God. Aquinas famously likened the Son to the Word or Idea begotten in the divine intellect and the Holy Spirit to the Love or Gift breathed forth in the divine will. By this analogy, God’s act of self-knowing generates a perfect Image or Word (the Son), and the mutual love of Father and Son breathes forth a Love who is the Spirit. Crucially, these processions remain within the one divine essence; they do not produce separate beings alongside God. Rather, they are modes of subsistence of the one infinite being of God.

  From these processions arise real relations in God: the Father is related to the Son as begetter to begotten (paternity and filiation), and the Father and Son are together related to the Spirit as principle to procession (active spiration, with the Spirit having the correlative relation of proceeding, often called passive spiration). According to Aquinas, these relations are the persons. In created beings, relationships are accidents (external qualities) that do not constitute a thing’s essence. But God, in His absolute simplicity, has no accidents; everything in God is identical with the divine essence itself. Therefore, the relations of Fatherhood, Sonship, and Spiration in God are not additional components – they subsist as the persons themselves, each one identical with the one divine essence. As Aquinas explains: in God, the relations are the divine essence, and so “in God essence is not really distinct from person; and yet the persons are really distinguished from each other” by the opposition of relations (SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: The persons in relation to the essence (Prima Pars, Q. 39)). In other words, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are nothing other than the one God (hence identical in essence), but they are really distinct from one another by virtue of the real relational opposition between Fatherhood, Sonship, and the spiration of Love. The Father is not the Son because one is in relation of origin to the other; the Son is not the Spirit; yet Father, Son, and Spirit each are the one God.

  This Thomistic resolution hinges on understanding that a real distinction of persons exists only in regard to each other, not in regard to the divine essence. The Father is distinct from the Son because Father and Son are opposite relations (one cannot be identical to the other in terms of who is originating and who is originated); likewise with the Spirit in relation to Father and Son. However, each of these subsistent relations is the one simple divine being under a different relational aspect. Aquinas succinctly states that the distinction lies in relation and the unity lies in essence: “Relation multiplies the Trinity of persons, but the unity of the substance remains undivided” (SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: The persons in relation to the essence (Prima Pars, Q. 39)). By conceiving the persons as subsistent relations, Aquinas avoids thinking of them as three parallel “parts” of God or three separate centers of consciousness. They are distinct (Father is not Son, etc.), yet never separate – each person is the one indivisible God. Thus, Thomistic metaphysics shows how plurality of persons can exist in the highest unity of being. As Garrigou-Lagrange observes in expounding Aquinas, this view “perfectly preserves the supreme simplicity of the divine being because in God there is but one being; the real relations, on the one hand, do not make a composition with the essence, and on the other hand they really distinguish the persons”. The result is that “in the three divine persons there is one divinity, equal glory, co-eternal majesty, and the same absolute perfection”. No person lacks any attribute of the Godhead that the others have; all are eternally equal in power and substance. The only “difference” is the manner of each Person’s relationship of origin (unbegotten paternity, filiation, and procession of love).

  By framing the Trinity in terms of relations of origin within God’s one essence, Aquinas ensured that divine simplicity was upheld. God is absolutely simple (without parts, composition, or division), and this remains true in Trinitarian doctrine. The divine simplicity “excludes every real distinction except where there is an opposition of relation”. Put another way, the only possible distinctions in the utterly simple God are the relational ones that emerge from eternal generation and procession. These do not add components to God; they are God-understood-as-Father, God-understood-as-Son, and God-understood-as-Spirit. This understanding answers the charge that the Trinity must imply composition or division in God. It does not: the Father, Son, and Spirit are not three independent pieces of the Godhead that together form a greater whole, but each is the whole Godhead, distinguished only by relationships of origin that reference each other. The one divine essence is numerically one and the same in all three Persons. Christian orthodoxy thus walks a razor’s edge between Unitarianism and Tritheism. Garrigou-Lagrange vividly illustrates this by saying the Catholic dogma stands “like the apex of a pyramid” between opposite errors: on one side a Unitarian denial of real plurality in God (as in Modalism or Arian subordinationism), and on the other a tritheistic separation of three gods. The former errs in denying what Scripture reveals about the Word and Spirit’s distinct divine existence; the latter errs in denying God’s unity. The truth, as the Church teaches, affirms both distinction and unity in the proper way, reflecting the fact that “the divine reality is infinitely broader than the limited concepts of the human mind”. We are forced beyond the simplifications of pure monad versus multiple gods, to confess unity in trinity.

  Divine Simplicity and the Rational Coherence of Trinitarian Distinction

  A central concern for both skeptics and sincere monotheists has been whether the Trinity violates the simplicity and oneness of God. How can one indivisible Godhead be three? Wouldn’t any plurality in God imply parts or composition? Thomistic theology provides a robust answer: the distinction of Persons in God is real, but it does not divide the substance of God. The key is to recognize that the numbers “one” and “three” do not apply to God in the same respect. God is one in essence or nature; God is three in persons or interpersonal relations. The divine essence is not something that can be cut into thirds – it is infinite and indivisible. Each divine Person possesses the totality of that one essence. They are distinguished not by having different “sections” of the godhead or different attributes, but solely by their relations of origin (paternity, filiation, spiration). Those relational distinctions, as noted, do not constitute independent beings; they are subsistent ways of the one being. Therefore, when Christians say “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” they are not enumerating three objects alongside each other in the category of God; they are naming three relationally-distinct subsistences of the one God. This is why classical theology insists that God is one “substance” (or essence) in three “hypostases” (or persons) – avoiding the misleading formulation of “three substances.” The Cappadocian Fathers in the 4th century used precisely that language (one ousia, three hypostaseis) to clarify that while Father, Son, and Spirit are distinct, they are not three gods. St. Thomas in Summa Theologiae I, Q.39, art.1 addresses the question whether in God the essence is the same as the person. He replies that divine simplicity demands that essence and person be identical in God (there is not an essence “plus” distinct individuals the way created things have a nature common to many instances) (SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: The persons in relation to the essence (Prima Pars, Q. 39)) (SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: The persons in relation to the essence (Prima Pars, Q. 39)). Yet the Persons are truly distinct by virtue of the relational opposition. “Thus there are one essence and three persons,” Aquinas concludes (SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: The persons in relation to the essence (Prima Pars, Q. 39)). This is a mystery unique to God: in created beings, one nature can only be shared by many individuals in a fragmented way (each human has his own instance of human nature, separate from another’s). But God’s infinite nature is not a genus that gets multiplied; it is one and only, so it can be fully possessed by more than one person only in the case where those persons are intrinsically one being. Father, Son, and Spirit each are the singular divine being, not three beings. In short, 3 persons ≠ 3 gods, but 3 persons = 1 God, when we understand “person” and “God” in the orthodox sense.

  From a rational standpoint, this formulation avoids logical contradiction. It would be contradictory to say “three Gods and one God” or “three persons and one person” in the same respect. But saying “one God in three persons” is no more illogical than saying (analogically) that one geometric triangle has three corners or one human nature is possessed by three human individuals (except that in the human case, that nature is split across three separate beings, whereas in God it is the same being). The point is that number is being predicated of different aspects: unity refers to essence, plurality refers to persons. There is mystery here, but not absurdity. The concept of “person” in God is sui generis – unlike human persons, the divine persons are not separate centers of consciousness with separate acts of will or knowledge. All divine action is singular, coming from the one divine nature – yet it is fittingly attributed in different ways to the different persons (for example, the Father creates through the Son, the Son becomes incarnate, the Spirit sanctifies, and so on, without division of labor). The three persons co-inhere in one another (perichoresis or circumincession, in theological terms), since they are one being. Thus, divine simplicity remains intact: God is not composed of intellect + will + power + parts – God is pure and simple being. The Trinity simply tells us that within that unity of being there exists a triune relational life. This does not make God “complex” in the way material things are complex; it signals that God’s unity is fertile and perfect, not sterile. Catholic theologians have even argued that the Trinity highlights God’s supreme perfection: unlike a solitary monad, the one God is never alone or lacking in relation; He is eternally a community of love in Himself (Father loving Son, Son loving Father, and Spirit being that love), which is a more perfect image of absolute goodness. The one divine nature is fruitful and self-communicative, not a solitary selfhood turned inward. While human reason could not deduce this on its own, once revealed it perceives a fittingness: God is love (1 John 4:8), and love implies beloved and the spirit of love – remarkably mirrored by Father, Son, Spirit. In Aquinas’s words, the Trinity of persons “perfects our natural knowledge of God the Creator” by revealing His intimate life, and even “throws light from above” on other mysteries. It is a doctrine that elevates our understanding of God beyond what philosophical monotheism could imagine, yet without contradicting the truth of God’s oneness.

  Refuting Arian Subordinationism

  One of the earliest and most significant challenges to the Trinity was posed by Arianism, a 4th-century heresy associated with Arius of Alexandria. Arius’s theology can be seen as an extreme attempt to preserve God’s transcendence and unity – but in doing so, it subordinated the Son and Holy Spirit, effectively reducing them to lesser divine agents or high creatures. According to Arius, the Logos or Son of God was not eternal God but the first and greatest creature, brought into existence by the Father to be an intermediary in creation and salvation. “God the Father alone is eternal,” taught Arius; the Son, though exalted, was made out of nothing in time and used as an instrument by the Father. The Holy Spirit, likewise, was viewed as a creature subordinate even to the Son. This theological move was partly influenced by a neo-Platonic and Gnostic mindset that God, being absolutely superior, could not interact with the world except through a hierarchy of lesser beings. The upshot was a denial of the Son’s true divinity: the Son was “heteroousios” (of different substance) or at best “homoiousios” (of similar substance) with the Father, but not “homoousios” (of the same substance). Arius’s subordinationism thus radically contradicts the biblical witness that “the Word was God” (John 1:1) and that the Son knows the Father perfectly and shares in divine honor, as well as the Church’s constant worship of the Holy Spirit as Lord and Life-giver. The Church, led by bishops like St. Athanasius, definitively rejected Arianism at Nicaea, affirming the Son’s consubstantiality with the Father.

  Arianism fails on multiple counts. First, it compromises monotheism just as severely as tritheism does – in effect, Arius ended up positing a quasi-divine demigod (the Son) and another subordinate spirit (the Holy Ghost). If Christians were to follow Arius, they would either have to worship a creature (the Son), which is idolatry, or deny Christ the worship given to the Father, which contradicts revelation. The Nicene Creed’s insistence on the Son being “true God from true God” was precisely to ensure that when Christians worship Jesus Christ, they are not offering secondary worship to a secondary god, but truly worshipping the one God in the Son. Aquinas underscores that the honor paid to the Son and Holy Spirit must be the honor given to God alone, since the Son and Spirit are God. By asserting that the Son is not of the Father’s essence, Arianism actually introduces composition and change in God far more problematic than the orthodox Trinity does. If the Father “produced” the Son as a creature, then at some point the Father was alone and then became a creator – meaning God acquired a new relation (that of creator or father) in time, implying change in God’s being. This conflicts with the divine immutability which classical theism (and indeed Arianism itself) wanted to preserve. The orthodox doctrine, in contrast, says the Father eternally generates the Son within the Godhead – an eternal, unchanging act – so that God is eternally Father and Son in relationship, with no new relation arising in time within God’s essence. Thus, ironically, Arius’s refusal to accept an eternal generation within God leads to a scenario where God’s relationship (Fatherhood) begins with time, undermining immutability. Moreover, Arianism is metaphysically unstable: it posits a semi-divine creator Son who is neither fully uncreated nor simply created like other creatures, which shatters the clear line between Creator and creature. By insisting the Son is fully divine, consubstantial with the Father, Christianity maintains a clear categorical distinction: everything on the Creator side of the line is God (Father, Son, Spirit – one Creator), and everything else is created. Arianism muddles this by placing the Logos in a middle position.

