PUN

The pun, also called paronomasia, is a form of word play which suggests two or more
meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for
an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the
intentional use and abuse of homophonic, homographic, metonymic,
or metaphorical language. A pun differs from a malapropism in that a malapropism uses
an incorrect expression that alludes to another (usually correct) expression, but a pun
uses a correct expression that alludes to another (sometimes correct but more often
absurdly humorous) expression. Henri Bergson defined a pun as a sentence or
utterance in which "two different sets of ideas are expressed, and we are confronted
with only one series of words". Puns may be regarded as injokes or idiomatic constructions, given that their usage and meaning are entirely local to
a particular language and its culture. For example, camping is intense (in tents).
Puns are used to create humor and sometimes require a large vocabulary to
understand. Puns have long been used by comedy writers, such as William
Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, and George Carlin. The Roman playwright Plautus is
famous for his tendency to make up and change the meaning of words to create puns
in Latin.

Typology
Puns can be classified in various ways:
The homophonic pun, a common type, uses word pairs which sound alike
(homophones) but are not synonymous. Walter Redfern exemplified this type with his
statement "To pun is to treat homonyms as synonyms". For example, in George Carlin's
phrase "Atheism is a non-prophet institution", the word "prophet" is put in place of its
homophone "profit", altering the common phrase "non-profit institution". Similarly, the
joke "Question: Why do we still have troops in Germany? Answer: To keep the Russians
in Czech" relies on the aural ambiguity of the homophones "check" and "Czech". Often,
puns are not strictly homophonic, but play on words of similar, not identical, sound as in
the example from the "Pinky and the Brain" cartoon film series: "I think so, Brain, but if
we give peas a chance, won't the lima beans feel left out?" which plays with the similar
but not identical sound of "peas" and "peace".
Some words are homophones only when spoken in certain accents. Here are some
examples of puns that depend on being pronounced in a particular accent:
"Caesar salad" (Scissor salad) in an Italian accent:

Customer: "I'd like a Caesar salad.

Italian waiter: "Sir! Are you sure you want the Scissor salad? You'll cut your mouth!"
"Space" (Spice) in certain Australian accents:
Spice...The final frontier. So much flavour! Space, on the other hand, is mostly
devoid of flavour and matter.
(alternatively...)
Q: What was the name of the first group of female astronauts? A: The Space Girls.
"The Nail River" (The Nile River) in certain Australian accents:
Never take your raft down the nail river. It'll pop instantly.

A homographic pun exploits words which are spelled the same (homographs) but
possess different meanings and sounds. Because of their nature, they rely on sight
more than hearing, contrary to homophonic puns. They are also known as heteronymic
puns. Examples in which the punned words typically exist in two different parts of
speech often rely on unusual sentence construction, as in the anecdote: "When asked
to explain his large number of children, the pig answered simply: 'The wild oats of my
sow gave us many piglets.' " An example which combines homophonic and
homographic punning is Douglas Adams's line "You can tune a guitar, but you
can't tuna fish. Unless of course, you play bass." The phrase uses the homophonic
qualities of "tune a" and "tuna", as well as the homographic pun on "bass", in which
ambiguity is reached through the identical spellings of /bes/ (a string instrument), and /
bs/ (a kind of fish).
Homonymic puns, another common type, arise from the exploitation of words which are
both homographs and homophones. The statement "Being in politics is just like
playing golf: you are trapped in one bad lie after another" puns on the two meanings of
the word lie as "a deliberate untruth" and as "the position in which something rests". An
adaptation of a joke repeated by Isaac Asimov gives us "Did you hear about the little
moron who strained himself while running into the screen door?", playing on 'strained'
as "to give much effort" and "to filter". A homonymic pun may also be polysemic, in
which the words must be homonymic and also possess related meanings, a condition
which is often subjective. However, lexicographers define polysemes as listed under a
single dictionary lemma (a unique numbered meaning) while homonyms are treated in
separate lemmata.

A compound pun is a statement that contains two or more puns. For example, a
complex statement by Richard Whately includes four puns: "Why can a man never
starve in theGreat Desert? Because he can eat the sand which is there. But what
brought the sandwiches there? Why, Noah sent Ham, and his descendants mustered
and bred." This pun uses "sand which is there/sandwiches there, "Ham/ham",
"mustered/mustard", and "bred/bread". Compound puns may also combine two phrases
that share a word. For example, "Where domathematicians go on weekends? To a
Mbius strip club!" puns on Mbius strip and strip club.
A recursive pun is one in which the second aspect of a pun relies on the understanding
of an element in the first. For example the statement " is only half a pie." ( radians is
180degrees, or half a circle, and a pie is a complete circle). Another example is
"Infinity is not in finity," which means infinity is not in finite range. Another example is
"A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother."[9] Finally, we are
given "Immanuel doesn't pun, he Kant" by Oscar Wilde. Visual puns are used in many
logos, emblems, insignia, and other graphic symbols, in which one or more of the pun
aspects are replaced by a picture. In European heraldry, this technique is called canting
arms. Visual and other puns and word games are also common in Dutch gable
stones as well as in some cartoons, such as Lost Consonants and The Far Side.
Another type of visual pun exists in languages which use non-phonetic writing. For
example, in Chinese, a pun may be based on a similarity in shape of the written
character, despite a complete lack of phonetic similarity in the words punned upon.
Mark Elvin describes how this "peculiarly Chinese form of visual punning involved
comparing written characters to objects.
Richard J. Alexander notes two additional forms which puns may
take: graphological puns, such as concrete poetry; and morphological puns, such
as portmanteaus.

USE
Comedy and jokes
Puns are a common source of humour in jokes and comedy shows. They are often used
in the punch line of a joke, where they typically give a humorous meaning to a rather
perplexing story. These are also known as feghoots. The following example comes from
the movie Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, though the punchline
stems from far olderVaudeville roots. The final line puns on the stock phrase "the lesser
of two evils".

Captain Aubrey: "Do you see those two weevils, Doctor?...Which would you choose?"
Dr. Maturin: "Neither. There's not a scrap of difference between them. They're the same
species of Curculio."
Captain Aubrey: "If you had to choose. If you were forced to make a choice. If there
were no other option."
Dr. Maturin: "Well, then, if you're going to push me. I would choose the right-hand
weevil. It has significant advantage in both length and breadth."
Captain Aubrey: "There, I have you!...Do you not know that in the Service, one must
always choose the lesser of two weevils?"
Puns often are used in the titles of comedic parodies. A parody of a popular song,
movie, etc., may be given a title that hints at the title of the work being parodied,
substituting some of the words with ones that sound or look similar. Such a title can
immediately communicate both that what follows is a parody and also which work is
about to be parodied, making any further "setup" (introductory explanation)
unnecessary.
Literature
Non-humorous puns were and are a standard rhetorical and poetic device
in English literature. Puns and other forms of word play have been used by many
famous writers, such asAlexander Pope, James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov, Robert
Bloch, Lewis Carroll, John Donne, and William Shakespeare, who is estimated to have
used over 3,000 puns in his plays.[citation needed] Some promoters of the
Shakespeare Authorship theory believe that the name Will Shake-spear was itself a
pun, chosen to hide the true author's name while revealing it as a mask.
Here is an example from Shakespeare's Richard III:
"Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of York"
(Son/sun)
Shakespeare was also noted for his frequent play with less serious puns, the "quibbles"
of the sort that made Samuel Johnson complain, "A quibble is to Shakespeare what
luminous vapours are to the traveller! He follows it to all adventures; it is sure to lead
him out of his way, sure to engulf him in the mire. It has some malignant power over his
mind, and its fascinations are irresistible." Elsewhere, Johnson disparagingly referred to
punning as "the lowest form of humour".[citation needed]
In the poem A Hymn to God the Father, John Donne, married to Anne More, reportedly
puns repeatedly: "Son/sun" in the second quoted line, and two compound puns on

"Donne/done" and "More/more". All three are homophonic, with the puns on "more"
being both homographic and capitonymic. The ambiguities serve to introduce several
possible meanings into the verses.
"When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done / For I have more.
that at my death Thy Son / Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore
And having done that, Thou hast done; / I fear no more."
Designation
Like other forms of wordplay, paronomasia is occasionally used for its attention-getting
or mnemonic qualities, making it common in titles and the names of places, characters,
and organizations, and in advertising and slogans.
Many restaurant and shop names use puns: Cane & Able mobility healthcare, Tiecoon
tie shop, Planet of the Grapes wine and spirits,[17] as do books, such as Pies and
Prejudice, comics (YU+ME: dream) and films (Good Will Hunting).
The Japanese anime Speed Racer's original title, Mach GoGoGo! refers to the English
word itself, the Japanese word for five (theMach 5's car number), and the name of the
show's main character, Go Mifune.
Names of characters also often carry puns, such as Ash Ketchum and Goku ("kakarot"),
the protagonists of the anime series Pokmon and Dragonball, respectively, both
franchises which are known for including second meanings in the names of many of
their characters. A recurring motif in the Austin Powers films repeatedly puns on names
which suggest male genitalia. In the science fiction television series Star Trek, "B-4" is
used as the name of one of four androids models constructed "before" the android Data,
a main character.
The parallel sequel The Lion King 1 advertised with the phrase "You haven't seen the
1/2 of it!". Wyborowa Vodka employed the slogan "Enjoyed for centuries straight",
while Northern Telecom used "Technology the world calls on."
Confusion and alternate uses
There exist subtle differences between paronomasia and other literary techniques, such
as the double entendre. While puns are often simple wordplay for comedic or rhetorical
effect, a double entendre alludes to a second meaning which is not contained within the
statement or phrase itself, often one which purposefully disguises the second meaning.
As both exploit the use of intentional double meanings, puns can sometimes be double
entendres, and vice versa. Puns also bear similarities
with paraprosdokian, syllepsis and eggcorns. In addition, homographic puns are

sometimes compared to the stylistic device antanaclasis, and homophonic puns

to polyptoton.
Science and computing
Scientific puns rely on the contrast between precise technical and imprecise informal
definitions of the same word. In statistical contexts, for example, the word significant is
usually assumed to mean "statistically significant", which has a precisely defined
technical meaning. Using significant with the layperson meaning "of practical
significance" in such contexts would qualify as punning, such as the webcomic xkcd's
double pun "statistically significant other".
In formal linguistics, puns can often be found embedded within the etymological
meaning or usage of words, which in turn may be buried over time and unknown to
native speakers. Puns may also be found in syntax, where morphological constructions
have derived from what may have originally been humorous word play, slang, or
otherwise idiosyncratic word usage.
In computing, esoteric programming languages (EPLs) are based in or contain what
may be regarded as conceptual puns, as they typically misuse common programming
concepts in ways which are absurd, or functionally useless. Some EPL puns may be
obvious, such as in the usage of text images, while other puns are highly conceptual
and understandable to experts only.
In computer science, the term type punning refers to a programming technique that
subverts or circumvents the type system of a programming language, by allowing a
value of a certain type to be manipulated as a value of a different type.
History
Puns were found in ancient Egypt, where they were heavily used in development of
myths and interpretation of dreams.
In China, Shen Tao (ca. 300 BC) used "shih", meaning "power", and "shih", meaning
"position" to say that a king has power because of his position as king.
In ancient Iraq, about 2500 BC, punning was used by scribes to represent words
in cuneiform.
The Maya are known for having used puns in their hieroglyphic writing, and for using
them in their modern languages.
In Japan, "graphomania" was one type of pun.

