Chapter 6

Dake’s Godhead in His Own Words

Three separate beings, each with a body, soul, and spirit, in his course and in his Bible

In the notes on 1 John in the Dake Annotated Reference Bible, Finis Dake stops to say exactly what he means by the Trinity. The note is headed “89 Proofs of A Divine Trinity,” and it begins this way.

What we mean by Divine Trinity is that there are three separate and distinct persons in the Godhead, each one having His own personal spirit body, personal soul, and personal spirit in the same sense each human being, angel, or any other being has his own body, soul, and spirit. We mean by body, whether a spirit body or a flesh body, the house for the indwelling of the personal soul and spirit. The soul is that which feels and the spirit is that which knows. Dake’s Annotated Reference Bible, note “89 Proofs of A Divine Trinity,” newer typeset edition, p. 489 (classic N.T. p. 280)¹

That paragraph holds Dake’s doctrine of God in a few lines of his own Bible. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three separate beings, and each has a body, a soul, and a spirit of His own, in the same way that you and I do. In his course he adds that the three are one the way a family is one, by sharing a name and agreeing perfectly. By the plain meaning of the words, this is tritheism: belief in three Gods. The church has always called it heresy, and the Athanasian Creed answers it in one line: “not three Gods, but one God.”²

Dake did not stumble into this teaching, and he did not hide it. He set it out first as a list of definitions in his correspondence course, God’s Plan for Man, and built on it across several lessons. Then he printed the same doctrine in the notes of his Bible. Chapter 7 gives the Bible’s answer to it.

One thing should be said in his favor at the start. Dake was no Arian. He taught that the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and he gave Scripture for each.³ He never made Christ a creature. His error runs the other way, and it divides the one God into three.

Why the definition matters

Nearly every other error in Dake’s doctrine of God grows out of this one. If each divine person has a body of His own, then the Father’s body has a size and a place, and He has to travel to be anywhere else. If the Spirit has a body of His own, His dwelling in the believer becomes a union at a distance. If the Son is one of three such beings, the incarnation becomes one God leaving His God-body behind to become a man. Chapters 8 through 14 follow those consequences one at a time, and each of them starts here.

The definition also reaches worship. Christians are baptized into one name, and they pray to one God. Under Dake’s definitions the believer stands before a company of three, each with a mind and will of His own, who have agreed to act together. That is a different object of worship, even when the hymns and the prayers keep their old words.

Pentecostal churches confess the historic doctrine. The Assemblies of God sets out its faith in its Statement of Fundamental Truths. It says that we “may speak with propriety of the Lord our God who is One Lord, as a trinity or as one Being of three persons,” and that “neither Person in the Godhead either exists or works separately or independently of the others.”⁴ Dake’s notes teach three separate beings. A believer who reads those notes in an Assemblies of God church is reading a doctrine of God that his own church does not hold.

His definitions

Lesson Four of God’s Plan for Man is titled “The Truth About God.”⁵ It opens with a complaint about preachers who make God a mystery.

Most men who believe in God introduce the subject with an apology for their ignorance of Him. Both preachers and writers, almost without exception, make God quite incomprehensible and beyond human reason; yet they can preach big sermons and write big books about the subject they know very little about, and which they claim no man can know the truth about. They seem to think that the best way to magnify God is to make Him a big mystery. This is one of the greatest errors of the Christian church of today. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Four, p. 49⁶

Dake had a point. Some preachers do use the word “mystery” to end a conversation they would rather not have. His answer was to define his terms before he argued anything. He put the definitions in a numbered list at the head of the lesson, and the review questions at the end of the lesson ask the student to define each one.⁷ The first two entries set the ground rules.

1. GOD. This word simply means deity or divinity and is a general term used of false gods as well as of the true. How many persons there are in the true deity cannot be determined by the word itself. Plain Scriptures on the subject must settle this question. 2. GODHEAD. This term simply means that which is divine. It is used of Jesus in Col. 2:9, as having all the qualities of divinity in His manifestation of God to men. It is also used of all three persons in the deity in Rom. 1:20. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Four, Point I, 1–2, p. 49⁸

So in Dake’s view the words “God” and “Godhead” cannot tell us how many persons there are. Some other test has to settle the number, and later lessons show what his test is. First, though, he defines the word that decides the whole question.