  Thomistic theology refutes Arian subordinationism by reasserting that any distinction of persons in God must be entirely within the unity of the Godhead, not a separation into greater and lesser beings. The Father and Son are related as begetter and begotten, but both possess the identical divine nature and glory. Aquinas points out that in God there is a perfect communion of essence: the Father eternally communicates the one divine essence to the Son in begetting Him, so the Son has all that the Father is (except being Father) – hence “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God.” There is no degree of divinity here; the Son isn’t 90% of the Father’s divinity or an “overflow” – He is 100% God, as is the Father, sharing the same numerical essence. Therefore, any notion of subordination refers only to relation of origin (the Son receives being from the Father, and so in that sense has a dependence of origin), but not to inequality of nature. The Athanasian Creed later summarized: the three persons are co-eternal and co-equal; none is before or after, greater or lesser. Arius’s error was denying this co-equality, effectively introducing hierarchy within the Godhead where only unity should reign. Arianism’s attempt to lower the Son and Spirit to protect God’s highness actually backfired – it led to a trio of beings (one supreme and two subordinate) and thus lost the unity it sought to safeguard. By contrast, orthodoxy paradoxically achieves a more profound unity: one God in three persons, with no division of substance or glory. Arianism can be seen as an inadequate account that tried to resolve the tension by sacrificing one of the truths (the Son’s true divinity). Aquinas would say that truth is not truly served by removing one horn of a paradox; instead, one must accept both horns and find the higher synthesis (in this case, the synthesis is the doctrine of consubstantial Trinity).

  Finally, from the standpoint of salvation (an important argument for the Church Fathers), only if the Son is true God could He bring about our divinization. St. Athanasius argued, “the Son of God became man so that we might become God (by participation).” If the Son were a creature, he could not bridge the gap between God and man – he would himself be on the creature side of the gap. The Thomistic view affirms that the Son and Spirit, being fully God, can impart divine life to us. Thus, the Trinity is not an abstract conundrum but lies at the core of Christian life: through the Son and in the Spirit we are brought to the Father. Arian subordinationism is inadequate because it breaks that chain – a lesser son could not impart God’s life. In summary, Arianism’s denial of the consubstantial Trinity was rightly deemed insufficient and erroneous. The Thomistic defense reinforces that the Son must be one in essence with the Father if we are to maintain consistent monotheism and the efficacy of redemption. The doctrine of the Trinity, properly understood, negates subordinationism: all three Persons are equally the one Almighty God, differing only in relational roles that do not imply inferiority or a divided Godhead.

  The Trinity and Islamic Monotheism

  Perhaps the most vigorous non-Christian objection to the Trinity comes from Islamic theology. Islam is staunchly monotheistic, confessing in its creed (Shahada) that “there is no god but Allah”. The Qur’an regards any suggestion of God having a “partner” or multiplicity as the sin of shirk (association/polytheism) – the “gravest of all sins” in Islamic doctrine (A Clash of Monotheisms: Tawhid vs. Trinity, Pt 1 | Greg Lanier) (A Clash of Monotheisms: Tawhid vs. Trinity, Pt 1 | Greg Lanier). In Islamic history, the emergence of Islam in the 7th century can be seen in part as a reaction against the Christian Trinity: Muhammad explicitly excluded the Trinity of persons, seeing it as a denial of the oneness of the Creator. Garrigou-Lagrange notes that in the Islamic formula, “There is no God but Allah,” Muhammad “had in mind a negation of the Trinity,” regarding the Christian belief as a lapse from pure monotheism. The Qur’an directly rejects the divinity of Christ and the idea that God has a “son” (e.g. Quran 4:171, 5:73, 19:35), sometimes misconstruing the Christian Trinity as God, Jesus, and Mary (Quran 5:116) – an indication that the doctrine was not fully understood in its proper form by early Muslims. From the Islamic perspective, the Trinity sounds like tri-theism; they ask, how can God be three and still be one? To Muslim theologians, God is an absolutely singular being (tawhid meaning unity) with no internal differentiation; any plurality would seemingly compromise His sovereignty and uniqueness (A Clash of Monotheisms: Tawhid vs. Trinity, Pt 1 | Greg Lanier). Thus, Islam stands firmly in the Unitarian camp, closer to ancient Monarchian or Modalist ideas about God’s unity.

  Addressing this Islamic critique requires clarifying what the doctrine of the Trinity actually asserts and why it does not amount to worshipping multiple gods. The first point to emphasize is that Christians just as strongly affirm that there is only one true God – we recite the Shema (Deut 6:4) and acknowledge no other deity. The difference lies in how we understand the inner nature of the one God. When Islam declares God’s oneness, it presupposes that oneness means absolute singularity with no distinctions; Christianity, by contrast, holds that God’s oneness is more rich and complex – not the oneness of a mathematical point or a solitary individual, but the oneness of a being who is inherently tri-personal. Importantly, the Trinity is not a belief in three gods. We do not hold that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three separately existing divine beings who together form a committee called “God.” Each person is fully the one God. So Christians do not worship three beings; we worship one divine Being, within whom we distinguish Father, Son, and Spirit. From a Christian perspective, therefore, the charge of shirk is a misunderstanding: we are not “associating” any creature or other deity with God – the Son and Spirit we confess are God, just as the Father is. No outsider is being added to God. There is a fundamental asymmetry here: the Islamic polemic assumes that by saying “Father and Son,” Christians have done something analogous to polytheists adding another deity beside Allah. But in reality, Christians are saying that within the one Allah (to use that term) there is a relationship of Father and Son. It’s an internal plurality, not an external addition. Thus, if one properly conceives of the Trinity, it does not violate the principle of tawhid (God’s uniqueness and unity), because the unity of essence remains absolutely intact. As Aquinas might say, the formula “3=1” is not asserted in any single category; rather “3 persons in 1 essence” is the formulation, which does not contradict the law of identity or non-contradiction (SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: The persons in relation to the essence (Prima Pars, Q. 39)).

  Another way to respond is to point out that even Islamic theology has struggled with affirming divine unity while acknowledging multiple attributes of God. Classical Islamic thinkers debated whether the various attributes of God (life, knowledge, power, mercy, justice, etc., as well as the eternal Quran/Word of God) are distinct realities or all one with God. If one says they are distinct, one risks implying multiple co-eternal entities (which some early Muslim rationalists accused orthodox Islam of – that it had a “multiple eternal” problem). If one says they are all exactly the same, one risks denying any real meaning to God’s attributes. The resolution in mainstream Sunni theology was to say God’s attributes are neither totally separate from Him nor identical in a simplistic way, but rather they flow from and are anchored in his essence in a manner befitting God. In a somewhat analogous way, Christian theology holds that the Word (Logos) and Spirit of God are internal to Him and co-eternal, not separate gods. The Gospel of John uses logos (Word) language that would later resonate in debates: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). This matches certain Islamic conceptions of God’s Word (Kalām Allāh) being uncreated and with God from the beginning – though Islam stops short of personifying the Word as a second Person. The Christian claim is precisely that the Word of God is eternally with God and is God (one in being). Thus, what we call “the Son” is God’s own self-knowledge begotten within Him, and what we call “the Holy Spirit” is God’s own love proceeding – neither is an alien addition to God. If a Muslim can accept that God’s Word and Spirit are eternal realities that are not separate gods but inherent to the one God, they have a conceptual bridge to understanding the Trinity (albeit the Trinity goes further in saying these are personal hypostases).

  Additionally, one can argue that God’s unity in the Christian view is actually richer and does not reduce God to a solitary monad. The doctrine of the Trinity teaches that God is eternally interpersonal – Father, Son, and Spirit in communion – which means relational attributes like love are not secondary; they are anchored in God’s very being. Islam certainly teaches that God is loving and merciful, but if God is absolutely one in a monadic sense, then such relational attributes either require creation to be expressed or are metaphorical. In Christianity, God is literally love (cf. 1 John 4:8) because within God there is an eternal beloved and an eternal love shared. The Father loves the Son and has done so from all eternity, and the Holy Spirit is often understood as the personified love or bond of love of Father and Son. Thus, God did not need to create creatures in order to have someone to love; relationship is intrinsic to God’s perfection, not an external requirement. Some Christian apologists have suggested that a Unitarian God would be dependent on creating the world to exercise love or communication, whereas a Trinitarian God is fully satisfied in an eternal exchange of love, creating freely to share that love. This line of reasoning attempts to show that Trinity does not diminish God’s greatness but rather highlights it – the one God is a dynamic living unity, not a static singularity.

  Of course, to a committed Muslim, the Trinity will remain a difficult concept, as it indeed surpasses human understanding. However, the task of the Thomistic defender is to remove misconceptions: the Trinity is not tritheism, not a dilution of monotheism, but a doctrine of unity-in-distinction that ultimately preserves God’s oneness in a more profound way. As Garrigou-Lagrange notes, Islam’s rejection of the Trinity was so emphatic that it considered the mere idea of God as Father, Son, Spirit to be a total departure from true faith. Yet Christianity contends that this mystery of God’s triune life was disclosed by God Himself for our salvation – not to multiply theoretical complexities, but to reveal who God is and draw us into communion with Him. In engaging Islam, one might finally point out that if God is truly omnipotent and transcendent, He is certainly capable of existing in a mode (threefold personal existence) that is beyond our finite experience. It is not limiting God to say He is Triune; on the contrary, it is saying God’s inner being is so rich that it contains personal distinction without compromising unity. The Muslim-Christian divide on this issue is deep, but careful explanation can at least correct the misunderstanding that Christians worship multiple gods. The doctrine of the Trinity falls squarely within the bounds of monotheism – one eternal being, the Almighty, who in Christian understanding is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. To rephrase an old theological aphorism: Christians do not say “there are three who are God” as if three separate gods – we say “there is one God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”

  Conclusion

  From a Thomistic perspective, the Trinity emerges as a sublime mystery that both humbles and elevates the human mind. We have seen that Thomistic metaphysics – with its emphasis on the unity of the divine essence and the relational distinction of persons – provides a cohesive intellectual framework for holding together truths that could seem contradictory at first glance. The distinction of Persons in one God does not fracture the divine unity nor introduce composition into God. As Aquinas and his commentators like Garrigou-Lagrange have shown, the divine relations of paternity, filiation, and spiration are real and account for the threefold personal distinction, yet they subsist in the one undivided divine being, thereby “one divinity, equal glory, co-eternal majesty” is shared by Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The doctrine of the Trinity safeguards all that classical theism holds about God’s oneness, simplicity, and perfection, while also unfolding the inner life of God as revealed in Christ. It answers the early Christian need to reconcile the biblical affirmations of Father, Son, and Spirit, avoiding the one-sided errors of Modalism and Arianism. It also provides a profound response to Islamic and other unitarian critiques: the Trinity is not a betrayal of monotheism but its fullest realization. God’s unity is so absolute that it can encompass relational plurality without ceasing to be unity. In the Catholic tradition, this truth has been contemplated not as a logical puzzle only, but as a source of wonder and worship – the inexhaustible mystery of one God in three Persons.

