The Father Alone is the One God - Part 1

One foundational pillar of the doctrine of the Trinity is that the Son of God, Jesus the Messiah, is the one God of the Bible—in addition to God the Father. This teaching is affirmed in the Trinitarian model presented in What is the Trinity? (see C.1 and C.2.). If this pillar goes, then the whole doctrine collapses.

In my journey out of belief in the Trinity, this pillar was first to go. It was heartbreaking to let go because I loved the Trinitarian God with all of my heart, soul, mind and strength as I tried to follow what Jesus commanded in Mark 12:30. I remember when I sang with full delight and awe a favorite of hymn of mine. For me the last two lines were the most beautiful.
“Holy, holy, holy; merciful and mighty!
God in three Persons, blessed Trinity!”

In most of my life, I defended the Trinity as absolute truth and at the very heart of Christianity until I discovered later that it is not even taught in the Bible. Instead, the Bible teaches that the Father alone is the one God. The basis for this teaching is derived from two findings.

1. The Bible singles out the Father as the one God.
2. The Bible singles out no one else as the one God.

Together the two make up the teaching that the Father alone is the one God. These findings go directly against a number of areas in the Trinitarian doctrine, of which is the teaching that Jesus is the one God. If the Bible singles out the Father—and no one else as the one God, then it follows that Jesus is not the one God of the Bible—in addition to God the Father.

In this and the next two articles I aim to establish that the Father alone is the one God of the Bible, which renders Jesus being the one God unbiblical. To that end, I will discuss ten most commonly cited biblical references that directly point to who the one God is, engage several popular Trinitarian works, and demonstrate that Trinitarians do not provide a single decisively clear biblical statement for Jesus being the one God of the Bible.

The Father, the Only True God

1. John 17:1-3

“After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed: ‘Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.’”[1]

In praying for his disciples, Jesus addresses the Father as the “only true God”. He identifies himself as the one whom this only true God, the Father, has “sent”. He does not identify himself as the one true God in this text or anywhere else in the Gospel of John.[2] Neither does Jesus do so anywhere in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke or even where Jesus is quoted by the Apostle Paul in any of his epistles.

Ironically, Trinitarian apologists use John 17:3 to maintain their claim for absolute biblical monotheism.[3] They do this despite of the fact that the “only true God” is a reference to God the Father.

For sure, establishing the Father as the one true God is a necessary step in making a case for one’s biblical monotheistic view. However, there is a gaping hole in Trinitarian apologetics in making a case for a Trinitarian view of God: There is not a single Bible verse that clearly and decisively singles out Jesus as the one true God.[4]

Prominent Trinitarian apologist Robert M. Bowman, Jr. uses John 17:3 as one of his biblical basis for Trinitarian monotheism.[5] In Why You Should Believe in the Trinity, Bowman writes, “There is only one Almighty God Jehovah, and he alone is to be worshipped—but the Bible also states flatly that he is the only God. More precisely, the Bible says that there is only one true God.”[6]

Similarly, cult expert Ron Rhodes uses John 17:3 as a basis for Trinitarian monotheism. He wrote a book titled The Challenge of the Cults and New Religions. Rhodes’ purpose was to train those involved with dialoguing with people in cults “with a view to motivate them to use their religious freedom to choose to leave the cult and transfer allegiance to the one true God of whom Scripture speaks (John 17:3).”[7]

Usage of John 17:3 as a basis for Trinitarian monotheism is not confined within the Trinitarian apologetic movement. It is also found amongst other Trinitarian works. For example, well-respected theologian Alister E. McGrath writes, “The New Testament emphasizes that there is only one God (. . . John 17:3. . .).”[8]

The Father, the Only One God

2. Romans 3:29-30
“Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles too? Yes, of Gentiles too, since there is only one God, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith.”

The “only one God” of both the Jews and Gentiles that Paul refers to here is none other than the Father (Rom. 1:7). He singles out the Father as the only one (true) God (cf. 1 Thess. 1:9) and never does this to Jesus in any of his writings in the New Testament.

