This article is about the nontrinitarian view in Christianity. For the belief in multiple deities, see
Polytheism.
Tritheism (from
Greek τριθεΐα, "three divinity"[1]) is a
polytheisticnontrinitarianChristian conception of God in which the unity of the
Trinity and, by extension,
monotheism are denied. It asserts that, rather than being single God of three eternally
consubstantialPersons, the
Father,
Son (
Jesus Christ), and
Holy Spirit are three ontologically separate Gods. [2] It represents more of a "possible deviation" than any actual school of thought positing three separate deities.[3] It was usually "little more than a hostile label"[4] applied to those who emphasized the individuality of each hypostasis or divine person—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—over the unity of the Trinity as a whole.[1] The accusation was especially popular between the 3rd and 7th centuries AD.[1]
In the
history of Christianity, various theologians have been accused of lapsing into tritheism. Among the earliest were the
monophysitesJohn Philoponos (died c. 570) and his followers, such as Eugenios and Konon of Tarsos.[1] They taught that the common nature of the Trinity is an abstraction; so that, while the three persons are consubstantial, they are distinct in their properties.[5] Their view was an attempt to reconcile
Aristotle with Christianity.[4] This view, which was defended by Patriarch
Peter III of Antioch, was condemned as tritheism at a synod in
Alexandria in 616.[3][1] It was again condemned as tritheism at the
Third Council of Constantinople in 680–81.[5]
In the
Middle Ages, the
scholasticRoscelin was accused of tritheism. He was an extreme
nominalist who saw the three divine persons as separately existing. He was condemned as a tritheist at the
synod of Soissons in roughly 1092. The
realist scholastic
Gilbert de la Porrée erred in the opposite direction by distinguishing between three divine beings and the essence of God (making a quaternity rather than a trinity), and was accused of tritheism.[3] He was condemned at the
council of Reims in 1148. Gilbert's ideas influenced
Joachim of Fiore, and the
Fourth Lateran Council (1215) tried to clarify the issue by confirming the numerical unity of the Trinity.[5]
In modern times, the Austrian
CatholicAnton Günther, in an effort to refute
Hegelian pantheism, declared three divine persons to be three absolute and distinct realities bound together only by their shared origin.[5]
List of Christians accused of tritheism
The following tritheistic tendencies have been condemned as heretical by mainstream theology.
Those who are usually meant by the name were a section of the
Monophysites, who had great influence in the second half of the sixth century, but have left no traces save a few scanty notices in
John of Ephesus,
Photius,
Leontius etc.[7] Their founder is said to be a certain John Ascunages, head of a
Sophist school at
Antioch. The principal writer was
John Philoponus, the great Aristotelian commentator; the leaders were two bishops, Conon of Tarsus and Eugenius of Seleucia in
Isauria, who were deposed by their comprovincials and took refuge at Constantinople where they found a powerful convert and protector in
Athanasius the Monk, a grandson of the
Empress Theodora. Philoponus dedicated to him a book on the Trinity. The old philosopher pleaded his infirmities when he was summoned by the
Emperor Justinian to the Court to give an account of his teaching. But Conon and Eugenius had to dispute in the reign of
Justin II (565-78) in the presence of the Catholic patriarch
John Scholasticus (565-77), with two champions of the moderate Monophysite party, Stephen and Paul, the latter afterward Patriarch of Antioch. The Tritheist bishops refused to anathematize Philoponus, and brought proofs that he agreed with Severus and Theodosius. They were banished to
Palestine, and Philoponus wrote a book against John Scholasticus, who had given his verdict in favour of his adversaries. But he developed a theory of his own as to the
Resurrection (see
Eutychianism) on account of which Conon and Eugenius wrote a treatise against him in collaboration with Themistus, the founder of the Agnoctae, in which they declared his views to be altogether unchristian. These two bishops and a deprived bishop named Theonas proceeded to consecrate bishops for their sect, which they established in
Corinth and
Athens, Rome, Northern Africa and the Western Patriarchate, while in the east agents traveled through Syria and
Cilicia,
Isauria and
Cappadocia, converting whole districts and ordaining priests and deacons in cities villages and monasteries. Eugenius died in
Pamphylia; Conon returned to Constantinople. Leontius assures that the Aristotelianism of Philoponus made him teach that there are in the Holy Trinity three partial substances (merikai ousiai, ikikai theotetes, idiai physeis) and one common. The genesis of the doctrine has been explained (for the first time) under MONOPHYSITES, where an account of Philoponus's writings and those of Stephen Gobarus, another member of the sect, will be found.
