The Historical Development Of The Trinity: An Analysis 1

The His­tor­i­cal Devel­op­ment Of The Trin­i­ty : An Analysis

Intro­duc­tion

T. S. Elliot was quot­ed to have once said that Chris­tian­i­ty is always adapt­ing itself into some­thing which can be believed.“John Hick, ed., The Myth of God Incar­nate, Pref­ace And true to this state­ment, Chris­tian­i­ty has digressed from the con­cept of the One­ness of God as stressed in the She­ma”, or the Jew­ish creed of faith in Hebrew : She­ma Yis­ra’el, YHWH Elo­heinu, YHWH echad (“Hear, O Israel : The Lord our God is one Lord.“Deuteron­o­my 6:4 into a vague and mys­te­ri­ous doc­trine that was for­mu­lat­ed dur­ing the fourth cen­tu­ry. This doc­trine, which con­tin­ues to be a source of con­tro­ver­sy both with­in and out of the Chris­t­ian reli­gion, is known as the Doc­trine of the Trinity.

The Trin­i­ty has become the cen­tral doc­trine of most of the Chris­t­ian sects of today. It is basi­cal­ly the mod­ern Chris­t­ian doc­trine of God for most church­es. Sim­ply put, the Chris­t­ian doc­trine of the Trin­i­ty states that God is the union of three divine per­sons — the Father, the Son and the Holy Spir­it — in one divine being. Accord­ing to Chris­tians, all three of these per­sons are God. Yet, they say believe in only one God and not three. Accord­ing to Chris­tians, the Father, the Son, and the Ghost have some sim­i­lar func­tions and some dif­fer­ent func­tions. For exam­ple, the Chris­t­ian believes all three par­tic­i­pat­ed in the cre­ation of the world, and yet they also have some func­tions pecu­liar to them­selves and they enjoy” each oth­er’s com­pa­ny. For exam­ple, The Father sends, and is not sent. The Father is the execu­tor of jus­tice, and the Son is the deliv­er of human­i­ty against this jus­tice. Accord­ing to Chris­tians, these three are co-equal” and in com­plete agree­ment. One of them is no greater than the other.

If that con­cept, put in basic terms, sounds con­fus­ing, the flow­ery lan­guage in the actu­al text of the doc­trine lends even more mys­tery to the matter :

…we wor­ship one God in Trin­i­ty, and Trin­i­ty in Uni­ty… for there is one Per­son of the Father, anoth­er of the Son, anoth­er of the Holy Ghost is all one… they are not three gods, but one God… the whole three per­sons are co-eter­nal and co-equal… he there­fore that will be saved must thus think of the Trin­i­ty…Excerpts from the Athanasian Creed

This is the prize and trag­ic exam­ple of the nat­ur­al mind of man spec­u­lat­ing upon divine things rather than being con­tent to humbly accept the sim­ple tes­ti­mo­ny of the Bible. Mil­lions of Chris­tians believe in the Holy Trin­i­ty” on faith alone. Through this for­mu­la they have made Jesus the Son of God”, and even God him­self. Let’s put this togeth­er in a dif­fer­ent form : one per­son, God the Father + one per­son, God the Son + one per­son, God the Holy Ghost = one per­son, God the What ?

Is this Eng­lish or is this gib­ber­ish ? It is said that Athana­sius, the bish­op who for­mu­lat­ed this doc­trine, con­fessed that the more he wrote on the mat­ter, the less capa­ble he was of clear­ly express­ing his thoughts regard­ing it. Who invent­ed the Trin­i­ty ? How did such a con­fus­ing doc­trine get its start ?

Is The Trin­i­ty in the Bible ?

Ref­er­ences in the Bible to a Trin­i­ty of divine beings are vague, at best. In Matthew 28:19, we find Jesus(P) telling his dis­ci­ples to go out and preach to all nations. While the Great Com­mis­sion” does make men­tion of the three per­sons who lat­er become com­po­nents of the Trin­i­ty, the phrase “…bap­tiz­ing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” is quite clear­ly an addi­tion to Bib­li­cal text — that is, not the actu­al words of Jesus(P) — as can be seen by two factors :

  • Bap­tism in the ear­ly Church, as dis­cussed by Paul in his let­ters, was done only in the name of Jesus ; and 
  • The Great Com­mis­sion” was found in the first gospel writ­ten, that of Mark, bears no men­tion of Father, Son and/​or Holy Ghost — see Mark 16:15. The only oth­er ref­er­ence in the Bible to a Trin­i­ty can be found in the Epis­tle of I John 5:7. Bib­li­cal schol­ars of today, how­ev­er, have admit­ted that the phrase “…there are three that bear record in heav­en, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost : and these three are one” is def­i­nite­ly a lat­er addi­tion” to Bib­li­cal test, and it is not found in any of today’s ver­sions of the Bible. 

We note that not only does the Bible fail to men­tion the Trin­i­ty, it also fails to explain or defend such a doc­trine. Indeed, it often con­tra­dicts the doc­trine, some­times with the very words of Jesus. For exam­ple, in John 14:28, Jesus(P) is report­ed to have said : The Father is greater than I am.”

Here we see Jesus(P) being quot­ed as say­ing that he is not the Supreme Being. This verse is an explic­it con­tra­dic­tion of the find­ings of the Nicene Creed and mod­ern Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy. From read­ing this verse, we have to con­clude that God is Supreme ; there is no one greater than God. Jesus, how­ev­er, is not Supreme ; there is Some­one supe­ri­or to him.

It is amaz­ing for exam­ple that Paul can write hun­dreds of vers­es to explain the impor­tance (or lack there­of) of dietary laws or cir­cum­ci­sion, and yet not utter a word in defense of the Trin­i­ty. Indeed, mod­ern schol­ar­ship has con­ced­ed that the orig­i­nal Chris­tians such as the Ebion­ites, Essenes, and Adop­tion­ists knew no Trin­i­ty and did not wor­ship the Christ Jesus(P). Indeed, these Chris­t­ian groups exist­ed before any of the cur­rent New Tes­ta­ment doc­u­ments did, and they also exist­ed before the Roman Catholic Church did. They used texts such as the Gospel of the Hebrews, the Gospel of the Nazarenes and the Gospel of the Ebion­ites. It can, there­fore, be seen that the con­cept of a Trin­i­ty of divine beings was not an idea put forth by Jesus(P) or any oth­er prophet of God. This doc­trine, now sub­scribed to by Chris­tians all over the world, is entire­ly man-made in origin.

