Three Errors About the Trinity

 The stated belief of most Christians is that God is a Trinity: three distinct persons united as one God. Thus, the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. The Father is not the Son, the Sone is not the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is not the Father (nor vice-verse). Catholics would add that this is a mystery: we can know that this is true, it has been revealed to us as true through Tradition and the Church's teaching authority. Most other Christians--C.S. Lewis' "Mere Christians" (whether Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican, or other ecclesial communities) would agree with these ideas; they might say with Peter Kreeft that while we cannot fully understand the Trinity, it makes the most sense out of the data (truths about God revealed to us, e.g. in Scripture).

There are, nonetheless, several errors about the Trinity, a few of which have appeared in one form or another as being among the larger and more widespread or pernicious of heresies. I want to mention three such errors in this post.

The first error is that the Trinity is a belief in three different Gods. Thus, a form of polytheism. This error would make God less than all-powerful, all-good, and all-knowing, as the three Gods might strive against each other: a three-person version of the early Gnostic and Manichaen heresies. I don't think that this error is especially common in a formal sense (it quickly becomes untenable), but it may be materially present in the ways that many Christians (Catholic or otherwise) interact with God practically.

The second error is that there are not indeed three persons, but only three modalities, three ways in which God presents Himself to us (or, more insidiously--three ways in which God has presented Himself to us...so far!). This error is Modalism or Sabellianism (the latter named after the third-century bishop who taught this idea, largely in response to other errors of his day). Modern days "Oneness" Pentecostals embrace a version of this error, and it perhaps will be making its way through the "Holiness" Pentecostal ranks by contact osmosis. Pentecostalism is one of the fastest growing Christian sects, and Oneness Pentecostals are themselves growing rapidly as a sect. Among other things, they teach that Jesus is God's name, and that Father, Son, Holy Spirit are different offices of the one God named Jesus*; this is analogous to how most Mere Christians would consider God as Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. As a consequence, the Oneness Pentecostals do not baptize using a Trinitarian formula ("I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit"). 

The third error is related to the first: there are three divine persons, but they are not coequal. Hence, the Father might be greater than the Son and the Spirit. All three are divine and participate in being God, but not all three to an equal degree. The pagan Plotinus taught a version of this in conceiving of a divine trinity, and one of the great heresies--Arianism and its offshoots--likewise allowed for Christ to be divine yet lesser that the Father.

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*It seems odd to me that God's "true" name means "YHWH is Salvation" or "God is Deliverance," since this means that God's true name (and hence nature) is thus dependent on the existence of an other to save.