TRITHEISM. - From Gr. τρεῖς = "three" and Θεός = "God"; the tendency of certain theologians who, in explaining the mystery of the Trinity, come to admit in God not only three distinct persons but also distinct natures.
Tritheism appears, for the first time, it seems, in the 6th century in the East, in the theological work of the Alexandrian John Philoponus (v.), who, in order to defend Monophysitism, identified the terms "person" and "nature," and therefore, since there are in God three really distinct persons, came also to admit three natures. Despite this, he always energetically refused to speak of three divinities (cf. Timothy, De recept. haeret.; PG 86, 60).
Tritheism is still encountered in its consequences, if not in its true form, in the nominalist Roscelin (v.), and in the exaggerated realist Gilbert de la Porrée (v.). For the nominalists, only individual and concrete substances exist, not common and abstract entities. This conception drove Roscelin to the same conclusions as Philoponus. Roscelin's tritheism, combated with stringent logic by St. Anselm and by Abelard, was condemned in the Council of Soissons (1092). For the exaggerated realists, on the other hand, the universal exists in itself. Consistently with this principle, Gilbert de la Porrée held that the three divine persons were really distinguished not only from one another but also from the essence; from this there followed a quaternity, since the divine essence thus came to have an existence of its own. His doctrine was combated by St. Bernard of Clairvaux and condemned in 1148 by the Council of Reims (cf. Denz-U, 389). A kind of tritheism was also professed by the abbot Joachim of Fiore (v.). In opposition to Peter Lombard (v.), whom he reproached for having introduced a quaternity in God, Joachim of Fiore denied a common nature to the three divine persons, according to the principles of nominalism, and consequently attributed to them a purely collective and moral unity. Since his Libellus de essentia Trinitatis contra Lombardum has been lost, his error emerges from the condemnation of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 (cf. Denz-U, 431-33).
Toward the middle of the 19th century, A. Günther (v.) sought to apply to the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity the presuppositions of Hegelian philosophy, starting from the identification of the concepts of personality and self-consciousness. His doctrine was condemned by Pius IX in 1857 (cf. Denz-U, 1655).
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Guglielmo Zannoni