Reasons Why The Bible Presents Unitarianism Not Trinitarianism
The Trinitarian view:
The Modalist view:
The Unitarian view:
Singular pronoun =
Singular pronoun is used of God thousands of times vs. the four times the plural is used (Genesis 1:26, 3:22, 11:7 and Isaiah 6:8)
Know therefore today, and take it to your heart, that the LORD, He is God in heaven above and on the earth below; there is no other. (Deuteronomy 4:39)
“Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one!” (Deuteronomy 6:4)
Deuteronomy 32:39 | Isaiah 43:10-11, 44:6
2) Jesus is always presented as a person distinct from the one God.
“For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Messiah Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5)
“This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus the Messiah whom You have sent” (John 17:3)
“Therefore concerning the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know that there is no such thing as an idol in the world, and that there is no God but one. For even if there are so-called gods whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through him” (1 Corinthians 8:4-6)
“The LORD [HaShem] says to my Lord [adoni]: ‘sit at My right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet’” (Psalm 110:1)
“…God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus the Messiah is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:9-11)
“…let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Messiah–this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2:36)
3) texts that appear to equate Jesus with God have a poetic literary parallel
“…by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities–all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:16-17)
“in these last days [God] has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world” (Hebrews 1:2).
“The LORD by wisdom founded the earth, by understanding He established the heavens” (Proverbs 3:19)
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being” (John 1:1-3)
“When He established the heavens, I was there, when He inscribed a circle on the face of the deep” (Proverbs 8:27, cf. all of chapter 8 of Proverbs)
“As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:10-11)
“The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14)
“No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him” (John 1:18) ["...he who has seen me has seen the Father..." (John 14:9)]
4) Scripture never requires belief in Jesus as God but rather we are to affirm that Jesus is Lord, Messiah, Son of God and Saviour, which are all things that do not necessarily make him God.
“…the Messiah, the son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16)
“these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name” (John 20:31)
“if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9)
[cf. Psalm 110:1, Luke 1:35, Mark 12:32]
5) God possesses certain attributes which are incompatible with human nature.
“now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen” (1 Timothy 1:17)
“[God] alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see: to Him be honor and eternal dominion! Amen” (1 Timothy 6:16)
“let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone” (James 1:13, cf. Luke 22:42)
“but of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone” (Matthew 24:36, cf. 1 John 3:20)
Recovering True Monotheism
Reasons Why the Bible Presents Unitarianism Not Trinitarianism
[take 5 minutes]
As Christians, the questions “who is God?” and “who is Jesus?” are of the utmost importance. The following is a short survey of the Bible to begin to answer those questions. Primarily of importance, we are looking to determine how many persons God is and if Jesus is himself God. To start, let’s define the historical positions on the nature of God and the relationship between the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit:
The Trinitarian view: God is three persons (God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit), each person being fully God, co-eternal, co-essential, and co-equal. In this way, God is not an individual person, but rather three individual persons who each share the substance of “God.” It can be said this way: “God is three whos in one what.” Jesus is God the Son incarnate, making him both fully God the Son and fully human.
The Modalist view: God is one person who manifests Himself in three ways or modes (as Father, Son or Holy Spirit). This can be expressed this way: “God is one who in three whats.” Jesus is God incarnate.
The Unitarian view: God is a single person, the Father, whereas Jesus is God’s direct creation in the womb of Mary, the second Adam, and the Holy Spirit is God’s personal, operational presence in His creation. Jesus is the fully human son of God who functions as God to his people but is not literally God in any sense.
It is almost impossible to approach the Bible without already having one of these perspectives already in mind. The purpose of this short survey is to demonstrate that the Bible actually presents the Unitarian view and that the other views were developed to deal with the Christological passages that seem to imply that Jesus is literally God.
