Almost without fail, our Trinitarian friends will use plural pronouns in the Bible to argue that God is a Trinity.  The stereotypical example is Genesis 1:26, “Let us make man in our image;” but as we have already discussed in another post, this verse in no way proves a Trinity.  My question for our Trinitarian friends is this: if God using plural pronouns proves that God is more than one person, what does God using singular pronouns prove?  God only uses plural pronouns a handful of times in the Bible, but he uses singular pronouns thousands of times.  Shouldn’t this catch our attention?

A perfect illustration for what I am talking about can be found in Genesis 15:7

And he said unto him, I am the LORD that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it.

Notice that the Bible uses a singular verb to describe Jehovah speaking to Abraham.  If God is multiple persons, why doesn’t the verse say, “And they said unto him”??  The original Hebrew plainly uses the word יאמר (yōmer), a third person singular masculine form; the LXX translates the verb with εἰπεν and the Vulgate translates it with dixit, which are both also singular forms.  The verb in this verse describes Jehovah as a singular person, a he.

When Jehovah begins to speak, the first word out of his mouth is “I.”  The Hebrew word that God used is אני (ani).  According to Basics of Biblical Hebrew, אני is a first person singular pronoun that functions like its English counterpart “I” (70-71); thus the Hebrew word אני only refers to a singular person.  The LXX translates אני with the singular pronoun ἐγω, and the Vulgate with ego, both of which are singular.

Not only does this verse call Jehovah a “he;” but he calls himself an “I.”  If God were a group of persons, why doesn’t this verse say, “And they (God) said unto him (Abraham), We are the Lord…”??  This is how Trinitarians want us to understand Genesis 1:26 because of plural pronouns; how are we supposed to understand this verse because of singular pronouns?

And if God really is three persons in a Trinity, the singular pronouns in this verse clearly demonstrate that only one person is speaking—unless simple words like “I” and “he” don’t really mean anything at all.  If God is a Trinity, which person of the Trinity is speaking here?  A Oneness believer can confidently say that Jesus is the one speaking here.  After all, Jesus did say, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad” (John 8:56); and Genesis 15 starts out with “the word (Jesus, John 1) of the LORD came unto Abram in a vision” (v1).  But if a Trinitarian says this, are God the Father and God the Holy Ghost just left out?  If only one person of the Godhead is speaking, where are the other two?

I encourage you to reclaim your faith in God’s unique monotheism.  Next time you pray to him, keep his unique Oneness in mind.  The God that we serve is a he, not a they.  God is a person, not a group of people.

If you want to read more on this topic, or if you are not really sure why God’s single-personhood matters, I encourage you to check out our earlier post about Genesis 1:26.