The Doc­trine Takes Shape

The Ency­clo­pe­dia Bri­tan­ni­ca gives a crit­i­cal piece of infor­ma­tion regard­ing the ori­gins of the Trinity :

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…Ency­clo­pe­dia Bri­tan­ni­ca, under the head­ing Trin­i­ty”

While Paul of Tar­sus, the man who could right­ful­ly be con­sid­ered the true founder of Chris­tian­i­ty did for­mu­late many of its doc­trines, that of the Trin­i­ty was not among them. He did, how­ev­er, lay the ground­work for such when he put forth the idea of Jesus being a divine Son.” After all, a Son does need a Father, and what about a vehi­cle for God’s rev­e­la­tions to man ? In essence, Paul named the prin­ci­pal play­ers, but it was the lat­er Church peo­ple who put the mat­ter together.

The evo­lu­tion of the Trin­i­ty doc­trine can be seen by the fact that the ear­ly Trini­tar­i­ans” tell us that the ear­ly Chris­tians were hor­ri­fied by Trini­tar­i­an ideas ; indeed, even the Chris­t­ian Fathers” them­selves show strik­ing igno­rance of the Trinity.

Ter­tul­lian, a lawyer and pres­byter of the third cen­tu­ry Church in Carthage, was the first to use the word Trin­i­ty” when he put forth the the­o­ry that the Son and the Spir­it par­tic­i­pate in the being of God, but all are of one being of sub­stance with the Father. He lament­ed in the late 2nd cen­tu­ry in Adver­sus Prax­eas (i.e. Against Praxeas):

The major­i­ty of believ­ers (i.e. Chris­tians), who every­where con­sti­tute a major­i­ty, shud­der in hor­ror at the dis­pen­sa­tion of the three (i.e., trin­i­ty). They fail to under­stand that while he is one God ; he must yet be under­stood with­in his own economy !

But the tru­ly amaz­ing thing is that Ter­tul­lian him­self had an improp­er” or incom­plete under­stand­ing of the Trin­i­ty ; for he also wrote, There was a time when the Son was not.” Or in oth­er words there was a time when Jesus did not exist ! Again, all this points to the fact of the grad­ual devel­op­ment of the doc­trine ; the Trin­i­ty was nev­er a part of the Gospel of Jesus Christ !

The East­ern the­olo­gian John of Dam­as­cus (about A.D. 675 – 749), in defend­ing icono­la­try, admit­ted the fact that nei­ther the Trin­i­ty nor the homoou­sion (iden­ti­fy­ing Jesus as God) nor the two natures of Christ can be found in the scrip­tures. John of Dam­as­cus then con­tin­ued, but we know those doc­trines are true.” After he acknowl­edged that icons, the Trin­i­ty and the incar­na­tion are inno­va­tions, John of Dam­as­cus went on to urge his read­ers to hold fast to them as ven­er­a­ble tra­di­tions deliv­ered to us by the fathers.” Thus, at least 14 cen­turies ago, he rec­og­nized that the incar­na­tion doc­trine is not a divine­ly revealed doc­trine, deliv­ered to us by Jesus, but a human idea passed down to us by the fathers.” Theodore the Stu­dite (about A.D. 795 – 826) adopt­ed this argu­ment too.

Euse­bius, a fourth cen­tu­ry schol­ar, in his leg­endary book on the his­to­ry of Chris­tian­i­ty, notes that ear­ly 1st cen­tu­ry Chris­tians liv­ing in and around Jerusalem did not wor­ship Christ.

Even as late as the 4th cen­tu­ry, we find that most Chris­tians, par­tic­u­lar­ly those who lived in the East, wor­shipped the Father alone. This fact is acknowl­edged by the Trini­tar­i­an father, St. Jerome, who lament­ed that in the mid-4th cen­tu­ry, the whole world groaned and mar­velled to find itself Ari­an” (Arius was the Chris­t­ian who at the Coun­cil of Nicaea rep­re­sent­ed Uni­tar­i­an Chris­tians against the false teach­ings of Athana­sius, father of the Trin­i­ty as the Catholics call him).

Now let’s look at what some of the Chris­t­ian fathers had to say about the Holy Spirit”:

  • Her­mas (Simil­i­tude V. 5,6) under­stands by the Holy Spir­it”, the holy ele­ment in Christ, name­ly the Son, was cre­at­ed before all things. The Spir­it in Her­mas’ belief is clear­ly not a per­son (and Jesus is not God either.)
  • In Dep­re­ca­tio Pro Chris­tia­n­is, ix, x, Athenago­ras who lived from about 110 C.E. to about 180 C.E., wrote that the Holy Spir­it” is an ema­na­tion of God pro­ceed­ing from and return­ing to Him like the rays of the Sun.
  • Ori­gen, the author of Hex­e­pla, and arguably the great­est of the pre-Nicene fathers did state that the Holy Spir­it had a per­son­al­i­ty, but he says that the Holy Spir­it is a crea­ture of the Son. In oth­er words, the Son cre­at­ed the Holy Spir­it after he him­self was cre­at­ed by the Father.

In study­ing these state­ments, we can notice not only the diver­gence between them, but the fact that they did not have any belief in the Holy Ghost” of mod­ern Trinitarians.

A For­mal Doc­trine is Drawn Up

When con­tro­ver­sy over the mat­ter of the Trin­i­ty blew up in 318 C.E. between two church men from Alexan­dria — Arius, the dea­con, and Alexan­der, his bish­op, regard­ing the basis of the meta­physics of sub­stance that led to con­cepts that have no foun­da­tions in the New Tes­ta­ment — such as the ques­tion of the same­ness of essence (homoou­sia) or the sim­i­lar­i­ty of essence (homoiou­sia) of the divine per­sons of the Trin­i­ty, the Emper­or Con­stan­tine stepped into the fray. Although Chris­t­ian dog­ma was a com­plete mys­tery to him, he did real­ize that a uni­fied church was nec­es­sary for a strong king­dom. When nego­ti­a­tion failed to set­tle the dis­pute, Con­stan­tine called for the first ecu­meni­cal coun­cil in Church his­to­ry in order to set­tle the mat­ter once and for all.

As far as Con­stan­tine was con­cerned, things were going from bad to worse. He was oblig­ed to inter­vene and addressed a let­ter to both Alexan­der and Arius. He said that his con­sum­ing pas­sion was for the uni­ty of reli­gious opin­ion, since it was the best guar­an­tee of peace in the realm. He then continues :

But Ah ! Glo­ri­ous and Divine Prov­i­dence, what a wound was inflict­ed not alone on my ears but on my heart, when I heard that divi­sions exist­ed among your­selves even more griev­ous than those in Africa ; so that you, whose agency I hoped to bring heal­ing to oth­ers, need a rem­e­dy worse than they. And yet, after mak­ing a care­ful enquiry into the ori­gins of these dis­cus­sions, I find that the cause is quite insignif­i­cant and entire­ly dis­pro­por­tion­ate to such a quarrel…I gath­er that the present con­tro­ver­sy orig­i­nat­ed as fol­lows : for when you, Alexan­der, asked each of the pres­byters what he thought about a cer­tain pas­sage in the Scrip­tures or, rather, what he thought about a cer­tain aspect of a fool­ish ques­tion ; and you, Arius, with­out due con­sid­er­a­tion, laid down propo­si­tions which nev­er ought to have been con­ceived at all, or if con­ceived ought to have been buried in silence, dis­sentions arose between you — com­mu­nion was for­bid­den, and the most peo­ple, torn in twain, no longer pre­served the uni­ty of a com­mon body.

