Is Jesus Christ a created being (Begotten Son) or has He always existed alongside God the Father (Eternal Son)?

Faith & Science Conversation
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while it’s true that the Greek word plērōma (translated “fullness”) carried philosophical weight in certain Hellenistic circles, especially among Gnostics and Platonists, its use in Colossians 2:9 is firmly rooted in Paul’s theological declaration, not in borrowed pagan philosophy. Paul was not trying to introduce a philosophical nuance but rather to make an unambiguous, Spirit-inspired statement: “For in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” That word plērōma here simply and powerfully means the entirety, completeness, and total expression of the Divine Nature—not a portion, not an emanation, but all that God is—dwelling permanently in the person of Jesus Christ in bodily form. Paul is not appealing to Greek philosophy; he is directly confronting it. Gnostics said divinity couldn’t dwell in matter—Paul says God did. And not partially, but fully. So the “hint” isn’t in philosophy—it’s in revelation. Jesus isn’t a reflection of deity or a conduit of divine light—He is God Himself in revealed flesh.

I hear your concern, but I assure you, my understanding of the Trinity doctrine is not based on caricature or ignorance—it’s based on years of study, prayer, and careful comparison of creedal theology with the full witness of Scripture. The traditional doctrine of the Trinity, as defined by councils and creeds, posits that within the one divine essence there are three distinct persons ( internal division)—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—each fully God, co-equal, co-eternal, yet not each other. That framework introduces three centers of self-awareness within the one divine Being, even if proponents insist these “persons” are not separate beings. What I am presenting is not a misunderstanding of the Trinity but a deliberate rejection of its internal division in favor of biblical, apostolic Oneness—that God is indivisibly One, not merely in essence, but in identity. Deuteronomy 6:4 declares, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD,” and the New Testament affirms that this one God was manifest in the flesh as Jesus Christ (1 Timothy 3:16). I do not deny the Father, Son, or Holy Ghost—I understand them not as three persons, but as manifestations or roles of the one true God, revealed in different ways across time (simultaneously not sequentially like Modalism) and fully in the man Christ Jesus. This is not confusion—it is the glorious mystery of godliness, revealed to those who seek Him in Spirit and in truth.

With respect, appealing to New Testament Greek grammar as the sole foundation for the doctrine of the Trinity oversimplifies the issue and misunderstands the role of language in theology. Grammar can show distinction between speakers or roles, but it cannot, on its own, establish ontological divisions within the Godhead. Just because the Father speaks to the Son, or the Son prays to the Father, does not necessitate separate divine persons any more than David speaking to his own soul (Psalm 42:5) means he is multiple beings. The language of Scripture accommodates the incarnation—God manifest in flesh (1 Timothy 3:16)—and reveals a real distinction between deity and humanity in the person of Jesus Christ. The Son is not a pre-existent person alongside the Father, but the man through whom the invisible God chose to reveal Himself (John 1:18; Colossians 1:15). Greek grammar affirms the reality of the incarnation, not an eternal plurality within God. The true foundation is not grammatical distinction, but divine revelation: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD” (Deuteronomy 6:4), and Jesus is the visible image of that one invisible God—not a second divine person, but God with us (Matthew 1:23).

These Scriptures below show no face to face intimacy in eternity past.

  • Isaiah 44:6: “Thus saith the LORD the King of Israel, and his redeemer the LORD of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God.”
  • Isaiah 44:8: “Fear ye not, neither be afraid: have not I told thee from that time, and have declared it? ye are even my witnesses. Is there a God beside me? yea, there is no God; I know not any.”
  • Isaiah 45:5: “I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me: I girded thee, though thou hast not known me:”
  • Isaiah 45:21: “Tell ye, and bring them near; yea, let them take counsel together: who hath declared this from ancient time? who hath told it from that time? have not I the LORD? and there is no God else beside me; a just God and a Saviour; there is none beside me.”
  • Isaiah 46:9: “Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me,”
  • Deuteronomy 32:39: “See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand.”
  • Isaiah 43:11: “I, even I, am the LORD; and beside me there is no saviour.”
  • Hosea 13:4: “Yet I am the LORD thy God from the land of Egypt, and thou shalt know no god but me: for there is no saviour beside me.”

