***Note: Not all resources are included. I will add as I get them.***
Critics of the doctrine say that it is not a Bible teaching, one history source even declaring: “The origin of the [Trinity] is entirely pagan.”—The Paganism in Our Christianity.
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 3
The Paganism in Our Christianity
The resource listed above is not in the public domain. However, the video below will give some insight regarding thoughts regarding the author.
“The Trinity is the term employed to signify the central doctrine of the Christian religion . . . Thus, in the words of the Athanasian Creed: ‘the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and yet there are not three Gods but one God.’ In this Trinity . . . the Persons are co-eternal and co-equal: all alike are uncreated and omnipotent.”—The Catholic Encyclopedia.
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 3
In the book Our Orthodox Christian Faith, the same church declares: “God is triune. . . . The Father is totally God. The Son is totally God. The Holy Spirit is totally God.”
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 3
The Encyclopedia Americana notes that the doctrine of the Trinity is considered to be “beyond the grasp of human reason.”
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 4
The Encyclopedia Americana (navigate to page 87)
A Dictionary of Religious Knowledge says: “Precisely what that doctrine is, or rather precisely how it is to be explained, Trinitarians are not agreed among themselves.”
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 4
A Dictionary of Religious Knowledge p. 944
In this regard, Jesuit Joseph Bracken observes in his book What Are They Saying About the Trinity?: “Priests who with considerable effort learned . . . the Trinity during their seminary years naturally hesitated to present it to their people from the pulpit, even on Trinity Sunday. . . . Why should one bore people with something that in the end they wouldn’t properly understand anyway?”
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 4
What Are They Saying About the Trinity?
Catholic theologian Hans Küng observes in his book Christianity and the World Religions that the Trinity is one reason why the churches have been unable to make any significant headway with non-Christian peoples. He states: “Even well-informed Muslims simply cannot follow, as the Jews thus far have likewise failed to grasp, the idea of the Trinity. . . . The distinctions made by the doctrine of the Trinity between one God and three hypostases do not satisfy Muslims, who are confused, rather than enlightened, by theological terms derived from Syriac, Greek, and Latin. Muslims find it all a word game. . . . Why should anyone want to add anything to the notion of God’s oneness and uniqueness that can only dilute or nullify that oneness and uniqueness?”
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 4
Christianity and the World Religions
Catholic scholars Karl Rahner and Herbert Vorgrimler state in their Theological Dictionary: “The Trinity is a mystery . . . in the strict sense . . . , which could not be known without revelation, and even after revelation cannot become wholly intelligible.”
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 4
“The word Trinity is not found in the Bible . . . It did not find a place formally in the theology of the church till the 4th century.” (The Illustrated Bible Dictionary)
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 5
And a Catholic authority says that the Trinity “is not . . . directly and immediately [the] word of God.”—New Catholic Encyclopedia.
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 5
The Catholic Encyclopedia also comments: “In Scripture there is as yet no single term by which the Three Divine Persons are denoted together. The word τρίας [triʹas] (of which the Latin trinitas is a translation) is first found in Theophilus of Antioch about A. D. 180. . . . Shortly afterwards it appears in its Latin form of trinitas in Tertullian.”
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 5
Similarly, in his book The Triune God, Jesuit Edmund Fortman admits: “The Old Testament . . . tells us nothing explicitly or by necessary implication of a Triune God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. . . . There is no evidence that any sacred writer even suspected the existence of a [Trinity] within the Godhead. . . . Even to see in [the “Old Testament”] suggestions or foreshadowings or ‘veiled signs’ of the trinity of persons, is to go beyond the words and intent of the sacred writers.”
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 6
Jesuit Fortman states: “The New Testament writers . . . give us no formal or formulated doctrine of the Trinity, no explicit teaching that in one God there are three co-equal divine persons. . . . Nowhere do we find any trinitarian doctrine of three distinct subjects of divine life and activity in the same Godhead.”
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 6
Yale University professor E. Washburn Hopkins affirmed: “To Jesus and Paul the doctrine of the trinity was apparently unknown; . . . they say nothing about it.”—Origin and Evolution of Religion.
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 6
Origin and Evolution of Religion
Historian Arthur Weigall notes: “Jesus Christ never mentioned such a phenomenon, and nowhere in the New Testament does the word ‘Trinity’ appear. The idea was only adopted by the Church three hundred years after the death of our Lord.”—The Paganism in Our Christianity.
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 6
The Paganism in Our Christianity
“Primitive Christianity did not have an explicit doctrine of the Trinity such as was subsequently elaborated in the creeds.”—The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology.
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 6
“The early Christians, however, did not at first think of applying the [Trinity] idea to their own faith. They paid their devotions to God the Father and to Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and they recognised the . . . Holy Spirit; but there was no thought of these three being an actual Trinity, co-equal and united in One.”—The Paganism in Our Christianity.
