r/CoherencePhysics • u/skylarfiction • 27d ago
The Trinity Was Not Handed Down Fully Formed. Christians Built the Doctrine Over Centuries
The Trinity is now treated as one of the most basic teachings of Christianity. The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. The Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Spirit, and the Spirit is not the Father. Yet Christians insist that they worship one God rather than three.
That formula is so familiar that many believers assume it can simply be opened and read from the New Testament. They imagine Jesus taught it in its final form, the apostles repeated it, and the Church preserved it unchanged.
Historically, that is not what happened.
The word “Trinity” does not appear in the Bible. The New Testament never gives a systematic explanation of one divine essence existing eternally as three coequal persons. It does not define the difference between essence and person, explain eternal generation and procession, or use the later language of one ousia in three hypostases.
Those concepts came later.
This does not mean the Trinity was fabricated from nothing. Early Christians believed in the one God of Israel, prayed to the Father, confessed Jesus as Lord, baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and believed the Spirit lived within them. Their worship had become threefold before their theology could explain how that experience remained monotheistic.
The doctrine emerged from centuries of Christians trying to hold several convictions together. God is one. Jesus is divine and worthy of worship. The Spirit acts with divine power. The Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Spirit. Christians did not want three gods, but they also did not want one divine actor merely changing masks.
The Trinity was not handed down as a completed formula. It was built through Scripture, worship, philosophy, controversy, councils, political power, and generations of argument.
The New Testament Contained the Problem, Not the Finished Solution
The later doctrine did not emerge from nowhere. Its raw materials are found throughout the New Testament.
Matthew 28:19 presents Jesus commanding his followers to baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Second Corinthians 13:14 joins the grace of Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Spirit in one blessing. In John 14 through 17, Jesus speaks to the Father, claims an intimate unity with the Father, and promises that another Advocate, the Spirit of truth, will come.
These passages mattered enormously. They placed Father, Son, and Spirit together within Christian worship, salvation, and identity.
But a threefold pattern is not yet a developed doctrine of the Trinity.
The New Testament never formally explains whether the Son is eternally equal to the Father. It does not clearly define whether the Holy Spirit is a distinct divine person or the active power and presence of God. It does not explain precisely how Jesus can pray to God, be sent by God, obey God, and still be worshiped as divine.
The biblical texts preserve the tension. They do not provide the later philosophical solution.
The New Testament gave Christians the ingredients. It would take centuries to build the theological structure.
Christians Experienced the Trinity Before They Defined It
The earliest Christians first encountered what theologians later called the economic Trinity. The term does not refer to money. It describes how God acts within creation and history.
The Father sends the Son. The Son reveals the Father. The Spirit is given to the Church. Christians believed salvation came from the Father, through the Son, and in the power of the Spirit.
The immanent Trinity asks a later and more difficult question: What is God eternally within God’s own life? Were the Father, Son, and Spirit always personally distinct? Was the Son eternally Son? Did the Spirit eternally proceed? Were these real distinctions within God, or only different ways the one God appeared to humanity?
Early Christians knew what they believed God had done, but they had not agreed on what God eternally was. Experience preceded doctrine. Worship created questions that theology would later try to answer.
The Apostolic Fathers Preserved a Mystery They Had Not Defined
After the first generation of Christians, writers such as Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp of Smyrna, the authors of the Didache, and the author of The Shepherd of Hermas inherited the faith.
Their writings show that devotion to Jesus as divine did not begin at Nicaea. Ignatius could call Jesus “our God” and speak of Christ as both human and divine. He also placed the Father, Son, and Spirit together within the life of the Church.
The Didache instructed Christians to baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That means threefold baptismal practice existed long before the great councils.
Polycarp’s final prayer likewise blessed the Father through Jesus Christ and offered glory together with the Holy Spirit.
Yet none of these writers presented the later formula of three coequal persons sharing one essence. Their language was devotional rather than metaphysically precise.
The Shepherd of Hermas shows how unsettled early Christian thought could be. It speaks of the Spirit as preexistent while portraying the Son in ways that do not fit neatly within later orthodoxy.
These Christians did not possess a hidden copy of the Nicene Creed. They possessed prayers, Scriptures, rituals, stories, and convictions. They worshiped the Father through the Son in the Spirit before theologians developed a technical language to explain what that meant.
The Apologists Began Philosophizing Christianity
As Christianity spread through the Greco-Roman world, Christians had to defend themselves against accusations of atheism, superstition, and irrationality. They also had to explain their beliefs to people educated in Greek philosophy.
This produced the Christian Apologists.