It’s not adding to the text—it’s rightly interpreting it in light of the whole counsel of Scripture and the Hebrew understanding of monotheism. Deuteronomy 6:4 declares, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD.” The Hebrew word for “one” (echad) in this context doesn’t imply a compound unity, but a singular, indivisible essence. This is not an imposition on the text but a faithful rendering of what Moses and the Hebrew people understood about God—that He is not divided in personhood or being.

To say that the Father is not the Son and the Son is not the Spirit, yet each is fully and distinctly God, is to introduce a structure within the divine identity that Scripture itself never reveals. That’s not clarity—it’s theological layering born from post-biblical development. Oneness theology doesn’t add to the text; rather, it guards the simplicity and purity of biblical monotheism by affirming that God has revealed Himself as one undivided person—manifesting Himself as Father in creation, Son in redemption, and Holy Ghost in regeneration. The Incarnation was not the arrival of a second divine person but the self-revelation of the one true God in visible form (John 1:14; Colossians 2:9; 1 Timothy 3:16). This is not an addition to Scripture—it’s a return to it.

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That would depend on which passages you are looking at. All three “persons” are mentioned individually and at least once all in the same sentance.

The Trinity model is just a human way to try and explain how God can be everywhere yet in one place with Jesus and as a spirit within us. It works as long as you do not psh it or labur the point. The Nicene creed used to include an anathema but it was removed. Dogma is less encouraged nowerdays.

Richard

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I fail to see how that isn’t chopping Christ into two pieces. When He prayed, He prayed as one being, as the enfleshed Logos. If He prayed only as a man, then you’re splitting the natures.
The wondrous mystery of it is that God prayed – not just a man, not just the human nature, but a whole Person, God and Man at once! What better way to urge people to pray than to point out that God Himself prayed!

Nestorian language again. Sure, it doesn’t rise to what was condemned at the Council, but the fathers at the council used the polemic of those who opposed Nestorius; his actual writings (what little we have) sound just like you do.
Christ suffered – man and God. Indeed as many have argued, of God did not suffer then we have no redemption, for the suffering on one man cannot possibly atone for any other, only for himself – and in Christ;s case, that would have been pointless as He had nothing to suffer for. But if God suffered, then that suffering was infinite and can cover any and all requirements for suffering!

That’s the moral model of the Atonement, that God’s love set an example. But Paul and the rest are clear that the Atonement, while it certainly included that, was far more.
Jesus said that there is no greater love than that where a man lays down his life for a friend – but on the Cross, God laid down His life for us!

And right there again is a place where the Fathers saw two Persons: Yahweh in heaven looking down as Yahweh on earth suffered.
And that was true of Christ;s entire earthly life: His suffering began when the immensity of divinity confined Himself to a single cell and it continued every hour during which He was confined to a human body! It struck me while watching an episode of The Chosen what agony it must have been to heal people, not that healing them was painful but that He could only do it for those He could reach with that limited human body! As man, He was constrained by that body; as God, experiencing a fallen world through human senses, He must have been tortured by all that was wrong and a desire to fix it!

Sufficiently so that at Chalcedon the fathers of the council (both sides!) could only describe what it is not: “without confusion, without change, without division, without separation”.

I’d forgotten that – thanks for including it!

Oh – and there was a strong strain to identify the Logos with the “Sophia” (Wisdom) of the Writings (Proverbs, etc.).

Tied to Isaiah, “I alone am your Savior”, which implied that Messiah had to be divine.

“What He did not assume, He could not redeem.” – Gregory of Nazianzus

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“Pagan”? Jewish philosophy used it as well!

It’s a blatant anti-Gnostic polemic (yes, there was Jewish Gnosticism). It isn’t introducing philosophy, it’s using it to trash a position that said that the “fulness” of God was distant and unapproachable and utterly separate from matter – Paul is saying, “Wrong, guys; that very fulness didn’t just touch matter, it is a Person who became matter”.

What’s interesting is that you then acknowledge that Paul was using it in its philosophical meaning!

