From Jesus Was Not a Trinitarian by Sir Anthony F. Buzzard.

In no verse in the Bible (and there are some 31,102 verses) is the word three ever associated with the word God. God is never said to be numerically three. None of the 810,677 words of the Bible provides a sample of the word “God” meaning a triune God. Yes, of course, the Father, the Son and the Spirit are mentioned together often in the New Testament, but never once does any Bible writer arrive at the proposition that God is to be defined as three Persons. It is one thing to speak of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit together. It is quite another to say that each of these three is coequally God and that together they amount to one God! The so-called Trinitarian passage in Matthew 28:19 may sound like the much later doctrine of the Trinity.

But it does not say that the three linked together as a triad amount to one God! Nor of course does the doxology in 2 Corinthians 13:13: “May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” This statement says nothing at all about the triad being equal to one God. Bible writers never mean a triune God when they say “God.”

Since the words “God,” “Lord God,” and LORD appear over twelve thousand times, they had about twelve thousand opportunities to make that equation “God = God in three Persons,” but they never did.

They constantly say that God is a single Person and in the New Testament they equate that divine Individual with the Father of Jesus, who is everywhere said to be the Father’s Son. Exhaustive studies by both Protestant and Catholic scholars affirm that the word God, used absolutely, in our New Testament documents refers to the Father of Jesus on page after page.[1] In no case, throughout the whole of Scripture, does the word “God” mean “God in three Persons.” The tripersonal God is therefore never mentioned as such in the Scriptures.

This fact surely calls for a public investigation.

The absence of the triune God as such would seem to rule out any suggestion that the Father and the Son are both equally to be thought of as God. While “God” in the New Testament describes the Father over 1300 times, the same word “God” is used of Jesus on two occasions for certain in the New Testament. There are a few verses where Jesus may be referred to as “God,” but because of grammatical ambiguity this cannot be maintained with certainty.[2] The “one Lord” of the creed which we hear Jesus affirming as the basis of true religion (Mark 12:28-34, citing Deut. 6:4) is unambiguously a reference to the God and Father of Jesus. Jesus never hinted that he was overturning his whole Hebrew heritage in the matter of defining who God is, by including himself in the Godhead.

To say that he was God while acknowledging his Father as God would quite evidently confront his audiences with the proposition that there were two Gods. This Jesus never imagined. Nor did he accept for one moment any accusation that he was interfering with the creed of Israel. He was not accused of deconstructing the monotheism of his Hebrew heritage. On the contrary as we have seen in Mark 12:29, Jesus affirmed that strict, unitary monotheism of Judaism, making it the basis of the greatest of all commandments. In John’s account of Jesus’ teaching, Jesus identified his God as the God of the Jews, holding the Jewish creed in common with Jews: “We know whom we worship, for salvation is from the Jews” (John 4:22).

At what point, a church member today might reasonably inquire, was that greatest commandment of God and of Jesus rescinded? Are churches meeting in the name of Jesus free to disregard the heart of his theology of God and redefine the creed? Are they at liberty to reshape the meaning of ultimate reality?

An enormous fuss is made in America about the sanctity of the Ten Commandments, but how many are agitated by the fact that the Church has forgotten the greatest commandment — Jesus’ own definition of who God is? It seems to be sailing under false colors.

[1] There is a very rare exception. On two occasions for certain the term “God” is applied to Jesus. But it should be remembered that the judges of Israel could be called God (Ps. 82:6) and that Moses was said to be God to Pharaoh (Exod. 7:1). The Roman emperor at the time of Jesus could also be addressed as “Lord and God.”

[2] 1 John 5:20; Rom. 9:5. 1 John 5:7 in the KJV is known by all modern commentators to be a forgery which is no part of the original text.