  Ultimately, the Trinity remains above reason – no philosophic syllogism can fully demonstrate it – but reason illumined by faith can see its fittingness and clear away claims of contradiction. The Triune God, as St. Thomas insisted, is the foundation of our Christian life: everything comes from the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit, and returns likewise in that Trinitarian order. Far from being an obscure piece of metaphysics, the Trinity is the living reality of God that Christians encounter in revelation and experience in grace. By defending the coherence of Trinitarian doctrine, Thomism shows that one can be a rigorous monotheist while confessing the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As Garrigou-Lagrange put it, the Trinity perfects our understanding of God the Creator and “gives us supernatural knowledge of the intimate life of God” It does so without compromising the fundamental truth that God is one. In the mystery of the Trinity, divine simplicity and divine tri-personality coexist without conflict, inviting us to acknowledge that God’s being transcends our categories. In sum, a Thomistic defense of the Trinity demonstrates that the doctrine is intellectually sound (within the limits of our understanding) and theologically necessary – safeguarding both God’s oneness and the full Christian revelation of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Thus we can wholeheartedly affirm the Triune mystery, worshipping one God in Trinity and Trinity in unity, neither confusing the persons nor dividing the substance, ever to God’s glory. (SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: The persons in relation to the essence (Prima Pars, Q. 39))
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  The point of existence and how it refutes the Trinity

  by slimboyfat in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  rowan williams, the former archbishop of canterbury gave an interesting answer to the somewhat stark question, what’s the point of us existing?

  as a christian, my starting point is that we exist because the most fundamental form of activity, energy, call it what you like, that is there, is love.

  that is, it’s a willingness that the other should be.

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  aqwsed12345

  Defending the Trinity from a Thomistic Perspective

  Introduction

  The doctrine of the Trinity – that God is one in essence and three in person – stands at the heart of Christian faith and yet has long been a focal point of controversy and misunderstanding. From the early fourth-century debates with Arians who denied the Son’s full divinity, to Islamic critiques that the Trinity compromises God’s unity, believers have been challenged to explain how one God can subsist as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. At first glance the doctrine may seem paradoxical or even irrational: How can “three” be “one” without violating the law of non-contradiction? A Thomistic approach, drawing on the metaphysical insights of St. Thomas Aquinas, offers a rigorous and coherent framework for addressing these questions. Aquinas’ teachings on divine essence, relation, and procession allow Christians to articulate the Trinity in a way that preserves God’s divine simplicity and unity while accounting for the real distinctions between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In what follows, we will present and defend the Trinity using Aquinas’ metaphysics, explaining how multiple divine persons exist in one essence without division or composition. We will engage historical objections – specifically the Arian claim that the Son is a created being and the Islamic claim that the Trinity implies polytheism – and show how a Thomistic understanding answers these concerns. Throughout, the goal is to demonstrate that while the Trinity is ultimately a mystery of faith, it is not a contradiction of reason. On the contrary, with the help of sound philosophy we find the Trinity to be a sublime truth above reason yet not against it, inviting us to an ever-deeper contemplation of the one God in three Persons.

  Divine Simplicity and Triune Unity

  Central to Aquinas’ defense of the Trinity is the doctrine of divine simplicity, the teaching that God is not composed of parts or diverse properties. In God, there is no composition of matter and form, substance and accident, or essence and existence – God is His own essence and existence, utterly one and indivisible (SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: The persons in relation to the essence (Prima Pars, Q. 39)) (Trinity and Simplicity — The Reformed Classicalist). Any division or composition in the Godhead would imply dependency or change, contradicting the absolute aseity and perfection of God. The challenge, then, is how to affirm three persons in one simple divine essence without introducing division. Thomas’s solution hinges on a careful distinction between how things are in God in reality and how we conceive them in our minds. The classical maxim, affirmed in scholastic theology and by the Council of Florence, is that in God “everything is one where there is no opposition of relationship” (Catechism of the Catholic Church | Catholic Culture). In other words, any feature of God that does not involve a relational distinction is identical in all three persons. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one being, one nature, one mind, one will – indeed one God – because they share the same simple essence. There is no partitioning of the divine substance among three “parts”; each person is the fullness of the one God. As one theologian explains, “All that is in God is God,” and the three persons are not composite parts of God but each is the identical divine substance subsisting in a relational way (SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: The persons in relation to the essence (Prima Pars, Q. 39)) (Trinity and Simplicity — The Reformed Classicalist). Thus, divine simplicity is not violated by the Trinity: whatever is true of God’s essence (such as eternity, power, goodness, mind, will) is true of the Father, Son, and Spirit equally and indivisibly. The persons are really distinct from one another, but not distinct as separate substances. They differ relationally (as we will see below), not by having different natures or attributes. In God, essence and person are one and the same reality, and only the relations of origin differentiate the persons (SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: The persons in relation to the essence (Prima Pars, Q. 39)). Aquinas emphasizes that the divine essence “is not really distinct from person” (SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: The persons in relation to the essence (Prima Pars, Q. 39)); the Father’s Godhead is numerically identical to the Son’s Godhead and the Spirit’s Godhead. The unity of God therefore remains absolute: one essence, one “God,” in three who subsist in that essence. Any appearance of contradiction (“three in one”) is resolved by understanding that “one” refers to the being or essence of God, while “three” refers to the persons or hypostases, distinguished by their relations. The Trinity is one as to what God is, and three as to who God is – a crucial distinction that keeps us from both polytheism (which would falsely multiply the essences and give three gods) and modalism (which would falsely collapse the persons into mere roles of one person).

  Procession and Relation in Aquinas’ Theology

  How exactly are the divine persons distinguished without compromising God’s unity? Aquinas answers: by relations of origin grounded in two eternal “processions” within God. A procession, in Thomistic terms, is not a movement through space or a coming-into-being (as it is with created things) but an internal emanation that remains within the divine nature (Aquinas) (Aquinas). Christian revelation speaks of the Son as “begotten” of the Father and of the Holy Spirit as “proceeding” from the Father (and, in Western theology, from the Father and the Son). Aquinas seeks to elucidate these truths philosophically. He identifies two and only two processions in God: one by way of the intellect and one by way of the will (Aquinas) (Aquinas).

  The first is the generation of the Son. God the Father eternally knows Himself, and by this perfect act of intellect He generates the Word – an interior utterance or concept that fully expresses His essence (Aquinas) (Aquinas). In John’s Gospel, this divine Logos (Word) is “with God” and “is God” (John 1:1), indicating both distinction and unity. Aquinas explains that when a mind understands something, it forms an inner word or idea, which proceeds from the mind yet remains within it (Aquinas) (Aquinas). In an analogous (though immeasurably higher) way, the Father’s act of self-understanding “proceeds” to a perfect image or Word of Himself – that Word is the Son. This procession is called generation because it is like a parent communicating life to offspring, except here the “nature” communicated is the one divine essence itself. The Father eternally begets the Son by knowing Himself, and in that single act the Father gives the fullness of the Godhead to the Son. There is no “time” when the Son did not exist, for this generation is eternal; nor is the Son a lesser copy, for He receives the identical divine nature. As the Nicene Creed professes, the Son is “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father.” Thomistic metaphysics reinforces this: because this procession is entirely internal to God, it does not result in another being or a created effect, but rather in another subsistent relation within the one God (Aquinas) (Aquinas). All that is in the Father – the simple divine essence – is communicated to the Son. “All that exists in God, is God,” Aquinas writes, so every internal procession necessarily shares the one divine nature (Aquinas). The Son, proceeding as the Word, is God, co-equal and co-eternal with the Father, distinguished only by being Son (the one who is from another) rather than Father (the one who is from no one).

  The second procession in God is the spiration of the Holy Spirit, an eternal act of the divine will or love. Just as God perfectly knows Himself, He also perfectly loves Himself. Aquinas describes how in an intellectual nature (like God’s), besides the intellectual word there is also a procession of love: “the object loved is in the lover” through an act of will (Aquinas) (Aquinas). The Holy Spirit is precisely this mutual Love or Gift personified – the love that flows between Father and Son (or from Father through Son) from all eternity. The Spirit’s procession is often called spiration (breathing forth) or simply procession. It is analogous to the way our will, upon knowing something good, produces an inner movement of love toward that good. In God, the Father and Son together breathe forth the Spirit as the one Love that they share. Importantly, this second procession is also entirely internal and does not leave the divine essence; it is the immanent fruition of God’s self-love. Consequently, the Holy Spirit too receives the one indivisible essence – He is God, on equal footing with Father and Son. The three persons are sometimes summarized as lover, beloved, and love, or as mind, word, and will in an infinite, absolute degree. These analogies (going back to St. Augustine) help us grasp how plurality of persons does not entail separation in substance. The processions of intellect and will in God terminate in relationships rather than independent beings, much as a thought or act of love remains within the thinker or lover.

  According to Aquinas, the divine processions give rise to real relations in God: Fatherhood, Sonship, and the relation of Spiration (between the Father and Son on one side and the Spirit on the other). These relations of origin are the only basis for distinction in God. The Father is related to the Son as begetter to begotten; the Son to the Father as begotten to begetter; the Spirit to the Father and Son as proceeding from them. These relationships are mutually opposed – for example, paternity is the opposite of filiation; being the principle of procession is the opposite of proceeding. Such relational opposition is crucial: it allows us to say the Father and Son are truly distinct from each other (because the Father is not the Son (SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: The persons in relation to the essence (Prima Pars, Q. 39)), the one begetting is not the one begotten), even though each is the same God. Outside of the opposition of relations, everything in God is identical. Aquinas puts it succinctly: considered in relation to the divine essence, these relations are not really distinct from the essence (since in a simple being, what God has God is); but considered in relation to each other, the relations are really distinct (SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: The persons in relation to the essence (Prima Pars, Q. 39)). The persons just are the subsistent relations in God’s being (SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: The persons in relation to the essence (Prima Pars, Q. 39)) (SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: The persons in relation to the essence (Prima Pars, Q. 39)). Thus the Thomistic explanation is that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinguished by their relations of origin alone – an eternal web of knower, known, and love – and not by any composition or division of the divine substance. The persons co-inhere in one another in perfect unity of being (per the Greek Fathers’ term, perichoresis, and as later Latin theology phrased, “the Father is wholly in the Son and in the Spirit, and likewise the Son in the Father and Spirit, etc.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church | Catholic Culture)). We can say the Father is God, the Son is God, the Spirit is God – each wholly and eternally – without saying the Father is the Son or the Spirit, because “Father” and “Son” designate a relationship, not a separate essence. In sum, by Aquinas’ account the Trinity involves one essence (God) and three subsistent relations (the divine persons). The unity is preserved because essence is one; the plurality is real but resides entirely in the order of relationship. God is not one thing and three things in the same respect, but one infinite reality existing as three relative modes of subsistence. This is how multiple persons exist in one simple essence without violating simplicity: the persons are not extra ingredients or properties added onto the essence, but are the one essence itself, differently oriented by relationship. As the Fourth Lateran Council taught and Aquinas often repeated: it is the relations that distinguish the persons, and apart from the relations, everything is one in God (Catechism of the Catholic Church | Catholic Culture).

  Answering Arian Objections: The Son’s Eternal Divinity

  One of the earliest major challenges to the Trinity came from Arianism, which contended that the Son (and by extension the Holy Spirit) are not co-eternal God but creations or inferior emanations. Arius, a priest in Alexandria in the 4th century, taught that “there was a time when the Son was not,” proposing that the Son was the first and greatest creature but not equal to the Father. To an Arian, calling Jesus divine meant only that he was godlike or heavenly, not that he literally shared the Father’s infinite essence. This view was motivated in part by a desire to protect God’s uniqueness: how could God be one if the Son is also God? Would that not make two gods, or imply that God begot a second divine being? Arius also pointed to passages of Scripture where Jesus seems subordinate to the Father (for example, calling the Father “greater than I,” or appearing limited in knowledge or power during his earthly life). The Arian error, however, stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means for the Son to be “begotten” of the Father. Arius conceived of divine begetting on the model of creaturely causation – as if the Father produced the Son as an external effect or work, thereby creating a second, lesser deity. Aquinas directly addresses this mistake: if “procession” in God were like an effect proceeding from a cause, then indeed the Arians would be right that the Son and Spirit are creatures, not true God (Aquinas) (Aquinas). But divine procession is nothing like creation. The Son’s generation is not an external act of God making something outside Himself; it is an internal act of self-communication, as described above. “Careful examination shows that [Arius and Sabellius] took procession as meaning an outward act… neither of them affirms procession as existing in God Himself,” Aquinas notes (Aquinas). For Arius, the Father begetting the Son was like a craftsman constructing a masterpiece – an act that results in a product separate from the agent. Thomistic theology flatly rejects this scenario. The Father’s begetting of the Son happens within God’s own being, not as an act upon an external object or matter (Aquinas) (Aquinas). Therefore it does not yield another, separate being; it yields a person who is intrinsic to God’s eternal life.

