The Holy Trinity

One God or Three?

 Paganism was conquered by Christianity, it is equally true
that Christianity was corrupted by Paganism. The pure Deism
of the first Christians (who differed from their fellow Jews only
in the belief that Jesus was the promised Messiah) 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 believe...
Edward Gibbons, Preface to History of Christianity, 1891, p. xvi.

Christianity did not destroy paganism; it adopted it. The

Greek mind, dying, came to a transmigrated life in the
theology and liturgy of the Church; the Greek language, having
reigned for centuries over philosophy, became the vehicle of
Christian literature and ritual; the Greek mysteries passed down
into the impressive mystery of the Mass. Other pagan cultures
contributed to the syncretist result. From Egypt came the ideas
of a divine trinity, the Last Judgment, and a personal
immortality of reward and punishment....
Will Durant, The Story of Civilization, Caesar and Christ, Part III,
1944, p. 595.

The world had long worshipped a triple goddess. Johns

creation of a dual-god,1 Yahweh and Jesus, the Father and the
Son, had disturbed a lot of worshippers on account of its
uniqueness. It was inevitable that, following the
masculinization of the androgynous holy spirit, he would
eventually be added to the unfamiliar duality to create the
more familiar trinity.
William Harwood, Mythology Last Gods, 1992, pp. 357-358.

11. The Gospel of John.

The Holy Trinity
One God or Three?
Are Christians Monotheists or Polytheists?

Gary Carl Grassl

Painting of the Holy Trinity with three heads.

The Christian god is a three-headed monster;

cruel, vengeful and capricious....
Thomas Jefferson
 Copyright 2012 by Gary Carl Grassl

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the
author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and
reviews. Inquiries should be addressed to Gary Carl Grassl, Miguel Mendoza #
59, Casa 4, Colonia Merced Gomez 01600, Delegacion Alvaro Obregon, Mexico
City, Mexico.
 ...beside me there is no other god.

Deuteronomy, 32:39

To the memory of Michael Servetus burned at the stake

for rejecting the Trinitarian concept of God.

MICHAEL SERVETUS PHYSICIAN OF ARAGON

 Contents
Preface
1. Christianity: A Monotheistic or Polytheistic Religion?
2. What Is the Most Holy Trinity?
3. The Doctrine of the Blessed Trinity at the Heart of the
Christian Religion
4. Examples of Christian Denominations Professing the Dogma
of the Trinity
5. The Three Persons of the Most Holy Trinity Are Truly Distinct
6. What the Trinity Is NotSabellianism or Modalism
7. The Dove God
8. Is the Doctrine of the Trinity Based on the Bible?
9. Is Jesus Christ God?
10. Did His Contemporaries Think of Jesus as God?
11. Jesus Christ as Subordinate to God in the Theology of Sts.
Paul and John
12. Do Certain Bible Passages Validate the Trinity?

13. Why the Trinity? How Christ Became God

14. Can the Doctrine of the Trinity Be Rationalized?
15. The Trinity in Action, Honor Killings?
16. Punishments for Denying the Dogma of the Most Holy
Trinity
17. The Mystery of the Trinity.
18. Is the Triune God Conceivable?
19. Behind the Trinitarian Smokescreen: Three Divine Persons
Remain Three Gods
20. Conclusion: Christians Worship More Than One God; They
Are Polytheists
21. Other Views on Christian Monotheism
APPENDIX AThe Blessed Trinity: Key Christian Dogma
APPENDIX BDeclarations of Faith of Select American
Denominations
APPENDIX CInvocations of the Blessed Trinity
APPENDIX DThe Main Christian Creeds
APPENDIX EThe Trinity Around Us
APPENDIX FOther Voices on Faith, Creeds and Dogmas
 THE HOLY TRINITY

Left to right: God the Son (auburn beard), God the Holy Spirit
(beardless) and God the Father (white beard). One halo with three
divine beams covers all three. Pressed together, they show they are
one God. Their age differences indicate that God the Father begot
God the Son, while the two together brought forth God the Holy
Spirit. In 1745 the Pope issued an edict against depicting the Holy
Spirit as a human being; today it may be shown only as a dove.
 Preface
This book, The Holy Trinity: One God or Three? examines the
rationality of the Christian dogma of the Holy Trinity and
Christianitys claim to monotheism. It does not ask, is there a God?
Only, does God come in three persons? Practically all Christians
believe in the Holy Trinity; they are Trinitarians. Yet they insist they
are Monotheists, because they worship only one God, the three-in-
one God. However, this singular Deity accommodates three
PersonsGod the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.
Each Person is unique; that is, the Father is not the Son and the Son
is not the Holy Spirit, etc. Each individual has its own origin and
mission. The Father existed always and is the maker of heaven and
earth. The Son (Jesus) was begotten by the Father, made man
and crucified for us. The Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father
and the Son and is the Lord and Giver of Life. Although, each
Person is different and each is God, they do not add up to three
Gods.
What serious objections is there to the doctrine of the Trinity?
There are many objections, answered John Norton Loughborough,
but we shall reduce them to the following: 1. It is contrary to
common sense, 2. It is contrary to Scripture, 3. Its origin is pagan
and fabulous. [Loughborough (1832-1924}, Review and Herald (Seventh
Day Adventists) Vol. XVIII, November 5, 1861, p. 184)]
Is the dogma of the tripartied God hocus pocus? The primary
logical arguments against the doctrine of the Trinity are that it is
contradictory, confusing, and incomprehensible. It is contradictory
in that Trinitarianism professes to be monotheistic (one God), while
insisting that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all have separate
identities as full-fledged Persons; each being God, yet they are not
three Gods.... [Servetus the Evangelical (pseudonym of Kermit Zarley),
The Doctrine of the Trinity].
 The Devils Catechism
Question: Is Jesus God?

Christian: Yes, Jesus is God the Son,

the Second Person of the Holy Tri

Question: Is the Father God?

Christian: Yes, the Father is God the Father,

the First Person of the Holy Trinity.

Q. Is the Holy Spirit God?

Christian: Yes, the Holy Spirit is God the Holy Spirit,
the Third Person of the Holy Trinity.

Q. And the Persons are not God?

Christian: Yes, each Person is God.

Q. So how many Gods do you have?

Christian: We have three I mean, we have ONE God.
 One
Christianity:
A Monotheistic or Polytheistic Faith?
Christianity is basically polytheistic religion
with a monotheistic veneer.
David Berger, The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages.

CHRISTIANITY PRIDES ITSELF ON BEING A CONTINUATION OF THE

JEWISH RELIGION. Its founder was, after all, an Orthodox Jew as
were the major Christian personagesSt. Mary, the Mother of
Jesus, St. Joseph, his foster father, Saints Peter, Paul and the
Apostles as well as St. Stephen, the proto martyr. The Christian
Holy Books are the Old Testament of the Jews and the New
Testament of Jesus. Jewish Scripture is read and Jewish Psalms are
sung in Christian services. Catholic monks chant all the Psalms in
the span of a week and the entire Bible (Old and New Testament)
within a year. Primitive Christian monotheism was a continuation
of ancient Jewish monotheism.
The Catholic Encyclopedia declared:
At a time when the neighbouring nations representing the
highest civilization of that timeEgypt, Babylonia, Greece
were giving an impure and idolatrous worship to many gods,
we find the insignificant Hebrew people professing a religion
in which idolatry, impure rites, and a degrading mythology had
no legitimate place, but where, instead, belief in the one true
God was associated with a dignified worship and a lofty moral
code. [Polytheism MonotheismMosaic, New Advent, The
Catholic Encyclopedia, 1917].
 Levi Leonard Paine wrote,
There is no break between the Old Testament and the New.
The monotheistic tradition is continued. Jesus was a Jew,
trained by Jewish parents in the Old Testament scriptures. His
teaching was Jewish to the core; a new gospel indeed but not a
new theology. And he accepted as his own belief the great
text of Jewish monotheism: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God
is one God. [Paine, A Critical History of the Evolution of
Trinitarianism, Houghton & Mifflin, 1900, p. 4. He was Waldo
Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Bangor (Maine) Theological
Seminary]

In 1938, Pope Pius XI announced, We descend spiritually from

Abraham. Christians are spiritually Semites.
Had Christianity turned polytheistic in the course of time, the
gap between the Old Testament and the new religion would have
become unbridgeable. A polytheistic Christianity could not claim to
base itself on monotheistic Judaism. Christianity must remain
monotheistic, at least ostensibly.
Whats at stake here is the logical integrity of the Christian
religion. This faith is based on its Nicene Creed, its Ten
Commandments and its Bible. The Creed begins,
We believe in one God. The Commandments begin, Thou
shalt have no other gods before me. And the Bible is the story of
Yahweh, the solitary God of the Hebrews. Remove its monotheistic
creed, commandments and scriptures and whats left of this
religion? Should Christianity prove to be polytheistic, its claim to
being a consistent, logical belief system crumbles.
The Catholic Church prides itself on its monotheism: The
sublime Monotheism taught by Jesus Christ has no parallel in the
history of religions... It may be said that the diffusion of
Monotheism is one of the great achievements of the Catholic
Church. [Monotheism, New Advent. The Catholic Encyclopedia.]
 The self-evaluation of Christians as monotheists is echoed by
Western scholars: For example, The New Encyclopedia
Britannica numbers Christianity among the great monotheistic
religions. [Macropaedia, 1986, Vol. 28, p. 599]

The Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology stated

Except for the great monotheisms of Judaism, Christianity,
and Islam, the worlds religions are overwhelmingly
polytheistic. Nonetheless, it is clear that Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam represent forms of theism incompatible
with polytheism. As the West becomes infiltrated with Eastern
religions and their derivative movements, Western Christians
will need directly to confront polytheism. [Walter A. Elwell
(editor), Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology (Baker Reference
Library). Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 1996].

Monotheism is considered superior to multitheism: Polytheism

is utterly discredited among the intelligent... wrote Professor of
Dogmatic Theology Francis J. Hall, D.D. If there is only one God, all
the peoples on earth are created by this singular creator, and we
are all in a sense brothers and sisters. This could not be true for the
offspring of the gods of the polytheistic religions. [Hall,
Dogmatic Theology, London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1910, Vol. 4, p. 301]

Christianity claims to be one of the worlds great monotheistic

faiths; yet, Christians pray to God the Father, God the Son and God
the Spirit, three in one. In their worship, Christians address these
three Divine Persons as individual and distinct being as, for
example, in the hymn Creator Spirit, Lord of Grace:
To God the Father let us sing,
To God the Son, our risen king,
And equally with these adore
The Spirit, God forevermore.
 Since virtually all Christians, whether Catholic, Orthodox or
Protestant, pray to three Divine Persons, are they not tri-theists?
An atheist or agnostic probably couldnt care less if Christians
believed in a single God or a troika. To them they are all equally
non existent. But it does matter to Christians. They associate
polytheism with primitive tribes and heathen practices. They
correlate it with the childhood of mankind and monotheism with
our maturity. In their view Christianity is superior to paganism,
because it has left behind the childish worship of multiple gods and
attained the summit of religious consciousnessfaith in One,
Supreme Creator. Christians look down on the practitioners of
polytheistic religions, but what if they turned out to be polytheists
themselves?
Rev. William Wachtel declared that Christians regard their
religion as monotheistic: However, Christian monotheism is a
unique kind of monotheism. It holds that God is One, but that
three distinct persons constitute the one God: the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Spirit. This unique, threefold God of Christian belief
is referred to as the Blessed Trinity (from Latin trinitas, three).
[Wachtel, Christian Monotheism, Reality or Illusion. A Journal from the
Radical Reformation, Fall 1991, Vol. 1. 21st Century Reformation, Oneness
Pentecostalism.]

Pastor Wachtel continued:

Historically, three great world religions have laid claim to
monotheism as a central tenet of faithJudaism, Christianity,
and Islam....
At this point, however, a strange anomaly appears in the
history of monotheism. Judaism and Islam, though quite
different religions, recognize each other as legitimately
monotheist, while at the same time both refuse to recognize
Christianity as a champion of real monotheism. To them,
Christianity is monotheistic in name only. While Christians
would claim that Christian monotheism is a realty, Jews and
Muslims would insist that it is only an illusion.
 This insistence, of course, is based on the fact that since the
Councils of Nicea and Constantinople (A.D. 325 and 381) the
bulk of Christendom has viewed God as being three distinct
persons or hypostases united in one substance. This teaching
the doctrine of the Trinityhas stood as an offense to both
Jews and Muslims, in their eyes a denial or a perversion of pure
monotheism
Wikipedia stated,
Christianity is typically understood as a Trinitarian
monotheism in its God-concept, although the theological and
philosophical work needed to differentiate this from tritheism
is significant. This difficulty is so great that non-Christians who
make the attempt are often left with a view of Christianity as
being a faith of tritheism. [Nontrinitarianism, Wikipedia,
The Free Encyclopedia]

What is the truth?

Christians say they are monotheists. Dont people have the
right to define themselves? Who are we to say they are not
monotheists? As long as Christians think of their God as one (even
he is also three) are they not monotheists? On the other hand, we
usually judge people not by what they claim about themselves but
by their actions. Christians say they worship one God, but they pray
to threeFather, Son and Spirit.
Michael C. Rea wrote:
Christians are monotheists but they believe in three fully
divine beings-the three Persons of the Godhead: Father, Son
and Holy Spirit. The tension here is obvious and well known.
Polytheism is most commonly defined simply and without
qualification as belief in more than one god, and a god is
most commonly understood to be any being that is fully
divine. Thus, in the most common way of understanding
polytheism, orthodox Christian belief is not monotheistic but
 quite clearly polytheistic. [Rea, Polytheism and Christian
Belief, Journal of Theological Studies, Oxford University Press, Vol.
57, Part 1, April 2006. Dr. Rea is Professor of Philosophy at the
University of Notre Dame and Director of its Center for Philosophy
of Religion].

If [the Trinity] is no more than a linguistic deceit then we are left

with three gods masquerading as one [badnewsaboutchristianity.com].

The Blessed Trinity in the form of a man and two beasts:

God the Father cradles the Lamb of God (Jesus),
while the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove observes the scene.
 Two
What Is the Most Holy Trinity?
For there is one Person of the Father; another of the Son;
and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the
Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost is all one;
Athanasian Creed

THE MYSTERY OF THE MOST HOLY TRINITY IS THE CENTRAL

MYSTERY of Christian faith and life stated the Catechism of the
Roman Catholic Church. It is the mystery of God in himself It is
the most fundamental and essential teaching in the hierarchy of
the truths of faith. [DITRICE VATICANA, second edition, 1992].

The Catholic Encyclopedia declared:

The Trinity is the term employed to signify the central
doctrine of the Christian religionthe truth that in the unity of
the Godhead there are Three Persons, the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Spirit, these three Persons being truly distinct one
from another. 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 of
Persons, the Son is begotten of the Father by an eternal
generation, and the Holy Spirit proceeds by an eternal
procession from the Father and the Son. Yet, notwithstanding
this difference as to origin, the Persons are co-eternal and co-
equal; all alike are uncreated and omnipotent.
In the words of the Athanasian Creed:
...the Father is Lord; the Son Lord; and the Holy Ghost Lord.
And yet not three Lords, but one Lord. For like as we are
compelled by the Christian verity to acknowledge every Person
 by himself to be God and Lord, so are we forbidden by the
Catholic Religion; to say, There are three Gods, or three Lords....

Christians consider God the Father, God the Son and God the
Holy Spirit equally divine. Thus, they proclaim:
Through the highest heaven, to the almighty Three,
Father, Son, and Spirit one same glory be.
The word Trinity is a contraction of the terms tri + unity
(unity of three). Christians worship the Father, the Son and the Holy
Spirit; yet these three divine Persons constitute one God. They are
one because they share the same divine substance or essence. At
the same time, each is a distinct person, and each comprises the
entirety of God.
Michael A. Rizzotti wrote:
Not until late in the fourth century did the Churchs
teaching on the Trinity begin to take shape. The fundamental
tenets developed by the magisterium [the teaching office of
the Church] define the Trinity as an absolute mystery and
believe that one God exists in three persons: they are equal,
coeternal and omnipotent. God is one divine nature, one
essence, and one substance. In the Trinity, the three persons
are distinct from one another. The Father has no principle of
origin. The Son is born from the substance of the Father. The
Spirit is not begotten, but proceeds from the Father and the
Son, from one principle, in one single spiration; e.g., action of
breathing. [Rizzotti, The Holy Trinity and the Sacred
Triad (The Net Age) 2013.]
Within the one God of the Holy Trinity are three co-equal and
co-eternal Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each is distinct
and each is fully God, but the three together add up to only one
God. God the Son (Jesus) is the only begotten Son of God the
Father. However, after the Son was begotten there were as many
Gods as beforeone. After the Father and the Son spirated forth
the Holy Ghost there were as many Godsone. But we may not
say that one God is born of another God that would be two Gods
and a heresy that could jeopardize our eternal salvation.
This dogma of the Blessed Trinity is the creed of the Roman
Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Churches and the main-line
Protestant Churches. It is the mark of orthodoxy. The Catholic
writer Frank Sheed described the Trinity in its barest outline like
this:
In the one divine nature, there are three persons, the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. No one of the persons is
part of the others, each is wholly himself. The Father is God,
the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God. But they are not three
Gods but one God. [Sheed,
Sheed and Ward]

The Father, Son and Spirit are each God and this God is one and
the same God. In other words, three divine individuals are at the
same time one divine being and this one divine existence is
simultaneously three divine entities.

According to A Catholic Dictionary:

The mystery of the Trinity consists in this, that God, being

numerically and individually one, exists in three Person. The
Father is unbegotten, the Son begotten, the Holy Ghost
proceeds from the Father and Son. Each Person is really
distinct from the other, each is the true, eternal God, and yet
there, is only one God. We can understand how three
individual men are distinct from each other and yet possess
humanity in common. The unity of the three Divine Persons is
altogether different. When we speak of them as one God, we
mean not only that each is God, but that each is one and the
same God, and herein is the mystery, incomprehensible to any
 created intelligence. [ William E Addis and Thomas Arnold, A
Catholic Dictionary, Kegan, Paul, Trench & Co., London, 1884]

The Riddle of the Trinity

According to Christian doctrine, Father, Son and Holy Spirit is

each a distinct and individual entity or person and each is fully God.
The Father is God, the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God;
however, the three beings are not three Gods but only one God.