Flibbertigibbet & Purre

This is the chronicle of how I started out researching the word "flibbertigibbet" and
ended up finding a selcouth pun of Shakespeare's from King Lear that's lain
undiscovered by all but one or two people since 1603, amongst other things.
The Castle of Perseverance, a medieval morality play written around 1425,
is notable for having the first recorded instances of the words flepergebet, flypyrgebet,
and flepyrgebet, which were to crystalise later as flibbertigibbet. The OED records this
origin as being "apparently an onomatopic representation of unmeaning chatter" and
gives its foremost meaning as a chattering or gossiping person. But in 1603, Samuel
Harsnett, the forty-two year old then Vicar of Chigwell, used Fliberdigibbet (with a "d") in
his hilarious polemic A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures to denote not a
gossiping fishwife, but a demon.
Entered in the Stationers' Register on the 16th of March, the Declaration is a retort at
the actions of Catholics at the time who were using possession by demons and
subsequent exorcisms as methods to frighten the public into Catholicism. Chapter Ten
is a deposition of "the trange names of their deuils", and contitutes an extraordinary
nomenclature bazaar: Maho, Modu, Pippin, Philpot, Hilco, Smolkin, Hillio, Hiaclito,
Lustie huffe-cap, Soforce, Cliton, Bernon, Hilo, Motubizanto, Killico, Hob, Portirichio,
Frateretto, Fliberdigibbet, Hoberdidance, Tocobatto, Lustie Jollie Jenkin, Delicat, Puffe,
Purre, Lustie Dickie, Cornerd-cappe, Nurre, Molkin, Wilkin, Helcmodion, and
Kellicocam.
Note that not only Fliberdigibbet is lifted from comic colloquial words of the time, but
Hoberdidance too. Michael Quinion, in his treatment of the word hobbledehoy suggests
that "it may well be related to Hoberdidance or Hobbididance, which was the name of a
malevolent sprite associated with the Morris dance (and whose name is from Hob, an
old name for the Devil; nothing to do with hobbits)." In fact, Tolkien subconsciously took
the word hobbit from a list of untoward creatures even more staggering than Harsnett's
in a piece in The Denham Tracts by Michael Aislabie Denham, so "hobbit" and "Hob"
are indeed related. Denham himself called his staggering piece "Ghosts Never Appear
on Christmas Eve!", which is a reference, of course, to Hamlet.
Shakespeare evidentally took to Harsnett's list of demons as he used several of them
in King Lear, in Act III Scenes iv and vi. Specifically, Edgar, feigning the madness of
a Tom O'Bedlam, mentions Smulkin (Smolkin), Obidicut (Haberdicut), Hobbididence
(Hoberdidance), Mahu (Maho), Modo (Modu), Flibbertigibbet (Fliberdigibbet), Frateretto,
and Hoppedance (Hoberdidance). In trying to find out more about this list, I came
across an apparently unheeded observation by Thomas Alfred Spalding in his 1880
work Elizabethan Demonology that deserved further investigation:

In addition to these, Killico has probably been corrupted into Pillicocka much more
probable explanation of the word than either of those suggested by Dyce in his
glossary; and I have little doubt that the ordinary reading of the line, "Pur! the cat is
gray!" in Act III. vi. 47, is incorrect; that Pur is not an interjection, but the repetition of the
name of another devil, Purre, who is mentioned by Harsnet. The passage in question
occurs only in the quartos, and therefore the fact that there is no stop at all after the
word "Pur" cannot be relied upon as helping to prove the correctness of this
supposition. On the other hand, there is nothing in the texts to justify the insertion of the
note of exclamation.
It is also on Spalding's word alone that I take Obidicut to be a derivation of Harsnett's
"Haberdicut", since I was unable to find Haberdicut in the Declaration myself. But as to
the observations of Spalding quoted above, I note firstly that in place of his suggestion
that Pillicock is a corruption of Killico, the more likely source is either Kellicocam or a
portmanteau of Killico and Kellicocam. In the quartos, Edgar is recorded to say "Pilicock
ate on pelicocks hill", even though the First Folio normalises thisor perhaps records
this more accuratelyas "Pillicock sat on Pillicock hill". Killico may have the vowels of
the First Folio, but only Kellicocam has the "cock" sound. It is most likely too, of course,
that the former is an abbreviation of the latter.
But the Pur claim is much more fascinating, and I wanted to corroborate Spalding's
claim. On a close examination of Harsnett's work, page 50, it seemed to me that the
word used couldn't possibly be Purre since the context of its use was "Puffe, and ?urre"
where the ? denotes an italicised capital letter that's different from the clear P of Puffe,
but that is somewhat difficult to make out. If it turned out to be an F, it might have made
sense for Pur to be a pun on Puffe and Furre, but in comparing it to both other instances
of F and T, it didn't fit. Then it dawned on me that initial capital letters used a different,
more lavish, glyph and that for some reason the typographer had used an initial italic P
here even though it wasn't initial. This was affirmed by the use of the same glyph earlier
on in the work, on page 21, in the name of "Sir George Peckham". It's used
inconsistently there too.
I then went to the trouble of examining each of the five quartos of King Lear that the
British Library haspublished online. In each one the phrase is exactly the same, as it
occurs in the last line of the following:
Ed. Let vs deale iutly, leepet or waket thou iolly hepheard,
Thy heepe bee in the corne, and for one blat of thy minikin
mouth, thy heepe hall take no harme, Pur the cat is gray.
The capitalisation after a comma reinforces Spalding's conjecture to a point where I
think the modern interpretation, which every version that I can find uses, of "Pur! the cat
is gray" on a new line is entirely erroneous; Pur is the name of the demon, and hence a

pun on the sound of the cat-like shape that it's assumed. There's such a long chain of
bad editorialisations of Shakespeare from before Warburton and onwards that it's
important to remember that we're just at the latest stage of understanding, and not the
goal.
Incidentally, in the Halliwell-Phillipps (C.34.k.17) quarto of 1608, an annotator has gone
through amending some of the errors in the text, and has occasionally underlined a
passage. "Pur the cat is gray" is one of those passages which has been underlined,
though for what reason it's difficult to tell.
It occurred to me that the list of names in the Declaration may also help to clear up the
strange word of Edgar's which is given first (III.iv) as "Seey" in the First Folio and in
quartos one, two, and three as "caese", "cease", and "ceas"; and second (III.vi) as
"see" in the First Folio only. It's amended by contemporary editors as "Sessa!", which is
an interjection that some take as meaning "be off with you!", and which has its canonical
spelling taken from the only other possible use, in I.i of The Taming of the Shrew. On
this mysterious word, the OED reports:
[perh. var. of SA, SA, or possibly a. F. cessez 'cease!' It is not certain that modern
editors are right in inserting the form sessa in all the passages; the word may not be the
same in the three places.]
1. An exclamation of uncertain meaning.
The cessez idea is from Dr. Johnson in his notes on King Lear. On "Dolphin my Boy,
Boy Sesey" specifically, Dr. Johnson insightfully comments that "of this passage I can
make nothing. I believe it corrupt: for wildness, not nonsense, is the effect of a
disordered imagination." The closest match in Harsnett for Sesey is Soforce, and for
Dolphin Delicat, but I believe both too far removed to merit too serious a consideration.
At best, it is possible that Shakespeare had invented another name as far removed as
Obidicut is from Haberdicut, but that it's now lost to us due to the transcription errors for
which the scriveners of the time were well known. Compare, for example, how in one of
the first quartos (C.34.k.17) Flibbertigibbet is Sriberdegibet (or Sriberdegibit),
in another it's Sirberdegibit, and in both Smulkin is the rather wonderful "snulbug".
Snulbug could even be a word from Shakespeare own pen, later changed to accord
more closely to Harsnett's original. Even though for centuries we have tried, in the
words of H.H. Furness, to "comprehend each syllable that is uttered, or strain our ears
to catch every measure of the heavenly harmony, or trace the subtle workings of
consummate art" from Shakespeare, it's a shame and a relief that we'll always have a
long way to go.

Trinity

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v

e
The Christian doctrine of the Trinity defines God as three
divine persons (Greek: ):[1] the Father, the Son (Jesus Christ), and theHoly
Spirit. The three persons are distinct yet coexist in unity, and are co-equal, co-eternal
and consubstantial (Greek: ). Put another way, the three persons of the Trinity
are of one being (Greek: ).[2] The Trinity is considered to be a mystery of Christian
faith.[3]
According to this doctrine, there is only one God in three persons. Each person is God,
whole and entire. They are distinct from one another in their relations of origin: as
the Fourth Lateran Council declared, "it is the Father who generates, the Son who is
begotten, and the Holy Spirit who proceeds". While distinct in their relations with one
another, they are one in all else. The whole work of creation and grace is a single
operation common to all three divine persons, who at the same time operate according
to their unique properties, so that all things are from the Father, through the Son and in
the Holy Spirit.[4]
Trinitarianism (one deity/three persons) contrasts with Christian non-Trinitarian positions
which include Binitarianism (one deity/two persons), Unitarianism (one deity/one
person), the Oneness or Modalism belief, and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints' view that the Godhead is a council of three deities, perfectly united in purpose
and will, but nevertheless separate and distinct individuals.[5]

Etymology
Part of a series on the
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Trinity

Veracity

Wrath
v

The "Shield of the Trinity" or "Scutum Fidei" diagram of traditional Western Christian
symbolism.
The English word Trinity is derived from Latin Trinitas, meaning "the number three, a
triad".[6]This abstract noun is formed from the adjective trinus (three each, threefold,
triple),[7] as the wordunitas is the abstract noun formed from unus (one).
The corresponding word in Greek is , meaning "a set of three" or "the number
three".[8]
The first recorded use of this Greek word in Christian theology (though not about the
Divine Trinity) was by Theophilus of Antioch in about 170. He wrote:[9][10]
"In like manner also the three days which were before the luminaries, are types of the
Trinity [], of God, and His Word, and His wisdom. And the fourth is the type of
man, who needs light, that so there may be God, the Word, wisdom, man."[11]
Tertullian, a Latin theologian who wrote in the early 3rd century, is credited with using
the words "Trinity",[12] "person" and "substance"[13] to explain that the Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit are "one in essencenot one in Person".[14]
About a century later, in 325, the First Council of Nicaea established the doctrine of the
Trinity as orthodoxy and adopted the Nicene Creed, which described Christ as "God of

