Is God a Trinity - Herbert W. Armstrong Library and Archives

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Theophilus could not possibly have gotten the idea of a Trinity from the Bible - if he really did have a Trinity of persons in mind, which appears unlikely from the preceding statement - as the Bible nowhere even alludes to God being a Trinity. From the time of Theophilus, it was several hundred years before this doctrine became a part of the Catholic dogma. It was in the last twenty-five years of the FOURTH century that "what might be called the definitive trinitarian dogma 'one God in three persons' became thoroughly assimilated into Christian life and thought" (New Catholic Encyclopedia, '' H 01 y T ri n i ty '') . From this it is evident that this "central doctrine" of Catholicism and Protestantism was not a part of the "faith which was once delivered unto the saints" (Jude 3) during or prior to the time of Jude, but was added by later theologians. The doctrine of the Trinity was not what Jesus Christ "came upon the earth to deliver to the world." He came to preach the good news of His soon-coming Kingdom, to establish His true Church, to give His life as a sacrifice for all who repent, and to give God's Holy Spirit to those who are baptized - the Spirit that empowers believers to be ONE with the Father and the Son.
Is the Trinity Biblical? 15 I i e * (Continued from page 11) person’s salvation. The doctrine of the Trinity is the result of that misunderstanding. The Trinity is not a biblical doctrine. It has no basis in biblical fact. Then how did this doctrine come to be believed by the Church? History of the Trinity The ancient idea of monotheism was shattered by the sudden appearance of Jesus Christ on the earth. Here was someone who claimed He was the Son of God. But how could He be? The Jewish people believed for centuries that there was only one God. If the claims of “this Jesus” were accepted, then in their minds their belief would be no different from that of the polytheistic pagans around them. If He were the Son of God, their whole system of monotheism would disintegrate. When Jesus plainly told certain Jews of His day that He was the Son of God, some were ready to stone Him for blasphemy (John 10:33). To get around the problem of a plurality in the Godhead, the Jewish community simply rejected Jesus. And to this day, Orthodox Jews will not accept Jesus’ Messiahship. However, the more liberal Jews will at least admit that He was a great man - maybe even a prophet. But the “new” Christian religion was still faced with the problem. How would proponents explain that there was only one God, not two? “The determining impulse to the formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity in the church was the church’s profound conviction of the absolute Deity of Christ, on which as on a pivot the whole Christian concept of God from the first origin of Christianity turned” (International Standard Biblical Encyclopedia, article “Trinity,” p. 3021). But the Deity of Christ does not mean that a doctrine of the Trinity is necessary, as we shall see in Chapter Two. Roots in Greek Philosophy Many of the early church fathers were thoroughly educated in Greek philosophy, from which they borrowed
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