  The implications of this for the Son’s divinity are enormous. Because the Son is begotten inside the infinite Godhead, what He receives from the Father is the divine essence itself, not a copy or a lesser nature. The Father gives all that He is to the Son (minus the personal identity of being “Father”). Nothing of the Father’s divinity is held back or only partially communicated. As Aquinas says, in God “the divine nature is communicated by every procession which is not outward” (Aquinas). Thus the Son is consubstantial with the Father – “one in being” or of the same substance. Christian tradition, beginning with the Council of Nicaea (AD 325), forcefully affirmed against Arius that the Son is true God from true God. Scripture itself leaves no room for the idea of Jesus as a semi-divine creature. St. John writes unequivocally: “In the beginning was the Word…and the Word was God” (John 1:1). St. Paul says of Christ, “In him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Colossians 2:9). Aquinas cites St. John’s First Epistle: “that we may be in His true Son, He is the true God and eternal life” (1 John 5:20) (Aquinas) (Aquinas). Likewise, he notes that because Christians are temples of the Holy Spirit, and only God can have a temple, the Holy Spirit must be truly God (cf. 1 Corinthians 6:19) (Aquinas). These biblical testimonies align perfectly with the Thomistic metaphysical insight: if the Son were a creature, not sharing the very being of the Father, Christianity would indeed be guilty of worshipping a lesser god alongside the Supreme God – a form of polytheism or idolatry. But because the Son is of one essence with the Father, when we honor the Son we are honoring the one God.

  Arian objections often cite Jesus’ human limitations in the Gospels or his filial language (“the Father is greater than I,” John 14:28) as proof of inequality. Here we must remember the distinction between Christ’s divine nature and his assumed human nature. Aquinas and orthodox theology teach that the Son, in the Incarnation, took on a complete human nature (body and soul). In that human nature, the Son could say the Father is greater, could experience suffering and ignorance, etc., without detracting from His divine nature. The Arians, lacking the later Christological clarifications, conflated Christ’s humanity with his divinity and thus misunderstood those passages. Properly understood, whenever Scripture speaks of the Son as less than the Father, it refers to the Son in his role as a man and mediator, not to his eternal divine essence. As God, the Son is equal to the Father; as man, the Son is subordinate to the Father (and even to the Spirit, as the Spirit led Jesus in his ministry). The Athanasian Creed succinctly states: “Equal to the Father, as touching his Godhead: less than the Father, as touching his Manhood.”

  Another Arian concern is that asserting two divine persons (Father and Son) compromises God’s unity. But this is addressed by the principle already elaborated: the Father and Son are distinct as persons (relative to each other) but one in being. They are not two gods, but one God, because there is a single divine nature. Their relationship can be understood by analogy to a thought in the mind: my thought is distinct from me in a sense (I can differentiate “I” and “the idea I have conceived”), yet it is not an external thing apart from me – it is an inward expression of myself. So the Son is the Father’s own self-expression, not a second god floating outside the Father. Aquinas goes even further to ensure we do not think of Father and Son as two separate entities composing God: since the divine essence is simple, the Father is that essence and the Son is that essence; they are numerically one God. The only distinction is the relational one of origin (Father as origin, Son as from the origin). Remove that relational opposition, and no distinction remains (SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: The persons in relation to the essence (Prima Pars, Q. 39)). Therefore, classical Trinitarianism is actually the strongest safeguard against both Arian subordinationism and crude polytheism. It refuses to divide the substance of God in any way. We do not have a hierarchy of greater and lesser gods; we have a communion of coequal persons each of whom is the one infinite God. Arius’s mistake was thinking that calling the Son “God” would violate monotheism unless the Son were demoted to a creature. In truth, it would violate monotheism only if the Son were a separate being alongside the Father. But since Father and Son share the same being, the unity of God is preserved. Medieval theologians captured this by saying the Father and Son are “distinct in person but not distinct in nature.” We can conclude, then, that the Arian objection fails once one understands Aquinas’s insight that the Son’s generation is an internal procession that leaves God’s unity intact. The Son is eternally begotten, not made, and this begetting is an outpouring of the Father’s very substance, not the production of a new lesser substance. Far from being an affront to reason, the orthodox doctrine satisfies both the demands of Scripture and the metaphysical principle that God, as the highest perfection, can communicate His entire being without loss. The Father, in knowing and loving Himself, eternally generates the Son and Spirates the Spirit, and in so doing He does not multiply gods but manifests the richness of life within the one Godhead.

  Answering Islamic Objections: One God in Three Persons

  The Islamic faith, fiercely monotheistic, has from its inception rejected the Trinity as incompatible with the oneness of God (tawhid). The Qur’an insists that God (Allah) has no partners or equals, and it explicitly repudiates the idea that God has a “son.” To Muslims, the Christian confession of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit often sounds like tri-theism – as though Christians worship three separate gods or associate others with God (shirk, the gravest sin in Islam). Islamic theologians historically have argued that the Trinity either introduces parts into God or compromises His unity and simplicity ( Trinity > Judaic and Islamic Objections (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) ). For example, the medieval philosopher Al-Kindi interpreted the Trinity to mean three divine individuals each composed of the one divine essence plus a distinguishing characteristic, and he rightly noted that any such composition would mean those individuals are not eternal or self-sufficient ( Trinity > Judaic and Islamic Objections (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) ). The Muslim critique thus poses a serious question: does the doctrine of the Trinity maintain the absolute unity and uniqueness of God, or does it make God into a committee of three? From a Thomistic perspective, we assert firmly that Trinitarian doctrine, properly understood, upholds God’s oneness in the strongest possible way. The unity of essence in the Trinity means that Christians no less than Muslims affirm there is exactly one God, one ultimate being who alone is worthy of worship. We do not believe in three separate gods, nor in one God who is split into three pieces or modes. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains in continuity with ancient councils: “Father, Son, Holy Spirit are not three principles of creation but one principle,” because “each of the persons is that supreme reality, viz., the divine substance, essence or nature” (CCC 258). The threeness of God lies only on the personal level (the relationships of Father, Son, Spirit); it does not multiply the godhead itself. Thus, in Christian understanding, the Father, Son, and Spirit are inseparable in what they are and what they do. There is a beautiful line in the Gospel of John that illuminates this unity: Jesus says of the Father, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). The Greek word for “one” here is neuter (hen), indicating unity of nature or essence, not merely agreement of will. Yet Jesus also prays to the Father and speaks to Him – showing He is personally distinct. Early Christian theologians captured this mystery with the formula that the Son is “one in essence” (homoousios) with the Father, even though He is another as a person. The Qur’an appears to misconstrue the Trinity in one verse as “God, Jesus, and Mary” – which is indeed a tritheistic and absurd formulation rejected by all orthodox Christians. In reality, Mary is a creature and not part of the Godhead, and Jesus is not a separate god beside the Father but the incarnate Word of the one God. So the Trinity is not “God plus two others,” as some Muslim polemics imagine, but rather one God in three personal self-distinctions.

  Aquinas and other scholastics were well aware of the philosophical objection that any real plurality in God seems to imply composition and thus negate simplicity. The answer they give is subtle: the plurality of persons in God is not like any other plurality we know. In creatures, multiple individuals of one species (e.g. three human beings) means three separate substances, each with its own divided portion of a common nature. But God is not a species that can have multiple members; God is infinite being. There cannot be three separate infinite beings, since each, to be distinct, would have to lack something the others have – which is impossible if each is truly God. Therefore, Christianity does not posit three parallel gods. Rather, the three persons share the one infinite being, like three candles all lit from the same flame (an analogy offered by medieval theologians to illustrate how one nature can be wholly in more than one person – though every analogy has limits). Another way to put it: when we say the Father is God, the Son is God, the Spirit is God, we do not mean there are three instances of deity as a genus or class. We mean the one Godhead is simultaneously Father, Son, and Spirit. This admittedly transcends full human comprehension, but it is not logically incoherent. It would be incoherent only if we said something like “three persons are one person” or “three beings are one being” in the same respect. But we do not say that. We say one being is three persons. Personhood and being are different categories: being answers the question “what are you?” whereas person answers “who are you?”. In created things, normally one being equals one person (e.g. a human being is one person). But God is radically different – His mode of being is unique and surpasses created analogies. It is not illogical that the ultimate reality might exist in a way that is one-and-plural on different planes (an analogy from geometry: three distinct coordinates can define one single point in space – here dimensionally different parameters coincide in one point). In God’s case, the “parameters” are not dimensions but the personal relations of origin that we discussed. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct as origin, begotten, and proceeding, yet they coincide in the one divine essence.

  Islamic objectors also charge that Trinity violates simplicity by effectively saying God has “parts” (the persons) or accidents (the relations). The Thomistic answer is that the persons are not parts of God, nor are the relations accidents inhering in a subject. In God, there cannot be accidents or separable parts at all (Trinity and Simplicity — The Reformed Classicalist) (Trinity and Simplicity — The Reformed Classicalist). The persons are best understood as subsistent relations – each person is the one God under a distinct relational aspect. This does not make the relations unreal; on the contrary, Father, Son, and Spirit are really distinct, but their distinction lies wholly in the relations of origin, not in any composition of the divine essence (SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: The persons in relation to the essence (Prima Pars, Q. 39)) (SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: The persons in relation to the essence (Prima Pars, Q. 39)). To a Muslim accustomed to thinking of God as a single-personal being, this is admittedly a foreign concept. The idea of relation as something that can subsist in and as the very being of God comes from Christian reflection on revelation aided by Aristotle’s philosophy of relations. Aquinas notes that in creatures, relations are typically accidents (e.g. the relation of fatherhood in a human is an accidental feature, not the substance of the man). But in God, relations being accidents would indeed compromise simplicity. Therefore, he concludes that in God the relations must be identical with the divine essence (SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: The persons in relation to the essence (Prima Pars, Q. 39)). That is, God’s very nature is to be Father knowing Himself and Word known, and Love proceeding from both. The relations are “what God is” just as much as the divine attributes are – they are only different in relation to each other, not in relation to God’s essence (SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: The persons in relation to the essence (Prima Pars, Q. 39)). This profound point shows that the Trinity does not introduce foreign elements into God; it is simply God’s one perfect being, considered in its self-relatedness. As the Council of Florence taught, all such relations are within the single divine substance, essence, or nature, which remains utterly one (Paragraph 2. The Father - The Holy See). If a Muslim interlocutor insists that God cannot have any internal distinctions at all, one might respond that even in Islamic theology God is described by many names or attributes (merciful, just, living, powerful, etc.). How can an absolutely simple being have multiple attributes? Classical Muslim theologians typically say those many names are all really one in God and only seem multiple to our finite minds – a view not far from the Christian understanding that in God’s simplicity, love = wisdom = power = being, etc. The difference with the Trinity is that the “three” are not attributes or acts directed outward, but personal relations of origin. Still, the principle is similar: plurality in God (of whatever sort) does not necessarily violate unity if that plurality does not compose or divide the divine essence. In Christianity’s claim, the “Threeness” is a relational plurality that actually requires the unity of essence as its underlying context. If there were three separate gods, they could not be Father, Son, and Spirit in relation – they would be three unrelated absolutes, which is not the Trinity at all. Paradoxically, only if God is one can He exist as a Trinity of persons, since only with one shared essence can the persons coinhere and love one another in total self-gift. If God were a solitary monad (as in strict Unitarian theology), God could not have the attribute of interpersonal love “built-in” from eternity – He would need creation to have something to love. The Christian vision of God as inherently relational Love (cf. 1 John 4:8, “God is love”) thus preserves God’s self-sufficiency (the three love one another perfectly, lacking nothing) and casts a new light on divine unity: it is not the unity of a lonely being but the unity of a communion. This does not convince by logical syllogism – Muslims and Christians ultimately have differing authorities and starting premises – but it shows that the doctrine of the Trinity is internally coherent and does not amount to tri-theism. No one in Trinitarian theology is asserting “3 gods = 1 god” which would indeed be nonsense. We assert one God in three persons, which is mysterious but coherent when we unpack the meanings of “person” and “essence.” Aquinas even addresses a common-sense worry: if each of the three is God, do we have three Gods? He answers no, because in God “what is” (the nature) is identical with “who is” (the person) only when considering each person singly (SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: The persons in relation to the essence (Prima Pars, Q. 39)). But since the nature is one, there are not three natures to yield three Gods. The term “God” can be predicated of Father, Son, Spirit in the singular, not as a plural count of gods (SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: The persons in relation to the essence (Prima Pars, Q. 39)). Christian thinkers sometimes use the analogy of a triangle: it has three corners, yet it is one triangle. The corners are distinct, but they are not three separate triangles; each corner is a “manifestation” of the whole triangle’s essence under a different aspect. The Trinity is infinitely greater and more mysterious than any geometric shape, but the analogy hints that threeness and oneness need not be incompatible in principle.