God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance
(homoousios) with the Father".
Personhood
In the Trinity doctrine, each person is understood as having the identical essence or
nature, not merely similar natures.[15] The being of Christ can be said to have
dominated theological discussions and councils of the church until the 7th century, and
resulted in the Nicene and Constantinopolitan creeds, the Ephesine Formula of 431, the
Christological statement of the Epistola Dogmatica of Leo I to Flavianus, and the
condemnation of Monothelism in the Sixth Ecumenical Council (680-681). From these
councils, the following christological doctrines were condemned as
heresies: Ebionism, Docetism, Basilidianism, Alogism or Artemonism, Patripassianism,
Sabellianism, Arianism, Apollinarianism, Nestorianism, Eutychianism,Monophysitism,
and Monothelitism.[16] Since the beginning of the 3rd century[17] the doctrine of the
Trinity has been stated as "the one God exists in three Persons and one substance,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit."[18] Trinitarianism, belief in the Trinity, is a mark of Roman
Catholicism, Eastern and Oriental Orthodoxy as well as of the "mainstream traditions"
arising from the Protestant Reformation, such
as Anglicanism, Baptist, Methodism, Lutheranism and Presbyterianism. The Oxford
Dictionary of the Christian Church describes the Trinity as "the central dogma
of Christian theology".[18]
References used from Scripture

God the Father (top), and the Holy Spirit(represented by a dove) depicted aboveJesus,
painting by Francesco Albani

Although the New Testament does not use the word "" (Trinity) nor explicitly teach
it, it provided the material upon which the doctrine of the Trinity was formulated.
[19] Reflection by early Christians on passages such as the Great Commission: "Go
therefore and make disciplesof all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and
of the Son and of the Holy Spirit"[Matt 28:19] and Paul the Apostle's blessing: "The
grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit
be with you all,"[2 Cor. 13:13] while at the same time the Jewish Shema Yisrael: "Hear,
O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one."[Deuteronomy 6:4][20] led the early
Christians to question which way the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are in unity. Later, the
diverse references to God, Jesus, and the Spirit found in the New Testament were
systematized into a Trinityone God subsisting in three persons and one substance
to combat heretical tendencies of how the three are related and to defend the church
against charges of worshiping two or three gods.[21]
In addition, the Old Testament has also been interpreted as foreshadowing the Trinity,
[22] by referring to God's word,[Ps 33:6] his spirit,[Isa 61:1]and Wisdom,[Prov 9:1] as
well as narratives such as the appearance of the three men to Abraham.[Gen 18]
[18] However, it is generally agreed that it would go beyond the intention and spirit of
the Old Testament to correlate these notions directly with later Trinitarian doctrine.[23]
[24]
Some Church Fathers believed that a knowledge of the mystery was granted to the
prophets and saints of the "Old Dispensation", and that they identified the divine
messenger of Genesis 16:7, 21:17, 31:11, Exodus 3:2 and Wisdom of the sapiential
books with the Son, and "the spirit of the Lord" with the Holy Spirit.[23] Other Church
Fathers, such as Gregory Nazianzen, argued in his Orations that the revelation was
gradual:
The Old Testament proclaimed the Father openly, and the Son more obscurely. The
New manifested the Son, and suggested the deity of the Spirit. Now the Spirit himself
dwells among us, and supplies us with a clearer demonstration of himself. For it was not
safe, when the Godhead of the Father was not yet acknowledged, plainly to proclaim
the Son; nor when that of the Son was not yet received to burden us further.[25]
Some scholars dispute the authenticity of the Trinity and argue that the doctrine is the
result of "later theological interpretations of Christ's nature and function."[26][27] The
concept was expressed in early writings from the beginning of the 2nd century forward,
and other scholars hold that the way the New Testament repeatedly speaks of the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is such as to "compel a trinitarian understanding of
God".[28]
[edit]References to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

The earliest known depiction of the Trinity, Dogmatic Sarcophagus, 350 AD[29]Vatican
Museums.
Some biblical verses specifically reference the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as distinct
entities in a single narrative. While trinitarians interpret these passages as support for
the notion of a Trinity, because these verses speak of distinct entities mentioned by
name, and not of a Trinity, non-trinitarians also appeal to these verses in support of their
argument that a Trinity was not envisioned at the time of their authorship.
"As soon as Jesus Christ was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment
heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and landing
on him. And a voice from heaven said, 'This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well
pleased.'"[Mt 3:1617] [Mk 1:1011] [Luke 3:22] [John 1:32]
"The angel answered and said to her, 'The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the
power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy Child shall be
called the Son of God.'"[Luke 1:35]
"How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered
himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so
that we may serve the living God!"[Heb 9:14]
"But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and
Jesus standing at the right hand of God."[Acts 7:55]
The eighth chapter of Paul's letter to the Romans, which contains many complex
formulations of the relationship between God, Christ, and Spirit, including "the Spirit of

him who raised Jesus from the dead,"[Rom 8:11] "all who are led by the Spirit of God
are sons of God,"[8:14-17]and "the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will
of God."[8:26-27]
Some verses also reference the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as part of a single formula,
which trinitarians view as support of a Trinity, though not explicitly stated. Nontrinitarians argue that because these verses are conclusions to their respective books,
they may be later trinitarian formulaic additions to the original works, which were added
after the doctrine of the Trinity had begun to be debated and accepted as dogmatic.[30]
"Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit"[Mt 28:19] (see Trinitarian formula). It has
been claimed that writings of Eusebius show the mention of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
to have displaced a request by Jesus that his disciples baptize people in his name.
[31] However, all extant manuscripts of the Gospel of Matthew unanimously contain the
trinitarian baptismal formula without variation at 28:19.[32]
"The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy
Spirit be with all of you."[2 Cor. 13:14]
Comma Johanneum
Main article: Comma Johanneum
In addition to these, 1 John 5:7, which is found in the King James Version but not in
modern English translations, states: "For there are three that bear record in heaven, the
Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one." However, this Comma
Johanneum is not considered to be part of the genuine text.[33] It is not included in the
official Latin text of the Roman Catholic Church,[34] nor in Vulgate manuscripts earlier
than about AD 800.[35][36] Jerome, the author of the Vulgate, seems not to have known
the text.[37] The earliest undoubted reference to it is by 4th-century Priscillian,[36] but
some hold that it was referred to by 3rd-century Cyprian.[37][38] It is commonly found in
Latin manuscripts other than the earliest, but is absent from the Greek manuscripts
except for a few late examples, where the passage appears to have been backtranslated from the Latin. Erasmus, the compiler of the Textus Receptus, on which the
King James Version was based, noticed that the passage was not found in any of the
Greek manuscripts at his disposal and refused to include it until presented with a
manuscript containing it, while still suspecting, as is now agreed, that the phrase was
a gloss.[39]
[edit]Jesus as God

God the Father (top), the Holy Spirit (represented by a dove), and child Jesus, painting
by Bartolom Esteban Murillo
As opposed to the Synoptic Gospels, the Gospel of John has been seen as aimed at
emphasizing Jesus' divinity, presenting Jesus as theLogos, pre-existent and divine, from
its first words, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
Word was God."[John 1:1][40] John also portrays Jesus as the creator of the universe,
such that "without him was not any thing made that was made."[John 1:3] Some render
John 1:1 as "the Word was a god", "the word was godlike", "the word was divine",
denying that the doctrine of the Trinity is supported by the verse.
The Gospel of John ends with Thomas's apparent confession of faith to Jesus, "My Lord
and my God!"[John 20:28][21] There is no significant tendency among modern scholars
to deny that John 1:1 and John 20:28 identify Jesus with God.[41]
Other passages of John's Gospel interpreted in this sense include, "Truly, truly, I say to
you, before Abraham was, I am.",[8:58] "I and the Father are one.",[10:30] "....the Father
is in me and I am in the Father.",[10:38][42] and "....he was even calling God his own
Father, making himself equal with God."[John 5:18] John is also seen to identify Jesus
as the Lord whom Isaiah saw,[John 12:34-45][Isa 6:1-10] while other texts[Heb 1:112] are also understood as referring to Jesus as God.[43][44][45]
There are also a few possible biblical supports for the Trinity found in the Synoptic
Gospels. The Gospel of Matthew, for example, quotes Jesus as saying, "all things have
been handed over to me by my Father".[Mt 11:27] This is similar to John, who wrote that
Jesus said, "All that the Father has is mine".[John 16:15] These verses have been

quoted to defend the omnipotence of Christ, having all power, as well as the
omniscience of Christ, having all wisdom.
Expressions also in the Pauline epistles have been interpreted as attributing divinity to
Jesus. They include: "For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth,
visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were
created by him and for him"[Colossians 1:16] and "For in Christ all the fullness of the
Deity lives in bodily form",[Colossians 2:9] and in Paul the Apostle's claim to have been
"sent not from men nor by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father".[Galatians 1:1]
[46]
In Daniel 7 the prophet records his vision of "one like a son of man, coming with the
clouds of heaven", who "was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples,
nations and men of every language worshiped him" (v. 14). Christians believe that
worship is only properly given to God, and that considering other Bible passages this
"son of man" can be identified as the second person of the Trinity. Parallels may be
drawn between Daniel's vision and Jesus' words to the Jewish high priest that in the
future those assembled would see "the son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty
One and coming on the clouds of heaven."[Mt 26:64-65] Jesus was immediately
accused of blasphemy, as at other times when he had identified his unity with the
Father.[John 10:33] Christians also believe that John saw the resurrected, glorified
Jesus and described him as "One like the Son of Man."[Rev 1:13]