5. PERSON. A person is anyone who can act, think, and feel; anyone capable of self-consciousness and self-determination; any individual having legal rights and duties; a rational being with bodily presence, soul passions, and spirit faculties. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Four, Point I, 5, p. 50⁹

A person, for Dake, is “a rational being with bodily presence.” In ordinary English that describes a man or a woman. Dake applies the same definition, unchanged, to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. A few entries later he defines the Trinity with that word.

8. TRINITY. This means the union of three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in one (unified) Godhead or divinity, so that all three persons are one in unity and eternal substance, but three separate and distinct persons as to individuality (1 John 5:7-8; Dan. 7:9-14; Matt. 3:16-17; 28:19; Acts 7:56-59). God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Four, Point I, 8, p. 51¹⁰

Read with his definition of “person,” the Trinity becomes a union of three rational beings, each with bodily presence. The entry speaks of “eternal substance,” a phrase the creeds use, and then it closes on “three separate and distinct persons as to individuality.” The very next entry says what that individuality includes.

9. BODY, SOUL, AND SPIRIT. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, each angel and man, and every separate person in the universe has a personal body, soul, and spirit, which are separate and distinct from all others, as defined below. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Four, Point I, 9, p. 51¹¹

The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit come first in a list that goes on to every angel and every human being. Each of them has a body, a soul, and a spirit that are “separate and distinct from all others.” In the same list Dake defines the little word “in.” When Scripture says one person is in another, he writes, it means union with that person, and it never means bodily entrance.¹² That definition comes back when he explains how three can be one.

Three bodies, three souls, three spirits

Dake drew the conclusion himself. Near the end of Lesson Four he writes that “if one person of the three in the Godhead has a personal body, soul, and spirit, all three persons must also have separate bodies, souls, and spirits.”¹³ Earlier in the lesson he puts the same point as a run of questions that expect the answer yes.

Cannot any number of persons retain their individuality and still be one in unity? Could not this be true of the Godhead? Could not God exist as three separate persons with three separate bodies, souls, and spirits, and still be one in unity? God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Four, p. 55¹⁴

By Lesson Twenty-five the questions have become statements. There he argues that the Holy Spirit has a body of His own, and he reasons from the whole Godhead down to each person in it. The word he chooses for the three is “beings.”

The last sentence sets the measure. Each person of the Godhead has His own individuality “in every sense that it is understood and required of any other person in existence.” Whatever it means for your neighbor to be a separate person, it means the same for the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. When Dake says the three are “the same in substance,” he explains himself in the same breath: they have “the same kind of spirit-bodies,” as one angel is the same kind of being as another.

In Lesson Twenty-seven, where Dake gathers his proof texts, he sums up the whole Bible the same way.

There are over 500 plain scriptures that refer to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as being THREE SEPARATE AND DISTINCT PERSONS, each with His own personal body, soul, and spirit in the sense that all other persons have them. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Twenty-seven, “Over 500 Scriptures Proving a Divine Trinity,” p. 498¹⁶

The capital letters are his. So is the closing phrase, “in the sense that all other persons have them,” and it rules out any softer reading. A body here is a body in the sense that a man has one, and a soul is a soul in the same sense. The review questions press the point on the student. Question 18 asks whether the three “have just one body between the three to dwell in,” and question 19 asks where the Bible ever says “there is only one body for the three persons.”¹⁷ A student who answered as the lesson taught would write down a Godhead of three bodies.

Counting the persons who are seen together

How did Dake prove that there are three beings? He did it mostly by counting. In Lesson Twenty-seven he lays down a rule: there are as many divine persons as can be seen at one time.

TWO and THREE persons called "Lord" and "God" are seen at the same time and at the same place; so the Deity must be as many persons as are clearly seen. Each has been seen with a separate body and separate acts as in the case of other persons. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Twenty-seven, sec. III, 2, p. 486¹⁸

He then works through a list of scenes. The first is Abraham’s.

