60. 14 The teachings of faith of the modern-day church attribute to God qualities that are merely human: they say, for example, that God looked at the human race with anger; that he needed to be reconciled to us; that he was in fact reconciled through his love for his Son and through the Son’s intercession; that he needed to be appeased by seeing his Son’s wretched suffering, and this brought him back into a merciful attitude; that he assigns the Son’s justice to unjust people who beg him for it on the basis of their faith alone, and turns them from enemies into friends and from children of wrath into children of grace.

37. The concept of a trinity of gods also goes against enlightened reason, as many arguments are capable of establishing. What person of sound reason would be open to hearing that three gods created the world? Or that creating and preserving, redeeming and saving, and reforming and regenerating are tasks undertaken by three gods, not one God? On the other hand, what person of sound reason would not be open to hearing that the same God who created us also redeems, regenerates, and saves us? Since the latter thoughts are reasonable, but the former are not, every group of religious and reasonable people on the face of this earth acknowledges that there is one God.

As we all know, Muslims and some of the peoples in Asia and Africa detest Christianity because they believe it entails the worship of three gods. When Christians are rebuked on this account, they have only one response: that the three persons share one essence, and therefore constitute one God.

I can attest that the reasoning power granted me allows me to see that no world, no angelic heaven, no church, and nothing within any of them could have come into existence or could continue to exist if there were not one God.