Note: This is part of a series on the Trinity from a rational, non-mystical perspective. See the index here.

Yesterday we discussed “James Attebury on the Trinity.” Today we are going to continue the series with a discussion of James White’s views on the Trinity.

James White is one of the most famous living apologists. I recommend that my children listen to his debates, because they are generally very good and he is an excellent example of someone who uses their mind to great effect. Most of the time he maintains his calm, sticks to ideas, and avoids fallacious reasoning. These are all things that I appreciate.

So it is not out of disrespect that I point out a contradiction from his book in this post. This greatly expands on the original, and very short, argument by “unitarian monotheist” Sir Anthony Buzzard here. Watch that video and if you still have questions or simply want more context, read this post.

Now, let’s read what James White has to say in his book (emphasis added):

This is an extremely important setup point.

Most Trinitarian Christians conclude that the Trinity is an unexplainable mystery that goes beyond the capacity for reason to even interact with it in rational terms and argument. This includes Roman Catholics, and so the largest body of Christians, but it includes other major denominations as well.

This particular view is an implicit acknowledgment that the Trinitarian formulation as described is inherently irrational and contradictory in form, that is, there exists no human language that can explain or describe it rationally. The emphasis here is that the doctrine is asserted to be true because scripture and/or tradition say it is true.

But James White is, like myself, a staunch rationalist. As his quotes above and below show, his apologetical method requires him to be able to explain the Trinity without any contradiction or fallacious reasoning (e.g. special pleading) in form. In other words, he is holding himself to a higher standard than most Christians are willing to take.

By way of example, White isn’t saying he can explain philosophical concepts such as the eternal, but he can nevertheless describe the eternal in rational form using language. Thus he avoids having to explain the metaphysical aspects of the Trinity while still obligating himself to explain the essential aspects rationally.

Keep this assumption in mind as we continue onward. What we conclude at the end applies to James White and his particular method. Other viewpoints may or may not be affected, depending on what they share in common with White’s viewpoint.

Here we go. This is a definition that is more-or-less rationally constructed.^[1] While it is debatable whether this is a completely rational formulation, for sake of argument we can assume that it is. We can leave that particular debate to others. It does not interest us at the moment.

All we care about is if James White can maintain a rational position within his own framework.

James White is absolutely correct that the assertion he gave would be self-contradictory. He is correct that the self-contradictory formulations are “commonly found in the literature of various religions that deny the Trinity.” I’ve found this exact situation in my own research.

As we stated above, our concern is not with viewpoints that make other assumptions (i.e. with strawmen arguments). All we want to know is if James White can describe the Trinity without contradicting his own stance according to his own standards. In other words, can he avoid doing exactly what the other literature does?

Or, put another way, will James White join the anti-Trinitarians with a self-contradictory description of the Trinity or will he expose those self-contradictory formulations as invalid descriptions of the true doctrine that he alone will describe accurately?

It turns out that he cannot do what he sets out to do:

Pay close attention to this. James White has identified the One True God as Yahweh, the divine being who created everything. He has identified the Father as the one (triune) being Yahweh. He has identified the Son as the one (triune) being Yahweh. And he has identified the Holy Spirit as the one (triune) being Yahweh. Three Yahwehs (Father, Son, Spirit) make up one Yahweh (One True God). Thus, James White has failed to distinguish between the WHOs and the WHATs, the being and the persons. He’s failed to heed his own warning not to mix them up. Most importantly, this is a self-contradictory formulation.

This is the logical fallacy known as “equivocation.” White is trying to get Jehovah’s Witnesses to agree that Yahweh is the One True God (the “Being”) and the Father (the “Person”), for the Jehovah’s Witnesses view these at the same thing. But White believes these are two separate uses, that they are different things. The first is Yahweh is as a being, the second is Yahweh as a person, but White makes no reference to persons here, only the being of Yahweh.

Of course the Jehovah’s Witness will agree that Yahweh is a being and that this being is equal to the Father: both Father and Yahweh are the being, the One True God. That’s the setup, the trap. Later, however, White tries to bait-and-switch by introducing personhood into the analogy, hoping that the Jehovah’s Witness he is speaking to isn’t quick enough to notice that “Father” no longer refers to being but to a person.

But, of course, it doesn’t logically follow: the Jehovah’s Witness would never have agreed to define Yahweh as a being and Father as a person separate from being. Rather, he would identify Yahweh as both the One True God and the Father, and conversely, he would identify the Father and the One True God as Yahweh. The insertion of personhood breaks the identity.

It is the (hidden!) equivocation of two different meanings using the same terminology. He’s equating two different arguments as if they were the same thing. Not only is this a dirty debate tactic, but doing so invalidates the initial argument.

Calling the One True God ‘Yahweh’, the Father ‘Yahweh’, the Son ‘Yahweh’, and the Spirit ‘Yahweh’ is known as Modalism. Its various forms are all considered to be heresies by a majority of the Church. But it is also an extremely common formulation.