John Philoponus, an
Aristotelian and
monophysite in Alexandria about the middle of the sixth century, was charged with tritheism because he saw in the Trinity as separated three natures, substances and deities, according to the number of divine persons. He sought to justify this view by the
Aristotelian categories of genus, species and individuum.[7]
In the Middle Ages,
Roscellin of Compiegne, the founder of
Nominalism, argued like Philoponus that unless the Three Persons are tres res (3 objects), the whole Trinity must have been incarnate. He was condemned of the heresy of tritheism at the 1092-1093
Council of Soissons presided over by
Renaud du Bellay,
archbishop of Rheims. Attempting to appeal to the authority of
Lanfranc and
Anselm, Roscellin prompted Anselm to write Cur Deus Homo and other treatments of the divine nature refuting his treatment.[7] Roscellin publicly recanted and, after exile in England and Italy, reconciled himself to the church, but returned to a form of his earlier reasoning.
Among Catholic writers,
Pierre Faydit, who was expelled from the
Oratory at Paris in 1671[7] for disobedience and died in 1709, practiced a form of tritheism in his Eclaireissements sur la doctrine et Phistoire ecclésiastiqes des deux premiers siecles (Paris, 1696), in which he tried to make out that the earliest Fathers were Tritheists. He was replied to by the
Premonstratensian Abbot
Louis-Charles Hugo (Apologie du système des Saints Pères sur la Trinité, Luxemburg, 1699).
A prominent ideologue of Russian
Old Believers and a writer,
Avvakum (died 1682) was accused by official Orthodox Church and by fellow Old Believers of tritheism, based on some passages in his letters.
A Catholic canon of Trier named Oembs, influenced by the doctrines of the "Enlightenment",[7] similarly attributed to the Fathers his own view of three similar natures in the Trinity, calling the numerical unity of God an invention of the
Scholastics. His book Opuscula de Deo Uno et Trino (Mainz, 1789), was condemned by
Pius VII in a Brief of 14 July 1804.
The Bohemian Jesuit philosopher
Anton Günther was also accused of tritheism, leading to his work ending up on the
Index librorum.
Among Protestants, Heinrich Nicolai (d. 1660), a professor at
Danzig and at
Elbing[7] (not to be confounded with the founder of
Familia Caritatis), is cited.
The best known in the Anglican Church is
William Sherlock,
Dean of St. Paul's,[7] whose Vindication of the Doctrine of the Holy and ever Blessed Trinity (London, 1690) against the
Socinians, maintaining that with the exception of a mutual consciousness of each other, which no created spirits can have, the three divine persons are "three distinct infinite minds" or "three intelligent beings.", was attacked by
Robert South in Animadversions on Dr. Sherlock's Vindication (1693). Sherlock's work is said to have made
William Manning a Socinian and
Thomas Emlyn an Arian, and the dispute was ridiculed in a skit entitled "The Battle Royal", attributed to William Pittis (1694?), which was translated into Latin at Cambridge.
Joseph Bingham, author of the "Antiquities", preached at Oxford in 1695[7] a sermon which was considered to represent the Fathers as tritheists, and it was condemned by the Hebdomadal Council as falsa, impia et haeretica, the scholar being driven from Oxford.
Though members of
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would probably not self-identify as tritheist, some critics of
Mormonism claim that it is tritheistic or polytheistic because it teaches that the
Godhead is a council of three distinct deities perfectly one in purpose, unity and mission, but nevertheless separate and distinct beings.[8][9]
Some have suggested that the
Seventh-day Adventist Church has embraced a tritheistic view of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as it does not see their singularity as a Godhead consisting in one being but rather as three separate beings in a single group.[10]
^
abcdF. L. Cross; E. A. Livingstone, eds. (2009) [2005],
"Tritheism", The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (3rd rev. ed.), Oxford University Press,
ISBN978-0-19-280290-3.
^
abcdefghChapman, John (1912).
"Tritheists"Archived 2012-06-15 at the
Wayback Machine. The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company (public domain). Retrieved October 17, 2012.