Among the philosophical objections Witnesses commonly make regarding the Trinity, the most prominent concerns a confusion between the existence of three divine Persons and three gods. Witnesses may ask, “If there are three divine persons, aren’t there three gods?” Here one must understand the difference between being and person, for these are two distinct things.
Informally speaking, we could say something’s “being” addresses the question
“What?”—the kind of thing it is—while “person” answers the question “Who?” For example, about my mother, the question “What is she?” could be answered “A human being.” The question “Who is she?” is answered “Janie.” All persons are beings, but not all beings are persons. For example, a rock is not a person, though it is a being. With regard to the Trinity, there is one Being, which is God, yet this Being is three Persons:
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This is not illogical. If one were to say that there is one God and three gods, or one Person and three Persons—that would be illogical.
But, “one Being and three Persons” is not a contradiction, since oneness and threeness are being applied to God in two different ways. In one way, God is one (one Being), but in another he is three (three Persons). The logical coherence of this cannot be denied on the grounds that it transcends our experience to find one being who is more than one person. First, God himself transcends our experience and, as the greatest Being that exists, it should not be surprising that he has aspects that are unlike what we have experienced here on earth. That would only be expected.
Second, logic alone shows that if there can be beings that are less than one person (e.g., a rock) and beings that are exactly one person (e.g., a human), then there is no identification or necessary one-to-one correlation between being and person; so there is no reason one cannot have a being that is more than one person (e.g., God). A Witness may not like this, but there is nothing illogical or contradictory about it.
This is not to say that Witnesses will not characterize it as such. Indeed, one of their favorite tactics is to cite Christians referring to the Trinity as a mystery:
Cardinal John O’Connor states: “We know that it is a very profound mystery, which we don’t begin to understand.” And Pope John Paul II speaks of “the inscrutable mystery of God the Trinity.”25
Though no sources are given, we should not be surprised at finding two such churchmen describing the Trinity in such terms, for the Trinity is a mystery—and that is nothing to be ashamed of. Indeed, the New Testament itself refers to various divinely revealed mysteries. The 1910 Catholic Encyclopedia explains in its article “Mystery”:
In the New Testament the word mystery is applied ordinarily to the sublime revelation of the gospel [Matt. 13:11; Col. 2:2; 1 Tim. 3:9; 1 Cor. 15:51], and to the Incarnation and life of the Saviour and his manifestation by the preaching of the apostles [Rom. 16:25; Eph. 3:4; 6:19; Col. 1:26; 4:3].
In conformity with the usage of the inspired writers of the New Testament, theologians give the name mystery to revealed truths that surpass the powers of natural reason. Mystery, therefore, in its strict theological sense is not synonymous with the incomprehensible, since all that we know is incomprehensible, i.e., not adequately comprehensible as to its inner being; nor with the unknowable, since many things merely natural are accidentally unknowable, on account of their inaccessibility, e.g., things that are future, remote, or hidden. In its strict sense a substantial being) can be expressed by the finite mind only in terms of analogy, e.g., the Trinity. A relative mystery is a truth whose innermost nature alone (e.g., many of the divine attributes), or whose existence alone (e.g., the positive ceremonial precepts of the Old Law), exceeds the natural knowing power of the creature.
The Trinity is a mystery in that it is something about God that could not be deduced without his having revealed the fact to us, as he does in sacred Scripture. It is also a mystery in that its innermost nature can only be understood by our limited minds by way of analogy. It is no surprise, then, when we find churchmen such as the late Cardinal O’Connor or Pope John Paul II adverting to the mysterious nature of the Trinity.
There are many mysteries, even of the natural order, that have the character of being understandable only by analogy. For example, when we contemplate the atomic structure of matter, we often imagine subatomic particles, such as electrons, protons, and neutrons, as if they were tiny spheres that relate to each other in certain ways—but they aren’t actually like that. This is just a model, an analogy to help us understand what is taking place on a subatomic level. Our minds have not fully penetrated the nature of matter; much less have they fully penetrated the nature of God.
Indeed, given how far God is above us in the order of being, we never will fully penetrate the mystery of God. He is infinite; our minds are finite. There must always
remain that about God which is mysterious to us—that which we could not have learned about him without revelation and cannot fully penetrate even when it is revealed to us.
For Witnesses to deny this would be to imagine a god about whom everything could be deduced and comprehended by the finite human mind, a god who is himself finite—thus unworthy of worship.
On the subject of God’s transcendence of man’s understanding, Scripture is clear:
“For the thoughts of you people are not my thoughts, nor are my ways your ways,”
is the utterance of Jehovah. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Is. 55:8–9) O the depth of God’s riches and wisdom and knowledge! How unsearchable his judgments [are] and past tracing out his ways [are]! For “who has come to know Jehovah’s mind, or who has been his counselor?” Or, “Who has first given to him, so that it might be repaid to him? Because from him and by him and for him are all things.” (Rom. 11:33–35, citing Is. 40:13, Job 41:11)
What is to be learned from this investigation of Should You Believe in the Trinity? Is one to conclude that Witnesses willingly seek to deceive as many people as possible?
Hardly. But the vast majority of Witnesses have probably never read a page of the Church Fathers as such or consulted an encyclopedia of mythology. They would not even know where to begin to look for them.
Witnesses tend to be very sincere people who strive to know and follow God, but their biggest and most tragic error is that they have placed their complete trust in an authority that deserves none at all. The Watchtower is guilty of irresponsible and sloppy research, and the victims are the unsuspecting readers. These Witnesses know well from their reading of Scripture that there is an authority instituted by Christ to guide them. Whoever hears it should be hearing Christ (Luke 10:16). They know that Scripture commands them to obey and submit to leaders within the Church (Heb. 13:17) and that the Church is the “pillar and support of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15). Unfortunately, they have not made the correct identification of that Church. With all love, they must be invited back to that One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.