Is The Trinity True Or False - Is The Trinity Biblical
The Origin of the Trinity Doctrine
It was about a century after Tertullian when Arianism began causing so
many disputes that Constantine convened the first ecumenical Council
in Church history to settle them.
Arius was an elder in the Alexandrian Church in the early fourth century
that taught Christ truly is the begotten Son of God and why God is called
His Father to state the obvious. A real Father and Son in other words.
Opposing the teachings of Arius was Athanasius, a deacon also from Alexandria.
His view was an early form of Trinitarianism where the Father, Son and Holy Spirit
are said to be all the same one god but distinct from each other making it impossible
for them to be a real Father and Son.
His view was a further but deteriorating change to what Tertullian believed with
the Holy Spirit not yet claimed to be a literal being. That came later.
Mainstream history states Arius taught Christ was created, but the Church burnt
what Arius believed and some historians claim they altered records and falsely
rumoured that he taught Christ was created in order to discredit him.
The Catholic Church is known for creating false historical records to their interpretation
of events to hide the real truth at times. Consider the following for instance.
The view of Athanasius was highly influenced by Origen who was a Greek philosopher
and theologian who reinterpreted Christian doctrine through the philosophy of Neoplatonism.
His work was later condemned as unorthodox. Origen taught the doctrine of Purgatory,
transubstantiation, transmigration and reincarnation of the soul, the Holy Spirit was
a feminine force, Jesus was only a created being, there would be no physical resurrection,
the creation account in Genesis is a fictitious story and is known to have publicly castrated
himself based on Matthew 19.
Arius on the other hand was a pupil of Lucian of Antioch. Lucian was responsible
for the work that gave us what is known as the Textus Receptus which was completed
by Erasmus, and is what gave us the trusted New Testament of the KJV Bible.
These and other facts reveal that Athanasius was influenced by Greek philosophy
and that Arius probably taught Biblical truth despite mainstream history.
Some believe Constantine was the first Christian Roman Emperor but he was actually
a sun worshiper who was baptized on his deathbed. During his reign he had his eldest
son and his wife murdered. His belief at best was a blend of paganism and Christianity
for political purposes, and so he neither cared nor really understood this dispute but was
just eager to bring the controversy to a close and keep unity in his empire.
When the bishops gathered at Nicea on May 20, 325 AD to resolve the crisis, very few
shared Athanasius's view of Christ as most held a position midway between Athanasius
and Arius. The religious debates lasted two months before the Council rejected the minority
view of Arius, but having no alternative, Constantine approved the view of Athanasius,
which was also a minority view. And so the Church was left supporting a belief held by
only a minority of those attending.
The Encyclopedia Britannica states: “Constantine himself presided, actively guiding
the discussions, and personally proposed ... the crucial formula expressing the relation
of Christ to God in the creed issued by the council ... Overawed by the emperor, the bishops,
with two exceptions only, signed the creed, many of them much against their inclination.”
— (1971 edition, Vol. 6, “Constantine,” p. 386)
Horrific religious persecution followed the decision made by Constantine who was
essentially a pagan Emperor who imposed an invented creed never preached by Jesus.
Constantine exiled those who refused to accept the creed as well as the bishops who
signed the creed but refused to join in condemnation of Arius. He also ordered all copies
of the Thalia to be burned, which was the book in which Arius expressed his teachings.
But several years later Constantine became lenient toward those he condemned and exiled
at the council and allowed them to return. In AD 335, they brought accusations against
Athanasius and so now Constantine had Athanasius banished! This was not about Biblical truth.
As a pagan sun worshipper, Constantine also enforced the first Sunday law just four years
earlier and hence played a major role in bringing two pagan traditions into the Church.
It was four hundred years after the cross when they formulated this creed that never existed
before hand, and so the Apostles and the early Church could never have taught it either.
See Encyclopedia Britannica and historical quotes.
Many of the Bishops who formulated the doctrine of the trinity were steeped in Greek
and Platonic philosophy, which influenced their religious views. In fact the language they
used in defining the trinity is taken directly from Platonic and Greek philosophy.
The Platonic term trias, meaning three, was Latinized as trinitas, which gave us the English
word trinity which is neither biblical nor Christian. As Bible scholars John McClintock and
James Strong (wrote the famous Strong's Concordance) explain, “Towards the end of the
1st century, and during the 2nd, many learned men came over both from Judaism and paganism
to Christianity. These brought with them into the Christian schools of theology their Platonic
ideas and phraseology.” — (Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature,
1891, Vol. 10, “Trinity,” p. 553)
So the trinity was not derived from scripture but was conceived in philosophy.
Greek philosophers were greatly influenced by Plato (427-347 BC) who was considered
the greatest of all Greek philosophers. Plato was ingrained with Trinitarian thought
and knew that all the ancient religions had triad deities, and so he desired to come up
with a better definition to define God above all the deities of Greek mythology.