Imagine A (who is not B or C) is the sitting President of the

United States. B (who is not A or C) is the sitting President of the
United States, and C (who is not A or B) is the sitting President of
the United States. However, there are not three sitting Presidents
of the United States but only one. If you can solve this riddle you
are close to solving the mystery of the Trinity.

According to the Athanasian Creed, God the Father fulfills the

definitions of a Goduncreated, unlimited, eternal and almighty.
Yet we are forbidden to count this being as one God. Likewise God
the Son, whom we are forbidden to call a second God. And the
same for the Holy Spirit, whom we must not call a third God. Each
one is called God and each one has all the attributes of God. While
we are compelled by the Creed to acknowledge each Person by
himself to be God and Lord, so are we forbidden...to say there are
three Gods or three Lords. If we dont believe this truly and
firmly we cannot be saved and we end in hell. Salvation depends
on our counting correctly.

The God of the Trinitythe Triune Godis not divided into

three parts. It is not like a pie cut into three pieces. Each of the
three Persons is 100 percent God. The Father is 100 percent God,
the Son is 100 percent God and the Holy Spirit is 100 percent God.
The three Persons together are 100 percent God, and each Person is
as much God as all three together. The hymn All Hail, Adored
Trinity, expresses it more poetically:

O God the Father; God the Son, and God the Spirit, ever One.
Three Persons praise we evermore, and one eternal God adore.

Comment
In summary: Each of the three holy ones has all the attributes
of God and each is God, yet they are not three Gods but one. This
is no doubt important to understand, but it seems beyond my ken.
But if I dont understand it, how can I believe it? But I have to
believe it. So help me God!--Author
 The Triangular Trinity

Above: The Blessed Trinity in the form of triplets. Left to right: God
the Son with image of lamb superimposed on his tunic; God the Father
with image of all-seeing eye while holding a royal scepter; God the Holy
Spirit with image of dove. The triangular halos signify membership in
the Holy Trinity. The heads of the angels serve as footstools for the
divinities. Note the marks of nails in the hands and feet of the Son.
(However, the Roman soldiers did not drive the nails through the hands,
because these would not have held the weight of the body; they drove
the nails through the wrists where bones are located.) According to the
Athanasian Creed, the three are completely equal; here, however, the
Father appears to be the first among equals. He is in the center and
slightly elevated. Rays extend out from him, and he is the one who is
giving the blessing.

Celestial Calculation
The three Christian personages offer certain advantages over
the singular God of Judaism and Islam. The pluralistic God of
Christianity presents more variety than plain monotheism, which
Friedrich Engels called monototheism. However, this variegated
God may cause a little problem for pupils. In arithmetic class they
learn that 1+1+1=3; however, in religion class they must remember
that 1+1+1=1.

Three
 The Dogma of the Blessed Trinity
at the Heart of the Christian Religion
The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is the cardinal dogma of the vast
majority of Christian denominations. This tenet is crucial; without it they
would worship three Gods and be tri-theists. ..
Gannon Murphy

THE MYSTERY OF THE TRINITY IS THE CENTRAL DOCTRINE OF

CHRISTIANITY. The Catholic Church declares this dogma the
foundation doctrine for all the other teachings of the Church.
Moreover, faith in the Blessed Trinity is the rule among all Christian
denominations, except those they reject as cults. Acceptance of
the Trinity is regarded as the foremost test of Christian orthodoxy.
Faith in this doctrine is what makes a Christian.
The doctrine of the Most Holy Trinity is at the core of the
Christian religion. It is the official dogma of all denominations,
liberal or fundamentalist, that proclaim Jesus Christ Almighty God.
This outlook is expressed in the following references:

The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church:

Trinitarianism, belief in the Trinity, is a mark of Roman
Catholicism, Eastern and Oriental Orthodoxy as well as of the
mainstream traditions arising from the Protestant
Reformation, such as Anglicanism, Baptist, Methodism,
Lutheranism and Presbyterianism. The Doctrine of the Trinity
is the central dogma of Christian theology. [Oxford Dictionary
of the Christian Church. Oxford University Press, 2005, article:
Trinity]

The Evangelical Dictionary of Theology:

 TrinityThe name of the fundamental mystery of
Christianity, that of the one Nature and three Persons (Father,
Son and Holy Spirit) in God. [Walter A. Elwell, General Editor,
The Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, Baker Books, 2001].

The Encyclopedia Americana:

TRINITY, The central and characteristic Christian doctrine of
God is that He exists in Three Persons, the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Spirit....

Catholic Church:
The mystery of the Holy Trinity is the most fundamental of
our faith. On it everything else depends and from it everything
else flows. [OConnor, Foreword, Handbook for Todays Catholic,
Liguori Publications, 1994, p. 16]

Reformed Dogmatics:
...the entire Christian belief system stands or falls with the
confession of Gods Trinity. It is the core of the Christian faith,
the root of all its dogmas, the basic content of the new
covenant.... [Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Grand
Rapids, Michigan, Baker Academic, Vol. 2, p. 260]

Wikipedia:
The Trinity is an essential doctrine of mainstream
Christianity. Father, Son and Holy Spirit represents both the
immanence and transcendence of God.... [Christianity,
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]
The Splendor of the Three-in-One God:
The monotheistic doctrine of God is at the headwaters of
the Christian faith, but it is the doctrine of the Trinity which
makes our doctrine of God distinctively Christian. Islam, one of
the worlds fastest growing religions, is monotheistic, but
rejects entirely the doctrine of the Trinity as unreasonable.
Jewish critics have long regarded the doctrine of the Trinity as
 polytheistic. Clearly the doctrine of the Trinity is a stumbling
block to vast numbers of people, but without it we are no
longer Christians.... [The Splendor of the Three-in-One God, R.
Scott Clark, Resident Faculty, Westminster Seminary, California,
2008.]

The vital importance of the Holy Trinity is expressed by the

following Baptist appeal:
The prodigious energies that the great apologists of
Christian orthodoxy throughout the centuries have poured into
defending the historic doctrine of the Trinity should humble
the pervasive laxity and docility of the church today with
regard to this cardinal tenet of the faith. It is not simply a
heady speculation or abstract doctrine without real, live
import for our lives. The Trinity grounds our salvation in the
immutable reality of the Godhead. It is not an optional or
marginal teaching.... Rather, the Trinity is a doctrinal hill that
all Bible-believing Christians must be willing to die on and to
defend with the utmost of fortitude.... This is a matter of
eternal salvation and is precisely why we must not be lax
toward it but must be ready to offer a defensein an age
where it is unpopular to do soof the paramount importance
and centrality of the Trinity. [Gannon Murphy, The Importance
of Defending the Trinity, Founders Journal, Winter 2003]
The dogma of the Trinity is at the core of the Christian faith
wrote the British Methodist Theologian William Burt Pope, D.D.:
The doctrine of the ever-blessed Trinity is essential to
Christianity; there is no Theology, there is no Christology
without it. [Pope, Compendium of Christian Theology. New
York: Phillips & Hunt, 1881, Vol. 1, p. 284]

The dogma of the Trinity is central to Christianity declared

Francis J. Hall, D.D. It constitutes the most fundamental and
significant of Christian doctrine and upon its truth the validity of
the Christian system...absolutely depends. [Dr. Hall was professor of
dogmatic theology at Union Theological Seminary, New York].

He went on:
The doctrine of the Trinity is the interpretive principle of all
Christian doctrine, the ultimate basis of Christian ideals and
hopes, and the most vital and inspiring of all the truths which
human minds can contemplate.... The doctrine of the Trinity
must occupy the central place in any sound or adequate
conception of spiritual realities. It constitutes the postulate of
the doctrines of the Incarnation, of the Atonement, of the
Church, of justification and salvation, and of the coming
kingdom of God. If it were shown to be false, these doctrines
would have to be modified beyond recognition, and
Christianity would become something quite other than it
actually is. Its faith would become no one can imagine
what....its worship would suffer condemnation as hopelessly
polytheistic.... (emphasis added). [Hall, Dogmatic Theology,
Longmans & Green, New York and London, 1910, Vol. 4, p. ix.]

Rev. Archibald Alexander Hodge D.D., former Principal of

Princeton Theological Seminary, declared:
it is essential to salvation to believe in the three persons
in one Godhead.
John Theodore Mueller said:
Those who deny the Triune God and his redemptive work
are outside the church and without hope of salvation. [The
Lutheran Confession, 1953, p. 6 (Missouri Synod)]
In the course of Christianity a few smaller denominations
rejected the dogma of the Trinity. Between 1548 and 1574
antitrinitarian congregations emerged in Poland. Calling
themselves Unitarians, they were persecuted throughout Europe. In
the 17th century Unitarian parishes arose in England and in the 18 th
in the USA. The nature religion of Deism that appeared during the
Enlightenment period also rejected the Trinity. Today non-
trinitarian faiths include some Adventists, The Way International,
Jehovas Witnesses, Christadelphians and Oneness Pentecostals

Four

Examples of Christian Denominations

Professing the Dogma of the Trinity
The Bible is not my Book and Christianity is not my religion.
I could never give assent to the long complicated statements
of Christian dogma.
President Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to a friend

CHRISTIAN DENOMINATIONS express their belief in the Blessed

Trinity through their prayers, catechisms and articles of faith.
Priests and ministers traditionally begin divine service with the
words, In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit. At the conclusion they may bless their congregations in the
name of the Holy Trinity, such as May Almighty God bless you, the
Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Following an ancient custom,
some Christians cross themselves while saying, In the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Clergy administer
baptism while saying, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and
the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Ministers call on the Trinity when they bless edifices or other

objects. For example, on February 21, 1885, the dedication of the
Washington Monument was concluded in the U.S. Capitol by Rev.
John A. Lindsay D.D., chaplain of the House of Representatives. He
prayed, The blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Spirit, be among you and remain with you always. Amen.
 Various denominations manifest their Trinitarian faith with
statements like the following:
There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without
body or parts, of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; the
maker and preserver of all things, both visible and invisible.
And in unity of this Godhead there are three persons, of one
substance, power, and eternitythe Father, the Son, and the
Holy Ghost. [United Methodist Church]

The eternal triune God reveals Himself to us as Father, Son,

and Holy Spirit, with distinct personal attributes, but without
division of nature, essence, or being
[Southern Baptist Convention]

There is only one true Godthe Triune Godwho exists in

three separate but equal persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
[Lutheran Church]

We believe in the Holy Trinity. There is one God, who exists

eternally in three personsthe Father, the Son and the Holy
Spirit. [ Presbyterian Church in America]

God the Father is the fountainhead of the Holy Trinity. The

Scriptures reveal the one God in Three PersonsFather, Son
and Holy Spiriteternally sharing the same nature.
[The Orthodox Church]

There is but One Living and True God, the Great Creator,
and there are three persons in the Godhead. The Father, the
Son and the Holy Ghost. [Congregational
Holiness Church]

We believe in the one living and true God, both holy and
loving, eternal, unlimited in power, wisdom, goodness, the
Creator and Preserver of all things. Within the unity there are
three persons of one essential nature, power and eternitythe
 Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. [ The Weslyan
Church]

The Triple God in the form of one head with three faces.

Five
The Three Persons of the Most Holy Trinity
Are Truly Distinct
Father, Son and Holy Spirit
are strictly, simply, truly and really so different or distinct
that one is born of another, and one is breathed out by the others,
and all these three are shut up in one jar.

Dr. Servetus

ACCORDING TO THE ATHANASIAN CREED, Christians worship one

God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the persons
nor dividing the substance. Not confounding the persons means
that each divine individual is addressed as a distinct being, as in the
prayers:

Glory be to the Father, who by his almighty power and love

created me, making me in image and likeness of God.
Glory be to the Son, who by his precious blood delivered me
from hell, and opened for me the gates of heaven.
Glory be to the Holy Spirit, who has sanctified me in the
sacrament of Baptism, and continues to sanctify me by the
graces I receive daily from his bounty.
Glory be to the three adorable Persons of the Holy Trinity, now
and forever.

The Persons of the Blessed Trinity differ among themselves in

their origins, functions and attributes. The Father, the First Person,
was neither created nor begotten but existed always. The Son was
begotten by the Father and sent to earth. The Holy Spirit was not
begotten but proceeds from both the Father and the Son
(according to the Western Church) or only from the Father
(according to the Eastern Orthodox Church). Therefore, only the
Father is self-existent; whereas, Son and Spirit although divine
depend for their being on the Father. Although Son and Spirit
originated from the Father, they are equal to him in status and age.
In the words of the Athanasian Creed: 1. The Father is made of
none, neither created, nor begotten. 2. The Son is of the Father
alone, not made, nor created, but begotten. 3. The Holy Ghost is
of the Father and Son, neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but
proceeding.
Despite these fundamental differences, the three Persons are
allegedly totally alike. All this raises some questions in the earth-
bound mind. How is the Son begotten by the Father who is a
male without a wife? Father and Son can be totally alike only if the
Father splits in two like an ameba. The Holy Ghost is not begotten
but proceeds from the Father and the Son. How can one male
proceed from two other males?
And in this Trinity none is afore, or after another....
(Athanasian Creed). Although one Divine Person is born of another
and a third proceeds from two others, they have always existed at
the same time, because none came before another. But how could
the Son be born of the Father if the two always existed
simultaneously? When did the Father find time? The same may be
asked about the Holy Ghost.
The permanent distinction of Father, Son and Holy Spirit is also
manifested in their different missions and attributes. Each of the
Holy Three is not only a specific and discreet entity, but each plays
a unique role. The Father does not become man and die on the
cross, instead he accepts the redemptive sacrifice of his Son. The
Holy Spirit does not rise from the dead, instead he heals and
comforts the faithful.

After God the Father created the universe and mankind, he sent
God the Son to earth to assume human nature so he could sacrifice
himself to the Father for the sins of mankind. He underwent the
passion and death on the cross to redeem mankind. However, he is
not only our redeemer but also the mediator between man and the
Father.
God the Holy Spirit impregnated the Blessed Virgin Mary so that
she begot God the Son as Jesus Christ. Later the Spirit in the form
of a dove descended on Jesus at his baptism in the Jordan River.
After his death, the Son with the Father sent the Spirit to earth
where he bore witness to the Son. The Spirit descended on the
heads of the Apostles in the form of flames to give them certain
powers. He continues to sanctify the faithful. Christians pray to:
God the Father, who created us,
 God the Son, who suffered for us on the cross,
God the Holy Spirit, who sanctified us in Baptism.
In the Christian Trinity there are three Hims, three centers of
consciousness, said Joseph Kenneth Grider. However, they differ
in their font of knowledge; for example, God the Son doesnt know
all the Father knows. [Grider, (Wesleyan Theological Society).
Contemporary Evangelical Thought: Basic Christian Doctrines . New York: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, 1962, p. 36].

Jesus said:
But as for that day or hour [when the world will end],
nobody knows it, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son; no
one but the Father (Mark 13:32).
Moreover, they also have independent wills. Jesus said:
I have come from heaven, not to do my own will, but to do
the will of him who sent me (John 6:38).
They are not always of one mind: The Father decided his Son
should suffer crucifixion, but the Son wasnt so keen about it:
Father, he said, If you are willing, take this cup away from
me. Nevertheless, let your will be done, not mine (Luke
22:42-43 and Matthew 26:39).
The division between Father and Son is most pronounced when
Jesus cries out in his death agony:
My God, my God, why have you deserted me? (Mark
15:34).
Finally he says, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.
After this he ascends to the Father and sits at his right hand.
Now, we wonder how beings so different could simultaneously
be exactly alike. But if they are completely alike, why have three of
them?
 The Athanasian Creed compels us to acknowledge each Person
by himself to be God and Lord. A person is someone who posses
his own unique mind and will. Ebon Musings commented:
This is the fundamental paradox of the Trinity. If the
Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit have separate
consciousnesses or desires, then they are each separate gods,
and there is no sense in which they are the same being. In that
case, Christianity is polytheistic. But, on the other hand, if the
Son and the Holy Spirit have no separate consciousness or will
from the Father, then they have no independent existence at
all...then there is no Trinity at all.... Either way, the resolution is
the same: the Christian divinity can be either one or three, but
not both at the same time. [ Ebon Musings, Three in One:
The doctrine of the Trinity, The Atheism Pages. ebonmusings.org.]

If we focus on the distinct origin and actions of the three Divine

Persons, they are three distinct gods. If so, what happened to the
oneness of God? On the other hand, if we concentrate on the
oneness of God, we may wonder what happened to the
discreteness of each Person.
Some theologians argued that everything the Trinity does is
done by Father, Son, and Spirit working together with one will...
(Trinity, Wikipedia). Thus we attribute to the Father the works of
creation, to the Son the work of redemption, and to the Holy Ghost
the work of sanctification. In reality these works belong equally to
all three. [Most Reverend Louis Laravoire Morrow, S.T.D., Bishop of
Krishnagar, Chapter 12, Unity of the Blessed Trinity, My Catholic Faith: A
Manual of Religion].

The Athanasian Creed forbids us to confound or confuse the

three divine Persons. However, isnt this what we do when we strip
away their particularity? Moreover, the idea that the three Divine
Persons act as One God collides with the dogma of the
redemption, a key doctrine of the Christian faith. According to this
tenant, the Son, Jesus, offered satisfaction to his Father for the sins
of mankind. He did this by sacrificing himself to the Father on the
cross; this offering propitiated the Fathers wrath so that he could
forgive the sins of mankind. As Jesus said when he gave wine to his
Apostles at the Last Supper: Drink all of you from this, for this is
my blood, the blood of the new testament, which shall be shed for
many for the forgiveness of sins (Matthew 26:27-29). As Paul said,
...we were reconciled to God by the death of His son... (Letter to
the Romans 5:10).

God the Father accepted the sacrifice of Jesus, whereby the

Divine honour is repaired and the Divine wrath appeased.... Gods
satisfaction and mans restoration is brought about by Christs
vicarious office working through satisfactory and meritorious
actions performed in our behalf. [Redemption, New Advent:
The Catholic Encyclopedia].

In every sacrificial offeringsuch as that of Jesusone

individual offers a sacrifice to another individualin this case the
Father. One cannot offer sacrifice to oneself. However, if Father,
Son and Spirit acted as One God, then God would have sacrificed
himself to himself to appease his own wrath. This would be the
heresy of Patripassionism, which holds that Jesus and the Father are
one person; therefore, the Father would also have been born,
suffered and died on the cross (from patri = father and passio =
suffering). This interpretation would undermine the key Christian
doctrine of Redemption through the death of Jesus.
The Father is not the Son and the Son is not the Holy Spirit;
However, each is God.
 Six
What the Trinity Is Not
Sabellianism or Modalism
I have found Christian dogma unintelligible.
Early in life I absented myself from Christian assemblies.

