Problems correspondents have with the Trinity Doctrine

cuadro que representa a la Trinidad (santuario della Santissima Trinità - Vallepietra RM) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Several people have difficulty with taking the words of the bible like they are written. When there is written that God says  "This is my beloved son" they still prefer to read that God says He came down and is standing there being incarnated, instead of His son standing there.

We got a message saying

Now here is one of the problems I have with the Trinity Doctrine:

If it was taught by the Bible then why didn't Christians of the first century believe in it? Why didn't Christians of the second century believe in it, or Christians of the third century believe in it? The council of Nicaea in 325 C.E. only talked about the Son and Father, but not the Holy Spirit. So if you do not believe in the Trinity then you share the Faith of Christians for more than 300 years after the death and resurrection of Christ.

And that sums up the reason why we prefer too to keep to the same faith of Jesus and his disciples, worshipping the Only One True God, the God of Abraham. By the years lots of false teachings entered Christianity and as the leaders of the country insisted to have a worship system allowing all the traditions of the regions being kept, several preachers and priests adapted their teachings and way of worship to the regional customs.


bambootigerwrites:

 First let's look at a definition of the Trinity: do you agree with this one?

According to the Athanasian Creed, there are three divine Persons

(the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost), each said to be eternal, each

said to be almighty, none greater or less than another, each said to be God, and yet together being but one God. Other statements of the dogma emphasize that these three "Persons" are not separate and distinct individuals but are three modes in which the divine essence exists.

First of all there are not three divine persons described in the first chapter of John's gospel, the Word is not described as eternal here or anywhere else, and the Word is not said to be almighty, or equal with God, or being one with God. but the Word is described here as a separate and distinct individual since the Greek text says that he is "toward (pros)" God, rather than using the prepasition for "in (en)", "from (apo)", or "out of (ek)" , and in a diagram of Greek prepositions "toward" would have to be describing someone outside of and separate and distinct from God.

So not only does the word "Trinity" appear here, but neither does any possible description of a Trinity, and for someone to say that the Word is equal to God because it is with him they would have to explain why this is the case for the Word, but not for the Angels who are elsewhere said to be with God as well.

(Proverbs 8:22) 22 "Jehovah himself produced me as the beginning of
his way, the earliest of his achievements of long ago.

Livingbreeze writes:

Commentators have observed (cf. Keener) that the book of John is bracketed by references to Jesus as theos (God - I want to be clear that I am not arguing here for a translation of Jn. 1:1, only that application of the title theos to Jesus) in Jn 1:1 and Jn 20:28.  This seems to draw the attention of the reader to Jesus as theos in both its introductory and concluding remarks. 

 

Jesus is also called theos in v. 18 and seems to reflect in a couple of ways both on Jn 1:1 and Jn 20:28.  First, it links the prologue and the remainder of the Gospel by highlighting the dual themes of the Father as directly and fully known to the Son and the Son as the unique exegete of the Father - themes that are prominent throughout the Gospel.  Second, together with the opening verse of the Prologue, verse 18 forms one of the two bookends that support and give shape to the whole Gospel, for 1:1 and 1:18 (at the beginning and the end of the Prologue) and 20:28 (at the end of the Gospel) all use theos of Jesus, whether he be thought of as the eternally preexistent Logos (1:1), the incarnate Son (1:18), or the risen Christ (20:28).  The evangelist thereby indicates that the acknowledgment of the messiahship of Jesus (20:31) necessarily involves belief in his deity. 

 

As elsewhere in John, the title ho uios tou theou (the Son of God), which is in apposition to ho christos (the Christ) in John 20:31, denotes more than simply the Davidic Messiah.  The Gospel was written to produce belief that Jesus was the promised Jewish Messiah and that this Messiah was none other than the "one and only" Son of God who had come from the Father (Jn 11:42; 17:8), who shared his nature (Jn 1:1, 18; 10:30) and fellowship (Jn 1:18; 14:11) and who therefore might appropriately be addressed and worshipped as ho theos mou ("My God").  Unique sonship implies deity (Jn 5:18; cf. 19:7). 

That is basically what I think - that because Jesus is God (theos) he may rightfully be called Messiah and Son of God.  Unless the former Jn 20:28 is true the latter Jn 20:31 is not true. 

So when making reference to God, and God alone, which person are we refering to?

In surveys of the NT use of theos it has been suggested that when theos occurs with the article it generally means the Father.  That would suggest that in Acts it is the Father who annoints the Son with the Holy Spirit. 

I think this applies to your question regarding the "Revelation of Christ" as well.

