In this 1852 book former Episcopal priest G.W. Hyer explains How I Became a Unitarian. It’s an interesting read, yet another example of the whistleblower genre; naturally, I don’t agree with all of it. But I thought he hit the nail on the head which it comes to the confused status quo among trinitarians. Obviously, this is the voice of experience.
. . . the Trinitarian “worships he knows not what.” First it is the Father, then the Son, then the Holy Spirit. Then all three in one. Then one for the sake of the other, then two. Then they are three gods because they are three personalities; but, frightened by the idea, he groups them before his mental vision in a kind of aggregation which is without division or divisibility. Lost again, he puts one forth as an influence, another as a sacrifice. Then, although they are but one god, one appeases the other, petitions, prays to him. Thus there is a continual conflict of ideas, and from lack of clear conception of the subject, a distraction which is equivalent to doubt. To affirm in this case may be easy, but to believe is impossible. For to attempt to worship three Persons as one God is to deny the attribute of deity to each. Or to worship each Person separately as God is to create three gods, for three divine persons equal to each other cannot be other than three gods.
pp. 90-91, modernized, emphases added
Is each Person of the Trinity a god? Some trinitarians say yes. (Most will then add that they are the same god – despite their differences!) But others will deny that any of the Three is a god.
Worship is something we do to another self; it is, as they say, an I-Thou relation or action. But trinitarians disagree about how many selves there are among the “three Persons” of the Trinity. You might think the obvious answer is three selves, but sone trinitarians clearly assert there to be one. Others, four. Others, none.
Is it enough to worship “the Trinity”? Or must one also – or instead – worship the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit? And if the latter, it is important to equally distribute worship among the three, or among the four, the Trinity being a fourth?
If they are one in being/essence, does worshiping one of them count as worshiping all of them?
The New Testament picture of worship (e.g. Revelation 5) is very simple and clear by comparison, as is its theology.
I should also point out that this position means, as Tertullian even explicitly says “the Father is the whole and the Son and Holy Spirit parts of the whole.” So you don’t have 3 zords that form a megazord. I.e. Father + Son + Holy Spirit = Trinity. Athanasians do. They have a 4 person God, because when combined the 3 form the Trinity which can be spoken of as “he” and so constitutes a 4th superperson. But if the Father is the whole, he is the whole Trinity, because the Son and Holy Spirit are parts of him. This is why you can just say “God” and mean the Father, and yet doing so is not denying the deity of the Son or Holy Spirit. Its also why Jesus as God can say to the Father “you are the only true God.” Because the Father alone contains the Son and Holy Spirit in himself; neither the Son nor Holy Spirit contains the Father wighin himself. Hence “my Father is greater than I.” The Son is still ontologically God, being “of one substance with the Father”, yet less than God (meaning the Father) in that he is a part of the whole not the whole.
Arius took his position that “the Son is no part of the substance of the uncreated” (and therefore must be a creation ex nihilo) based on a philosophical belief that God’s substance cannot be subdivided. At its core then Arius’ position was a rejection of the formula “the Father is the whole and the Son and Holy Spirit parts of the whole” and the Athanasian Creed is a rejection of the same formula(!) — so they have way more in common with Arius than they know.
The Emperor also voiced a similar position at the council of Nicea objecting apparently to some language of Eusebius of Ceasaria, launching into some claims about the indivisibility of the divine substance, but these comments did not effect the decision to embrace exactly that in the Nicean Creed. And the Athanasian Creed asserts the same when it says “The Father by himself is the whole God.” (So far so good!) “The Son by himself is the whole God. The Holy Spirit by himself is the whole God.” (Why? Why?) This insane belief that God cannot subdivide his substance into three, and yet “I believe in a Trinity.” Dingbat, a Trinity requires that God can subdivide his essence into three; that literally is the doctrine of the Trinity. Ergo, Athanasians are not really Trinitarians but simultaneous modalists. If each person is the whole God that is because each person is actually the same person! Duh. And to say that each person is the whole is to say each person contains each other person, which is the same as saying its really just one person. So they are not really Trinitarians. The reason they uncharitably push “the Trinity” so hard is to compensate for not being real Trinitarians themselves; they puff their chests on it to hide how anti-trinitarian they themselves actually are.
The confusion comes from the insistence of the “experts” that the Athanasian Creed is the standard of the Trinity. The lie is that Nicea or Constantinople rubber stamped Athanasius’ doctrine as found in the Athanasian Creed, or that the Athanasian Creed is even compatible with the Nicean-Constantinoplean Creed.
In reality those councils would have rejected the Athanasian Creed as the rejection of the monarchy of the Father (i.e. that the personalities of the other two persons have an origin point in him, being generated within his essence, such that is substance they always existed but in personality began to exist when he generated them in his substance) as the Atahanasian Creed argues simply all three person always existed as such, i.e. a divine triplet born from primordial chaos.
Tertullian’s trinitas doctrine, that the Father alone existed but was not alone because he had his Reason (Logos) within him and he and it spoke to each other as he reasones within himself, yet it was not a person yet, and then he begot it and it became the Son…and something similar for the Holy Spirit…that was the basis of Nicea and Constantinople, not Athanasius’ divine always existing triplet brothers doctrine.
And ironically Tertullian also said each person in the trinitas exists in a different “mode.” No modalist even uses the word mode. In fact, the Athanasian Creed teaches these 3 modes and some Athanasians even use the word mode for it, i.e.
The Father is uncreated.
The Son is uncreated BUT begotten.
The Holy Spirit is uncreated AND unbegotten BUT proceeding.
Those are the 3 modes.
Any Trinitarian pastor who can’t write the post I just made off the top of his head should quit in shame because he can’t explain the most basic position of or history of the doctrine of the Trinity.
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