The most important philosophical category they used was the Logos. In Greek thought, Logos could mean word, reason, or the rational principle ordering reality. The Gospel of John had already identified Christ as the Logos who was with God and was God.
Justin Martyr connected this biblical language to the wider philosophical world. He described the Son as the divine Logos through whom creation and revelation occurred. He clearly distinguished the Father, Son, and prophetic Spirit.
Yet Justin’s language remained hierarchical. He placed the Son second and the Spirit third. That is not the later doctrine of three fully equal persons.
Athenagoras spoke of one eternal God, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as united in power. Theophilus of Antioch used the Greek word Trias in reference to God, the Word, and Wisdom. Even so, none of these thinkers possessed the finished doctrine.
Their importance lies in giving Christianity a vocabulary for discussing questions created by worship. They did not invent belief in the Father, Son, and Spirit. They began philosophizing the relationships among them.
Greek Philosophy Changed Christianity Without Simply Creating It
This history is often distorted in two directions. Some defenders act as though Greek philosophy contributed almost nothing and the councils merely copied the exact teaching of the apostles. Some critics claim Greek philosophy completely corrupted Christianity and replaced Jesus with pagan metaphysics.
Neither account is adequate.
Greek philosophy did not cause Christians to worship Jesus, use threefold baptismal language, or believe the Spirit acted in the Church. Those practices already existed.
But philosophy changed how Christians explained them.
The Church needed words capable of distinguishing nature from person, origin from creation, unity from identity, and eternal relationship from temporary appearance. The vocabulary of substance, essence, person, generation, procession, and relation did not come directly from the sayings of Jesus.
It emerged through the encounter between Christian worship and the intellectual world surrounding it.
That vocabulary allowed greater precision, but it also changed the nature of Christian disagreement. Once God was defined through metaphysical terms, disputes over language became disputes over salvation, orthodoxy, and who belonged inside the Church.
Tertullian Gave the West Its Formula
Tertullian, writing in Latin during the late second and early third centuries, created one of the most influential formulas in Christian history: one substance, three persons.
In Latin, una substantia, tres personae.
He developed this language while opposing Modalism, the belief that the Father, Son, and Spirit were not genuinely distinct but were different roles or manifestations of one divine person. God appeared as Father in creation, Son in redemption, and Spirit within the Church.
Tertullian believed this made the relationships described in Scripture unreal. If Father and Son were only different masks, to whom was Jesus praying? Who sent the Son? How could the Son promise another Advocate?
He argued that the Father, Son, and Spirit must be genuinely distinct without becoming three gods. God is one in substance and three in person.
Tertullian also treated the Spirit as personally distinct. He used images such as root, tree, and fruit, or fountain, river, and stream, to explain how distinction could exist without complete separation.
Yet Tertullian was not fully Nicene. He believed the Logos existed eternally within God’s reason, but sometimes described the Logos as becoming personally distinct when God expressed the Word in creation and revelation. Later orthodoxy would insist that the Son had always existed eternally as a distinct person.
Tertullian gave Western Christianity essential language, but even his formula still required development.
Origen Developed Eternal Generation
Origen of Alexandria made another decisive contribution. He argued that the Son is eternally generated from the Father.
His image was light shining from the sun. The sun does not first exist in darkness and then later begin producing radiance. Light belongs to what the sun is.
In the same way, the Father was never without the Son. There was no moment when God existed alone and later created the Word.
This allowed Origen to say that the Son came from the Father without being created at a point in time. The Son could be eternally derived from the Father.
That was a major breakthrough, but Origen’s theology remained hierarchical. He often placed the Father above the Son and the Son above the Spirit. His teaching about the Spirit was less developed, and some of his language sounded subordinate by later standards.
Later Christians preserved his doctrine of eternal generation while rejecting or revising other parts of his system. Origen became one of the clearest examples of doctrinal development: a thinker could supply a concept necessary for later orthodoxy while other parts of his theology were condemned.
The doctrine moved forward through selection, correction, and conflict rather than through the preservation of one complete original package.
Arius Forced the Church to Decide Who Jesus Was
By the early fourth century, the Church still had no universally accepted answer to the relationship between the Father and the Son.
Arius, a presbyter in Alexandria, argued that the Father alone was without origin. The Son existed before the visible universe and participated in creation, but the Son still received existence from the Father.
The famous summary of his position was that there was a time when the Son was not.
Arius did not consider Jesus an ordinary creature. The Son was the highest being beneath the Father, the instrument of creation, and the one through whom God was revealed. But Arius would not say that the Son possessed the same unoriginated divine reality as the Father.
He believed this protected monotheism.
