Reference
BibleRef
Reference pages used for BibleRef-first links to Scripture passages.
BibleRef, accessed June 16, 2026.
Open sourceArgument
The Trinity Is Monotheism
The Trinity is the Christian confession that the one God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, not a claim that three independent gods exist.
Christian argument should reject caricatures of tritheism while showing why the biblical data forces more than a bare unitarian description of God.
Premises
- 1 Scripture teaches that there is one God.
- 2 The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are personally distinguished in the New Testament.
- 3 Divine names, works, worship, and agency are applied to the Son and the Spirit without abandoning one-God confession.
Deny the false choice
The biblical choice is not between one isolated divine person and three gods. The New Testament retains Jewish monotheism while naming the Father, Son, and Spirit in ways that require a richer confession.
Argue from the whole pattern
A single proof text rarely carries the whole doctrine alone. The doctrine summarizes a pattern: one God, the Son's divine identity, and the Spirit's personal divine agency.
Sources
Secondary context
Jesus and the God of Israel
Scholarly work on early divine-identity Christology and Jewish monotheism.
Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament's Christology of Divine Identity, Eerdmans, 2008.
Secondary context
Lord Jesus Christ
Scholarly work on devotion to Jesus in earliest Christianity.
Larry W. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity, Eerdmans, 2003.