According to Jesus

Anthony Buzzard

God is strictly one person, not two or three. Christians who value Jesus as the Supreme revealer of truth should consider his classic words, uttered in final prayer. "You father, are the only one who is truly God" (Joh_17:3).

It is a serious hijacking of Jesus' words if one adds to Jesus' creed. For Jesus, his Father is "the one alone who is truly God, the only one who is truly God (see also Joh_5:44 and Mar_12:29).

These utterances are clear without a hint of ambiguity. Yet they have been ignored by the church bearing Jesus' name. The church has for centuries, since post-biblical times, defined God as three persons. Jesus defined God as one person, the Father. Jesus believed and taught unitary monotheism. He had never heard of the Trinity -- or if he had, he rejected it.

Centuries later, after church counsels had invested iron-clad creeds and imposed them on the faithful, Augustine came face to face with Jesus' definition of God as the "only one who is truly God." What was he to do? The church by then had lost Jesus' creed. It propagated everywhere belief that God was three persons. The innocent sentence in Joh_17:3 stated that God was a single person, not three persons. Here is Augustine's "solution." He wrote: "The proper order of the words is 'that they may know you and Jesus Christ, the only true God" (Tractates on John, 105:3).

It is hard to see how one can have the words of Jesus and the words of post-biblical creeds at the same time. Following Jesus means believing his teachings. Jesus' teaching about how many persons are the One God is really not difficult: "You , Father,  are the only true God." Jesus is the Lord Messiah (Luk_2:11; Psa_110:1), the Son of God (Mat_16:16), but not the One True God. The word "one" should be clear to all.

If anyone has any question about this, he should consult the thousands of singular personal pronouns used for God in the Bible. "I," "me," "mine," "myself," "thee," "thy." "thine," "thyself," "he," "him," "his," "himself." All these words, as well as God's proper name (Yahweh) followed by singular verbs (6700 times), ought to convince the open-minded that God is one person, not more, And monotheism -- belief that God is one -- is, according to Jesus, of critical importance (Mar_12:29).

Jesus, the Son of God, is the perfect human reflection of the One God, his Father. But he is not God. He is the sinless second Adam and the "prophet to be raised up from the house of Israel" (Deu_18:15-18). Created and begotten in the womb of his mother by the poser of God's Spirit, he is designated "Son of God" (Luk_1:35). The idea that he is "eternally begotten" not only has no recognizable meaning in language, but it is false to Scripture. "Eternal generation" contradicts the important biblical fact that the Son of God was begotten "today," not in eternity (Psa_2:7; cp. Act_13:33, referring in the latter text to the birth of Jesus).