Religious Studies

Table of Contents - 1996 - Volume 32, Issue 04  

Research Article

Trinity or Tritheism?

Kelly James Clarka1

a1 Department of Philosophy, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, M1 49546

In The Christian God (hereafter CG), Richard Swinburne offers a series of arguments which a priori support the necessity of the doctrine of the Trinity. If his arguments are successful, he has dramatically narrowed the field of logically possible religious beliefs to (Christian) trinitarianism. I contend that Swinburne's arguments necessitate the existence of more than one quasi-independent divine being; indeed Swinburne's arguments move us in the direction of tritheism rather than orthodox trinitarianism.