Benjamin Franklin, Toward The Mystery

THE CHRISTIAN GOD is not one person who assumes different roles
or modes as occasion arises. Instead, God is three separate,
simultaneous Persons each of whom has a unique and consistent
character that permanently differentiates him from the others.
God the Father is not God the Son, but generates the Son
eternally, as the Son is eternally begotten. The Holy Spirit is neither
the Father nor the Son, but a distinct person having his divine
nature from the Father and the Son by eternal procession.

Some theologians concluded that the worship of three

permanently distinct divine entities landed Christianity in tri-theism.
No matter how you turned them, Father, Son and Holy Spirit always
turned up as three. To avoid this, they interpreted God as one
divine person who acted sometimes as Father, sometimes as Son
and on occasion as Holy Spirit, just as a single human being may
assume alternately the role of son, husband or father. This
interpretation of God is known as the heresy of Sabellianism or
Modalism; it denies the permanent distinctiveness and individuality
of the three Persons in the Trinity. [Sabellianism and Oneness
Pentecostalism, Wikipedia]

Jerome the Elder of Prague taught that Father, Son and Holy
Ghost were simply three temporary modes or expressions of the
one divine substance, like water, steam and ice are three successive
forms of the earthly substance H2O. After being painfully chained
up for more than a year, Jerome, plus his writings, were burned at
the stake in 1416 by the Ecumenical Council meeting in Constance,
Germany. [Waclaw Urban. Der Antitrinitarismus
in den Bhmischen Lndern und in der Slowakei im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert.
Baden-Baden: Editions Valintin Koerner, 1986, p. 17].

Both Catholic and the Protestant churches have condemned

this interpretation of the Blessed Trinity. Besides Jerome they
burned at the stake several other proponents of this belief
including Servetus.
Christian Scripture presents each of the Holy Three as a
permanent entity and not as temporary function or mode of one
God. The Christian Churches today still reject this interpretation of
the Trinity, although they no longer burn its proponents at the
stake. This conception of God is condemned by the mainline
Christian confessions, because it would make hash of Holy
Scriptures. For example, if Jesus and the Holy Spirit were one
person, Jesus would have impregnated the Virgin Mary and
become his own father. If the Father and Jesus were the same
individual, Jesus would have prayed to himself when he prayed to
the Father. How could the Father call Jesus his son if they were one
and the same? How could Jesus say that he doesnt know
everything the Father knows if they were one person? Why would
Jesus on the cross feel abandoned by the Father (by himself)? How
could Jesus ascend into heaven and sit at the right hand of the
Father (his own right hand)?
 The simultaneous appearance of Father, Son and Holy Spirit
during the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan demolishes the
Sabellian idea that God is sometimes Father, sometimes Son and
then Spirit:
It was at this time that Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee
and was baptized in the Jordan by John. And at once, as he
was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart
and the Spirit, like a dove, descending on him. And a voice
came from heaven, You are my Son, the beloved; my favour
rests on you (Mark, 1:9-11).
 THE BAPTISM OF JESUS
Above: God the Son (Jesus) being baptized in the River
Jordan by John the Baptist. God the Father blesses the scene
from above. Descending on Jesus is God the Holy Spirit in the
form of a dove. The simultaneous appearance of Father, Son
and Spirit in the same scene shows that they are three
permanently distinct beings. It gives a lie to the Modalist
heresy whereby God assumes now this and now that persona
or mode. (The fact that all three appear simultaneously does
not, however, proof that the are one God.)
The Christian doctrine of atonement is predicated on God the
Father and God the Son being permanently distinct individuals.
The Son became a human being and sacrificed himself on the cross
to the Father. The Father accepted this perfect sacrifice, and he was
again reconciled to mankind. In the words of the Dictionary of
Theology, God forgives the worlds sin because Jesus Christ has
made satisfaction in our stead and for us by his death on the cross
and has atoned to God.... [Karl Rahner and Herbert Vorgrimler, editors,
Dictionary of Theology. New York: Crossroads, 1981, second edition, p. 434].
If God the Father and God the Son were not permanently
distinct persons but a single individual, Christ would have sacrificed
himself to himself to appease his own anger. To avoid such
nonsense, Christian theologians insist on the perpetually discrete
existence of Father and Son, as well as Spirit. Christians pray to
each Person as eternally disparate beings. For example, in the
hymn, The Day of Resurrection:
Then praise we God the Father,
And praise we Christ his Son,
With them the Holy Spirit, Eternal Three in One.
They imagine Father, Son and Spirit as existing simultaneously:
GLORY TO YOU GOD THE FATHER. Supreme King, Creator of
the Heavens and the earth....
 GLORY TO YOU GOD THE SON OF THE HEAVENLY FATHER,
my most loved Lord Jesus Christ....
GLORY TO YOU GOD THE HOLY SPIRIT, Spirit of the Father
and of the Son, Voice of the Wisdom of God....

PENTECOST
God the Holy Spirit is descending on Mary, the Mother of
Jesus, and on the Apostles after Jesus has ascended to heaven.
In the foreground is Mary with St. John, who was appointed by
Jesus as her care taker. The Spirit in the form of a dove is
bestowing his gifts on the Apostles along the red lines. (The
long neck and red beak of the dove resembles more a goose
but note the divine halo.)
 Seven
God the Dove
You shall not have strange gods before me.
First Commandment of Yahweh

THE HOLY SPIRIT WAS DESIGNATED ALMIGHTY GOD by the First

Council of Constantinople in 381. With the addition of this Third
Person, the Holy Trinity was operational. The Nicene Creed
proclaims:
And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord, and Giver of Life,
who proceedeth from the Father [and the Son]; who with the
Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified....
This Holy Spirit is the Christian personification of an Old
Testament attribute of Jahwehhis breath or spirit. Voltaire
described the origin of the Holy Spirit as follows:
How unfortunately ambiguous is this Holy Ghost, this
agion pneuma of which the christicoles have made a third god!
The word meant only breath. You shall find in the Gospel
attributed to John (20:22): When he said this, he breathed on
them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost.
Take note that this was an ancient ceremony of magicians,
to breathe into the mouth of those whom they desired to
bewitch. There, then, is the origin of the third god of these
maniacs... [Voltaire on Religion: Selected Writings, edited by
Kenneth W. Appelgate. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co.,
1974, p. 169.]
 According to Gregory Nazianzus, a Father of the Church, God
the Holy Spirit is intelligent, free and acting as personally as God
the Father himself. He gives commands, is made sad and becomes
angry. [Gregory Nazianzus, Theological Oration]

The origin of God the Holy Spirit is somewhat unusual. He is

not born, but he proceeds from both the Father and the Son
(filioque) according to the Western creeds.
The Holy Spirit is probably the member of the Holy Trinity
most difficult for non-believers to comprehend. I understand
about the Father and the Son, a newcomer from Asia asked at a
meeting of charismatics at The Catholic University of America. But
what about this pigeon?
God the Holy Spirit appeared on earth in the form of wind,
tongues of fire but also as a dove. Despite the fact that the Bible
prohibits the worship of birds, Christian iconographers have
generally depicted God the Holy Ghost as a dove.

This might not have met the approval of St. Paul: The more
they called themselves philosophers the more stupid they
grew, until they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for a
worthless imitation, for the image of mortal man, of birds, of
quadrupeds and reptiles (Letter of Paul to the Romans 1:22-
24).

In older iconography the Holy Ghost appears also at times as

a human being. Some artists pictured the Holy Ghost with Father
and Son as identical triplets. Others attempted to distinguish the
Holy Ghost from his fellows by attaching wings to his back. Still
others tried to show their age differences by portraying the Father
with a long white beard, the Son with a short dark beard and the
Spirit sans beard; thus they upheld the article of the Creed
according to which the Father begot the Son and the two together
generated the Holy Ghost. But in doing so the artists violated
another article which holds that Father, Son and Spirit existed from
all eternity and must therefore be of identical age. By Papal edict,
God the Holy Spirit may no longer be portrayed as a human being
but exclusively as a dove. Note that members of the Russian
Orthodox Church avoid eating dove on the grounds that in
Christian belief it is the symbol of the Holy Spirit. [Theodor H.
Gaster, The Holy and the Profane: Evolution of Jewish Folkways. New York:
William Morrow & Co., 1980, p. 205]

Yahweh forbids the worship of strange gods. But what are

we to make of this spectral deity, this Holy Ghost, who sometimes
comes as a bird? Isnt this a strange god indeed? However, god-
as-bird is not as extraordinary as it may seem; the ancient Egyptians
worshipped the falcon god, which had a mans body and a birds
head. When God the Son appeared on earth in the form of a
human being, theologians declared him to be true God and true
man. So far, however, theologians have not declared the Holy
Spirit true God and true bird.
God the Holy Ghost played a key role in the incarnation of
God the Son by impregnating the Virgin Mary. The future Mother
of God was told by an angel, The Holy Spirit will come upon you,
and the power of the Most High will cover you with its shadow
(Luke. 1:35). Consequently Mary conceived what is in her by the
Holy Spirit (Matthew, 1:20).
In Christi an iconography, the Holy Ghost hovers over Mary in
the form of a dove as she conceives Jesus. What is otherwise
achieved through the action of a male, was done to Mary by Gods
omnipotence. [Michael Schmaus, Katholische Dogmatik (Catholic
Dogma), Mariology, Vol. 5, 1955.]
Thomas Paine wrote:
...Jesus Christ [was] begotten, they say, by a ghost, whom
they call holy, on the body of a woman, engaged in marriage,
and afterwards married, whom they call a virgin... [Paine, The
Age of Reason, Part II].
 As Zeus appeared in the form of a swan to impregnate Leda, so
the Holy Spirit comes as a dove to impregnate the Blessed Virgin
Mary. This calls to mind the following doggerel (or dovverel if you
prefer):
There once was a God called Ghost,
All manner of shapes he could boast.
But when it was time to mate,
He came as a fowl to the maid.
The Triune God sent a piece of Himself, the Holy Ghost, to
seduce and impregnate a human virgin; however, it wasnt rape,
because the Virgin consented (See Luke 1:24-33).
According to the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity, the father of
Jesus is God the Father, the First Person of the Trinity. However,
this was not his only father. According to the Gospels, the other
father of Jesus of Nazareth, the Galilean carpenter, is God the Holy
Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity. As we just learned, it was he
in the form of a bird who impregnated Christs mother, the Blessed
Virgin Mary. Therefore, Jesus has a father according to his divinity
and another according to his humanity. But why did Jesus while on
earth acknowledge only his father corresponding to his divinity and
completely ignore his father according to his flesh? Was he
ashamed of father number 2, the spouse of his mother?
James Joyce attributed Jesus ability to ascend to heaven to his
father having been a bird. As Jesus says farewell to his apostles on
Mount Olivet, he tells them:
I am the queerest young fellow that ever you heard.
My mothers a Jew, my fathers a bird....
Whats bred in the bone cannot fail me to fly,
Olivets breezy... Goodbye, now, goodbye (Ulysses).
 Trinities are common in religion, Carl G. Jung tells us. There are,
for example, the Egyptian gods Osiris (father), Isis (mother) and
Horus (son).
Jung wrote:
Triads of gods appear very early, at the primitive level. The
archaic triads in the religions of antiquity and of the East are
too numerous to be mentioned here. Arrangement in triads is
an archetype in the history of religion, which in all probability
formed the basis of the Christian Trinity. [ Jung. A
Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity, Psychology
and Religion: West and East, Vol 11, The Collected Works of Carl G.
Jung (translator F.C. Hull). Bollingen Series XX. Princeton University
Press].

The divine triad is a reflection in the sky of the human

family on earth. While the Christian Trinity boasts a father
and a son, it notably lacks a
mother; instead, we have the
enigmatic Holy Ghost. Early an
effort was made to make the
Holy Spirit serve as mother.
Old Testament Holy Wisdom,
which bore similarities with the
Holy Spirt, was feminine. This
development was short
circuited, however, by an
interpolator of the Gospels of
Matthew and Luke; he made the
Holy Ghost the impregnator of
the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Impregnators are usually male.
 So the Christian religion is stuck with a divine family of
three males.
Above: Folk painting of the Trinity
The Irish poet William Butler Yates commented on that
masculine Trinity in his poem Ribh Denounces Patrick:
An abstract Greek absurdity has crazed the man Recall
that masculine Trinity. Man, woman, child (a daughter or a
son), Thats how all natural or supernatural stories run....
[The Collected Poems of W. B. Yates, Macmillen Co., 1958, p. 283.]

In the opinion of the theologian and physician Michael Servetus,

The doctrine of the Holy Spirit as a third separate being lands us in
practical tritheism, even though the unity of God be insisted on....
[Servetus, On the Errors of the Trinity, The Two Treatises of Servetus on the
Trinity. Cambridge: Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1932].

Left: God the Dove in the act of impregnating the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Right: The God Zeus in the form of a swan about to impregnate Leda.
The Spouse of the Holy Spirit

Sponsa, Spiritus, Sancti

 Eight
Is the Doctrine of the
Trinity Based on the Bible?
In regard to the doctrine of the Most Holy Trinity...
this unintelligible doctrine is nowhere found in scripture.
Voltaire, Dictionnaire Philosophique

DOES THE HOLY BIBLE UPHOLD THE TRINITARIAN DOGMA of one

Christian deity consisting of three Divine Persons?
We could assume that the doctrine of the Blessed Trinitythe
central dogma of Christianitywould be solidly based on the Holy
Bible, the foundation of the faith. However, we vainly search for
words like Trinity in the Bible or expressions like God the Son or
God the Holy Spirit. The Bible says nothing about God being
three Persons or three Persons being One God.
Michael Servetus could write,
Not even a single word is found in the whole Scriptures
about the Trinity, nor about the persons, nor about the
essence, nor about the substances unity, nor the nature of the
various divine beings. [On the Errors of the Trinity, The
Two Treatises of Servetus on the Trinity . Edited by Earl Morse
Wilbur. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1932].

The God of Abraham and of the Torah announced through his

Prophet Isaiah, I, I am Yahweh, there is no other savior but me
(Isaiah 43:11). The Catholic Churchs appointment of Jesus as the
Savior of mankind is, therefore, contradicted by the very
words of the Prophet whom Jesus vowed to uphold.
 The Jews, with whom God communicated personally during Old
Testament times, never believed in a triune God. The rabbinical
writings (Talmud) are voluminous, but you will find nothing there
about the concept of a trinity. The Hebrew Bible most explicitly
proclaims one, singular GodYahweh:
I am Yahweh, unrivaled; there is no other God besides me
(Isaiah 45:5).
The Old Testament offers no hint of a threesome of divinities;
God is one and one alone:
No god was formed before me, nor will be after me ( Isaiah
43:10).
Therefore, contrary to the Christian creeds, God the Son could
not have been begotten by God the Father, and Jesus Christ could
not be God.

A Yiddish song goes like this:

Gott is ene God is one
und mehr kene. and more none.

The doctrine of the Christian Trinity seems to violate the First

Commandment of the Jewish Bible: You shall have no gods except
me (Exodus 20:3 and Deuteronomy 5:7). The Old Testament
establishes the God of Israel as the one and only God:

I am God unrivaled, God who has no like (Isaiah 46:9).

Thus says Israels king and his redeemer, Yahweh Sabaoth: I

am the first and the last; there is no other God besides me
(Isaiah 44:6).
...you alone are God, Yahweh (Isaiah 37:20).
With you alone is God, and he has no rival; there is no other
god (Isaiah 45:14).
Yahweh, there is no other like you (Jeremiah 10:6).

Levi Leonard Paine, professor of ecclesiastical history, declared,

The Old Testament is strictly monotheistic. God is a single
personal being. The idea that a trinity is to be found there or
even in any way shadowed forth, is an assumption that has
long held sway in theology, but is utterly without foundation.
[Paine, A Critical History of the Evolution of Trinitarianism.
Houghton Mifflin and Co., 1900, p. 4, Bangor (Maine) Theological
Seminary].

The Encyclopedia of Religion stated:

Theologians today are in agreement that the Hebrew Bible
does not contain a doctrine of the Trinity. [Encyclopedia of
Religion. Macmillan Publishing Company, 1987, Vol. 15, p. 54].

The Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics pointed out:

There is in the Old Testament no indication of distinctions
in the Godhead; it is an anachronism to find either the doctrine
of the Incarnation or that of the Trinity in its pages. [The
Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. 6, p. 254].

Rev. Edmund J. Fortman wrote:

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.
[Fortman S.J., The Triune God. Baker Book House, 1972, pp. xv, 8, 9].
 So we see that the Hebrew Bible offers no hint of the existence
of a trio of divine persons; on the contrary, it makes clear that God
is one person and one only.
The Encyclopedia of Catholicism indicated:
...scholars generally agree that there is no doctrine of
the trinity as such in either the Old Testament or the New
Testament. [The HarperCollins Encyclopedia of
Catholicism. Richard McBrian, general editor, 1995].

The Illustrated Bible Dictionary stated,

The word trinity is not found in the Bible.... It did not find a
place formally in the theology of the church until the fourth
century...it is not a biblical doctrine in the sense that any
formation of it can be found in the Bible.... Scripture does not
give us a formulated doctrine of the trinity.... [Illustrated Bible
Dictionary. Intervarsity Press, Tyndale House Publishers, 1980, part
3, p. 1]

Catholic theologian Karl Rahner recognized that theologians in

the past have been embarrassed by the simple fact that in reality
the Scriptures do not explicitly present a doctrine of the imminent
Trinity (even Johns prologue is no such doctrine). [Rahner S.J.
The Trinity: Milestones in Catholic Theology (Der dreifaltige Gott als
transzendeter Urgrund der Heilsgeschichte). NY: Herder & Herder, 1997, p.
22.]

Rev. John W. Ritenbaugh said, In reality, the Trinity doctrine

must be read into the Scripturesit is not derived from it....
[Ritenbaugh, Image and Likeness of God (Part 2), Biblical Tools.
Church of the Great God, Charlotte, NC, pastored by Ritenbaugh].]

The New Encyclopaedia Britannica noted:

 Neither the word Trinity, nor the explicit doctrine as such,
appears in the New Testament, nor did Jesus and his followers
intend to contradict the Shema in the Old Testament: Hear, O
Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord... (Deuteronomy, 6:4).
[Trinity, The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, Micropaedia , 1976,
Vol. X, p. 126.]

