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‘One single being’?


This post was published on Monday 19 November 2007.

God is not just one single being. He is Father, Son and Holy Spirit: he is Trinity, he is community. And so therefore God is mutual love.

Graham Tomlin, The Praise of Creation, Holy Trinity Brompton, Sunday 29 October 2006

I have a couple of sermon podcasts on my iPod and I was listening to this one on the train home yesterday afternoon. This sentence hit me square between the eyes.

The question is, how far should we reduce and simplify doctrine in our preaching? I think quite a lot - but not so what we say is misleading (at best) or wrong (at worst). The example above is a case in point. ‘God is not just one single being’ is an extremely misleading statement. What I think he means is this: to say God is ‘one’ is not all we can say about God. Because, God actually is a ‘single being’. We do not believe in three gods, Christians are not tritheists. It is language like the sentences above that makes people think we are.

In our language about the Trinity I think we need to make three things clear: 1) God is one, 2) God is one-in-three and three-in-one, 3) God’s unity is primary. Point (3) is the traditional way of Christian theology, and of course it has its dangers - which Moltmann emphasises - but it safeguards the divinity of Father, Son and Spirit, and the unity of their work in Creation. Given the clear demarcation in the New Testament between Father and Son especially, theologically the unity needs to be our starting point, and needs to be stressed. ‘Community’ is simply too weak a concept for the unity of God. This is one of Moltmann’s biggest problems - if you stress the threeness of God first, how can you explain the unity of God in strong enough terms?

Graham Tomlin’s point is that God did not need to create us because he needed someone to love him, to glorify him. In Godself, God is perfect love, because the one God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. To that, I say, absolutely. I have no problem with that. However, you do not need to say ‘God is not just one single being’ in order to be able to say ‘God is mutual love’.

It is here that the question I raised initially is important: how far should we reduce and simplify doctrine in our preaching? How can we explain that God is mutual love in Godself, in a couple of sentences? Sometimes we may only be able to say what God is not, to define boundaries, beyond which language fails miserably. Here’s my attempt.

The Bible tells us that God is one, that there is no other God besides him. But the Bible also tells us that God reveals himself as Father, Son and Spirit. The Father did not need to create the world to be loved, because from all eternity he loves and is loved by the Son, who shares that love with the Spirit. The one God is perfect, mutual love.

I know it isn’t perfect, and it is perhaps more complicated, but it does seek to emphasise both the oneness and threeness of God together.