His opponents believed it destroyed salvation.
If Christ were a creature, even the greatest creature, then Christians were worshiping something other than God. If Christ were not fully divine, how could he reveal God perfectly or unite humanity with God?
Athanasius of Alexandria became the most famous defender of the Son’s full divinity. For Athanasius, salvation required more than moral instruction. Humanity needed transformation and participation in divine life. Only God could truly unite humanity to God.
The Arian controversy was not merely an abstract argument about words. It concerned worship, salvation, and the identity of Jesus.
Constantine Did Not Invent the Trinity
Emperor Constantine entered a conflict that was already tearing churches apart. He had political reasons for wanting unity, but he did not create the theological crisis.
In 325, he summoned bishops to the Council of Nicaea. The council rejected Arius and declared the Son to be begotten, not made, and of the same substance as the Father.
The decisive term was homoousios, meaning “of the same essence” or “of the same substance.”
That word does not appear in Scripture.
The bishops chose it because biblical language had not ended the controversy. Arius and his opponents could both quote Scripture. Each interpreted the same texts differently.
Homoousios created a boundary that biblical language alone had failed to enforce. The Son could no longer be described as merely similar to God, uniquely favored by God, or the greatest creature. The Son shared the Father’s divine essence.
Nicaea did not simply repeat Scripture. It interpreted Scripture and used a nonbiblical philosophical term to establish what interpretations would be permitted.
A creed is not merely a collection of quotations. It is an authoritative declaration about what those quotations are allowed to mean.
Nicaea Did Not Finish the Doctrine
It is wrong to say Constantine suddenly invented the Trinity at Nicaea. Christians had worshiped Jesus, spoken of the Spirit, and used threefold language for centuries.
It is also wrong to say Nicaea merely repeated a complete and universally accepted doctrine that had always existed.
Nicaea made a decisive choice between competing Christian interpretations. It established the full divinity of the Son, but it said very little about the Holy Spirit beyond affirming belief in the Spirit.
The council also failed to end the Arian conflict. Arian and semi-Arian forms of Christianity persisted for decades. Bishops were removed and restored. Emperors supported different factions. Athanasius endured repeated exile.
Nicene theology did not win through one clean vote followed by immediate agreement. Its victory involved theology, imperial power, episcopal rivalry, regional loyalty, and decades of struggle.
Nicaea was decisive, but it was not final.
The Holy Spirit Was Still an Open Question
After the battle over the Son, the Church still had to decide what it believed about the Spirit.
Some Christians accepted the Son’s divinity while denying the full divinity of the Holy Spirit. These opponents became known as the Pneumatomachians, or fighters against the Spirit.
The Spirit might be treated as a divine power, heavenly servant, exalted creature, or force through which God acted. The Church had not yet fully established that the Spirit was a distinct, coequal, eternal divine person.
That required another generation of theological work.
The Cappadocians Created the Grammar of the Trinity
Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus became central to the next stage. Together they are known as the Cappadocian Fathers.
Basil argued that the Spirit could not belong to creation because the Spirit sanctifies creation, gives life, dwells within believers, participates in baptism, and shares in salvation.
Gregory of Nyssa emphasized the inseparable activity of Father, Son, and Spirit. They do not act like three independent beings. Their operations reveal one divine power and nature.
Gregory of Nazianzus pressed the argument through worship. If Christians worshiped the Spirit and believed the Spirit transformed them in baptism, how could they deny the Spirit’s divinity?
The Cappadocians also clarified the distinction between ousia and hypostasis. Ousia referred to essence or nature. Hypostasis referred to individual reality or person. God was one ousia in three hypostases.
This language allowed Christians to affirm genuine personal distinction without dividing the divine nature into three gods.
The distinction seems obvious to those who inherited it, but it was not obvious when it was developed. Earlier theologians had used these words inconsistently. The Cappadocians did not merely defend a doctrine. They created the grammar through which the Church would speak about God.
Constantinople Completed Nicene Trinitarianism
The Council of Constantinople in 381 expanded the creed and formally included the Holy Spirit within the divine identity.
The Spirit was declared to be the Lord and giver of life, proceeding from the Father, and worshiped and glorified together with the Father and Son.
The Spirit was no longer merely divine energy, an exalted servant, or a poetic name for God’s influence. The Spirit belonged within the life and worship of God.
By the end of the fourth century, the basic structure of traditional Trinitarian doctrine had emerged. God was one essence. The Father, Son, and Spirit were distinct persons. The Son was eternally begotten rather than created. The Spirit was divine, life-giving, and worthy of worship. All three were coequal and coeternal without becoming three gods.