The Oxford Companion to the Bible declared:

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 canon. [Bruce Metzger and Michael David Coogan, editors,
The Oxford Companion to the Bible. Oxford University Press, USA,
third edition, 1993, p. 782]

According to John L. McKenzie, S.J., the concept of the Trinity is

based on Greek philosophical speculations:
The trinity of God is defined by the church as the belief that
in God are three persons who subsist in one nature. The belief
as so defined was reached only in the 4 th and 5th centuries AD
and hence is not explicitly and formally a biblical belief. The
trinity of persons within the unity of nature is defined in terms
of person and nature, which are Greek philosophical terms;
actually the terms do not appear in the Bible. The Trinitarian
definitions arose as the result of long controversies in which
these terms and others such as essence and substance were
erroneously applied to God by some theologians. [Rev.
McKenzie, The Dictionary of The Bible. Touchstone Book, 1995, p.
899]

Nevertheless, some Catholics maintain that Scriptures prove the

existence of the Holy Trinity:
 In the Scriptures it is revealed that there are three persons
in one God. [Gregory A. Pesely, Trinity Sunday, Our Sunday
Visitor, June 10, 1990, p. 8.]
the various elements of the Trinitarian doctrine are all
expressly taught in the New Testament. [The Blessed Trinity,
New Advent, The Catholic Encyclopedia, 2017].
The doctrine of the Trinity is encapsulated in Matthew
20:19, where Jesus instructs the apostles , Go therefore and
make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the
Father, and the Son and Holy Spirit. [Catholic Answers
Magazine and Catholic Online].
First, Jesus never said these words; they are an interpolation; in
other words, a forgery. Secondly, listing the three does not prove
that they form a Trinity, one God in three Persons.
On Trinity Sunday three Bible passages are read to express the
theme of the day. They are Exodus 34:4-6, 8-9, Second Corinthians
13:11-13 and Gospel of John 3:16-18. Here, if anywhere in Holy
Scriptures, we could expect to find proof of the Trinity. However,
you would listen in vain for any mention of the Trinity, directly or
indirectly. [Trinity Sunday is the first Sunday after Pentecost in the
Western liturgical calendar (Wikipedia).]

Exodus is mute about a trinity. St. Pauls Second Letter to the

Corinthians ends with a trinity of sorts: The grace of the Lord
Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit
be with you all. But this Pauline trinity is a far cry from the later,
orthodox Trinity; in fact, it contradicts it. Since only one of the
three is called God, we must assume that the others are not God.
This goes along with Pauls outlook whereby only the Father but
not Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are God. In the Gospel of John,
Jesus calls himself Gods only Son (3:18). This may qualify as
equal to God, but it isnt the Trinity, because the Holy Ghost is not
identified as God.
 I realize that no one knows the actual names of the authors
of the four Gospels. Also, that Paul did not write all the letters
credited to him. In addition, there are numerous interpolations
in the Scriptures. It would have been impossible to point out
all these problems and at the same time pursue my topicthe
credibility of the Christian dogma of the Trinity. I have simply
used the standard bibles that Christians use today; their believe
in the authenticity of the Trinity is based on these writings.
The Author.

The oldest creeds, the Old Roman Creed and the Apostles
Creed, do not mention a Trinity; neither Jesus Christ nor the Holy
Ghost is identified as God. Jesus is called his only Son our Lord;
however, this does not necessarily mean that he was considered
Almighty God. Many people are called Sons of God in the Old
Testament. If Jesus is supposed to be the only Son of God what
about these others? (See Appendix EOld Roman Creed and
Apostles Creed).
Mackenzie-Hanson declared:
The early Church was NOT trinitarian. Even the Apostles
Creed...does not refer to the trinity, the divinity of Jesus or the
Holy Spirit, referring to them only as separate entities,
something that would have been far too important to miss-out
if it had been part of the doctrine of the early Church. In fact,
the concept of the trinity was unheard of by the early
Christians and never advocated by Jesus the Messiah. It is clear
that the early Christians were monotheistic both by instinct and
by teaching. [Rev. Dr. Brian Mackenzie-Hanson (Primate of the
Arian Catholic Church in the Archdiocese of York, UK), Disputation
 on Apostasies and Heresies, Legitimacy of the twenty-one
Ecumenical Councils..., Oct. 2007, pp. 3-4. Arius was a Libyan-born,
Amazigh (Berber) descended, Catholic priest of Alexandria.]

Theology of the Arian Catholic Church [http:arian-catholic.org]:

Arian Catholicism is the ecumenical theology of the early
Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, upholding the teaching of
Yeshua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) and his apostles through the
early church and following the guidance of St. Arius of
Alexandria, teaching that Yeshua was a man to be followed not
worshiped, an Orthodox Jew who was the spiritual son of
God.

The word Trias (of which the Latin Trinitas is a translation) is

first found in Theophilus of Antioch about 180 AD.... Shortly
afterwards it appears in its Latin form of Trinitas in Tertullian.
[The Catholic Encyclopedia, Robert Appleton Co., 1912, Vol. 15, p. 47.]
Hasty conclusions cannot be drawn from usage, for [Tertullian]
does not apply the words to Trinitarian theology. Tertullian
believed that Jesus was subordinate to God the Father. In other
words, Trinitas did not yet mean three Persons in one God. The
orthodox Trinity required the unity of three equal Persons.
[OCarroll, Trinitas: A Theological Encyclopedia of the Holy Trinity . Liturgical
Press, 1987, p. 208.]

Did God Fool His Chosen People?

Almighty God made himself known to the Jews as a solitary
individual through the centuries. God had an especially close
relationship with Moses. When he had finished speaking with
Moses on the mountain of Sinai, he gave him two tablets of...stone
inscribed by the finger of God (Exodus 31:18). But the Trinity
apparently never came up. Then there was the time God showed
Moses his backside: you shall see the back of me, but my face is
not to be seen! (Exodus 33:18-23).
 How could Moses imagine Yahweh other than a singular God,
especially when he had made crystal clear that he tolerated no
other gods besides him? But then the Christian Church comes
along and reveals that Yahweh did not reign alone; there were two
associated divinitiesGod the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Now
Yahweh is no longer the solitary God of the Hebrews but only one
member of a triad. But why would Yahweh have led his chosen
people to believe that he was the one and only God when there was
also at his side God the Son and God the Holy Spirit?
Why for a thousand years did none of Gods prophets reveal this
Trinity to his people? Why would God inspire hundreds of pages of
Scripture and not use even one to teach about the Trinity if it was
such a central doctrine of the faith as the church maintains? Why
did not God, the Great Teacher, explain the Trinity to his people? If
it was a fundamental, core doctrine of such great importance, why
was it not clearly and unmistakably stated in Scripture.

Christians may reply that God waited until the birth of Jesus to
fully reveal himself. In other words, God had told the truth to the
Jews, just not the whole truth. However, God did not simply
withhold some of the information. God deceived his people into
thinking that he was a one-person God when he was actually a
three-person God. How could God, who is supposedly truth itself,
be so deceitful?
 Below: Woodcut of God the Father (left) and God the Son
(right), with God the Holy Spirit (middle). Jesus wears only a cloak
to display his bare torso, which was pierced by a lance. All three,
including the dove, wear the divine halo with the three beams or
rays. The book they hold may contain the names of the saved.
Below: The Holy Trinity with one head, four eyes,
three noses and three mouths.

Nine
Is Jesus Christ God?
The Father is greater than I.

Jesus Christ
THE DOCTRINE OF THE BLESSED TRINITY is predicated on Jesus
and the Holy Spirit being of identical nature, substance and
stature as God the Father. Were Jesus and the Spirit not fully
equal to Almighty God, the Trinity would be impossible; God the
Father could unite only with beings entirely like himself to form
One God.
Jesus never claimed to be God. He repeated to his followers this
exhortation from Deuteronomy: Listen, Israel, the Lord our God is
the one, only Lord... (Mark 12:29-30). If the God of Israel is the
only Lord God, Jesus cannot himself be Lord God.

Jesus said, You must worship the Lord your God, and serve him
alone (Matthew 4:10 and Luke 4:8). If people are to serve
exclusively the Lord God they would not be obliged to serve Jesus.
In that case Jesus is not God.

Jesus conceded his lack of two essential attributes of God

goodness and righteousness. When Jesus was addressed as
righteous he replied, Why do you call me righteous! No one is
righteous except God alone (Mark 10:17, Matthew 19:1617 and
Luke 18:18-19). Jesus also said, Why call me good? There is none
good but one, that is God (Matthew 19:17).

Jesus wanted to avoid his mission. Before his death, he knelt

down and prayed:

Father, he said, if you are willing, take this cup away

from me. Nevertheless, let your will be done, not mine. Then
an angel appeared to him, coming from heaven to give him
strength. In his anguish he prayed even more earnestly, and
sweat fell to the ground like great drops of blood (Luke 22:41-
44)
 Jesus wanted to escape his crucifixion, but that is why the Father
had sent him into the world in the first place. If Jesus were God, he
would certainly know that his mission on earth was to die for
mankind. This passage also shows clearly that Jesus considered
himself subordinate to the Father who decided Christs fate.
In referring to the end of the world, Jesus said,
But as for that day and hour, nobody knows it, neither the
angels of heaven, nor the Son, no one but the Father only
(Mark 13:32 and Matthew 24:36).
Had Jesus been God, he would have known when the world was
scheduled to end. Or should we assume that we are dealing here
with a being with two mindsa divine mind that can foretell the
future and a human mind that cannot? And the human mind
cannot know what the divine mind is thinking. According to
psychiatry, a being with several minds suffers from two or more
distinct identities or personality states. Are we to think that Jesus
suffered from Multiple Personality Disorder?
 Ten
Did His Contemporaries
Think of Jesus as God?
When his relatives heard of this, they set out to take charge of him,
convinced he was out of his mind.
Gospel of Mark 2:20-21

PAUL OF TARSUS WAS THE CHIEF PROMOTER OF THE CHRISTIAN

RELIGION; some scholars think of him as the intellectual author of
the faith. How did he view Jesus?
St. Paul made a clear distinction between Godwhom he
usually called God our Father or just plain Godand Jesus,
whom he usually called the Lord Jesus Christ but never God the
Son. For Paul only the Father is God; Jesus is merely our Lord.
Paul expresses this distinction in his greetings:
May God Our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ send you
grace and peace (First Letter to the Corinthians 1:3 and Letter
to the Romans 1:7).
We wish you the grace and peace of God our Father and of
the Lord Jesus Christ... (Letter to the Galatians 1:3-4).
May God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ grant peace,
love and faith to all the brothers (Letter to the Ephesians 6:23-
24).
Paul said, there is only one God and it isnt Jesus:
For there is only one God, and there is only one mediator
between God and mankind, himself a man, Christ Jesus, who
offered himself as a ransom for all (First Letter to Timothy 2:5-
6).
 According to Paul, the Father is the one God; therefore, the
Lord Jesus cannot be God:
There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God
who is Father of all (Letter to the Ephesians 4:5-6).
According to Paul, the Father is the God of Jesus:
May the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory,
give you a spirit of wisdom... (Letter to the Ephesians 1:17).
3
How could the Father be the God of Jesus if he himself were
God?
For Paul only God the Father is the eternal God, not Jesus. In his
Letter to the Romans, Paul spoke of the eternal God who alone is
wisdom; give glory therefore to him through Jesus Christ for ever
and ever. Amen (16:26-27).
Paul left room for no God but God the Father, whom he
acknowledged as the eternal King, the undying, invisible and only
God, [to whom] be honor and glory for ever and ever (First Letter
to Timothy 1:17
Paul also said,
Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is
Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of
Christ is God (First Letter to the Corinthians 11:3).
If Christ is subordinate to God how could he himself be God?
Paul spoke also of our Lord Jesus Christ, who at the due time will
be revealed by God, the blessed and only Ruler of all, the King of
kings and the Lord of lords, who alone is immortal... (First Letter to
Timothy 6:14-16). So, for Paul only God is the immortal ruler of all
and not Jesus Christ. If Jesus is not immortal, how could he be
God?
For Paul there is only one God, and he is not Jesus Christ:
 ...for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all
things come and for whom we exist; and there is one Lord,
Jesus Christ... (First Letter to the Corinthians 8:4-6).
For Paul, Jesus is subordinate to God:
And when everything is subjected to him, then the Son
himself will be subject in his turn to the One who subjected all
things to him, so that God may be all in all (First Letter to the
Corinthians 15:28).

How could Jesus be subjected to God if he himself were God?

In his letter to Titus, Paul appears to be saying that Jesus is God:
...we are waiting in hope for the blessing which will come
with the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior
Christ Jesus (2:13- 14, Catholic Jerusalem Bible).
However, this appears to be a mistranslation. Paul makes a
clear distinction between God and Jesus in all his other letters; why
would he equate Jesus with God here and nowhere else? I believe
that the correct translation is the glory of our great God and of
our Savior Christ Jesus. (emphasis added)
Did the Other Apostles Consider Jesus God?
The Apostle Jude dedicated the following doxology at the end
of his letter
To God, the only God, who saves us through Jesus Christ
our Lord, be the glory, majesty, authority and power, which he
had before time began, now and forever (Letter of Jude 25).
If God the Father is the only God, as Jude wrote, Jesus cannot be
God.
None of the Apostles claimed that Jesus was fully God and fully
man or that he was begotten not made, of one substance with
the Father, as the fourth century Nicene Creed maintains.
[Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in
the Bible (And Why We Dont Know About Them). HarperCollins, 2009].
 Did his relatives and neighbors think of Jesus as God?
His neighbors tried to kill him:
He came to Nazara [Nazareth] where he had been brought up,
and went into the synagogue on the sabbath day as he usually
did.... Then he began to speak to them.... They said... We have
heard all that happened in Capernaum, do the same here in your
own countryside. And he went on, I tell you solemnly, no prophet
is ever accepted in his own country.
[Jesus was explaining to his hometown folks why he could
perform few miracles there. They lacked sufficient faith, but
they werent satisfied with this.]
When they heard this everyone in the synagogue was enraged.
They sprang to their feet and hustled him out of the town; and they
took him up to the brow of the hill their town was built on,
intending to throw him down the cliff, but he slipped through the
crowd and walked away (Luke 4:16-30).
Not even his brothers had faith in him (John 7:5-6). Moreover,
his relatives thought he was crazy:
He went home again, and once more such a crowd
collected that they could not even have a meal. When his
relatives heard of this, they set out to seize him, convinced he
was out of his mind (Mark 3:20-21).

Jesus felt despised by his neighbors and relations, who had no

faith in him. Jesus preached in the synagogue of his hometown,
but the people would not accept him. And Jesus said to them, A
prophet is only despised in his own country, among his own
relations and in his own house; and he could work no miracles
there, though he cured a few sick people by laying his hands on
them. He was amazed at their lack of faith (Mark 6:4-6).
Jesus could work few miracles, because the people who knew
him had no faith in him. However, if Jesus were God, he could
surely work miracles whether the people had faith in him or not.

Eleven
Jesus Christ Is Subordinate to God
in the Theology of Saints Paul and John

THE TRINITY IS POSSIBLE ONLY IF JESUS IS GOD. For St. Paul, Jesus
was always our Lord Jesus Christ but never God. He drew a clear
distinction between one God, the Father, from whom all things
come and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things come.
Paul thought of Jesus as the agent through whom God created the
world. Therefore, Jesus was exalted above all men and the angels;
nevertheless, he was less than God, because he was created by him.
Jesus was the first-born of all creation; in other words, he was the
first to be created by God:
...for us there is one God, the Father, from whom all things
come and for whom we exist; and there is one Lord, Jesus
Christ, through whom all things come and through whom we
exist (First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians 8:6, Jerusalem
Bible).
The idea that Jesus or the Word was the agent of God in the
creation of the world was also expressed by St. John in the
Prologue to his Gospel:
In the beginning was the Word:
the Word was with God
 and the Word was God.
He was with God in the beginning.
Through him all things came to be,
not one thing had its being but through him...
(John 1:1-3, Jerusalem Bible)
The Word or Logos was in the beginning. In the
beginning of what? In the beginning of the world. But God has no
beginning; he is always. If the Word were God, it would be
understood that he existed through all eternity. No one would
need to explain that he was in the beginning of the world. The
emphasis on the Word having existed only from the beginning of
creation shows that he was not really God despite the fact that John
entitled him God.
The Word is with God, says John. The Word is therefore a
separate being from God; otherwise it could not be with God.
Therefore, there are either two Gods or the Word isnt a real God.
Philo of Alexandria (20 BC50 AD), a Hellenized Jew, used the
term Logos [Word] to mean an intermediary divine being or
demiurge. It was Gods instrument in the creation of the
universe. Demiurge is a Platonic concept for an artisan-like figure
responsible for the fashioning and maintenance of the physical
universe.... Although a fashioner, the demiurge is not quite the
creator figure in the familiar monotheistic sense.... [Logos and
Demiurge, (Wikipedia]
While the Synoptic GospelsMark, Matthew and Lukefail to
present Jesus as God, the Gospel of John lays the groundwork for
the elevation of Jesus to God by the Council of Nicea in 325.
William Harwood explained:
It was the Gospel of John, written at about the time of bar
Kokhbas rebellion of 132-135 CE, that transformed Christianity
from a monotheistic sect of pseudo-Jews into a pagan
 polytheistic mythology with two permanent gods, Yahweh and
Jesus. It did not, however, make Jesus part of a divine trinity.
The Trinity would not be inserted into Christianity for a further
two centuries after the publication of John. [Harwood, The
Making of a God, Mythologys Last Gods: Yahweh and Jesus.
Buffalo, NY, Prometheus Books, 1992, p. 342].
The Gospel of John calls Jesus the only Son of the Father and
Gods only Son. Some other verses from this Gospel could also be
interpreted as characterizing Jesus as God:
Jesus told the Jews, I tell you most solemnly, before
Abraham ever was, I am (8:58). [Jesus existed before
Abraham].