God appeared to Abraham in Gen. 18, and in Gen. 19:24 this "Lord" who was in visible form before Abraham rained fire upon Sodom "FROM the Lord [another one] out of heaven." God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Twenty-seven, sec. III, 2 (1), p. 486¹⁹

The words in square brackets are Dake’s own, set inside his King James text of Genesis 19:24, and they carry his reading into the verse. In Zechariah he finds an angel called “the Lord” speaking with “the Lord of Hosts.” He concludes, “Here we have TWO Lords, one called ‘the Lord’ and the other called ‘the Lord of Hosts’ who sends ‘the Lord’ to Israel.”²⁰ His favorite case is Daniel 7, where the Ancient of Days takes His throne and one like a Son of Man comes to Him with the clouds of heaven.

TWO are seen with the eyes as two separate persons with TWO separate bodies in Dan. 7:9-14 ... One reading of this passage by any honest person will prove to him that there are TWO separate persons referred to. The one sitting on the throne had to have a body, or He could not sit down, and He could not wear clothes or have hair on His head. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Twenty-seven, sec. III, 2 (2), pp. 486–487²¹

A few lines later he adds, “He had a body and the Son of Man had a body, or both could not have been seen coming before each other bodily.”²² At the baptism of Jesus the count reaches three.

THREE separate and distinct persons are seen and heard in Matt. 3:16-17. When Jesus (one person) was baptized the Spirit of God (another person) was seen manifesting Himself in bodily shape like a dove and descending upon Him, and at the same time these TWO were seen by the same eyes at the same place, the voice of the Father (another person distinct from both Jesus and the Spirit) was heard from Heaven saying, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." If TWO persons were seen on Earth and one was heard from Heaven, then there must be THREE separate and distinct persons in the Godhead. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Twenty-seven, sec. III, 2 (4), p. 487²³

Stephen’s vision in Acts 7 is the last scene. Stephen saw Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and Dake reasons that “God has to be a separate person from the Son in order for them to be standing and sitting side by side.”²⁴ Back in Lesson Four he had already made this way of counting a matter of honesty.

Common honesty demands that we accept ONE, TWO, and THREE separate and distinct persons wherever they are seen with the eyes and referred to in plain human language by the first, second, and third personal pronouns. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Four, p. 55²⁵

The church has always confessed that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are distinct, and the scenes Dake lists show that they are. A vision of a throne, a dove over the Jordan, and a voice from heaven show three persons acting. Dake treats them as a head count of bodies, and from the bodies he concludes that God is three beings. His rule decides the answer before the passages are read, and Chapter 7 reads each passage on its own ground.

“One” as a family is one

Dake says “one God” often, and he means it sincerely. What he means by “one” is in his definitions.

3. ONE. The Hebrew word for one in such Scriptures as "one Lord" (Deut. 6:4-6) and "one God" (Mal. 2:10) is achad, to unify, collect, be united in one, one in number. It is used as one in unity many times: "they shall be one flesh" (Gen. 2:24); "the people is one" (Gen. 11:6). ... Whether one in unity or one in number is the meaning in a particular passage must be determined by Scripture and not by the meaning of the word itself. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Four, Point I, 3, pp. 49–50²⁶

The last sentence of that entry leaves the question open, and it sounds careful. Dake does not leave it open for long. Near the end of the same lesson he settles it for the Godhead.

Here we may say that the only sense in which THREE can be ONE is the sense of unity, and ONE PERSON cannot be THREE PERSONS in any sense. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Four, Point II, 10, p. 65²⁷

Lesson Twenty-seven says the same about the Hebrew word for God: “The one Elohim then is not one person, or one in number, but one in unity.”²⁸ On the same page, writing about Deuteronomy 6:4, he speaks of how many persons are in “the ‘One [Unified] Lord.’”²⁹ The bracketed word is his, placed inside the words of the verse. Then, in Lesson Four, he gives the picture that shows what kind of unity he has in mind.