The Emper­or then exhorts them to let both the unguard­ed ques­tion and the incon­sid­er­ate answer be for­got­ten and forgiven :

The sub­ject nev­er ought to have been broached, but there is always mis­chief found for idle hands to do and idle brains to think. The dif­fer­ence between you has not arisen on any car­di­nal doc­trine laid down in the Scrip­tures, nor has any new doc­trine been intro­duced. You both hold one and the same view. Reunion, there­fore, was eas­i­ly possible.

The Emper­or went on to quote the exam­ple of pagan philoso­phers who agree to dis­agree on details while hold­ing the same gen­er­al prin­ci­ples. How then, he asked, can it be right for brethren to behave towards one anoth­er like ene­mies because of mere tri­fling and ver­bal dif­fer­ences. Such con­duct in his opin­ion was :

vul­gar, child­ish, and petu­lent, ill-fit­ing priests of God and men of sense…It is the wile and temp­ta­tion of the Dev­il. Let us have done with it. If we can­not think alike on all top­ics, we can at least all be unit­ed on great essen­tials. As regars the Divine Prov­i­dence, let there be one faith and one under­stand­ing, one unit­ed opin­ion in ref­er­ence to God.

The let­ter then concludes :

Restore me then my qui­et days and untrou­bled nights that I may retain my joy, the glad­ness of peace­ful life. Else I must groan and be defused whol­ly in tears and no com­fort of mind till I die. For while the peo­ple of God, my fel­low sevants, are thus torn asun­der in unlaw­ful and per­ni­cious con­tro­ver­sy, how can I be tran­quil of mind ?Muham­mad Ata’ Ur-Rahim, Jesus : A Prophet of Islam, MWH Lon­don Pub­lish­ers, 1977, p. 93 – 94

We can see that this let­ter demon­strates the igno­rance of the Emper­or, not only of Chris­tian­i­ty but also of any reli­gion in gen­er­al, since he assumes that whether a man wor­ships God as he pleas­es, or in the man­ner that God indi­cates, it is the same to him. To say that the con­tro­ver­sy between Alexan­der and Arius was mere­ly a ver­bal quar­rel or an insignif­i­cant and non-essen­tial point is absurd. To regard the dif­fer­ence between the two as triv­ial” clear­ly shows that Con­stan­tine did not under­stand what he was talk­ing about. This let­ter only shows that Con­stan­tine was not con­cerned with the nature of Real­i­ty, but with his own peace of mind.

His above let­ter failed to achieve its objec­tive, and the argu­ment between Arius and Alexan­der wors­ened. Final­ly, Con­stan­tine called for a meet­ing of all Chris­t­ian bish­ops in order to set­tle the mat­ter once and for all. His posi­tion as a pagan, he said, was a great advan­tage since by virtue of his not belong­ing to any sect, he would make an impar­tial judge. Six weeks after the 300 bish­ops first gath­ered at Nicea in 325 C.E., the doc­trine of the Trin­i­ty was ham­mered out. The God of the Chris­tians was now seen as hav­ing three essences, or natures, in the form of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spir­it. The irony is that Christ’s deity was rat­i­fied over the objec­tions of most of the Chris­t­ian bish­ops who had been gath­ered there from all over the world. Out of the more than 1000 Chris­t­ian schol­ars present, less than 400 accept­ed the Nicene Creed, and even these were divid­ed among them­selves into three groups.

The Trin­i­ty At the Coun­cil of Nicea

Of the Coun­cil of Nicea, 352 A.D., where the doc­trine of the Trin­i­ty was first offi­cial­ly for­mu­lat­ed, the well-known Trini­tar­i­an his­to­ri­an Mosheim, a Luther­an, admits (Cen­tu­ry 4, Part 2, Chap­ter 3, Sec­tion 1) that :

.…the dis­cus­sions con­cern­ing the three per­sons in the God­head, among those who approved the deci­sions of the coun­cil of Nice.

There is so lit­tle clear­ness and dis­crim­i­na­tion in these dis­cus­sions, that they seem to rend the one God into three Gods.

More­over, those idle fic­tions, which a regard for the pre­vail­ing opin­ions of the day had induced most the­olo­gians to embrace, even before the time of Con­stan­tine, were now in var­i­ous ways con­firmed, extend­ed and embellished.

Hence it is that we see on every side evi­dent traces of exces­sive ven­er­a­tion for saints in heav­en, of belief in a fire to puri­fy souls on leav­ing the body, of par­tial­i­ty for priest­ly celiba­cy, the wor­ship of images and relics, and for many oth­er opin­ions which, in process of time, almost ban­ished the true reli­gion, or at least very much obscured and cor­rupt­ed it.

Gen­uine piety was grad­u­al­ly sup­plant­ed by a long train of super­sti­tious obser­vances, which were derived part­ly from a pre­pos­ter­ous dis­po­si­tion to adopt pro­fane rites.

To the tem­ples, to water con­se­crat­ed with cer­tain forms, and to like­ness­es of holy men, the same effi­ca­cy was ascribed and the same priv­i­leges assigned, as had been attrib­uted to the pagan tem­ples, stat­ues and lus­tra­tions before the advent of Christ.

This is a Trini­tar­i­an’s descrip­tion of con­di­tions in the Catholic Church dur­ing the time the doc­trine of the Trin­i­ty was being for­mu­lat­ed and imposed.

In the same chap­ter, Sec­tion 5, Mosheim says

The doc­tors who were dis­tin­guished for their learn­ing explained the sacred doc­trines after the man­ner of Ori­gen (see notes below on Ori­gen) on whom they fixed their eye — in accor­dance with the prin­ci­ples of that phi­los­o­phy which they learned in their youth at school, name­ly, the Pla­ton­ic phi­los­o­phy as cor­rect­ed by Origen.

