First, I think it is necessary to define what we are talking about when it comes to the Trinity; what is it? The Trinity doctrine states that God is three separate persons who function as God, a council of divine persons if you will. It was not received by divine revelation, invented, or taught in either Jerusalem or Antioch, Syria by anyone before the fourth century, not even the apostles of Jesus or any of the Old Testament prophets of God. It is not taught in any Holy Scripture and it is also rejected in orthodox Judaism. So, where did it come from and how could something that Jesus never taught be part of the Gospel?

The first philosopher to fuse Christianity with Paganism appears to be Justin Martyr who was the first philosopher to claim that the logos was a person. He was well studied in Paganism and utilized his knowledge around 150 AD in an attempt to convince the Roman emperor, Antoninus, to abandon the persecution of the Church by fusing the logos, popular in Pagan philosophies, into the Christian doctrine.

He taught that the logos had manifested in different ways even before the establishment of the Christian religion and could therefore be understood to be the same logos that Pagans revered for centuries even before the birth of Jesus. As Justin had explained, Jesus was another manifestation of Paganism’s logos and that Socrates and Plato, though they were unaware of it, were Christians before the Gospel was even delivered. He was one of the earliest to write that the Eucharist becomes the actual body of Jesus.

The doctrine of the trinity was developed more succinctly by the Roman/Pagan Emperor Constantine and Alexandrian Bishops and Philosophers including Athanasius, in 325 AD, over three centuries after Jesus and His apostles walked this planet building on the same philosophy that was presented by Justin many years before. So as you can see, this philosophy began in Rome and Egypt not in Antioch, Syria, the seat of the apostles’ ministry.

According to the interpretation of these Pagan and Egyptian philosophers, the nature of God consists of, The Father who is God, The Son who is God, The Holy Spirit who is also God, however, The Father is NOT the Son, the Son is NOT the Father and the Holy Spirit is NOT the Son or the Father. All three are distinct individuals who serve as one God. That’s correct; three = one and one = three. Three separate persons who are ONE God. A council of divine persons as the Pagans say.

It’s no wonder that Athanasius viewed God through the eyes of Paganism because he was from Alexandria, Egypt which was a major center of Paganism in the fourth-century world as well as was Rome. Even though Constantine had decreed Christianity as the official religion of Rome, Paganism was not outlawed until about the end of the fourth century and it was not even Constantine who outlawed it. Constantine died just twelve years after the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea where the doctrine of the Trinity was first proposed.

By the twelfth century, this philosophy had taken root in the Catholic Church. Peter of Poitier was a French theologian at the Catholic University of Paris who developed a symbol to represent the Athanasius creed of the nature of God. It is still in use today to represent the nature of God commonly called the ‘Trinity Shield.”

This symbol is a graphic depiction of the nature of God as interpreted by Catholic doctrine; God is a Council of Divine persons who exist as one God. God the Father who is not the Son and God the Son who is not the Father and God the Holy Spirit who is neither the Father nor the Son and yet are one. Confused? Well, so are the proponents of this doctrine. They even confess that we should be confused because God is so much above us that we cannot understand with our carnal minds but they, with their carnal minds, continue to teach what they admit even they don’t understand.

HOW WE LEARN ABOUT GOD

There are a couple of different approaches that can be taken when learning about God and attempting to understand His nature. First, we can read His Word, the Bible, and ask Him to reveal the meaning in our heart by His Holy Spirit as He promised to do;

John 14:26 KJV

But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.

Second, we can formulate what we think about God through our own reasoning and philosophy as these men from Egypt and Rome did and take scriptures out of context to fit our philosophy which takes some good old fashion imagination. Paul warns us about doing this;

2 Corinthians 10:4-5 KJV

(For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) [5] Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;

Keep in mind that when we discuss the Trinity Doctrine, we are speaking of man’s attempt at describing the actual nature of God Himself utilizing his own imaginations, not a divine revelation from God. It is an attempt at placing God into a box that the carnal mind can understand, though those that teach it do not believe it can be understood. The problem is, when we try to reason outside of God’s revealed word, we will most certainly become confused and ultimately fall into error if there is no standard of truth to compare to and truth becomes arbitrary, subject only to the imagination of men. That is why we must utilize God’s word as the standard of truth when discussing His nature, after all, who knows His nature better than He?

Isaiah 1:18 KJV

Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.

Throughout the ministry of Jesus and even the ministries of the apostles, there was little discussion about the nature of God other than to express the divinity of Christ. The Jews of their day seemed convinced of who God was based on the writings of Moses and the prophets of the Old Testament and they were quite convinced that God is One Lord based on those writings and their tradition. Apparently, the Jews never doubted or questioned that God is One Lord who possesses all the majesty of Heaven and all power in the universe, and yet, neither Jesus nor His apostles ever questioned this belief. This is what set the monotheistic Jews apart, after all, from all the polytheistic Pagan religions that surrounded them throughout their entire history. According to their tradition and God’s own word delivered to Moses by God Himself, God is only one Lord.

