You also don't believe in the Trinity?
I've found no trinity Doctrine in the scriptures. The New Encyclopedia Britannica comments: Scholars acknowledge that the Athanasian Creed, often quoted as a standard definition and support of the Trinity, was not written by Athanasius but by an unknown author much later.
“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 who died around 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.”
In the New Catholic Encyclopedia it says that a catholic authority says the Trinity "is not," directly and immediately, the word of God.
The Catholic Enclopedia also comments: “In Scripture there is as yet no single term by which the Three Divine Persons are denoted together. The word "trias of which the Latin "trinitas" is a translation is first found in Theophilus of Antioch about A. D. 180.
The New Catholic Enclopedia also says: “The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is not taught in the Old Testament."
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.
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.
The late Anglican bishop John Robinson gave a thought-provoking answer to this question in his best-selling book
Honest to God. He wrote:
“In practice popular preaching and teaching presents a supranaturalistic view of Christ which cannot be substantiated from the New Testament. It says simply that Jesus
was God, in such a way that the terms ‘Christ’ and ‘God’ are interchangeable. But nowhere in Biblical usage is this so. The New Testament says that Jesus was the Word of God, it says that God was in Christ, it says that Jesus is the Son of God; but it does not say that Jesus was God, simply like that.”
In his book
The Church of the First Three Centuries, Dr. Alvan Lamson states that the doctrine of the Trinity “had its origin in a source entirely foreign from that of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures; that it grew up, and was ingrafted on Christianity, through the hands of the Platonizing Fathers.” Who were these “Platonizing Fathers”? They were apostate clerics who were infatuated with the teachings of pagan Greek philosopher Plato.
Many scholars, including Trinitarians, admit that the Bible does not contain an actual doctrine of a Trinity. For example,
The Encyclopedia of Religion states:
“Exegetes and theologians today are in agreement that the Hebrew Bible does not contain a doctrine of the Trinity. Although the Hebrew Bible depicts God as the father of Israel and employs personifications of God such as Word (
davar), Spirit (
ruah), Wisdom (
hokhmah), and Presence (
shekhinah), it would go beyond the intention and spirit of the Old Testament to correlate these notions with later trinitarian doctrine.
“Further, exegetes and theologians agree that the New Testament also does not contain an explicit doctrine of the Trinity. God the Father is source of all that is (Pantokrator) and also the father of Jesus Christ; ‘Father’ is not a title for the first person of the Trinity but a synonym for God.
“In the New Testament there is no reflective consciousness of the metaphysical nature of God (‘immanent trinity’), nor does the New Testament contain the technical language of later doctrine (
hupostasis, ousia, substantia, subsistentia, prosōpon, persona). It is incontestable that the doctrine cannot be established on scriptural evidence alone.”
Regarding the historical facts on this matter,
The New Encyclopædia Britannica states:
“Neither the word Trinity nor the explicit doctrine appears in the New Testament.
“The doctrine developed gradually over several centuries and through many controversies.
“It was not until the 4th century that the distinctness of the three and their unity were brought together in a single orthodox doctrine of one essence and three persons.”
The New Catholic Encyclopedia makes a similar statement regarding the origin of the Trinity:
“There is the recognition on the part of exegetes and Biblical theologians, including a constantly growing number of Roman Catholics, that one should not speak of Trinitarianism in the New Testament without serious qualification. There is also the closely parallel recognition on the part of historians of dogma and systematic theologians that when one does speak of an unqualified Trinitarianism, one has moved from the period of Christian origins to, say, the last quadrant of the 4th century. It was only then that what might be called the definitive Trinitarian dogma ‘one God in three Persons’ became thoroughly assimilated into Christian life and thought.
