The Trinity

Some people seem to think that the Christian doctrine of the Trinity is illogical. This article, for instance, when telling of the Council of Nicaea's affirmation that Jesus is God and of one substance with the Father, says "At Nicaea, the radicals were the orthodox, and theirs was a defiant stand against the idol of reason, the false deity of logic". Sometimes people use the words "reason" and "logic" to express what is actually impressions, imagination or intuition. That might be happening in this article; I see phrases like "it makes more sense" and "sounds reasonable". If that's what they mean by "logical", then maybe the doctrine of the Trinity is illogical. But if "logical" has to do with real logic — truth relations between propositions that express predicates, relations and suchlike — then I'm going to say no.

Is 3 = 1 is illogical? Yes, but 3 and 1 of what? The doctrine of the Trinity is the proposition that God is three persons that have one essence. The careful reader will notice that it's three persons and one essence, and persons and essences are not identical. There's no problem saying there are three persons in one family, four quarts in a gallon, or seven days in a week, so what's the problem? I see two possiblities:

• One possibility is that some people assume that a god is, by definition, a person. God is a person and God is three persons: 1 = 3. All I can say to that is that was never part of the Christian idea of God, and it's obviously not part the Council of Nicaea's idea of God.
• The other possibility is that we understand the doctrine of the Trinity to mean God is one being and three persons, and some people also make the assumption that each person is a distinct being. God is three persons and one being; each person is a being; therefore, God is three beings and one being. But is it really true that all persons are distinct beings?

What makes us consider two things to be different "beings"? It can't be simply because we can make a distinction between them. An electron's mass and an electron's electrical charge are distinct, but they are properties of the same being — the electron. In other words, the word "being" implies something more than distinguishability from other things. It can't be existence. An electron's mass exists. An electron's charge exists. Be we don't call them "beings". If we say that the difference between masses and charges and persons is that mass and charge are properties, but persons are beings, we beg the question. What is the difference between a property and a being? Why can't a person be a property? Considering each human person to be a distinct being makes sense because humans are in every way separable from each other. We each have our own minds. Each of us occupies a different location in space. We can be separated by time. One human individual's existence doesn't necessarily entail another human's existence. I can imagine a world where Abraham Lincoln existed, but I didn't exist. I can imagine a world where Abraham Lincoln existed, but Mary Todd Lincoln didn't exist. I can even imagine a world where Abraham Lincoln existed, but his mother didn't exist. (Surely, Abraham Lincoln must have had a mother, but not necessarily the one that he did have.) But that doesn't work for the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Their existences necessarily require each other, because the relationships between each other are part of each of their definitions. They can't be separated by time, because they are coeternal. They can't be separated by space, because God (or God the Father, at least) is everywhere. That leaves their minds: It seems clear to me from the thoughts that Jesus expressed in the Gospels that he and the Father have their own minds, but I don't see how that amounts to them being separate beings. They seem to have different thoughts, but ultimately, they never disagree, and Jesus never opposes the Father.

Possible Objections

• What decides a person's essential properties? Why is Jesus being Yahweh's son necessary, but Abraham Lincoln being Nancy Lincoln's son not necessary? Also, could there be something arbitrary about how we divide the universe into beings? When we say that one series of sets of molecules defined across time is me, and another is Abraham Lincoln, is it just convention or convenience, and not the expression of some metaphysical reality? Maybe. But that doesn't make the idea of God being three persons and one being self-contradictory. And if there are no metaphysical realities to consider when defining beings and essential properties, then the idea can't be false. The worst we can say is that it is difficult or complicated. But if there really is an all-powerful creator of the universe, what makes you think that such a being wouldn't be complicated or difficult to understand?
• There's a chance that someone might read this and think that I'm committing the heresy of partialism. Partialism (according to Christians who object to partialism, at least; I don't know anyone who is themselves a partialist) is the idea that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are fully God only when they exist together. Sort of like how Captain Planet appears only "by your powers combined", I guess. But that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying they are eternally coexistent. An electron exists where a certain mass and a certain charge are combined into one thing, and mass and charge can exist in other things, but for Father, Son and Holy Spirit, there are no "other things". There is only the Trinity, and the Trinity has always existed and will always exist.