Deuteronomy 6:4 KJV

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD:

This is the first verse from scripture that every Jewish child learns and is considered to be the statement of faith for the Jews; that God is one Lord. It is called the Shema and is well known to all Jewish people from childhood. They are instructed to recite this verse when they get up in the morning and when they go to bed at night.

The reading of the “Shema’” morning and evening is spoken of in the Mishnah (Ber. i. 1-2) as a matter of course, and rests upon the interpretation of (“when thou liest down, and when thou risest up”; Deut. vi. 7). https://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/13548-shema

At one point in the New Testament, Jesus made a bold statement that turned the Jews into a ravenous mob ready to stone Him to death. What was the big deal to them? It was when Jesus claimed that His hand and the Father’s hand are the same. As a matter of fact, He came right out and stated that He and the Father are one.

John 10:28-33 KJV

And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. [29] My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand. [30] I and my Father are one. [31] Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him. [32] Jesus answered them, Many good works have I shewed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me? [33] The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God.

Why did the Jews want to kill Jesus in this passage? Was it because He only claimed to be the Son of God? No! All male Jews were called sons of God because they were His chosen people.

“Sons of God” and “children of God” are applied also to Israel as a people (comp. Ex. iv. 22 and Hos. xi. 1) and to all members of the human race.

https://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/13912-son-of-god

The Jews there that day according to their own word were going to stone Jesus for blasphemy because He was claiming to be God. They believed that the God of Israel was one Lord as they had recited day and night their entire life in the Shema and Jesus was claiming to be equal to their God which was blasphemy in their eyes because no man can be equal to God the Father. The prophet who wrote the Psalms wrote;

Psalm 86:10 KJV

For thou art great, and doest wondrous things: thou art God alone.

After all, God had told them by the prophet Isaiah;

Isaiah 45:5 KJV

I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me: I girded thee, though thou hast not known me:

Was Jesus not aware of this belief? Of course, He was. He was raised in the same Jewish tradition as those who were now trying to kill Him. He undoubtedly recited the Shema His entire life as well.

To the Jews, there was no question that God is only one Lord. It was in the Torah, they recited that fact twice every day in the Shema; it was their tradition. The Jewish belief is a long-standing tradition whose foundation is that God is ONE.

So how did we end up today with a tradition that recognizes three persons in the Godhead? According to tradition, God is a Trinity, that is, three persons or a council of divine persons (Pagan Description) if you will. Yes, God is One according to holy scripture and tradition but He exists in three separate, distinctly different persons with different wills and abilities who share the same essence.

Did this come from the Bible? Well, no. It did not come from Holy Scripture but was the product of the Council at Constantinople in the old Roman Empire in the year 381. Constantinople is an ancient city in modern-day Turkey that’s now known as Istanbul. (see; https://www.history.com/topics/middle-east/constantinople)

This was the second Ecumenical Council in Rome held at Constantinople that decreed final edicts and punishments for those who opposed the Trinity Doctrine among other things. The leaders of Rome and Bishops from Alexandria, Egypt met to finalize what had been started in Nicaea by Constantine himself in 325 AD which was over three hundred years after the death of Jesus and all His apostles. Not one apostle, Jesus nor any early believers were involved in these councils about God’s nature because they had been long dead by this time. So much for their tradition. This doctrine is clearly not the tradition that was begun by Jesus and His apostles because they never taught this in any of their writings. So we are faced with two lines of tradition if you will.

Note: This book will refer to the manuscript fragments that were handed down from the Church of Paul the Apostle in Antioch, Syria. They were called the majority text notes because there are over 5500 of them which are the majority of all writings that were accepted by the Christian church as a whole. Erasmus later translated them into the common language of the day which was Koine Greek. The Erasmus version was called the Textus Receptus (Received Text) because it was received by the church as a whole at that time and later translated into English by the King James translators and called the Authorized Version because it became the official Bible of England under his reign.

The King James Authorized Version of the Bible was accepted as an official liturgy for many, many years until the end of the 19th century when a couple of unbelieving textual scholars named, Brooke Wescott and Fenton Hort went public with their disdain of the King James Bible, as well as the Received Text and the majority text notes it was founded on. They translated the minority text notes, commonly called the Critical Text (Vaticanus and Sinaiticus manuscripts), of which there are only about 45 copies that came from Alexandria, Egypt that was considered spurious yet eventually became the official manuscript for the Roman Catholic Church. This is the manuscript that virtually all modern Bible versions are based on today.

The argument for the authenticity of the Critical Text is that there are older copies of it and so it must be more accurate to what was originally produced. This logic falls far short of common sense in my opinion namely because of the persecution of the people of God who preached dissenting views from the Catholic church who were martyred and whose writings were destroyed.

One of the reasons I adhere to the Majority Text Manuscript English translations that underlay the King James Bible is that it originated in Antioch, Syria. Paul and many disciples and apostles witnessed from Antioch, Syria but they never ministered in Alexandria, Egypt. There was never an epistle to the saints at Alexandria written by Paul. There is no evidence that I can see that Paul ever traveled to Alexandria to minister. Acts 6 clearly states that the Alexandrians were one of several groups that were disputing with Stephen, who was anointed by the Holy Ghost in Antioch to be one of the first deacons of the early church. Assuming he was being led and directed by the Holy Ghost, shouldn’t this seem strange to those who put so much authority on the Alexandria text regardless of age?

