Thoughts and Facts on the Trinity, article in The Christian Life, Volume 13, Aug 27 1887
The doctrine of a Triune-Deity is the basis of Trinitarian theology, whereas in no part of Holy Scripture occur the phrases Trinity, Triune-Deity, Three in One, One in Three; Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are one God.
The most strict oneness of God is clearly taught in every portion of Scripture: that, "There is but one God." "That God is one." "The first of all the commandments is, Hear, 0 Israel, Jehovah is one." "The Holy, Lofty, Mighty One," is the current language of the Bible,—never the Holy, Lofty, or Mighty Three.
The word Jehovah occurs several thousands of times in the Hebrew Bible, and always of one and the same intelligence. In the New Testament the word God is applied upwards of thirteen hundred times to a Being distinct from Jesus Christ. Twenty times is God called, "the God of Jesus Christ," and sixty-eight times the Father of Jesus Christ.
That the whole evidence really adduced from Scripture for the Trinitarian hypothesis, are only one or two passages. The most eminent Trinitarian theologians confess the smallness of scriptural evidence for this doctrine; and also concede the utter absence from the Bible of the words and terms by which this doctrine is commonly expressed in the churches.
Dr. Hooker, a Trinitarian, says, "Our belief in the Trinity, the co-eternity of the Son of God with his Father, the proceeding of the Spirit from the Father and the Son, these, with such other principal point.*, are in Scripture nowhere to be found, by express literal mention."
Martin Luther says, "The word Trinity is never found in the divine records, but is only of human invention, and therefore sounds altogether frigidly. Far better would it be to say God, than Trinity."
John Calvin says, "I dislike this vulgar prayer, 'Holy Trinity, one God, have mercy upon us,' as savouring of barbarism. We repudiate such expressions as being not only insipid but profane."
The fundamental principles of the Christian religion are all made clear in the Holy Scriptures in numerous passages, and expressed in language which needs no alteration. This cannot be said of the doctrine of the Trinity.
Dr. Dwight, a Trinitarian, says, "The language of Scripture is the language of common sense; the plain, artless language of nature." Why do the churches depart then from Scriptural language? is a question worthy of consideration.
Robert Hall, a Trinitarian, says, "Of what is essential to salvation, it is not difficult to judge. The quiet of the conscience requires that the information on this subject should be clear and precise." There is no clear and precise revelation on the doctrine of the Trinity. Its advocates concede.
That the Father is God Almighty, the Son God Almighty, and the Holy Ghost God Almighty, and this to be understood of each distinctly, and then to say, "these are not three Almighties, but one Almighty," is self-contradictory
Archbishop Tillotson, a Trinitarian, says, "God never offers anything to any man's belief, that plainly contradicts the natural and essential notions of his mind, because this would be for God to destroy his own workmanship."
Dr. South, a Trinitarian, says, "That any one should be both Father and Son to the same person, produce himself, be cause and effect too, seems at first sight so very strange and unaccountable, that, were it not to be adored as a mystery, it would be exploded as a contradiction."
"The phrase, 'Eternal Son,'" says Dr. Adam Clarke, "is a positive self-contradiction. Eternity is that which has had no beginning, nor stands in any reference to time. Son supposes time, generation, and father; and time also antecedent to such generation."
All artistic illustrations of the Trinity, used to defend and explain it, are but the union of finite things, which are possible, and so bear no analogy to the supposed union of three almighty, infinite, coeternal beings, which are impossible.
Dr. Hey, a Trinitarian, says, on the Trinity, "My understanding is involved in perplexity, my conceptions bewildered in the thickest darkness. I profess and proclaim my confusion in the most unequivocal manner."
Dr. Adam Clarke says, "The doctrine which cannot stand the test of rational investigation cannot be true. We have gone too far when we have said, such and such doctrines should not be subjected to rational investigation, being doctrines of pure revelation."
Archbishop Seeker says, "Indeed, let any proposition be delivered to us, as coining from God, or from man, we can believe it no further than we understand it; and, therefore, if we do not understand it all, we cannot believe it at all."
The most learned and eminent Trinitarians have conceded "The Trinity is not found in the plain teaching of Scripture." "It contradicts our reason." "And from the principles of nature it cannot be made known to us." Scripture, reason, and nature speak not of it.
For many ages the Jewish nation was the repository of divine revelation; favoured with inspired teachers who spoke of God, his worship, and commandments; yet the Jews, in no period of their history, ever believed in the Trinity.
On this command "The Lord our God is one," they have always laid great stress. It is one of the four passages written on their phylacteries, and repeated by them at their morning and evening prayers.
