Triunotheism: Reclaiming the Triune God from the Gods

Originally posted on douglasvandorn.com

In some recent online discussions and posts about the nature of God vs. the gods, a core Christian doctrine keeps cropping up that those who disagree with our view have said is at stake. The word they use to identify this theology is monotheism, a word whose definition I both agree with and share. Nevertheless, the claim is that if you really believe that the gods are gods by nature, then you cannot be a monotheist, even if you hold to the Shema and the Ecumenical Creeds of church history. This is an extremely serious charge and it is a main reason why I decided to get into this ring publicly. To be blunt, I find it both offensive and absurd.

I’ve already explained that elohim in the Bible is defined by two very distinct kinds of entities, both of which are truly elohim by nature. Therefore this means that elohim has more than one biblical definition, something those in disagreement do not seem to want to admit. The “nature” of the elohim in view must be rightly considered. God as The Elohim transcends all others by his incommunicable attributes which he alone possesses (eternality, omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence, Spirit, etc.). To possess these attributes alone is what it means for him to be The Elohim. However, God shares communicable attributes (life, location, knowledge, power, spirit, etc.) with beings that he created and as such, some of these are considered elohim in a derivative, analogical, and yet very true sense. But that sense is obviously not the same as God himself!

In this post, I want to look at the term “monotheism”: its origins and definition, to see what it does well and what it does not do quite as well. At the end, I will offer an alternative word that I believe captures the biblical view of God in a way that monotheism simply isn’t capable of doing--perhaps on purpose, since the word was not coined by any orthodox Christian to describe the biblical understanding of God.

Monotheism: It’s Origin

First, let’s look at the meaning and origin of “monotheism” and then think about it in relation to other terms that have been bantered around. Monotheism was likely coined by Henry More in his An Antidote Against Atheism (1653). More, himself an unorthodox Anglican who believed in the pre-existence of souls and held to a platonic pantheistic-leaning “Spirit of Nature” doctrine—a kind of created, impersonal plastic force that animates and governs the physical universe, at odds with the Christian Logos tradition of Jesus (e.g. John 1:1) as the divine intermediary—used the term as a counter to atheism. His very belief system suggests it was not originally coined to reflect the biblical view but to categorize and encompass a host of religious beliefs broadly speaking, including non-Christian ones.

I didn’t bring up More’s more unorthodox views to act as a strawman, as if somehow I want to blow down the house of monotheism like the bad wolf in the Three Little Pigs because I don’t like it. Rather, I think the term is useful and true in as much as it overlaps with the Christian view of God. But I bought up his unorthodoxy and the context in which he coined the term in order to demonstrate that “monotheism” is not a word that is exclusive merely to Christianity. Never has been. Rather, Muslims, non-Christian Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Deists, Vaishnavite Hinduism, Pure Land Buddhism, and others fall under the definition of monotheism. It is difficult to overstate the importance of this point. If Christians want so badly to say that the most important foundational doctrine of them all is monotheism, they need to acknowledge that there are lots of other non-Christian worldviews that also fall under this umbrella, and it is difficult to understand how our most foundational doctrine could be shared by those who do not worship and sometimes even hate our God.

Monotheism: It’s Meaning

Webster’s 1828 Dictionary has the following entry: “MON'OTHEISM, noun [Gr. only, and God.] The doctrine or belief of the existence of one God only.” Curiously, he capitalized “God,” which fits nicely with my suggestion in my first post in this series that the capitalization is how we easily distinguish (today) God from the gods. However, we mustn’t be anachronistic here. It is unclear if he meant this as only the Christian God, since capitalization standardization was in flux at this time namely due to the influence of grammarians and lexicographers like Webster himself. Surely, he knew of Allah and the Supreme Being of Deism and that both would be considered monotheistic by this definition.

Let’s look at the etymology of the term. Some have claimed that monotheism comes directly from the NT Greek. For example, 1 Timothy 1:17 says, “To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only (monō in dative, from monos) God (theō from theos)…” Again, John 17:3 says, “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only (monon, from monos) true God (theon, from theos), and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Certainly, the two words do come together in these places, and they obviously teach us an important truth. What is that truth? There is only one Uncreated Eternal True God who alone has all of the incommunicable attributes of what it means to be Himself. This I have already addressed in previous posts.

But there are two necessary things to point out here. First, we must remember that this definition of only one Uncreated Eternal True God is not what monotheism actually means! This is a specialized definition of monotheism, much like saying that Elohim is a specialized usage distinct from elohim (note the capitalization). Second, we can’t infer from these verses a negative inference. The negative inference fallacy is a logical fallacy that does not follow from the facts. If I say I love my wife, you shouldn’t infer from this that I hate all other women. What you should infer is that I love my wife differently than I love all other women, because she is my wife. In the same way, just because the Bible speaks of “the only God” and then identifies him with incommunicable attributes, we can’t infer from this origin of the much later term “monotheism” that other gods therefore do not exist. I’ve already dealt with how they do exist in my fourth article in this series. 

For these reasons, it quickly becomes apparent that “monotheism” is a word that is incapable of doing the kind of duty it needs to do in order to fully incorporate the biblical data and therefore be the most foundational of all words we can use for our belief-system. Thus, scholars have gone in search of other words that might work better. Some have suggested that if we say there are many gods who are truly called gods in the Bible, then you have entered into a polytheistic worldview. Is this right?