  Finally, Muslims argue that God revealing Himself as a Trinity introduces a “mystery” that offends the clarity of pure monotheism. Islam prides itself on a simple, comprehensible creed: There is no god but God; Muhammad is His messenger. Christianity agrees there is only one God, but adds richness to that statement by confessing Father, Son, Holy Spirit within the Godhead – something we could not know without God telling us. Aquinas concedes that the Trinity is not discoverable by natural reason; it is known only by divine revelation (through Christ and the apostolic witness) ( Trinity > Judaic and Islamic Objections (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) ) ( Trinity > Judaic and Islamic Objections (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) ). But once revealed, it is fitting and reasonable in the highest sense – it does not violate reason, it transcends it. If one believes God is an infinite, transcendent reality, it is not surprising that aspects of His inner life exceed the grasp of finite human logic. Rather than contradicting monotheism, the revealed mystery of the Trinity elevates our understanding of the unity of God, showing it to be a living, fruitful unity, not a barren singularity. Many Muslim thinkers hold that God’s oneness is so absolute that even attributes like knowledge and will are only nominally distinct (lest God appear composed). Ironically, this can make God almost impersonal – a pure will with no inherent relationality or love. The Trinity, in contrast, presents a God who is super-personal – not less than personal, but a communion of Persons. This is a unity that is dynamic and fecund (the Father eternally generates the Son, and the Father and Son breathe forth the Spirit), yet it remains one being. Christianity thus maintains, just as firmly as Islam, that there is only one God, even as it invites people to know this one God more intimately as Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit. The charge of polytheism only sticks if one misunderstands what the doctrine actually teaches. When correctly understood via the Thomistic metaphysical distinctions, the Trinity emerges as a profound mystery that in no way compromises the oneness, simplicity, or sovereignty of God.

  Mystery and Rationality: Triune Truth as Accessible to Reason and Faith

  To human reason alone, the inner life of God as Holy Trinity would have remained unknown. Aquinas teaches that the truth of the Trinity “surpasses the capacity of human reason,” and thus had to be revealed to us ( Trinity > Judaic and Islamic Objections (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) ). Nevertheless, he also insists that this mystery, once revealed, is not irrational or absurd. The Trinity is a mystery, meaning it is a truth that is inexhaustibly deep and cannot be comprehended fully by our finite minds. But a mystery in the theological sense is not a logical contradiction; it is a reality whose inner workings we cannot completely grasp, yet we can approach by analogy and be confident it contains no error or inconsistency. In fact, part of the task of Christian theology (especially in the Thomistic tradition) is to show that mysteries of faith are at least negative mysteries – they do not force us to believe something contradictory, even if we cannot imagine exactly how it is so. For example, the statement “one God in three persons” sounds paradoxical, but through careful definitions of one (essence) and three (persons), we see it is not the same kind of “one” and “three,” and thus not a direct contradiction. Reason can affirm that the doctrine is internally coherent (when terms are properly understood) (Ye Olde Trinity Diagram: The Shield of Faith – Trinities) (Ye Olde Trinity Diagram: The Shield of Faith – Trinities). Reason can also illuminate fitting analogies (mind-word-love, etc.) to partially illumine the mystery. Yet reason will also humbly acknowledge its limits: we cannot prove the Trinity by logical deduction, nor can we fully comprehend how one divine essence is entirely possessed by three distinct persons. We rely on God’s self-revelation in Christ and the Holy Spirit’s guidance of the Church to know that the Trinity is real.

  Aquinas famously said that in this life we are like wayfarers who know God “as in a mirror, dimly” – our concepts and analogies fall short of the divine reality (SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: The persons in relation to the essence (Prima Pars, Q. 39)) (Aquinas). But he also believed that our analogical knowledge is true as far as it goes. For instance, knowing God as intellect and will (by analogy to our soul) is a true insight, even if God’s intellect and will are one and the same in a way ours are not. Likewise, understanding the Son as the Word of the Father and the Spirit as the Love of Father and Son gives us a genuine, if analogical, glimpse into why God is triune. It shows that the Trinity, rather than being an arbitrary conundrum, actually corresponds to God’s nature as the highest intellect and highest love. It would be unworthy of God to be a solitary thinker without a Word, or a lover without an eternal Love. The Trinity reveals that God is not a solitary distant deity, but an eternal communion of truth and love. Human reason, reflecting on this, can see a profound beauty and consistency in the doctrine. It seems contradictory only if we impose on God the limitations of created beings (e.g. assuming that three persons must mean three separate beings, which holds for finite creatures but not for the infinite Creator). Once we allow that God is in a category of His own (“His ways are above our ways”), the Trinity can be accepted as a unique mode of existence that has no exact parallel elsewhere – and yet leaves traces in creation (like the image of God in man as rational and loving, which points to a triune original).

  It’s worth noting that Christian theology does not ask us to check our rationality at the door; rather, it asks us to enlarge our intellect by faith. Faith and reason work together (fides et ratio). The mystery of the Trinity is first received by faith in God’s revelation. But faith seeks understanding, and so we use reason to explore and clarify what we can. Aquinas argued that while natural reason cannot demonstrate the Trinity, it can show that the Trinity is fitting (conveniens) and free from contradiction ( Trinity > Judaic and Islamic Objections (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) ). For example, he demonstrates that having only two processions (intellect and will) in God avoids an infinite regress of persons (Aquinas), and that because “whatever is in God is God,” an internal procession implies consubstantiality (Aquinas). These rational reflections reassure the believer that the doctrine hangs together and does not ask one to believe “three equals one” in a simplistic way. In a sense, reason acts as the handmaiden of faith here: it tidies up our language, refutes misunderstandings, and draws out implications, even as the core truth remains a gift beyond unaided reason.

  Thus, the Trinity is mysterious but not absurd. We call it a rational mystery – not in the sense that reason can exhaustively explain it, but in the sense that reason can see the mystery’s contours and affirm its possibility. This stands in contrast to a square circle, which is a true contradiction that no amount of higher understanding can salvage. The Trinity is not like that; it’s more like light split through a prism – appearing as three colors but coming from one pure light. To a mind that only knew monochrome, the spectrum might seem impossible, yet deeper insight shows it to be real and consistent. Similarly, the prism of divine revelation shows us plurality in the one divine Light. Aquinas’ metaphysics – with its concepts of simplicity, relation, substance, personhood – acts as a kind of intellectual prism that helps us make sense of what we are seeing, assuring us it is not nonsense or a trick, but the real nature of the divine being, however ineffable.

  Conclusion

  From a Thomistic perspective, the doctrine of the Trinity emerges as a sublime harmony of unity and plurality in God. We have seen that by deploying the concepts of essence, procession, and relation, St. Thomas Aquinas provides a framework in which Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are understood as distinct persons precisely through their relations of origin, and yet as one being by virtue of the one simple divine essence they each are. Divine simplicity is upheld: God is not composed of parts or lesser elements, and the three persons do not partition the Godhead. Rather, as Aquinas showed, the divine relations are the divine essence in its relational mode, so that “in God, the essence is not really distinct from the person” (SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: The persons in relation to the essence (Prima Pars, Q. 39)) and “there are one essence and three persons” (SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: The persons in relation to the essence (Prima Pars, Q. 39)) without contradiction. We addressed the Arian objection by clarifying that the Son’s generation is an internal communication of the fullness of deity, not the creation of a secondary god. The Son is begotten, not made, eternally receiving the one identical divine nature from the Father, and thus He is fully God, co-equal with the Father – a truth rooted in Scripture and articulated at Nicaea against Arius’s subordinationism. We then engaged the Islamic objection, affirming that the Trinity does not compromise God’s oneness: it is a doctrine of one God in three persons, not three gods. Thomistic analysis underscores that the unity of God’s essence is absolute, and the distinctions of person are real but relational. Hence, the Trinity does not entail polytheism or any division in the divine substance. It remains a profound mystery, yes, but one that is coherent in itself and fitting to the nature of a God who is Love and Word eternally. The relational opposition of Father, Son, and Spirit allows for personal differentiation without breaking unity – “everything (in God) is one where there is no opposition of relationship” (Catechism of the Catholic Church | Catholic Culture).

  In the end, the Trinity invites us to adore a God whose inner life is an everlasting communion of love, knowledge, and gift. Aquinas would remind us that our concepts can only go so far; we navigate between the errors of tritheism and modalism by sticking closely to the language of one essence and three relational subsistences, even if we cannot imagine a created example of such a thing. The seeming paradox of the Trinity humbles our intellect, but does not humiliate it – rather, it elevates reason to consider realities above its natural reach. In the Thomistic vision, faith perfects reason, and reason, in turn, finds the Trinity to be not an enemy but a luminous mystery that both satisfies and surpasses our deepest philosophical longings. We conclude that the doctrine of the Trinity, defended on metaphysical grounds by thinkers like Aquinas, stands as a internally consistent and theologically compelling portrayal of the one true God. It is not irrational – indeed, it would be irrational to claim exhaustive understanding of an infinite God. The Trinity is a mystery, but one accessible to reasoned insight and entirely worthy of belief. In the final analysis, the Thomistic approach helps us echo with understanding what Christians have confessed for centuries: Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit – the Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity, one God forever and ever. (SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: The persons in relation to the essence (Prima Pars, Q. 39))
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  228

  The point of existence and how it refutes the Trinity

  by slimboyfat in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  rowan williams, the former archbishop of canterbury gave an interesting answer to the somewhat stark question, what’s the point of us existing?

  as a christian, my starting point is that we exist because the most fundamental form of activity, energy, call it what you like, that is there, is love.

  that is, it’s a willingness that the other should be.