Most Christians have never actually thought about this question, and so adopt whatever form of Trinitarianism has been placed upon them.  But when polled about it, it was found that a majority of Christians will describe the Trinity in a heretical or contradictory form:

When pressed to explain the Trinity, analogies that describe Modalism are often used as an explanation. There are actually quite a few different versions of Trinitarianism, but hardly anyone can even describe their own views correctly, let alone debate different versions. This includes pastors and apologists!

Here is the best explanation and illustration of this that I am aware of:

James White shows here that he’s unable to avoid the contradiction that he says we must be so careful to avoid. White—a seasoned apologist—can’t even get it right in a book about the Trinity!

Now I can see what White is trying to do. Can you? He starts with the Jehovah’s Witnesses assumptions, then presents Modalism as compatible with their view (which it is!), and then engages in a bait-and-switch to orthodox Trinitarianism. But Trinitarianism is completely incompatible with the Jehovah’s Witness’ initial assumptions! The fact of the matter is that White had to argue for Modalism (and then quietly switch to Trinitarianism by way of a logical fallacy) to make his point.

In his debate with Iglesia Ni Cristo on the Trinity, James White says:

So overconfident is James White that his reason would prevail that, in his self-contradiction, he inadvertently lends support to both Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Iglesia Ni Cristo!

Did you catch that last part in the video? Here it is (emphasis added):

Over at LifeWay (the ones who did the poll mentioned above), Brandon D. Smith writes writes that we should not attempt to reason using analogies:

There is a reason that (small ‘o’) orthodox Christians do not try to use reason to defend the doctrine of the Trinity, and James White provides the perfect example for why that is. I’ve watched a number of James White’s debates on the Trinity (all listed here), and IMO, he’s never won any of them, despite winning most of his other debates. His arguments on this topic are always weak and speculative because he’s trying to prove what can’t be proven with reason. The best he can hope for in a debate is a tie (or a proof-less “victory” due to the ineptitude of his opponent). But, at worst, he does damage to his own cause.

If you want to believe in the doctrine of the Trinity, you have to do so on blind faith. There exists no logical argument that can lead one conclusively to belief in the Trinity. If you attempt to reason your way into it, you will inevitably be defeated when a better prepared opponent comes your way. You can never prove the doctrine of the Trinity by argument. It is a logical contradiction. It’s impossible.

When I wrote “Grammatical analysis of John 1:1c and John 1:14,” which thoroughly analyzed the various competing views, I opened with this note:

Then I proceeded to show that the traditional explanation—the one James White believes—cannot be established using the rational argument regarding the most common proof-text. In doing so, I proved precisely what the church has known throughout the centuries: the Trinity is a doctrine that has no basis whatsoever in natural reason. It’s why most in the church do not bother with rational explanations.

My views are consistent with this. I’ve described them here:

I am unlike the average Christian in that I am a deep rationalist. So it is intriguing, therefore, that when the average, non-rationalist Christian is asked about this, they do not describe the speculative explanation that the theologians have provided to them, but rather conclude only what limited information they can know for sure from scripture.

Why do a majority of Christians confirm these three things?

The Holy Spirit as a force but not a personal being.

Jesus was the first and greatest being created by God.

Jesus was a great teacher, but he was not God.

Because if you read scripture and only scripture, you would quickly hit the limit of what you could safety conclude. Beyond this is pure speculation. The majority of American Christians more-or-less describe what scripture teaches despite being taught something different!

When I wrote “A Decree to Rebuild,” I noted this same effect at work:

This is where I differ from both the pure rationalist and the pure mystic. You don’t need a PhD for God to reveal truth to you, but neither do you need to become a mystic who shuns reason. God’s truth has been revealed to all, and it’s there for any who seek it.

Many readers will not even see the error that James White made, even though it has been explained. So ingrained are the assumptions, that the equivocation simply becomes second nature. It is performed automatically. Consider this comment on the YouTube video:

Do you see how the commenter holds both meanings of Yahweh (יהוה) simultaneously—the one being Yahweh and the three persons of Yahweh—without even realizing he is doing it? Greek grammarian Don Hartley did the same thing when he wrote of John 1:1 that “Jesus is God in every sense the Father is.” But I merely pointed out:

This is exactly what James White did when speaking to the Jehovah’s Witnesses. He equivocated on “Yahweh the being” and “Yahweh the father” without even realizing he had done so. The Trinitarian hears…

…and mentally inserts…

…without realizing that this changes the plain meaning of the statement.

Consider the two consecutive uses of ‘God’ in the opening to the Gospel of John:

The Trinity Delusion website explains this equivocation of God as Father and God as God the being:

The Trinitarian apologist just switches the sense of “God” from the being or the person as his assumptions demand, even if this means applying both meanings simultaneously to the same word! It doesn’t even occur to him to notice that he’s switched from “God the person” to “God the being” because it suits his presuppositions.

As with the comment by dekelt above, so ingrained is this indoctrination that the mind cannot even comprehend this objection. The typical Trinitarian cannot read scripture without applying their indoctrination filter to it, and so cannot understand the argument that does not apply this filter implicitly or explicitly.

Footnotes

^[1] It’s not clear that the distinction between “being” and “person” can logically be made without begging-the-question. In the human experience, all real examples of persons—outside of the Trinity—are beings with a one-to-one correspondence.