Many Christians are taught that the trinity is a doctrine so well-established in scripture that it is essential to the Christian faith, and that any attempt to find a more biblical view will inevitably lead to cultic beliefs. But some are curious to know if there are any prooftexts against the trinity that might stand in the face of orthodox criticism.

Trinity Berean as a site is committed to producing a well-developed, biblically solid critique of trinitarian ideas. Shooting off rapid-fire prooftexts against the trinity is therefore somewhat against the nature of the content on this site, but I know that most people studying a biblical concept just want a few verses to understand the idea, rather than spend hours integrating passages into a cohesive view.

This page won’t give you a thorough understanding of either the trinity or the pattern, but it will present a few verses that can be used for quick, rapid-fire challenges to trinitarian ideas. Then, after each section, you’ll find a link to an article that develops the subject more fully. Ironically, the most impactful prooftexts against the trinity are found in some of the strongest passages that trinitarians use to support their view. When examined carefully, however, they refute rather than support the doctrine of the trinity.

The foundational charge made by patternists is that the trinitarian conception of the Jesus’ sonship is biblically inaccurate. Whereas trinitarians claim that Jesus is the Son of God on account of his divine nature, patternists claim that this describes his human nature, in the same way that Adam was considered a son of God, and Christians are considered sons of God, and therefore brothers of Jesus.

Because a title that describes one nature is used to refer to the whole person of Christ, scripture regularly has divine titles speaking of human actions, and human titles speaking of divine actions, when used in reference to Jesus, the God-man. Trinitarians and Patternists both recognize this phenomenon of transferred attribution, and agree that it’s appropriate for one title to refer to activities done by both natures.

Colossians 1-2 is a classic example of this, ascribing both the creation of the universe and the death on the cross to Jesus, the Son of God. Creation of the universe was clearly done by Christ’s divine nature, whereas death could only be possible of his human nature. Yet both activities are ascribed to the Son, because the title references the whole person of Christ, even if it describes only one nature. Where we disagree is the question of which nature the title “Son” describes.

Colossians 1:19 is particularly problematic for the trinitarian claim that Jesus’ sonship comes from his divine nature. It reads,

For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell (Col 1:19)

The pronoun “him” refers back to the Son of the Father (Col 1:12-13), meaning that the fullness of God dwelt in the Son. Trinitarian theology would argue that the Son is that fullness of God dwelling in Christ, not the temple within which God dwells. Examined closely, however, this passage forces the Son to be interpreted as describing Jesus’ human nature, or at least the temple within which God dwells.

In this instance, trinitarians can’t appeal to the transfer of attribution from one nature to the other, because the relationship between the two natures itself is being examined. Whereas normal discussion of Jesus involves his whole person, Colossians 1:19 specifically examines the interaction between Jesus’ divine and human natures. Therefore when it says that God dwells within the Son, it’s evident that Paul views the Son as properly describing Jesus’ human nature, within which his divine nature dwells.

The one rescue for trinitarian theology is to claim that God the Father somehow mystically dwells within God the Son from eternity past, but this does eisegetical violence to the passage and the general testimony about Christ, requiring there to now be two indwellings rather than one. Colossians 2:9 makes it clear that Paul here is talking about God dwelling in the body (human nature) of Christ Jesus, an indwelling which other scriptures support. The only reason to accept an eternal indwelling of the Father in the Son is to maintain trinitarian belief in the face of contrary evidence.

Plainly taken, Colossians refutes the trinitarian claim that the title “Son of God” is a reference to his divine nature. Rather, the Son is a human being, created in the image and likeness of God, within whom the fullness of the godhead dwells bodily.

Most trinitarians will immediately accuse me of arianism for the above statement, but arianism isn’t the only way to grant Jesus a preincarnate created nature. And more to the point, the description of the Word in John 1:1 refutes trinitarian claims about the divine nature of Christ, so we all have a problem. It reads,

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (Jhn 1:1)

Trinitarians use this passage heavily because it clearly shows a plurality of divine persons at the very beginning of creation. However, while it affirms plurality, it specifically refutes the trinitarian framing of that plurality. The problem is seen when you replace the words that John uses with the more formulaic trinitarian language.

In the beginning was the Son, and the Son was with the Father, and the Son was the Father.

The doctrine of the trinity strongly argues that God exists as three non-overlapping persons with one divine nature shared among them. Thus it is explicitly and emphatically stated on their view that the Father is not the Son. And yet, when we replace John’s language with more common trinitarian language (Word becomes Son, and God becomes Father), we see that consistently applied, it produces the very non-trinitarian idea that the Son is the Father.