God in the person of the Son confronts Adam and Eve

Some believe the Trinity was also introduced in the Old Testament book of Isaiah written
around 700 years before Jesus, copies of which were preserved from 300 years before
Jesus in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Isaiah 9:6 prophesies "For unto us a Child is born, Unto
us a Son is given; And the government will be upon his shoulder. And his name will be
called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." Thus a
son who will be born at a particular point in history who is called "Mighty God". Some
non-Trinitarians argue that this passage would also imply that Jesus is the Father, the
first person in the Trinity. However, Trinitarians contend that Jesus is the second person
in the Trinity, and he is called "Everlasting Father" because of his role as Creator of
men.
Another possible biblical demonstration of the deity of Jesus comes from the biblical
scholar[47] Granville Sharp who noted the construction of a particular Greek idiom,
which is now called Granville Sharp's rule.[48] According to the rule, when two nouns
that are personal, singular, and not proper names are connected in a TSKS pattern (The
SubstantiveKaiSubstantive, where 'kai' is Greek for 'and') then the two nouns
refer to the same person.[49] Passages like Titus 2:13 and 2Peter 1:1 fit this pattern.
Therefore, when Paul says:[Titus 2:13] "The great God and savior, Jesus Christ" he is
grammatically identifying Jesus Christ as the great God. Proper nouns are not used in
this phrase.[50] In his review of over 1,000 years of Greek literature, Christopher
Wordsworth confirmed that early church Fathers had this same understanding of the
text.[51]
An opposing view of the Granville Sharp rule, however, argues that in Matthew 21:12
Jesus cast out all those that were selling and buying in the temple, (
). So, too, in Mark 11:15, the two classes are made distinct by the
insertion of before . Because of this, they argue that no one can
reasonably suppose that the same persons are here described as both selling and
buying, yet they fit within the Granville Sharp rule's construction. Therefore, according to
this view, there is biblical evidence to distinguish between "the great God" and "our
Saviour, Jesus Christ" in Titus 2:13, and by extension, 2 Peter 1:1.[52] However, unlike
2 Peter 1:1 and Titus 2:13, Matthew 21:12 and Mark 11:15 do not fit Sharp's rule, since
they use plural participles, not singular personal nouns.
Some have suggested that John presents a hierarchy when he quotes Jesus as saying,
"The Father is greater than I",[14:28] a statement which was appealed to by nontrinitarian groups such as Arianism.[53] However, Church Fathers such as Augustine of
Hippo argued this statement was to be understood as Jesus speaking in the form of a
man.[54]
Others have suggested that passages in the Synoptic Gospels contradict the Trinity. For
example, the Agnoetae sect argued that Jesus himself denied omniscience, when he

said "but of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in
heaven, neither the Son, but the Father".[Mark 13:32][Matthew 24:36] However, the
Church Fathers reasoned that, in the Bible, "to know" can sometimes mean "to reveal".
For example, Augustine of Hippo argued that when Deuteronomy 13:3 said "the LORD
your God is testing you, to know whether you love the LORD your God with all your
heart", "to know" here meant "to reveal".[55] So too, Mark 13:32 could be saying that
the Father alone reveals that day, but Jesus himself could know the day as well. This is
supported by passages that seem to argue that Jesus did know all things, such as, "He
said to him the third time, 'Simon, son of John, do you love me?' Peter was grieved
because he said to him the third time, 'Do you love me?' and he said to him, 'Lord, you
know everything; you know that I love you.' Jesus said to him, 'Feed my
sheep.'"[John 21:17]
[edit]Holy Spirit as God
As the Arian controversy was dwindling down, the debate moved from the deity of Jesus
Christ to the equality of the Holy Spirit with the Father and Son. On one hand,
thePneumatomachi sect declared that the Holy Spirit was an inferior person to the
Father and Son. On the other hand, the Cappadocian Fathers argued that the Holy
Spirit was an equal person to the Father and Son.
Although the main text used in defense of the deity of the Holy Spirit was Matthew
28:19, Cappadocian Fathers such as Basil the Great argued from other verses such as
"But Peter said, 'Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to
keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land? While it remained unsold, did it
not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it that
you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to men but to
God.'"[Acts 5:3-4][56]
Another passage the Cappadocian Fathers quoted from was "By the word of the Lord
the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their
host."[Psalm 33:6] According to their understanding, because "breath" and "spirit" in
Hebrew are both " "
"( ruach"), Psalm 33:6 is revealing the roles of the Son and Holy
Spirit as co-creators. And since, according to them,[56] because the holy God can only
create holy beings such as the angels, the Son and Holy Spirit must be God.
Yet another argument from the Cappadocian Fathers to prove that the Holy Spirit is of
the same nature as the Father and Son comes from "For who knows a person's
thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends
the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God."[1Cor. 2:11] They reasoned that this
passage proves that the Holy Spirit has the same relationship to God as the spirit within
us has to us.[56]

The Cappadocian Fathers also quoted, "Do you not know that you are God's temple
and that God's Spirit dwells in you?"[1Cor. 3:16] and reasoned that it would be
blasphemous for an inferior being to take up residence in a temple of God, thus proving
that the Holy Spirit is equal with the Father and the Son.[57]
They also combined "the servant does not know what his master is
doing"[John 15:15] with 1 Corinthians 2:11 in an attempt to show that the Holy Spirit is
not the slave of God, and therefore his equal.[58]
The Pneumatomachi contradicted the Cappadocian Fathers by quoting, "Are they not all
ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?",
[Hebrews 1:14] in effect arguing that the Holy Spirit is no different than other created
angelic spirits.[59] The Church Fathers disagreed, saying that the Holy Spirit is greater
than the angels, since the Holy Spirit is the one who grants the foreknowledge for
prophecy[1Cor. 12:8-10] so that the angels could announce events to come.[56]
Claims of Old Testament prefigurations

The Holy Trinity, c. 13001350. English or Spanish. Alabaster. National Gallery of Art,
Washington, D.C.
Genesis 1819 have been interpreted by Christians as a Trinitarian text.[60] The
narrative has the Lord appearing to Abraham, who was visited by three men.[Gen 18:12] Then in Genesis 19, "the two angels" visited Lot at Sodom. The interplay between
Abraham on the one hand, and the Lord/three men/the two angels on the other was an
intriguing text for those who believed in a single God in three persons. Justin Martyr,

and John Calvin similarly, interpreted it such that Abraham was visited by God, who was
accompanied by two angels.[61] Justin supposed that the god who visited Abraham was
distinguishable from the god who remains in the heavens, but was nevertheless
identified as the (monotheistic) god. Justin appropriated the god who visited Abraham to
Jesus, the second person of the Trinity.
Augustine, in contrast, held that the three visitors to Abraham were the three persons of
the Trinity.[61] He saw no indication that the visitors were unequal, as would be the case
in Justin's reading. Then in Genesis 19, two of the visitors were addressed by Lot in the
singular: "Lot said to them, 'Not so, my lord.'"[Gen 19:18 KJV][61] Augustine saw that
Lot could address them as one because they had a single substance, despite the
plurality of persons.[62] Some Christians see indications in the Old Testament of a
plurality and unity in God, an idea that is rejected by Judaism.
Some Christians interpret the theophanies or appearances of the Angel of the Lord as
revelations of a person distinct from God, who is nonetheless called God.[63] This
interpretation is found in Christianity as early as Justin Martyr and Melito of Sardis, and
reflects ideas that were already present in Philo.[64] The Old Testament theophanies
were thus seen as Christophanies, each a "preincarnate appearance of the Messiah".
[65]
Theophanies:
Genesis 12:7 and Genesis 18:1God appeared to Abraham
Genesis 26:2 and Genesis 26:24God appeared to Isaac
Genesis 35:1, Genesis 35:9 and Genesis 48:3God appeared to Jacob
Exodus 3:16 and Exodus 4:5God appeared to Moses
Exodus 6:3God appeared to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob
Leviticus 9:4 and Leviticus 6:2God appeared to Aaron
Deuteronomy 31:15God appeared to Moses and Joshua
1 Samuel 3:21God appeared to Samuel
1 Kings 3:5, 1 Kings 9:2 and 1 Kings 11:9God appeared to Solomon
2 Chronicles 1God appeared to David
2 Chronicles 7:12God appeared to Solomon
The angel (messenger) of the Lord:

Genesis 16:714
Genesis 22:914
Exodus 3:2
Exodus 23:20,21
Numbers 22:2135
Judges 2:15
Judges 6:1122
Judges 13:3
Possible references in the Deuterocanonical books
In Wisdom, Sirach, and Baruch, the personifications of wisdom have been seen in the
Christian traditions as prefigures for Christ. The most explicit reference to the Trinity is
in Wisdom of Solomon:
Who has learned your counsel, unless you have given wisdom and sent your holy spirit
from on high? And thus the paths of those on earth were set right, and people were
taught what pleases you, and were saved by wisdom.
Wisdom of Solomon 9:17-18

History

Pope Clement I prays to the Trinity, in a typical post-Renaissance depiction

byGianbattista Tiepolo.
Main article: Trinity of the Church Fathers
The first of the early church fathers recorded as using the word Trinity was Theophilus
of Antioch writing in the late second century. He defines the Trinity as God, His Word
(Logos) and His Wisdom (Sophia)[66] in the context of a discussion of the first three
days of creation. The first defence of the doctrine of the Trinity was in the early third
century by the early church father Tertullian. He explicitly defined the Trinity as Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit and defended the Trinitarian theology against the "Praxean" heresy.
[67]
Although there is much debate as to whether the beliefs of the Apostles were merely
articulated and explained in the Trinitarian Creeds,[68] or were corrupted and replaced
with new beliefs,[69][70] all scholars recognize that the Creeds themselves were
created in reaction to disagreements over the nature of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
These controversies, however, were great and many, and took some centuries to be
resolved.

Of these controversies, the most significant developments were articulated in the first
four centuries by the Church Fathers[68] in reaction toAdoptionism, Sabellianism,
and Arianism. Adoptionism was the belief that Jesus was an ordinary man, born of
Joseph and Mary, who became the Christ and Son of God at his baptism. In 269,
the Synods of Antioch condemned Paul of Samosata for his Adoptionist theology, and
also condemned the term "homoousios" in the sense he used it.[71]
Sabellianism taught that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are aspects of how humanity
has interacted with or experienced God. In the role of the Father, God is the provider
and creator of all. In the role of the Son, God is manifested in the flesh as a human to
bring about the salvation of mankind. In the role of the Holy Spirit, God manifests
himself from heaven through his actions on the earth and within the lives of Christians.
This view was rejected as heresy by the Ecumenical Councils.[which?]
Arianism, which was coming into prominence during the 4th century along with
Trinitarianism, taught that the Father came before the Son, and that the Son was a
distinct being from the Holy Spirit. In 325, the Council of Nicaea adopted a term for the
relationship between the Father and the Son that from then on was seen as the
hallmark of orthodoxy; it declared that the Son is "of the same being" ( ) as
the Father. This was further developed into the formula "three persons, one being".
Saint Athanasius, who was a participant in the Council, stated that the bishops were
forced to use this terminology, which is not found in Scripture, because the Biblical
phrases that they would have preferred to use were claimed by the Arians to be capable
of being interpreted in what the bishops considered to be a heretical sense.[72] They
therefore "commandeered the non-scriptural[73] term homoousios ('of the same being')
to safeguard the essential relation of the Son to the Father that had been denied
by Arius."[74]
Moreover, the meanings of "ousia" and "hypostasis" overlapped then, so that the latter
term for some meant essence and for others person. Athanasius of Alexandria (293
373) helped to clarify the terms.[75]
The Confession of the Council of Nicaea said little about the Holy Spirit.[76] The
doctrine of the divinity and personality of the Holy Spirit was developed by Athanasius in
the last decades of his life.[77] He defended and refined the Nicene formula.[76] By the
end of the 4th century, under the leadership of Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa,
and Gregory of Nazianzus (the Cappadocian Fathers), the doctrine had reached
substantially its current form.[76]
The Ante-Nicene Fathers, although likely foreign to the specifics of Trinitarian theology
because they were not defined until the 4th century, nevertheless affirmed Christ's deity

and referenced "Father, Son and Holy Spirit". Trinitarians view these as elements of the
codified doctrine.[78]
By the end of the 4th century, as a result of controversies concerning the proper sense
in which to apply to God, Christ and the Holy Spirit terms such as "person", "nature",
"essence", and "substance", the doctrine of the Trinity took the form that has since been
maintained in all the historic confessions of Christianity.[20][18][79][80]
Theology
Baptism as the beginning lesson

Baptism of Christ, by Piero della Francesca, 15th century

Baptism is generally conferred with the Trinitarian formula, "in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."[Mt 28:19]Trinitarians identify this name with the
Christian faith into which baptism is an initiation, as seen for example in the statement
of Basil the Great (330379): "We are bound to be baptized in the terms we have
received, and to profess faith in the terms in which we have been baptized." "This is the
Faith of our baptism", the First Council of Constantinople also says (382), "that teaches
us to believe in the Name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. According to
this Faith there is one Godhead, Power, and Being of the Father, of the Son, and of the
Holy Spirit."

