There is such a thing as threeness, or fourness, and the threeness of three cannot be added to the fourness of four.
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The Morrígan is often considered a triple goddess, but this triple nature is ambiguous and inconsistent. These triple appearances are partially due to the Celtic significance of threeness. Sometimes she appears as one of three sisters, the daughters of Ernmas: Morrígan, Badb and Macha. Sometimes the trinity consists of Badb, Macha and Anand, collectively known as the Morrígna.
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Some anti-trinitarians note also that the Greek philosopher Plato believed in a special "threeness" in life and in the universe. In Plato's work Phaedo, he introduces the word "triad" (in Greek τριάς),Phaedo 104e. which is rendered in English as "trinity". This was adopted by 3rd and 4thcentury professed Christians as roughly corresponding to "Father, Word, and Spirit (Soul)".
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In Eastern Orthodox theology, God the Father is the "principium" (beginning), the "source" or "origin" of both the Son and the Holy Spirit, which gives intuitive emphasis to the threeness of persons; by comparison, Western theology explains the "origin" of all three hypostases or persons as being in the divine nature, which gives intuitive emphasis to the oneness of God's being.
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DeRégnon had said that Western Trinitarian theology had emphasized God's oneness, while Eastern Trinitarian theology had emphasized his threeness. In the Harvard Theological Review Khaled Anatolios acknowledged that “The assertion of a substantive rift between Eastern and Western trinitarian theologies… is not found in either Hanson or Simonetti ... and its genealogy ... has been famously exposed by Michel Barnes.”Khaled Anatolios, “Yes and No: Reflections on Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy,” Harvard Theological Review 100 (2007): 153-58, here 153.
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Nontrinitarian Christians with Arian or Semi-Arian views contend that the weight of scriptural evidence supports Subordinationism, the Son's total submission to the Father, and God's paternal supremacy over the Son in every aspect. They acknowledge the Son's high rank at God's right hand, but teach that the Father is still greater than the Son in all things. While acknowledging that the Father, Son, and Spirit are essential in creation and salvation, they argue that that in itself does not confirm that the three are each co-equal or co-eternal. They also affirm that God is only explicitly identified as "one" in the Bible, and that the doctrine of the Trinity, which word literally meaning a set of three, ascribes a co-equal threeness to the being of the infinite God that is not explicitly scriptural.
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"The term 'Trinity' is not in the Bible", and some nontrinitarians use this as an argument to state that the doctrine of the Trinity relies on non-biblical terminology, and that the number three is never clearly associated with God necessarily, other than within the Comma Johanneum which is of spurious or disputed authenticity. They argue that the only number clearly unambiguously ascribed to God in the Bible is one, and that the Trinity, literally meaning three-in-one, ascribes a co-equal threeness to God that is not explicitly biblical. Nontrinitarians cite other examples of terms or phrases not found in the Bible; multiple "persons" in relation to God, the terms "God the Son", "God-Man", "God the Holy Spirit", "eternal Son", and "eternally begotten". While the Trinitarian term hypostasis is found in the Bible, it is used only once in reference to God where it states that Jesus is the express image of God's person.
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Advocates of the "Hellenic influences" argument attempt to trace the influence of Greek philosophers, such as Plato or Aristotle, who, they say, taught an essential "threeness" of the Ultimate Reality, and also the concept of "eternal derivation", that is, "a birth without a becoming". They say that theologians of the 4th century AD, such as Athanasius of Alexandria, interpreted the Bible through a Middle Platonist and later Neoplatonist filter, mixing Greek pagan philosophy with the biblical concepts of God and Christ. These advocates point to what they see as similarities between Hellenistic philosophy and post-Apostolic Christianity, by examining the following factors: In his Introduction to the 1964 book Meditations, the Anglican priest Maxwell Staniforth discussed the profound influence of Stoic philosophy on Christianity. In particular: > Again in the doctrine of the Trinity, the ecclesiastical conception of > Father, Word, and Spirit finds its germ in the different Stoic names of the > Divine Unity.
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