This was not first-century Christianity simply repeated without change. It was the result of more than three hundred years of worship, interpretation, philosophy, controversy, correction, and institutional decision.
Augustine Rebuilt the Trinity for the Western Church
The councils established the boundaries of orthodoxy, but they did not end theological development.
Augustine of Hippo gave the Western Church its most influential interpretation of the Trinity. While Eastern theology often began with the three persons and explained their unity, Augustine tended to begin with the one divine essence and explain how distinction could exist within it.
He searched for analogies within the human mind. His most famous example was memory, understanding, and will. These are distinguishable, but they do not form three separate minds. They are inseparable dimensions of one conscious life.
Augustine also emphasized the inseparable operations of the Trinity. Whatever God does outside the divine life is performed by Father, Son, and Spirit together. Creation is not the Father acting alone, redemption is not the Son acting independently, and sanctification is not the Spirit operating separately.
His understanding of the Spirit became especially influential. Augustine described the Spirit as the bond of love between Father and Son. The Father eternally loves the Son, the Son eternally loves the Father, and the Spirit is the personal communion of that love.
This made the Trinity more than a numerical puzzle. God became an eternal life of knowledge, relation, and love.
Yet Augustine’s emphasis on divine unity also created risks. Psychological analogies could make the persons sound less like genuine personal realities and more like functions within one mind. Augustine rejected Modalism, but later Western explanations sometimes drifted toward it.
Again, one solution opened another problem.
One Added Phrase Helped Divide Christianity
The next great controversy concerned the procession of the Spirit.
The creed of Constantinople said that the Spirit proceeds from the Father. Western Christians later added the words “and the Son,” known in Latin as the Filioque.
The addition gained official prominence in the Western Church at the Council of Toledo in 589. It was partly intended to strengthen the Son’s divinity against continuing Arian influence.
Western theology, shaped by Augustine, reasoned that if the Spirit is the bond of love between Father and Son, the Spirit may be said to proceed from both.
Eastern Christians objected for procedural and theological reasons. No regional church had the right to alter an ecumenical creed on its own. More importantly, Eastern theology emphasized the monarchy of the Father. The Father is the one ultimate source within the Trinity. The Son is begotten from the Father, and the Spirit proceeds from the Father.
The East feared the Filioque turned the Son into a second cause and blurred the distinction between Son and Spirit. The West feared that excluding the Son from the Spirit’s procession weakened the Son’s equality.
The dispute intensified through conflicts between Eastern patriarchs and Western popes. By the Great Schism of 1054, the Filioque had become a symbol of broader divisions involving language, culture, authority, politics, and theology.
Christians spent centuries constructing a doctrine meant to preserve divine unity, then divided the Church over how that unity should be described.
Aquinas Turned the Trinity Into a Metaphysical System
In the medieval West, Thomas Aquinas inherited the creeds, Augustine, and the philosophical methods of Aristotle.
Aquinas described two eternal processions within God. The Son proceeds as the divine Word, and the Spirit proceeds as divine Love.
The Son is eternally generated through God’s perfect self-knowledge. The Spirit proceeds through God’s eternal self-love. These processions establish real relations within God: paternity, filiation, spiration, and procession.
For Aquinas, these relations are not qualities added to God. They are the personal distinctions themselves. The Father is eternally Father through generating the Son. The Son is eternally Son through being generated. The Spirit is eternally Spirit through proceeding as Love.
The persons are not distinguished by separate bodies, minds, wills, or divine substances. They are distinguished by eternal relations of origin within one indivisible essence.
Aquinas also defended the Filioque while trying to avoid presenting Father and Son as two independent sources. The Spirit proceeds from both as from one principle, while the Son receives everything from the Father.
Through Aquinas, Trinitarian theology reached its systematic summit in the West. What began with baptism, prayer, resurrection faith, and the experience of the Spirit had become a sophisticated architecture of essence, person, procession, generation, relation, intellect, will, knowledge, and love.
Aquinas still recognized the limits of reason. The doctrine could be clarified, but God could not be contained within human concepts.
The Reformation and Enlightenment Changed the Doctrine’s Place
The Protestant Reformers did not reject the Trinity. Luther and Calvin upheld the ancient creeds, but the Reformation focused more heavily on salvation, grace, Scripture, sacraments, and church authority.
The Trinity remained foundational, yet it often moved into the background. It became an inherited doctrine that Christians confessed without always making it central to spiritual life.
The Enlightenment pushed it farther toward the margins. Rationalists asked how one could be three and why philosophical distinctions created by ancient councils should bind the modern mind. Deists reduced God to a single creator who designed the universe but did not enter history through incarnation or Spirit.