Matthew 28:19 may be taken to indicate that baptism was associated with this formula
from the earliest decades of the Church's existence.
Some groups, such as Oneness Pentecostals, demur from the Trinitarian view on
baptism. For them, the omission of the formula in Acts outweighs all other
considerations, and is a liturgical guide for their own practice. For this reason, they often
focus on the baptisms in Acts, citing many authoritative theological works. For example,
Kittel is cited where he is speaking of the phrase "in the name" (Greek: ) as
used in the baptisms recorded in Acts:
The distinctive feature of Christian baptism is that it is administered in Christ (
), or in the name of Christ ( ). (Gerhard Kittel, Theological
Dictionary of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977), 1:539.)
The formula ( ) seems to have been a tech. term in Hellenistic commerce
("to the account"). In both cases the use of the phrase is understandable, since the
account bears the name of the one who owns it, and in baptism the name of Christ is
pronounced, invoked and confessed by the one who baptises or the one
baptised[Acts 22:16] or both. (Kittel, 1:540.)
Those who place great emphasis on the baptisms in Acts often likewise question the
authenticity of Matthew 28:19 in its present form. A. Ploughman, apparently following F.
C. Conybeare, has questioned the authenticity of Matthew 28:19, but most scholars of
New Testamenttextual criticism accept the authenticity of the passage, since there are
no variant manuscripts regarding the formula, and the extant form of the passage is
attested in the Didache[81] and other patristic works of the 1st and 2nd
centuries: Ignatius,[82] Tertullian,[83] Hippolytus,[84] Cyprian,[85] and Gregory
Thaumaturgus.[86]The Acts of the Apostles only mentions believers being baptized "in
the name of Jesus Christ"[Acts 2:38] [10:48] and "in the name of the Lord
Jesus."[8:16] [19:5] There are no biblical references to baptism in the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit outside of Matthew 28:19, nor references,
biblical or patristic, to baptism in the name of (the Lord) Jesus (Christ) outside the Acts
of the Apostles.[87]
Commenting on Matthew 28:19, Gerhard Kittel states:
This threefold relation [of Father, Son and Spirit] soon found fixed expression in the
triadic formulae in 2 Cor. 13:14 and in 1 Cor. 12:4-6. The form is first found in the
baptismal formula in Matthew 28:19; Did., 7. 1 and 3....[I]t is self-evident that Father,
Son and Spirit are here linked in an indissoluble threefold relationship.[88]
In the synoptic Gospels the baptism of Jesus is often interpreted as a manifestation of
all three persons of the Trinity: "And when Jesus was baptized, he went up immediately

from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened and he saw the spirit of God
descending like a dove, and alighting on him; and lo, a voice from heaven, saying, 'This
is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.'"[Mt 3:1617]
One God
Main article: Monotheism
Christianity, having emerged from Judaism, is a monotheistic religion. Never in the New
Testament does the trinitarian concept become a "tritheism" (three Gods) nor even two.
[28] God is one, and that the Godhead is a single being is strongly declared in the Bible:
The Shema of the Hebrew Scriptures: "Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is
one."[Deut 6:4]
The first of the Ten Commandments"Thou shalt have no other gods before me"[5:7].
and "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."[Isa 44:6]
In the New Testament: "The Lord our God is one."[Mk 12:29]
In the Trinitarian view, the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost share the one
essence, substance or being. The central and crucial affirmation of Christian faith is that
there is one savior, God, and one salvation, manifest in Jesus Christ, to which there is
access only because of the Holy Spirit. The God of the Old Testament is still the same
as the God of the New. In Christianity, statements about a single God are intended to
distinguish the Hebraic understanding from the polytheistic view, which see divine
power as shared by several beings, beings which can and do disagree and have
conflicts with each other.
God in three persons
According to the Trinity doctrine, God exists as three persons, or hypostases, but is one
being, that is, has but a single divine nature.[89] ChalcedoniansRoman
Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and Protestantshold that, in addition, the second
person of the TrinityGod the Son, Jesusassumed human nature, so that he has two
natures (and hence two wills), and is really and fully both true God and true human.
In the Oriental Orthodox theology, the Chalcedonian formulation is rejected in favor of
the position of the 3rd ecumenical council that the union of the two natures, though
unconfused, births a third nature: redeemed humanity, the new creation, following
Christology of St Cyril of Alexandria and the formula "
" - Jesus Christ being really and fully both true God and true human. This

doctrine is not to be confused with monophysitism which is condemned by the Oriental

Orthodox churches.
The members of the Trinity are said to be co-equal and co-eternal, one in essence,
nature, power, action, and will. As stated in the Athanasian Creed, the Father is
uncreated, the Son is uncreated, and the Holy Spirit is uncreated, and all three are
eternal with no beginning.[90]
It has been stated that because three persons exist in God as one unity,[91] "The Father
and the Son and the Holy Spirit" are not three different names for different parts of God
but one name for God,[92] because the Father can not be divided from the Son or the
Holy Spirit from the Son. God has always loved, and there has always existed perfectly
harmonious communion between the three persons of the Trinity. One consequence of
this teaching is that God could not have created man to have someone to talk to or to
love: God "already" enjoyed personal communion; being perfect, he did not create man
because of a lack or inadequacy he had. Another consequence, according to Rev. Fr.
Thomas Hopko, an Eastern Orthodox theologian, is that if God were not a Trinity, he
could not have loved prior to creating other beings on whom to bestow his love. Thus
God says, "Let us make man in ourimage, in our likeness, and let them rule over the
fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all
the creatures that move along the ground. So God created man in his own image, in the
image of God he created him; male and female he created them."[Gen 1:26-27] For
Trinitarians, emphasis in Genesis 1:26 is on the plurality in the Deity, and in 1:27 on the
unity of the divine Essence. A possible interpretation of Genesis 1:26 is that God's
relationships in the Trinity are mirrored in man by the ideal relationship between
husband and wife, two persons becoming one flesh, as described in Eve's creation later
in the next chapter.[2:22]
Mutually indwelling
A useful explanation of the relationship of the distinct divine persons is called
"perichoresis", from Greek going around, envelopment. This concept refers for its basis
to John 1417, where Jesus is instructing the disciples concerning the meaning of his
departure. His going to the Father, he says, is for their sake; so that he might come to
them when the "other comforter" is given to them. Then, he says, his disciples will dwell
in him, as he dwells in the Father, and the Father dwells in him, and the Father will dwell
in them. This is so, according to the theory of perichoresis, because the persons of the
Trinity "reciprocally contain one another, so that one permanently envelopes and is
permanently enveloped by, the other whom he yet envelopes". (Hilary of
Poitiers, Concerning the Trinity 3:1).[93]

This co-indwelling may also be helpful in illustrating the Trinitarian conception of

salvation. The first doctrinal benefit is that it effectively excludes the idea that God has
parts. Trinitarians assert that God is a simple, not an aggregate, being. The second
doctrinal benefit is that it harmonizes well with the doctrine that the Christian's union
with the Son in his humanity brings him into union with one who contains in himself, in
St. Paul's words, "all the fullness of deity" and not a part. (See also: Theosis).
Perichoresis provides an intuitive figure of what this might mean. The Son, the eternal
Word, is from all eternity the dwelling place of God; he is the "Father's house", just as
the Son dwells in the Father and the Spirit; so that, when the Spirit is "given", then it
happens as Jesus said, "I will not leave you as orphans; for I will come to
you."[John 14:18]
Some forms of human union are considered to be not identical but analogous to the
Trinitarian concept, as found for example in Jesus' words about marriage: "For this
cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; And they twain
shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh."[Mark 10:7
8] According to the words of Jesus, married persons are in some sense no longer two,
but joined into one. Therefore, Orthodox theologians also see the marriage relationship
as an image, or "icon" of the Trinity, relationships of communion in which, in the words
of St. Paul, participants are "members one of another". As with marriage, the unity of the
church with Christ is similarly considered in some sense analogous to the unity of the
Trinity, following the prayer of Jesus to the Father, for the church, that "they may be one,
even as we are one".[John 17:22]
[edit]Eternal generation and procession
Trinitarianism affirms that the Son is "begotten" (or "generated") of the Father and that
the Spirit "proceeds" from the Father, but the Father is "neither begotten nor proceeds".
The argument over whether the Spirit proceeds from the Father alone, or from the
Father and the Son, was one of the catalysts of the Great Schism, in this case
concerning the Western addition of the Filioque clause to the Nicene Creed. The
Roman Catholic Church teaches that, in the sense of the Latin verb procedere (which
does not have to indicate ultimate origin and is therefore compatible with
proceeding through), but not in that of the Greek verb (which implies
ultimate origin),[94] the Spirit "proceeds" from the Father and the Son (see Filioque),
and the Eastern Orthodox Church, which teaches that the Spirit "proceeds" from the
Father alone, has made no statement on the claim of a difference in meaning between
the two words, one Greek and one Latin, both of which are translated as "proceeds".
This language is often considered difficult because, if used regarding humans or other
created things, it would imply time and change; when used here, no beginning, change
in being, or process within time is intended and is excluded. The Son is generated

("born" or "begotten"), and the Spirit proceeds, eternally. Augustine of Hippo explains,
"Thy years are one day, and Thy day is not daily, but today; because Thy today yields
not to tomorrow, for neither does it follow yesterday. Thy today is eternity; therefore
Thou begat the Co-eternal, to whom Thou saidst, 'This day have I begotten
Thee."[Ps 2:7]
[edit]Son begotten, not created
Because the Son is begotten, not made, the substance of his person is that of the deity.
The creation is brought into being through the Son, but the Son himself is not part of it
except through his incarnation.
The church fathers used several analogies to express this thought. St. Irenaeus of
Lyons was the final major theologian of the 2nd century. He writes, "the Father is God,
and the Son is God, for whatever is begotten of God is God." (Compare Spinoza's
philosophy of God.)
Extending the analogy, it might be said, similarly, that whatever is generated
(procreated) of humans is human. Thus, given that humanity is, in the words of the
Bible, "created in the image and likeness of God", an analogy can be drawn between
the Divine Essence and human nature, between the Divine Persons and human
persons. However, given the fall, this analogy is far from perfect, even though, like the
Divine Persons, human persons are characterized by being "loci of relationship". For
Trinitarian Christians, this analogy is important with regard to the Church, which St. Paul
calls "the body of Christ" and whose members are, because they are "members of
Christ", also "members one of another".
However, an attempt to explain the mystery to some extent must break down, and has
limited usefulness, being designed, not so much to fully explain the Trinity, but to point
to the experience of communion with the Triune God within the church as the Body of
Christ. The difference between those who believe in the Trinity and those who do not, is
not an issue of understanding the mystery. The difference is primarily one of belief
concerning the personal identity of Christ. It is a difference in conception of the salvation
connected with Christ that drives all reactions, either favorable or unfavorable, to the
doctrine of the Holy Trinity. As it is, the doctrine of the Trinity is directly tied up
with Christology.

