Where did the Doctrine of the Trinity come from?

Question

Trinities of gods were taught in non-Christian religions since ancient times. In Mesopotamia one such "trinity" was Anu (the god of the sky), Entil (the god of the earth) and Ea (the god of the waters). Another trinity, in ancient Babylon, was made up of three gods Nimrod, Semiramas and Tammuz. Grouping of gods in triads was also common in Egypt, Greece and Rome in the centuries before and after Christ. So where did the Doctrine of the Trinity come from?

Answer 1

The Hebrews did not follow a Trinitarian God, just one God whom they called Yahweh. The early Christians, did not believe in a Trinitarian God either. During the rule of emperor Constantine of Rome, around 300 AD, he united Pagan beliefs with Christians beliefs (Council of Nicea)because his empire was falling apart. Therefore, he became a Christian and adopted pagan beliefs as well. 300 AD marks the beginning of what is known today as Catholicism. This is well documented in history.

Answer 2

The doctrine of the Trinity developed out of very specific historic circumstances, in a worldwide the place maximum folk have been polytheists. in the Roman worldwide, the gods have been visualized as people, and adult males (emperors) have been larger to the status of gods. consequently, in the early centuries whilst Christianity replaced into coming up, it replaced into in a worldwide the place it replaced into somewhat easy to a guy as a god, and consequently easy to work out Jesus as God. i believe that Prophets which includes Jesus are humanity's purely direct touch with the divine, yet extra in that remember of mirrored image particularly than some sort of embodiment. that's the "mechanism" that the doctrine of the Trinity tries to describe (area of the subject right that's that the doctrine replaced into no formulated via monotheists yet via those days converted Roman polytheists). See the 'history' section in the link below.

Answer 3

We have seen that God is revealed in the Scriptures as a family— comprising the Father and the Son in heaven, with many potential members of the same divine family now on earth. The Bible speaks of "the whole family in heaven and earth" (Ephesians 3:15).

Two divine members of that family, the Father and the Son, reside in heaven, but the human children of God on earth even now help make up this family (Romans 8:14; 1 John 3:1-2).
............The truth is that the Bible does not teach the Trinity. The Oxford Companion to the Bible's opening words under the article "Trinity" enlightening: "Because the Trinity is such an important part of later Christian doctrine, it is striking that the term does not appear in the New Testament. Likewise, the developed concept of three coequal partners in the Godhead found in later creedal formulations cannot be clearly detected within the confines of the [New Testament] canon" (Bruce Metzger and Michael Coogan, editors, 1993, p. 782, emphasis added throughout these quotations).

The term later is a vital key in understanding why general Christian belief has been burdened with the Trinity doctrine. Post-firstcentury theologians originally conceived the doctrine, and others added to and elaborated on it down through the centuries.

Notice this admission in the New Bible Dictionary: "The term 'Trinity' is not itself found in the Bible. It was first used by Tertullian at the close of the 2nd century, but received wide currency and formal elucidation only in the 4th and 5th centuries" (1996, "Trinity").

The same dictionary explains that "the formal doctrine of the Trinity was the result of several inadequate attempts to explain who and what the Christian God really is . . . To deal with these problems the Church Fathers met in 325 at the Council of Nicaea to set out an orthodox biblical definition concerning the divine identity." However, it wasn't until 381, "at the Council of Constantinople, [that] the divinity of the Spirit was affirmed . . ."

Another theological source admits that there was "an impression of binitarianism [that is, two in unity, the Father and Son] given by much second- and third-century thought . . . Pluralist thinkers . . . maintained the full co-presence of the two (later three) distinct entities within the Godhead . . ." (Alan Richardson, editor, A Dictionary of Christian Theology, 1969, p. 345, emphasis added).

We see, then, that the doctrine of the Trinity wasn't formalized until long after the Bible was completed and the apostles were long dead in their graves. It took later theologians several centuries to sort out what they believed concerning the Holy Spirit. Regrettably, the Trinity doctrine has been a major barrier to clear comprehension of the biblical truth that God is a divine family.

Continuing with the account in The Oxford Companion to the Bible: "While the New Testament writers say a great deal about God, Jesus, and the Spirit of each, no New Testament writer expounds on the relationship among the three in the detail that later Christian writers do" (p. 782). These scholars are, of course, somewhat understat- ing what is obvious to those who comprehend the biblical explanation of God.

Spurious addition in 1 John 5:7-8

Some Bible translators of past ages were so zealous to find support for their belief in the Trinity in the Scriptures that they literally added it. A case in point is 1 John 5:7-8. It now reads in the King James Version (KJV), also known as the Authorized Version (AV): "For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth, the spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one." The words in italics are simply not a part of the accepted New Testament manuscripts. Regrettably, in this particular passage the New King James Version (NKJV) reads essentially the same.

Most Bible commentaries tell us this is a spurious addition to the biblical text. Consider the words of The New Bible Commentary: Revised: "Notice that AV includes additional material at this point. But the words are clearly a gloss and are rightly excluded by RSV [Revised Standard Version] even from its margins" (1970, p. 1269).

In the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), 1 John 5:7-8 correctly reads, "There are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood, and these three agree." John personifies these three elements as providing testimony, just as Solomon personified wisdom in the book of Proverbs.

