Application.God and worship.The Nature of God

"And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent" John 17:3.

The central message or teaching of the Bible is the revelation of who God is, how He relates to us, and how we are to relate to Him. Unfortunately, there is no unanimity among Christians on the nature of God. The three competing views are as follows:

	The Nature of God
Topics	One Person	Two Persons	Three Persons
	Unitarian	Binitarian	Trinitarian
Defined	Judaism and Islam hold to the one God view (Yahweh and Allah, respectively) and no literal Son. (In the Quran, 112:1-4 it says, "He is God, the One...He begets not, nor was He begotten, and there is none like Him.")	The Father and Son - There is one God, the Father and one Lord, Jesus Christ. The "Holy Spirit" is not a person but the Father's and Son's spirit (cf. Romans 8:9-11).	The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three distinct persons. This is the central doctrine of Catholic faith and the belief of most Protestants including modern-day Seventh-day Adventists.
Past		The Seventh-day Adventist Pioneers held this view.	History of the Trinity
Future		EGW on the Persons of God	EGW on the Trinity
Present		Audio Series	Alpha and Omega of Deadly Heresies
God		Attributes of God	Members of the Trinity
Man		God raised Jesus from the dead
Others		Statement of belief on the Nature of God	Problems with the Trinity
World		Bible references	Bible references

"The trinity of God is defined by the Church as the belief that in God are three persons who subsist in one nature. That belief as so defined was reached only in the 4th and 5th centuries AD and hence is not explicitly and formally a biblical belief." --The Dictionary of the Bible, John L. McKenzie, S.J., p. 899

Seventh-day Adventist related

• Non-Trinitarian versus Trinitarian Adventists. "The Trinitarian understanding of God, now part of our [Seventh-day Adventists] fundamental beliefs, was not generally held by the early Adventists." - Adventist Review, Jan 6, 1994. p. 10.
• Questions on the Persons of God. How many Divine Beings were involved in the Plan of Redemption, Creation, the giving of the Ten Commandments, Christ's Baptism, etc? The Adventist pioneers had a uniform response. Answer these seven basic questions on the Persons of God to understand the pioneers' position.
• What does Godhead mean? The word "Godhead" is used three times in the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible (Acts 17:29, Romans 1:20, and Colossians 2:9). It is not used in most other translations. For example, it is nowhere found in the NIV, RSV, and ESV translations. Instead, the words "deity," "divine nature," and "divine being" are used. Yet the word "Godhead" is freely and often used in Statements of Belief and topics discussing the Trinity doctrine. Learn more about this word here.
• What was the early Adventist position on Christ's pre-existence? Early Adventists were accused of being Arians. Arianism is the belief that Christ had a beginning. In that sense, early Adventists were Arian. Ellen G. White viewed as a Tritheist but not Trinitarian by a Protestant researcher.

Binitarian related

• Questions answered from a Binitarian point of view which help demystify certain Biblical passages. For example, when God created Adam and Eve in God's image, He create two beings and not three. Why is that?