Economic and ontological Trinity

Depiction of Trinity from Saint Denis Basilica in Paris.

Economic Trinity: This refers to the acts of the triune God with respect to the creation,
history, salvation, the formation of the Church, the daily lives of believers, etc. and
describes how the Trinity operates within history in terms of the roles or functions
performed by each Person of the TrinityGod's relationship with creation.
Ontological (or essential or immanent) Trinity: This speaks of the interior life of the
Trinity[John 1:12]the reciprocal relationships of Father, Son, and Spirit to each other
without reference to God's relationship with creation.
The ancient Nicene theologians argued that everything the Trinity does is done by
Father, Son, and Spirit working together with one will. The three persons of the Trinity
always work inseparably, for their work is always the work of the one God. Because of
this unity of will, the Trinity cannot involve the eternal subordination of the Son to the
Father. Eternal subordination can only exist if the Son's will is at least conceivably
different from the Father's. But Nicene orthodoxy says it is not. The Son's will cannot be
different from the Father's because it is the Father's. They have but one will as they
have but one being. Otherwise they would not be one God. If there were relations of

command and obedience between the Father and the Son, there would be no Trinity at
all but rather three gods.[95] On this point St. Basil observes "When then He says, 'I
have not spoken of myself,' and again, 'As the Father said unto me, so I speak,' and
'The word which ye hear is not mine, but [the Father's] which sent me,' and in another
place, 'As the Father gave me commandment, even so I do,' it is not because He lacks
deliberate purpose or power of initiation, nor yet because He has to wait for the
preconcerted key-note, that he employs language of this kind. His object is to make it
plain that His own will is connected in indissoluble union with the Father. Do not then let
us understand by what is called a 'commandment' a peremptory mandate delivered by
organs of speech, and giving orders to the Son, as to a subordinate, concerning what
He ought to do. Let us rather, in a sense befitting the Godhead, perceive a transmission
of will, like the reflexion of an object in a mirror, passing without note of time from Father
to Son.."[96]
In explaining why the Bible speaks of the Son as being subordinate to the Father, the
great theologian Athanasius argued that scripture gives a "double account" of the son of
Godone of his temporal and voluntary subordination in the incarnation, and the other
of his eternal divine status.[97] For Athanasius, the Son is eternally one in being with the
Father, temporally and voluntarily subordinate in his incarnate ministry. Such human
traits, he argued, were not to be read back into the eternal Trinity.
Like Athanasius, the Cappadocian Fathers also insisted there was no economic
inequality present within the Trinity. As Basil wrote: "We perceive the operation of the
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to be one and the same, in no respect showing differences
or variation; from this identity of operation we necessarily infer the unity of nature."[98]
Augustine also rejected an economic hierarchy within the Trinity. He claimed that the
three persons of the Trinity "share the inseparable equality one substance present in
divine unity".[99] Because the three persons are one in their inner life, this means that
for Augustine their works in the world are one. For this reason, it is an impossibility for
Augustine to speak of the Father commanding and the Son obeying as if there could be
a conflict of wills within the eternal Trinity.
John Calvin also spoke at length about the doctrine of the Trinity. Like Athanasius and
Augustine before him, he concluded that Philippians 2:4-11 prescribed how scripture
was to be read correctly. For him the Son's obedience is limited to the incarnation and is
indicative of his true humanity assumed for human salvation.[100]
Much of this work is summed up in the Athanasian Creed. This creed stresses the unity
of the Trinity and the equality of the persons. It ascribes equal divinity, majesty, and
authority to all three persons. All three are said to be "almighty" and "Lord" (no
subordination in authority; "none is before or after another" (no hierarchical ordering);

and "none is greater, or less than another" (no subordination in being or nature). Thus,
since the divine persons of the Trinity act with one will, there is no possibility of
hierarchy-inequality in the Trinity.
Catholic theologian Karl Rahner went so far as to say:
"The 'economic' Trinity is the 'immanent' Trinity and the 'immanent' Trinity is the
'economic' Trinity."[101]
Since the 1980s, some evangelical theologians have come to the conclusion that the
members of the Trinity may be economically unequal while remaining ontologically
equal. This theory was put forward by George W. Knight III in his 1977 book The New
Testament Teaching on the Role Relationship of Men and Women, states that the Son
of God is eternally subordinated in authority to God the Father.[102] This conclusion
was used to support the main thesis of his book: that women are permanently
subordinated in authority to their husbands in the home and to male leaders in the
church, despite being ontologically equal. Subscribers to this theory insist that the
Father has the role of giving commands and the Son has the role of obeying them.
[edit]Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Protestant distinctions
The Western (Roman Catholic) tradition is more prone to make positive statements
concerning the relationship of persons in the Trinity. Explanations of the Trinity are not
the same thing as the doctrine; nevertheless, the Augustinian West is inclined to think in
philosophical terms concerning the rationality of God's being, and is prone on this basis
to be more open than the East to seek philosophical formulations which make the
doctrine more intelligible, while recognizing that these formulations are only analogies.
Eastern Christianity, for its part, correlates ecclesiology and Trinitarian doctrine, and
seeks to understand the doctrine of the Trinity via the experience of the Church, which it
understands to be "an icon of the Trinity". Therefore, when St. Paul writes concerning
Christians that all are "members one of another", Eastern Christians in turn understand
this as also applying to the Divine Persons.
The principal disagreement between Western and Eastern Christianity on the Trinity has
been the relationship of the Holy Spirit with the other two hypostases. The
original credal formulation of the Council of Constantinople was that the Holy Spirit
proceeds "from the Father". While this phrase is still used unaltered both in the Eastern
Churches, including theEastern Catholic Churches, and, when the Nicene Creed is
recited in Greek, in the Latin Church, it became customary in the Latin-speaking
Church, beginning with the provincial Third Council of Toledo in 589, to add "and the
Son" (Latin Filioque). Although this insertion into the Creed was explicitly vetoed
by Pope Leo III,[103] it was finally used in a Papal Mass byPope Benedict VIII in 1014,

thus completing its spread throughout Western Christianity. The Eastern Orthodox
Churches object to it on ecclesiological and theological grounds, holding that "from the
Father" means "from the Father alone", while in the West belief that the Holy Spirit
"proceeds", in the Latin (and English) meaning of this word, "from the Father and the
Son" had already been dogmatically declared to be orthodox faith in 447 by Pope Leo I,
the Pope whose Tome was approved at the Council of Chalcedon,[104] and Pope Leo
III, who opposed insertion of the phrase into the Nicene Creed, "affirmed the orthodoxy
of the term Filioque, and approved its use in catechesis and personal professions of
faith".[103]
The 1978 Anglican Lambeth Conference requested:
that all member Churches of the Anglican Communion should consider omitting the
Filioque from the Nicene Creed, and that the Anglican-Orthodox Joint Doctrinal
Commission through the Anglican Consultative Council should assist them in presenting
the theological issues to their appropriate synodical bodies and should be responsible
for any necessary consultation with other Churches of the Western tradition.[105]
None of the member Churches has implemented this request; but the Church of
England, while keeping the phrase in the Creed recited in its own services, presents in
its Common Worship series of service books a text of the creed without it for use "on
suitable ecumenical occasions".[106]
Most Protestant groups that use the creed also include the Filioque clause. However,
the issue is usually not controversial among them because their conception is often less
exact than is discussed above (exceptions being the Presbyterian Westminster
Confession 2:3, the London Baptist Confession 2:3, and the Lutheran Augsburg
Confession 1:16, which specifically address those issues). The clause is often
understood by Protestants to mean that the Spirit is sent from the Father, by the Son,
[citation needed] a conception which is not controversial in either Catholicism or Eastern
Orthodoxy. A representative view of Protestant Trinitarian theology is more difficult to
provide, given the diverse and decentralized nature of the various Protestant churches.
Questions of logical coherency
In contrast to Joachim of Fiore's historicization of the Trinity, there have been recent
philosophical attempts to defend the logical coherency of Trinity by men such as Peter
Geach. Regarding the formulation suggested by Geach, not all philosophers would
agree with its logical coherency. Geach suggested that "a coherent statement of the
doctrine is possible on the assumption that identity is "always relative to a sortal term".
[107]

The Canadian philosopher-theologian, Bernard Lonergan, has demonstrated by analogy

with the operations of the human subject (the psychological analogy) the logical
coherency of the Trinity. It is chiefly in his work "The Triune God: Systematics" that he
draws on his abstract phenomenology to show this logical inner coherency in the Trinity
doctrine. He sees himself as doing nothing more than standing in the tradition of
Augustine and Aquinas on this issue and not based on the Bible.
Most Christians, and probably the wide ecumenical consensus, foremost uphold the
belief that God is One. "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one"
(Deuteronomy 6:4). But how to reconcile the Trinity with a monotheistic faith? The wider
ecumenical consensus has viewed God's unity "not as a unity of separable parts, but of
distinguishable persons."[108] The Trinity is formed by three distinct persons, yet of one
and the same essence. Three persons, one God. To distinguish in what way God is
One, and in what way God is Three, helps remove the logical contradiction. This has
been upheld as the correct interpretation of the Apostolic teachings since the writings
of Athanasius and the Council of Nicaeain AD 325.
Art
See also: God the Father in Western art

Holy Trinity, fresco by Luca Rossetti da Orta, 1738-9 (St. Gaudenzio Church atIvrea).
The Trinity is most commonly seen in Christian art with the Spirit represented by a dove,
as specified in the Gospel accounts of the Baptism of Christ; he is nearly always shown
with wings outspread. However depictions using three human figures appear
occasionally in most periods of art.[109]
The Father and the Son are usually differentiated by age, and later by dress, but this too
is not always the case. The usual depiction of the Father as an older man with a white
beard may derive from the biblical Ancient of Days, which is often cited in defense of
this sometimes controversial representation. However, in Eastern Orthodoxy the Ancient
of Days is usually understood to be God the Son, not God the Father (see below)

early Byzantine images show Christ as the Ancient of Days,[110] but

this iconography became rare. When the Father is depicted in art, he is sometimes
shown with a halo shaped like an equilateral triangle, instead of a circle. The Son is
often shown at the Father's right hand.[Acts 7:56] He may be represented by a symbol
typically the Lamb or a crossor on a crucifix, so that the Father is the only human
figure shown at full size. In early medieval art, the Father may be represented by a hand
appearing from a cloud in a blessing gesture, for example in scenes of the Baptism of
Christ. Later, in the West, the Throne of Mercy (or "Throne of Grace") became a
common depiction. In this style, the Father (sometimes seated on a throne) is shown
supporting either a crucifix[111] or, later, a slumped crucified Son, similar to
the Piet (this type is distinguished in German as the Not Gottes)[112] in his
outstretched arms, while the Dove hovers above or in between them. This subject
continued to be popular until the 18th century at least.
By the end of the 15th century, larger representations, other than the Throne of Mercy,
became effectively standardised, showing an older figure in plain robes for the Father,
Christ with his torso partly bare to display the wounds of his Passion, and the dove
above or around them. In earlier representations both Father, especially, and Son often
wear elaborate robes and crowns. Sometimes the Father alone wears a crown, or even
a papal tiara.

