Good Evening, Chris Land!
You asked "Why do you think that you have to fully understand the trinity before you will ever submit to believing in it?" It's not necessary for me to understand it, all that it will take is to find it in the Bible. Its not there, as these authorities state:
"The formulation of 'one God in three Persons was not solidly established, certainly not fully assimilated into Christian life and its profession of faith, prior to the end of the 4th century...Among the Apostolic Fathers there had been nothing even remotely approaching such a mentality or perspective." New Catholic Encyclopedia
"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.
"To Jesus and Paul the doctrine of the trinity was apparently unknown;...they say nothing about it." Origin and Evolution of Religion by Yale professor E. Washburn Hopkins.
"Neither the word Trinity nor the explicit doctrine appears in the NT" New Encyclopaedia Britannica.
"At first the Christian faith was not Trinitarian...It was not so in the apostolic and sub apostolic ages, as reflected in the NT and other early Christian writings." Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics.
The ante-Nicene fathers, acknowledged to have been the leading teachers after the deaths of the apostles; Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Hippolytus, Origen, and Tertullian believed as I do, as their writings show. Said Tertullian, [died c 230] The Father is different from the Son, as he is greater; as he begets is different from him who is begotten; he who sends, different from him who is sent" and "There was a time when the Son was not ... Before all things God was alone."
Summing up the historical evidence 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 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."
And states Jesuit priest John McKenzie in his Dictionary of the Bible:
"The trinity of God is defined by the Church as the belief that in God there are three persons who subsist in one nature. This belief as so defined was reached only in the 4th and 5th centuries AD and hence is not explicitly and formally a biblical belief ... The OT does not contain suggestions or foreshadowing of the trinity of persons
Chris, why do you believe a doctrine that contradicts Jesus' own words and is recognized, even by trinitarians, as being unscriptural? Is it because you prefer mystery to understanding?
My Father is greater than I.
The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father doing.
I can of myself do nothing: I seek not my will, but the will of him that sent me.
I ascend to my Father and your Father, and my God and your God.
If Jesus, who is called Son of man 77 times, is God, why did he require an escort of angels to introduce himself to himself in Daniel 7:13? It's not in the Bible, Chris, that's why I don't believe it. May prayer, Bible study and Holy Spirit lead you away from this pagan myth. I know many who would be glad to help you.
Don Martini |
