Tritheism (from Greek τριθεΐα, "three divinity"[1]) is a polytheistic nontrinitarian Christian conception of God in which the unity of the Trinity and, by extension, monotheism are denied.
[3] It was usually "little more than a hostile label"[4] applied to those who emphasized the individuality of each hypostasis or divine person—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—over the unity of the Trinity as a whole.
The realist scholastic Gilbert de la Porrée erred in the opposite direction by distinguishing between three divine beings and the essence of God (making a quaternity rather than a trinity), and was accused of tritheism.
Gilbert's ideas influenced Joachim of Fiore, and the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) tried to clarify the issue by confirming the numerical unity of the Trinity.
[5] In modern times, the Austrian Catholic Anton Günther, in an effort to refute Hegelian pantheism, declared three divine persons to be three absolute and distinct realities bound together only by their shared origin.