The most basic affirmation the Scriptures make regarding the nature of God is that He is one. The shema of Deuteronomy 6 reads as follows: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one” (v. 4). These words that preface the great commandment are axiomatic to the biblical understanding of the nature of God. Old and New Testaments together bear witness to the eternal truth that there exists one God — monotheism. Another term for monotheism is the word monarchianism, meaning that the God of the Bible is a monarch. Monarch comes from a Greek word that has a prefix and a root. The prefix mono means “one” or “single.” The root word archē means “beginning, chief, or ruler.” We hear of archbishops, archenemies, archangels, all of which employ the root term archē.

A monarchy is a form of government in which the rule is restricted to one person, a king or a queen, as distinguished from the rule of the few (oligarchy) or the rule of many (plutarchy). The doctrine of the Trinity, central to Christian confession, is not the result of abstract speculation. Rather, it is the result of the church’s reflection on the teaching of the Bible. With respect to the doctrine of the Trinity, or what I call “triune monarchy,” the church was faced with two distinct issues. The first was the responsibility to exercise fidelity to the Bible. The second was to be clear in its rejection of heretical doctrine.

Two virulent monarchian heresies emerged in the first three hundred years of the Christian church. The first was called Modalistic Monarchianism, as expressed in the heretical views of Sabellius. This form of monarchianism will be treated in another article in this issue of Tabletalk. Suffice to say, it was condemned at Antioch in 267 ad. Perhaps even more serious was the “Dynamic Monarchianism” of Arius, which threatened Christian orthodoxy in the beginning of the fourth century. It resulted in the Council of Nicea and the Nicene Creed. The theological struggles of the first three centuries were based upon the church’s desire to be faithful to biblical monotheism (monarchianism) and at the same time to be faithful to the attribute of deity for each of the three persons in the Godhead.