Nope – there is no “internal division”; that’s contrary to the doctrine of the Trinity. (hint: the four negations in the Definition of Chalcedon also apply to the Trinity)

There is no “internal division” – that idea can only come from not having actually studied the doctrine. Try reading Aquinas, and (more recently) Rahner.

In other words, you confess to modalism.

That’s just one form of modalism.

So you’re imposing an exterior philosophical position on the plain language. That’s a really lousy way to approach the scriptures.

But David (1) specifically says, “O my soul” and (2) is speaking poetically. You cannot impose the strictures of poetic language onto ordinary language.

Nestorianism again – you’re chopping Christ into two pieces. The Son is Christ, both God and man – Logos and human, where the Logos has always been and has been face-to-face with God.

Nice selection. But set them beside the places in the Old Testament scriptures where there is Yahweh in two places at once, in heaven plus on earth in human form. Yahweh is a Person whether in heaven or on earth, and you can’t make Him into just one Person when there are two on the scene.

Sure it is – those words are not in the verse cited.

To be faithful you have to include the instances where Yahweh is both in heaven and on earth in human form at the same time – that’s two distinct Persons!

This is worth the watch –

(though his diagrams don’t accurately reflect what he’s saying)

It’s to sum up what the scripture says. It’s a structure that the scriptures seem to assume – The Father is Yahweh, the Son is Yahweh, the Spirit is Yahweh, but they are not the same. And each is treated as a person, or Person.

You just added to the text again: the scripture nowhere says they are one person, and in fact it has not only instances where Yahweh above and Yahweh on earth (and Yahweh the Spirit) are all present at once, it has them talking to each other – and “modes” do not talk to each other, persons do!

You’re taking a philosophical position by which you set the unity above the threeness; the Trinity doctrine takes both seriously because it takes all the scripture seriously.

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Technically, the anathema was part of the Nicene declaration of faith, but was not included in the Creed as promulgated at the Council of Constantinople. Nicaea was more interested in condemning error; Constantinople was more interested (apart from the politics) in affirming what was correct teaching – it had its anathemas, but they were addenda, not attached to the Creed.

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St. Raymond, I truly appreciate your passion to preserve the full wonder of the Incarnation—God manifest in the flesh. But let’s be clear: to say Jesus prayed “as a man” is not to divide His person or “chop Christ into two,” but rather to affirm the very mystery the Scriptures present. Hebrews 5:7 says that “in the days of His flesh” He offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears—not because the divine nature needed to pray, but because the human will submitted to the indwelling Spirit of God (John 14:10). That’s not a division of natures—it’s the harmony of them. It’s the Sonship in full submission to the Father, not as a second divine person, but as the perfect, sinless man indwelt by the fullness of God (Colossians 2:9).

Jesus is one Person, yes—but within that one Person are two distinct natures: fully God and fully man. Recognizing when He is acting or speaking from His humanity does not split Him—it reveals Him. Otherwise, we must ask: Did the divine nature sleep? Grow in wisdom? Become hungry? Of course not. These were acts of the real humanity of Christ. And when He prayed, it was not “God praying to God,” but the man Christ Jesus (1 Timothy 2:5) in communion with the eternal Spirit. That’s not theological fragmentation—that’s biblical incarnation. Far from weakening our call to prayer, it strengthens it: if the sinless man Christ Jesus leaned fully on the Spirit, how much more should we?

I understand your concern, but respectfully, conflating proper Christological clarity with Nestorianism misrepresents both the point and the person of Christ. What I affirmed is not a division of two persons but a biblically sound distinction between the divine nature and human nature of the one Lord Jesus Christ. The eternal Spirit of God—the Father—cannot die (1 Timothy 6:16). Scripture is clear that “God is not a man” (Numbers 23:19), and that the man Christ Jesus gave Himself as a ransom (1 Timothy 2:5–6). It was the humanity of Christ, not His divinity, that bled, thirsted, hungered, and ultimately died. To suggest that “God died” in an ontological sense is to enter dangerous theological territory, for God is immortal and cannot cease to exist.