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  aqwsed12345

  @vienne

  This is also a textbook example of distorted hermeneutics and primitive prooftexting:

  Ecclesiastes 9:5 -"the dead know nothing at all"
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  187

  Insight Book LIES - then tells the TRUTH!

  by BoogerMan in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  it-1 p. 493 communication - "when the circumcision issue was resolved by the governing body in jerusalem......".

  it-1 p. 881 galatians, letter to the - "by reason of a revelation, paul, with barnabas and titus, went to jerusalem regarding the circumcision issue; he learned nothing new from james, peter, and john, but they recognized that he had been empowered for an apostleship to the nations.

  " (galatians 2:1-10).

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  aqwsed12345

  @scholar

  Claim 1: Critics “Ignore” the Exile’s Threefold Structure

  JW Claim: Opponents of the 607 BCE date allegedly deny the Jewish Exile and its supposed threefold framework of Exile–Servitude–Desolation for 70 years.

  Rebuttal: No serious historian denies the Babylonian exile of the Jews – what’s rejected is the Watchtower’s interpretation that these three aspects formed one exact 70-year period starting in 607 BCE. Secular scholars recognize the exile happened in stages (deportations in 597 and 587 BCE, etc.) and that Judah’s servitude to Babylon began even earlier. Jeremiah’s prophecy of 70 years (Jer. 25:11–12) is usually understood as a round-number period of Babylonian domination, not strictly 70 years of complete land desolation. Critics do not “ignore” the exile at all – they simply disagree that all three elements (exile of the people, servitude of nations, and desolation of the land) overlap exactly for 70 years beginning in 607 BCE. This threefold 607–537 timeline is a Watchtower construct, not a biblical necessity. Even the Bible’s own writers present the 70-year period in different ways. For example, the Chronicler (2 Chron. 36:20–23) links the 70 years to land sabbaths ending with Cyrus’s decree, whereas Zechariah (Zech. 1:12) speaks of “these 70 years” in 518 BCE – a context that fits roughly 587–518, not a 607–537 exile. Far from “denying” scripture, mainstream scholars are interpreting the texts in context. It is actually the Watchtower’s harmonization of “Exile–Servitude–Desolation” into one rigid 70-year block that departs from both biblical evidence and historical facts. Indeed, as historian Lester L. Grabbe observes, the insistence on a literal 70-year desolation of Judah’s land is a naïve reading of prophetic texts (ancient history - When was Jerusalem destroyed by the Babylonians? - History Stack Exchange). In short, critics fully acknowledge the Exile; they reject the 607 timeline because it forces the historical data into an unsupportable framework.

  Claim 2: Josephus “Confirms” a 607–537 BCE Exile

  JW Claim: The first-century historian Flavius Josephus purportedly supports the Watchtower’s teaching of a 70-year exile from 607 BCE (Jerusalem’s fall) to 537 BCE (return under Cyrus). Josephus “confirms” this chronology.

  Rebuttal: Josephus’s writings do not consistently support the Watchtower’s 607 BCE date – in fact, Josephus gives conflicting statements about the length of Jerusalem’s desolation. The Watchtower cherry-picks one Josephus passage while ignoring others that align with standard chronology (587 BCE). For example, Against Apion I.19 in older translations seems to say the Babylonians “burnt the temple, … and the city lay desolate for seventy years until the time of Cyrus.” On the surface this might sound like a 70-year desolation. However, Josephus is plainly in error here. He misplaces the Temple’s destruction, claiming it happened under Nebuchadnezzar’s father (Nabopolassar), 18 years too early. This confusion led him to start counting 70 years from 605 BCE. Josephus’s own translator (Thackeray) notes that Josephus likely interpolated the Temple burning into Nabopolassar’s reign “erroneously”. In other words, Josephus garbled the timeline from his sources.

  Crucially, just two paragraphs later (Apion I.21), Josephus actually affirms the conventional chronology. He there quotes the Babylonian historian Berossus’s list of Neo-Babylonian kings (Nebuchadnezzar 43 years, Evil-Merodach 2, Neriglissar 4, Labashi-Marduk ~0.75, Nabonidus 17) and says “this account is in accordance with our books.” Why did he consider it correct? Josephus explains that scripture recorded the Temple’s destruction in Nebuchadnezzar’s 18th year, that the Temple lay waste for 50 years, and that in Cyrus’s 2nd year the reconstruction began. Indeed, 50 years is exactly the period from 587 BCE to 537 BCE. Thus, Josephus elsewhere acknowledges a 50-year desolation, not a 70-year one, matching the traditional 587 BCE date. He even ties this 50-year span to the biblical timeline (“in accordance with our books”). Far from being a cheerleader for 607 BCE, Josephus here implicitly supports 587 BCE.

  In summary, Josephus is not a reliable witness for a 607–537 exile. The Watchtower’s argument relies on an out-of-context reading of his flawed statement, while ignoring his later correction. Even Watchtower scholar R. Furuli admits Josephus’ figures are problematic, yet Furuli still quoted the outdated Whiston translation that gave Nabopolassar a bogus 29-year reign. Scholarly rebuttals note that had Furuli used a modern critical text, he’d see Josephus did not actually list a 29-year Nabopolassar. In short, Josephus’s ambiguous statements cannot override the massive contemporary evidence dating Jerusalem’s fall to 587/586 BCE. Appealing to Josephus for 607 BCE is not only selective, it hinges on Josephus’s own chronological mistake, which he effectively corrected elsewhere.

  Claim 3: 586 vs. 587 BCE – Does Scholarly Disagreement Undermine Secular Chronology?

  JW Claim: Historians dispute whether Jerusalem fell in 586 BCE or 587 BCE, and this alleged uncertainty in secular chronology supposedly shows it is flawed – implying the Watchtower’s 607 BCE date (which they view as biblically certain) is more reliable.

  Rebuttal: This argument greatly exaggerates the significance of a minor academic debate. The difference between 586 and 587 BCE amounts to one year, stemming from how ancient regnal years are counted (Judah’s calendar vs. Babylon’s, accession-year counting, etc.). Scholars overwhelmingly agree Jerusalem was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar’s army in the late 580s BCE, specifically in Nebuchadnezzar’s 18th regnal year. The only question is whether that regnal year corresponds to 587 or 586 BCE – a technicality. Both dates are within the same historical framework, which is anchored by numerous Babylonian records. In contrast, the Watchtower’s date (607 BCE) is a full 20 years earlier, a discrepancy of a completely different magnitude. It’s misleading to equate a scholarly 586 vs. 587 discussion with the Watchtower’s wholesale revision.

  The scholarly process actually highlights the strength of the evidence: researchers debate 587 vs 586 because the evidence narrows the destruction to that tiny window. All lines of historical evidence – Babylonian chronicles, datable economic tablets, astronomical observations – point to the late 580s, not to 607. For example, Babylonian Chronicle ABC 5 pinpoints Nebuchadnezzar’s campaign in Judah to 587 BCE (his year 18) by modern dating, and the astronomical diary VAT 4956 independently fixes Nebuchadnezzar’s 37th year to 568 BCE, which means year 18 was 587 BCE. At most, an alternative counting could place it in 586 BCE. This tiny uncertainty is no “flaw” in the chronology – it’s normal scholarly precision. It certainly doesn’t imply we can throw out two decades of well-attested history.

  Ironically, even Watchtower publications have flip-flopped on whether the destruction was in 587 or 586 before ultimately insisting on 607. Thus, the Watchtower’s own history reflects uncertainty until they imposed their dogmatic solution. In contrast, secular historians remain confident in the 580s BCE timeframe. The bottom line: a one-year debate does not equal an open door for a twenty-year error. Claiming otherwise is a false equivalence. By this logic, one could argue scholars’ debates about 33 CE vs 30 CE for Jesus’ death invalidate the whole timeline – which is clearly absurd. Minor academic debates are a far cry from the Watchtower’s chronological overhaul, which is not supported by any reputable evidence.

  Claim 4: A “Single, Unified” 70-Year Biblical Timeline (607–537 BCE)

  JW Claim: The Bible supposedly presents a single, unified 70-year period for Judah’s exile that must run from the fall of Jerusalem in 607 BCE until the Jewish return in 537 BCE. In this view, all biblical references to “70 years” share one clear meaning tied to that timeframe.

  Rebuttal: There is no consensus even within the Bible itself that the 70 years are a single period of total exile from 607–537. This claim glosses over the complexity and diverse perspectives found in Scripture. The prophecy in Jeremiah 25:11–12 foretells 70 years of nations serving the king of Babylon (implying Babylonian supremacy). Jeremiah 29:10, addressed to exiles, speaks of 70 years “at Babylon” (often understood as Babylon’s domination or the exile in a broad sense, not specifically the land lying empty). By contrast, 2 Chronicles 36:20–21 interprets Jeremiah’s 70 years as the land enjoying its Sabbaths during its desolation, but then immediately says this period lasted “until the first year of Cyrus” – which historically was about 50 years after Jerusalem’s fall. Meanwhile, Daniel 9:2 reflects on Jeremiah’s prophecies of 70 years, and Daniel (writing near the end of those years) seems to treat them as nearly complete in his time (c. 538 BCE). Zechariah 1:12 (in 520 BCE) refers to God’s indignation on Jerusalem “these seventy years,” which from 520 would backdate to ~590 BCE. This suggests different starting reference points (perhaps the initial Babylonian incursions or exile of 597 BCE) rather than a neat 607 BCE start. In short, the biblical texts do not unanimously pinpoint a 607 start – that date is an inference the Watchtower makes by forcing all references into one mold.

  Furthermore, the Bible never explicitly links the destruction of Jerusalem with a countdown of exactly 70 years. The prophets simply foretold a 70-year Babylonian period of judgment and exile. History shows that period was roughly 605–538 BCE (from Babylon’s rise to Babylon’s fall). The Watchtower’s insistence on 607–537 is actually a modern interpretation driven by their prophetic chronology (1914 calculation), not a plainly stated biblical timeline. The claim of a “single context” oversimplifies scripture. As Grabbe and other scholars note, treating the 70 years as a literal block of desolation for Judah is a theologically driven reading that ignores the historical context. The Bible’s message about the 70 years is thematic (judgment and restoration) rather than a precise chronological formula to be calculated to the month. In fact, no biblical writer explicitly says “Jerusalem will lie desolate for seventy years from its fall.” That is a harmonization the Watchtower imposes. Therefore, the supposed “unity” of the 70-year period is an illusion – it is the product of selective interpretation rather than a clear scriptural statement.

  Claim 5: The Bible Never Defines the 70 Years as Babylonian Domination

  JW Claim: Scripture never explicitly defines the prophesied 70 years as a period of Babylonian imperial domination, implying that the 70 years must instead be defined by Judah’s exile/desolation (as the Watchtower teaches).

  Rebuttal: This claim is misleading. While it’s true the Bible doesn’t use the exact phrase “70 years of Babylonian empire,” the plain sense of Jeremiah’s original prophecy is indeed the period of Babylon’s rule over the nations. Jeremiah 25:11 clearly says “these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years.” That is a definition by the Bible itself – servitude to Babylon for 70 years. The Watchtower tries to redefine “serve” as if it meant the Jews were exiled for 70 years, but Jeremiah was addressing multiple nations, not just Judah. Similarly, Jeremiah 29:10 (written to exiles in Babylon) said “when seventy years for Babylon are completed, I will bring you back.” Notice it says “for Babylon,” indicating the period is tied to Babylon’s timeframe (i.e. its dominance), not explicitly “for Jerusalem.” Thus, the Bible very much frames the 70 years around Babylon – specifically the time of Babylonian ascendancy and later Babylon’s punishment after those years (Jer. 25:12).

