It is somewhat strange that my opponent(s)...should take the ground that the Trinity is plainly stated in the Bible. It is a remarkable assertion, to which I hardly think a dozen Trinitarians of any eminence, in our entire country, would affix their signatures.
And yet it is more remarkable that many believe the doctrine who admit that it is not once affirmed or stated in Scripture. To my mind it is a very important argument against this system, that the Bible does not some where state it as fully and explicitly as the Athanasian Creed. What if it can be extorted from Scripture by collection or inferences? Why is not a doctrine of such assumed (and if true, of real) importance, more than obscurely implied in REVELATION? Why was the important work of molding the fundamental doctrine of the religion of Heaven into its true form, passed by in neglect by the world's Great Teacher, and left for the uninspired bishops of the Romish Church?
Could not Jesus have stated the Doctrine of the Trinity as clearly as Athanasius? Would it not have been as easy for him, when Peter said to him, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,” to have replied that he was the “Second person in the Trinity, very and eternal God,” as to have left him in ignorance about the Trinity? And was it not practising deception then to assure Peter that he had given him his true and full character? Was Jesus less anxious men should believe the Trinity than Athanasins? Or did not Jesus have as clear an idea as Athanasius of what would be a sufficient statement of the doctrine? And finally, if the doctrine is important to be believed, and it is important that it should have statement in order to be believed; was there any less importance in its being stated by Jesus to his disciples, than centuries afterwards by uninspired men?
All these questions are easily answered, and can be answered in only one way. They drive us to the conclusion that if the Doctrine of the Trinity is true, we should find it, not merely intimated, but “plainly stated” in the Scriptures; and if we do not at least once, somewhere, find it explicitly and concisely expressed in Scripture, it needs no further argument to prove that it is not a “radical doctrine of the Bible.”
Now, on this point, our brother has made a serious mistake, or the ablest Biblical critics of the world are in error. The truth is, as I am about to show you from Trinitarian authority, there is not one plain statement of the Doctrine of the Trinity in all God's holy Book—NOT ONE.
We will hear the testimonies of able and distinguished champions of this system in regard to this matter.
Says James Carlile: “The Doctrine of the Trinity is rather a doctrine of inferences, and of indirect intimation than a doctrine directly and explicitly declared.”
Says Bishop Hampden: “The doctrine of the Trinity is not dogmatically revealed to us in any express sentence” of the Bible.
Says George Waddington: “The sublime truths it (the Athanasian creed) contains are not expressed in the language of the Holy Scriptures.”
Says Bishop Horsely: “I meant not to assert that it (the Son's eternity) is so expressly declared in the Scriptures.”
Says John Henry Newman: “The doctrine of the Trinity has never been learned merely from Scripture.”
Says Richard Hooker: “Our belief in the Trinity is in Scripture no where to be found by express literal mention; only deduced out of Scripture by collection.”
Now these are but few of the many witnesses that might be introduced bearing similar testimony.
I affirm that it is the general belief, even among Trinitarians, that the doctrine of the Trinity is not once stated in the whole volume of Revelation.
There is a passage, found in 1 John 5:7 that has been supposed to favor the Trinity. “There are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one.” I presume my brother will not take pains to inform you that this passage is a base forgery; for to many, especially to illiterate Trinitarians, this verse is of immense importance. The struggle that Trinitarians have had to give some appearance of authenticity to this passage shows how vastly valuable one plain scriptural statement of the Trinity would be to the doctrine. It is a confession that there is no other such statement. If there was another such passage in the Bible, another seeming effort to state the Trinity, Trinitarians would not hold to this as Scripture, against evidence that would banish any other verse from the Bible at once. For you will observe that this verse says nothing about the equality of the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, nothing about the deity of Christ, nor the personality and deity of the Holy Ghost.
I hold, therefore, that the fact that Trinitarians are so unwilling to yield this partial statement of the Trinity, is proof that the doctrine is no where else even approximately asserted in the Bible.
Mr. Landis showed very plainly, by using this verse as a text, how loath he was to spare it; and yet he immediately remarks, “As the genuineness of this passage has been called in question, I shall not adduce it in the argument.”
But a scriptural forgery is a very fitting text for a sermon in defence of the doctrine of the Trinity, that can be supported only by scripture of that character, or by the gross perversion of genuine Revelation.
I shall devote more time to this passage than would be necessary, but that my opponent makes the remarkable assumption that the Trinity is plainly stated in the Bible, and because this must be the Scripture to which he refers.