Those who wish to get a full insight into this sub­ject may exam­ine Gre­go­ry Nazianzen among the Greeks and Augus­tine among the Latins who were regard­ed in the sub­se­quent ages as the only pat­terns wor­thy of imi­ta­tion, and may be fit­ly styled, next to Ori­gen, the par­ents and sup­port­ers of philo­soph­ic or scholas­tic the­ol­o­gy. They were both admir­ers of Plato.

Thus it is unan­i­mous­ly accept­ed that the doc­trine of Trin­i­ty is the prod­uct of the Nicene Con­fer­ence (325 AD). Huw Par­ri Owen, a for­mer pro­fes­sor of Chris­t­ian Doc­trine at King’s Col­lege, Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don acknowl­edges the fact that

… the ear­ly Church for­mu­lat­ed the doc­trine of The Incar­na­tion. Here the two main land­marks are the coun­cil of Nicaea in 325 and the coun­cil of Chal­cedon in 451. Through­out the cen­turies chris­tol­ogy has been deter­mined, direct­ly or indi­rect­ly, by the for­mu­lae that these two coun­cils produced.…After Nicaea, then, there was no doubt in ortho­dox cir­cles that Christ was divine.[5]

The Zon­der­van Pic­to­r­i­al Ency­clo­pe­dia of the Bible in the arti­cle Deity of Christ” sug­gests the same fact :

The clear­est and fullest expres­sion of the deity of Christ is found in the Nicene Creed which was orig­i­nal­ly pre­sent­ed at the Coun­cil of Nicea, AD 325. In the Eng­lish Book of Com­mon Prayer the trans­la­tion appears as fol­lows : ‘… one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begot­ten Son of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, Begot­ten, not made.’[6]

The Ency­clopae­dia Bri­tan­ni­ca, under the head­ing Trin­i­ty” states that :

…in Chris­t­ian doc­trine, the uni­ty of Father, Son, and Holy Spir­it as three per­sons in one God­head. Nei­ther the word Trin­i­ty nor the explic­it doc­trine appears in the New Tes­ta­ment, nor did Jesus and his fol­low­ers intend to con­tra­dict the She­ma in the Old Tes­ta­ment. The doc­trine devel­oped grad­u­al­ly over sev­er­al cen­turies and through many controversies…The Coun­cil of Nicaea in 325 AD stat­ed the cru­cial for­mu­la for that doc­trine in its con­fes­sion that the Son is of the same sub­stance [homoousios] as the Father,’ even though it said very lit­tle about the Holy Spir­it. Over the next half cen­tu­ry, Athana­sius defend­ed and refined the Nicene for­mu­la, and, by the end of the 4th cen­tu­ry, under the lead­er­ship of Basil of Cae­sarea, Gre­go­ry of Nys­sa, and Gre­go­ry of Nazianzus (the Cap­pado­cian Fathers), the doc­trine of the Trin­i­ty took sub­stan­tial­ly the form it has main­tained ever since.[7]

Col­lier’s Ency­clo­pe­dia CD-ROM says that :

In the sec­ond and third cen­turies, Chris­tians devot­ed much thought to these ques­tions and dif­fered wide­ly in their answers. In the Greek word Logos, which had wide cur­ren­cy in con­tem­po­rary phi­los­o­phy and which is loose­ly trans­lat­ed as word,” they found a term which seemed to be usable, and they sought to give it a con­tent which would be con­sis­tent with what they believed about Christ. But how was the Logos relat­ed to the Father ? One school of thought became known as Ari­an­ism from a lead­ing expo­nent, Arius (256336), a priest in the church of Alexan­dria. Ari­an­ism held that the Father had cre­at­ed the Son, that there had been a time when the Son had not exist­ed, and that he was sub­or­di­nate to the Father. So acute did the con­tro­ver­sy become that Con­stan­tine feared that the divi­sion with­in the Church might jeop­ar­dize the uneasy uni­ty of the Empire which he had achieved. To resolve the issue, he called a coun­cil of the Church in 325 at Nicaea, not far from Con­stan­tino­ple. It became the first of what the Chris­t­ian Church has regard­ed as ecu­meni­cal coun­cils,” that is, rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the entire church. After a stormy debate it con­demned Ari­an­ism. The creed which is today called Nicene embod­ies the find­ings of the coun­cil. On the major issue it declares : I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begot­ten Son of God, begot­ten of His Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begot­ten, not made, being of one sub­stance with the Father.” The creed was lat­er elab­o­rat­ed, but with­out doing vio­lence to the orig­i­nal mean­ing. The Greek in which it was first phrased employed terms to which a dis­tinc­tive mean­ing was giv­en. One term, homoou­sion, trans­lat­ed as the same sub­stance,” was cen­tral. It meant that Christ was tru­ly God very God of very God” accord­ing to the Eng­lish trans­la­tion and was not sub­or­di­nate to the Father. Ari­an­ism, how­ev­er, con­tin­ued to be influ­en­tial for sev­er­al cen­turies ; it was endorsed by some lat­er emper­ors and was the form of Chris­tian­i­ty to which sev­er­al of the Ger­man­ic peo­ples were converted.[8]

The Comp­ton’s Inter­ac­tive Ency­clo­pe­dia rec­og­nize that :

The first of the great church coun­cils was con­vened in ancient Nicaea (mod­ern Isnik, Turkey) by the Roman emper­or Con­stan­tine I, who sought to deal with a heresy, called Ari­an­ism. This doc­trine, orig­i­nat­ed by Arius of Alexan­dria, was divid­ing Chris­tian­i­ty and threat­ened to divide the empire. It stat­ed that Jesus Christ was not divine, but a cre­at­ed being– The coun­cil con­demned Arius and his teach­ings and declared the com­plete equal­i­ty of God the Father and the Son. Its decree that Father and Son were com­posed of one sub­stance” became part of the Nicene Creed, a state­ment of faith that unit­ed and con­tin­ues to unite all major divi­sions with­in Chris­tian­i­ty. The coun­cil addressed oth­er issues as well, includ­ing the method for con­se­crat­ing bishops.[9]

The New Catholic Ency­clo­pe­dia also acknowl­edges that the Trin­i­ty doc­trine does not exist in the Old Tes­ta­ment, and that it was for­mu­lat­ed three cen­turies after Jesus(P).

There is the recog­ni­tion on the part of exegetes and Bib­li­cal the­olo­gians, includ­ing a con­stant­ly grow­ing num­ber of Roman Catholics, that one should not speak of Trini­tar­i­an­ism in the New Tes­ta­ment with­out seri­ous qual­i­fi­ca­tion. There is also the close­ly par­al­lel recog­ni­tion on the part of his­to­ri­ans of dog­ma and sys­tem­at­ic the­olo­gians that when one does speak of an unqual­i­fied Trini­tar­i­an­ism, one has moved from the peri­od of Chris­t­ian ori­gins to, say, the last quad­rant of the 4th cen­tu­ry. It was only then that what might be called the defin­i­tive Trini­tar­i­an dog­ma One God in three Per­sons’ became thor­ough­ly assim­i­lat­ed into Chris­t­ian life and thought … it was the prod­uct of 3 cen­turies of doc­tri­nal development.[10]

Read­ing all the above, one has to ask one­self why it was that Jesus(P) him­self, in his teach­ings, did not express the doc­trine of Trin­i­ty as ful­ly and clear­ly” as the Nicene Coun­cil did 300 years after his departure.