The Jews held the same view of the oneness of God during the days of Christ, as they had done previously, and hold at this day. Jesus Christ never reproved but confirmed them in this belief.
No historian of any credit, Jewish or Christian, can point to a time or influences which changed the Jewish faith from a Trinitarian to a Unitarian belief in God.
Bishop Beveridge says, "The Jews have had the law above three thousand years, and the prophets above two thousand years, yet to this day they could never make the Trinity an article of their faith."
Bishop Bloomfield says, in reference to some who hold that the Jews once believed in the Trinity—"I confess that I am not prepared to go to the full length of these positions. I think it in the highest degree probable that the Jews expected a Messiah who would be a sharer in the divine nature, but not one who should be equal with God."
Dr. Campbell, a Trinitarian, says, "The general belief of the Jews was, that the Messiah would be a much greater man than David, a mighty conqueror, and even a universal monarch, the sovereign of the kings of the earth, who was to subdue all nations, and render them tributary to the chosen people; yet they still supposed him to be a mere man."
Dr. Burton, a Trinitarian, says of those who hold the Jews once believed in the Trinity, "He looked upon it as unfortunate that they should have quoted cabalistic forgeries to support this position."
Archbishop Lawrence, a Trinitarian, says, "Indeed if the argument (for the Jewish belief in the Trinity) has any force at all, it is calculated to prove more than its advocates wish; for it goes to demonstrate that the Jews believed in ten, not in three personal emanations of deity."
The Jews are unquestionably Unitarian in their belief in God now; they have always been so, is the affirmation of every candid and able divine and ecclesiastical historian; they were so in the days of Christ; Christ never reproved, but strengthened, them in this belief.
The Jews never brought against Christ or his apostles the charge of teaching any doctrine contrary to the Jewish Church on the oneness of God. The first Christians and the Jews were at one on this matter, as the Unitarians and the Jews are at this day.
No Jewish writer of the first or second century charges the Christian Church with belief in the Trinity. From the fourth century to the present the Jews have ever charged the Christians with belief in more Gods than one.
During the first centuries of the Christian era Jews were the leading apostles, martyrs, and confessors of Christianity; after the adoption of the Trinity they ceased to espouse the cause of Christianity altogether. The history of the Christian Church, the first four centuries, affords abundant evidence of the change from the Unitarian to the Trinitarian faith.
The three creeds: the Apostles' Creed, a simple Unitarian creed; the Nicene Creed, a semi-Trinitarian creed; the Athanasian Creed, a complete exposition of the Trinitarian faith; truly mark the stages of belief of the first centuries of the Christian Church.
It is universally acknowledged that the Apostle's Creed was the faith of apostolic times; the Nicene Creed was not received until A.d. 325; and the Athanasian Creed at a much later date.
The Nicene Creed affords evidence of the corruption of Christianity, and after its adoption, a vast amount of error and superstition, unknown to primitive times, arose in the Church.
Waddington, a Trinitarian, says, "The Athanasian Creed is commonly attributed to Vigilius Tapsensis, who lived at the end of the fifth century. The writer, whoever he was, forged the name of Athanasius to give it currency and credit."
The Athanasian Creed is the clearest definition of the Trinity, and the most perfect burlesque on scripture, reason, common sense, and charity ever penned. Archbishop Tillotson "wished the Church well rid of it."
Dr. Mosheim, a Trinitarian, says of the first two centuries of Christianity, "The Christian system, as it was hitherto taught, preserved its native and beautiful simplicity, and was comprehended in a small number of articles. The public teachers inculcating no other doctrines than those taught in the Apostle's Creed."
Dr. Hind, late Bishop of Norwich, says, "That while for so many centuries of all the Christian doctrines, that of a Trinity in unity has been considered the most obscure and mysterious; in the writings of the Apostles there is no trace of any scruple which it created. It seems to have called for no explanation, and it is not even spoken of as a mystery." It's a matter of fact, it was never spoken of at all; this solves the difficulty.
Mosheim says, during the first three centuries of the Christian Church, "Nothing was dictated to the faith of Christians in this matter; nor were there any modes of expression prescribed, or requisite to be used in speaking of this mystery—the Trinity."
Mosheim says, "There is not the least trace of Church councils before the middle of the second century, and that these councils changed the face of the Church, and took away the privileges of the people." Augustine says, "That the yoke under which the Jews formerly groaned, was more tolerable than that imposed upon Christians by these councils."
