“Should you believe in the Trinity” references

https://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/trinity.php

Discusses the misrepresentations of Should you believe in the Trinity?

This brochure makes arguments that are anachronistic, or assuming that the doctrine should have anticipated the future formulations already at the beginning. This would be similar to arguing that the Watchtower organization should have used the definition for the term “generation” used by the organization in 2020 already in the 1880’s. You are blaming people in the past for not using language that would be used in the future. Not exactly fair. You should not equate academic expressions discussing the historical development of the doctrine as being the same as the practical beliefs of its proponents. Early expressions of the doctrine were different than later ones and can’t be used fairly against the early forms as ammunition. The article repeatedly criticizes early proponents for not using the “explicit” or “clear” formulations used later. If such an argument were valid then even the Watchtower doctrines could all be validly dismissed because their early expressions were not equal to their later ones.

JW.org quote from Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics “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. URL to archive.org

“What the Watchtower doesn’t want you to know” by Wilbur Lingle 2009. He makes the claim in chapter 9 that it “has over a hundred quotes from various encyclopedias and books. The only trouble is that all but one of these quotes is out of context, conveying the opposite of the original article’s intended meaning. If the teaching of the Trinity is so “pagan,” why does the society have to distort the writings of Trinitarians to “prove” its point?” Although the author does not provide exhaustive proof that over 100 quotes were misleading, he does discuss 2 from the brochure Should you believe in the Trinity? and then a few more from Reasoning from the Scriptures.

Authors quoted in this brochure. Index to this brochure’s authors.

Arthur Weigall

Quotes used in the brochure Should you believe in the Trinity? I will list all the quotations used in the brochure and see how accurate they are. We should pay special attention any time the ellipsis are used.

Section Should you believe it?

• 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.
• If the Trinity is false, it dishonors God to say, as noted in the book Catholicism: “Unless [people] keep this Faith whole and undefiled, without doubt [they] shall perish everlastingly. And the Catholic Faith is this: we worship one God in Trinity.”

Section How is the Trinity explained?

• THE Roman Catholic Church states: “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.
• For example, the Greek Orthodox Church also calls the Trinity “the fundamental doctrine of Christianity,” even saying: “Christians are those who accept Christ as God.” 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.”
• The Encyclopedia Americana notes that the doctrine of the Trinity is considered to be “beyond the grasp of human reason.”
• Many who accept the Trinity view it that same way. Monsignor Eugene Clark says: “God is one, and God is three. Since there is nothing like this in creation, we cannot understand it, but only accept it.” Cardinal John O’Connor states: “We know that it is a very profound mystery, which we don’t begin to understand.” And Pope John Paul II speaks of “the inscrutable mystery of God the Trinity.”
• Thus, 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.”
• We can understand, then, why the New Catholic Encyclopedia observes: “There are few teachers of Trinitarian theology in Roman Catholic seminaries who have not been badgered at one time or another by the question, ‘But how does one preach the Trinity?’ And if the question is symptomatic of confusion on the part of the students, perhaps it is no less symptomatic of similar confusion on the part of their professors.”
• 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?”
• HOW could such a confusing doctrine originate? The Catholic Encyclopedia claims: “A dogma so mysterious presupposes a Divine revelation.” 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.”

Section Is it clearly a Bible teaching?

”IF THE Trinity were true, it should be clearly and consistently presented in the Bible. Why? Because, as the apostles affirmed, the Bible is God’s revelation of himself to mankind. And since we need to know God to worship him acceptably, the Bible should be clear in telling us just who he is.”

We could equally counter that “IF THE doctrine that Jesus is Michael the archangel were true, it should be clearly and consistently presented in the Bible.”

• A PROTESTANT publication states: “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) And a Catholic authority says that the Trinity “is not … directly and immediately [the] word of God.”—New Catholic Encyclopedia.
• 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.”
• However, this is no proof in itself that Tertullian taught the Trinity. The Catholic work Trinitas—A Theological Encyclopedia of the Holy Trinity, for example, notes that some of Tertullian’s words were later used by others to describe the Trinity. Then it cautions: “But hasty conclusions cannot be drawn from usage, for he does not apply the words to Trinitarian theology.”
• The Encyclopedia of Religion admits: “Theologians today are in agreement that the Hebrew Bible does not contain a doctrine of the Trinity.” And the New Catholic Encyclopedia also says: “The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is not taught in the O[ld] T[estament].”
• 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.”—Italics ours.

Testimony of the Greek Scriptures

• The Encyclopedia of Religion says: “Theologians agree that the New Testament also does not contain an explicit doctrine of the Trinity.”
• 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 New Encyclopædia Britannica observes: “Neither the word Trinity nor the explicit doctrine appears in the New Testament.”
• Bernhard Lohse says in A Short History of Christian Doctrine: “As far as the New Testament is concerned, one does not find in it an actual doctrine of the Trinity.”
• The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology similarly states: “The N[ew] T[estament] does not contain the developed doctrine of the Trinity. ‘The Bible lacks the express declaration that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are of equal essence’ [said Protestant theologian Karl Barth].”
• 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.
• 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.

Taught by early Christians?

• “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.
• “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.
• “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.
• “The formulation ‘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.

What the Ante-Nicene Fathers taught

I have handled this section for each of the church fathers in detail in this file.

• 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 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.”

Section How Did the Trinity Doctrine Develop?

• 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.”
• 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.”
• “Constantine had basically no understanding whatsoever of the questions that were being asked in Greek theology,” says 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.”
• The creed that bears his [Athanasius] 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.”
• 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.”
• In Origin and Evolution of Religion, E.W.Hopkins answers: “The final orthodox definition of the trinity was largely a matter of church politics.”
• The Encyclopedia Americana comments: “Fourth century Trinitarianism did not reflect accurately early Christian teaching regarding the nature of God; it was, on the contrary, a deviation from this teaching.”
• Historian Will Durant observed: “Christianity did not destroy paganism; it adopted it. … From Egypt came the ideas of a divine trinity.”
• And in the book 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.”
• Morenz considers “Alexandrian theology as the intermediary between the Egyptian religious heritage and Christianity.”
• In the preface to 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.”
• 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.”
• That is why, in the 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,”
• 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.”
• 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.”
• 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.”
• 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.”
• Harnack says: “In reality it legitimized in its midst the Hellenic speculation, the superstitious views and customs of pagan mystery-worship.”
• In the book 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.”

Why Did God’s Prophets Not Teach It?

WHY, for thousands of years, did none of God’s prophets teach his people about the Trinity? At the latest, would Jesus not use his ability as the Great Teacher to make the Trinity clear to his followers? Would God inspire hundreds of pages of Scripture and yet not use any of this instruction to teach the Trinity if it were the “central doctrine” of faith?
Are Christians to believe that centuries after Christ and after having inspired the writing of the Bible, God would back the formulation of a doctrine that was unknown to his servants for thousands of years, one that is an “inscrutable mystery” “beyond the grasp of human reason,” one that admittedly had a pagan background and was “largely a matter of church politics”?
The testimony of history is clear: The Trinity teaching is a deviation from the truth, an apostatizing from it.

We can equally ask the same questions about the supposed identity of Jesus being Michael the Archangel. Why didn’t God make that clearer in scripture if it is true?

Section What Does the Bible Say About God and Jesus?

• 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.”
• Thousands of times throughout the Bible, God is spoken of as one person. When he speaks, it is as one undivided individual.

Except for those times he is quoted with the pronoun “we”!

Section Is God Always Superior to Jesus?

Section The Holy Spirit—God’s Active Force

Section What About Trinity “Proof Texts”?

Section Worship God on His Terms