The Church Puts its Foot Down

The mat­ter was far from set­tled, how­ev­er, despite high hopes for such on the part of Con­stan­tine. Arius and the new bish­op of Alexan­dria, a man named Athana­sius, began argu­ing over the mat­ter even as the Nicene Creed was being signed ; Ari­an­ism” became a catch-word from that time onward for any­one who did not hold to the doc­trine of the Trinity.

It was­n’t until 451 C.E., at the Coun­cil of Chal­cedon, that, with the approval of the Pope, the Nicene/​Constantinople Creed was set as author­i­ta­tive. Debate on the mat­ter was no longer tol­er­at­ed ; to speak out against the Trin­i­ty was now con­sid­ered blas­phe­my, and such earned stiff sen­tences that ranged from muti­la­tion to death. Chris­tians now turned on Chris­tians, maim­ing and slaugh­ter­ing thou­sands because of a dif­fer­ence of opin­ion. In 628 C.E., a law was put for­ward by Emper­or Theo­do­sius II to stamp out the Arians.

The Church also went on to devel­op the doc­trine of blind faith”. This is because those who devel­oped the Trin­i­ty” doc­trine were unable to define it in any man­ner that could not be refut­ed by the unwa­ver­ing Uni­tar­i­ans Chris­tians through the Bible. In the begin­ning they tried to defend the Trin­i­ty” through log­ic and the Bible. This con­tin­ued for a long time until the Trini­tar­i­an church final­ly gave up on ever sub­stan­ti­at­ing their claims through the Bible. So they demand­ed blind faith in their doc­trines. Any­one who did not believe blind­ly and dared to ques­tion them would be brand­ed a heretic and tor­tured or killed.

The Debate Continues

Bru­tal pun­ish­ments and even death did not stop the con­tro­ver­sy over the doc­trine of the Trin­i­ty, how­ev­er, and the said con­tro­ver­sy con­tin­ues even today. The Uni­tar­i­an Chris­tians were then vio­lent­ly pros­e­cut­ed ; their books burnt ; and by 600 C.E., they had basi­cal­ly ceased to exist (although Uni­tar­i­ans would re-emerge in the 1500’s with the revolt against the Catholic Church now known as the Ref­or­ma­tion). The major­i­ty of Chris­tians, when asked to explain this fun­da­men­tal doc­trine of their faith, can offer noth­ing more than I believe it because I was told to do so.” For oth­er Chris­tians, it is explained away as mys­tery” — yet the Bible says in I Corinthi­ans 14:33 that

… God is not the author of confusion. 

To avoid this dilem­ma, many Chris­tians resort to George Orwell’s dou­ble­think”. He defined it thus :

Dou­ble­think means the pow­er of hold­ing two con­tra­dic­to­ry beliefs simul­ta­ne­ous­ly and accept­ing both of them. The par­ty intel­lec­tu­al knows that he is play­ing tricks with real­i­ty, but by the exer­cise of dou­ble­think he also sat­is­fies him­self that real­i­ty is not violated.[11]

William Lutz, a pro­fes­sor in the Eng­lish Depart­ment at Rut­gers Uni­ver­si­ty has a clear­er def­i­n­i­tion of how this atti­tude is practiced.

A third kind of dou­ble­s­peak is gob­bledy­gook or bureau­cratese. Basi­cal­ly, such dou­ble­s­peak is sim­ply a mat­ter of pil­ing on words, of over­whelm­ing the audi­ence with words, the big­ger the words and the longer the sen­tences the bet­ter.… The fourth kind of dou­ble­s­peak is inflat­ed lan­guage that is designed to make the ordi­nary seem extra­or­di­nary ; to make every­day things seem impres­sive ; … to make the sim­ple seem complex.[12]

Chris­t­ian cler­gy­men have enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly praised the Trin­i­ty for cen­turies. They have employed impres­sive lan­guage of dou­ble­think” and use dou­ble­s­peak” to defend this fic­ti­tious con­cept. Let us read E. J. Fort­man’s glorification :

If we tru­ly believe that the ground of real­i­ty is not the nuclear com­po­si­tion of mat­ter but the Trin­i­ty,’ not the divi­sion of the infi­nite­ly small but dis­tinc­tion at the heart of the infi­nite­ly great, we can­not but ded­i­cate all the resources of our log­ic, all the ener­gies of our mind, all the fire of our heart to the lov­ing study of the Father, his Word and their Spirit.[13]

Fort­man tries to hide the plain con­tra­dic­tion between the Trin­i­ty and Uni­ty by using gob­bledy­gook and inflat­ed lan­guage, start­ing with a big if”. This is one of the com­mon defense strate­gies of priests when they encounter a dif­fi­cult prob­lem regard­ing their teach­ings. They are unable to explain the Trin­i­ty with­out the use of dou­ble­think”.

As anoth­er author comments :

Dou­ble­think lies at the root of a Chris­tian’s basic assump­tion that Christ is God. It is around this assump­tion that the con­tro­ver­sy of the two natures of Jesus has raged. One moment he is human. The next moment he is divine. First he is Jesus, then he is Christ. It is only by the exer­cise of dou­ble­think that a per­son could hold these two con­tra­dic­to­ry beliefs simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. It is only by the exer­cise of dou­ble­think that belief in the doc­trine of Trin­i­ty can be maintained.[14]

The Uni­tar­i­an denom­i­na­tion of Chris­tian­i­ty has kept alive the teach­ings of Arius in say­ing that God is one ; they do not believe in the Trin­i­ty. As a result, main­stream Chris­tians abhor them, and the Nation­al Coun­cil of Church­es has refused their admit­tance. In Uni­tar­i­an­ism, the hope is kept alive that Chris­tians will some­day return to the preach­ing of Jesus(P): “…Thou shalt wor­ship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.”[15]

The fun­da­men­tal doc­trine of Trin­i­ty makes no sense unless the doc­trines of incar­na­tion and atone­ment are also accept­ed. Jesus of Nazareth was hence God-incar­nate walk­ing on earth, dis­tinct from God the Father dwelling in heav­en and hear­ing our prayers. It thus became nec­es­sary to think of God as at least two in one, who were at least for a while exist­ing in heav­en and on earth, as dis­tinct entities.

