In popular Christian writing, as well as in theology, I’m constantly seeing the word “godhead” being used to mean something like “the three members of the Trinity, considered as a group”. An example context would be discussion “the eternal fellowship of the Godhead”.
Historically, this usage puzzles me. You never see this usage in ancient, medieval, or early modern material.In fact, I’m not sure I’ve seen it in anything before 1980 – anyone out there have a counterexample?
Here’s what our friend the Oxford English Dictionary says about “godhead”:
1. The character or quality of being God or a god; divine nature or essence; deity.
b. As a title: Divine personality. Obs.
2. a. the Godhead: the Supreme Being; the Deity; = GOD n. 5. (Also rarely without article.)
b. A deity or divinity. = GOD n. 1. Now rare. (Oxford English Dictionary online, “godhead”)
Basically, the OED acknowledges two usages of “godhead’ – (1) that which makes God divine – his quality of divinity, and (2) God. (2) is a natural extension of (1) – it’s a case of using a word for a part/aspect/component of the thing to stand for the whole thing – here, God. Note: the OED is out of date; it lacks the usage I noted at the start of this post. The new usage implies a divine community; the old (2) doesn’t – it is like referring to God using a sort of euphemistic title such as “Providence” or “Heaven”. Note that a “Godhead” in the recent usage is never a “him” but always a “they” or an “it” – this is the whole point of the new usage.
My hypothesis is this: Continue Reading »

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Philosopher 

Thanks to Ed Feser for some interesting dialogue on the topic of mysteries in Christian theology. This post is just a bunch of miscellaneous responses to his thoughts posted last week, 



Below is a guest post by Greg Spendlove, who is an adjunct philosophy instructor at Salt Lake Community College. He received his Master of Arts in Christian Thought with an emphasis in Systematic Theology and a cognate in Philosophy of Religion from Trinity International University in Deerfield, IL in 2005. His Master’s thesis was entitled “A Critical Study of the Life and Thought of Brahmabandhab Upadhyay” and critically assessed Brahmabandhab’s attempt to reconcile Christian theology as expressed by Aquinas with Shankara’s Advaita Vedanta.
Has Richard, after these 21 chapters so far of Book III of his On the Trinity (De Trinitate) only succeeded in proving that there are at least three gods? In chapter 22, Richard argues for a negative answer.
In the preceding chapters, Richard has been arguing for the impossibility of only one divine person. If there’s one, there must be more than one; more than that, there must be at least three.
As Joseph explained in his 








