by Dr. Steven Nemes, PhD in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary, author of Orthodoxy and Heresy (Cambridge University Press, 2022)
I do not affirm the catholic doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation as understood by the Nicene-Chalcedonian tradition. The doctrine of the Trinity teaches that the one God is one “being” or “nature” (ousia) subsistent in three “persons” (hypostases). The doctrine of the Incarnation teaches that Jesus Christ is one “person” (hypostasis, prosopon) in two “natures” (ousia, physeis). These are essential dogmas of the catholic tradition of Christian theology, but I do not accept these doctrines, and I don’t think that anyone else has to accept them, either. I think they rather enjoy the status of theologoumena: debatable opinions about which Christians are free to disagree. In this respect, I am on a very different wavelength than most other Christians in the world, or at least those whom I run into most often in my life, whether online or in reality.
Why do I not accept these doctrines? I have written a book on this topic and am in the process of trying to get it published, so you may have to wait until later to hear the whole story. In a sense, there are many reasons. For example, there are problems reconciling the Trinitarian formula of one ousia (being) in three hypostases (persons) with the idea that there is only one God and with divine simplicity. There are also problems reconciling the Incarnational formula of one prosopon (person) in two physeis (natures) with the idea that God is immutable and exists independently of the created order. As anyone who has studied these issues in any detail knows, it is very difficult to provide a concrete interpretation of the verbal formulas of one ousia in three hypostases or one prosopon in two physeis that does not run into problems somewhere or other. As far as I am concerned, that is because the whole complex and framework of catholic theology, of which the doctrines of Trinity and Incarnation are only two parts, is fundamentally an assemblage of mutually inconsistent ideas and ways of speaking. In other words, catholic theology considered as a whole is incoherent.
In another sense, there is one simple, eminent reason not to accept the doctrines of Trinity and Incarnation. One does not need them to make sense of what the New Testament teaches about Jesus and his relation to God. Of course, Christian theology historically has always begun with the New Testament and presented itself as the formal interpretation of what is found in the pages of the apostolic writings. It just so happens that I think there is a far simpler framework which makes sense of the relevant data and does not raise any of the philosophical problems of the catholic trinitarian and dyophysite [two natures] paradigm.
My basic paradigm for understanding the New Testament’s discourse can be summarized in the simple narrative one finds presented in the synoptic gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. Jesus was told that he is God’s Son and filled with the Holy Spirit when he was baptized in the river by John; he went about teaching, healing, and performing miracles fully convinced of his identity as the man to whom God had granted authority over all things (cf. Dan. 7:13–14); he entered into conflict with the Pharisees and scribes because of the presumption he showed in healing on the Sabbath, in disregarding the traditions of the elders, and in critiquing them as teachers of the people of Israel; he was executed for blasphemy by some of the religious authorities through the help of the Romans, though he made of his death an offering of obedience to God as a ransom for the sins of many; and he was raised from the dead and exalted to God’s right hand, whence it is believed he presently rules as the God-appointed king of the cosmos as a whole.
As far as I am concerned, everything the New Testament says about Jesus in relation to God can be easily made sense of through the elements of this basic framework. There is no need to introduce the complications of the ontological language of Nicene-Chalcedonian theology. Everything about Jesus that is suggestive of divinity in his earthly ministry is to be understood in light of the fact that he has been given God’s Spirit. So also, all “incarnational” language (e.g., John 1:1–14; Phil. 2:5–11) is to be understood with reference to the experience of his baptism. The Word of God, a personified reference to the wisdom and power by which God created all things, “becomes flesh” (John 1:14) in a figurative sense when Jesus receives the Spirit at his baptism. Christ humbles himself instead of taking advantage of the equality with God he possesses as his Son (cf. Ps. 2:7–8), as the one to whom God promises the whole earth as his inheritance, choosing to serve rather than to be served (Mark 10:45). Jesus can even be called the “creator of all things” (cf. Col. 1:16) in the sense that he accomplishes a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17) through the transformation of human beings in communion with himself (Eph. 2:10, 15). Of course, the exegetical battles on this topic are numerous and exhausting, and people are hardly ever convinced of the other side’s arguments. But my point is that there is nothing implausible or impossible about the non-trinitarian readings, and they do not raise any obvious philosophical or theological problems or introduce a thousand mysteries into our theology.
In brief, then, in my opinion at least, one of the best reasons not to accept the catholic doctrines of Trinity and Incarnation is that they are entirely unnecessary for making sense of the New Testament’s testimony to Jesus and God his Father. Once more, as far as I can tell, there are no significant philosophical or theological problems of coherence introduced by the simpler, non-trinitarian framework that I described above. Rather, the whole picture is very clean and parsimonious.
This kind of talk will not sit well with some people. They insist that God is mysterious, and from this they infer that (at least apparent) incoherence in theology is not a bad thing but rather to be expected. Yet I wonder about this. I don’t claim to be able to know everything about God, just as I don’t claim to know everything about my wife or about any finite created thing that is found in the world. But I don’t see what connection there is between God’s mysteriousness and the apparently intractable incoherencies of the catholic doctrines of Trinity and Incarnation. I don’t think that because God is mysterious, therefore true doctrines about him must or even just likely will seem to us contradictory.
In my less charitable moments, I think there is something pathological about the way some people speak about mystery in religion. It’s almost as if they find nothing worthwhile in a Christianity that they can make sense of. They prefer to throw themselves headlong into the night of the understanding and to contemplate and to affirm as absolutely necessary doctrines that they admit surpass human comprehension. But why? Where does this impulse come from? Why would anyone prefer to walk into the dark? Perhaps they prefer their religion to be mysterious so as to place it beyond the possibility of refutation or falsification. If it can hardly be understood, it surely can’t be proven wrong. But for my part, I am happy to be able to understand the things I believe and to explain them to those who raise questions about them. I feel at home in the light of reason, so to speak, and do not have an impulse to turn toward the dark.