Plato's definition of God was,
(1) The “first God,” who was the Supreme Being in the universe;
(2) the “second God,” whom Plato described as the “soul of the universe”; and
(3) the “third God,” defined as the “spirit.”
The Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria (15 BC-AD 50) who followed
Greek philosophy was influenced by Plato's version and saw God as,
(1) Father, who created all things (Philo named him “the Demiurge”),
(2) Mother, who was Knowledge the Maker possessed and
(3) the Beloved Son was the world. -Supposedly the union of demiurge and
knowledge produced man's world. This esoteric type of thinking is what led
to the birth and development of the trinity.
Notice how these quotes document a belief in a divine trinity in many regions and religions
of the ancient world and that the origin of the conception is entirely pagan. Egyptologist
Arthur Weigall summed up the influence of ancient beliefs on the adoption of the trinity
doctrine by the Catholic Church in this excerpt from his book Paganism in Our Christianity.
And so the Council of Nicea did not end the controversy and the bishops went on teaching as
they had before, and the Arian crisis continued for another sixty years. Athanasius was exiled
no fewer than five times and it was very difficult to make his creed stick. The ongoing disputes
were violent and bloody at times. Noted historian Will Durant writes,
“Probably more Christians were slaughtered by Christians in these two years (342-3)
than by all the persecutions of Christians by pagans in the history of Rome.” —
(The Story of Civilization, Vol. 4: The Age of Faith, 1950, p. 8). So Christians fought
and slaughtered one another over their differing views of God.
So after Constantine's death in 337 AD, disputes continued. Constantine's son
Constantius II favoured the Arians and set out to reverse the Nicene Creed.
Constantius used his power to exile bishops adhering to the Nicene Creed and especially
Athanasius who fled to Rome. The debates resulted in numerous councils. Among them
the Council of Sardica in 343 AD, the Council of Sirmium in 358 AD and the double Council
of Rimini and Seleucia in 359 AD, and no fewer than fourteen further creed formulas
between 340 and 360 AD.
After Constantius' death in 361 AD, his successor Julian, who was a devotee
of Rome's pagan gods, declared that he would no longer favor one Church
faction over another and allowed all exiled bishops to return, which resulted
in further increasing dissension among Christians.
*Please I'm not a trinity hater, but just a truth seeker of Gods Kingdom
Disputes eventually became over the nature of the Holy Spirit. So 44 years after
Constantine's death in May 381 AD, Emperor Theodosius, baptized only a year
earlier, convened the Council of Constantinople to resolve them.
Theodosius favoured the Nicene Creed and so after he arrived in Constantinople
he expelled the bishop Demophilus, and surrendered the Churches there to Gregory
of Nazianzus who was the leader of a small Nicene community there and one of three
men that became known as “the three Cappadocians.” These three men had an agenda
at this council which was for the first time to push the idea of the Holy Spirit being
a literal being.
Gregory was recently appointed as archbishop of Constantinople, but due to illness,
Nectarius, an elderly city senator had to take over the role of archbishop and presided
over the council. And so Nectarius was baptized for the job and the Trinitarian view on
the Holy Spirit was governed by someone with little or no knowledge of theology!
What resulted became known as the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed where they now
decided that the Holy Spirit was a literal being. Any who disagreed were in accordance
with the edicts of the emperor and Church authorities branded heretics and dealt with
accordingly. This final teaching on the nature of God is what became the trinity
as generally understood today.
It was not decided so much from Scripture but from Greek philosophy,
much bloodshed and whoever had the most power.
So in short, when Babylon was conquered, most of the Babylonian Priests took
their pagan teachings to Alexandria which resulted in the school of Alexandria.
The Alexandrines incorporated Greek Pagan philosophical beliefs from Plato's
teachings into Christianity (Neoplatonism), and interpreted much of the Bible
allegorically. Lucian rejected this system entirely and propounded a system
of literal interpretation that dominated the Eastern Church for a long period.
Thus Origen taught the allegorical method of explanation of Scripture that
Athanasius and the three Cappadocians learned from, which was influenced
by Plato and strong pagan theological speculations, which gave us the trinity doctrine.
“The Alexandria catechetical school, which revered Clement of Alexandria and Origen,
the greatest theologian of the Greek Church, as its heads, applied the allegorical method
to the explanation of Scripture. Its thought was influenced by Plato: its strong point was
[pagan] theological speculations. Athanasius and the three Cappadocians [the men whose
Trinitarian views were adopted by the Catholic Church at the Councils of Nicaea and
Constantinople] had been included among its members.” — (Hubert Jedin, Ecumenical
Councils of the Catholic Church: an Historical Outline, 1960, p. 28)