That being said, I affirm fully and joyfully that in Christ, the fullness of the Godhead dwelt bodily (Colossians 2:9). God manifested Himself in flesh (1 Timothy 3:16), and through that union, His suffering had infinite redemptive value—not because the divine nature suffered, but because the One who suffered was both God and man. To say “God suffered” must be clarified as “God in Christ, in His humanity, suffered,” for the divine Spirit did not suffer or die, but rather dwelled fully in the man who did. Otherwise, we not only confuse natures—we risk implying that God is passible and subject to death, which Scripture and sound doctrine both reject. Redemption is secured not by separating Christ, but by honoring the mystery that the man who died is also the very self-expression and manifestation of the eternal God.

Absolutely, —I’m in full agreement with your reflection. The condescension of Almighty God to robe Himself in human flesh is itself a staggering act of divine humility and love. The eternal, all-present, all-powerful Spirit willingly confined His self-expression to the limitations of a single human body—not by ceasing to be God, but by choosing to fully experience our condition through the man Christ Jesus. That incarnation wasn’t just a moment—it was a continual suffering. From conception in Mary’s womb to the final breath on the cross, He endured the weight of frailty, pain, hunger, sorrow, and emotional anguish—not because He had to, but because love compelled Him.

I’ve often meditated on the very thing you pointed out: how agonizing it must have been for the One who could speak worlds into existence to walk among broken people, knowing His divine power, yet limited by the reach of a human hand and the boundaries of time and space. He could only heal the sick in front of Him. He could only preach to those within earshot. And yet He submitted to those constraints out of perfect obedience and love. The suffering didn’t begin at Calvary—it began in Bethlehem. And in every moment between, He bore the quiet grief of perfection walking through a world fractured by sin. That’s why Isaiah said He was “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” He felt it all—not just at the Cross—but in every heartbeat of His earthly walk. And that, to me, is part of the beauty of the Gospel: He didn’t just die for us—He lived among us, felt the fallenness of this world, and chose to endure it all, so we could be redeemed.

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The thing that bothers me about all this, very similar to creationism, is the notion that God has this pressing need to explain such things to us. I don’t think so and thus I think we are making a heck of a lot up out of random bits of prose and poetry. I don’t think the Bible is a “divine dynamics for dummies” book any more than it is a “creation for dummies” book.

I don’t mind explaining why I like the doctrine of the Trinity. But that is about as far as I think I can reasonably go.

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I hear your assertion that the doctrine of the Trinity denies internal division, but we must follow the implications of its own framework. If within the one divine essence there exist three distinct persons, each with their own center of consciousness, will, and relational awareness—then by definition, that is an internal division. You cannot affirm three distinct “I’s” who can speak to, send, glorify, or love one another without affirming an internal multiplicity. The moment you say the Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Spirit, and yet each is fully God, then you’ve introduced three minds, not one undivided being.

The “four negations” of Chalcedon (no confusion, no change, no division, no separation) may have been intended to preserve unity, but they can’t logically hold together when applied to a doctrine that also insists on personal distinctions within the Godhead. The biblical witness does not present God as three self-aware persons in one being—it reveals one God who expresses Himself in different ways, but never divides His essence. If God has three who’s within one what, and each “who” is fully conscious, then the divine essence is internally partitioned, even if that language is uncomfortable. The Trinity doctrine, as historically articulated, does not escape internal division—it simply masks it behind philosophical terms that contradict biblical simplicity.

(Have to take my mom to hospital, will continue later. Probably after prayer meeting at Church.)

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Those are two different categories: the first few are things that the entire Christ experienced because of the human nature, the second is something a whole person does – when Christ prayed, Christ prayed.

You’re trying too hard to impose external categories onto the text.

I see a refusal to accept the Incarnation! If the Logos “became flesh”, then when that flesh prayed, the Logos prayed. You can’t divide things when one of those things is identical with the other.

That’s what Nestorius said.

That divides the natures. It was the whole Christ who “bled, thirsted”, etc.

It’s to acknowledge what Paul calls the “mystery of godliness”.

It began at the Annunciation, which is when (traditionally) the conception took place – nine months before Bethlehem. Bethlehem is just when the Suffering One appeared as a separate human being.

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No – this shows you haven’t studied theology; since at least the fourth century there has been a line drawn between “distinct” and “divided”. A distinction is not a division. Noting that there is a distinction between a photon as particle and as wave does not divide the photon, it distinguishes – the photon is fully wave yet fully particle, always (as well as being a disturbance in a field, three things at once, each one of them the whole thing yet not being each other).