Polytheism comes from poly- (many) and theos (god) is literally the belief in many gods. Etymology Online has it going back to the French polythéisme of the 16^th c. and in English it perhaps came into usage in the early 1600s. One early source is John Selden’s De Diis Syris (1617), who used it in the opposite way that modern liberals to today, to argue that polytheism was a deviation from original monotheism.[1] But Selden, who did use polytheism (its Latin equivalent polytheismus) did not use “monotheism,” even though that is the term scholars attribute, because it had not yet been coined! Instead, he used phrases such as Unicum Supremam Causam (The One Supreme Cause) or Deus Optimus Maximus (The Greatest and Best God).[2] Those are both interesting, because neither presupposes that other gods do not exist, unlike a possible conclusion from the term “monotheism.”

Vitally, the belief in many gods and the belief in only one God are not logically incompatible, so long as we have different definitions for “gods” and “God.” However, because polytheism is associated with Greek myths, Hinduism, Mormonism, and not Christianity, it is not a good term to use for the biblical data. Besides, it is just as incapable of doing the heavy lifting as monotheism as a term to express the biblical religion. This should be self-evident as polytheistic religions do not tend to have One God at the top who created all others, much less One who has all of the attributes of the biblical God. For example, the top “g-o-d” of Greek religion is actually Chaos, the antithesis of the Christian God!

But polytheism has sometimes meant “the worship of many gods.” Clearly, this only happened in Israel when they disobeyed the Lord God. Thus, some have tried to use terms like “henotheism” or “monolatry.” “Henotheism,” coined by Max Müller in the 19^th century, derives from henos (one) and theos (god). In some ways, that is identical to monotheism, but he infused it with the idea that you worship one god … at a time. Thus, the word appears to assert that all gods are equals, including the one being worshiped as supreme—whoever it may be at the moment. That’s not the biblical religion. “Monolatry,” coined by Julius Wellhausen, comes from monos (one) and latreia (worship), and as such is the worship of one God, while many others exist. The weakness of this word is that it doesn’t distinguish whether you should or shouldn’t worship that god/God or why.

Of course, as soon as you start talking like this, conservative Christians will remember that it is liberal Christians that generally use these terms in order to somehow demonstrate that, for instance, the “strict monotheism” of the latter OT arose out of a polytheism or henotheism or monolatry of previous Jews. Where I believe both sides (conservative and Liberal) are failing is that they are presupposing that monotheism is the best way to describe the fullness of the (late or total) Biblical data—one in order to defend that data, the other often to try and undermine it. Nevertheless, it’s two sides of the same coin.

While each of these words: monotheism, polytheism, henotheism, and monolatry do explain part of the whole well, yet none is capable of fully describing the Biblical God and his worship, I propose a new term. To find or coin this term, I needed it to 1. Be fully Christian in the language it uses to discuss the Biblical God. If other religions can be properly identified with the term, then it will be no better than monotheism. 2. Get at the heart of who God is. If it doesn’t do this, then there is nothing in the word that would distinguish God from any others, and thus it is no better than monotheism, polytheism, henotheism, or monolatry.

I tried several possible words as a fun experiment:

• Supradivinitism (Latin: supra, “above”; divinitas, “divinity”). A Latin combo meaning God is above-divine. This emphasizes God’s transcendence (Isaiah 43:10) but it risks implying a divine hierarchy, and “divinity” is itself a word that needs as much clarification as “g-o-d” does.  

• Theoktistism (Greek: theos, “God”; ktizo, “to create”). A Greek combo meaning The Creator God. This highlights God as Creator (Nehemiah 9:6) but other religions also claim this. Besides, it is clunky not easy to remember.

• Suprachristocreatism (Latin: supra; Greek Christos, ktizo). A Latin combo meaning Christ is the Creator above other gods. This is true and combines transcendence and creation but it is starting to get complex. It is quite a mouthful! Also, what about the Father and Spirit?

• Triunocretism. This Latin combo is getting much closer and I actually like it a lot. It comes from Triuno as the Trinity (triunus or “three-in-one”) and creatism which has creare (creation) as the root.[3] While I like this word, it still feels too far from the others, as most end in -theism—our Greek equivalent of “g-o-d.”

At the end of the day, I thought that “triunotheism” is a great word to truly define and set apart the Christian view of God from all others. It still has theism as the ending, thus the worship of ____ g-o-d and easy to remember. But the “triuno” prefix, coming from “trinity,” clearly tells us which God we worship, unlike monotheism, which could be God or any number of created rivals or even made-up deities.

Because it is the Triune God, it implicitly teaches that we worship the One True God. But unlike monotheism, it is not a word that Muslims or Deists could also identify with, even though they only worship one god (monotheism). Further, triunotheism is not a word that someone would ordinarily look at and conclude that it presupposes that other elohim do not exist, unlike monotheism in its “ONE-God” nomenclature (a deduction which I believe is not actually being fair even to this word). It obviously doesn’t smack you like polytheism does, but it allows for other gods to exist—even as it implies that if they do then whatever they are, they are not the Triune God of the Bible.

Perhaps the use of a word like triunotheism in a debate like the present one would be all the clarification that is needed to wrap our minds around the biblical data that Elohim is a word that simultaneously implies monotheism and the possible existence of other gods, but not in the way some liberals or conservatives are trying to push which has led to so much confusion, incorrect theology, and unnecessary controversy.

[1] Felix Schlichter, Mythology, Chronology, Idolatry: Pagan Antiquity and the Biblical Text in the Scholarly World of Guillaume Bonjour (1670-1714) (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 280.

[2] Cited in Martin Mulsow, “John Seldens De Diis Syris: Criticism of Idolatry and Comparative Religious History in the 17^th Century,” Aufsätze  (Jan 2001): 16 and 24 respectively.

[3] I tried a Hebrew and Greek equivalent of this: Yahwehboreism from the Tetragrammaton and bara, “to create” and Triadoktisism from trias (three), a term used for the Trinity in the Greek Fathers and ktis, from ktizo (“to create”). I like both of these words too!