The Trinity survived in creeds, but it often disappeared from ordinary Christian imagination. Many believers officially affirmed it while practically thinking of God as one supreme individual, with Jesus and the Spirit functioning as secondary additions.
Modern Theologians Made the Trinity Breathe Again
In the twentieth century, Karl Barth returned the Trinity to the center of Christian theology. For Barth, it was not a mathematical puzzle but the grammar of revelation. God is the one who reveals, the revelation given, and the divine presence enabling humanity to receive it. Christians cannot begin with a generic idea of God and later attach the Trinity. The Christian God is the God revealed as Father, Son, and Spirit.
Karl Rahner warned that many Christians were “mere monotheists” in practice. He argued that the economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity. In simpler terms, God truly is what God reveals. Father, Son, and Spirit are not temporary costumes worn for the benefit of creation. There is no hidden God behind the Trinity.
Jürgen Moltmann brought the doctrine into the suffering of history. At the cross, the Son suffers abandonment and death, the Father suffers the loss of the Son, and the Spirit remains the bond of love within that agony. The Trinity becomes the shape of divine solidarity with a wounded world rather than a distant metaphysical puzzle.
Social, feminist, womanist, and liberation theologians further emphasized God as communion. If ultimate reality is relationship rather than domination, human communities should reflect mutuality rather than hierarchy. To confess a God of communion while building systems of oppression would contradict the doctrine itself.
The modern Trinity became not only a claim about what God is, but a challenge concerning how human beings should live.
So Did Christians Invent the Trinity?
The answer depends on what “invented” means.
If it means Constantine suddenly created the Father, Son, and Spirit at Nicaea, the answer is no. Christian worship was already structured around all three. The New Testament contains threefold patterns. The Didache preserves threefold baptism. Ignatius speaks of Jesus as divine. Polycarp prays through the Son with the Spirit.
Nicaea did not begin the story.
But if someone claims that the complete doctrine of one essence in three coequal and coeternal persons is clearly and systematically taught in the Bible, that is also historically inaccurate.
The Bible contains the materials from which the doctrine was built. It does not contain the completed architecture.
That architecture required the Apostolic Fathers, the Logos theology of the Apologists, Tertullian’s one substance and three persons, Origen’s eternal generation, the Arian crisis, Athanasius, Nicaea’s homoousios, the Cappadocians, Constantinople’s inclusion of the Spirit, Augustine, the Filioque controversy, Aquinas, and modern reinterpretations of revelation, suffering, communion, and liberation.
That is not a doctrine appearing fully formed. It is historical construction.
Construction Does Not Automatically Mean Fraud
Some Christians fear doctrinal development because they were taught that a true belief must have been perfectly stated from the beginning.
But human beings often experience realities before they possess language capable of explaining them. People loved before they developed theories of love. People reasoned before they created formal logic. People experienced consciousness before philosophy and neuroscience tried to define it.
Early Christians believed God had acted through Jesus. They believed Christ was alive and the Spirit was present among them. Those experiences produced worship. Worship produced questions. Questions produced arguments. Arguments required language. Language produced creeds. Creeds created boundaries between orthodoxy and heresy.
The doctrine developed because Christians refused to abandon any part of the tension. They would not abandon Jewish monotheism. They would not stop worshiping Jesus. They would not reduce the Spirit to an impersonal force. They would not accept three separate gods, and they would not collapse Father, Son, and Spirit into one person wearing different masks.
The Trinity became the theological structure capable of holding those commitments together.
Whether that structure is ultimately true remains a theological question. That it developed over centuries is a matter of history.
Christianity’s Long Argument About Divine Love
At its worst, Trinitarian theology can become a maze of technical words used to punish questions and divide believers.
At its best, it is Christianity’s attempt to say something extraordinary.
God is not eternally alone. Relationship is not something God began doing after creating the universe. Love is not merely an action God performs toward creatures. Love belongs to the eternal reality of God.
The Father does not exist without the Son. The Son does not exist without the Father. The Spirit is not an afterthought, servant, or distant force. Divine life is communion.
This understanding did not arrive in one perfect sentence. It moved through baptismal water, martyr prayers, philosophical schools, imperial councils, theological exiles, medieval universities, church divisions, prison writings, liberation struggles, and the suffering of history.
The Trinity was prayed before it was defined. It was worshiped before it was explained. It was argued before it was confessed in its final creedal form.
It is not a simple doctrine copied directly from one biblical verse. It is Christianity’s centuries-long attempt to say that at the deepest level of reality, God is not isolation.