How Islam Views The Trinity

The fun­da­men­tal doc­trine of Trin­i­ty makes no sense unless the doc­trines of incar­na­tion and atone­ment are also accept­ed. St Anselm, in his Cur Deus Homo, showed that the con­cept of atone­ment demand­ed that Christ had to be God, since only an infi­nite sac­ri­fice could atone for the lim­it­less evil of human­i­ty, which was, in Augustine’s words, a mas­sa damna­ta — a damned mass because of Adam’s orig­i­nal sin. Jesus of Nazareth was hence God-incar­nate walk­ing on earth, dis­tinct from God the Father dwelling in heav­en and hear­ing our prayers. It thus became nec­es­sary to think of God as at least two in one, who were at least for a while exist­ing in heav­en and on earth, as dis­tinct enti­ties. In ear­ly Chris­tian­i­ty, the Logos which was the Christ-spir­it believed to be active as a divine pres­ence in human life, in time became hypo­sta­tized as a third per­son, and so the Trin­i­ty was born. No doubt this process was shaped by the tri­adic beliefs which hov­ered in the Near East­ern air of the time, many of which includ­ed the belief in a divine atone­ment figure.

While Chris­tian­i­ty may have a prob­lem defin­ing the essence of God, such is not the case in Islam.

They do blas­pheme who say : God is Christ the son of Mary.’ But said Christ : O Chil­dren of Israel ! Wor­ship God, my Lord and your Lord.’[16]

They do blas­pheme who say God is one of three in a Trin­i­ty : for there is no god except One God. If they desist not from their word (of blas­phe­my), ver­i­ly a griev­ous penal­ty will befall the blas­phe­mers among them.[17]

Suzanne Haneef puts the mat­ter quite suc­cinct­ly when she says :

But God is not like a pie or an apple which can be divid­ed into three thirds which form one whole ; if God is three per­sons or pos­sess­es three parts, He is assured­ly not the Sin­gle, Unique, Indi­vis­i­ble Being which God is and which Chris­tian­i­ty pro­fess­es to believe in.[18]

Look­ing at it from anoth­er angle, the Trin­i­ty des­ig­nates God as being three sep­a­rate enti­ties — the Father, the Son and the Holy Spir­it. If God is the Father and also the Son, He would then be the Father of Him­self because He is His Own Son. This not exact­ly log­i­cal. Chris­tian­i­ty claims to be a monothe­is­tic reli­gion. Monothe­ism, how­ev­er, has as its fun­da­men­tal belief that God is One ; the Chris­t­ian doc­trine of the Trin­i­ty — God being Three-in-One — is seen by Islam as a sub­tle form of poly­the­ism. The con­cept of Holy Ghost as ?Fil­ioque ? (a dou­ble pro­ces­sion) was added to the Orig­i­nal Doc­trine much lat­er. As taught by the Greek the­olo­gians and advo­cat­ed by St. Augus­tine, it sim­ply makes the Holy Ghost a go-between” com­mu­ni­ca­tions or things that pro­ceed from the Father and is received by an indi­vid­ual via Jesus Christ. One may argue that since the Holy Ghost emanates from God the Father, it is also God. In real­i­ty, this would only be pos­si­ble if there was a total ema­na­tion” (100% trans­fer). If that be the case, then the Pri­ma­ry Source has either anni­hi­lat­ed Him­self (Itself) or has pro­duced a Clone. God the Father still exists and Chris­tians with their Trini­tar­i­an Beliefs yet claim God is One. From this, we can see that Chris­tians don’t revere just One God, they revere three.

This is a charge not tak­en light­ly by Chris­tians, how­ev­er. They, in turn, accuse the Mus­lims of not even know­ing what the Trin­i­ty is, point­ing out that the Qur’an sets it up as Allah the Father, Jesus the Son, and Mary his moth­er. While ven­er­a­tion of Mary has been a fig­ment of the Catholic Church since 431 C.E. when she was giv­en the title Moth­er of God” by the Coun­cil of Eph­esus, a clos­er exam­i­na­tion of the verse in the Qur’an most often cit­ed by Chris­tians in sup­port of their accu­sa­tion, shows that the des­ig­na­tion of Mary by the Qur’an as a mem­ber” of the Trin­i­ty, is sim­ply not true. While the Qur’an does con­demn both Trini­tar­i­an­ism (Qur’an 4:17) and the wor­ship of Jesus and his moth­er Mary (Qur’an 5:116), nowhere does it iden­ti­fy the actu­al three com­po­nents of the Chris­t­ian Trin­i­ty. The posi­tion of the Qur’an is that who or what com­pris­es this doc­trine is not impor­tant ; what is impor­tant is that the very notion of a Trin­i­ty is an affront against the con­cept of One God. This is one of the rea­sons why some Chris­t­ian the­olo­gians sees the Islam­ic doc­trine as the revival of the ear­li­er Judeo-Chris­t­ian faith”, in oth­er words, the emer­gence of the com­pro­mise­less Monotheism.

Islam has his­tor­i­cal­ly been more skep­ti­cal of philo­soph­i­cal the­ol­o­gy as a path to God than has Chris­tian­i­ty, and in fact the divine uni­ty has been affirmed by Mus­lims on the basis of two supra-ratio­nal sources : the rev­e­la­tion of the Qur’an and the uni­tive expe­ri­ence of the mys­tics and the saints. That God is ulti­mate­ly One, and indi­vis­i­ble, is the con­clu­sion of all high­er mys­ti­cism, and Islam, as a reli­gion of the divine uni­ty par excel­lence, has linked faith with mys­ti­cal expe­ri­ence very close­ly. An eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry Bosn­ian mys­tic, Hasan Kai­mi, expressed this in a poem which even today is chant­ed and loved by the peo­ple of Sarajevo :

    O seek­er of truth, it is your heart’s eye you must open.
    Know the Divine Uni­ty today, through the path of love for Him.
    If you object : I am wait­ing for my mind to grasp His nature’,
    Know the Divine Uni­ty today, through the path of love for Him.

    Should you wish to behold the vis­age of God,
    Sur­ren­der to Him, and invoke His names,
    When your soul is clear a light of true joy shall shine.
    Know the Divine Uni­ty today, through the path of love for Him.”