Romans 3:30 is used by Bowman in his work with J. Ed Komoszewski to establish Trinitarian monotheism. They write, “Paul and other New Testament writers echo the Shema when they affirm that God is one or that there is one God,” citing Romans 3:30 as one of the biblical references, but they do not cite a reference to Jesus being the one true God.[9]

In volume two of his four-volume work, apologist Norman L. Geisler uses Romans 3:30 as one of the verses to support belief in absolute biblical monotheism. He writes, “[I]t is evident from these many verses that there is, absolutely, only one God. But if God is absolutely one, then He cannot be divided into many gods.”[10] Here, it appears that Geisler is trying to establish monotheism in general, rather than Trinitarian monotheism in particular. However, nowhere in any of his works, that I know of, does Geisler provide a verse that identifies Jesus as the only one God.

What is more, notice how Rhodes tries to establish Trinitarian monotheism. He provides three lines of evidence: (1) there is “only one true God”; (2) there are three persons who are God; (3) there is evidence that indicates “three-in-oneness within the Godhead.”[11] However, as to the first line of evidence, Rhodes uses Romans 3:30 as one of the biblical references, and none of the other references he uses speaks of Jesus being the “only one true God.”[12]

Lastly, Romans 3:30 is on McGrath’s list of biblical references for the Father being the “only one God.”[13] He recognizes the fact that the “only one God” referred to both in the Old Testament and the New Testament is none other than the Father.[14] McGrath states that it is clear that the only one “God is not identified with Jesus: for example, Jesus refers to God as someone other than himself; he prays to God; and finally he commends his spirit to God as he dies.”[15]

Updated January 15, 2021
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[1] Scripture references in these three articles are from the New International Version of the Bible (2011).

[2] Three further considerations pertaining to John 17:3 are in order. First, notice that the only person Jesus places in the category “only true God” is the Father. He does not place anyone else—not even himself—in that category. Second, it seems natural to think that John 17:3 by itself would settle the issue once and for all that the Father alone is the God of the Bible because of the nature of the language. For if the Father is the only true God, then no one else is, not even Jesus Christ. Consider the statement “Donald Trump is the only true President.” If Donald Trump is the only true President, then no one else is, not even Joe Biden. However, there are Trinitarian apologists who do not apply this language to the text for reasons I plan to address in my future blogs. For now, suffice it to say that, while I believe that John 17:3 should settle the issue, my contention here does not rest on the natural way to think of the language of the text. My contention, rather, is that the Bible en toto points to no else but the Father as the one God, which necessarily disqualifies Jesus as such. Third, if “eternal life” is to “know” Jesus as the one God—in addition to the Father, then Jesus missed the opportunity to say so. Trinitarians have their work cut out for them to establish that Jesus did ever say that he is the one God. In fact, they can’t because nowhere in the Bible did Jesus ever say this about himself. So they would have to take some other route to establish that Jesus is the one God of the Bible—in addition to the Father, another topic I plan to address in my future blogs.

[3] As will be realized, the Bible references discussed in these articles all point to none other than God the Father in support of absolute biblical monotheism.
[4] In an attempt to establish that Jesus is the one God of the Bible, some Trinitarians use 1 John 5:20 to argue that “this is the true God” is a clear reference to Jesus Christ. However, even amongst Trinitarians, this is a highly contested—and hence too problematic a—text to be used as a reference to Christ. For a number of reasons this text fails to be a decisively clear indication that Jesus is the one God of the Bible. For an excellent exegetical treatment of 1 John 5:20, see Murray J. Harris, Jesus as God (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1992), 236-53.

[5] I draw a distinction between monotheism in general (the view that most people naturally think of God as one person, one being) and Trinitarian monotheism in particular (the peculiar view that Trinitarians think of God as three persons, one being).

[6] Robert M. Bowman, Jr., Why You Should Believe in the Trinity (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1989), 51, emphasis in original.
[7] Ron Rhodes, The Challenge of the Cults and New Religions (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), 15, emphasis in original; cf. 72, 95, 248, 269.
[8] Alister E. McGrath, Understanding the Trinity (Grand Rapids: Academic Books, 1988), 120-121.

[9] Robert M. Bowman Jr. and J. Ed Komoszewski, Putting Jesus in His Place: the Case for the Deity of Christ (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 2007), 166.
[10] Norman L. Geisler, Systematic Theology: God, Creation, vol. 2 (Minneapolis, Minn: Bethany House, 2003), 39-40.
[11] Rhodes, 248.
[12] Ibid.
[13] McGrath, 120.
[14] Ibid. 120-21, 123.
[15] Ibid. 120-21, emphasis in original.