 The suggestion is that the tradition is somewhat confused, but that charitably, we should think its talk of “one God” should be understood as referring to the Trinity. (However, see the opening line of the Nicene creed.) What sort of thing is this Trinity? It is not a divine Person, and is not a thing (person or not) with the divine essence. Rather, it is a thing of which the three divine beings (selves, persons) are proper parts (425). Despite this complex entity not having the divine essence (and so, not being a god), Swinburne sometimes refers to it as “God himself” (424). He argues that these three beings can’t help but cooperate, and so agrees with the traditional claim that apart from the aforementioned eternal causings of one another, any act of one Person of the Trinity is an act of all three Persons (425). In sum, “This common omnipotence, omniscience, and perfect goodness in the community of action makes it that case that in a natural sense there is one God” (428). That is, given the three divine beings described above, it is “natural”, when it comes to the name-like use of the word “God,” to apply the term to that thing which is the whole consisting of those three Persons. But it remains that there are three things here each of which is divine, and that this whole is not itself divine; it’s hard to see why this is monotheism and not tritheism.