God is One

A. God is Three? The Catholic idea of Trinity breaks God into three separate beings: The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost (Matthew 28:19). Contrast this to the Shma, the basis of Jewish belief: “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is ONE” (Deut. 6:4). Jews declare the Shma every day, while writing it on doorposts (mezuzah), and binding it to the hand and head (tefillin). The Shma as a proclamation of God's one-ness is the first words a Jewish child is taught to say, and the last words he utters before he dies. In Jewish law, worship of a three-part god is idolatry -- one of the three cardinal sins that a Jew should rather give up his life than transgress.

Rabbis who explain God’s revelation to His Church as three separate beings perhaps do not fully understand what He has revealed to His Church. The Catholic understanding is completely consistent with every word in the Torah.

Let us imagine a man standing outdoors in the country. He looks around and sees one tiny plant. As he approaches, he sees that it is a three-leaf clover. He was right in his initial assessment, it is one plant with three leaves. In the Torah we find this absolutely true statement: Shma Israel, Adonai, Eloheynu, Adonai ekhad. Deut 6:4 “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one [ekhad] LORD.” ONE God!

But when we look more closely, we see that Adonai, often translated “LORD,” is plural, “my Lords.” Eloheynu, often translated “God,” is also plural, “our Gods.” A literal translation of the Shma would be, “… my Lords our Gods my Lords one.” Three mentions of God. A perfect representation of the Blessed Trinity. The second mention of God, moreover, is Eloheynu, “our Gods,” not Elohai, “my Gods,” suggesting the Second Person, who would open the Torah to the whole world. “One” reminds us that God is one Blessed Trinity.

Rabbinic tradition connects the three mentions of God in the Shma with God’s self-description in the thirteen attributes of God’s mercy. Ex 34:6 “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious.” In the Torah’s original Hebrew, YHWH, YHWH, Elohim, “He is, He is, Gods,” which again points to the Blessed Trinity.

Rabbinic tradition also connects the three mentions of God in the Shma with the “thrice-holy” kadosh, kadosh, kadosh in Isaiah’s vision of the seraphim. Is 6:3 “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory,” In Hebrew, kadosh kadosh kadosh YHWH tzvaot.

The rabbis ascribe these three triple repetitions to the fact that Old Testament Hebrew had no grammatical comparatives or superlatives; the only way to emphasize was by repetition. But the Shma in particular and the others together with it suggest, according to the usual methods of rabbinic exegesis, that God is one but that there is something three-ish about Him.

The Shma itself even occurs in three places in the Torah.

The first and most prominent part commands us to love God with all our heart and soul and might, to remember all the commandments at all times, and to teach them to our children:

Deut 6:4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. And you shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

The second repeats much of the first, but adds the promise of reward for fulfillment and punishment for transgression:

Deut 11:13 “And if you will obey my commandments which I command you this day, to love the Lord your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, he will give the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the later rain, that you may gather in your grain and your wine and your oil. And he will give grass in your fields for your cattle, and you shall eat and be full. Take heed lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them, and the anger of the Lord be kindled against you, and he shut up the heavens, so that there be no rain, and the land yield no fruit, and you perish quickly off the good land which the Lord gives you. You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul; and you shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. And you shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. And you shall write them upon the doorposts of your house and upon your gates, that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers to give them, as long as the heavens are above the earth.”

The third commands Jews to wear the tzitziot, fringes or tassels, on the tallit, prayer shawl, as a constant reminder of the laws and a warning against succumbing to our fallen nature:

Num 15:37 “The Lord said to Moses, ‘Speak to the people of Israel, and bid them to make tassels on the corners of their garments throughout their generations, and to put upon the tassel of each corner a cord of blue; and it shall be to you a tassel to look upon and remember all the commandments of the Lord, to do them, not to follow after your own heart and your own eyes, which you are inclined to go after wantonly. So you shall remember and do all my commandments, and be holy to your God. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: I am the Lord your God.’”

These three appearances of the most central and powerful command in all the Torah are more than the usual grammatical repetition for emphasis. God is more subtle than we realize at any particular time. Any of these threes alone might be explainable in grammatical terms, but when we look at them all in context we can only conclude that, yes, God is absolutely one, but there is definitely something three-ish about Him.

The ancient rabbis correctly read these texts as emphasizing one God, in contrast to the pagan religions that had many gods. These threes are a classic example of the one-way prophecies of Jesus. On the day before the Annunciation, the wisest sage reading all the prophecies of Jesus could not put them together and anticipate that God would send His promised Messiah as a divine Person with a human nature. But once we have seen Jesus, we can go back and recognize Him in the prophecies.

He is one God, all the same spiritual substance. Each Sunday morning, Catholics affirm in the Nicene-Constantinople Creed that Jesus is “one in being with the Father.” But God revealed that He is a family of three divine Persons. Mt 3:16 “And when Jesus was baptized, he went up immediately from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and alighting on him; and lo, a voice from heaven, saying, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” This statement was not only God’s affirmation that He is a family of three divine Persons, but also of the prophecies concerning the Son of David. In Hebrew, david is “beloved.” All the people present heard God say, “This is my david son.”

B. God is Three? continued. This explains why during the Inquisitions and throughout history, Jews gave up their lives rather than convert.

Certainly some Jews did, but in Spain, during the 1400s, the Spanish government was told that the Talmud was explicitly anti-Christian. In the atmosphere of that time, pressure began to build for Jews to leave Spain. Many Jews, with successful business connections and other ties to their homeland, decided instead to live outwardly as Catholics while secretly living as Jews. These crypto-Jews, called conversos, became so numerous and powerful that Spain’s King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella had to institute an inquisition to find and eliminate them.

Learn more about the Spanish Inquisition.