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 6
The Paganism in Our Christianity
“At first the Christian faith was not Trinitarian . . . It was not so in the apostolic and sub-apostolic ages, as reflected in the N[ew] T[estament] and other early Christian writings.”—Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics.
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 6-7
Justin Martyr, who died about 165 C.E., called the prehuman Jesus a created angel who is “other than the God who made all things.” He said that Jesus was inferior to God and “never did anything except what the Creator . . . willed him to do and say.”
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 7
Irenaeus, who died about 200 C.E., said that the prehuman Jesus had a separate existence from God and was inferior to him. He showed that Jesus is not equal to the “One true and only God,” who is “supreme over all, and besides whom there is no other.”
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 7
Tertullian, who died about 230 C.E., taught the supremacy of God. He observed: “The Father is different from the Son (another), as he is greater; as he who begets is different from him who is begotten; he who sends, different from him who is sent.” He also said: “There was a time when the Son was not. . . . Before all things, God was alone.”
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 7
Hippolytus, who died about 235 C.E., said that God is “the one God, the first and the only One, the Maker and Lord of all,” who “had nothing co-eval [of equal age] with him . . . But he was One, alone by himself; who, willing it, called into being what had no being before,” such as the created prehuman Jesus.
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 7
Origen, who died about 250 C.E., said that “the Father and Son are two substances . . . two things as to their essence,” and that “compared with the Father, [the Son] is a very small light.”
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 7
Alvan Lamson says in The Church of the First Three Centuries: “The modern popular doctrine of the Trinity . . . derives no support from the language of Justin [Martyr]: and this observation may be extended to all the ante-Nicene Fathers; that is, to all Christian writers for three centuries after the birth of Christ. It is true, they speak of the Father, Son, and . . . holy Spirit, but not as co-equal, not as one numerical essence, not as Three in One, in any sense now admitted by Trinitarians. The very reverse is the fact.”
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 7
The Church of The First Three Centuries
Henry Chadwick says in The Early Church: “Constantine, like his father, worshipped the Unconquered Sun; . . . his conversion should not be interpreted as an inward experience of grace . . . It was a military matter. His comprehension of Christian doctrine was never very clear, but he was sure that victory in battle lay in the gift of the God of the Christians.”
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 8
The Encyclopædia Britannica relates: “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, ‘of one substance with the Father’ . . . Overawed by the emperor, the bishops, with two exceptions only, signed the creed, many of them much against their inclination.”
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 8
“Constantine had basically no understanding whatsoever of the questions that were being asked in Greek theology,” says A Short History of Christian Doctrine.
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 8
A Short History of Christian Doctrine
The Encyclopedia Americana notes: “The full development of Trinitarianism took place in the West, in the Scholasticism of the Middle Ages, when an explanation was undertaken in terms of philosophy and psychology.”
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 8-9
Athanasian Creed. Athanasius was a clergyman who supported Constantine at Nicaea. The creed that bears his name declares: “We worship one God in Trinity . . . The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God; and yet they are not three gods, but one God.”
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 9
The New Encyclopædia Britannica comments: “The creed was unknown to the Eastern Church until the 12th century. Since the 17th century, scholars have generally agreed that the Athanasian Creed was not written by Athanasius (died 373) but was probably composed in southern France during the 5th century. . . . The creed’s influence seems to have been primarily in southern France and Spain in the 6th and 7th centuries. It was used in the liturgy of the church in Germany in the 9th century and somewhat later in Rome.”
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 9
In Origin and Evolution of Religion, E. W. Hopkins answers: “The final orthodox definition of the trinity was largely a matter of church politics.”
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 9
Historian Will Durant observed: “Christianity did not destroy paganism; it adopted it. . . . From Egypt came the ideas of a divine trinity.”
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 11
Egyptian Religion, Siegfried Morenz notes: “The trinity was a major preoccupation of Egyptian theologians . . . Three gods are combined and treated as a single being, addressed in the singular. In this way the spiritual force of Egyptian religion shows a direct link with Christian theology.”
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 11
Edward Gibbon’s History of Christianity, we read: “If Paganism was conquered by Christianity, it is equally true that Christianity was corrupted by Paganism. The pure Deism of the first Christians . . . was changed, by the Church of Rome, into the incomprehensible dogma of the trinity. Many of the pagan tenets, invented by the Egyptians and idealized by Plato, were retained as being worthy of belief.”
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 11
A Dictionary of Religious Knowledge notes that many say that the Trinity “is a corruption borrowed from the heathen religions, and ingrafted on the Christian faith.” And The Paganism in Our Christianity declares: “The origin of the [Trinity] is entirely pagan.”
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 11
A Dictionary of Religious Knowledge
Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics, James Hastings wrote: “In Indian religion, e.g., we meet with the trinitarian group of Brahmā, Siva, and Viṣṇu; and in Egyptian religion with the trinitarian group of Osiris, Isis, and Horus . . . Nor is it only in historical religions that we find God viewed as a Trinity. One recalls in particular the Neo-Platonic view of the Supreme or Ultimate Reality,” which is “triadically represented.” What does the Greek philosopher Plato have to do with the Trinity?