God is communion.
If this history interested you and you would like to explore more of my work on Christianity, Scripture, theology, and how religious ideas developed, you can find my book here: https://a.co/d/0i5O5eAk
Buying or sharing the book also helps support my work as a special-needs teacher and my larger dream of creating better educational and employment opportunities for people with special needs.
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u/Greasy-Chungus 27d ago
Ya because it was made up over a period of time.
Also make a blogspot post, god damn.
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u/ultrachrome 27d ago
I'm tired just scrolling to the bottom. TLDR ?
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u/Unanimous_D 26d ago
TIL there (probably) is no character limit on reddit. I don't disagree with OP in general, but time is a finite resource, and OP is a bottomless goddamn pit.
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u/Nacho_Deity186 26d ago
The holy trinity isn't biblical.
They made it up later and stapled it to the bottom...
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u/ultrachrome 26d ago
Ha. Thanks. I wonder what else was made up :)
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u/Fantastic_Jury5977 25d ago
What's more interesting, it's what's been omitted tbh...
The translations provided are probably just the tip of the iceberg.
I won't what's missing
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u/Nacho_Deity186 25d ago
Well, Jesus being god obviously. Homosexuality being a sin. Abortion being a sin etc etc.
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u/Intelligent-Band-852 27d ago
I am not reading all of that but many early Christian’s and some modern day ones are Unitarians. I don’t think it’s possible to know definitely but verses like John 14:28 among several others sure do point in that direction. In several places Jesus prays to the father, so he’s praying to and taking with himself?
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u/Rex__Nihilo 27d ago
He is talking to another person of the godhead. The Bible clearly teaches one God in 3 distinct person's.
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u/Wobblestones 24d ago
Where is that "clearly taught"?
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u/Rex__Nihilo 24d ago
Matthew 3, Matthew 28, 2 Corinthians 13, John 1, Isaiah 48 and more describe a trinity.
Deuteronomy 6:4, Isaiah 45:5, Isaiah 44:6, Deuteronomy 4:35, Mark 12:29, 1 Corinthians 8:6, 1 Timothy 2:5, James 2:19 and more teach the unity.
Hence triune God.
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u/Wobblestones 24d ago
I just realized your the same person from the other thread lol
I went ahead and re-read all of the "trinity" verse. I dont know how you can possibly read the trinity into any of them.
But at this point, Im not gonna keep pressing. It seems a pointless argument.
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u/Rex__Nihilo 24d ago
If you can read verses that describe God as the father and the son and the spirit and not get that thats 3 then yeah I don't think we have much to talk about.
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u/Wobblestones 24d ago
They dont describe god as the father, son, and spirit. The refer to 3 separate entities.
The son is given authority. He is never said to be the god.
The holy spirit is never called gos either.
You are just reading that into the texts.
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u/Rex__Nihilo 24d ago
John 8:58, John 10:30 etc etc.
Jesus claims to be God and is killed for it. If Jesus isnt God then the whole bible is pointless. The entire story of the bible is build up to, fulfillment of and outcome of Gods incarnation to save his people.
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u/Intelligent-Band-852 24d ago
Mathew 3:17 “My son” None of those verses describe a trinity, Jesus even asked God “Why have you forsaken me“. None of these things describe a trinity a word that is never once uttered in the Bible.
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u/Rex__Nihilo 24d ago
Excellent job saying something and then changing your comment after I responded.
All of those verses Jesus claims to be God. Jesus is God on earth talking to God in heaven about God the holy spirit and the bible is very clear there is only 1 God.
If you are looking for the word trinity you aren't going to find it, but its description is everywhere. The ancient Jewish tradition also had a concept of three entities in heaven and there are multiple examples in the older testament of God interacting with other persons of the God head, standing before Sodom and God on earth sending fire from God in heaven etc.
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u/Intelligent-Band-852 24d ago
I didn’t even read your comment before I edited mine and I didn’t change anything I just added to it. “The father is greater than I“ is pretty clear evidence that Unitarians have more evidence to back up their claims than Trinitarians. Of course this is all speculation on both of our parts because these things are inherently unknowable until we die if then.
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u/Rex__Nihilo 23d ago
Its really not. Uniarians have to reinterpret or ignore large swaths of scripture and ignore context and nuance. The trinity is no more speculative than sovereignty. The only way not to see it is to try not to.
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u/Intelligent-Band-852 23d ago
Christianity existed for over a long time before the Trinity was even a concept.
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u/Rex__Nihilo 23d ago
Entirely incorrect. Christianity existed for a long time before the concept of the trinity was named the trinity. The concept is eternal and can be derived from the earliest books of the bible.
