The following article was published in Maiden Newton Parish Magazine in March 2006.

All for One and One for All

My exchange in the Herald last year with Lesley Eve over the existence or otherwise of Hell has put me in mind of other Christian doctrines and ideas with poor scriptural support. Considering that the Protestant tradition seeks to justify its views from Scripture there are quite a few of them.

The first one that came to mind was the incomprehensible (officially so), and central, “Doctrine of the Trinity”. Nearly all Christian sects are Trinitarian, the main exceptions being the Unitarian Churches and the Jehovah’s Witnesses; the latter being the sole torch bearers for the 4th Century Arian heresy. It must be said that the Trinity is a very difficult doctrine and I have heard even ministers, in trying to explain it, fall into one heresy or another. And certainly the identification of Jesus, who, arguably, personifies the best of human nature with the Old Testament Yahweh who embodies the very worst has always been a difficult trick. But despite all this the Trinity has remained triumphant for nearly seventeen hundred years.

Notoriously the word “Trinity” is absent from the Bible as, indeed, is any exposition of Trinitarian ideas. There is a handful of passages used to support the concept but they do this by implication only and it is widely accepted that anyone ignorant of the doctrine who read the Bible from beginning to end would be very unlikely to come away with any Trinitarian notions at all. The Trinity was not known to the early church and it did not become official doctrine until the “Proto-Trinity” of Father and Son was adopted at the famous Council of Nicaea in 325 with the Holy Spirit added, apparently as an afterthought, at the Council of Constantinople in 381.

So how did this doctrine come about? First, it is easy to trace in the New Testament and later writings a sort of theological one-upmanship with Jesus initially being thought of as a great teacher, then a holy man, then a prophet, then various types of demi-god and finally, God. Secondly some in the Church felt that the blood sacrifice of a human being, even a perfect one and St Paul notwithstanding – see Romans 5:15-19, was not enough, and that only the sacrifice of a God could redeem all creation.

Finally if Christianity had remained as a Judaic sect then the sophisticated polytheism of the Trinity could never have come about. But early in its life the church spread to the Jews and Gentiles of the wider Greco-Roman world and came under the influence of many philosophies and of the many religions that it was destined to supplant. Among the philosophies absorbed by the church were Platonism and Neo-Platonism with their three “hypostases” (don’t ask) and from the pagan religions of the day came a related idea - that of a triune godhead. Triune godheads were the rule rather than the exception in the ancient world and Christianity was soon to have one of its own.

As to the texts used to support the Trinity the most famous is John 1:1 – “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God” where Word is clearly Jesus. However with the correct rendering of the last phrase being “…the Word was a god” it loses much of its Trinitarian appeal.

There are several other such verses which I do not have space to examine. Suffice it to say that they will have to stand up against the many strongly unitarian passages which oppose Trinitarian interpretations:

John 20:17 “..I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God”.

John 14:28 “…the Father is greater than I am”.

Deuteronomy 6:4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord”

In the end a Christian must read the Bible and perhaps a little history and make up his or her own mind. I just wonder sometimes how many ever do.