 

In the modern era, in his treatment of Sabellianism and the beginning of the trinitarian discussion, W. P. du Bose remarks (72; similarily Liddon, Romans, 154) that "the Christian doctrine of the Trinity was perhaps before anything else an effor to express how Jesus was God (theos) and yet in another sense was not God (ho theos), that is to say was not the whole Godhead."  In particular reference to Johannine usage (which is found to be representative of the NT in general; cf. Murray, 37), B. F. Westcott claims that "the difference between ho theos and theos is such as might have been expected antecedently.  The former brings before us the Personal God who has been revealed to us in a personal relation to ourselves:  the latter fixes our thoughts on the general conception of the Divine Character and Being" (Epistles, 172). 

About the Trinity it self we can find:

from the Encyclopedia Britannica 2005:

The doctrine developed gradually over several centuries and through many controversies. Initially, both the requirements of monotheism inherited from the Old Testament and the implications of the need to interpret the biblical teaching to Greco-Roman religions seemed to demand that the divine in Christ as the Word, or Logos, be interpreted as subordinate to the Supreme Being. An alternative solution was to interpret Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as three modes of the self-disclosure of the one God but not as distinct within the being of God itself. The first tendency recognized the distinctness among the three, but at the cost of their equality and hence of their unity (subordinationism); the second came to terms with their unity, but at the cost of their distinctness as “persons” (modalism). It was not until the 4th century that the distinctness of the three and their unity were brought together in a single orthodox doctrine of one essence and three persons.

The Council of Nicaea in 325 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 aboutthe 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.

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Arthur Weigall, in his book The Paganism in Our Christianity, states:

 "Jesus Christ never mentioned such a phenomenon, and nowhere in the New Testament does the word ‘Trinity’ appear."

He says the idea of a coequal trinity

 "was only adopted by the [Roman Catholic] Church three hundred years after the death of our Lord; and the origin of the conception is entirely pagan."

On page 198 of his book Weigall gives a brief history of the trinity doctrine, saying:

 "In the Fourth Century B.C. Aristotle wrote: ‘All things are three, and thrice is all: and let us use this number in the worship of the gods; for, as the Pythagoreans say, everything and all things are bound by threes, for the end, the middle, and the beginning have this number in everything, and these compose the number of the Trinity.’

The ancient Egyptians, whose influence on early religious thought was profound, usually arranged their gods or goddesses in trinities: there was the trinity of Osiris, Isis, and Horus, the trinity of Amen, Mut, and Khonsu, the trinity of Khnum, Satis, and Anukis, and so forth. The Hindu trinity of Brahman, Siva, and Vishnu is another of the many and widespread instances of this theological conception. The early Christians, however, did not at first think of applying the idea to their own faith. They paid their devotions to God the Father and to Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and they recognized the mysterious and undefined existence of the Holy Spirit; but there was no thought of these three being an actual Trinity, co-equal and united in One, and the Apostles’ Creed, which is the earliest of the formulated articles of Christian faith, does not mention it."

(1 Timothy 4:1) 4 However, the inspired utterance says definitely that in later periods of time some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to misleading inspired utterances and teachings of demons,

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Please do find also to read:

1.  Only one God
2. God of gods
3. Attributes to God 
4. The trinity – the truth
5. Is God comprised of three persons, or is He just one person? 
6. How did the Trinity Doctrine Develop 
7. History of the acceptance of a three-in-one God 
8. The History of the Development of the Trinity Doctrine
9. Trinity in the Bible
10. Altered to fit a Trinity
11. The Trinity: paganism or Christianity?
12. Trinity And Pagan Influence
13. Questions for those who believe in the Trinity
14. How do trinitarians equate divine nature
15. The Word being a quality or aspect of God Himself
16. The Great Trinity debate
17. Newton not believing in the Holy Trinity
18. Trinitarian philosophy
19. About a man who changed history of humankind
20. For the Will of Him who is greater than Jesus
21. Word – John 1:1
22. The Word being a quality or aspect of God Himself
23. Servant of his Father
24. One mediator
25. The true vine
26. On the Nature of Christ
27. Jesus Christ being dispatched as the Figurehead of a Religion
28. The Christ, the anointed of God
29. Jesus begotten Son of God #4 Promised Prophet and Saviour
30. Jesus begotten Son of God #6 Anointed Son of God, Adam and Abraham
31. Jesus begotten Son of God #8 Found Divinely Created not Incarnated: The Anointed begotten Son of God
32. Jesus begotten Son of God #10 Coming down spirit or flesh seed of Eve
33. Jesus begotten Son of God #14 Beloved Preminent Son and Mediator originating in Mary
34. Jesus begotten Son of God #15 Son of God Originating in Mary
35. Jesus begotten Son of God #16 Prophet to be heard
36. Jesus begotten Son of God #18 Believing in inhuman or human person
37. Matthew 1:1-17 The Genealogy of Jesus Christ
38. Raising digression
39. Politics and power first priority #1
40. Politics and power first priority #2
41. Politics and power first priority #3 Elevation of Mary and the Holy Spirit
42. What is the truth asked also Pontius Pilate
43. In Defense of the truth

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