Gospel Guidebook: Getting and Keeping It Right 
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Review of The Forgotten Trinity by James White
by Robert P. TerryPublished October 11, 2025
The title of this book is a bit silly. Nobody has forgotten the Trinity. Some of us wish we could forget it, but being the shibboleth of so-called orthodoxy, the mainstream Christian churches won't let us forget it. But this being the case, what the author of this book really means by "Forgotten Trinity" is his version of the Trinity.
The general consensus is that Trinitarian-sounding language first took creedal form at the Council of Constantinople 381. However, there are competing narratives about this council and how to interpret the creed. The author's version is just one version of the Trinity, and while he can explain his Trinity in a way that is consistent with the creed, it is unlikely that the council would have looked favorably upon his description of God as a Trinity that consists of "one what and three who's" (p. 24). In contrast to the author's Trinity, the creed says, "We believe in one God, the Father almighty." The Trinity is not the Father.
In Chapter 2, the author gives us his definition of the Trinity. He says, "Within the one Being that is God, there exists eternally three coequal and coeternal persons, namely, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit." This is his "one what and three who's." In his definition, he carefully chooses the word "that" instead of "who." But this creates a predicament for the author. By describing God as a "what" and a "that," he is thereby indicating that the "Being that is God" is impersonal. Certainly, that doesn't sound Biblical. But he can't easily sidestep this problem because if he says that God is personal, we no longer have "three who's" but "four who's." In Chapter 12, the author does says, "Biblically speaking, there are three kinds of beings who are personal: God, men, and angels," and if this is the case, his "Being that is God" is a "fourth who." But maybe he means something different because this is the only instance in the book, as far as I know, where he refers to God as a personal being. At any rate, we are left with this rather strange situation. The author's version of the Trinity requires that God be impersonal, and if anyone says otherwise, we are inevitably left with four persons: the Being that is God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
In Chapter 3, the author assures us that he believes in "absolute monotheism." He says this three times ( maybe once for each person of the Trinity? lol ), yet his absolutisms betray an insecurity. He must be aware that his doctrine naturally lends itself to being perceived as a form of polytheism. To guard against this, not only does he repeatedly assert absolute monotheism, but also feels the need to tell the reader again and again that the Trinity is often miscommunicated, misunderstood, and misrepresented (in Chapter 2 alone, he tells us 10 times.) In other words, he wants to assure us that if the Trinity sounds like polytheism, it is only because it is being misunderstood, misrepresented, or being described with the misleading limitations of human language. Instead of taking heed to our instincts and reason, he wants us to believe that these three persons preserve "absolute monotheism." Shall we take his word for it? Personally, I don't think pounding the table while shouting, "I believe in monotheism!" and "You are misrepresenting the Trinity!" will absolve him so easily.
The Trinity doctrine is really a dead-end street. As Louis Berkhof noted in his Systematic Theology, "They [i.e., the explanations of the Trinity] invariably resulted in the development of tritheistic or modalistic conceptions of God." This true. The Trinitarian who attempts to explain his belief will always sound like a modalist or tritheist. Berkhof's solution was to just accept the "mystery" of the Trinity as revealed truth. The problem with this solution is that, according to Jesus, God was no mystery to the Jews. He said to the Samaritan woman, "You worship that which you do not know; we worship that which we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers" (John 4:22-23). The Jews knew God was the Father. In contrast, it is the Trinitarians who show themselves to be like the Samaritans with their mysterious God (the author himself appealing to mystery nearly a dozen times in the book, especially chapters 1 and 12). Furthermore, contrary to Berkhof, the Trinity has not been revealed. We know that 1 John 5:7 is an interpolation, and many scholars and commentators (among whom are several Trinitarians), such as Schaff, Beasley-Murray, Hastings, Conybeare, and the Anchor Bible Dictionary, have demonstrated that Matthew 28:19 is of highly questionable authenticity. This means that Matthew 28:19 might also be an interpolation. Yet, the author refers to this very verse as being part of a "Great Trinitarian Passage." In Chapter 12, he says, "[Matthew 28:18-20 is] the single passage of the Bible that comes the closest to providing a 'creedal' statement." In other words, this is his best proof text for the Trinity, a disputed verse (even among Trinitarian scholars).
In Chapter 2, the author said that he wrote the book as a "Christian theologian and apologist." This is very telling, because as an apologist, his agenda is to push his agenda, so it is no wonder that he didn't tell the reader about the evidence against the triadic baptismal formula of Matthew 28:19, or the fact that every single Bible verse he quotes in the book has a plausible alternative interpretation. But according to the author, he can't safely question his beliefs, for he says, "It’s [i.e., the Trinity's] the topic we won’t talk about: no one dares question the Trinity for fear of being branded a 'heretic'" (p. 10). This is an admission of superstition and fear of men. But for those of us who are not afraid, we will boldly say that "We believe in one God the Father."