1. God is always presented as singular person.
[take 10 minutes]
God gave us His revelation in common language, which means that we must take the language used as normative. In other words, if God intended to communicate truth to us, He would have had to have done it using a method we can understand. For God to use words that normally mean one thing to us but He actually meant something different, then it is no longer revelation, it is confusion. So, when God consistently uses the first person, singular personal pronoun when referring to Himself, we must take that to mean that He is one person. In normal language, when the words “I,” “me,” “he,” “him,” and “himself” are used, they all refer to one person. The handful of times that the plural personal pronoun is used in reference to God (Genesis 1:26, 3:22, 11:7 and Isaiah 6:8) must be weighed against the thousands of verses that use the singular personal pronoun instead. Besides, when a person uses the first person, plural pronoun, it always refers to one person and at least one other person. Why would we think that isn’t what God meant in those rare instances where He uses a plural pronoun? Why would we suddenly think that it refers to multiple persons within an entity?
As mentioned, there are literally thousands of examples we could look at to find the singular personal pronoun used of God but the following should suffice:
Know therefore today, and take it to your heart, that the LORD, He is God in heaven above and on the earth below; there is no other. (Deuteronomy 4:39)
Here we find Moses referring to God as “He,” meaning God is a single person. The purpose of this verse is to convey that HaShem is the only God in the universe. This, of course, is another of way stating the cardinal creed of Israel: “Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one!” (Deuteronomy 6:4). If God was a Trinity of persons, this verse should read “…the LORD, they are God…” but it does not, it communicates to us that God is one person.
See now that I, I am He, and there is no god besides Me; it is I who put to death and give life. I have wounded and it is I who heal, and there is no one who can deliver from My hand. (Deuteronomy 32:39)
Here we have God speaking in the first person and referring to Himself as “I.” Here God exhausts human language to communicate that He is a single individual and that He alone is God. I submit that the entire concept of multiple persons within the same god is completely foreign to the Bible, whether of the true God or even of false gods. False gods are individual persons as well and here in this verse HaShem declared that those so-called gods do not actual exist for He alone is the only true God.
‘You are My witnesses,’ declares the LORD, ‘and My servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe Me and understand that I am He, before Me there was no God formed, and there will be none after Me. I, even I, am the LORD, and there is no savior besides Me’ (Isaiah 43:10-11).
“Thus says the LORD, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the LORD of hosts: ‘I am the first and I am the last, and there is no God besides Me” (Isaiah 44:6).
Here we find HaShem revealing again that He alone is God and that there are no other gods. The words “I” and “Me” are used to signify that HaShem is a singular personal entity. There is no hint that HaShem is actually three persons. If God is actually three persons then plural pronouns should have been used since it would be deceitful to use singular personal pronouns to refer to the impersonal essence or substance that the three persons of the Trinity share.
2. Jesus is always presented as a person distinct from the one God.
[take 20 minutes]
The Bible clearly presents Jesus as a distinct person from His Father. Even Trinitarians readily admit this, since, from that perspective, the unity between the Father and Jesus is not in that they are the same person but that they share the same essence or substance. In this way, when the Bible distinguishes between Jesus and God the Father, the Trinitarians can affirm this and maintain the doctrine of the Trinity. However, there are instances when Jesus is distinguished from God and the word “God” is not coupled with a further identification (i.e. God the Father). To put it a different way, from a Trinitarian perspective, when the word “god” is used of the one true deity, it can refer to the three persons of the Trinity at once or it can refer to a specific person of that Trinity. So, when the word “God” without any reference to a specific person of the Trinity is used and it is distinguished from Jesus, the Trinitarian has to infer that the Father is meant (or perhaps the Spirit). In this way, the Trinitarian gets to have their cake and eat it too. Conveniently for them, the writers of Scripture can make a distinction between God and Jesus and yet Jesus can still be God because the doctrine of the Trinity does acknowledge the distinction in persons. This, however, is placing a contrived doctrine onto the text of Scripture. What if the writers of Scripture, when distinguishing Jesus from God, were simply saying that Jesus is not to be understood as God?