Jesus said to the Father, because you loved me before

the foundation of the world (17:24). [Jesus existed before
the creation of the world.] He also declared, Anyone who
has seen me has seen the Father (14:9 and 17:22).
When doubting Thomas saw Jesus after the resurrection, he
addressed him as, My Lord and my God (20:28-29) (Dominus et
Deus Noster)--the style of addressing the Emperor. Taken literally
this could mean that Thomas recognized Jesus as God; however, he
could have meant no more than recognizing him as an honorary
god.
In other verses of the Gospel of John, Jesus denied that he was
God. Addressing God the Father, Jesus said, And eternal life is this:
to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have
sent (17:3). If the Father is the only true God, Jesus cannot be God.
Jesus referred to the Father as the one God. If he is the one
God, how could Jesus also be God (5:44)? Jesus also told his
followers that God himself has set his seal on him (6:27). If Jesus
were God would he refer to another as God himself? Jesus said
that he was the one who comes from God... (6:46). If Jesus comes
from God could he also be God? Jesus said, my Father is greater
than I (14:28). If Jesus were God wouldnt he have equal status?

Twelve

Do Certain Bible Passages

Validate the Trinity?
Skepticism is the highest duty and blind faith the one
unpardonable sin.
Thomas Henry Huxley, M.D. Essays on Controversial Questions, 1889.

THE NEW TESTAMENT mentions God numerous times but always

as a solitary being and never as a member of a triad. Christian
theologians rely chiefly on three passages from the New Testament
to justify their assertion that God the Father, God the Son and God
the Holy Spirit form One God.

First Passage:
Peter, apostle of Jesus Christ, sends greetings to all
those living among foreigners...who have been chosen, by
the provident purpose of God the Father, to be made holy
by the Spirit, obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with
his blood (First Letter of Peter 1:1-2).

This verse does indeed refer to a holy trioGod the Father, the
Spirit and Jesus Christhowever, Peter referred to only one as God,
implying that the others are not God. For a true Holy Trinity, Spirit
and Jesus should have been identified as God the Holy Spirit and
God the Son.
 . Second Passage:
This is the passage most often quoted by Trinitarians.
Jesus allegedly instructed his Apostles, Go, therefore,
make disciples of all nations; baptize them in the name of
the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit
(Matthew 28:19).
However, Harry Austryn Wolfson pointed out, scholarship on
the whole rejects the traditional attribution of the tripartite
baptismal formula to Jesus and regards it as of later origin.
[Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Church Fathers: Vol. I. Faith, Trinity,
Incarnation. Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press, 1964, p. 1431].
If Jesus instructed his Apostles to baptize in the name of the trio,
why did his followers continue to baptize in his name alone? This is
the baptismal formula used in the rest of the New Testament ( Acts
of the Apostles 2:38, 8:16, 10:48 and 19.5; Letter of Paul to the
Romans 6:3; and Letter of Paul to the Galatians 3:27).
Scholars agree that the earliest Christians baptized exclusively
in the name of Jesus. The late insertion in Matthew of a Trinitarian
saying by Jesus raises suspicions of fraud, not only about the
authenticity of the formula, but also about the Trinity itself. The
Trinity appears to have come as an afterthought here and
afterthoughts seem more human than divine. [William H. Trapnell,
Christ and His Associates, Voltairian Polemic: An Assault on the Trinity and
the Two Natures. Saratoga, California: Anma Libri, 1982, pp. 238-239].
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, before he became Pope Benedict XVI,
said as much:
The basic form of our Matthew 28:19, the Trinitarian
profession of faith, took shape during the course of the second
and third centuries in connection with the ceremony of
baptism. So far as the place of its origin is concerned, the text
came from the city of Rome.
Third Passage:
 This passage appears as follows in the Authorized Version of the
Bible:
For there are three witnesses, the Spirit, Jesus Christ
and God, and these three are one (First Letter of John 5:7-
8).
However, modern scholars reject [this version] because it
appears in none of the older manuscripts.
[Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Church Fathers, p. 142].
It is based upon an interpolation in the Latin
version of the New Testament and it is not found in
any of the original Greek manuscripts.
The original read, there are three witnesses, the
Spirit, the water and the blood, and all three of
them agree (Catholic Jerusalem Bible).
So we see Trinitarians correcting two Bible
passages to make them conform to the dogma of
the Trinity. However, if the Bible already validated
the Trinity, why did they have to alter it?
The Three-Faced God
The Blessed Trinitythe three-in-one / one-in-three manage
of Father, Son and Holy Ghostwas not accepted by the Church
until three or four centuries after Christs death. While the
concept of the Trinity seems indispensable to modern
Christianity, neither Jesus Christ, the originator of that religion,
nor St. Paul, its chief promulgator, seemed aware of it. They
certainly never mentioned it but sometimes contradicted it.
The Church claims that Almighty God descended to earth in the
form of Jesus Christ to instruct mankind but can point to no
authentic saying where he taught its cardinal doctrineand this a
dogma in which he allegedly plays such a prominent role.
 The Church teaches that the Father is God, Jesus is God and the
Holy Spirit is God; however, as we have seen, the founder of the
Christian religion himself called his divinity into question.
Why did the progenitor of this religion keep a most
fundamental truth from his followers while among them on earth:
that he was God and there were two other divine persons besides
himself and that they all added up to one God? Why did Jesus
leave this important matter for his followers to puzzle out and fight
over? Couldnt a providential deity have foreseen such a turmoil
and averted it with a plain statement of the truth?
Sir Anthony F. Buzzard and Charles F. Hunting wrote:
Those Trinitarians who believe that the concept of a Triune
God was such an established fact that it was not considered
important enough to mention at the time the New Testament
was written should be challenged by the remarks of another
writer, Harold Brown: It is a simple fact and an undeniable
historical fact that several major doctrines that now seem
central to the Christian Faithsuch as the doctrine of the
Trinity and the doctrine of the nature of Christwere not
present in a full and self-defined generally accepted form until
the fourth and fifth centuries. If they are essential todayas
all of the orthodox creeds and confessions assertit must be
because they are true. If they are true, then they must always
have been true; they cannot have become true in the fourth
and fifth century. But if they are both true and essential, how
can it be that the early church took centuries to formulate
them? [Buzzard and Hunting, The Doctrine of the Trinity:
Christianitys Self-Inflicted Wound, Amazon Books, 1998]
The Doctrine of the Trinity: Christianitys Self-Inflicted Wound
challenges the notion that biblical monotheism is accurately
represented by the doctrine of the Trinity. The Bible presents
Jesus as Messiah and Son of God but not as God Almighty. False
teachings about the nature of Jesus, beginning in the second
century, perverted the biblical doctrine of God and Christ. These
false ideas became the foundation of the unscriptural doctrine
known as the Trinity.
In the Encyclopedia Americana we read:
Unitarianism [monotheism] as a theological movement
began much earlier in history, indeed it antedated
Trinitarianism by many decades. Christianity derived from
Judaism and Judaism was strictly Unitarian [belief in one God].
The road which led from Jerusalem to Nicea [325] was scarcely
a straight one. 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....
[Trinity, Encyclopedia Americana, 1956, Vol. XXVII, p. 2941.]
 The dead Son of God in the arms of his father. In an act of fatherly love,
God the Father props up his dead Son. In accordance with the Fathers
command, Jesus had suffered an excruciating death. But this appeased
the Fathers anger against sinners, and he could forgive their offenses.
 Thirteen

How Christ Became God

God found out about the Trinity in 325 A.D.
Rocco A. Errico, Bible scholar and ordained minister
Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a
worm, yet he will make gods by the dozen.
Michel de Montaigne

BECAUSE THE EARLY CHRISTIAN CHURCH UPHELD THE JEWISH

BELIEF IN THE UNITY OF GOD, the incorporation of Jesus into the
Christian godhead posed a serious problem. How could Father and
Son be God, and yet God remain one? [Arthur W. Wainwright, The
Trinity in the New Testament, Wipf & Stock Publisher, 2001, p. 3].

Bound up as it was with the Jewish religion, the new Christian

faith could not jettison Yahweh and monotheism. Yahweh, the
Jewish God, is after all also the Christian God the Father.
Primitive Christian monotheism was a continuation of ancient
Jewish monotheism. Levi Leonard Paine wrote:
There is no break between the Old Testament and the New.
The monotheistic tradition is continued. Jesus was a Jew,
trained by Jewish parents in the Old Testament scriptures. His
teaching was Jewish to the core; a new gospel indeed but not a
new theology. And he accepted as his own belief the great
text of Jewish monotheism: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God
is one God. [Paine, A Critical History of the Evolution of
Trinitarianism, The Riverside Press, Cambridge, 1900. Waldo
Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Bangor (Maine) Theological
Seminary

As we have seen, Paul and the author of the Gospel of John saw
in Jesus an exalted personage far above a mere human being. In
fact, he was the agent through whom Almighty God had created
the world. For John, he was also a titular divinity or God;
nevertheless, as a created being he remained subordinate to
Almighty God.
Were Jesus to be advanced to true or full God, the Christian
religion would become officially polytheistic. The gap between it
and Judaism would then be unbridgeable. Multi-god Christianity
could not claim to base itself on single-god Judaism. It was
essential that Christianity remain monotheistic, at least ostensibly.
The worship of a multiplicity of gods prevailing in the
surrounding Mediterranean region certainly exerted a pull toward
poly-god-ism. The Apostle Paul acknowledged the prevalence of
god-men in his time when he pointed out, in the sky or on
earth...there certainly seem to be gods and lords in plenty (First
Letter to the Corinthians 8:5).
The New Testament shows how eager the populace was to turn
living persons into gods:
...Herod, wearing his robes of state and enthroned on a
dais, made a speech to [Tyrians and Sidonians]. The people
acclaimed him with, It is a god speaking, not a man! (Acts of
the Apostles 12: 21-22).
Frederick Carl Eiselen declared:
To the Jew, the very idea of the deification of a man was
utterly abhorrent. Not so to the Greek. Apparently in the
earlier period of the Greek religion, heroic qualities or the
possession of unusual powers might lead to apotheosis. The
mortal, as in the mystery cults, might achieve divinity. The
extent to which this was carried out in the Hellenistic world
from the time of Alexander the Great and onward, when divine
honors were paid to living rulers, and legends grew up about
their supernatural origin, is well known. First the Seleucidae
and Ptolemies adopted the cult, and finally it was transferred
to the Roman world and culminated in the state worship of the
 emperors. [Eiselen (editor), The Abingdon Bible Commentary.
Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1957, pp. 851-852]

The impulse to promote Jesus to Godhood arose in a milieu of

competing pagan religions with their multiple gods. Some third
and fourth-century higherarchs wished to have a full-fledged God
heading their religion, perhaps from motive of prestige. Other
prelates like Bishop Athanasius believed that God could forgive the
horrendous sins of mankind only if a being of his own stature and
nature would sacrifice himself in our stead. The only way
satisfaction could be rendered for the offenses inflicted on Gods
majesty by mens sins was through the sacrifice of a redeemer who
was both man and God. While these Church leaders favored the
apotheoses of Jesus, others preferred the Old Time ReligionJesus
as demi god. After all, if Jesus were fully God, the Christian religion
would be bi-theistic when God had commanded: You shall have no
God except me.
Meanwhile, Roman Emperor Constantine I saw his empire
unravelling. He wanted to use this up-and-coming Christian
religion to cement his dominions; therefore, he legalized the faith.
But now he saw Christianity itself divided over the question, was
Jesus fully God or a lesser being? He realized that the new faith
could not cement his empire if it was itself split. To heal this rift, he
summoned a council of bishops to his palace at Nicaea, not far
from his capital of Constantinople. The Council of Nicaea met in
what is today Iznick, SE of Constantinople [modern Istanbul].
Although still the high priest of the state religion of Sol Invictus
[the Invincible Sun], Constantine presided over this council.

The faction upholding the original form of the faith was

headed by Arius (c 250-336), a priest of Alexandria. He
championed the traditional view of Jesus as created by God and
therefore subordinate to him. Arius based himself on Christs
statement, the Father is greater than I (John 14:28). The faction
favoring the deification of Jesus was headed by Athanasius (c 297-
373), the bishop of Alexandria.
The emperor didnt care much what his council decided as
long as it did decide. Only a fraction of the existing bishops
attended the confab. They consisted mostly of prelates from the
East, who favored Jesus as God. So, this interpretation prevailed.
The emperor, still the pagan Pontifex Maximus or Chief Priest of
Rome, declared this tenet the only true Christian faith. Two of the
bishops who voted pro-Arius were exiled, and his writings were
burned. Constantine decreed that anyone caught with Arius
documents would be subject to the death penalty.
So, Jesus was promoted to God by the Council of Nicaea. In
gratitude the Eastern Orthodox Church canonized Constantine,
although he went on to murder a son and one of his wives.
But the controversy wasnt settle yet, and turmoil continued
in the Church. Several other councils were called, who voted this
way or that. Between the years 340 and 360 fourteen different
creed formulas were promulgated. Finally a major council in
Constantinople declared in 381 not only Jesus God but also the
Holy Spirit. Now the Holy Trinity was operational.
The encyclopedia Wikipedia stated:
While Arianism continued to dominate for several decades
[after 325] even within the family of the Emperor, the Imperial
nobility, and higher-ranking clergy, in the end it was
Trinitarianism which prevailed in the Roman Empire at the end
of the 4th century. Arianism, which had been taught by the
Arian missionary Ulfilas [Wulfia] to the Germanic tribes, was
dominant for some centuries among several Germanic tribes in
western Europe, especially Goths and Lombards (and
significantly for the late Empire), the Vandals, but ceased to be
the mainstream belief by the 8th century, as it was successfully
crushed through a series of military and political conquests,
 culminating in the political-religious domination of Europe
over the next 1,000 years by Trinitarian forces in the Catholic
Church. Trinitarianism remained the dominant doctrine in all
major branches of the Eastern and Western Church and later
within Protestantism until modern times. [Arianism (Arius
and Arian controversy), Wikipedia.]

Most Christians are Trinitarians today because the Roman

Emperor Constantine legitimized Christianity and Theodosius the
Great made Orthodox Nicene Christianity the state religion. Both
favored this Trinitarian theology. In 390, Theodosius slaughtered
7,000 people without judicial process in vengeance against an anti-
Roman riot. For this he had to perform several months of penance
under Saint Ambrosius.

When the Church Fathers decided to declare Jesus and the Holy
Spirit full God, they found themselves confronted with...the
problem of how to reconcile their new Christian belief in three
Gods with their inherited Jewish belief in one God. [Harry Austryn
Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Church Fathers, Volume I, Faith, Trinity,
Incarnation. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964, p. 308].

To solve the seemingly unsolvable contradiction between

inherited Christian monotheism and the addition of Jesus and Spirit
to the Godhead, the Council of Constantinople declared that God
was still singular. However, he consisted not of three Gods but of
three PersonsFather, Son and Holy Spiritin one God. They
called this the Most Holy Trinity. The three were gods in everything
but name. The prelates contrived this dogma by drawing upon
metaphysical abstractions from the pagan philosophy of Plato
conceptualizations absent from the Bible. These included such
ideas as Father, Son and Spirit being coequal and coeternal; the
divinity and humanity of Jesus being joined in a hypostatic union;
the substance and essence of God and Jesus being identical
(homoousia) and not merely similar (homoiousia). Using such
nebulous and ambiguous hypotheses, these theologians invented
the notion of Father, Son and Holy Spirit constituting one, solitary
God, because they shared the same divine substance.
William Temple declared
[It] is the Platonism of Alexandria which lies behind the
whole theology of St. Athanasius [the champion of the Trinity]
and provides the language in which the Nicene Creed and the
great orthodox formularies generally are drawn up. In fact, at
the time of the Council of Nicea, it may, broadly speaking, be
said that to accepted Plato as philosophical master was almost
essential to orthodoxy. [Rev. Temple (1881-1944) was chaplain
to the Archbishop of Canterbury].
[The] doctrine of the Trinityoriginated from Greek
philosophy, and not the scriptures. Greek philosophers which
pre-date Christ had the most influence in the development of
the doctrine of the Trinity. The most notable of all
philosophers in this regard was Plato. [Temple,
Introduction to Greek Philosophy and the Trinity ]
Andrews Norton (1786-1853), Harvard professor and biblical
scholar, declared that the Trinity was grounded not in Scripture but
in Platonic philosophy:
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....
[Norton, A Statement of Reasons for Not Believing in the Doctrines
of the Trinitarians Concerning the Nature of God and the Person of
Christ. Boston: American Unitarian Association, fifth edition, 1872,
p. 94].

Voltaire commented,
What can be said after that [about the Trinity]? How can
we help confessing, with grief, that nobody understands it?
How can we help confessing, that from the first...until the great
 controversy of Athanasius, the Platonism of the Trinity was
always a subject of quarrels. A supreme judge was absolutely
required to decide, and he was at last found in the Council of
Nice, which council afterwards produced new factions and
wars. [The Works of Voltaire, A Contemporary Version. New York:
E.R. DuMont, 1901.]

It had taken about 350 years from the death of Jesus for the
idea of the Trinity to be accepted as official Christian doctrine.
Instead of calling Jesus, Holy Spirit and Yahweh three Gods,
theologians now called them three divine Persons. These three
Persons combined to form one God. This concept is expressed in
the Preface for Trinity Sunday:
Father, all-powerful and ever-living God.... You have
revealed your glory as the glory also of your Son and of the
Holy Spirit, three Persons equal in majesty.... [New Saint Joseph
Sunday Missal: Prayerbook and Hymnal for 1982. New York:
Catholic Book Publishing Co., 1981, p. 259].

The doctrine of the Trinity protects the Church from charges of

harboring three Gods. If Jesus was also God, Christians could be
accused of having two Gods. And when the Holy Spirit became a
divinity, Christians could allegedly have three Gods. The solution to
this dilemma was to establish the dogma of the Trinity, which
consisted of admitting simultaneously a unity and a trinity in
Godhead.
As George Albert (G.A.) Wells put it:
It is true that Christianity is monotheistic only in virtue of
an unintelligible fiction (the Trinity).... [Wells, Bible scholar and
professor of German at the University of London].
Revilo Pendleton Oliver expressed it in these words:
the Unitarian doctrine [one God]...the belief of the earliest
Christian sects, is more authentically Christian than the
Trinitarian nonsense. Historically, the absurd notion of a
 three-in-one god was excogitated by a pack of holy men, led
by an agitator named Athanasius, who wanted to have both
Yahweh and Jesus as gods, but wanted also to be able to claim
that their cult was a monotheism. It required a century of
frantic persecution and slaughter to compel a majority of the
Christians to pretend to believe anything so absurd.... [New
Hoaxes for Old, Liberty Bell, November 1985. Dr. Oliver was
Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign.]