Eastern Orthodox tradition

Old Testament Trinity icon by Andrey Rublev, c. 1400 (Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow)
Direct representations of the Trinity are much rarer in Eastern Orthodox art of any
periodreservations about depicting the Father remain fairly strong, as they were in the
West until the high Middle Ages. The Second Council of Nicea in 787 confirmed that the
depiction of Christ was allowed because he became man; the situation regarding the
Father was less clear. The usual Orthodox representation of the Trinity was through the
"Old Testament Trinity" of the three angels visiting Abrahamsaid in the text to be "the
Lord"[Genesis 18:1-15]. However scholars generally agree that the direct representation
of the Trinity began in Greek works from the 11th century onwards, where Christ is
shown as an infant sitting on the Father's lap, with the Dove of the Holy Spirit also
present. Such depictions spread to the West and became the standard type there,
though with an adult Christ, as described above. This type later spread back to the
Orthodox world where post-Byzantinerepresentations similar to those in the West are
not uncommon outside Russia.[113] The subject long remained sensitive, and
the Russian Orthodox Church at the Great Synod of Moscow in 1667 finally forbade
depictions of the Father in human form. The canon is quoted in full here because it
explains the Russian Orthodox theology on the subject:
Chapter 2, 44: It is most absurd and improper to depict in icons the Lord Sabaoth (that
is to say, God the Father) with a grey beard and the Only-Begotten Son in His bosom
with a dove between them, because no-one has seen the Father according to His
Divinity, and the Father has no flesh, nor was the Son born in the flesh from the Father
before the ages. And though David the prophet says, "From the womb before the
morning star have I begotten Thee"[Psalm 109:3], that birth was not fleshly, but
unspeakable and incomprehensible. For Christ Himself says in the holy Gospel, "No

man hath seen the Father, save the Son".cf.[John 6:46] And Isaiahthe prophet says in
his fortieth chapter: "To whom have ye likened the Lord? and with what likeness have ye
made a similitude of Him? Has not the artificier of wood made an image, or the
goldsmiths, having melted gold, gilt it over, and made it a similitude?"[Isa 40:18-19]In
like manner the Apostle Paul says in Acts[Acts 17:29] "Forasmuch then as we are the
offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold or silver or
stone, graven by art of man's imagination." And John Damascene says: "But
furthermore, who can make a similitude of the invisible, incorporeal, uncircumscribed
and undepictable God? It is, then, uttermost insanity and impiety to give a form to the
Godhead" (Orthodox Faith, 4:16). In like manner St. Gregory the Dialogist prohibits this.
For this reason we should only form an understanding in the mind of Sabaoth, which is
the Godhead, and of that birth before the ages of the Only-Begotten-Son from the
Father, but we should never, in any wise depict these in icons, for this, indeed, is
impossible. And the Holy Spirit is not in essence a dove, but in essence he is God, and
"No man hath seen God", as John the Theologian and Evangelist bears
witness[John 1:18] and this is so even though, at the Jordan at Christ's holy Baptism the
Holy Spirit appeared in the likeness of a dove. For this reason, it is fitting on this
occasion only to depict the Holy Spirit in the likeness of a dove. But in any other place
those who have intelligence will not depict the Holy Spirit in the likeness of a dove. For
on Mount Tabor, He appeared as a cloud and, at another time, in other ways.
Furthermore, Sabaoth is the name not only of the Father, but of the Holy Trinity.
According to Dionysios the Areopagite, Lord Sabaoth, translated from the Jewish
tongue, means "Lord of Hosts". This Lord of Hosts is the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and
Holy Spirit. And although Daniel the prophet says that he beheld the Ancient of
Days sitting on a throne, this should not be understood to refer to the Father, but to the
Son, Who at His second coming will judge every nation at the dreadful Judgment.[114]
Oriental Orthodox traditions
The Coptic Orthodox Church never depicts God the Father in art although he may be
identified by an area of brightness within art such as the heavenly glow at the top of
some icons of the baptism of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Syrian, Armenian, Indian and British Orthodox Churches appear to follow the same
practice[citation needed].
In contrast, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church has many ancient icons depicting
the Holy Trinity as three distinct Persons.[115][116] These icons often depict all Three
Persons sitting upon a single throne to signify unity. The Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo
Church follows the same practice.
Scenes

Trefoil and triangle interlaced.

Only a few of the standard scenes in Christian art normally included a representation of
the Trinity. The accounts in the Gospels of the Baptism of Christ were considered to
show all three persons as present with a separate role. Sometimes the other two
persons are shown at the top of a crucifixion. The Coronation of the Virgin, a popular
subject in the West, often included the whole Trinity. But many subjects, such as Christ
in Majesty or the Last Judgement, which might be thought to require depiction of the
deity in the most amplified form, only show Christ. There is a rare subject where the
persons of the Trinity make the decision to incarnate Christ, or God sending out the
Son. Even more rarely, the Angel of the Annunciation is shown being given the mission.
[117]
Less common types of depiction
Especially in the 15th century, and in the less public form of illuminated manuscripts,
there was experimentation with many solutions to the issues of depicting the three
persons of the Trinity. The depiction of the Trinity as three identical persons is rare,
because each Person of the Trinity is considered to have distinct attributes.
Nonetheless, the earliest known depiction of God the Father as a human figure, on the
4th century Dogmatic Sarcophagus, shows the Trinity as three similar bearded men
creating Eve from Adam, probably with the intention of affirming
the consubstantiality recently made dogma in the Nicene Creed. There are many similar
sarcophagi, and occasional images at intervals until a revival of the iconography in the
15th century.[118] Even rarer is the depiction of the Trinity as a single anthropoid figure
with three faces (Latin "Vultus Trifrons"), because the Trinity is defined as three persons
in one Godhead, not one Person with three attributes (this would imply Modalism, which
is defined as heresy in traditional Christian orthodoxy). Such "Cerberus" depictions of

the Trinity as three faces on one head were mainly made among Catholics during the
15th to 17th centuries, but were condemned after the Catholic Council of Trent, and
again by Pope Urban VIII in 1628,[119] and many existing images were destroyed.
The Trinity may also be represented abstractly by symbols, such as the triangle (or
three triangles joined together), trefoil or the triquetraor a combination of these.
Sometimes a halo is incorporated into these symbols. The use of such symbols are
often found not only in painting but also
in needlework on tapestries, vestments and antependia, in metalwork and
inarchitectural details.
Gallery
Different depictions
Four 15th century depictions of the Coronation of the Virgin show the main ways of
depicting the persons of the Trinity.

The conventional depiction, with older Father, dove, and Christ showing the wounds of
his Passion

Enguerrand Quarton with Christ and God the Father as identical figures, and a dove, as
specified by the cleric who commissioned the work

Page from Book of Hours, with three differentiated human figures for the Trinity

Jean Fouquet, also with three human figures, but identical.

Depictions using two different human figures and a dove

"Throne of Mercy", Gothic, Sweden

Not Gottes, Bernt Notke c. 1483 (St.-Annen-Kloster,Lbeck)

"Throne of Mercy", Albrecht Drer, 1511

"Gottes Not", Jan Polack (Polish artist working Germany), 1491

"Gottes Not", Jusepe de Ribera, ca. 1635

Icon of the Holy Trinity atVatopedi Monastery, Mount Athos

Michael Damaskenos Icon of the Holy Liturgy, from the 16th century Cretan school,
showing Western stylistic influence.

Baroque Trinity, Hendrick van Balen, 1620, (Sint-Jacobskerk, Antwerp)

Wall Painting in Georgia's ancient Monastery, Shio-Mghvime

Other depictions

Holy Trinity by Fridolin Leiber (18531912)

Allegory of the Holy Trinity, painted as three faces fused in one,

medievalfresco in Perugia

Trinity, XV century fresco, Castelletto Cervo (Vercelli,Italy), St Peter and St. Paul Church

Holy Trinityby M. Presnyakov (inspired by Andrei Rublev's famous icon)

Holy Trinity Image, Quasi-Parish of Santissima Trinidad, Malolos City,Philippines[1].

Mysticism

The Catholic nun Anne Catherine Emmerich said that as a child she had had visions, in
which she had seen the core of the Holy Trinity in the form of three concentric
interpenetrating spheres - the biggest but less lit sphere represented the Father core,
the medium sphere the Son core, and the smallest and brightest sphere as the Holy
Spirit.
Non-orthodoxy
Non-orthodox views of the Christian trinitarian God have also been suggested
by process theologians like Lewis S. Ford, who endorse the entitative view of God as
timeless and eternalconcrescence, but interpret the Whiteheadian natures of God
(primordial nature, consequent nature, and superjective nature) in a trinitarian way.
Other process theologians like Joseph A. Bracken consider the three divines persons,
each understood in the Neo-Whiteheadian societal view of God sensu Charles
Hartshorne and David Ray Griffin, as constituting a primordial field of divine activity.
Nontrinitarianism
Main article: Nontrinitarianism
Some Christian traditions either reject the doctrine of the Trinity or consider it
unimportant. Persons and groups espousing this position generally do not refer to
themselves as "Nontrinitarians". They can vary in both their reasons for rejecting
traditional teaching on the Trinity, and in the way they describe God.
Groups
History
Since Trinitarianism is central to so much of Catholic and Orthodox church doctrine,
Christian nontrinitarians were mostly groups that existed before the Nicene Creed was
codified in 325 or are groups that developed after the Protestant Reformation, when
many church doctrines came into question.[120]
In the early centuries of Christian history Adoptionists, Arians, Ebionites,
some Gnostics, Marcionites, and others held nontrinitarian beliefs. The Council of
Nicaea professed the divinity of Jesus, and the Council of Chalcedon made a
declaration on the issue of the relationship between Jesus' divine and human natures,
against Monophysitism ("one nature only"), a belief that did not deny his
divinity. Miaphysitism ("one nature") and monothelitism ("one will") were other attempts
to explain this relationship, while upholding Trinitarianism.
During more than a thousand years of Trinitarian orthodoxy, formal nontrinitarianism,
i.e., a doctrine held by a church, group, or movement, was rare, existing, for example,