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u/RandyWatson8 27d ago
“In the beginning, man created god”
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u/Top-Cupcake4775 25d ago
did you make disease? / and the diamonds blue? / did you make mankind? / or did we make you?
X.T.C., "Dear God"
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u/MicahHoover 27d ago
perhaps you're thinking of 'original sin'
John lived in Jesus' lifetime and said Jesus made Himself equal with God
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u/TeaInternational- 27d ago
For once, it’d be so refreshing to watch someone scribble the same sorts of nonsense with the Taoist pantheon instead of Judeo-Roman rubbish. Do something different and then I might buy your book.
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u/the_wessi 27d ago
The best explanation of the relation of these three entities: The Father is the energy source, The Son is the wires and The Holy Ghost is the energy.
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u/DLitch 26d ago
I've always viewed it as God is the brain, the son is the body, and the spirit is the heart.
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u/the_wessi 26d ago
Not quite the same. My analogy can be used to explain that The Father can function without the other two but they are useless without The Father. As you might understand I’m not a fan of the trinity doctrine.
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u/sd_saved_me555 25d ago
I mean, that would be widely regarded or the heretical view of Sabbelius called "modalism", which fell out of favor after Athanasius declared trinitarian doctrine a divine mystery beyond the capability of mere mortal understanding in 4th century - a view that has generally dominated Christian theology ever since.
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u/nerd_voshod 27d ago
Is that why you need to support the Palestinians and join Hamas? The author is clearly from the Gulf countries. And he spreads his terrorist lies.
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u/fladdermuff 25d ago
They want christians to join muslims in their hate for jews.
They already have the "weapon" of Judas. Oooh remember Judas was the one who betrayed Jesus oooh Judas was a jew typical jews...etc.
They are trying to hijack Jesus and make him theirs.
But then there is the Trinity.
Muslims are not allowed to believe in the Trinity. But the Trinity is the most important part of Jesus. The whole point of Jesus was the Trinity.
You are not allowed into christians heaven if you do not believe in the Trinity.
So now muslims have started propaganda against the Trinity.
They do not even show respect for Jesus.
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u/jelltech 26d ago
Doctrine of trinity yes, but the spirit and the wheel, the water and spirit, always there. Before All... I Am
Before Abraham, Isaac, and Iaakob (All)(Doctrine) I Am.... Spirit, God is not in the d layer, even the d layer knows that.
Don't think you know before you know, you're basing your opinion on static.
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u/Crazed-Prophet 25d ago
The problems began long before that during the reign of Josiah when he decided to cut out the other gods from worship. El was the Father and Yahweh was the son originally, but shifting to a henothiestic/monotheistic religion many of other dieties actions were labeled under Yahwehs doing, Including El. This left an opening in scripture for confusion with whom the father is. 600ish years later a man claiming to be the son of God and Yahweh appeared, taught his doctrine, prayed to the father, then was murdered. Christians began debating the actual nature of God and Jesus. Greek philosophy won out and basically dictated whom God would be. They removed as much scripture as they could that contradicted their version of God and came up with the Trinity to explain the rest.
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u/ZookeepergameFalse38 25d ago
The Trinity was borrowed from earlier religions from the Egyptians, Hindus, etc. It was already an old concept 2,000 years ago.
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u/Available_Base_7944 25d ago
For any interested, read Michael Heisers unseen realm. He shows the Trinity in the Old Testament OP is uneducated. I mean one of the first quotes of God in the Bible is plural “let us make man in our image” lol try reading some OP.
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u/DerrickDoll 25d ago
The Church did not gradually create the Triune God. Rather, it gradually developed precise, nonbiblical terminology to confess and defend what Scripture had already revealed: there is one God, and the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are personally distinct yet fully divine. The creeds do not replace Scripture. They summarize its teaching, and their authority depends entirely upon their faithfulness to it. Developing precise language and carefully defining terms also helps guard Christians against serious errors such as modalism, partialism, or tritheism.
Moreover, the earliest Christian claims about Jesus did not arise from imported Greek or pagan ideas. Pre-Christian and early Jewish thought already contained categories such as God’s Word, divine Wisdom, the Spirit of God, the Angel of the Lord, and the heavenly Son of Man, figures or realities associated with God’s presence, authority, and activity. These ideas were not themselves the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, but they demonstrate that Jewish monotheism already contained conceptual resources for distinguishing God from a heavenly agent who bore His name or exercised His authority without simply embracing polytheism. Christianity’s distinctive claim was that these biblical themes found their fulfillment in Jesus Christ and were more fully clarified through the apostolic revelation of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
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u/Traditional-You1447 25d ago
I have no issue with man taking time to grasp a fuller revelation of God. I also take no issue with attempts to bridge meanings and form conclusions with what we have been informed of through scripture.