Some people wondered how God could be one and three

simultaneously. To keep people from examining their slight of
hand too closely, theologians declared it a deep mystery beyond
human understanding. The dogma of the divine Triumvirate has
been most useful to the Church; it enabled Christianity to turn Jesus
and the Holy Spirit into Gods while maintaining its standing as a
monotheistic religion.

The concept of the Blessed Trinity was consolidated in the

Athanasian Creed and committed to writing in the Fifth Century.
This idea is not Biblical nor does it represent the early Church. Why
does the New Testament fail to mention this key Christian dogma?
Why did it take so long for theologians to come up with this
cardinal doctrine? Reason: It wasnt needed until Jesus Christ was
declared God in the 4th century. Then it was introduced to prevent
Christianity from appearing polytheistic.
 Fourteen
Can the Doctrine of the Trinity
Be Rationalized?

MONOTHEISM IN ITS PUREST FORM DOES NOT ALLOW FOR A

TRINITY. [Levi Leonard Paine, professor of ecclesiastical history, A
Critical History of The Evolution of Trinitarianism. Boston and New York:
Houghton, Mifflin, and Company, The Riverside Press, Cambridge, 1900, p.
269].

Theologians were aware of rational objections to their doctrine

of God being both three and one. To convince people of the
reasonableness of their dogma, they pointed to natural phenomena
they said were one and several at the same time. One of these
churchmen was St. Gregory, a fourth century bishop of Nyssa in
Cappadocia (present-day Turkey). In his treatise That There Are
Not Three Gods, he compared the divinity shared by the three
persons of the Trinity to the human nature that is shared by several
human beings. However, we cannot say that several human beings
constitute a single man, whereas the three Divine Persons are
supposed to constitute a Triune God.
Tertullian, who was born about 160 in Carthage, North Africa,
declared that God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit
were three just like the roots, trunk and branches of a tree are
distinctly three things. Yet, he claimed, they are also one because
they are correlatively joined. In other words, the tree is a single
organism similar to the Trinity, which consists of one divine
substance, while the roots, trunk and branches represent the three
Divine Persons. However, the Athanasian Creed prohibits
confounding the Persons; in other words, each of them is distinct
and discrete. Yet, the three parts of the tree are not separate but
part of one organic whole; therefore, they cannot symbolize the
three Persons. [Harry Austryn Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Church
Fathers: Volume I, Faith, Trinity, Incarnation. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1964, p. 361].

Origen, the third-century Father of the Church from Alexandria,

Egypt, thought to solve the problem of tri-unity by taking the
three members of the Trinity to constitute three distinct individual
species and by taking their unity to consist in a unity of specific
genus. [Same].
Just as man, monkey and ape are distinct, because each
belongs to a different species so Father, Son and Spirit are distinct.
However, Father, Son and Spirit are also one just as man, monkey
and ape are all primates. This analogy might demonstrate the
distinct existence of Father, Son and Spirit; however, man, monkey
and ape are so different that they could not represent one divine
substance. [Same, p. 346].

Tertullian, Origen and Basil used the concept of unity of rule

to show that Father, Son and Spirit are both one and three. Human
rulers such as a triumvirate are one inasmuch as they rule as one
and yet they are three individuals. Likewise, God the Father, Son
and Holy Spirit rule as one while remaining three distinct Persons.
However, the human rulers could not be described as one in
substance as are Father, Son and Spirit. Their unity of will as long
as it lastsis not on that level of closeness. [Same]

Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo in North Africa, one of the

greatest thinkers of the early church, compared the Trinity to an
individual human being. Mind, spirit and will are three distinct
aspects of a man, and together they constitute one integral man.
However, this analogy fails because human mind, spirit and will
cannot be compared to the three Divine Persons. According to the
Athanasian Creed, every Person by himself [is] God. But not every
human aspect is a human being.
St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, was supposed to have
explained the Blessed Trinity to the Irish by means of a three-leaf
clover. The Trinity is one like a shamrock is one, but it is also three
like its three leaves. While the three leaves joined by a stem might
be viewed as an organic whole and thus express the oneness of
God, each leave is only a part of the clover and not distinct like
each divine Person is distinct.
Another simile involves water, ice and snow; each consists of a
distinct form, but all are H2O. These three modes could stand for
the three divine Persons, while H2O could stand for the single divine
substance.
In the Middle Ages, Many manuals were drawn up for the
guidance of parish priests in the art of religious teaching.... In case
any doubted that God could be Three and One at the same time,
the priest was advised to say, [John Myre, Instructions for Parish Priests.
Volume 31 of Early English Text Society Original Series, published by Trbner
& Co. for the Early English Text Society, 1868.]
Leste thys be harde you to leve, Lest this be hard [for] you to
believe,
By ensampul I wole that pruve. By example I will that prove.
So the ensampul that I you schowe, So the example that I you show,
Of water and ys and eke snowe, Of water and ice and white snow,
Here beth thre thynges, as you may se, Here be three things, as you may
see,
And yet the thre, alle water be. 2 And yet the three all water be.

However, this example has some shortcomings: The Triune

God is upposed to be a living being, while H2O is, of course, a mere
compound of elements. The three divine Persons are permanently
Father, Son and Spirit, while the form of H20 changes according to
2
temperature. This simile might apply to the trinity according to the
heresy of modalism. In this deviation, God is one being who
appears alternately as Father, Son or Spirit. But that is not the
Christian Trinity. Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield warned:
As the doctrine of the Trinity is indiscoverable by reason, so
it is incapable of proof from reason. There are no analogies to
it in Nature, not even in the spiritual nature of man, who is
made in the image of God. In His trinitarian mode of being,
God is unique; and, as there is nothing in the universe like Him
in this respect, so there is nothing which can help us to
comprehend Him. [Breckinridge Warfield (1851-1921), The
Biblical Doctrine of the Trinity. The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield,
Vol. 2, Biblical Doctrines. Oxford University Press].

Professor Francis H. Hall of Union Theological Seminary in New

York reasoned along similar lines:
It is objected that the doctrine of the Trinity is
unintelligible, because hopelessly unrelated to human
experience. There are no finite analogies to the existence of
persons in one being, and finite experience alone affords the
terms in which any proposition can be made intelligible to us.

It must be acknowledged that every attempt to illustrate

the Trinity by finite analogies has resulted in failure, when
these analogies have been assumed to be adequate by those
who have employed them.... [Hall, Dogmatic Theology. New
York and London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1910, Vol. 4, p. 160.]

Below: St. Patricks shamrock.

 Fifteen
The Trinity in Action: Honor Killing?
They have pierced my hands and my feet, I can count all my bones.
Psalm 22:17-18.

ALL-LOVING GOD HAS SON NAILED TO A CROSS SO HE CAN FORGIVE

SINNERS (imaginary newspaper headline).
The honor of God the Father was violated by his creatures who offended
his majesty by disobeying his commandmentssuch as eating a forbidden
apple. He ordered his people to slaughter thousands of their animals, but this
sacrifice did not restore his honor, besides the stench was unbearable. So, he
ordered human sacrifices. [Yahweh spoke to Moses and said, Consecrate all the
first born to me, the first issue of every womb, among the sons of Israel. Whether man or
beast, this is mine (Exodus 13:1-2)].
Human sacrifice came nearer to restoring lost honor, but in the end it
also fell short. Then he thought that the supreme sacrifice of his own son
would outweigh the offenses and restore his honor among angels and men.
(This would be akin to an honor killing a Moslem father has to perform with
regard to a daughter who offended his honor by disobeying himwith this
difference that the sinless Jesus did not himself commit disobedience, but he
would die vicariously for those who did.) So, God the Father decided to have
God the Son expire in excruciating agony on a cross in Jerusalem; surely this
would provide satisfaction for his injured dignity. True, but this was an
extremely difficult decision for God the Father to make. The relationship
between the members of the Holy Trinity is described by the Catholic Church
as one of extraordinary love. Wrote F. K. Bartels:
 As we reflect on the Holy Trinity one of the first things we notice is the
inseparable relationship between the three distinct Persons who are the
one God. The Father loves the Son, the Son loves the Father, and the Holy
Spirit proceeds from the Father and Son. We might say that the life of the
Triune God is the highest and supreme principle of familial relationship.
[F. K. Bartels, Catholic Deacon, The Most Holy Trinity: Supreme Model for
Family and Marriage, July 2010, Catholic Online, www.catholic.org].

Reportedly his son, whose name is Jesus, was not overly excited about his
fathers plan to hang him naked on a cross where birds could peck out his
eyes. But he didnt want to hurt his fathers feelings, so he tells him that he
will go along with whatever public humiliation pleased his old man, if thats
what he wanted.
The Roman philosopher Cicero described crucifixion as a most cruel and
disgusting punishment. It resulted in a prolonged, gruesome and
deliberately agonizing death. The crucified hung completely naked before a
taunting crowd, which mocked the emptying of his bowels and the erection of
his penis.
Iron spikes about 7 inches long were driven through his wrists or arms into
the cross beam. The points entered near the median nerve that runs from the
brain to the fingers; this caused shocks of pain to radiate through the arms.

After being nailed to the cross beam, Jesus was lifted up with it so that it
rested on the vertical post of the cross and formed a tau cross or a T. This
caused a tremendous strain on his wrists, arms and shoulders, resulting in a
dislocation of the shoulder and elbow joints. The arms, being held up and
outward, held the rib cage in a fixed position which made it extremely difficult
to exhale, and impossible to take a full breath.

The feet were then nailed to the vertical post of the cross. As time passed,
the muscles, from the loss of blood, lack of oxygen and the fixed position of
the body, would undergo severe cramps and spasmodic contractions.
 Insects borrowed into the open wounds caused by the flogging preceding
the crucifixion. They borrowed into the eyes, ears and nose of the dying and
helpless victim, and birds of prey tore at those sites and dogs fed on the flesh
of his legs.
From the cross, Jesus cried to his father for mercy: My God, my God, why
have you forsaken me? (Mark 15:34 and Matthew 27:46). But Dad didnt
answer. God the Father ignored God the Son.
The slow process of suffering and resulting death during a crucifixion may
be summarized as follows:

...it appears likely that the mechanism of death in crucifixion was

suffocation. The chain of events which ultimately led to suffocation are as
follows: With the weight of the body being supported by the sedulum,
the arms were pulled upward. [The sedulum was a plank nailed to the
stem of the cross as a crude support for the buttocks, which prolonged
the torture]. This caused the intercostal and pectoral muscles to be
stretched. Furthermore, movement of these muscles was opposed by the
weight of the body. With the muscles of respiration thus stretched, the
respiratory bellows became relatively fixed. As dyspnea developed and
pain in the wrists and arms increased, the victim was forced to raise the
body off the sedulum, thereby transferring the weight of the body to the
feet [that were nailed to the post of the cross]. Respirations became
easier, but with the weight of the body being exerted on the feet, pain in
the feet and legs mounted. When the pain became unbearable, the victim
again slumped down on the sedulum with the weight of the body pulling
on the wrists and again stretching the intercostal muscles. Thus, the
victim alternated between lifting his body off the sedulum in order to
breathe and slumping down on the sedulum to relieve pain in the feet.
Eventually, he became exhausted or lapsed into unconsciousness so that
he could no longer lift his body off the sedulum. In this position, with the
respiratory muscles essentially paralyzed, the victim suffocated and died.
[NP DePasquale and GE Burch, Death by Crucifixion, American Heart Journal,
September 1963, pp. 434-435].
 Late Bulletin: Authorities are trying to locate the father of Jesus. A man
called Joseph, who brought up Jesus, said that God was Jesus' father through
a rare occurrence called the miraculous conception. Charges are pending
against the father. Prosecutors are citing the paragraph of the U.S.
Constitution forbidding cruel and unusual punishment.
JESUS CHRIST ON THE CROSS.
 Sixteen
Punishments for Denying
the Dogma of the Most Holy Trinity
Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony
and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause.
Letter of President George Washington to Sir Edward Newenham, June 22, 1792

Punishment in the Hereafter

Persons who deny the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity will be punished
forever in hell, stipulates the Athanasian Creed:
As Christian truth compels us to acknowledge each distinct person as
God and Lord, so catholic religion forbids us to say that there are three
gods or lords. Whoever wants to be saved should above all cling to the
catholic faith. Whoever does not guard it whole and inviolable will
doubtless perish eternally. [Emphasis added. Christian and Catholic is
identical in this context.] [While God will punish Christians in hell if they dont
believe in the Trinity; ironically, Allah will torment those who do believe
(Glorious Koran, Surah Maidah, chapter 5, verse 73].

Punishment by excommunication and banishment

If anyone does not confess that the Father and the Son and the Holy
Spirit are one nature or essence, one power or authority, worshipped as a
trinity of the same essence, one deity in three hypostases or persons, let him
be anathema. [Anathemas or banishments of the Second Council of Constantinople
(553 AD].
 Punishment by death
The following were put to death for denying the doctrine of the Trinity
(partial list):

Adam Duff OToole was burned alive at Hugges Green in Dublin in 1327
or 28 for denying the trinity of persons in the unity of the Godhead.
Ludwig Haetzer (1500-!529), was beheaded Feb. 4, 1529, at Constance,
Germany, for denying the Blessed Trinity.
Katharine Weigel or Katarzyna Zalasowska was summoned several times
before an Episcopal court in Krakow, Poland, for opposing trinitarianism;
she was probably influenced by the book De Operibus Dei by Martin
Borrhaus. She defended her views before the Polish Parliament in 1538-
39. Shortly thereafter, the Bishop of Krakow charged her with apostasy.
On April 19, 1539, at the age of 80, Katharine was burned to death in the
market square of Krakow.
Stephen Dolet, eminent scholar and typographer, native of Orleans,
burned at the stake in Lyon, France, 1546, for atheismnonbelief in the
Trinity.
George Van Paris was a Dutch Arian who was burnt at the stake in
London with the approval of his fellow Protestants in 1551.
Condemned by Catholics and Protestants alike, Dr. Michael Servetus of
Aragon, Spain, was arrested in Geneva under John Calvin for denying the
doctrine of the Most Holy Trinity. He was burned at the stake in 1553 by
order of the Protestant Geneva governing council. The green wood
burned slowly, and it took the man no less than thirty agonizing minutes
to expire.
Patrick Patingham, burned at the stake, 1555.
Giulo Guirlada, executed by drowning in Italy, 1562.
Giovanni Valenti Gentile of Calabria, beheaded in Bern, Switzerland,
1566.
Ferancesco Sega de Rovigo, executed by drowning in Italy, 1566.
Hermann van Flekyk, burned at the stake in Flanders (now Belgium),
1569.
 Johann Sylvanus, a teacher, was beheaded on December 23, 1572, in
the marketplace of Heidelberg, Germany, before his children. He had
drafted an anti-trinitarian treatise in 1570 entitled, Christliche Bekentniss
von dem einigen wahren Gott... (True Christian Confession of the
Ancient Faith of the One True God and of Messiah Jesus of the True Christ,
against the Three-Person Idol...). He had been asked to refute an anti-
trinitarian book, but he could find no evidence in the Gospels supporting
the dogma. Sylvan came to the conclusion that the apostolic teachings
on the messianic role of Christ had been corrupted by the intrusion of
Greek philosophy. While he continued to think of Christ as divine in some
sense, he judged the doctrines of the Trinity and the hypostatic union as
meaningless constructs that had themselves become the focus of
idolatry.... After decapitation, his body was burned along with the
offensive manuscripts and thrown into the Neckar River. [Christopher
Burchill, The Heidelberg Antitrinitarians: Johan Silvan, etc. Editions Valentin
Koerner, Tome XI: 1989, pp. 21-22.]

Francis David (Hertel) was a Unitarian bishop of the Principality of

Transylvania, Romania, and a descendant of an old aristocratic
Transylvania Saxon family named Hertel. David was a leading figure of
the nontrinitarian movement during the Reformation era. About 1572, he
was condemned to prison for the rest of his life. He died in the dungeon
of the Fortress of Deva, Romania, in 1579.
Matthew Hamont, a plowwright, after his ears were cut off, he was
burned at the stake by the Church of England in the moat of Norwich
Castle in 1579.
John Lewes, burned at Norwich, 1583.
Cole, a tanner of Ipswich, met the same fate at Norwich in 1587.
Jacob Palaelogos of Chios, who was openly advancing antitrinitarian
views, was beheaded in Italy by the Catholic Inquisition in 1585.
Herman van Vlekwijk, executed at Bruges, 1569.
John Tyscovicius or Tyszkiewicz of Bielsk beheaded in Poland, 1611.
Thomas Legate, a dealer in cloth, died in Newgate Prison, London, in 1612.
Bartholomew Legate (1575-1612}, a dealer in cloth, burned at the stake at
Smithfield, London, 1612.
 Edward Wightman, clothier and Baptist minister, burned at the stake in
Lichfield, England, 1612. He declared that the doctrine of the Trinity was a
total fabrication and Christ was only a man. Wightman was the last person
in England to be burned to death for heresy (Wikipedia).
John Biddle (1615-1662), the father of English Unitarianism, died from
illness contracted in prison. Biddle had received an M.A. in 1641 from
Oxford University, and he had become headmaster of the Crypt Grammar
School in Gloucester. Since he was obliged to teach his pupils according to
the Catechism of the Church of England, he immersed himself in the study of
the Bible. He concluded that the doctrine of the Trinity was not supported
by the Bible, and he set about publishing his own views on the nature of
God. He called the doctrine of the Trinity fitter for conjurers than for
Christians. Biddle was arrested several times for his rejection of the Trinity,
and all of his writings were banned and burned. In 1653, Biddle was
sentenced to exile on Scilly Isle, 40 miles off the coast of England. He
returned in 1658 only to land back in prison in 1660 for conducting
unauthorized worship contrary to the Anglican Act of Uniformity. Biddle
died in 1662 as a result of diseases he had contracted in prison.
In 1697, the 20-year-old medical student Thomas Aikenhead from
Edinburgh, Scotland, was hung near Edinburgh for denying the Trinity,
among other charges.
Norbert Capek, founder of the modern Czech Unitarian Church, was sent
to Dachau by the Nazis and gassed to death at Hartheim, Austria, in 1942.

