Holy Spirit
What about the Holy Spirit? While the distinction between the Father and Son can be explained by the incarnation, when it comes to the Father and the Spirit there is no incarnational distinction. How is it that the Spirit is distinct from the Father? Is the Holy Spirit a reference to a distinct person within God, or is it a reference for a particular aspect of God's one person just like our spirit is a reference to a particular aspect of our one person (I Corinthians 2:11)? If the former, why did the OT not make this explicit, and why is the NT data so lacking for such a conclusion? The NT often makes a distinction between the Father and Son, but rarely makes a distinction between Father, Son, and Spirit.
While the OT speaks of the Spirit of(3) God, there is never any indication that the Spirit is a distinct person within God's essence. The Spirit is most often said to belong to YHWH, not to be a distinct person from Him. If YHWH is the Trinity (Father, Son, and Spirit), and the Spirit is a person in the Trinity, then we must conclude that the Spirit is YHWH. If the Spirit is YHWH, how can the Spirit be said to belong to YHWH? Does the Spirit belong to Himself? It would be senseless to say that one can belong to themselves. They either are themselves, or they belong to another. If YHWH is the Trinity, and the Spirit is said to belong to YHWH, and yet one cannot belong to themselves, then we would have to conclude that the Spirit is not YHWH. Such cannot be true even in Trinitarian thought, and thus we have no logical reason to assume that the Spirit is a distinct person from YHWH. The only way to curtail such a logical conclusion would be to argue that in some references "YHWH" is referring only to the Father, and the Spirit is being said to belong to the person of the Father in YHWH. Such an explanation, however, is inconsistent and falls prey to splitting up the Trinity. Either YHWH is the Trinity of eternal persons, or YHWH refers to only one person in the Trinity. It cannot be both ways.
God is holy, and God is a Spirit, so it is no surprise that God is referred to as "Holy Spirit," or that we read about the "Spirit of [being used as a possessive meaning "belonging to"] God." God's Holy Spirit is the innermost essence of His being. The references to God's Holy Spirit also speak of God in activity. The term serves to signify a certain aspect of God's self-revelation to man. In the OT the Spirit is clearly understood to be a reference to YHWH, referring to His nature as Spirit.
We must still ask how it is that the Spirit is distinguished from the YHWH in the OT, or the Father and Son in the NT. We can make as much distinction between God and His Spirit as we can between a man and his spirit. Paul seemed to make this point when he said concerning the deep things of God: "But God has revealed them to us by His Spirit: for the Spirit searches all things, yes, even the deep things of God. For what man knows the things of a man, except the spirit of man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God" (I Corinthians 2:12-13). I can distinguish my spirit from my flesh, and speak of my spirit as distinct from me, but my spirit is not a distinct person within me. I am one person, a unified whole, being both body and spirit. God's Spirit is no more distinct from Him than my spirit is from me.
When we understand the NT distinctions to be incarnationally-grounded, it explains the reason Trinitarians find so few passages that would argue for a distinct person of the Spirit, while they find so many that seem to argue for the distinct person-hood of the Son.
Jesus' Prayers
Trinitarians believe that Jesus' communication with the Father, namely His prayers, compels us to conclude that the deity of the Father and the deity of the Son are distinct persons in the Godhead. It is reasoned that if the deity of the Son and the deity of the Father are the same personal deity, then Jesus' communication to the Father was simply God talking to Himself. The simple fact that Jesus communicates with the Father and has a relationship with the Father does not de facto indicate that God is a Trinity of persons. We have to understand why Jesus communicates with the Father. While it could be due to the fact that God is tri-personal, is there compelling evidence to conclude so? There are several reasons why Jesus' communication with the Father should not be understood to indicate that God is a Trinity. We need to ask a few questions about the Biblical data before we can conclude why Jesus communicated with the Father.
First, why do we not read of any communication between the Father and Son until after the incarnation?(4) If God is eternally Father and eternally Son we would expect to find the Father and Son communicating with one another prior to the incarnation. Interestingly, however, we only find such communication after the incarnation. If the communication between Father and Son is a major reason why Trinitarians feel compelled to conclude that the Father and Son are two distinct and eternal persons, and yet the communication only begins after the incarnation when God became man, what compelling evidence is there to conclude that God is eternally Father and eternally Son? If the communication began at a certain point in time, maybe the Son is not an eternal person in the Godhead. Maybe there is another explanation for the Father/Son distinction, and another explanation for the Son's communication with the Father.
Secondly, why is it that Jesus never communicated with any person of the Trinity besides the Father? Why did He not communicate with the Holy Spirit or with God the Son?(5) It seems kind of odd that Jesus would only communicate with one person in the Trinity. Are we more justified in believing that the Son simply chose not to communicate with any person besides the Father, or are we more justified in believing that Jesus only communicated with the Father because there is only one person in the Godhead to communicate with in the first place? The lack of communication to the other two persons of the Triune God may just indicate that there are no 'two other persons.'
Maybe Jesus only communicated with the Father because "Father" is the one uni-personal God's existence as the unlimited Spirit apart from the incarnation. Maybe we do not find any communication between Father and Son prior to the incarnation because the Son did not exist before the incarnation, because the Son is the uni-personal God's existence as man. Maybe the communication and relationship between the Son and Father is due to the fact that God assumed a real limited human consciousness in the incarnation, and with such a consciousness Jesus had need of a relationship with God as does any other human being. Jesus' prayers do not support Trinitarian theology.
Foundational Problems with Trinitarianism
If we are going to confess a Trinity we must ask why we do not find this triunity of God until the NT. We have to wonder why we never read about the second person in the OT. Why was the existence of a second person not revealed until the incarnation? Why is it that God has only spoken through the Son in these last days (Hebrews 1:1-3) if the Son has eternally existed alongside the Father? Does it make more sense to conclude that the Son is an eternally distinct person in the Godhead that God failed to mention until the NT, or is it more reasonable to conclude that "Son" has to do with the one uni-personal God's existence as a man, which existence did not come to be until the incarnation?