True – but a multiplicity of distinction, not of division.

Sure, if you want to restrict God to human limitations.

I think it was C.S. Lewis who suggested that what in a human is a personality trait should be expected in the divine to rise to the level of not merely distinct traits but distinct persons. So fatherness is not merely an aspect of God, it is a Person, the Father; son-ness is not merely an aspect of God, it is a Person; etc.

This actually makes mathematical sense, BTW, though it’s one of those things I could only follow while looking at an explanation; n-dimensional geometry always kind of eluded me.

It escaped internal division because it denies it. And it doesn’t contradict biblical simplicity, it merely sums it up.

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Thoughts?

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Let’s see–

That “ascends” at the bottom should be “sends”, since that is what Jesus said He would do with the Spirit.
In the center, the Name of God is YHWH; Jesus is the name of the Incarnate Logos.
At the bottom left, “immaterial soul” is in conflict with the OT definition.

And I’m not sure about any of the outer arrows!

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preceed in that context isnt talking about time of birth of the deity that is Christ. How do we know this…read isaiah 9:6 for one where clearly “the wonderful counsellor, mighty God, everlasting Father” are all referring to Christ!
If Christ is also Mighty God and Everlasting Father, then logically (and scientifically for that matter) the Father can not “preceed” him in the sense that you are trying to forward there. Very obviously, the use of the word preceed there has a different meaning from your inference that he existed before the Son (or the Hoy Spirit).

This is the main reason why the Trinitarian doctrine does not make claims about who came first in the Godhead. The belief is, God has always existed…God never had a beginning, nor did the other 2 of the Godhead “members” (if you will) the the Holy Spirit and Christ (the deity).

It is only the “Son of Man” (the human form) that had a beginning. Christs “human” beginning came at the time of his conception inside the virgin Mary.

This is why the dual nature of Christ is an important doctrine…the notion of God becomes nonsense when we start claiming Everlasting Father (Isaiah 9:6) in Heaven also had a beginning in 4-2BC.

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“Preceed” both isn’t a word and isn’t in my post – I said “proceeds”, as in when Jesus said that the Spirit proceeds from the Father.

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“Begotten” is a bad translation. “One and only” “unique” or “only one of its kind” is a better translation of μονογενῆ.

Also, it’s stupid to try to explore Christian doctrine apart from Christian teaching (creeds and historical interpretations). The gospel has always been preached by humans who embody God’s Spirit. The truth doesn’t exist in some objective for in the Scriptures for us to mine. We understand what Scripture means because we have been discipled into its meaning from a long succession of people filled with God’s Spirit and discipled by Christ. The Word of God is just a text unless you have the wisdom of God embodied in humans who speak language and participate in cultures and have time and place bound interpretive frames telling you what it means.

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I must gently point out that what you’re defending here leans more on philosophical theology than on the clear language of Scripture. To say the Logos was “face-to-face with God” and then use that to imply two co-equal persons having an interpersonal relationship before the incarnation is to go beyond what the text actually says—and into speculative theology. The Word (Logos) in John 1:1 is not a second person within the Godhead, but rather God’s own self-expression, His divine utterance—the same Word by which He created all things (Psalm 33:6). The Logos is not a body, not a being separate from God, and certainly not someone with whom God has to “face” in a spatial or interpersonal sense. God is a Spirit (John 4:24), and before the incarnation, the Logos had no human form or distinct personhood separate from God Himself. The Son is not eternally alongside the Father as a separate person; the Son is the man Christ Jesus—the Logos made flesh (John 1:14). What you’re describing sounds like a confusion of the incarnation with eternal preexistence, but Scripture makes it plain: the Sonship began in time when the Holy Ghost overshadowed Mary. God’s Word always existed—but it became the Son when it took on humanity. Let’s not let philosophical constructs like “eternal relationships of persons” cloud the beauty of the mystery revealed in Christ: the one true God manifest in flesh (1 Timothy 3:16).