In reference to the Council of Nice, the first Trinitarian council, Mosheim says little for the men who composed it. "There was so little order, precision, or light in their discourses, that they appeared to substitute Three Gods instead of one."
"The Council of Constantinople, A.D. 381," (mark the words of the Trinitarian historian, Mosheim "gave the finishing touch to what the Council of Nice had left imperfect of three persons in one God; and they branded with infamy all errot, and set a mark of execration upon all heresies."
It was not until A.d. 529, it was ordered to be sun? in churches, "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost," &c. &c
Dr. Cudworth, a Trinitarian, says, "The doctrine of a Trinity of three persons numerically the same, or having all one and the same singular and existent essence, was consummated by the Lateran Council, A.D. 1215."
There is the most indisputable evidence that the "doctrine of the Trinity" was introduced into the Christian church in the second century, by learned Platonists. The common people had not access to the Scriptures; or philosophy (falsely so called would have been confounded by the plain statements of divine revelation.
Plato, a Greek philosopher, lived before Christ, 350. He was in general a wise and good man: he had many disciples in the east for many hundreds of years who had much influence in Greece and Egypt. He taught his disciples a Trinity of Persons in the Godhead.
Plato taught that in the Godhead was first "To Agathon," the supreme good; the second, "Logos or Nous," the mind or intellect; the third, "Psyche," the soul. This was the Trinity of Plato, and found in his writings only.
Plato taught that the second person was generated from the first, and the third was dependent on the first and second; and yet all three are one co-essential, co-eternal Divinity. Gibbon, the Roman historian, says, "That the Athenian sage, Plato, had marvellously anticipated one of the most surprising discoveries of the Christian revelation."
Platonic philosophers espoused Christianity and mixed with the simple teaching of Jesus Christ the teaching of their master, Plato. Thus Christianity became corrupted by Gentile philosophy.
Mosheim says, "That learning and philosophy gained the ascendant .... and it is certain that human learning and philosophy have in all rimes pretended to modify the doctrines of Christianity, and that these pretensions have extended further than belongs to the province of philosophy on the one hand, or is consistent with the purity and simplicity of the gospel in the other."
Bishop Horsley, the champion of Trinitarianian, concedes, "Platonic converts to Christianity applied the principles of their old philosophy to the explication and confirmation of the articles of their faith. They defended it by arguments drawn from Platonic principles, and even propounded it in Platonic language."
Justyn Martyr was the first Platonising father of the Church; after his time many of these philosophers turned Christians. Augustine says, "I belonged to the Ebionites (they were Unitarian Christians) until I read the works of Plato, and from that time 1 believed in the doctrine (the Platonic doctrine) of the Logos." At Alexandria existed the most famous school of Platonists; Athanasius was Bishop at Alexandria, and an ardent admirer of Plato. He used to tell the Arians to go to school to the Platonists and learn the Trinity.
Augustine, in his Confessions, states, "He was in dark about the matter (Trinity) until he found the doctrine in a Latin translation of some Platonic writings, which the providence of God had thrown in his way."
The Jewish Christians were not familiarised with the writings of Plato, and were firm upholders of the Unitarian doctrine of the Godhead as delivered by Moses, Christ, and his Apostles, while the Gentile Christians were fast becoming Trinitarians through Platonism.
The principal Unitarian Christians who wrote against the Platonising Christians of the third and fourth centuries: Artemon, Beryllus, Theodotus, Arius Photinus, and others, always contended that they held the Apostolic doctrine, and that the philosophers were corrupting Christianity. The common people were always on their side.
Unitarians can prove from the testimony of Trinitarian historians, that the first centuries of the Christian Church were Unitarian; and that only by cruel persecution was the light of Unitarianism for a time put out.
Mosheim says, "That the greatest part of the writings of those that were branded with heresy have not reached our times most unfair representations have been given of their opinions." The translator of Mosheim says, "The Arian history needs yet a pen guided by integrity and candour, and unbiased by affection or hatred."
The Jewish Christians were divided into two sects, Nazareans and Ebionites. Ecclesiastical historians almost universally concede that these Christians knew nothing of the Trinity. The Ebionites were at an early date placed on the register of heretics. They did not believe in the miraculous conception. The Nazareans, who were Unitarian Christians, were never counted among the heretics of the first three centuries. Epiphanius, a writer of the fourth century, Mosheim says, was the first that branded them as heretics.
Hegesippus, a Jewish Christian and historian, A.d. 150, wrote the history of the Church from the time of the Apostles to his own time. He never mentions the Nazareans or Ebionites as heretics, although he wrote a work on heresies.