Take, for example, this creedal statement in 1 Timothy: “for there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Messiah Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5). Unless Paul intended to communicate that Jesus is a mediator between man and himself, the reference to the one God here is a reference to the Father. So, unless Paul intended to convey that Jesus is the mediator between man and one person of the Trinity (the Father, who would then somehow be the “one God”), Jesus here, whom Paul clearly identified as a man, is the mediator between God the Father, the one God, and men. With only a handful of exceptions, the thirteen hundred plus times the word “God” (“theos“) is used in the Apostolic Scriptures, it undeniably refers to the Father. This is because the Father is the only true God, as Jesus himself declared in John: “this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus the Messiah whom You have sent” (John 17:3). In prayer to the Father, Jesus declared that the Father is the only true God. Of course, eternal life is that we have relationship with the Father through Jesus the Messiah, whom the one God has sent. It is true and let us affirm that the only way to God is through the Messiah Jesus but Jesus is not to be confused with the one God.
Consider Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians: “therefore concerning the eating of things sacrificed to idols, we know that there is no such thing as an idol in the world, and that there is no God but one. For even if there are so-called gods whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through him” (1 Corinthians 8:4-6). Here the Father is clearly identified as the one God and once again Jesus the Messiah, our one human Lord, is coupled with his Father. This passage distinguishes between God and Jesus but, of course, recognizes the highly exalted position that Jesus enjoys. This is similar to Psalm 110:1, the most quoted or alluded to passage of the Tanakh in the Apostolic Scriptures.
The first verse of the hundred and tenth Psalm says: “the LORD says to my Lord: ‘sit at My right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet’” (Psalm 110:1). Here, David prophetically records for us a statement from HaShem to David’s Lord. Our English translations blur the distinction made between the first “LORD” and the second “Lord” in this verse. The first “LORD,” in the Hebrew, is actually the Tetragrammaton, that is, the four-letter name of God. The second “Lord” in this verse is actually the Hebrew word “adoni,” which literally means “my lord.” The word “adoni” is never used of God in the Bible but certainly does refer to human superiors. So, like what we saw in John 17:3 and 1 Corinthians 8:6, Jesus is clearly distinguished from the one God, HaShem, but is also coupled with Him.
Again, it is true that Jesus has been highly exalted but his exalted position was granted to him by God and it is for God’s glory. Paul said in Philippians: “…God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus the Messiah is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:9-11). Notice how it is the Father who is identified as God, whereas Jesus is identified as Lord, which is the pattern set by Psalm 110:1. Elsewhere, in Acts, we learn that God highly exalted Jesus and made him both Lord and Messiah: “…let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Messiah–this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2:36). Read through the entire book of Acts (and the rest of the Bible) and you will consistently find the Apostles distinguishing Jesus from God, who is clearly
the Father.
(Not only that, even among Trinitarians, most Christians already relate to God and Jesus through the Unitarian model. Do you believe that Jesus is God’s son and God’s anointed King? Then you are making a distinction between the one God and His human son, Jesus.)
3. Any text that appears to equate Jesus with God has a literary parallel, which proves that it is not to be taken literally.
[take 20 minutes]
In the Apostolic Scriptures, we encounter several passages that on the surface appear to imply that Jesus is literally God. To conclude that, in these passages, the Apostles intended to convey to us that Jesus is literally God is take their words hyper-literally. In other words, when we read and interpret the Bible, we must remember that though we are to take the Bible literally, sometimes the writers of Scripture employ metaphor and symbolism. Additionally, sometimes the Apostles use certain language which the Jewish audience of the day would have understood to be taken poetically and not literally. For example, in Colossians, Paul said: “…by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities–all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:16-17). Similarly, it says in Hebrews: “in these last days [God] has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world” (Hebrews 1:2). Taken out of context and without any knowledge of the Jewish literature of the day, we could conclude that Jesus was the Creator of the universe. However, Paul and the writer to the Hebrews were both using the language that other Jewish writers of the day used of wisdom. For example, Philo said that Wisdom was the agent that God used to create the world (see Christology in the Making, James Dunn, pg. ). Not only that, but in the Hebrew Scriptures we find: “the LORD by wisdom founded the earth, by understanding He established the heavens” (Proverbs 3:19).