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 11
The French Nouveau Dictionnaire Universel (New Universal Dictionary) says of Plato’s influence: “The Platonic trinity, itself merely a rearrangement of older trinities dating back to earlier peoples, appears to be the rational philosophic trinity of attributes that gave birth to the three hypostases or divine persons taught by the Christian churches. . . . This Greek philosopher’s conception of the divine trinity . . . can be found in all the ancient [pagan] religions.”
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 11
The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge shows the influence of this Greek philosophy: “The doctrines of the Logos and the Trinity received their shape from Greek Fathers, who . . . were much influenced, directly or indirectly, by the Platonic philosophy . . . That errors and corruptions crept into the Church from this source can not be denied.”
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 11
The Church of the First Three Centuries says: “The doctrine of the Trinity was of gradual and comparatively late formation; . . . it had its origin in a source entirely foreign from that of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures; . . . it grew up, and was ingrafted on Christianity, through the hands of the Platonizing Fathers.”
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 11
The Church of the First Three Centuries
Adolf Harnack states in Outlines of the History of Dogma, church doctrine became “firmly rooted in the soil of Hellenism [pagan Greek thought]. Thereby it became a mystery to the great majority of Christians.”
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 11
A Statement of Reasons, Andrews Norton says of the Trinity: “We can trace the history of this doctrine, and discover its source, not in the Christian revelation, but in the Platonic philosophy . . . The Trinity is not a doctrine of Christ and his Apostles, but a fiction of the school of the later Platonists.”
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 11-12
Fourth century Trinitarianism was a deviation from early Christian teaching.’—The Encyclopedia Americana
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 8
“The Symbolism of Hindu Gods and Rituals” says regarding a Hindu trinity that existed centuries before Christ: “Siva is one of the gods of the Trinity. He is said to be the god of destruction. The other two gods are Brahma, the god of creation and Vishnu, the god of maintenance. . . . To indicate that these three processes are one and the same the three gods are combined in one form.”—Published by A. Parthasarathy, Bombay.
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 12
“Constantine had basically no understanding whatsoever of the questions that were being asked in Greek theology.”—A Short History of Christian Doctrine
Should You Believe In The Trinity?
L. L. Paine, professor of ecclesiastical history, indicates that monotheism in its purest form does not allow for a Trinity: “The Old Testament is strictly monotheistic. God is a single personal being. The idea that a trinity is to be found there . . . is utterly without foundation.”
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 12
Paine answers: “On this point there is no break between the Old Testament and the New. The monotheistic tradition is continued. Jesus was a Jew, trained by Jewish parents in the Old Testament scriptures. His teaching was Jewish to the core; a new gospel indeed, but not a new theology. . . . And he accepted as his own belief the great text of Jewish monotheism: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one God.’”
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 12-13
Rylands Bulletin states: “The fact has to be faced that New Testament research over, say, the last thirty or forty years has been leading an increasing number of reputable New Testament scholars to the conclusion that Jesus . . . certainly never believed himself to be God.”
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 20
The Catholic Encyclopedia: “Nowhere in the Old Testament do we find any clear indication of a Third Person.”
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 22
Catholic theologian Fortman: “The Jews never regarded the spirit as a person; nor is there any solid evidence that any Old Testament writer held this view. . . . The Holy Spirit is usually presented in the Synoptics [Gospels] and in Acts as a divine force or power.”
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 22
The New Catholic Encyclopedia: “The O[ld] T[estament] clearly does not envisage God’s spirit as a person . . . God’s spirit is simply God’s power. If it is sometimes represented as being distinct from God, it is because the breath of Yahweh acts exteriorly.” It also says: “The majority of N[ew] T[estament] texts reveal God’s spirit as something, not someone; this is especially seen in the parallelism between the spirit and the power of God.”—Italics ours.
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 22
As A Catholic Dictionary notes: “The third Person was asserted at a Council of Alexandria in 362 . . . and finally by the Council of Constantinople of 381”—some three and a half centuries after holy spirit filled the disciples at Pentecost!
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 23
This type of reference, admits McClintock and Strong’s Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, “proves only that there are the three subjects named, . . . but it does not prove, by itself, that all the three belong necessarily to the divine nature, and possess equal divine honor.”
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 23
Regarding John 10:30, John Calvin (who was a Trinitarian) said in the book Commentary on the Gospel According to John: “The ancients made a wrong use of this passage to prove that Christ is . . . of the same essence with the Father.
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 24
Commentary on the Gospel According to John
And Jesuit John L. McKenzie wrote in his Dictionary of the Bible: “Jn 1:1 should rigorously be translated . . . ‘the word was a divine being.’”
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 28
Does it honor him to call Mary “the mother of God” and the “Mediatrix . . . between the Creator and His creatures,” as does the New Catholic Encyclopedia?
Should You Believe In The Trinity? p. 30