Eusebius wrote the history of the Church up to his time, A.d. 320. Valerius the translator of Eusebius, says, "The history of Hegesippus was neglected because it favoured the Unitarians."
Hegessipus travelled to Rome about A.D. 150, and says of his journey among the Churches, "All the churches were holding the true faith." Hegesippus being a Jew, the true faith would be the Unitarian faith, and all the Churches were Unitarian A.d. 150.
Although the principal Christian teachers, called the orthodox fathers, of the second and third centuries, under powerful Platonic influences, introduced into the Christian system the doctrine of the Trinity and the deity of Christ; they knew nothing of the doctrines of the Athanasian Creed, or the complete equality of the three persons in the Godhead.
Clement of Rome writes, A.d. 96, "The Apostles preached the Gospels to us from the Lord Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ from God; Christ therefore was sent out by God and the Apostles by Christ."
Justin Martyr writes, A.d. 140, "He who appeared to Abraham, Jacob, and Moses, and called God, is different from the God who made all things, numerically different, but the same in will."
Clement of Alexandria writes, A.d. 194, "There is one unbegotten Almighty Father, and one first begotten—one is truly God that made the Son."
Ireneaus writes, A.d. 172, "All the Evangelists have delivered to us the doctrine of one God, and one Christ, the Son of God. Invoking the Father he calls him the only true God."
Tertullian writes, A.d. 200, "That God was not always a Father or a Judge, since he could not be a Father before he had a Son, nor a Judge before there was sin, and there was a time when both sin and the Son were not."
Athenagoras, who wrote at the close of the second century, calls Christ the first production of the Father; but says he was not always actually produced.
Arnobius writes, A.d. 220, Christ a God under the form of a man, speaking by the order of the principal God—"At length did God Almighty, the only God, send Jesus Christ."
Eusebius of Caesarea, writes, A.d. 315, "The only begotten Son of God and first-born of every creature, teaches us to call his Father, the only true God, and commands us to worship the Father only."
Eusebius, the historian, writes, A.d. 320, "There is one God, and the only-begotten comes from him." . . . . "Christ being neither the supreme God, nor an angel, he is of a middle nature between them: and being neither the supreme God, nor a man, but a Mediator, is in the middle between them." .... "Christ teaches us to call his Father the true God, and to worship him."
Lactantius, writes, A.d. 320, "Christ taught that there is one God, and that he alone ought to be worshipped; neither did he ever call himself God; because he would not have been true to his trust, if, being sent to take away Gods and assert one, he had introduced another beside that one."
Whiston, well read in Christian antiquity, asserts, "That Athanasius seems never to have heard of the opinion of Christ having any other soul than his divinity." It was at the Council of Chalcedon, A.D. 451, it was agreed, "That in Christ there are two distinct natures united in one person."
The doctrine of the personality and deity of the Holy Ghost, as one of the Oxford tracts admits, is nowhere stated in the Scripture; is a mere tradition of the Church.
Macedonius, Bishop of Constantinople, fourth century, declared the Holy Ghost to be a divine energy, diffused throughout the universe.
Origen thought the Holy Ghost a creature of the Son, and said, "The Saviour and Holy Ghost are more excelled by the Father, than Christ and the Holy Spirit excel other things."
Novatian held, A.d. 250, " That Jesus Christ was greater than the Holy Spirit," Justin Martyr held, "The Holy Ghost and the Son came from God, and a host of other good angels."
Tertullian confounds the Spirit with the Word, and calls the Spirit a third after God. Origen thinks the Spirit was created by the Son. The early orthodox fathers had no idea of the present doctrine that all three are "co-essential, co-equal, and co-eternal."
It was necessary, to complete the doctrine of the Trinity, "three persons in one God," to enforce the personality and Deity of the Holy Ghost, and thus in time this doctrine became established.
Mosheim writes, "The subject of this fatal controversy which kindled such deplorable divisions throughout the Christian world, was the doctrine of three persons in the Godhead; a doctrine which in the three preceding centuries had happily escaped the vain curiosity of human researches; and had been left undefined and undetermined by any particular set of ideas."
The corruption of Christianity from the Unitarian to the Trinitarian belief, during the third, fourth, and fifth centuries, was not effected without the protest of the people, and most violent disputes among the clergy of that time.
They, the Platonising fathers, were charged with holding belief in more than one God; to which Tertullian replies, "When the Father and the Son are named together, I call the Father God, and Jesus Christ Lord."