There are the strongest evidences against the genuineness of this passage. And if it contained a statement of the Trinity, the most that could be claimed is, that this doctrine is stated in a passage of doubtful authenticity. And therefore the more the Trinitarian relies upon such proof, the more he betrays the weakness of his position, and his want of any unquestionably genuine Scripture which affirms his doctrine.
The testimony is overwhelming that this verse does not belong to the inspired Writings. The majority of critics of all denominations regard it an interpolation.
Albert Barnes, a Presbyterian Commentator, regards the passage spurious, and supports his position with the following arguments:
1. It is wanting in all Greek Manuscripts of the New Testament written before the sixteenth century.
2. It is wanting in the earliest versions, and indeed in a large part of all the versions of the New Testament made in all former times.
3. It is never quoted by the Greek Fathers in their controversies on the doctrine of the Trinity; and not referred to by the Latin Fathers till the end of the fifth century.
4. The internal evidence makes it morally certain that it can not be genuine.
5. It was probably placed in the margin of some Latin MS. when first written, expressive of the belief of the writer, and by some transcriber copied into the text on the supposition that it had been accidentally omitted, and its importance as support of the Trinity has kept it there.
6. The passage is now omitted in the best editions of the Greek Testament, and regarded as spurious by the ablest critics.
Dr. Adam Clarke considers it a forgery. He says: “It stands on no authority sufficient to authenticate any part of a revelation professing to have come from God. I am rather inclined to think it the work of an unknown bold critic, who formed a text from one or more MSS. in conjunction with the Vulgate, and who was by no means sparing of his own conjectural emendations.”
Neander, the eminent Church Historian, says:
The Doctrine of the Trinity “does not strictly belong to the fundamental articles of the Christian faith, as appears sufficiently evident from the fact that it is expressly held forth in no one particular passage in the New Testament; for the only one in which this is done,—the passage relating to the three that bear record in heaven,—is undoubtedly spurious.”
Dr. Davidson, an eminent Trinitarian, regards this passage as very suspicious, because it seems to favor Trinitarianism; the strongest evidence he could have given against the Trinity. For this was to assume that the system is so foreign to Revelation, that a passage that should seem to teach it contained so much evidence against its authenticity.
This conclusion, however, is eminently just. Those readings which afford Trinitarianism an appearance of support, “it is fair to conjecture,” as says Dr. Seiler, also a Trinitarian, “may have been altered through a zeal for orthodoxy.”
Thus men “get the Trinity from the Bible, as one may press cider out of cotton—after first having put cider in the cotton.” It is not strange that Trinitarians should find more readily than others, semblances of a Trinity in the Bible; for they know just where they put them. There is not a sentence or a word in Scripture that favors Trinitarianism, but that, as I affirm upon the highest Trinitarian authority, has been placed there by uninspired men, and evidently by the believers in this system.
So says Dr. Chalmers, an eminent Trinitarian:
“The only semblance of this doctrine in conjunct propositions, in the Bible, is in that verse of the three bearing record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost; a passage which, by the generality of critics, is now admitted to have been the importation of a formal deliverance from some of the compends of Orthodoxy.”
Now place the assertion of brother Hickey by the side of the testimonies of these eminent Trinitarians I have quoted, and what is the conclusion?
Manifestly, our brother has made a serious mistake. Find it where else you may, THE TRINITY Is NOT IN THE BIBLE.
Do we need to multiply arguments against this doctrine, in view of the luminous fact that it has no mention on any page of Revelation, especially when we remember the doctrine is assumed to be so important that to reject it is to be lost forever? We have reason to expect the principle of faith upon which Salvation mainly depends, the cardinal truth of religion; to shine forth unmistakably clear from every page of the Sacred Records; but at the very least, it should be once somewhere explicitly declared, definitely and concisely stated, in Scripture.
For if the doctrine of the Trinity be true, its omission from the Bible is the omission of Christianity itself. Which will you believe;—that the Bible does not once state the really vital, the one infinitely essential principle of religion; or that this absurd doctrine is not mentioned in Scripture because it is utterly false?
If the Trinity be true, Romish Bishops have done us greater service than Jesus; —they, not he, gave us the true idea of God!
If the Trinity be true, the Athanasian Creed is more valuable to the world than the Bible; for it gives us what is wanting in the Bible, the knowledge of the true object of worship, and the principle of faith upon which salvation depends!
If the Trinity be true, we have a Book called Revelation, from which the great object of Revelation is omitted!
Then, Christian friends, is the Trinity true?
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