The problem is that trinitarians equivocate in their interpretation of this verse. They interpret “God” as “Father” in the first instance, to show plurality in the godhead. Then they interpret “God” to mean “divine” in the second instance, changing the meaning of “God” in the span of a few words.

A far better interpretation is to appeal to the hypostatic union (relationship between Jesus’ divine and human natures) rather than plurality in the godhead. In the incarnation, it is appropriate to say that Jesus is with God (as a human), and that he is God (as incarnated deity). Because John 1 is speaking of creation, such an interpretation requires us to push the hypostatic union back to the beginning, long before Jesus’ incarnation as a man. But we have good evidence to think that this was the case — that when Jesus came to earth as a man, he gave up a prior, created nature in which he dwelt from the beginning, known elsewhere as the Angel of the Lord.

In whatever way John 1 is resolved, it should be viewed as a challenge to trinitarian orthodoxy, rather than support for it. To be clear, pattern theology agrees that a divine person of the Word exists and is incarnated in Christ. John 1 simply does not provide support for that idea; it is talking about the God-man, not the godhead.

The way that trinitarians accomplish monotheism (belief in one God) while maintaining belief in multiple divine persons in the godhead is to appeal to the divine essence that unites them. The Athanasian Creed reads as follows:

And the catholic faith is this: that we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Essence. For there is one Person of the Father; another of the Son; and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one; the Glory equal, the Majesty coeternal.

If that is true, then it is biblically necessary for there to be a fourth divine person, namely the person represented by the godhead itself. This is made necessary by the Shema, the classic prooftext used to establish monotheism for Judaism and Christianity. It reads,

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. (Deu 6:4-5)

While trinitarians do excellent work showing that the oneness of God in this passage allows for plurality within that oneness, it nevertheless stands that the one God of this passage is described as a person who is to be loved, and who otherwise interacts with Israel as their personal God.

In most scriptures which refer to “God” as a person, trinitarians will use a hermeneutic that assigns one of the members of the godhead to be the person speaking or acting, usually God the Father. However here, in the Shema, it is necessary that all divine persons in the Godhead are included in the title “God,” or else they are not to be considered the one God of Israel. Isaiah 45:5 faces a similar problem, as do other passages affirming the monotheistic nature of God.

Trinitarians must therefore affirm either overlapping identities among the persons (allowing God the Father to speak as if he were simultaneously God the Son and God the Spirit), or they need to ascribe personhood to the divine essence itself, creating a fourth divine person who encapsulates the three. The patternist view is to understand the terms “Father” and “God” to be largely synonyms in scripture, referring to this united, divine, personal essence, with the Word and the Spirit serving as two persons who are one within that composite unity, similar to the marriage between a man and his wife (Gen 2:24).

In any case, the Shema and similar passages push hard against the depersonalization of God that is often produced by trinitarian theology, albeit unconsciously.

As a bonus prooftext against the trinity, Hebrews 1 contains a text about the “begetting” of the Son from the Father, which was the source of much dispute in the Arian controversy. Arians wanted to claim it as evidence that the Son had a beginning (implying that he was a created being), whereas the trinitarians insisted that it referred to an eternal generation of the Son from the Father, to prevent the true divinity of Jesus from being undermined.

I call this a bonus because an analysis of this passage doesn’t actually refute the trinity, as the others do. Rather, it refutes only a commonly held trinitarian belief, the language of which made it into historic and famous creeds, that the Son generates from the Father eternally and outside of time. As a patternist, I don’t really care one way or another if there is or is not an eternal generation of the Word from the Father, as that idea is wholly compatible with the patternist system. I just don’t think that that is what the author of Hebrews is talking about in the first chapter that talks about the begetting.

The author of Hebrews relies on the two-nature distinction in Christ as the foundation for his argument, which is an insight that was poorly understood at the time of Nicea. The Arians therefore assumed in their argument that A) the begetting of the Son must speak of his origin, and B) that origin must be the origin of his existence as a divine being. Rather than refute these premises, the trinitarians simply accepted them, and recast the verse to support their own view, changing it to mean an eternal generation of the Son.

But the argument of Hebrews specifically situates the begetting at a point in time long after the origin of the Son (on any view), a “begetting” of the Son in his post-resurrection ascension to the throne of God in Heaven. Luke speaks of the timing most succinctly, so I’ll cite him for the sake of rapid prooftexting.

And we bring you the good news that what God promised to the fathers, this he has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus, as also it is written in the second Psalm, “‘You are my Son, today I have begotten you.’ (Act 13:32-33)

The begetting of Jesus has nothing to do with the nature of God debate. If there is some sort of eternal generation of the Son from the Father, it should be established from other texts, and Hebrews should be left to make the point that it wants to make — that Jesus is supreme over all creation on account of his role as its divine creator, and his role as its human redeemer.