So, what did the Apostles intend to convey by equating Jesus with the wisdom of God? Jesus is the wisdom of God in so far that he fully obeyed God and therefore perfectly lived out the wisdom of God found in the commandments. As a human being, Jesus perfectly conveyed to us the right way to live since he always used God’s wisdom. In what way was the universe created through Jesus? Jesus is the creative power of God because God had Jesus in mind when creating the world, specifically in regards to us and our salvation. Additionally, through Jesus we are created anew, destined to live forever. These statements are beautifully poetic and express to us how perfect and Godly Jesus was and is.
In the first chapter of the gospel of John we find: “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being” (John 1:1-3). John clearly echoes the first line from the book of Genesis when he says “in the beginning.” In fact, the Hebrew name for the book of Genesis is Breisheet which we translate as “in the beginning.” Therefore, with just the first line, John intends for us to think of the Torah. This informs what John meant when he used the word “logos,” which is translated into English as “word.” In Jewish thinking, the Torah is God’s own expression of Himself to Israel (and the world), His very word. In the Torah we can learn about who God is and what He expects of mankind. Through God’s commandments, mankind can know God’s wisdom. This wisdom, the expression of God, was poetically personified in the book of Proverbs: “when He established the heavens, I was there, when He inscribed a circle on the face of the deep” (Proverbs 8:27, cf. all of chapter 8 of Proverbs). No one in ancient Israel took the personification of wisdom in the book of Proverbs literally, as if there was a lady named Wisdom there with God at creation. Instead, personifying God’s attributes is way of expressing the transcendent God. The personification of the word here in the first chapter of John should be understood in a similar vein.
To speak of God’s word being with God and being God is just another way to communicate how God expresses Himself and that this expression accurately represents Him. Just as the words we speak express our thoughts and represent who we are, so too does God’s word (His speech) express who He is and represents Him perfectly. We should keep in mind however, that a person’s speech is not literally the person but rather represents the person. This, of course, is highly philosophical and esoteric but this is how John chose to present his version of the story of Jesus.
If we are correct in thinking that the word that John has in mind is God’s speech which brought creation into existence as conveyed to us in the Torah then we can be sure that any personification of the word is purely for poetical reasons. In Genesis, God’s word is not to be understood as a second person but rather the expression of God. John would not be the first Biblical writer to attribute personality to God’s word. Isaiah recorded the words of God as follows: “as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:10-11). Here, God’s word is sent on a mission and accomplishes the task assigned to it but God’s word should not be understood to be a literal person.
When we come to verse 14 of the first chapter of John, we find: “the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). It is at this point that we can rightly speak of the word being a literal person, in the sense that God’s word was embodied in the human being, Jesus of Nazareth. It is correct to say that Jesus is the word of God made flesh because he is the direct creation of God who perfectly expresses God to the world in regards to being a man. This informs what is written later in the first chapter of John: “no one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him” (John 1:18). Whether the text says “the only begotten God” or “the only begotten Son” (the manuscripts differ on this) is irrelevant because what is being communicated is that Jesus is the ultimate created representative of the one God. Jesus is the new Adam, the image of the invisible God, which means he represents God. In fact, Jesus represents God so perfectly that he could say: “…he who has seen me has seen the Father…” (John 14:9).
4. Scripture never requires belief in Jesus as God but rather we are to affirm that Jesus is Lord, Messiah, Son of God and Saviour, all things that do not necessarily make him God.
[take 10 minutes]
There is never a place where the Bible calls for belief that Jesus is God. When Jesus asks Peter who he thought he was, Peter’s reply was to declare that Jesus was “…the Messiah, the son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16); Jesus’ approval of Peter’s declaration should signal to us that there wasn’t more to be learned about Jesus’ nature. Similarly, at the end of the book of John we read: “these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name” (John 20:31). Consider also Paul’s words in Romans: “if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9). Search through the Scriptures and you will never find anything that requires people to believe that Jesus is literally God.