  The Watchtower argument often emphasizes that 2 Chron. 36 and Daniel refer to the desolation of Jerusalem, insinuating the Bible’s 70 years must be about Jerusalem’s condition exclusively. But 2 Chronicles doesn’t say “70 years of desolation” – it says the land kept sabbath “to fulfill seventy years” (alluding to Jeremiah) and that Cyrus’s decree came “in order to fulfill the word of the LORD by Jeremiah”. In other words, the Chronicler understood Jeremiah’s 70-year word as fulfilled by Cyrus’s decree ending Babylonian rule. This is perfectly compatible with the domination interpretation – Babylon fell to Cyrus after ~70 years of regional power. Indeed, Babylon’s empire effectively began with its conquest of Assyria and regions (around 609–605 BCE) and ended in 539 BCE – a period of about 70 years. Biblical scholars widely hold that the “70 years” is a round number symbolizing a long, complete period of exile and foreign domination, not necessarily an exact calendar interval for an empty land. The Watchtower’s complaint that “the Bible never calls it Babylonian domination” is a straw man; the language of Jeremiah does exactly that, and later biblical writers allude to Jeremiah without redefining the period in a radically different way.

  Moreover, the context of prophecy in the ancient Near East often used idealized numbers. “Seventy years” likely conveyed a lifespan or a fullness of time under Babylon’s yoke (note: 70 is 10×7, symbolically complete). The Watchtower’s literalistic approach insists it must be exactly 70 years of land desolation, but that is not explicitly stated anywhere. By contrast, Babylon’s role is explicitly mentioned by Jeremiah. In summary, the Bible’s definitions point to Babylon’s period of supremacy as the span of the 70 years, not a mysterious 20-year-longer Jewish exile that defies all historical evidence.

  Claim 6: Josephus Supports 607 BCE in Multiple References

  JW Claim: Josephus "consistently" supports 607 BCE, his various references harmonize with the Watchtower’s interpretation of a 70-year desolation ending in 537 BCE. In essence, Josephus is a witness on the JWs' side, not just in one passage but overall.

  Rebuttal: This is incorrect – Josephus’s references on the exile are anything but consistent, and none unambiguously endorse a 607–537 timeline when properly understood. As discussed, Josephus made an internal error by implying a 70-year desolation starting with an event he mistakenly placed in 605 BCE. But elsewhere, Josephus calculates the time differently. For example, in Antiquities XI.1, Josephus says that the first year of Cyrus was 70 years after the prophecy of Jeremiah (which he places in the 11th year of Zedekiah) – by Josephus’s reckoning that prophecy would have been around 587 BCE, making 70 years land in 517 BCE (long after Cyrus’s first year). This demonstrates how Josephus struggled with the chronology, yielding contradictory numbers. He also preserves the data from Berossus that fix the Neo-Babylonian reigns totaling about 66 years (not 86) from Nebuchadnezzar to Nabonidus. That matches a 587 BCE destruction, not 607.

  In fact, Josephus explicitly notes that the Temple lay desolate for 50 years (from 587 BCE to about 537 BCE). This aligns with secular chronology. The Watchtower argument typically strings together Josephus quotes out of context. Rolf Furuli, for instance, cited Josephus’s Apion I.19 about 70 years of desolation and then immediately quoted Josephus saying “the statement (about the kings’ reigns) is correct and according to our books” – giving the false impression Josephus “agrees” that 70 years of desolation is correct according to scripture. In reality, Josephus was referring to Berossus’s list as correct, which, as noted, yields a 587 BCE timeline. By splicing quotes, the you misrepresent Josephus’s stance.

  Leading scholars have pointed out these conflicting statements in Josephus. The inaccuracies likely stem from Josephus using different sources (biblical and Babylonian) and not reconciling them perfectly. Thus, trying to enlist Josephus as a firm supporter of 607 BCE is misguided. At best, Josephus provides a confused secondary testimony that occasionally mentions “70 years” of exile in a way the Watchtower likes. But he is not an authority overriding primary historical data. We must remember Josephus wrote centuries after the events, lacking our modern access to Babylonian records; where we can test him against contemporary evidence, Josephus’s 70-year statements do not hold up. In sum, Josephus cannot be honestly cited as consistent proof for 607 BCE – in fact, when understood properly, his work undercuts the Watchtower chronology more than it helps it.

  Claim 7: Nebuchadnezzar’s “Seven Missing Years” Must Be Added

  JW Claim: The biblical book of Daniel (Dan. 4) says King Nebuchadnezzar temporarily lost his sanity for “seven times” (often understood as seven years). Secular chronology "ignores" these 7 years – implying there is a gap in the historical record. They suggest these seven years of Nebuchadnezzar’s absence should be added to Neo-Babylonian chronology, supporting a longer timespan that could accommodate 607 BCE.

  Rebuttal: This argument reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of both ancient chronology and the biblical account. No credible evidence indicates Nebuchadnezzar’s 43-year reign had an uncounted 7-year gap. Babylonian records from his reign are continuous year-by-year. Business tablets are dated by the reigning king’s year, and we have economic texts for every year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign up to year 43. There is no sudden break of “unknown ruler” or missing dating that would correspond to an unrecorded hiatus. If Nebuchadnezzar truly was incapacitated for several years, he apparently remained the official king, and the Babylonian administration kept counting the regnal years in order. In other words, those 7 years would still fall within his 43-year reign as recorded – not in addition to it. The Watchtower’s notion of “adding” them seems to presuppose they were somehow left out by historians, but Babylonian scribes who lived through that period did not omit seven years in their dated documents.

  Moreover, many scholars interpret Daniel 4’s story theologically or symbolically – it’s possibly a didactic tale about humility, not a precise chronicle requiring us to amend Babylonian king lists. But even if one takes it literally, Nebuchadnezzar’s “seven times” could well be seven periods of a few months (since the text uses “times,” not explicitly years) or simply a figurative way to say “a complete period of punishment.” There is no solid basis to insert a literal seven-year gap into secular history. The Neo-Babylonian chronology is tightly confirmed by multiple lines of evidence. For example, a royal inscription by Nebuchadnezzar’s daughter (the Adad-guppi’ Stele) and numerous contract tablets show a consistent timeline of kings with no room for extra regnal years. If we erroneously added 7 years to Nebuchadnezzar, we would have to push all subsequent events 7 years later, wrecking the synchronism with Persian records and astronomically dated tablets.

  In fact, Watchtower defenders themselves seldom agree on how to apply these “missing years.” Some suggest Nebuchadnezzar ruled 7 years longer than recorded (making his reign 50 years), others speculate a coregency or an otherwise unattested ruler took over. All such scenarios collide with hard evidence. Notably, no Babylonian text mentions Nebuchadnezzar’s supposed period of madness – which is odd if it lasted a long time. This silence suggests either the episode was brief, non-literal, or simply kept out of official annals. Regardless, the chronological record doesn’t show a gap. As a result, historians have never needed to “add” these years. The only ones insisting on doing so are trying to force-fit a predetermined 607 BCE date. In short, Nebuchadnezzar’s seven “missing” years are a mirage – a conjecture that finds zero support in the detailed Babylonian chronology, where every single year is already accounted for.

  Claim 8: Furuli’s Research Is Unrefuted Since Critics Avoid Peer-Review

  JW Claim: Jehovah’s Witness scholar Rolf Furuli’s revisionist chronology (supporting 607 BCE) supposedly stands unrefuted because critics have not challenged it in peer-reviewed academic journals. The implication is that mainstream scholars “cannot” disprove his “Oslo Chronology,” or they fear engaging it, so it remains valid by default.

  Rebuttal: This claim is demonstrably false. Furuli’s work has been refuted – and notably, it has been reviewed in at least one peer-reviewed publication. In 2004, Prof. Lester L. Grabbe (a respected historian of ancient Judaism) published a scathing review of Furuli’s first volume in the Journal for the Study of the Old Testament. Grabbe characterized Furuli as “an amateur who wants to rewrite scholarship” and dismantled his arguments about Persian chronology and the 70 years. Grabbe highlighted how Furuli’s methodology cherry-picks data and relies on naive literalism of biblical texts (ancient history - When was Jerusalem destroyed by the Babylonians? - History Stack Exchange). So the idea that Furuli has not been addressed “in peer review” is simply wrong – it has, and the verdict was negative.

  Beyond formal journals, subject matter experts have weighed in. The renowned Assyriologist Dr. Hermann Hunger (University of Vienna) authored a detailed critique of Furuli’s second volume, pointing out egregious errors in how Furuli handled Babylonian astronomical texts (this review was made available online to inform interested readers). Hunger, an authority on cuneiform astronomy, showed that Furuli’s interpretations of tablets like VAT 4956 were flawed and that his proposed chronologies were untenable. Likewise, analyst H.G. Halsey published a three-part examination of the Watchtower’s use of VAT 4956, further refuting Furuli’s astronomical claims with meticulous analysis. These are serious, substantive refutations – the fact they weren’t printed in Watchtower-friendly venues doesn’t erase them.

  The lack of multiple peer-reviewed rebuttals is not a sign of Furuli’s strength but of its fringe status. Academic journals rarely waste pages rebutting every fringe theory (especially one self-published by its author, as Furuli’s books were). It’s telling that when Furuli attempted to present his work to actual experts, it did not persuade them – it drew criticism. In scholarly discourse, silence does not equal endorsement. By this logic, one could claim young-earth creationism is “unrefuted in peer review” – which is misleading, since mainstream scholars consider it already refuted by basic science and thus don’t engage on its terms. Furuli’s chronology is analogous: it’s so at odds with established evidence that specialists see little to debate. In sum, Furuli’s research is far from unrefuted. It has been addressed and found wanting by those qualified to evaluate it (ancient history - When was Jerusalem destroyed by the Babylonians? - History Stack Exchange). The onus was on Furuli to convince experts with solid evidence, but he has not – instead his work has been largely ignored in academia because it lacks merit, not because it’s unassailable.

  Claim 9: Critics Don’t Use Furuli’s Methodology, So Rebuttals Are Invalid

  JW Claim: Critics of Furuli (and the 607 BCE chronology) haven’t followed the same “methodology” Furuli used; therefore, their counter-arguments are supposedly flawed or irrelevant. In other words, unless one replicates Furuli’s exact approach, one cannot properly refute his conclusions.

  Rebuttal: This argument tries to deflect criticism by moving the goalposts. The true test of any methodology is whether it yields a coherent, evidence-supported result – and Furuli’s does not. His methodology essentially involved discarding or downplaying vast amounts of standard data (like thousands of cuneiform tablets and well-established king lists) while giving outsized weight to a few ambiguous or speculative points that might support a longer timeline. Scholars are right not to emulate such a flawed approach. Instead, critics evaluate Furuli’s claims with sound historical method, examining all evidence, not just a select subset.

  In fact, analyzing Furuli’s work reveals that his methodology is riddled with inconsistencies and special pleading. For instance, Furuli speculated that the astronomers’ observations might be fraught with errors, hoping to invalidate well-dated tablets like VAT 4956 – yet he accepted another astronomical tablet (Strm. Kambys 400) because the Watchtower had used it in support of 607. This double standard is not how valid methodology works. Critics rightly point out such inconsistencies rather than reproducing them. As another example, Furuli lifted outdated figures from Whiston’s 18th-century translation of Josephus, leading him to claim “Josephus said Nebuchadnezzar reigned 43 years, Evil-Merodach 18, Neriglissar 40,” etc. – numbers we now know are textually corrupt. A proper method would use current critical texts, which Furuli didn’t; critics justifiably corrected this without needing to repeat Furuli’s error-laden process.