Any family as individuals or collectively could be called by the family name; so it is with the Godhead. All three persons in the Deity are Divine, God, Lord, etc. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Four, p. 56³⁰

In Lesson Twenty-seven he offers a second picture. The singular “name” in Matthew 28:19, he writes, shows “a perfect union of three persons in ‘one God,’ just like the name of the United States affirms the equality and oneness of the 48 states—a perfect Union.”³¹

Both pictures teach the same thing. A family carries one name, and yet it is several people, each with a life of his own. The states share one name and one flag, and each of them still has its own government. When the members of a family agree perfectly, their wills line up, and there are still as many wills as there are people. On Dake’s pictures the oneness of God is an agreement among three beings. The church confesses that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit share one being, so that the three are the one God.

What he called the church’s doctrine

Dake knew he was rejecting what most churches taught, and he said so plainly.

So the old idea that God exists as three persons in one person is not only unscriptural, but it is ridiculous to say the least. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Four, Point II, 10, p. 65³²

Earlier in the lesson he fires a round of questions at the standard books: “Do we have to believe that the Trinity is such a mystery? Do we have to believe that it bewilders the most astute minds? ... Do we have to believe the other foolish statements in our doctrine books?”³³ In Lesson Twenty-seven, after his reading of Daniel 7, he turns on anyone who reads the vision another way.

Shall we deny such plain, literal passages giving actual descriptions of both God and the Son of Man? Shall we reject the Bible in part or in whole just for the sake of holding on to man-made ideas and theories about God? To me, such a program is rebellious and sinful, and it is confusing if we want a simple understanding of the Bible. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Twenty-seven, sec. III, 2 (2), p. 487³⁴

On Stephen’s vision he goes further. Any reading that will not find two persons in those verses, he writes, is “plainly of the devil” and “out of harmony with the Word of God.”³⁵ He did not offer his Godhead as one view among several. He called the other view rebellion and sin, and at his sharpest he called it the devil’s work.

The doctrine he rejects is “the old idea that God exists as three persons in one person.” The historic creeds have never said that God is one person. They confess one God, one being, in three persons. The formula Dake attacked is a muddled version of the doctrine, one the church would also reject. Whatever he had heard from pulpits in his day, his students learned the wrong formula under the church’s name, and they learned to scorn the church’s doctrine along with it.

What he denied, and what he never denied

Some of Dake’s readers will say that he never taught three Gods, and in one narrow sense they are right. The words “three Gods” and “tritheism” appear nowhere in his course, in his other books, or in either setting of his Study Bible. No passage in any of them denies the charge either.³⁶ What Dake denies is the formula he called ridiculous, three persons in one person. His Study Bible goes a step further. In a list headed “The Trinity - 18 fallacies,” on the same page as the “89 proofs,” the first fallacy reads, “That there is only one person or one being called God.”³⁷ One being called God is exactly what the church confesses, and Dake lists it as an error.

The nearest he comes to a denial is his note on Deuteronomy 6:4, the verse Israel recited at its morning and evening services. There he says the verse declares “the unity of God as contrasted with polytheism.” The next point of the same note says what that unity is.

2 The Trinity of God. There are more than one Jehovah and more than one God as individuals, but they are one Jehovah and one God in unity, thus expressing the truth of 3 separate and distinct persons, beings, or individuals in the Divine Trinity (1 Jn. 5:7). The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are one in this way, not one in individuality. The words Jehovah and God have a singular and a plural meaning, like our word sheep. Since there are 3 persons or beings, then the only way they can be one is in the sense of unity, as prayed for in Jn. 17:21-23. See The Trinity, p. 280 of N. T. Dake’s Annotated Reference Bible, note “Unity of God (6:4),” point 2, classic setting, O.T. p. 235³⁸

In one note Dake sets the unity of God against polytheism and then speaks of “more than one God as individuals.” To him the two statements did not clash, because “one God” meant three beings united in purpose. The only printed denial that Dake taught three Gods comes from his defender Leon Bible, and Chapter 24 answers it.³⁹

The same doctrine through the rest of his system

The three-beings Godhead shapes Dake’s account of God’s plan for the ages. In Lesson Five he renders the first verse of the Bible, “In the beginning Gods created the heaven and the earth,” and then he defends the plural.