The Trin­i­ty in Ancient Pagan Worship

Now let us study the Trin­i­ty” and its roots in ancient pagan wor­ship. The Trin­i­ty” of Chris­ten­dom, as defined in the creed of Nicea, is a merg­ing of three dis­tinct enti­ties into one sin­gle enti­ty, while remain­ing three dis­tinct enti­ties. We are told to speak of the three gods as one god, and nev­er as three gods which would be con­sid­ered heresy (Isa­iah 43:10). They are con­sid­ered to be co-eter­nal, co-sub­stan­tial, and co-equal. How­ev­er, only the first was self-exis­tent. The oth­ers pre­ced­ed from the first. This Neo-Pla­ton­ic philo­soph­i­cal doc­trine has its roots not in the inspi­ra­tion of God, but in ancient pagan­ism. Most ancient reli­gions were built upon some sort of three­fold dis­tinc­tion. Deities were always trini­ties of some kind or con­sist­ed of suc­ces­sive ema­na­tion in threes.

In India, we find the doc­trine of the divine trin­i­ty called Trimur­ti” (San­skrit : Three Forms”) con­sist­ing a tri­ad of Brah­ma, Vish­nu, and Siva. It is an insep­a­ra­ble uni­ty though three in form. Wor­ship­pers are told to wor­ship them as one deity. Schol­ars con­sid­er that the Trimur­ti doc­trine as an attempt to rec­on­cile dif­fer­ent monothe­is­tic approach­es with one anoth­er and with the philo­soph­ic doc­trine of ulti­mate real­i­ty (Brah­man). Such con­cepts posed no prob­lem to the log­ic of a Hin­du wor­ship­per since they were already used to wor­ship­ping gods with the body of a man and the head of an ele­phant (Ganesh), or mon­key-faced gods (Hanu­man), or gods with six arms, and so forth. Remem­ber, clas­si­cal Hin­duism dates back to at least 500 BC, with roots extend­ing as far back as 2000 BC.

The Brah­mas also have their trin­i­ty. In their trin­i­ty, Vajra­pani, Man­jus­ri, and Aval­okites­vara form a divine union of three gods into one god called Bud­dha”. In Mahayana Bud­dhism, there is also the con­cept of trikaya (San­skrit : three bod­ies”), the con­cept of three bod­ies, or modes of being, of the Bud­dha : the dhar­makaya (body of essence), the unman­i­fest­ed mode, and the supreme state of absolute knowl­edge, the samb­hogakaya (body of enjoy­ment), the heav­en­ly mode ; and the nir­manakaya (body of trans­for­ma­tion), the earth­ly mode, the Bud­dha as he appeared on earth or man­i­fest­ed him­self in an earth­ly bod­hisatt­va, an earth­ly king, a paint­ing or a nat­ur­al object such as a lotus. The cit­i­zens of Chi­na and Japan also wor­ship Bud­dha, but they know him as Fo.” When they wor­ship him they say Fo, is one god but has three forms.”

Sir William Jones says :

Very respectable natives have assured me, that one or two mis­sion­ar­ies have been absurd enough to in their zeal for the con­ver­sion of the Gen­tiles, to urge that the Hin­doos were even now almost Chris­tians ; because their Brah­ma, Vish­nu, and Mah­e­sa (Siva), were no oth­er than the Chris­t­ian Trinity.[19]

The ancient Egyp­tians also wor­shipped a trin­i­ty. Their sym­bol of a wing, a globe, and a ser­pent is sup­posed to have stood for the dif­fer­ent attrib­ut­es of their god. There was also the tri­ad of Osiris, Isis and Horus. In Baby­lon, there was a Trin­i­ty of Ishtar, Sin and Shamash ; in Ara­bia, Al-Lat, Al-Uzza and Manat.

The Greeks also had their trini­ties. When mak­ing their sac­ri­fices to their gods, they would sprin­kle holy water on the altar three times, they would then sprin­kle the peo­ple three times also. Frank­in­cense was then tak­en with three fin­gers and strewed upon the alter three times. All of this was done because the ora­cle had pro­claimed that all sacred things ought to be in threes. Remem­ber that the phi­los­o­phy of these peo­ple (The Greeks) is what was pri­mar­i­ly respon­si­ble for defin­ing the Chris­t­ian Trini­tar­i­an” nature of God. This was done through the writ­ings of the Greek philoso­pher Pla­to regard­ing his Logos” (“word”). Fur­ther, remem­ber that the Gospels of the Bible were named the Greek Gospels” for a rea­son : they were writ­ten in their lan­guage and based upon their philosophy.

T. W. Doane says that :

The works of Pla­to were exten­sive­ly stud­ied by the Church Fathers, one of whom joy­ful­ly rec­og­nizes in the great teacher, the school­mas­ter who, in the full­ness of time, was des­tined to edu­cate the hea­then for Christ, as Moses did the Jews. The cel­e­brat­ed pas­sage : In the begin­ning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word Was God” is a frag­ment of some Pagan trea­tise on the Pla­ton­ic phi­los­o­phy, evi­dent­ly writ­ten by Ire­naeus. It is quot­ed by Amelius, a Pagan philoso­pher as strict­ly applic­a­ble to the Logos, or Mer­cury, the Word, appar­ent­ly as an hon­or­able tes­ti­mo­ny borne to the Pagan deity by a barbarian?We see then that the title Word” or Logos,” being applied to Jesus, is anoth­er piece of Pagan amal­ga­ma­tion with Chris­tian­i­ty. It did not receive its autho­rized Chris­t­ian form until the mid­dle of the sec­ond cen­tu­ry after Christ. The ancient pagan Romans wor­shipped a Trin­i­ty. An ora­cle is said to have declared that there was First God, then the Word, and with them the Spir­it’. Here we see the dis­tinct­ly enu­mer­at­ed, God, the Logos, and the Holy Spir­it or Holy Ghost, in ancient Rome, where the most cel­e­brat­ed tem­ple of this cap­i­tal — that of Jupiter Capi­toli­nus — was ded­i­cat­ed to three deities, which three deities were hon­ored with joint worship.[20]

Trini­ties were not con­fined to these groups alone, but the Per­sians, the Assyr­i­ans, the Phoeni­cians, the Scan­di­na­vians, the Druids, the inhab­i­tants of Siberia, the ancient Mex­i­cans, the Peru­vians, and many oth­ers, all wor­shipped Trini­tar­i­an” pagan deities (among a great mul­ti­tude of oth­er gods) long before the Coun­cil of Nicaea of 325 C.E. offi­cial­ly rec­og­nized this to be God’s true” nature.