Punishment by Expulsion
William Whiston (16671752) was an English theologian, historian and
mathematician whose studies had convinced him that Arianism was the
creed of the early church. (Arianists revered Jesus but did not consider
him Almighty God.) In 1710 Whiston was deprived of his professorship
for antitrinitarianism and expelled from the University of Cambridge.
Until the passing of the Unitarian Relief Act in 1813, it was a criminal
offence to deny the doctrine of the Trinity in England.
The following law was in force in the Colonial Province of Maryland:
That if any person...shall deny the Holy Trinity, the Father, Son, and the
Holy Ghost, or the God-head of any of the three persons, or the unity of the
God-head, or shall utter any profane words concerning the Holy Trinity, or
the persons thereof and shall therefore be convicted by verdict, shall, for the
first offense, be bored through the tongue, and fined 20, to be levied on his
body. As for the second offense, the offender shall be stigmatized by
burning in the forehead the letter B, and fined 40. And that for the third
offense, the offender shall suffer death without the benefit of clergy.
Laws like this existed in all countries where the Church had power.

Richard Dawkins declared:

Rivers of medieval ink, not to mention blood, have been squandered
over the mystery of the Trinity, and in supposing deviations such as the
Arian. Arius of Alexandria, in the fourth century AD, denied that Jesus was
consubstantial (i.e., of the same substance or essence) with God. What on
earth could that possibly mean, you are probably asking? Substance?
What substance? What exactly do you mean by essence? Very little
seems to be the only reasonable reply. Yet the controversy split
Christendom down the middle for a century, and the Emperor Constantine
ordered that all copies of Ariuss book should be burned. Splitting
Christendom by splitting hairssuch has ever been the way. [Dawkins,
The God Hypothesis, Chapter 2, Houghton Mifflin first America Edition]

George Washington wrote:

Christian creeds and doctrines, the clergys own inventions, through all
the ages has made Christendom a slaughterhouse, and divided it into
sects of inextinguishable hatred for one another. [Letter of George
Wahington to Sir Edward Newenham, June 22, 1792]

Thomas Jefferson said:

On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral principles, all
mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been
quarreling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for abstractions
unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the
comprehension of the human mind. [Letter of Jefferson to
Archibald Carey]
 Why did Trinitarians feel that their dogmas had to be enforced by
banishment, torture or death? While scientists do not feel that their
conclusions have to be enforced by coercion? Do they have more confidence
in their theories than Christians in their doctrines.
THE HOLY TRIPLETS
Three digits of the left hand are extended to
signify the Blessed Trinity.

Dr. Servetus burned at the stake in

Geneva, Switzerland, in 1553 for denying
the doctrine of the Trinity.
Johann Sylvanus beheaded in Heidelberg, Germany, in
1572, for writing against the dogma of the Trinity. (Wikipedia)
 Seventeen
The Mystery of the Trinity
Personified incomprehensibilty.
Georg Lichtenberg

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCHS PROOF OF THE TRINITY: Revelation (Holy

Scripture / the Word of God) declares that Yahweh, the Hebrew God, is one
God; however, the Christian church has determined that he has a son (Jesus)
who is also God, and to whom must be added the Holy Spirit. How to
reconcile several Gods when God is supposed to be singular? Here is the
solution worked out by theologians: The Hebrew God, Jesus and the Holy
Spirit are not three gods but three persons. A person is an individual being of
a rational nature; normally one person equals one being. However, by this
definition, the three persons would be three beings or three gods, but this
cannot be, because Holy Writ says there is only one God. So, theologians re-
define a divine person as having the usual personal attributes but without
constituting one individual being. As a matter of fact, several of these divine
persons fit into the single being that is the Trinity. While this is contrary to
human understanding of person, it must be true, because it explains how
Yahweh, Jesus and the Spirit can be God and yet there is only one God.
Francis. J. Hall, Professor of Dogmatic Theology at New Yorks General
Theological Seminary, explained:
In reckoning with the rational difficulties which attend the doctrine of
the Trinity, we acknowledge explicitly that we cannot solve the
fundamental problem which it raises. (How can three personal Selves
exist in and possess one individual essence and nature?) But this fact does
not deter us from believing. The reason why it does not is that our
knowledge of the personality of Godof the manner of divine personal
subsistencemust be obtained, if at all, from supernatural revelation, and
the contents of such revelation, when perceived to be genuine, must
determine our convictions. If problems are thus raised which we cannot
 solve, this is to be expected, because of the finite limitations of our reason
and knowledge; and therefore their emergence does not warrant a
rejection of any of the indubitable particulars of revelation. [Dr. Hall,
Dogmatic Theology, Longmans, Green & Co., New York and London, 1910, Vol.
4, p. 158]

All this is based on the belief that revelation posits one God, Yahweh, the
God of the Hebrews. But also that Jesus and the Holy Ghost are equally god?
But this is not so certain. The three synoptic Gospels do not show that Jesus
is God. Some passages of the Gospel of John could be interpreted as
declaring Jesus God, but many more the opposite. (See chapters 9 to 12 of
this book.) Besides, just how sound are these revelations anyway? The books
that were included in the New Testament were determined by the vote of a
committee of bishops, which rejected many. The revelations recorded in the
New Testament were hand written almost 2,000 years ago. How do we know
that they were all conscientiously copied and passed along? Scholarship
proves that at least some passages were altered or inserted. How do we
distinguish between what is genuine and what not? A person receiving a
revelation from God knows if it is genuine, but everyone else has to rely on
his or her word. These stories passed down through countless generations
are all hearsay; something that would never hold up in court.
Normally we first study something before we believe in it. If I want to buy
a used car, I first look it over carefully, before I can convince myself that it is
sound. With the dogma of the Trinity, it is just the opposite: Since theistic
philosophy is unable to establish this dogma on the basis of unaided human
reason, the Catholic theologian is compelled to adhere closely to the teaching
of his Church. He must first believe; then he may inquire. [Rev. Joseph
Pohle, D.D. [Professor of dogma, Catholic University of America and University of Breslau),
Dogmatic Theology: The Divine Trinity. St. Louis: B. Herder, 1912, Vol. 2, p. 5].

The Mystery of Faith

The Christian divinity is both three and one; its three Divine Persons are
one God. An absurdity, you think; nothing but verbal gymnastics?
Christian theologians defend their Trinity from charges of irrationality by
declaring it a mystery of faith that is beyond human reason:
The Second Vatican Council, 1962-65, has explained the meaning to be
attributed to the term mystery in theology. It lays down that a mystery is a
truth which we are not merely incapable of discovering apart from Divine
Revelation, but which, even when revealed, remains hidden by the veil of
faith and enveloped, so to speak, by a kind of darkness.... In other words, our
understanding of it remains only partial, even after we have accepted it as
part of the Divine message. Through analogies and types we can form a
representative concept expressive of what is revealed, but we cannot attain
that fuller knowledge which supposes that the various elements of the
concept are clearly grasped and their reciprocal compatibility manifest....
The Vatican Council further defined that the Christian Faith contains
mysteries strictly so called. All theologians admit that the doctrine of the
Trinity is of the number of these. Indeed, of all revealed truths this is the
most impenetrable to reason.... [The Trinity, New Advent: The Catholic
Encyclopedia.]

The Encyclopedia Americana declared:

TRINITY. The central and characteristic Christian doctrine of God is
that He exists in Three Persons.... At the same time, the Christian church
insists that God is One in substance...and thus combines in its mystery
(a formula or conception which really transcends human understanding)
the truths set forth in the Holy Scriptures. [Frederick C. Grant, The
Encyclopedia Americana, International Edition. Danbury, Conn.: Grolier, 1988,
Vol. 27, p. 1161.]

Catholic scholars Karl Rahner S.J. and Herbert Vorgrimler stated:

The Trinity is a mystery...in the strict sense...which could not be known
without revelation, and even after revelation cannot become wholly
intelligible.... [Rahner and Vorgrimler, Concise Theological Dictionary. Canterbury
House, 1983.]
 St. Jerome (347420), a Father of the Church who translated the Bible into Latin,
said, The true profession of the mystery of the Trinity is to own that we do not
comprehend it (De mysterio Trinitatus recta confessio est ignoratio scientiae).

For Christian theologians like Joseph Kenneth Grider, the Trinity is a matter
of faith, not reason: Logic and mathematics do not suffice, what is needed
is an obedient heart. [Grider, The Holy Trinity, Contemporary Evangelical
Thought: Basic Christian Doctrines. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962, p. 35].

The Most Holy Trinity is one of the great mysteries of the Orthodox
Faith, said the Reverend Seraphim Holland of the Russian Orthodox Church.
With our finite and limited minds, we are unable to comprehend the Holy
Trinity at all, and yet with our hearts, we can believe in the truth of this
mystery. [Holland, The Holy Trinity, St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church,
McKinney Texas.]

Father Tommy Lane related the following anecdote of St. Augustine:

The Christian theologian was walking on the beach contemplating the
mystery of the Trinity. Then he saw a boy in front of him who had dug a
hole in the sand and was going out to the sea again and again and bringing
some water to pour into the hole. St. Augustine asked him, What are you
doing? Im going to pour the entire ocean into this hole. That is
impossible, the whole ocean will not fit in the hole you have made, said St.
Augustine. The boy replied, And you cannot fit the Trinity in your tiny little
brain. The story concludes by saying that the boy vanished as St. Augustine
had been talking to an angel. [ Lane, Associate Professor of Sacred
Scripture at Mount St. Marys Seminary, Emmitsburg, Maryland.]

Because the Triune God is incomprehensible, Christians are bidden to

submit humbly and just believe. Rev. Jacob Myers explained,
All attempts to bring the Trinitarian teaching closer to our experience of
physical life inevitably led to perversion of this teaching.... The attempts
to
 comprehend the teaching of the Holy Trinity in full have a hidden threat of
perversion of the true faith.... [Belief in the Holy Trinity by Father Jacob
Myers, pastor of St. John (Maximovitch), the Wonderworker Orthodox Church,
Atlanta, Georgia.]

Thomas Adams (15831653), an English clergyman, preached:

It is rashness to search, godliness to believe, safeness to preach, and eternal
blessedness to know the Trinity. [Adams, A Puritan Golden Treasury (Puritan
Paperbacks), I. D. E. Thomas, editor. Banner of Truth Publisher, 2007.]

The English churchman and theologian Robert South (1634-1716) warned:

As he that denies [the Trinity] may lose his soul: so he that too much
strives to understand it may lose his wits. [Martin, Essential Christianity:
A Handbook of Basic Christian Doctrines, Vision House, Santa Anna,
California,1975, p. 21.]

Put in other words, if you try to understand the trinity, you may lose your
mind, but if you dont believe it, you will lose your soul.
The highly lauded St. Augustine explained,
...sin has corrupted our minds, so that we cannot understand the
doctrine, which we should still hope to understand in the next life. [On the
Trinity]

Walter Ralston Martin stated:

We cannot understand the Trinity with our corrupted human reason,
explained Martin, founder of the Christian Research Institute: .
[The Trinity] is a doctrine beyond the scope of mans finite mind. It lies
outside the realm of natural reason or human logic.
No man can fully explain the Trinity, though in every age scholars have
propounded theories and advanced hypotheses to explore this mysterious
Biblical teaching. But despite the worthy efforts of these scholars, the
Trinity is still largely incomprehensible to the mind of man.
Perhaps the chief reason for this is that the Trinity is a-logical, or
beyond logic. It, therefore, cannot be made subject to human reason or
logic. Because of this, opponents of the doctrine argue that the idea of
the Trinity must be rejected as untenable. Such thinking, however, makes
mans corrupted human reason the sole criterion for determining the truth
of divine revelation. [Martin, Essential Christianity: A Handbook of Basic
Christian Doctrines, Vision House, Santa Anna, California,1975, p. 21].

Gregory A. Pesely explained how we will understand the Trinity in heaven:

If it seems irrational that three Divine Persons should be one God, its
only because our feeble minds are not astute enough to grasp such
profundity. Some day, however, in heaven our rationality will blossom
forth, and we will be able to see how eminently reasonable the Trinity was
all along. In the words of Gregory A. Pesely, Our finite minds cannot
comprehend the infinite Trinity. What a marvelous mystery we have in
store for us when we reach Paradise. [ Pesely, (Catholic ethicist),
Todays Liturgy, Our Sunday Visitor, June 10, 1990, p. 8.]

Meantime, we can only believe and pray!

AN ACT OF FAITH
O MY GOD, I firmly believe that Thou art one God in Three Divine
Persons, Father, Son and Holy Ghost. I believe that Thy Divine Son
became Man, and died for our sins, and that He will come to judge the
living and the dead. I believe these and all the truths which the Holy
Catholic Church teaches, because Thou hast revealed them, Who canst
neither deceive nor be deceived.

Evangelist/Pastor Dave Burrus explained:

The most difficult thing about the Trinity Doctrine is that there is no
way to adequately explain it. The Trinity is a concept that is impossible
for any human being to fully understand, let alone explain. God is
infinitely higher than we are, therefore we should not expect to be able to
fully understand Him. The Bible teaches that the Father is God (Exodus
3:14), that Jesus is God (John 8:58), and that the Holy Spirit is God (Acts
5:3-4). The Bible also teaches that there is only one God (Deuteronomy
 6:4; James 2:19). How these two statements of doctrine can both be true
is incomprehensible to the human mind. However, this doesnt mean that
theyre both not true. [Burrus, AllAboutGod.net An Online Community].

Trinitarians admit that their doctrine is humanly incomprehensible.

Nevertheless, they know that its true; we should just accept it on faith. But
how do they know its true if they cannot understand it themselves.
Although it is the central dogma of all mainstream Christian Churches,
there is no Scripture verse that says anything like: There are three Persons in
the one God. However, theologians claim that they have arrived at this
insight from studying the Bible. But the result of their research is still an
incomprehensible mystery. It seems somehow incongruous for someone to
offer an explanation of a phenomenon and then concede that he cannot really
understand it himself. Its like Darwin laying out the theory of the origin of
human species and then admitting that its a mystery to him too.

Some people complain, why has not the All-Wise God better explained his
nature to his faithful or at least to theologians? Some things may be difficult
for the layman to understand; for example, the theory of relativity. However,
if Einstein could explain this difficult concept to scientists and
mathematicians, why couldnt Almighty God present a clearer picture of the
Trinity?
While the doctrine of the Trinity underpins all mainstream churches and
forms part of their official creeds, some emphasize it more than others. Some
denominations hardly mention it at all, treating it almost like an
embarrassment. Others, like the televangelists, talk only of Jesus (who is their
money machine).
Maurice Wiles noted:
The actual doctrine of the Trinity is a thorn in the side of modern
Christianity because it is (A) rather hard to grasp for those who spend
their lives outside a seminary, (B) not obviously supported by the New
Testament narrative, (C) smacks of Platonic philosophy and the trinities
 of pagan gods and (D) seems to have popped up during the Nicene
period and is thus associated with many of the errors of [Emperor]
Constantine and his interference in the early Christian church.
[Wiles, Archetypal Heresy: Arianism Through the Centuries. Oxford University
Press, 2001.]

But the fact is that the Christian Churches officially worship God the
Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Are not these three Gods?
Should anyone raise this question, the Church leaders will trot out the Trinity.
They will contend, we are not polytheists because we believe in the Trinity
One God in Three Persons. The doctrine of the Trinity keeps the Christian
Church from being indisputably polytheistic. Therefore, Church leaders
cannot completely dispense with this doctrine however they might like. It is
useful when the occasion arises. To discourage a closer look at this dogma,
they call it a mystery of faith. Nobody can really understand it; there is no
point in delving into it too much. To stop further speculation into the
inscrutable mystery of the Trinity, the Church calls it an enigma that
transcends human understanding.

I believe that God is three.

I wish that he were four
so I could believe some more.
 THE MOST HOLY TRINITY

Two of the Holy Trio are enthroned on a chest, while the third dives
between them. God the Son on the left is identified by the cross and
his pierced hands. God the Father on the right holds the globe of the
world in his left hand and extends three digits of his right hand in the
Triniterian blessing. All three, including the dove, wear the divine halo
with its three beams or rays.
 Sculpture of the Holy Trinity
in the form of three men
on a sarcophagus in the
Vatican Museum. Known
as the Dogmatic Trinity,
it is the oldest known
depiction of the triad.
They are apparently
engaged in the act of
creating Adam.
 Faith, Creeds and Dogmas
Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to
believe.Voltaire.

Faith is the effort to believe what your common sense tells you is not true.
Elbert Hubbard.

Metaphysics is almost always an attempt to prove the incredible by an appeal

to the unintelligible.H. L. Mencken.

Eighteen
Is the Triune God of Christianity
Conceivable?
...no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity.
President Thomas Jefferson

WE ARE TOLD BY THE CHURCH TO THINK OF GOD AS ONE, but we

encounter him as three God the Father, God the Son and God the
Holy Spirit. How is it possible to understand a oneness that is
three? or a threeness that is, at bottom, one? asked David L. Miller.
Even more problematic, how might a person believe in a God that
insists on being imagined monotheistically (as one), but who
persists in manifesting himself in history polytheistically (as three)?
[Miller, Three Faces of God: Traces of the Trinity in Literature and Life,
Spring Journal. New Orleans, Louisiana. 2005.]
The Holy Trinity has been characterized as unintelligible,
incomprehensible, inconceivable, unimaginable, incoherent and a
rational impossibility. Could anyone believe in such a phantasm?
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), the great Russian writer, stated:
 One may say with ones lips: I believe that God is one, and
also three but no one can believe it, because the words
have no sense. [Tolstoy, What Is Religion? Free Age Press,
1901-02].

The Trinity exceeds the comprehension not only of temporal

but even of eternal intelligence, declared Origen, a Father of the
Church. [Origen, On First Principles (212-215]. Apparently not even
angels in heaven can comprehend the Trinity.
Ayn Rand, an atheist Russian-American novelist and
philosopher, considered God...a being whose only definition is that
he is beyond mans power to conceive.
Annie Besant, the 19th century British atheist, recognized that
the Christian three-in-one God was beyond human reason. She
wrote in her book Why I Do Not Believe in God:
Never yet has a God been defined in terms which were not
palpably self contradictory and absurd; never yet has a God
been described so that a concept of Him was made possible to
human thought.

Even the Christian theologian Frederick C. Grant, conceded that

the One God of Christianity is really impossible...to conceive. Can
anyone believe in something they could not perceive? [Grant, Basic
Christian Beliefs. London: Oliver and Boyd, 1960, p. 34. Grant (1891-1974) was
Professor Emeritus of Biblical Theology at Union Theological Seminary, NY]

Can one believe in something if one doesnt even know what it

is? asks Agnes in the comic strip by Tony Cochran.

Picture Agnes and her companion Trout lying under a tree.

