When we shall have done away with the incomprehensible jargon of the Trinitarian arithmetic, that three are one, and one is three…we shall then be…worthy disciples.
Thomas Jefferson, quoted in Michael A. Robinson, God Does Exist!, Author House 2006, p.144
But the Trinity does not state this. A straw man is easily refuted. Persons and substance are not the same.
Jefferson also went on to say:
- “It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in the Platonic mysticism that three are one, and one is three; yet that the one is not three, and the three are not one;….” (Jefferson’s Works, Vol. 6, p. 192 by H.A. Washington).
- “No historical fact is better established, than that the doctrine of one God, pure and uncompounded, was that of the early ages of Christianity;…. The hocus-pocus phantasm of a God like another Cerberus, with one body and three heads, had its birth and growth in the blood of thousand and thousands of martyrs…. In fact, the Athanasian paradox that one is three, and three but one, is so incomprehensible to the human mind, that no candid man can say he has any idea of it, and how can he believe what presents no idea? He who thinks he does, only deceives himself. He proves, also, that man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most montrous,… With such persons, gullability, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason, and the mind becomes a wreck.” (Jefferson’s Works, Vol. 7, p. 269-70 by H.A. Washington). – Thomas Jefferson
But the Athanasian Creed states:
…we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance. 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 co-eternal. (excerpt)
It seems there is an unwillingness of certain people to state the doctrine properly and hide behind the phrase, ‘It’s contradictory’. It’s not easy, but who would expect to peer into the very being of God and grasp that being so easily?