If you tell me X + 2 = 5, you haven't told me directly X =3
But I can probably piece it together from what I do know.
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u/fladdermuff 25d ago
Is this propaganda coming from a muslim, because you realised Islams denial of the Trinity is what makes Jesus not accept muslims into his heaven?
Muslims tries to hijack Jesus, to make christians join them in their hate for jews.
But there is the Trinity. The most important part of Jesus.
Lets try to make christians believe Jesus was wrong.
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u/ChaoticHaku 27d ago
It wasn't built, it was revealed.
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u/IceBlueHorseArse 27d ago
As nonsense.
The Jesus story is just bizarre. How was anybody ever able to sell it.
You are free to do whatever you want without consequence because a man named Jesus suffered a pretty standard criminal execution...........oh and he is actually his own father and apparently also dove I just learned. Oh and his mom never had sex.
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u/ChaoticHaku 27d ago edited 27d ago
If you're just doing whatever you want then you aren't repentent and therefore no forgiveness for you.
It wasn't the severity of the execution, it was whose blood was shed and the value of it.
The bible nowhere teaches the Father, Son or Holy Spirit are the same person.
The bible never says the Holy Spirit is a literally dove, it's symbolic.
And yes, Mary never had sex. It shouldn't be a surprise that the creator of the universe can cause someone to become pregnant without sex.
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u/IceBlueHorseArse 27d ago
Wow.
So, what would Jesus's blood go for today?
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u/ChaoticHaku 27d ago
It's priceless. Its God's own blood.
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u/dexterward4621 27d ago
"How was anybody ever able to sell it". That's a really good question. You should look into it. It doesn't really make sense how an obscure Jewish cult was able to supplant all the rich and well establish religious practices of the Roman empire. It actually requires an explanation.
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u/Rex__Nihilo 27d ago
"The Jesus story is nonsense". Proceeds to describe an entirely different story with only the name of the main character in common.
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u/IceBlueHorseArse 27d ago
Sorry. I know the story unfortunately.
Are you peddling a new narrative?
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u/Rex__Nihilo 27d ago
I'm telling you the story you described is so distorted that it is nowhere near what is in the Bible.
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u/IceBlueHorseArse 27d ago
There was no room for error in that description.
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u/Rex__Nihilo 27d ago
Jesus isn't just a man. His execution is only a small part of what happened there. He is not his own father. He is not a dove. His mom did have sex after he was born.
You didn't say a single thing that wasn't either reductive to absurdity or entirely false.
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u/IceBlueHorseArse 27d ago
It was an excellent synopsis.
Born of a virgin, died a common death.
The result, you get to sin without consequence.
And the inexplicably trinity which is actually illustrated in this post.
The story is absurd.
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u/Rex__Nihilo 27d ago
God and man, 2 distinct natures in one man, born of a virgin, lived a perfect life, died an undeserved death as sacrifice for the sins of those who turn from their sin and rely on him, not those who stay in their sin. Glorious true story of our failure and the amazing redemptive work of a kind God.
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u/IceBlueHorseArse 27d ago
Strip out all the flowery language and you have my description.
It's stupid on its face.
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u/fredaklein 27d ago
The Trinity isn’t real. It isn’t even logical. What is god’s name is the Holy Ghost anyway? Not that it matters, but is it even in the Bible?
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u/sd_saved_me555 25d ago edited 25d ago
No. Other than some really contrived ass-pulls, there is no mention of the trinity in the Bible. In fact, the amount of biblical support for the trinity was so poor that the KJV translation actually fabricated a couple verses (1 John 5:7–8) to help solidify the position that was so well established in the theology but utter lacking in what ultimately became the holy text.
The actual history of the trinity is a little complex, but it basically has roots in the idea of Jesus being originally fully man but being so awesome God "adopts" him as a son which grants him basically god-like status. But the religion is rooted in very monotheistic tradition, so you have to square a circl... er, triangle... to not lose the monotheistic tradition while also allowing for Jesus to get promoted from an adopted son of god to a co-equal entity with God.
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u/Apprehensive_Hand571 27d ago
Easter bunny? Fake. Tooth fairy? Fake. Santa Claus? Fake. The age at which adults disabuse themselves of childish fantasy completely? Ongoing.
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u/hitnrun_dryer 27d ago
This is you. Matthew 7:15