If there was no distinct person from the Father in the OT, what would we expect to find in the OT concerning the Son? Nothing. What do we find? Nothing. So why conclude that the Son of God is an eternal person in the Godhead, and reject the idea that "Son" pertains to God's incarnate existence, if we read nothing about the Son until the incarnation? Frankly, there is no good reason to do so. Trinitarians must account for the lack of evidence upon which they have concluded that the Son is eternal. They must account for the fact that God never disclosed His threeness until the NT, offer a viable explanation for such disclosure, and offer compelling evidence that would substantiate the belief that there ever was an eternal Son to be disclosed in the first place.
While both Trinitarian and Oneness theologies must account for the new revelation of God in the incarnation, there is a difference between saying that the same person who revealed Himself to Moses in the OT became a man in the NT (Oneness theology), and saying that a second person in the Godhead no one knew existed became a man in the NT (Trinitarian theology). While Oneness believers may be shocked to see that God would become a man, Trinitarians would be shocked to see who showed up! In Oneness theology the person who shows up is the same person we have been reading about in the OT, not a different person in the Godhead we never read about before. Trinitarian theology has to admit that a whole other person in the Godhead showed up on the scene in flesh, who is personally distinct from the personal God revealed in the OT. In Oneness theology we do not find a part of God that we have never known before; we find the same familiar God, but manifest in flesh.
Also, why is it that God is called "YHWH" before the incarnation, and only "Father" and "Son" after the incarnation? The "Father/Son" terminology only arises after the incarnation when God actually became a man. It is no surprise, then that we find a distinction between Father and Son starting in the NT (not the OT). Maybe we do not find such terminology in the OT because God was never "Father" (in the NT sense of the word describing the relationship between Father and Son) before He fathered a son in the incarnation.
(See my article entitled "Eternal Father, Eternal Son?") It is much more reasonable to conclude that the distinctions between Father and Son are temporal distinctions arising in the incarnation, not eternal distinctions within God's essential being.
Conclusion
What model of God, then, can most adequately account for all of the Biblical data? What model best explains the Biblical insistence on monotheism, the lack of any distinction in God's person in the OT, the emergence of "Father/Son" terminology only after the incarnation, and the fact that most of the Biblical distinctions are in reference to the Father and Son, to the exclusion of the Spirit? Is it the Trinitarian or Oneness model?
While the Trinitarian model can account for the distinctions in the NT, it cannot account for the lack of such in the OT, nor the failure of the OT to mention "God the Son" (other than in prophetic passages), nor the non-existence of the "Father/Son" terminology before the incarnation. While it can account for the distinction passages, it does so only at the expense of redefining "one" to mean "unity," and thus bringing the church to the borders of Tritheism. Why should we adopt the Trinitarian model of God when the model fails to answer so much of the Biblical data?
I argue that a Oneness theology best accounts for such a phenomenon, insisting that God is an absolute monad, the Spirit being His very nature and an aspect of His one person, and the Son being none other than His one person incarnated as a man, but distinguished from His continued existence beyond the incarnation due to the hypostatic union of His deity and humanity into one unified theandric existence. Oneness theology best accounts for the rise of distinction-terminology in the NT, and the emergence of the appellations "Father/Son," because it was not until the NT that God fathered a son, and it was not until the hypostatic union when God incorporated a human identity into His person that there arose such a need to make any distinctions in reference to God. The distinction, however, is never said to be between eternal persons in the Godhead. Such distinctions are only necessary in light of the incarnation and God's acquisition of a genuine human consciousness when He assumed a genuine human existence.
Footnotes
(1). Jesus, the Son of God, is fully God, but God is not identified with Jesus, as being identically the same. This demonstrates that God was not centralized in the person of Christ, so that God no longer existed apart from the incarnation. The Scripture presents Jesus both as being God, and in contradistinction to God, offering us a paradoxical, bilateral view of His person. Jesus thought of the Father as being someone other than He Himself, though He also realized that the deity of the Father was in Him (John 10:38; 14:10-11, 20), and that He preexisted the incarnation as YHWH (John 8:56-59).
(2). Coming from the Greek theos (God) and anthropos (man).
(3). In the Hebrew grammar "of" is being used as a possessive meaning "belonging to."
(4). In certain OT passages YHWH does speak to or of the Son (Psalm 2:7; 45:6; 110:1), but a few things should be noted. First, it is never said that the "Father" spoke to the Son. It only speaks of "YHWH" or "God," never suggesting a Father/Son relationship prior to the incarnation. Secondly, these OT passages are clearly prophetic, speaking of the Messiah, and thus cannot be divorced from the incarnation which was yet future. The communication between YHWH and the Messiah (Son), then, was not a present transaction, but a future even.
(5). While it may be argued that Jesus would not communicate with God the Son (as he exists apart from the incarnation) because Jesus was God the Son incarnate, and for Jesus to communicate to God the Son would be for Jesus to communicate to Himself, this assumes that Jesus' communication to the Father arose out of His divine consciousness, rather than a genuine human consciousness. Such a view of Christ denies Christ a true human consciousness and psyche, being Docetic and Apollinarian in nature. Trinitarians must confess a genuine human consciousness for Christ. If His consciousness was human, then His prayers were also human, and could not be construed to be one divine person praying to another divine person, but a genuine human being praying to God. In such case it would not matter if Jesus (God the Son incarnate) prayed to God the Son transcendent because Jesus' prayers arose out of His human consciousness, not God the Son's divine consciousness.
Jason Dulle