"The textual evidence is all against 1 John 5:7," explains Neil Lightfoot. "Of all the Greek manuscripts, there are only two which contain it. These two manuscripts are of very late dates, one from the fourteenth or fifteenth century and the other from the sixteenth century. Both clearly show this verse to be translated from the Latin" (How We Got the Bible, 1963, pp. 56-57).

The Expositor's Bible Commentary also dismisses the KJV and NKJV versions of 1 John 5:7 as "obviously a late gloss with no merit" (Glenn Barker, Vol. 12, 1981, p. 353). Peake's Commentary on the Bible is very incisive in its comments as well: "The famous inter- polation after 'three witnesses' is not printed in RSV and rightly [so] . . . No respectable Greek [manuscript] contains it. Appearing first in a late 4th century Latin text, it entered the Vulgate and finally NT of Erasmus" (p. 1038).

Again, Trinity did not come into common use as a religious term until after the Council of Nicea in A.D. 325, several centuries after the last books of the New Testament were complete. It is not a biblical concept.

Answer 4

From the Council of Nicea 325 A.D. The council tried to define God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost. The Nicean Creed is contradictory at best. You never hear the whole Creed. Just enough to keep you confused. The Creed supposedly describes the father and son, it didn't get around to the Holy Ghost. The God of the New Testament is the same as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Monotheism. The Jews were the only culture on the planet that worshipped the One True Creator. He proved it to them time and time again.

Answer 5

I do not think I understand your question, because it appears that you have already answered it, the idea of a trinity is as old as 6000 bce, possibly older, if you mean the Christian use of the Trinity, just a thought and I could be wrong. the shape of a pyramid, three points on each side, and this held religious significance, Moses being brought up in Egypt, the freeing of the slaves, his people, the generations that followed. I could play dot to dot, but I would just confuse myself this early, but very good question

Answer 6

There are distinct differences between the God of Judaism and others like the Greeks, Romans, Mesopotamians, etc. The triune (three-one) God of Judaism, (and Christianity), is only one God. He manifested Himself in three Persons, but He is still one God.

Just as He manifested Himself to Abraham as three men in Genesis 18. And as a burning bush, a pillar of fire, a cloud, etc. Yet He was never any less God than He who sits on the throne.

Example: (crude example, but any example would be crude when trying to explain God in natural terms.) Let's say you have 50 gallons of water in a container. You take some water out, and pour it into another container. Take some more out of the original 50-gallon container and pour it into yet another container. Now, you have water in three containers, right? Yet you still have water in all three. Not waters (plural). The water in each of the containers has not changed in essence, substance or composition. They have not been diminished in their "wateryness". The water in each container is still capable of doing whatever water can do. That's basically the concept of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Each is equally God. They are identical in eternality, power and position. Part of Jesus' ministry on earth, which confuses many people, was to demonstrate how we were to relate with the Father. So He submitted Himself as an example to us of what to do. That is why He called Him Father, and submitted to His will here on earth. But in heaven, He sits on the throne. Just as the Father does. The short answer is: the doctrine of the Trinity came from the Bible.

Answer 7

Michael M:

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father [and the Son],
who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets.

Answer 8

The Bible has the concepts of the Trinity. It was the Council of Nicea in 325 that adopted the term.

Answer 9

It came from the Romans in Rome where the Roman Catholic Church took its name. It is the church of the Romans who are break away members of the Pagan religion and the break away members of the Roman Catholics became Protestants. Both Catholic and Protestant believe on trinity. God, the Fatheer. God the Son and the Holy Spirit of God are called trinity by the catholics and Protestants. They call it 3 persons in one God

Answer 10

"Following this apostolic tradition, the Church confessed at the first ecumenical council at Nicaea (325) that the Son is 'consubstantial' with the Father, that is, one only God with him. [The English phrases 'of one being' and 'one in being' translate the Greek word homoousios, which was rendered in Latin by consubstantialis.] The second ecumenical council, held at Constantinople in 381, kept this expression in its formulation of the Nicene Creed and confessed 'the only- begotten Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father'. [Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed; cf. DS 150.]"
"The Trinity is One. We do not confess three Gods, but one God in three persons, the 'consubstantial Trinity'. [Council of Constantinople II (553): DS 421.] The divine persons do not share the one divinity among themselves but each of them is God whole and entire: 'The Father is that which the Son is, the Son that which the Father is, the Father and the Son that which the Holy Spirit is, i.e. by nature one God.' [Council of Toledo XI (675): DS 530:26.] In the words of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), 'Each of the persons is that supreme reality, viz., the divine substance, essence or nature.' [Lateran Council IV (1215): DS 804.]"

"All those Catholic expounders of the divine Scriptures, both Old and New, whom I have been able to read, who have written before me concerning the Trinity, Who is God, have purposed to teach, according to the Scriptures, this doctrine, that the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit intimate a divine unity of one and the same substance in an indivisible equality; and therefore that they are not three Gods, but one God: although the Father hath begotten the Son, and so He who is the Father is not the Son; and the Son is begotten by the Father, and so He who is the Son is not the Father; and the Holy Spirit is neither the Father nor the Son, but only the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, Himself also co-equal with the Father and the Son, and pertaining to the unity of the Trinity." - St. Augustine of Hippo ("On The Trinity" 4th century A.D.)