37. What Trinitarian Bible Teachers say About the Trinity!

 It Is Not In The Bible      

The following quotes (blue) are from, The United Church of God, web page:

http://www.ucg.org/booklet/god-trinity/trinity-biblical/   

But did you realize that, even though it is a common assumption among many sincere religious people, the word Trinity does not appear anywhere in the Bible? In fact, the word Trinity did not come into common use as a religious term until centuries after the last books of the Bible were completed—long after the apostles of Christ were gone from the scene!

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 [common use in intellectual discussion] and formal elucidation [clarification] only in the 4th and 5th centuries" (1996, "Trinity").

That same source goes on to explain 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 [A.D.] 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" (ibid.).

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 centuries to sort out what they believed and to formulate belief in the Trinity!

The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia acknowledges that "'trinity' is a second-century term found nowhere in the Bible, and the Scriptures present no finished trinitarian statement" (1988, Vol. 4, "Trinity," ). It further states that "church fathers crystallized the doctrine in succeeding centuries"—long after the apostles had passed from the scene.

The HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism states: "Today, however, scholars generally agree that there is no doctrine of the Trinity as such in either the OT [ Old Testament ] or the NT [ New Testament ] . . . It would go far beyond the intention and thought-forms of the OT to suppose that a late-fourth-century or thirteenth-century Christian doctrine can be found there . . . Likewise, the NT does not contain an explicit doctrine of the Trinity" (Richard McBrien, general editor, 1995, "God," pp. 564-565).

The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, in its article on the Trinity, explains: "

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" (1985 edition, Micropaedia, Vol. 11, p. 928).

The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology points out that "primitive Christianity did not have an explicit doctrine of the Trinity such as was subsequently elaborated in the creeds of the early church" (Colin Brown, editor, Vol. 2, 1976, "God," p. 84).

Luther, Ryrie and Erickson

Martin Luther, the German priest who initiated the Protestant Reformation, conceded, "It is indeed true that the name 'Trinity' is nowhere to be found in the Holy Scriptures, but has been conceived and invented by man" (reproduced in The Sermons of Martin Luther, John Lenker, editor, Vol. 3, 1988, p. 406).

Professor Charles Ryrie, in his respected work Basic Theology, writes: "Many doctrines are accepted by evangelicals as being clearly taught in the Scripture for which there are no proof texts. The doctrine of the Trinity furnishes the best example of this. It is fair to say that the Bible does not clearly teach the doctrine of the Trinity . . . In fact, there is not even one proof text, if by proof text we mean a verse or passage that 'clearly' states that there is one God who exists in three persons" (1999, p. 89).

Ryrie goes on to state: "The above illustrations prove the fallacy of concluding that if something is not proof texted in the Bible we cannot clearly teach the results . . . If that were so, I could never teach the doctrine of the Trinity" (p. 90).

Professor Erickson ... states that the Trinity teaching "is not present in biblical thought, but arose when biblical thought was pressed into this foreign mold [of Greek concepts]. Thus, the doctrine of the Trinity goes beyond and even distorts what the Bible says about God"

This post could be made indefinitely long by quoting Protestant Bible teachers who say they believe that the Trinity exists, but who, at the same time admit that such a teaching is not logical, not believable and not taught in the Bible.

This is probably enough about this topic for here and now.  If you want more evidence from the Bible that argues against the doctrine of the Trinity, I suggest the book: 

The Doctrine of the Trinity; Christianity's Self-inflicted Wound by Anthony Buzzard, available at:

http://focusonthekingdom.org/articles/trinity.htm