  The suggestion that one must use Furuli’s methodology to refute him is like saying astronomers must use Ptolemy’s geocentric model to prove heliocentrism. In reality, one demonstrates the flaws in a method by showing how it contradicts the evidence or established principles. That’s exactly what has been done. Experts have shown Furuli’s approach conflicts with primary sources and even internal logic. For example, Furuli’s “Oslo Chronology” needed to conjure up extra kings or longer reigns to add 20 years; he scoured a damaged tablet for the phrase “ruled for three years” to posit an unknown king, a leap his own source material couldn’t support. Highlighting this desperate leap is a valid refutation; one need not engage in the same speculative treasure hunt to show it’s baseless. In short, critics have no obligation to adopt a faulty methodology. Their task – which they have done – is to expose its faults, and they’ve done so by relying on sound historical and textual analysis. The academic consensus remains that Furuli (and thus Watchtower) methodology is fundamentally flawed, as it requires dismissing an avalanche of consistent data in favor of tenuous reinterpretations. A methodology that produces such skewed results is not one to emulate – it’s one to reject.

  Claim 10: A 20-Year Gap Confirms Watchtower Dating (607 BCE vs. 587 BCE)

  JW Claim: There is a 20-year gap between secular history’s timeline and the Bible’s (as interpreted by Watchtower). Specifically, secular historians date Jerusalem’s fall around 587 BCE, whereas Watchtower says 607 BCE – a difference of about 20 years. This gap itself “proves” secular chronology is missing 20 years, thereby “validating” the Watchtower’s 607 BCE date.

  Rebuttal: This reasoning is completely circular – it assumes what it needs to prove. Yes, the Watchtower chronology and the academic chronology diverge by about 20 years for the Neo-Babylonian period. But that gap is exactly the issue in question, not evidence to end the debate. To “confirm” Watchtower dating, one must show positive evidence for those extra 20 years. And all evidence actually runs contrary to the gap. Decades of research into Babylonian records have found no hint of an extra 20 years inserted anywhere. On the contrary, every reliable source from that era lines up with the shorter chronology (587 BCE). For instance:

  • Contemporary King Lists: Ancient Babylonian king lists and chronicles (such as the Uruk King List and Babylonian Chronicle series) enumerate the reigns of Neo-Babylonian kings with no large breaks. Summing those reigns from Nebuchadnezzar’s accession to the fall of Babylon yields about 66–67 years, not 86–87. There is simply no 20-year void where an unrecorded king or extended reign could hide.
  • Business Tablets: Tens of thousands of dated economic tablets exist from Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon and his successors. These tablets cover every year in sequence – they “fill in” year after year with contracts, receipts, etc., all dated to a specific king’s year. Scholars can trace families and officials through these documents continuously from Nabopolassar through Nabonidus. If 20 extra years existed, we would expect at least a gap or some anomaly in these archives. We find none. The continuity of documents from Nebuchadnezzar’s 1st year through the fall of Babylon is a strong practical confirmation of the traditional timeline.
  • Astronomical Tablets: Perhaps most decisively, several Babylonian astronomical records pin absolute dates to Babylonian regnal years, making it impossible to stretch or move those years. One famous example is the astronomical diary VAT 4956, which records planetary and lunar positions in Nebuchadnezzar’s 37th year. The only year that matches its detailed observations is 568 BCE (not 588 BCE). Another set of texts, the lunar eclipse tablets LBAT 1419, 1420, 1421, list lunar eclipses in specific regnal years of Nebuchadnezzar – these also align perfectly with 590s–580s BCE dates, locking Nebuchadnezzar’s 18th year to 587 BCE. In total, at least five astronomical texts from Nebuchadnezzar’s reign (including VAT 4956 and others) “inexorably block” any attempt to shift his reign by even one year, let alone twenty. The motions of planets and eclipses simply do not lie – they are like time-stamped photographs of the sky. For the Watchtower’s 607 BCE to be true, all these tablets would either have to be fraudulent or wildly misdated by ancient scribes, which credible experts like Dr. Hunger vehemently reject.

  In light of this overwhelming evidence, historians conclude there is no missing 20 years – the gap exists only in the Watchtower’s interpretation. That interpretation originates from a dogmatic need to make “70 years” fit a particular theology, not from neutral analysis of data. Indeed, to bridge the gap, Watchtower defenders have proposed far-fetched theories (e.g. inventing new kings or equating known figures like Nabonidus’s son with extra rulers). Furuli’s “Oslo Chronology” tried both strategies: he speculated that a Babylonian text’s mention of a king ruling “for three years” might hint at an unknown king, and he even argued Babylonian king Kandalanu was actually Nabopolassar under another name – all to shuffle the timeline around. These hypotheses have been thoroughly debunked. For instance, the “King for 3 years” line comes from a damaged prophecy text and is far too flimsy to assert a new monarch; meanwhile, equating Kandalanu with Nabopolassar contradicts both historical and astronomical data (the reign of Kandalanu is firmly fixed in the 640s BCE by a tablet of Saturn observations). In short, the only way to insert 20 extra years is to rewrite history with unsubstantiated speculation – and even then, the sky itself (astronomy) refutes it.

  Therefore, instead of confirming Watchtower dating, the “20-year gap” claim simply highlights that Watchtower chronology stands 20 years apart from reality. All real evidence confirms the conventional timeline (with Jerusalem’s fall in 587/586 BCE), leaving 607 BCE as an outlier based on misinterpretation. As one former Witness publication aptly put it: “The cosmic fingerprint doesn’t lie… Watchtower chronology doesn’t stand a chance.” (ancient history - When was Jerusalem destroyed by the Babylonians? - History Stack Exchange)
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  The point of existence and how it refutes the Trinity

  by slimboyfat in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  rowan williams, the former archbishop of canterbury gave an interesting answer to the somewhat stark question, what’s the point of us existing?

  as a christian, my starting point is that we exist because the most fundamental form of activity, energy, call it what you like, that is there, is love.

  that is, it’s a willingness that the other should be.

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  aqwsed12345

  @Blotty

  You're mistaken in both your historical and theological assessments, and your response reveals not only a misunderstanding of early Christian theology but also a refusal to deal honestly with the evidence as it stands. Let me respond directly, without evasion, distortion, or rhetoric. The issue here is not whether one simply finds the word "creator" used verbatim in every instance, but whether the early Church Fathers—especially Justin Martyr and Tertullian—understood Christ as the pre-existent Logos, divine in nature, and the active agent of creation. And the answer is clearly yes.

  You question where Justin Martyr or Tertullian call Christ "Creator." The answer is found in Justin Martyr's First Apology (Chapter 60), where he states that the Logos "is the first-begotten of God, and is God" and that through Him, God created all things. This is an unmistakable identification of the Son as the agent of creation. You also ignore Dialogue with Trypho (Chapter 62), where Justin argues that the "Lord" who appeared to Abraham and who created man in Genesis 1:26 (“Let us make man in our image”) was the Logos—whom he calls "God" and through whom all things came into being. He even goes as far as to say that the Logos is “God” (theos) and distinct from the Father as His “numerically distinct” but not ontologically inferior Word.

  Your claim that Justin merely meant “a god” in Ex.7:1/Ps.83-sense by using allos theos (another god) is another misreading. The Greek language often used the term theos without the article (ho theos) in reference to divine persons in a nuanced way. In fact, Justin is grappling with the same distinction that John's Gospel makes in John 1:1—“and the Word was God (theos en ho logos)”—where the Logos is fully divine but distinct in person from the Father. Justin clearly upholds monotheism while affirming that the Son is divine and not a creature. The use of allos theos does not mean a different kind of god, nor does it mean “a lesser being”; it affirms a second divine person. If Justin were an Arian or subordinationist in the sense you imply, he would not have said that the Son is worshipped and prayed to (First Apology, ch. 67) along with the Father and the Spirit—something utterly blasphemous for a Jew unless Christ is truly God.

  Tertullian, in his Against Praxeas, is explicit: “The Word, therefore, is both always in the Father, as He says, ‘I am in the Father;’ and is always with God, according to what is written, ‘And the Word was with God;’ and never separate from the Father, or other than the Father, since ‘I and the Father are one.’” (Adv. Praxean, 8). And in chapter 5: “Everything was created by Him, and without Him nothing was made.” Again, this is a direct echo of John 1:3, affirming the Son’s role in creation. If Christ creates everything, then He is not a creature. If He is eternally with the Father and consubstantial, as Tertullian argues, then He shares the divine nature fully.

  But I'll gladly throw the ball back to you, answer which pre-Nicene church father explicitly said that

  • the Father "created" (epoisen, ἐποίησεν) the Son
  • the Son is the Archangel Michael
  • the Holy Spirit is identical with the power of God (dynamis)

  ...and I could list the distinctive doctrines of the JWs. So the naive (and completely false) historical perception of church history, that "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away”, there once was a proto-JW church, only that "evil" Constantine "corrupted" it just because he loved paganism so so much. It is quite unfair and dishonest that while you JWs expect us to present explicit doctrinal precision from the Church Fathers' writing, there is not even traces for your distinctive doctrines in the early Christian sources.

  You challenge my interpretation of John 17:3 as if the "separation" between the Father and the Son negates the Son's divinity. But as I made clear, that this verse simply asserts monotheism, not unitarianism, and Trinitarians have never denied that the Father is here ho theos, the “only true God”—rather, they affirm that the Son and Spirit share in that very nature, not by being identical persons, but by being of the same divine essence (homoousios). You seem to misunderstand the very foundations of Trinitarian theology: the unity of essence and the distinction of persons. John 17:3 is a relational statement within the economy of salvation, not an ontological disqualification of Christ’s deity. The prayer is about eternal life through knowledge of both the Father and the Son—the Greek kai unites them in one salvific knowledge. You ask: “Why are the other two not mentioned as part of the ‘only true God’?” But the Son is mentioned in the same breath—and that is the point. The Spirit, as John 14–16 shows, comes from both the Father and the Son, proceeding from them and glorifying the Son. Trinitarianism is not a slogan but a coherent synthesis of the entire scriptural witness.

  Your reference to Eusebius betrays the usual misuse of history to support a conspiracy theory. Yes, there was a development in rhetoric—because heresies demanded clarity. The faith was defined, not ”invented” at Nicaea. Eusebius himself signed the Nicene Creed, affirming homoousios. The shift was not a corruption of doctrine but the articulation of what the Church had always believed and taught, even if the philosophical language had not yet been developed. The early Fathers, far from suppressing dissent with violence, engaged in rigorous theological disputation. The fact that heresy was sometimes met with political resistance later does not falsify the substance of Nicene orthodoxy. You are importing Enlightenment tropes of ecclesial tyranny into a period where the Church was, in fact, under immense pressure from both pagan and imperial forces.

  As for the ad hominem jabs—calling me dishonest or deluded—these only show the weakness of your argument. If you can’t address the content, attacking the person is poor form and beneath serious theological dialogue. You said you would not engage further unless I show respect. I have shown nothing but intellectual honesty, citing primary sources, engaging your claims fairly, and refusing to caricature your position. But intellectual honesty also demands clarity and correction when truth is distorted.

  You asked for substance. I have given you the Fathers, the Greek grammar, the historical context, the theological categories, and the scriptural framework. Your rejection of the Trinity is not biblical fidelity—it is a rejection of the full revelation of God in Christ. To deny the Son’s divinity is to stand against the Gospel itself. As Athanasius said, “He became what we are, that we might become what He is.” If Christ is not truly God, then we are not truly redeemed. That’s the truth—not rhetorical sleight of hand, but the confession of the Church, the apostles, and Christ Himself.