It is perfectly scriptural to use the plural word "Gods" when we speak of three separate persons in the Godhead ... There would be no sense to the meaning of one in unity if there was only one person in the Godhead. It is perfectly natural, therefore, if there be three persons in the Deity that all of them would have a part, and would consult each other in the drafting of the plan. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Five, “The Drafting of God’s Plan,” p. 77⁴⁰

On this account the plan of redemption came out of a consultation among three divine beings. The same Godhead governs his doctrine of the Spirit. A section of Lesson Twenty-five is titled “The Holy Ghost Has a Personal Spirit-Body,” and it reasons directly from the three beings of Lesson Four.⁴¹ Chapter 14 follows that teaching to Pentecost.

Dake also offered the doctrine to his students as a gift. Supplement Two, written for students who had just finished Lessons Three and Four, opens with it.

The idea that the Godhead consists of three separate and distinct persons, each with a personal spirit body, a personal soul, and a personal spirit will mean much to you as you learn to know and love God and follow the divine plan for your life. At least, this conception of God will make the whole Godhead comprehensible to you. It will no longer be a mystery beyond all possible understanding as you have perhaps been taught. God’s Plan for Man, Supplement Two (for Lessons Three and Four), sec. I, p. 67⁴²

The heading over that section speaks of a “New Conception of God,” and the reward it promises is understanding. Dake was writing for ordinary believers who had been told the Trinity was beyond them. He gave them a God they could picture, made of three beings like the ones they already knew. Many of them welcomed it. What they received was a Godhead the church had never confessed. Chapter 4 traces the way of reading that made it seem obvious to him.

But he says “Trinity” and “one God” all the time

This is the defense heard most often, and it is true as far as it goes. Dake uses both phrases gladly and often. He also printed what he meant by them, at the head of the lesson where he taught them. Reading him carefully means reading his definitions, and his definitions make the Trinity three beings and make “one” a unity of agreement. Chapter 5 shows how the same words can carry two different doctrines.

Doesn’t the baptism of Jesus show three separate persons?

At the Jordan the Son stands in the water, the Spirit comes down like a dove, and the Father speaks from heaven. Christians have always seen the three persons there. The creeds confess that the Father is not the Son and the Son is not the Spirit. Dake takes one step further, from three distinct persons to three separate beings with three bodies. The scene shows the first and says nothing about the second, so the second rests on his counting rule. Chapter 7 takes up the baptism and the rule together.

Isn’t the course harsher than the Bible notes?

Some readers grant that God’s Plan for Man teaches three beings, but they expect the Bible notes to be milder, since the course was written for eager students in the 1940s. The notes say the same thing. The “89 Proofs” note I began with is printed in the Bible itself, and so is the note on Deuteronomy 6:4. So is the list that counts “one being called God” as a fallacy. In printings before 1988, other notes send readers to that page in the same language. A note on John 14:28 calls the Father “the head of the Divine Trinity” and adds “See 89 proofs, p. 280.” A note on Exodus 23:23 calls God’s Angel “The second person of the Divine Trinity.”⁴³

Dake did not soften the course in later years either. The copy of the course I have quoted is the 1977 printing, issued under a copyright he renewed in his own name ten years before he died.⁴⁴ He was still teaching these words at the end of his working life.

One God in one name

Finis Dake taught three Gods under the name of the Trinity. He never used the word tritheism, and he never once denied that his doctrine was tritheism. He defined the Trinity as three separate beings with three bodies, three souls, and three spirits, who are one only as a family is one. By the plain meaning of his own words, that is tritheism, and the church has always called it heresy.

The God of the Bible is one God. When Jesus sent His disciples into all the world, He told them to make disciples, “baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19, NKJV). Dake noticed that the name is singular, and he was right to notice it. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit share one name because they are one God. When you pray to the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit, you are speaking to the one God who made you and saved you. Chapter 7 opens the Scriptures that teach it.

If you own a Dake Bible, turn to the “89 Proofs” note and read it beside his definitions in Lesson Four. The Bereans checked even the apostle Paul against the Scriptures, and Luke praised them for it.⁴⁵ Dake asked his readers to check him the same way.