These scriptures are emphatic, declarative, and direct assertions from God Himself declaring there is no other beside Him. These aren’t poetic flourishes or metaphorical shadows; they are divine affirmations of His exclusive identity and indivisible nature. Isaiah 44 through 46 repeatedly says, “There is no God beside me… I know not any.” That statement from the all-knowing God rules out the presence of any other divine person alongside Him in eternity past—on earth or in heaven. When Deuteronomy 32:39 says, “There is no god with me,” the Hebrew is clear—no elohim, no divine being with Him.

Now regarding the appearances of God on earth, such as “Yahweh on earth while Yahweh is in heaven,” these are manifestations, (1 Timothy 3:16 “And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.”) not separate divine persons. The burning bush, the Angel of the LORD, the fourth man in the fire—these are theophanies, not a second person of a divine trinity. God can manifest His presence in any form and any location without dividing His person. He is omnipresent, omnipotent, and sovereign. The visible Yahweh is always the manifested presence of the one true invisible God (1 Timothy 1:17), not another being beside Him.

Scripture harmonizes perfectly when we affirm One God who manifests Himself. The “Word” that became flesh (John 1:14) is not a separate co-equal person eternally beside the Father, but God’s own self-expression made visible in Christ. The man Christ Jesus is both fully human and fully divine—not as two persons, but as one manifestation of the only true God (John 17:3) in flesh. Let us hold tightly to the revelation that in Jesus dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily (Colossians 2:9), and beside Him there truly is no other.

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I appreciate your effort to appeal to analogy and theological tradition, but your response actually confirms the concern rather than resolving it. The philosophical distinction between “distinct” and “divided” may hold rhetorical value in classical Trinitarian theology, but when applied to three “centers of consciousness,” “wills,” and “relational awareness,” the line between distinction and division becomes a semantic shield rather than a meaningful clarification. A single being with three distinct minds, wills, and relationships is, by any plain definition, not one indivisible being but a compound of three persons—each aware of the others, acting distinctly from the others, and relating to the others. That is functional division, regardless of creedal language. The photon analogy, while clever, is flawed: a photon is not conscious, does not speak, love, or send another like the Trinitarian persons are said to do. Unlike a wave-particle duality (which describes one thing manifesting in different forms under observation), Trinitarianism describes three who’s within one what—which cannot be reconciled with the scriptural affirmation of God’s absolute oneness (Deut. 6:4). God is not a mystery of philosophical categories—He is the One Spirit (Eph. 4:4) who became flesh (John 1:14), not one of three relational minds, but the singular, self-revealing God who alone is Savior (Isa. 43:10–11).

I hear your distinction between “multiplicity of distinction” and “division,” but this is precisely where theological wordplay attempts to mask an unresolvable contradiction. If you affirm three distinct “I’s” who possess self-awareness, volition, and relational capacity—capable of speaking to one another, sending one another, loving and glorifying one another—you’ve stepped beyond a simple distinction and entered the territory of personal differentiation, which by definition constitutes internal multiplicity. Call it distinction if you wish, but when those distinctions involve separate acts of will, communication, and consciousness, that is not one undivided Being—it’s three centers of divine identity. Scripture proclaims over and over that God is one (Deut. 6:4), not one essence split among multiple persons, but one indivisible I AM (Isa. 44:6, John 8:58). The biblical God doesn’t merely act as one—He is one in every way: will, consciousness, identity, and being. The only “I” who speaks from Genesis to Revelation is the one eternal Spirit (John 4:24) who manifested Himself in flesh (1 Tim. 3:16), not one of three, but the One and Only. Anything more than one “I” is not just a distinction—it’s division dressed in theological terminology.

Appealing to higher-dimensional logic or C.S. Lewis’s imaginative theology does not resolve the core issue—it deflects it. The concern is not about limiting God to human constraints, but about remaining faithful to how God has chosen to reveal Himself in Scripture. When you say the Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Spirit, and yet each is fully God, each acting, speaking, and willing distinctly, you are not merely describing traits—you are defining three minds and therefore, three centers of identity and will. That’s not biblical monotheism—it’s functional tri-theism, even if cloaked in metaphysical language.