as a belief among the Cathars, a Christian dualist heresy in W. Europe in the 13th14th
centuries.[121] The Cathars were a serious threat to the authority of the Catholic
Church especially in southern France Albigenses and northern Italy, until they were
suppressed.[122] They were forced into secrecy by a war between the nobles of the
north and south of France, the northern nobles were supported by a crusade authorized
by the Catholic Church.[123]
The Protestant Reformation of the 16th century also brought tradition into question. At
first, nontrinitarians were executed (such as Servetus), or forced to keep their beliefs
secret (such as Isaac Newton). The eventual establishment of religious freedom,
however, allowed nontrinitarians to more easily preach their beliefs, and the 19th
century saw the establishment of several nontrinitarian groups in North America and
elsewhere. These include the Church of God (7th day) - Salem Conference,
the Christadelphians, the Jehovah's Witnesses, andUnitarians groups. Some Messianic
groups are also nontrinitarian. Servetus heavily influenced the theology of Emanuel
Swedenborg; the church founded on his writings is a small but influential nontrinitarian
movement. Some groups espousing Binitarianism such as the Living Church of
God claim that Binitarianism was the majority view of those that professed Christ in the
2nd century.
20th century nontrinitarian movements include Iglesia ni Cristo, Most Holy Church of
God in Christ Jesus, and the Unification Church. Nontrinitarian groups differ from one
another in their views of Jesus Christ, depicting him variously as a divine being second
only to God the Father (e.g., Jehovah's Witnesses), as Yahweh of the Old Testament in
human form (Modalism), as God (but not eternally God), as Son of God but inferior to
the Father (versus co-equal), as a prophet, or simply as a holy man.
Modalism
Main article: Modalism
"Origen introduced the phrase the Son's eternal generation"-Robert Isaac
Wilberforce[124]
Modalism teaches that the Heavenly Father, Resurrected Son and Holy Spirit identified
by the Trinity Doctrine are different modes or aspects of the One God, as perceived
by the believer, rather than three coeternal persons in God Himself. In passages of
scripture such as Matthew 3:16-17 where the Son, Father, and Holy Spirit are separated
in the text, they view this phenomenon as confirming God's omnipresence, and His
ability to manifest himself as he pleases. Oneness Pentecostals, other Oneness
adherents,[125][126] and Modalists dispute the traditional Trinitarian doctrine, while
affirming the Christian doctrine of God taking on flesh as Jesus Christ. Like Trinitarians,
Oneness adherents believe that Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man. However,

whereas Trinitarians believe that "God the Son", the eternal second person of the Trinity,
became man, Oneness adherents hold that the one and only true Godwho manifests
himself in any way he chooses, including as Father, Son and Holy Spiritbecame man.
Oneness Pentecostals and other modalists are regarded by Catholic, Orthodox, and
some other mainstream Christians as heretical for rejecting the Trinity Doctrine, which
they regard as equivalent to Unitarianism. Modalists differentiate themselves from
Unitarians by affirming Christ's Deity.[127] Oneness teaches that there is only one
being, revealing himself in different ways.[128] Modalists cite passages in the New
Testament that refer to God in the singular, and note the lack of the word "Trinity" in any
canonical scripture.[124] They claim that Colossians 1:15-20 refers to Christ's
relationship with the Father in a similar sense:
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by (that is, by
means of; or in)[129] him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and
invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities; all things were created
through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the
dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was
pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or
in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.[130]
They also cite Christ's response to Philip's query on who the Father was in John 14:10:
Jesus answered: "Don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a
long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us
the Father'?
A notable modern adherent of Modalism is T.D. Jakes[131]
Baptismal formula
When criticized by Trinitarian believers who cite the Great Commission in Matthew
28:19 as being the biblical affirmation of "in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit" baptismal formula, Oneness adherents point to the singular sense of that phrase,
[132] and argue that if the passage was really supporting what the Trinitarians propose,
it would have said the "Names" in the plural instead of "Name".[132] Oneness Scholars
then state that the passage is referring to The Name, in other words, Jesus,[132] and
they point to passages like Acts 2:38 KJV as being the correct baptismal formula.
[132] Oneness believers view "Father", "Son" and "Holy Spirit" as titles or forms,
reflecting different manifestations of the one true God.[132] Apostolic Christians also
point out that there is no passage that appears to confirm Matthew 28:19 as being the
correct baptismal formula (going against the scriptural requirement of "two witnesses" to
establish a verdict),[133] while all the other passages in the Gospels and Acts point to

"in the Name of Jesus" as the correct form.[133] They also state that Jesus was not
referencing Water Baptism, but the long term "baptism in thought, word, and deed" (2
Corinthians 10:5 and Romans 15:18 NIV) that all believers undergo as they mature in
the Word.[133]
Unitarianism
Main article: Unitarianism
Unitarianism is a form of Christian theology holding that God is only one person, in
contrast to the doctrine of the Trinity (God as three persons in one), and that God is a
separate being from Jesus Christ.[134] It is a specific type of nontrinitarian theology and
resembles strictly monotheistic conceptions of God upheld in Judaism and Islam.
Some confusion has resulted because the term "unitarianism" (uncapitalized) has
sometimes been used informally to describe any Christology (i.e., understanding
of Jesus Christ) that denies the Trinity or believes that only the Father of Jesus (and not
Jesus himself) is God. Mere denial of the Trinity, however, is more commonly
called nontrinitarianism. Recently some religious groups have adopted the term "biblical
unitarianism" to describe their theology, but they hold to a conservative form of
nontrinitarianism, which rejects many of the teachings of liberal Unitarianism.[135]
So, too, Unitarianism does not accept the Godhood of Jesus, and therefore does not
include Modalist belief systems which dofor example, Oneness
Pentecostalism, United Pentecostal Church International and the True Jesus Church
that maintain that Jesus is God as a single person.
Binitarianism
Main article: Binitarianism
George Johnson, a proponent of Binitarianism, argues that Jesus is the God of the Old
Testament, distinct from the God who is called the Ancient of Days in Daniel 7:13, and
that the Holy Spirit is not a person.[136]
Islam
Zia H. Shah, a Muslim, interprets the Christian doctrine of the Trinity as saying that "the
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three complete and separate Gods and are yet one at
the same time", a thought that he describes as absurd and incompatible with
monotheism.[137] Al-Quran says: Surely, disbelievers are those who said: "Allah is the
third of the three (in a Trinity)." But there is no Allah (god) (none who has the right to be
worshipped) but One Allah (God -Allah). And if they cease not from what they say, verily,
a painful torment will befall on the disbelievers among them.[138][139]

Eric Cline states that certain verses of the Quran, which are included in a
monumental calligraphic inscription on the inside arcade of the Dome of the Rock on alHaram esh-Sharif inJerusalem, explicitly deny the Christian concept of the Trinity:[140]
O People of the Scripture, do not commit excess in your religion or say about Allah
except the truth. The Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary, was but a messenger of Allah
and His word which He directed to Mary and a soul [created at a command] from Him.
So believe in Allah and His messengers. And do not say, "Three"; desist - it is better for
you. Indeed, Allah is but one God. Exalted is He above having a son. To Him belongs
whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth. And sufficient is Allah as
Disposer of affairs. Never would the Messiah disdain to be a servant of Allah, nor would
the angels near [to Him]. And whoever disdains His worship and is arrogant - He will
gather them to Himself all together.[141]
That is Jesus, the son of Mary - the word of truth about which they are in dispute. It is
not [befitting] for Allah to take a son; exalted is He! When He decrees an affair, He only
says to it, "Be", and it is.[142]
Judaism
Cher-El L. Hagensick says that the Trinity doctrine owes more of its Triune philosophy
to pagan Egyptian and Stoic sources, and that the word Trinity was formulated 100
years after the crucifixion by Tertullian: "The word trinity was not coined until Tertullian,
more than 100 years after Christ's death, and the key words (meaning substance) from
the Nicene debate, homousia and ousia, are not biblical, but from Stoic thought.
Nowhere in the Bible is the Trinity mentioned." [143] In other words, the writer says, the
early church began to slowly include pagan Greek philosophy that was not taught in the
Bible.[143] Scholars also criticize efforts to introduce plurality into God's names in the
Old Testament:
"Enough has been said to show that a great majority of the most learned authors in the
orthodox body who have treated of the subject acknowledge that the argument drawn
from the plural forms of Hebrew nouns applied to Deity are totally invalid, in support
either of a Trinity or any plurality of Persons in the Godhead. To deduce a plurality in
God from a Hebrew idiom is impossible. The argument for plurality in God seems never
to have been thought of before the time of Peter Lombard, a puerile writer who lived in
the twelfth century"-John Wilson[124]
Mormonism
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Spirit (Holy Ghost) are three individual members of a heavenly council,
perfectly united in purpose and will, but nevertheless separate and distinct

individuals[144], a view sometimes called social trinitarianism.[145] An April 1830

revelation to Joseph Smith, for instance, affirms that they 'are one God, infinite and
eternal, without end'.[146] This belief that God the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost
are physically distinct beings is in contrast to most denominations of Christianity which
continue to uphold the doctrine of the relationship of the Father, the Son and the Holy
Ghost in the terms recorded in creeds, such as the Nicene Creed, which were
formulated as part of the Arian controversy.
Like other faiths, members of the LDS Church also claim to draw their understanding of
the Godhead (Christianity) from teachings of the Bible, but also draw from teachings of
the Book of Mormon, and revelations given to modern day prophets and apostles. One
of the most influential accounts of the Godhead in the LDS Church comes from the
prophet Joseph Smith, Jr., who claimed to have actually seen God the Father and Jesus
Christ in his First Vision, and recounted seeing "two personages," one of which referred
to the other as His "Beloved Son."[147][5] Still, Mormons do cite Biblical script to
support their position that God the Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost are actually
three distinct beings.[148] Daniel C. Peterson of Brigham Young University states that
"uniquely Mormon scriptural texts assert the unity of Father, Son and Holy Ghost at
least as strongly as the Bible does.[149]
Jehovah's Witnesses
Jehovah's Witnesses reject the trinity doctrine. According to their belief, Jehovah is the
only true God, and Jesus Christ is the son of Jehovah. Holy spirit is considered to be
God's active force and not a person.[citation needed]
Christian Science
Christian Science explicitly denies the deity of Jesus and has therefore always been
non-Trinitarian, for which reason the term is of little significance within its core texts,
though Mary Baker Eddy did adopt it on occasion for discussion of a wider spiritual unity
with God which characterized all mankind rather than Jesus alone, as in her statement
that "The Trinity inChristian Science is found in the unity of God, Christ, and the Holy
Ghost or"God the Father-Mother; Christ the spiritual idea of sonship; divine Science
or the Holy Comforter." Its elements thus united but distinct in essential identity, this
Trinity indicated "the intelligent relation of God to man and the universe".[150]