Virtually all modern Bible versions are translations of the philosophically influenced text of Alexandria known as the Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. The Nestle/Aland/ Martini (Martini was a Jesuit) manuscript is a translation of this text as translated into Greek by the unbelieving theologians, Brooke Wescott and Fenton Hort who did not believe in any of the miracles in the Bible, the garden, the deity of Christ, etc. This is the standard text of virtually all modern English translations.

I believe that the Antiochian manuscript is the only one that has authority from the Holy Ghost to be the Word of God and it is clearly the most accurate because its origin is Antioch, Syria where the Apostles were based.

FACTS ABOUT THE TRINITY DOCTRINE

One source that aptly describes the facts about the doctrine of the Trinity is from Stanford University Encyclopedia which you can view online at the URL that follows this citation;

The New Testament contains no explicit trinitarian doctrine. However, many Christian theologians, apologists, and philosophers hold that the doctrine can be inferred from what the New Testament does teach about God. But how may it be inferred? Is the inference deductive, or is it an inference to the best explanation? And is it based on what is implicitly taught there, or on what is merely assumed there? Many Christian theologians and apologists seem to hold it is a deductive inference.

In contrast, other Christians admit that their preferred doctrine of the Trinity not only (1) can’t be inferred from the Bible alone, but also (2) that there’s inadequate or no evidence for it there, and even (3) that what is taught in the Bible is incompatible with the doctrine. These Christians believe the doctrine solely on the authority of later doctrinal pronouncements of the True Christian Church (typically one of: the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox tradition, or the mainstream of the Christian tradition, broadly understood). Some Catholic apologists have argued that this doctrine shows the necessity of the teaching authority of the Church, this doctrine being constitutive of Christianity but underivable from the Bible apart from the Church’s guidance in interpreting it. This stance is not popular among Christians who are neither Catholic nor Eastern Orthodox. (2) would be the main sticking point, although some groups deny all three.(https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/trinity/trinity-history.html#OldTes)

In modern-day Christianity, there are a couple of ways that people arrive at the truth. Some say that it is necessary to believe the Bible where we can understand and to scholars and theologians when we can’t. These people will provide us with not only scriptural interpretations but also what the tradition of the church teaches us about any given subject. Others believe that only the Bible can be trusted to deliver the absolute truth and should stand as the only standard of truth utilizing the Holy Spirit of God to provide the interpretation. I fall into the latter category.

As we continue our investigation into the history of the Trinity Doctrine, we should be able to conclude that there were two separate lines of tradition and two separate origins. Before we begin examining these two lines of tradition, we must decide how we will identify truth and error.

DISCERNMENT OF THE TRUTH

As is recorded in Acts 17, Paul and Silas ended up in Berea after fleeing from an angry mob in Thessalonica. The Bereans are credited in scripture of more nobility than the Thessalonicans because they checked out the standard of our first tradition, the Holy Scriptures to see whether Paul and Silas were teaching the truth.

Acts 17:11 KJV

These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.

Notice that the Bereans had a standard to refer to when Paul and Silas were teaching; the Holy Scriptures. Their scripture was not the New Testament but the Old Testament that Jesus and His apostles constantly quoted from when delivering the gospel. These were the actual scrolls that were read in the synagogues including the law of Moses and the writings of the prophets which the Jews revered as the anointed message from God.

The scriptures of their day had the anointing and blessing of God Almighty on them and stood as the actual word of God. So we too will hold to the standard that the Bereans held to; that truth is the revealed word of God delivered through His prophets and those He anointed and sent to share the gospel to the world.

We know that the apostles of Jesus Christ were anointed to share the gospel with the world because Jesus hand-picked them for that purpose as is recorded in the New Testament. Saul was chosen on the road to Damascus to take the gospel to the Gentiles by Jesus Christ Himself. These men and their writings should have full and final authority because they were commissioned directly by our Lord. Anyone who brings ‘Another Gospel’ should be rejected.

The message of Christ was once delivered by the apostles according to Paul. He instructed believers to refuse anything that comes later that was not included in the original message even if an angel from Heaven delivers it.

Galatians 1:8-9 KJV

But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. [9] As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.

The doctrine of the Trinity is one such doctrine that was never preached by the apostles of Jesus Christ nor any prophet of the Old Testament and therefore, in my opinion, has absolutely no authority as the Word of God. If there is no standard of authority based on the anointing of the authors by the Lord Jesus Christ, we are just wandering philosophers free-falling into deception and the waiting arms of the serpent who is the great deceiver.

Jesus made this clear;

John 8:44 KJV

Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.

Now that I have laid a foundation of the origins of the Trinity Doctrine, I will begin to examine the two traditions that have existed alongside one another for centuries in the next chapter; one from Antioch, Syria begun by Jesus and the apostles themselves, the other from Alexandria, Egypt begun by the philosophers of Paganism.