Scripture doesn’t portray “Fatherness” or “Sonship” as separate persons coexisting eternally in a shared divine nature. Rather, the Father is the invisible Spirit (John 4:24), and the Son is the visible manifestation of that same Spirit in flesh (Colossians 1:15; 2:9; 1 Timothy 3:16). “Son” is not an eternal second mind or divine person—it’s the title and role God took on in time to redeem us (Galatians 4:4). To suggest these roles are eternal persons borders on redefining the nature of God through philosophical models rather than divine revelation. God’s oneness is not confined to human understanding, but neither is it confused by man’s philosophical analogies. The God of Scripture is not three relationally distinct minds, but one undivided Spirit who manifested Himself in the Son to save the world, and now dwells in us as the Holy Ghost. That is not limiting God—it is honoring the revelation He gave.

Denying internal division is not the same as escaping it. Simply asserting that “the Trinity denies division” doesn’t resolve the internal complexity inherent in defining God as three distinct persons—each with their own will, consciousness, and relational identity. That’s not summing up biblical simplicity; that’s constructing a metaphysical framework that requires constant qualification to avoid tritheism. The Shema (Deut. 6:4) declares, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD,” a profound and unambiguous statement about the indivisible oneness of God—not a unity of three persons, but a singular, undivided being. Jesus Himself never described God as a tri-personal being but pointed to the Father as the one true God (John 17:3), while also declaring, “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30), not “we are two who share one divine nature.”

The claim that the Trinity “sums up” biblical simplicity overlooks the fact that the apostles never articulated anything remotely resembling the Nicene or Athanasian definitions. Instead, they proclaimed that God was in Christ (2 Cor. 5:19), not alongside Him as another person, but fully embodied in Him (Col. 2:9). So when we say that the doctrine of the Trinity contradicts biblical simplicity, we mean that it introduces post-biblical philosophical complexity that the early believers never taught or needed. Biblical monotheism doesn’t require a tri-personal reinterpretation—it requires faith in the One God who revealed Himself in Christ.

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I appreciate your passion for honoring the historic witness of the Church, but I believe your response dismisses the heart of the matter too quickly. Yes, μονογενής is better understood as “unique” or “one of a kind” rather than simply “begotten” in a biological sense—but that only strengthens the original question: is this uniqueness tied to eternal origin, or is it a revelation of Christ’s redemptive role as the visible manifestation of the invisible God? Scripture does not describe the Son as eternally begotten in the sense of origin from another person within the Godhead. Instead, Hebrews 1:5 and Psalm 2:7 both state, “This day have I begotten thee,” clearly placing the begetting within time, not eternity. The begetting is redemptive, not metaphysical—it’s tied to the Incarnation and Resurrection, not some eternal procession.

Now, while it’s true that God uses Spirit-filled people across generations to proclaim truth, we must never elevate church tradition or creedal formulations above the authority of Scripture itself (2 Timothy 3:16). The Word of God is not “just a text”—it is living and active (Hebrews 4:12), and the Holy Ghost leads each generation into truth (John 16:13), not merely into inherited interpretation. Truth isn’t owned by a tradition—it is revealed by the Spirit to those who hunger for it and search the Scriptures (Acts 17:11). If our doctrine cannot be supported by a plain, Spirit-guided reading of Scripture, no amount of historical repetition or creedal endorsement can make it true.

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The “authority of Scripture” is a construct and is derived from manmade doctrines (of inspiration for example), the same kind you are telling us we can put aside. You can’t invoke a traditional doctrine of Scripture to call for the putting aside of all other traditonal doctrine. I call BS.

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I reject this premise. David in the Hebrew Scriptures was a figure that represented the reality of the Sonship of the Second Person of the Trinity in human form. He was the covenantal Son of God, a bridge between heaven and earth, a mediator between God and Israel, representing God and God’s rule to the Israel and representing/advocating for Israel to God. This is how ancient Israel (and David himself) saw his role and the Psalms attest to this all over the place.

If The Second Person of the Trinity only became the Son of God at the Incarnation, than David, as the covenant Son of God for Israel actually prefigured God instead of prefiguring Jesus, the covenant Son of God for all of humanity. (God incarnate bridging heaven and earth, representing God to humanity and advocating for humanity before God.)

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