Surely, we must affirm that Jesus is our Lord (cf. Psalm 110:1), God’s anointed, the one who was directly created in the womb of Mary, making him God’s only begotten son (cf. Luke 1:35). To confess Jesus as Lord is to confess that he is your God-appointed human superior. Jesus is the one we must pledge allegiance to and imitate because he is God’s chosen and perfect representative. Jesus is the son of God because he was begotten in the womb of a virgin. To say that Jesus is God is to make nonsense the words “son of” in the title “son of God.”
Additionally, similar to the instance in Matthew 16, in Mark 12 we find another opportunity for Jesus to teach that he is to be included in the definition of the nature of God and that there was more to God than simply understanding Him to be one person. In affirming Jesus’ statement that the Shema was the greatest of all the commandments, the scribe said: “right, Teacher; you have truly stated that HE IS ONE, AND THERE IS NO ONE ELSE BESIDES HIM” (Mark 12:32). Again, notice the use of singular personal pronouns in reference to the one God. Not only did Jesus not go on to say that there was more to learned about the nature of God, he complimented the scribe, saying that he was not far from the kingdom.
5. God possess certain attributes which are incompatible with human nature, namely, God possesses intrinsic immortality, whereas Jesus died.
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The last thing we can look at in this short study is the issue of how God can become a man. The classical Trinitarian position is that Jesus was both fully man and fully God. From this view, though Jesus has two natures, he is still one person. On this surface, this view appears to satisfy the conundrum that the Scriptures seem to speak of Jesus both in terms of being a man and being God. Digging a little deeper, however, we find that there are certain characteristics of God and man that are simply incompatible. Foremost is that of that fact that God is intrinsically immortal, whereas man is mortal.
In Paul’s first epistle to Timothy, it says: “now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen” (1 Timothy 1:17). Here, Paul clearly identifies the only God as being immortal and invisible. Not only that, he went on to say in that same epistle that God “alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see: to Him be honor and eternal dominion! Amen” (1 Timothy 6:16). It does not take much convincing of any thinking Christian that Jesus was mortal and visible!
From the so-called orthodox Christian perspective, Jesus was both fully God and fully man but yet was still one person (Jesus did not have two centers of consciousness). If this was the case, then how is it possible to say that the God part of him lived on but the human part of him died? Does that have any meaning? Death is the cessation of life, the cessation of consciousness. Doesn’t it make more sense that Jesus was a man and that when he died, he actually died?
God cannot be tempted, as it says in James: “let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone” (James 1:13), but Jesus was tempted. If Jesus is God then the temptation that he endured from Satan was a charade. Not only that, if Jesus cannot actually be tempted to sin, it diminishes his decision to give himself as a ransom for his people. Thankfully, despite the temptation to do otherwise, Jesus said to God: “yet not my will, but Yours be done” (Luke 22:42).
God knows everything (1 John 3:20) but Jesus didn’t know the time of his return, as it says in Matthew: “but of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone” (Matthew 24:36). Are there secrets within the Godhead? Is Jesus able to limit the God part of himself?
I submit that, despite paying lip service to it, no one actually believes in the doctrine that states Jesus is both fully God and fully man. Taking what’s written about Jesus in the Gospels, you will either understand him to be God functioning as man or man functioning as God. Trinitarians have to explain away the parts of the Gospels that clearly show Jesus to be a man. When Jesus does not know the time of his second coming, at this moment, from the Trinitarian perspective, Jesus is simply functioning as man and the God part of him is somehow being limited. When Jesus died, the human part of Jesus died but the God part continued to live. So, is Jesus’ consciousness in the human part or the God part? If it’s in the God part, then why did he not know the time of his second coming? If it’s in the human part, then how can we say that the God part continued to live on when his human part died? The doctrine that Jesus is both fully God and fully man simply does not hold up under scrutiny. Instead, Jesus is fully human and, as a perfect human being, he represents God to us; Jesus functions as God to us but is not literally God.