Origen writes, A.d. 220, "We may by this means solve the doubts which terrify many men who pretend to great piety, and who are afraid of making two Gods. We must tell them, he who is God of himself is the God, even as our Saviour affirms in his prayer to his Father, 'That they may know thee, the only true God.' We must not pray to any created being, not to Christ himself, but only to God the Father of all, to whom our Saviour himself prayed."
Tertullian writes, "The simple, ignorant, and unlearned, who are always the greater body of Christians, will have it that we are worshippers of two and even of three Gods, but that they are the worshippers of one God."
Origen is more abusive, and writes, "It grieves those who stand up for the holy faith, that the multitude, especially those of low understanding, should be infected with those blasphemies. Things that are sublime and difficult are not to be apprehended except by faith, and ignorant people must fall, if they cannot be persuaded to rest in faith, and avoid curious questions."
Epiphanius writes, A.d. 350, that the short plain argument of the mass of the people in his time was, "Well, friend, what doctrine now—shall we acknowledge one God or three Gods?" No Trinitarian liturgies being then in use they could conscientiously worship together.
Facundus, a Trinitarian, calls the Unitarians, then the "Grex Fidelium," "The common herd or great mass of believers," of whom he says, "They were imperfect in the faith, resembling the whole Christian Church, in the time of our Saviour." Chillingworth, writes, "Time has been, when the struggle was, the world against Athanasius, and he against the world. Athanasius had to write a book, so many of the Church were against him, to prove that numbers were not to be regarded as a test of truth." Trinitarians in those days had to say, "The Arians have the people, but we have the faith."
During fifty-six years, from the council of Nice, A.d. 325, to the council of Constantinople, A.d. 381, Unitarianism had the ascendancy forty-one years, and Trinitarianism fifteen years. The council of Nice banished Arius, but the council of Tyre, A.D., 335, banished Athanasius, and recalled Arius.
Constantine the Great was first an Athanasian, but recanted before he died, and was baptised by an Arian. Valens was the last Arian Emperor. During the forty-one years of Unitarian ascendancy, the Trinitarians enjoyed considerable liberty, and were free from much persecution.
Theodosius, Trinitarian Emperor, successor of Valens, commenced a war of extermination against Unitarians. Gibbon says, "In the space of fifteen years, Theodosius issued no less than fifteen severe edicts, more especially against those who rejected the doctrine of the Trinity; and to deprive them of every hope of escape, he sternly enacted, that if any laws or rescripts should be alleged in their favour, the judges should consider them as the illegal productions of either fraud or forgery."
Waddington, a Trinitarian, says, "That Theodosius addressed the Arians, A.d. 383, thus: 'I will not permit throughout my dominions any other religion than that which obliges us to worship the Son of God, in unity of essence with the Father and the Holy Ghost, in the adorable Trinity.'"
Waddington says, "As Theodosius persevered inflexibly against the Arians, and his severities were attended by general and lasting success; the doctrine of Arius, if not perfectly extirpated, withered from that moment rapidly and irrecoverably." The page of Trinitarian historians testifies that it was not sound argument, but persecution, which crushed Unitarianism in the early ages.
The doctrine of the Trinity being accepted and enforced by the sword, the dark ages set in; idolatry, superstition, various false doctrines followed; and the most absurd practices and foolish disputations commenced, and will be continued as long as the doctrine of a Triune-Deity is taught in the Church.
Nestorius, a bishop, was censured and degraded for denying that Mary was the mother of God.—St. Ann, the supposed mother of the Virgin Mary, was called by some "the mother of the mother of God," another party in the Church called her God's grandmother, which caused severe contentions in the Christian Church.
A violent dispute arose in the reign of the Emperor Justinian, on the question whether we ought to say "One of the Trinity suffered in the flesh," or "One person of the Trinity suffered in the flesh." On this pretty puzzle there were four different opinions: one, approving both expressions; a second, condemned both; a third, maintained the first words orthodox; a fourth, the last, words. In this squabble the whole Church engaged with great zeal.
In A.d. 1351, a dispute arose in the Church about the divinity of the blood which flowed from Christ. The Franciscans denied it; the Dominicans affirmed it. It was referred to the Pope, and has gone undecided ever since.
In the present century the doctrine of the Trinity gives rise to the most foolish contentions and unscriptural Church enactments. The Roman Catholic Church has just adopted as another article of her creed, "The Immaculate conception of the Virgin."
Nature, reason, scripture, the simplicity of worship, the peace, purity, and prosperity of the Christian Church, demand the removal of the doctrine of a Triune-Deity from Christian confessions; and the maintenance, in its primitive simplicity, the first of all the commandments, "There is but one God the Father."