Con­clu­sions

We can see that the doc­trine of the Trin­i­ty is a con­cept con­ceived entire­ly by man ; there is no sanc­tion what­so­ev­er from God to be found regard­ing the mat­ter sim­ply because the whole idea of a Trin­i­ty of Divine beings has no place in monothe­ism. The fact is that an intel­li­gent, lit­er­ate per­son, unac­quaint­ed with such mat­ters (not hav­ing any knowl­edge for or against or about the Trin­i­ty) can­not go from read­ing the Bible to com­ing to knowl­edge of the Trin­i­ty. A per­son can­not read the Bible and then write any­thing like the Nicene creed. Chris­tians can only arrive at the Trin­i­ty through eise­ge­sis” (in con­trast to what we might call exe­ge­sis”). Chris­tians read things into the Bible that just aren’t there. They have a the­ol­o­gy-first not a scrip­ture-first men­tal­i­ty. Chris­tians are so deter­mined to find the Trin­i­ty in the Bible that they will read a verse like the one in Isa­iah : Holy, holy, holy, is the Almighty God that I praise” and then come to the con­clu­sion that since the word holy” is men­tioned three times, that must mean there is a Trinity !

In the Qur’an, God’s final Rev­e­la­tion to mankind, we find His stand quite clear­ly stat­ed in a num­ber of elo­quent passages :

…your God is One God : who­ev­er expects to meet his Lord, let him work right­eous­ness, and, in the wor­ship of his Lord, admit no one as part­ner.” (Qur’an 18:110)

…take not, with God, anoth­er object of wor­ship, lest you should be thrown into Hell, blame­wor­thy and reject­ed.” (Qur’an 17:39)

Because, as God tells us over and over again in a Mes­sage that is echoed through­out all His revealed Scriptures :

…I am your Lord and Cher­ish­er : there­fore, serve Me (and no oth­er)” (Qur’an 21:92)

And only God knows best !

[5] Chris­t­ian The­ism, T&T. Clark, Edin­burg, 1984, p. 38 – 39

[6] Deity of Christ”, Zon­der­van Pic­to­r­i­al Ency­clo­pe­dia of the Bible Vol. 2, Sec­ond ed., 1977, p. 88

[7] Trin­i­ty”, Ency­clopae­dia Bri­tan­ni­ca Vol 11, p. 928

[8] Col­lier’s Ency­clo­pe­dia CD-ROM

[9] Comp­ton’s Ency­clo­pe­dia CD-ROM

[10] The New Catholic Ency­clo­pe­dia, Vol­ume XIV, p. 295

[11] As cit­ed by Muham­mad Ata’ Ur-Rahim, Op. Cit., p. 198

[12] William Lutz, Dou­ble­s­peak, Harp­er Peren­ni­al, New York, 1990, p 5

[13] J. Fort­man, The Chris­t­ian Trin­i­ty in His­to­ry, St. Bede’s Pub­li­ca­tion, 1982, Intro­duc­tion page

[14] Muham­mad Ata’ Ur-Rahim, Op. Cit., p. 198

[15] Luke 4:8

[16] Sura’ Al-Maaidah (5):72

[17] Sura’ Al-Maaidah (5):73

[18] Suzanne Haneef, What Every­one Should Know About Islam And Mus­lims, Library of Islam, 1985, pp.183 – 184

[19] T.W. Doane, Bible Myths and Their Par­al­lels in Oth­er Reli­gions, p. 370

[20] Ibid., pp. 375 – 376Endmark


Published:

in

,

Author:

Tags:

Comments

2 responses to “The His­tor­i­cal Devel­op­ment Of The Trin­i­ty : An Analysis”

  1. Glen Davidson Avatar
    Glen Davidson

    Have a book out on this : The Devel­op­ment of the Trin­i­ty. Step by step of the problems.

    Go to Ama­zon or Barnes and Noble. Can be down­loaded, or book pur­chased soon.

  2. shery Avatar
    shery

    Mark 10:17 – 18 (Eng­lish Stan­dard Version)

    The Rich Young Man
    And as he was set­ting out on his jour­ney, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, Good Teacher, what must I do to inher­it eter­nal life?” 18And Jesus said to him, Why do you call me good ? No one is good except God alone.

    Luke 18:18 – 19 (Eng­lish Stan­dard Version)

    The Rich Ruler
    And a ruler asked him, Good Teacher, what must I do to inher­it eter­nal life?” 19And Jesus said to him, Why do you call me good ? No one is good except God alone.
    John 4:19 — Jesus was a prophet.
    John 4:23 – 24 — Wor­ship in spir­it and truth.
    John 14:28 — One was greater than the other.
    John 5:19, 5:30, 7:28, 8:28 — Jesus was helpless.
    John 5:20 — The Father showed the son.
    John 5:30 and 6:38 — Jesus and God had dif­fer­ent wills.
    John 5:31 – 32 — Jesus’ wit­ness was not true.
    John 6:11 and 11:41 – 42 — Jesus gave thanks.
    John 6:32 — The Father was the provider, not the son.
    John 7:29, 16:5, 16:28 — Jesus was from God.
    John 7:16, 12:49, 14:24, 17:14 — Jesus’ words were not his.
    John 8:42 — Jesus did not come of himself.
    John 10:29 — My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all.”
    John 14:1 — Jesus said, “…believe also in me.”
    John 14:16, 17:1, 17:9, 17:11, 17:15 — Jesus prayed.
    John 14:31 and 15:10 — Jesus fol­lowed commands.
    John 17:6 – 8 — I have giv­en unto them the words which thou gavest me.”
    John 20:17 — Jesus had a god.
    Exo­dus 33:20, John 1:18, 1 Tim­o­thy 6:16 — No one saw God.
    Isa­iah 42:8 — Do not praise and wor­ship images.
    Isa­iah 45:1 — Anoint­ed” does not mean God”.
    Matthew 14:23, 19:13, 26:39, 27:46, 26:42 – 44 — Jesus prayed.
    Matthew 24:36 — Jesus was not all-knowing.
    Matthew 26:39 — Jesus and God had dif­fer­ent wills.
    Matthew 28:18 — All pow­er was giv­en to Jesus.
    Mark 1:35, 6:46, 14:35 – 36 — Jesus prayed.
    Mark 10:17 – 18 and Luke 18:18 – 19 — Jesus denied divinity.
    Mark 12:28 – 29 — God is one.
    Mark 13:32 — Jesus was not all-knowing.
    Mark 16:19 and Luke 22:69 — Jesus at the right hand of God.
    Luke 3:21, 5:16, 6:12, 9:18, 9:28, 11:1 – 4, 22:41 — Jesus prayed.
    Luke 4:18, 9:48, 10:16 — Jesus was from God.
    Luke 7:16, 13:33, 24:18 – 19 — Jesus was a prophet.
    Luke 10:21 — Jesus gave thanks.
    Luke 23:46 — The spir­it of Jesus was com­mend­ed to God.
    Acts 2:22 — Jesus was a man approved of God.”
    Romans 8:34 — Jesus was an intercessor.
    1 Tim­o­thy 2:5 — Jesus was the medi­a­tor between God and humans

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *