TRINITY
EXPOSED
"God can in no way be described." -- Plato (Father of the pagan
Trinity) "The Trinity itself is a mystery or a "holy secret". It
is incomprehensible. It can never be fully understood." -- Dr. Walter Martin
1 Corinthians 14:33 -- "God is not
the author of confusion. "
Of course, that doesn't stop the above writer,
along with B. Larson, R. Rhodes, James R. White and others from trying to
explain the unexplainable. The above writers will use scriptures like John
1:1,18; 8:58; Acts 20:28; Romans 9:5; Hebrews 1:8 etc.
Have you ever noticed that Bible Dictionaries
and most scholarly religious encyclopedias and reference works don't use those
scriptures. Why is that? Because they don't prove a trinity. For a trinity you
need "THREE".
In the above scriptures, and in almost all
so-called "Trinity Proof" texts, the holy spirit is woefully
under-represented. Using the above scriptures is less trinitarian and more
Sabbelianism/Modalism. Just like this quotation from the myopic James R. White,
"The Bible teaches that Jesus Christ is the eternal Word, the Creator of
all things, the mighty God, as the Nicene Creed states it so succinctly,
...there is no Christianity where this truth is denied. Of this there can be no
question." (The King James Only Controversy)
So what is this "truth" of the Nicene
Creed?
It
was 325 A.D. at Nice that the doctrine of the Trinity was rammed through by
Athanasius (who in the future would use strong-arm tactics that would make a
modern day mobster proud) in a Council that was overseen by the Emperor
Constantine who, ironically enough, thought of himself as God-incarnate.
(Constantine was a Sun Worshipper and only made an official conversion to
"christianity" on his deathbed). Roman coins of the period still
portrayed the image of the sun God despite the sudden adoption/conversion of
Christianity. Many of those present at the Council Of Nicaea were in fact
opposed the doctrine of the Trinity and had sided with Arius, who was quite
adept and effective in proving from the scriptures that the Son was separate
and subordinate to God. Much less effective was Athanasius's theory of
homoousion which meant "made of the same stuff". By this reasoning
though, you could have 2 copper coins that were homoousion because they were of
the same substance...so couldn't the Word (Logos) also be a second and separate
god. Even after the Nicene Creed, the doctrine of the Trinity was hotly debated
for decades and centuries after.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE CHURCH AFTER NICAEA
325 AD - Constantine convenes the Council of
Nicaea in order to develop a statement of faith that can unify the church. The
Nicene Creed is written, declaring that "the Father and the Son are of the
same substance" (homoousios). Emperor Constantine who was also the high
priest of the pagan religion of the Unconquered Sun presided over this council.
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica:
"Constantine himself presided, actively guiding the discussions and
personally proposed the crucial formula expressing the relationship of Christ
to God in the creed issued by the council, `of one substance with the
Father'."
The American Academic Encyclopedia states:
"Although this was not Constantine's first attempt to reconcile factions
in Christianity, it was the first time he had used the imperial office to
IMPOSE a settlement."
At the end of this council, Constantine sided
with Athanasius over Arius and exiled Arius to Illyria.
328 AD - Athanasius becomes bishop of
Alexandria.
328 AD - Constantine recalls Arius from
Illyria.
335 AD - Constantine now sides with Arius and
exiles Athanasius to Trier.
337 AD - A new emperor, Contantius, orders the
return of Athanasius to Alexandria.
339 AD - Athanasius flees Alexandria in
anticipation of being expelled.
341 AD - Two councils are held in Antioch this
year. During this council, the First, Second, and Third Arian Confessions are
written, thereby beginning the attempt to produce a formal doctrine of faith to
oppose the Nicene Creed.
343 AD - At the Council of Sardica, Eastern
Bishops demand the removal of Athanasius.
346 AD - Athanasius is restored to Alexandria.
351 AD - A second anti - Nicene council is held
in Sirmium.
353 AD - A council is held at Aries during
Autumn that is directed against Athanasius.
355 AD - A council is held in Milan. Athanasius
is again condemned.
356 AD - Athanasius is deposed on February 8th,
beginning his third exile.
357 AD - Third Council of Sirmium is convened.
Both homoousios and homoiousios are avoided as unbiblical, and it is agreed
that the Father is greater than His subordinate Son.
359 AD - The Synod of Seleucia is held which
affirms that Christ is "like the Father," It does not however,
specify how the Son is like the Father.
361 AD - A council is held in Antioch to affirm
Arius' positions.
380 AD - Emperor Theodosius the Great declares
Christianity the official state religion of the empire.
381 AD - The First Council of Constantinople is
held to review the controversy since Nicaea. Emperor Theodosius the Great
establishes the creed of Nicaea as the standard for his realm. The Nicene Creed
is re-evaluated and accepted with the addition of clauses on the Holy Spirit
and other matters.
If you believe that Nicaea just formalized the
prevalent teaching of the church, then there really should not have been any
conflicts. Why should there be? If it were the established teaching of the
church, then you would expect people to either accept it, or not be Christians.
It would be like me being a member of the Communist Party. I would join it
knowing that they do not believe in the ownership of private property, no
conflict. But now, say after I have been a member of the party for a few years,
someone decides to introduce a proposal that we allow the ownership of private
property, not everyone in the party is going to agree, the result is conflict.
This is similar to what happened in the church. It was not the established
teaching, and when some faction of the church tried to make it official, the
result was major conflict.
It was mainly a theological power grab by
certain factions of the church. The major complication throughout all this was that the emperors were
involved. At Nicaea it was Constantine that decided the outcome. Then as you
can see, we have the flip-flopping of opinion with the result that Athanasius
is exiled and recalled depending on who is in power. We even have in 357 AD the
declaration that homoousios and homoiousios are unbiblical, and that the Father
is greater than His subordinate Son.
This is 180 degrees from Nicaea. It is
definitely not the Trinitarian formula.
In 380 AD Emperor Thedosius declares
Christianity the state religion. One can come to the conclusion that whichever
way Theodosius favors, that is the way in which it is going to end. This is
exactly what happened next.
In 381 AD the struggle was finally ended by the
current emperor, Theodosius the Great, who favored the Nicene position. Just
like at Nicaea, the EMPEROR again decided it. The emperors were dictating the
theology of the church.
The big difference now was that there was not
going to be any more changing sides. It was now the state religion. You cannot
make Christianity the state religion and then change its beliefs every few years.
It would undermine its credibility as the true faith. The Trinity was now the
orthodox position, and the state was willing to back it up. Debates however,
would continue for years to come. Juan Baixeras
"These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far way from me. Their worship of me is useless, because
they teach man-made rules as if they were doctrines." Matt. 15:8 Jewish N.
T.
From the Webmaster: For the most part, the
trinitarian church has silenced critical thought and dealt treacherously with
anyone of open mind and free thought. In the 1670's, Isaac Newton quietly
studied the Trinity and came to the conclusion that the doctrine was foisted on
the Church by Athanasius in order to swell the numbers and fill the coffers. He
concluded Arius was right and he claimed that the Bible had prophesied the Rise
of Trinitarianism("this strange religion of the west", the cult of 3
equal gods) as the abomination of desolation. -- The Rise of Science and
Decline of Orthodox Christianity. A study of Kepler, Descartes and Newton.
After Newton, others such as Matthew Tindal, John Toland, Gottfried Arnold,
Goerg Walch, Giovanni
But, Henry Noris and Hermann Samuel Reimarus argued
Arianism (unitarianism) and opened up a new era of criticism. It is only
logical for people to argue after this, "What else has the Church lied
to us about?" This unfortunately led to Higher Criticism of the bible
in the 19th century which in turn, paved the way for evolutionism and
Neitzsche's death of God. Is it not logical that to replace a polytheistic
trinity, man would have to become gods themselves.
The Superman would replace God and declare war
on old christian values. (Thus Spake Zarathustra 1883) Can this happen to the
message of Christ? It can if the message is diluted. Albrecht Ritschl(1822-89)
saw the Trinity doctrine as flagrantly Hellenistic. It had corrupted the
Christian message by introducing an alien "layer of metaphysical
concepts, derived from the natural philosophy of the Greeks," and it
had nothing to do with early christianity.
Quotes:
"The doctrine of the Trinity is a post-scriptural attempt to bring
to coherent expression diverse affirmations about God..." -- Grolier
Encyclopedia
"Most assuredly, I am saying to you, A
slave is not greater than his master, nor even one who is sent on a mission
greater than the one who sent him." -- John 13:16 (Kenneth S. Wuest)
"The Chalcedonian formula [the council's
decision declaring Jesus both God and man] makes genuine humanity impossible.
The conciliar definition says that Jesus is true man. But if there are two
natures in him, it is clear which will dominate. And Jesus becomes immediately
very different from us. He is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent. He knows the
past, present and future...He knows exactly what everyone is thinking and going
to do. This is far from ordinary human experience. Jesus is tempted but cannot
sin becasue he is God. What kind of temptation is this? It has little in common
with the kinds of struggles we are familiar with." To Know and Follow
Jesus, Roman Catholic writer Thomas Hart (Paulist Press, 1984), 46.
"And the LORD said...'you cannot see my
face, for no man may see me and live.'" Ex. 33:19, 20 NIV
"It is exegesis of a mischievous if pious
sort that would find the doctrine of the Trinity
in the plural form elohim [God]" ("God," Encyclopedia of
Religion and Ethics)
"Surely Christ has not been divided."
1 Corinthians 1:13 Revised English Bible
Historian Will Durant: "Christianity did
not destroy paganism; it adopted it. . . . From Egypt came the ideas of a
divine trinity." And in the book Egyptian Religion, Siegfried Morenz
notes: "The trinity was a major preoccupation of Egyptian theologians . .
. Three gods are combined and treated as a single being, addressed in the
singular. In this way the spiritual force of Egyptian religion shows a direct
link with Christian theology."
"He is exactly like God himself who is
invisible. Of all creation, he was the first to be produced." Col 1:15
21st Century NT
"But how can such weak creatures ever take
in so strange, so difficult and so abtruse a doctrine as this [the Trinity], in
the explication and defence wherof multitudes of men, even men of learning and
piety, have lost themselves in infinite subtleties of dispute and endless mazes
of darkness? And can this strange and perplexing notion of three real persons
going up to make one true God be so necessary and important a part of that
Christian doctrine, which, in the Old Testament and the New, is represented as
so
plain and so easy, even to the meanest understandings."
William G. Eliot, Discourses on the Doctrines of Christianity (American
Unitarian Association, Boston,1877), pp. 97, 100
"That men may know that thou, whose name
alone is Jehovah, art the most high over all the earth." Ps 83:18 King
James Version
The Eastern Theologian John of Damascus (c.
675-749) once used a very curios argument in favour of icons...John replied to
the criticism are unscriptural by admitting the fact, and adding that you will
not find in scripture the Trinity, of homousian or the two natures of Christ
either. But we know those doctrines are true. And so, having acknowledged that
icons, the Trinity and the incarnation are innovations, John goes on to urge
his reader to hold fast to them as venerable traditions delivered to us by the
Fathers...He was not the only one to use this argument: Theodore the Studite
(759-826) adopted it too. It brings out an odd feature to Christianity, its
mutability and speed with which innovations come to be vested with religious
solemnity to such an extent that anyone who questions them find himself
regarded as the dangerous innovator and heretic." The Christ of
Christendom by Don Cupitt, as used in The Myth of God Incarnate, p. 133
"Ye are my witnesses, saith Jehovah, and
my servant whom I have chosen; that ye may know and believe me, and understand
that I am he: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after
me." Is 43:10 ASV
In the preface to Edward Gibbon's History of
Christianity, we read: "If Paganism was conquered by Christianity, it is
equally true that Christianity was corrupted by Paganism. The pure Deism of the
first Christians . . . was changed, by the Church of Rome, into the
incomprehensible dogma of the trinity. Many of the pagan tenets, invented by
the Egyptians and idealized by Plato, were retained as being worthy of
belief."
"Is there not one Father of us all? Did
not one God create us? Why then, do we break faith with one another, profaning
the covenant of our ancestors." Malachi 2:10 NJB
"Only one, the Father, can absolutely be
termed the ‘only true God,’ not at the same
time Christ (who is not even in I John 5:20 the true God…). Jesus, in unity
with the
Father, works as his commissioner (John 10:30), and is His representative (John
14:9, 10) (Professor H.A.W. Meyer, Commentary on the New Testament. The
quotation is from his comment on John 17:3).
The son honours his father, the slave stands in
awe of his master. But if I am indeed father, where is the honour due to me?
And if I am indeed master, where is the awe due to me? says Yahweh Sabaoth to
you priests who despise my name." Malachi 1:6 NJB
"It was impossible for the Apostles to
identify Christ with Jehovah. Psalm 110:1 and
Malachi 3:1 prevented this" (R.A Bigg, D.D. Regius Professor of
Ecclesiastical
History, Oxford, in International Critical Commentary on I Peter).
"glorify the God and Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ." Romans 15:6 ASV
"Does this mean that early Christian
theology was "nothing but" paganism with a biblical accent? Or, to
paraphrase Numenius, was Christianity no more than Plato with a faint
Palestinian accent?...We should not say it was "no more than" the sum
of its parts, but the reality of the pagan environment cannot be
neglected." Gods and the One God, Robert M. Grant, p. 170
"We have one Father, God." John 8:41
Lamsa
"Christendom has done away with
Christianity without being quite aware of it" (Soren
Kierkegaard, cited in Time magazine, Dec. 16, 1946, p. 64).
"There is...one God and Father of
all" Eph 4:4,6 ASV
"In his theological interpretation of the
idea of God, Arius was
interested in maintaining a formal understanding of the oneness of God. In
defense of the oneness of God, he was obliged to dispute the sameness of
essence of the Son and the Holy Spirit with God the Father, as stressed by
the theologians of the Neoplatonically influenced Alexandrian school.
From
the outset, the controversy between both parties took place upon the common
basis of the Neoplatonic concept of substance, which was foreign to the New
Testament itself. It is no wonder that the continuation of the dispute
on
the basis of the metaphysics of substance likewise led to concepts that have
no foundation in the New Testament--such as the
question of the sameness of
essence (homoousia) or similarity of essence (homoiousia) of the divine
persons." Brittanica.com
"For the wisdom of this world is
foolishness with God." 1Cor 3:19 Tyndale
"The three-in-one/one-in-three mystery of
Father, Son and Holy Ghost made tritheism official. The subsequent
almost-deification of the Virgin Mary made it quatrotheism . . . Finally,
cart-loads of saints raised to quarter-deification turned Christianity into plain
old-fashioned polytheism. By the time of the Crusades, it was the most polytheistic religion to ever have
existed, with the possible exception of Hinduism. This untenable
contradiction between the assertion of monotheism and the reality of polytheism
was dealt with by accusing other religions of the Christian fault. The Church -
Catholic and later Protestant - turned aggressively on the two most clearly
monotheistic religions in view - Judaism and Islam - and persecuted them as
heathen or pagan. "
"The external history of Christianity consists largely of accusations that
other religions rely on the worship of more than one god and therefore not the
true God. These pagans must therefore be converted, conquered and/or killed for
their own good in order that they benefit from the singularity of the Holy
Trinity, plus appendages." -- The Doubter's Companion (John Ralston
Saul)
"It isn't for me to say who will sit at my
right side and at my left. That is for my Father to say." -- Matthew 20:23
- Contemporary English Version
"In brief, the ante-Nicene Fathers taught
the real distinction and divinity of the three persons . . . but in their
attempts at a philosophical interpretation of the Dogma, the ante-Nicene
Fathers used certain expressions which would favor sudordinationism. In
the late 17th century, the Socinians cited these expressions that the
ante-Nicene tradition agreed rather with Arius than with Athanasius . . .
Catholic theologians commonly defend the orthodoxy of these early Fathers,
while admitting that certain of their expressions were inaccurate and
eventually dangerous." -- Colliers Encyclopedia
"Yeshua(Jesus) said to him, 'Why are you
calling me good? No one is good except God!" -- Mark 10:18 - Jewish New
Testament - D.H. Stern
"You simply simply cannot find the
doctrine of the Trinity set out anywhere in the Bible. St Paul has the highest
view of Jesus' role and person, but nowhere does he call him God. Nor does
Jesus himself explicitly claim to be the second person of the Trinity, wholly
equal to his heavenly Father." -- For Christ's Sake by Tom Harpur
(Anglican Priest).
"Hear, O Israel, the lord our God is one
lord." --
Deuteronomy 6:4 (Douay)
"No historical fact is better established,
than that the doctrine of one God, pure and uncompounded, was that of the early
ages of Christianity . . . Nor was the unity of the Supreme Being ousted from
the Christian creed by the force of reason, but by the sword of civil
government, wielded at the will of the Athanasius. The hocus-pocus phantasm of
a God like another Cerberus, with one body and three heads, had its birth and
growth in the blood of thousands of martyrs . . . The Athanasian paradox that
one is three, and three but one, is so incomprehensible to the human mind, that
no candid man can say he has any idea of it, and how can he believe what
presents no idea? He who thinks he does, only deceives himself. He proves,
also, that man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against
absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of
every wind. With such person, gullibility which they call faith, takes the helm
from the hand of reason, and the mind becomes a wreck." -- Thomas
Jefferson: Letter to James Smith, Dec. 8, 1822 For more Letters from T.
Jefferson see:
http://www.nidlink.com/~bobhard/tjletters.html
". . . there is only one God." Romans
3:30 - New Jerusalem Bible
"Thus by your own tradition, handed down
among you, you make God's word null and void." -- Mark 7:13 - New
English Bible
"The doctrine is not taught explicitly in
the New Testament, where the word God almost invariably refers to the
Father" -- MS Encarta 99
"For God is one; and one is mediator
between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus." -- 1 Timothy 2:5 - Montgomery
NT
"The word itself does not occur in the
Bible...The explicit formula was thus formulated in the post-biblical period,
although the early stages of its development can be seen in the NT. Attempts to
trace the origin still earlier (to the OT literature) cannot be supported by
historical-critical scholarship, and these attempts must be understood as
retrospective interpretations of this earlier corpus of Scripture in the light
of later theological developments." The Harper Collins Study Bible
Dictionary
"We are judged to be heretics because we
can no longer believe in essence, person, nature, incarnation, as they want us
to believe. If these things are necessary for salvation, it is certain that no
poor peasant Christian be saved, because he could never understand them in all
his life." -- Francis David (1510-79)
"No one has seen God at any time." --
John 1:18 - New King James Bible
Christ's deity was "repugnant not only to sound
Reason, but also to the holy Scriptures." -- Fostus Socinus (1539-1604)
". . . the Father is greater than I."
-- John 14:28 - New Revised Standard Version
Catholic theologian Hans Küng in Christianity
and the World Religions, "Even well-informed Muslims simply cannot
follow, as the Jews thus far have likewise failed to grasp, the idea of the
Trinity . . . The distinctions made by the doctrine of the Trinity between one
God and three hypostases do not satisfy Muslims, who are confused, rather than enlightened,
by theological terms derived from Syriac, Greek, and Latin. Muslims find it all
a word game . . . Why should anyone want to add anything to the notion of God's
oneness and uniqueness that can only dilute or nullify that oneness and
uniqueness?"
"I have come to you from God. I am not
here on my own, but he sent me." -- John 8:42 - Living Bible
"The word Trinity is not found in the
Bible . . . It did not find a place formally in the theology of the church till
the 4th century." -- The Illustrated Bible Dictionary
"There is no God but one." -- I
Corinthians 8:4
And a Catholic authority says that the Trinity
"is not . . . directly and immediately [the] word of God." -- New
Catholic Encyclopedia
"one lord, one faith, one baptism."
-- Ephesians 4:5 - Revised Standard Version - Catholic Edition
The
Catholic Encyclopedia also says: "In Scripture there is as yet no
single term by which the Three Divine Persons are denoted together. The word
[tri'as] (of which the Latin trinitas is a translation) is first found in
Theophilus of Antioch about A. D. 180 . . . Shortly afterwards it appears in
its Latin form of trinitas in Tertullian." However, this is no proof in
itself that Tertullian taught the Trinity. The Catholic work Trinitas - A
Theological Encyclopedia of the Holy Trinity, for example, notes that some
of Tertullian's words were later used by others to describe the Trinity. But
then it states: "But hasty conclusions cannot be drawn from usage, for he
does not apply the words to Trinitarian theology."
". . . let your will be done, not
mine." -- Luke 22:42,43 - Jerusalem Bible
The Encyclopedia of Religion says: "Theologians agree that
the New Testament also does not contain an explicit doctrine of the
Trinity."
"For there is but one God and one mediator
between God and men - Christ Jesus." -- 1 Timothy 2:5 Weymouth
Jesuit Fortman: "The New Testament writers
. . . give us no formal or formulated doctrine of the Trinity, no explicit teaching
that in one God there are three co-equal divine persons. . . . Nowhere do we
find any trinitarian doctrine of three distinct subjects of divine life and
activity in the same Godhead."
"And this is the eternal life, that they
know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ Whom thou didst send." --
John 17:3 - Worrell N.T.
The New Encyclopædia Britannica: "Neither the word Trinity nor the
explicit doctrine appears in the New Testament."
"The Lord our God is one Lord." --
Mark 12:29 - Webster's Bible
Bernhard Lohse in A Short History of
Christian Doctrine: "As far as the New Testament is concerned, one
does not find in it an actual doctrine of the Trinity."
"Yet to us there is one God the Father, Of
whom are all things, and we for him; And one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom
all things are, and we through him." -- 1 Corinthians 8:6
Rotherham - The New International Dictionary
of New Testament Theology:
"The N[ew] T[estament] does not contain the developed doctrine of the
Trinity."
"The Bible lacks the express declaration
that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are of equal essence.", said
Protestant theologian Karl Barth
"God is supreme over Christ." -- 1
Corinthians 11:3 - Good News Bible
Yale University Professor E. Washburn Hopkins:
"To Jesus and Paul the doctrine of the trinity was apparently unknown; . .
. they say nothing about it." -- Origin and Evolution of Religion.
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ." -- 1 Peter 1:3 - New Berkeley Version
Tom Harpur states, "As early as the 8th
century, the Theologian St. John of Damascus frankly admitted what every modern
critical scholar of the NT now realizes: that neither the Doctrine of the
Trinity nor that of the 2 natures of Jesus Christ is explicitly set out in
scripture. In fact, if you take the record as it is and avoid reading back into
it the dogmatic definitions of a later age, you cannot find what is traditionally
regarded as orthodox Christianity in the Bible at all." -- For Christ's
Sake.
"I am returning to my Father and your
Father, to my God and your God." -- John 20:17 - New International
Version
Historian Arthur Weigall: "Jesus Christ
never mentioned such a phenomenon, and nowhere in the New Testament does the
word 'Trinity' appear. The idea was only adopted by the Church three hundred
years after the death of our Lord." -- The Paganism in Our Christianity
"Grace to you and peace from God our
Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." 1Cor 1:3 ASV
The New Encyclopædia Britannica: "Neither the word Trinity, nor
the explicit doctrine as such, appears in the New Testament, nor did Jesus and
his followers intend to contradict the Shema in the Old Testament: 'Hear, O
Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord' -- Deut. 6:4
. . . The doctrine developed gradually over several centuries and through many
controversies . . . By the end of the 4th century . . . the doctrine of the
Trinity took substantially the form it has maintained ever since." -- Micropædia,
Vol. X, p. 126. (1976)
"See to it that no one takes you captive
through philosophy and empty deception." -- Colossians 2:8 - New
American Standard Bible
The New Catholic Encyclopedia states: "The formulation 'one
God in three Persons' was not solidly established, certainly not fully
assimilated into Christian life and its profession of faith, prior to the end
of the 4th century. But it is precisely this formulation that has first claim
to the title the Trinitarian dogma. Among the Apostolic Fathers, there had been
nothing even remotely approaching such a mentality or perspective." - (1967),
Vol. XIV, p. 299.
"In vain do they worship me, teaching as
doctrines the precepts of men." -- Matthew 15:9 - Common Bible-RSV
The Encyclopedia Americana: "Christianity derived from
Judaism and Judaism was strictly Unitarian [believing that God is one person].
The road which led from Jerusalem to Nicea was scarcely a straight one. Fourth
century Trinitarianism did not reflect accurately early Christian teaching
regarding the nature of God; it was, on the contrary, a deviation from this
teaching." -- (1956), Vol. XXVII, p. 294L.
"No one has ever seen deity, but
Jesus." -- John 1:18 - Simple English Bible
The Nouveau Dictionnaire Universel, "The Platonic trinity, itself
merely a rearrangement of older trinities dating back to earlier peoples,
appears to be the rational philosophic trinity of attributes that gave birth to
the three hypostases or divine persons taught by the Christian churches . . .
This Greek philosopher's [Plato, fourth century B.C.E.] conception of the
divine trinity . . . can be found in all the ancient [pagan] religions."
-- (Paris, 1865-1870), edited by M. Lachâtre, Vol. 2, p. 1467.
"Yet about that day or hour no one knows,
not even the angels in heaven, not even the Son; no one but the Father."
-- Mark 13:32 - Revised English Bible
"The
belief as so defined was reached only in the 4th and 5th centuries AD and hence
is not explicitly and formally a biblical belief. The trinity of persons within
the unity of nature is defined in terms of "person" and "nature:
which are Gk philosophical terms; actually the terms do not appear in the
Bible. The trinitarian definitions arose as the result of long controversies in
which these terms and others such as "essense" and
"substance" were erroneously applied to God by some
theologians." Dictionary of the Bible by John L. McKenzie, S.J. p.
899
"Every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven
men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. And whoever
says a word against the Son of man will be forgiven; but whoever speaks against
the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to
come." -- Matt 12;31,32 - Revised Standard Version
Regarding the Nicene Council and those that
followed, Hans Kung in Christianity says, "The conciliar decisions
plunged Chrisitianity into undreamed-of theological confusions with constant
entanglements in church politics. They produced splits and sparked off a
persecution of heretics unique in the history of religion. This is what
Christianity became as it changed its nature from a persecuted minority to a
majority persecuting others."
"By this all will know that you are
disciples of mine, if you have love for each other." -- John 13:35
Byington
-- For much, much more on the Trinity, click here.
"Anyone who can worship a trinity and
insist that his religion is a monotheism can believe anything." -- Robert
A. Heinlein
Well I like to be fair, so I will now give the
other side a chance to explain their belief:
"We are to consider the order of those persons in the Trinity described in
the words before us in Matthew 28:19. First the Father and then the Son and
then the Holy Ghost; everyone one of which is truly God. This is a mystery
which we are all bound to believe, but yet must exercise great care in how we
speak of it, it being both easy and dangerous to err in expressing so great a
truth as this is. If we think of it, how hard it is to imagine one numerically
divine nature in more than one and the same divine person. Or
three divine persons in no more than one and the same divine nature. If we
speak of it, how hard it is to express it. If I say, the Father, Son and Holy
Ghost be three, and everyone a distinct God, it is false. I may say, God the
Father is one God and the Son is one God, and the Holy Ghost is one God, but I
cannot say that the Father is one God and the Son is another God and the Holy
Ghost is a third God. I may say that the Father begat another who is God; yet I
cannot say that He begat another God. I may say that from the Father and Son
proceeds another who is God; yet I cannot say that from the Father and Son
proceeds another God. For though their nature be the same their persons are
distinct; and though their persons be distinct, yet still their nature is the
same. So that, though the Father be the first person in the Godhead, the Son
the second and the Holy Ghost the third, yet the Father is not the first, the
Son the second and the Holy Ghost a third God. So hard it is to word so great a
mystery aright; or to fit so high a truth with expressions suitable and proper
to it, without going one way or another from it." Bishop Beverage, Private
Thoughts, Part 2, 48, 49, cited by Charles Morgridge, The True Believers
Defence Against Charges Preferred by Trinitarians for Not Beleiving in the
Deity of Christ (Boston: B. Greene, 1837), 16.
Nuff said!
Yes, I do not always agree 100% with some of the
other works of the above mentioned authors, but then, I don't agree 100% with
anyone..period. I have produced an eclectic array of trinitarians,
non-trinitarians, pagans, skeptics, atheists, liberal theologians to provide a
rounded view that people from all walks of life, people of great intelligence
find humor and incredulity in the triune doctrine.
So why use them? I will finish off with a quote from E.H. Broadbent to show you
where I am coming from. Speaking of the much persecuted but humble group of
Christians of times past, the Waldenses and the Albigenses, he says "They
considered that in all times and in all forms of churches there were
enlightened men of god. They therefore made use of the writings of Ambrose,
Augustine, Chrysostom, Bernard of Clairvaux and others, not accepting, however,
all they wrote, but only that which corresponded with the older, purer teaching
of Scripture." The Pilgrim Church, p.120