Agnes asks: Do you believe in Manifest Destiny? Trout answers, I
do if you do. She asks, Do you even know what it is? He
answers, I dont need to know what a thing is to believe in it.
Agnes counters, Really? How can you believe in something if you
dont even know what it is? Trout trumps her, HeckIll even sign
off on vampire zombie dairy cows if you shut up and let me sleep.
[The Washington Post, July 29, 2012].

Christians call their Trinity ineffable. They exclaim:

Glory be to Thee, O most sweet, most noble, resplendent,
peaceful, ineffable Trinity. [ From the Chaplet in Honor of the
Most Holy Trinity.]

Pope John Paul II noted the ineffable unity and inscrutable

Trinity of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. [Homily of Pope John Paul
II at the Parish of St. Linus in Rome, 25 May 1997]. Ineffable means
incapable of being expressed in words. However, if one cannot
express an idea in words, how could one understand it or
communicate it? David Chart commented:
God is supposed to be both three and one, in such a way
that the three are very different but absolutely the same. This
is simply incoherent in human terms; there is no way to
understand it in a way that preserves both the difference and
the identity. Thus, if God is a Trinity, God is ineffable, and
beyond human understanding. [Chart, Ineffable God,
web page. Born in Stockport, England, in 1971, Chart attended the
University of Cambridge.]

Thomas Jefferson declared:

Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against
unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before
reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea
of the trinity. [Letter of Thomas Jefferson to Francis Adrian Van
der Kemp, 30 July, 1816.]

Christians pray, O my God, I firmly believe that Thou art one

God in three divine persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit....
However, can Christians really form any idea of this One God
composed of three persons?
 Christian theologians claim that their three Divine Persons, each
with a distinct consciousness and will, are somehow also One
God. How three individual entities could also be one individual
being boggles the mind. How, we might inquire, could a single
being harbor several independent minds and wills? Perhaps
someone suffering from a multi-personality disorder? But are we
to think of the One God of Christianity as a schizoid? Yet, even
within a split personality only one mind predominates at a time.
One might imagine the Trinity as Siamese tripletsif there were
such a thingbut these would be three individuals and not one. Or
should we imagine the Trinity as a Chimaera, a being with the head
of a lion, a fire-belching goat, and the tail of a snake?

This is a mystery difficult to understand, theologians tell us.

They are right. But is it because the idea is too profound or
because it makes no sense? Jamie Whyte wrote:
The Christian clergy claims that there are three distinct
divine Persons Father, Son and Spirit called the Holy Trinity.
Like all Persons each must have a distinct consciousness or
mind; otherwise, they would not be three Persons but three
nothings. So the Father is not identical with the Son, the Spirit
not identical with the Father, and the Son is not identical with
the Spirit. However, these clerics also insist that these three
distinct Persons are also one being called One God. This
being must also have a distinct consciousness or mind;
otherwise, it would not be a being but a nothing. The Christian
 clergymen agree that three cannot be also one, however, they
claim an exception to this rule in the case of the Holy Trinity;
here three are at the same time one. But this would be
possible only if Father, Son and Spirit were identical. In that
case, however, they would not be three Persons but only one;
this would undermine the concept of the Holy Trinity: three
Persons in One God.... .
[Whyte, Crimes Against Logic: Exposing the Bogus Arguments of
Politicians, Priests, Journalists, and Other Serial Offenders].

Dr. Servetus declared that three beings cannot exist in one God;
they cannot even be imagined. Moreover, it is wholly impossible to
have any notion of them. He stated:
We have become Atheists, men without any God. For as
soon as we try to think about God, we are turned aside to
three phantoms, so that no kind of unity remains in our
conception. What else is being without God but being unable
to think about God, when there is always present to our
understanding a haunting kind of confusion of three beings,
by which we are forever deluded into supposing that we are
thinking about God.
When Christians try to imagine a one God composed of
Father, Son and Spirit, they are actually thinking of a fourth
God. So Christians cherish a Quaternity in their minds though
they deny it in words. [ Servetus, On the Errors of the
Trinity.]

For these ideas Dr. Servetus was burned at the stake. However,
he was right. A closer examination of the Trinitarian deity yields
more than three entities. First, there is Yahweh, the God of the
Jews, whom Christians call God the Father. But Trinitarians teach
that Yahweh is really only one of three divine Persons Jesus and
the Holy Ghost being the other two. These three Persons form
One God, who is more than the three Persons side by side. This
One God, also known as the Triune God or the Godhead, is the
result of the union of the three Persons. This Triune God is the
fourth God of the quaternity to which Servetus was referring.
When I was a Catholic, I tried to pray to this One God or
Triune God. I tried to bring to mind a divine figure who was neither
Father, Son nor Spirit or the three in a group but their single
essence or substance. I came up with a deity remarkably like God
the Father. This new divinity I called the One God, but I soon
realized that he was not that but only one more God. When I
perceived that I had concocted a fourth divine being, I abandoned
my effort and fell back on God the Father. Other Christians may
have had a similar experience. When imagining addressing the
unimaginable One God, they may have really been praying to
God the Father, who is not the alleged Triune God but merely one
of the holy trio.
All this can be confusing. The Triune God is being mistaken for
God the Father in the following Prayer to the Blessed Trinity:
Let us praise the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; let us
bless and exalt [the Triune] God above all forever.
Almighty and everlasting [Triune] God, to whom we owe
the grace of professing the true faith, grant that while
acknowledging the glory of the eternal Trinity and adoring its
unity, we may through Your majestic power be confirmed in
this faith and defended against all adversities, through Jesus
Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you [actually with
the Father, not the Triune God] in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, forever and ever. Amen.
In this prayer, the Triune God is sometimes confused with God
the Father. This prayer is first addressed to the Triune God, but then
this God becomes without warning God the Father. Contrary to
this prayer, the Triune God does not live in unity with Christ and the
Holy Spirit. It is God the Father who lives in unity with these two;
their union results in the Triune God or Trinity.
 But the Blessed Trinity gets more complicated: The second
Person, Jesus, is not only God but also man. Catholics pray:
Blessed be God. Blessed be His Holy Name. Blessed be Jesus
Christ, true God and true Man.... [From the Divine Praises]
According to the Athanasian Creed, Jesus Christ is Perfect God;
and perfect Man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting.
The Catholic Catechism teaches: Jesus Christ possesses two
natures, one divine and the other human, not confused, but united
in the one person of God's Son.
Therefore, we also have to fit this God-man into our Trinity. So
the Triune God consists not only of God the Father and God the
Holy Ghost, who are pure spirits, but also of God the Son, who has
not only a divine spirit but is also a human being, complete with
flesh and blood. Thus, the One God of Christianity has to be
imagined not only with three divine minds and wills but also with a
fourth mind and will; that of a human. Can Christians cram all this
into their One God without stretching it to the breaking point?
Christian iconographers created numerous likenesses of God the
Father with his long beard, of God the Son as an infant in the arms
of his mother or as an adult hanging from a tree and of God the
Holy Spirit soaring through the air. Sometimes these artists
depicted the Most Holy Trinity as two animals and one human; that
is, a dove, a lamb and a grandfatherly type. At other times, as three
male triplets or alternatively as males of different agesa beardless
youth, a man in the prime of life (if he is not dead) and finally an
elderly gentleman. But they never succeeded in showing us even a
thumb-nail sketch of their all-inclusive One God. We search in
vain through the output of two millennia of Christian artistry for a
glimpse of this mono theos in whom Christians allegedly believe.
When Christians are so ready to draw us pictures of God the Father,
God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, why dont they show us even
a speck of their Triune God who supposedly subsumes all three?
Christian artists experimented with various means for conveying
the oneness of Father, Son and Spirit. Some crowded all three
beneath a single halo; others pressed them or even chained them
together. However, no matter how tightly they were joined, the
seams showed. A few resorted to such monstrosities as one head,
three faces and four eyes, but they were all unsuccessful. The
alleged One God of Christianity made up of Father, Son and Spirit
could not be visualized as one for the simple reason that three
Persons with four minds and wills cannot be imagined as being one
person.
 Nineteen
Behind the Trinitarian Smokescreen:
Three Divine Persons Remain Three Gods
The dogma of the Trinity is an even more glaring logical contradiction.
God is one and three at the same time. His threeness
in no way detracts from his onenessand vice-versa.
Voltaire

THE CHRISTIAN DIVINITY IS ONE AND THREE-FOLD: So the

Father is God; the Son is God; and the Holy Ghost is God. And
yet they are not three Gods; but one God (Athanasian Creed).
According to this formulation, God the Son is of one substance
with the Father; likewise God the Holy Spirit. They are one God,
because they share in this same divine substance.
We may summarize the doctrine of the Trinity as follows: God
the Father shares divine substance with God the Son who shares
divine substance with God the Holy Spirit. They all share divine
substance; therefore, they are one God. However, this concept is
valid only in the spiritual realm; it does not apply in ordinary life.
One cannot say, John, Joe and Jack share human substance;
therefore, they are one boy.
But what is this divine elixir? Substance is a term from
Platonic metaphysicswhat a thing is in itself, apart from its
physical appearance. Advent: Catholic Encyclopedia noted the
following under substance:
The substance theory holds that a substance of a thing is
distinct from its properties.
The English philosopher David Hume denied the reality of
substance because it cannot be perceived. The philosophers
and writers Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Michel
Foucault and Gilles Deleuze also rejected the notion of

16
 substance. In addition Locke, Mill, and Taine, and in our day
Wundt, Mach, Paulsen, Ostwald, Ribot, Jodi, Hffding, Eisler,
and several others deny the reality of substance and consider
the existence of substance as an illusory postulate of naive
minds. The tendency of modern philosophy has been to regard
substance simply as an idea which the mind indeed is
constrained to form, but which either does not exist objectively
or, if it does so exist, cannot be known.
So we see that the existence of the Trinity hinges on this ancient
Greek notion. Should there be no such thing as substance, three
Divine Persons cannot be one Divine God on the basis of having the
same substance.
Rev. C. Randolph Ross declared:
From Moses to Jesus to us, our bedrock belief is that God is
one. All Christians, of course, claim to be monotheiststhey
believe in one God. At least, they believe they believe in one
God. However, if we pray to God the creator, and to Jesus as a
separate divine person, and perhaps to another divine
person called the Holy Spirit.... Well, it can be difficult to
think of this as a single God.
How, we may ask, could Christians form an idea of this
One God composed of three distinct beings with three
separate minds? Yet, Christians pray, O my God, I firmly
believe that Thou art one God in three divine persons.
Some orthodox Christian theologians have spent a lot of
energy to persuade us that these three--the Trinity--are indeed
one God. But...the explanations of the Trinity are not simply
obtuse or difficult to comprehend. To the extent that they
attempt to explain how three persons are one God, they are
illogical and nonsensical.... And too often, this turns into a
covert polytheism, with three deities who can be separately
worshipped and prayed to, as long as we believe they are
(somehow) ultimately one. So explanations of why the Trinity
is really monotheism sound very much like a Hindu

16
 explanation of their gods. [Ross, Why I am a small u
unitarian, Common Sense Christianity. Occam Publishers, Cortland,
New York, 1990. Ross is a Methodist minister.]

In the Middle Ages the nature of the Trinity was the subject of
public disputations between Christians and Jews. Rabbi Moses
Nachmanides was ordered by King James I of Aragon to take part
in a public disputation with Pablo Christiani, a Jewish convert to
Catholicism. This Dominican friar wanted to test his new missionary
technique to bring Jews to Christianity. The Disputation of
Barcelona [July 20-24, 1263] was held in the royal palace in the
presence of the king, his court and many ecclesiastical dignitaries
and knights. Nachmanides related the following concerning this
debate:
Then Fra Pablo arose and said that he believed in the unity,
which, none the less, included the Trinity, although this was an
exceedingly deep mystery, which even the angels and the
princes of heaven could not comprehend. I arose and said: It
is evident that a person does not believe what he does not
know: therefore the angels do not believe in the Trinity. His
colleagues then bade him be silent. [Milhemet Hobah,
Constantinople, 1710, p. 13a].

Is the dogma of the Trinity a hoax? One God composed of

God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit cannot be imagined or
grasped, because it isnt rational. No one can perceive or
comprehend the so-called Christian One God, because three
persons cannot be simultaneously one person.
According to the doctrine of the Trinity, God the Father, God the
Son and God the Holy Spirit are each a person, and together they
constitute One God. But what is this One God? A being? If it is
not a being, then its a nothing, and a nothing cannot be God. But
what kind of a being? To be God it would have to have a mind and
a will. But if it has a mind and a will then it is a person. If it were
not a person, what would it be? A nothing? So Father, Son and

16
Spirit are each a person, and they supposedly constitute together
another person, the One God. Three persons together equal one
person, and one person equals three persons. But this would be as
sensible as maintaining that three apples equal one apple and one
apple equals three apples. So we see that the doctrine of the
Trinity translates into gibberish
The purported One God of Christianity is beyond imagination
and conception, because no one can visualize or understand how
three persons could simultaneously be one person. Christians may
envision the three divine beings separately or side by side, but they
cannot picture them as a single being. Its like trying to conjure up
a three-cornered circle or a round triangle. Such a thing cannot be
grasped, because it makes no sense.
What cannot be envisioned or understood cannot be believed.
Nachmanides was right: its impossible for people to believe in
something of which they can form no conception. Since no one can
envisage God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit as a
single God, no one can believe in it. Neither the angels in heaven
nor the Christians on earth can really believe in a Triune God,
because they can form no idea of it. They may say they believe in
this something or other of which they have no concept, but they
are only fooling themselves; the One God is only a compound
word. People cannot worship something in which they do not
believe. Christians may pray to Father, Son and Spirit individually
or collectively, but they cannot pray to a One God who
encompasses all three. Therefore, Christians do not worship a
Triune God; instead, they worship God the Father, God the Son
and God the Holy Spirit as separate Gods. Thus, Christians are
functional tri-theists while imaging themselves monotheists.
Christians would point to the dogma of the Trinity, that
adorable mystery, if we questioned their belief in One God. But
we have seen how this construct violates logic and involves the

16
Christian religion in absurdities. The Trinitarian formula, which
allegedly transmutes three individuals into one being, is as
efficacious as those medieval formulas that purported to transform
iron into gold. This alchemist formula cannot transform three Gods
into One God; stubbornly they remain three.
The doctrine of the Trinity was conjured up by some Christian
theologians to paper over their act of joining Jesus and the Holy
Ghost with the one Jewish God, something that violated their First
Commandment. This doctrine is a linguistic deceit, a convoluted
attempt to hide the polytheism beneath Christian monotheism.
They passed off their Most Sacred Trinity to the world as a grand
mystery that is impossible to understand, because it is too
profound. In reality, it is impossible to grasp, because it makes no
sense; it is a fake facade and a false front.
In spite of its pretense and propaganda, Christianity is not a
monotheistic faith. Christian theologians, priests and ministers
have perpetrated a gigantic fraud; they have convinced two billion
Christians that their religion is top-quality monotheistic when it is
really commonplace polytheistic. How did theologians bring off
this gigantic hoax? By inducing the faithful to replace rational
thinking with emotion and faith, by stirring up the peoples
imagination so that it would overshadow their reasoning power. As
Thomas Paine wrote to Andrew Dean, it is the nature of the
imagination to believe without evidence.
Nonsensical as the notion of the Trinity may be, it has been
most useful. It enables Christianity to worship three Gods and still
pass as a monotheistic religion. By the use of this clever ruse,
Christian theologians managed to enthrone Jesus and the Holy
Ghost side-by-side with Yahweh in their holy of holies and claim
with a straight face to worship one God alone.
Anthony F. Buzzard and Charles F. Hunting wrote:

16
 The God of Moses, Isaiah, Jesus, and the apostles was one
person, the Father. One cannot be made equal to two or three.
All that can be done with one is to fractionalize it. Divide it
into smaller segments and it is no longer one. Expand it, and
in spite of prodigious mental gymnastics on the part of
Trinitarians, it cannot be made into two or three and still
remain one....
One of the great marvels of Christian history has been the
ability of theologians to convince Christian people that three
persons are really one God. [Buzzard and Hunting, The Doctrine
of the Trinity: Christianitys Self-Inflicted Wound. University Press of
America, 1994-98.]

The Athanasian Creed, which enshrines the trinitarian dogma,

bids us to acknowledge every Person by himself to be God and
Lord, but we are forbidden to say there are three Gods or Lords.
We may say Jesus is God and Lord, but we may not say Jesus is a
God and a Lord. If Jesus were a God then the Father would be a
God and also the Holy Spirit; then there would be three Gods.
While Christians are forbidden to say this, in practice, they often
forget this theological distinction and think of each Person as a
God. For example, even the prominent Catholic writer Wilfred
Sheed called Jesus a God when he wrote, there was never such
an authoritarian figure as Yahweh, the Jewish God. But then we
[Christians] have a God that was human, and He can express what
humans should feel for each othernot necessarily what God
would feel for us but what a God who is human would feel for us....
[Wilfred Sheed, Thats Entertainment, Once a Catholic. Houghton Mifflin
Company, Boston, 1987, pp. 58-50.]

Even a Master of Divinity can get confused and call Jesus, Father
and Holy Spirit Gods. Gary C. Burger, Master of Divinity from
International School of Theology, San Bernardino. CA, wrote, Gods
triune nature means essentially that Jesus, the Father and the Holy

16
Spirit are all distinct personal Gods but share the same substance
and will to such a full and perfect degree they are one. What he
apparently meant to say was, Jesus, the Father and the Holy Spirit
are all distinct Persons...they are one God. Burger is director of
New Media Ministries, Greensboro, NC.
Margaret OConnell in her short story An Afternoon of
Christian-Jewish Friendship illustrates this Christian tendency to
think of each Divine Person as a God:
During the meeting, a man tried to focus the discussion on
what Christians and Jews supposedly have in commontheir
belief in one God.
Mrs. Harris, the Lutheran, suddenly jumped to her feet and
shouted.... Aha! she said, pointing her finger at the man in
the middle aisle. But thats the whole thing right there! The
whole thing! We believe in three gods!...
Father Reed stared at the reddish lady, who had gone
considerably redder, and stammered into the last of the stifled
chuckles, Are you a...a...I mean...What are you, Madam?
I am a Missouri Synod Lutheran, Mrs. Harris replied
staunchly, in a tone that proclaimed she was quite ready to
burn at the stake for it.
But surely, the moderator implored. Surely Madame you
believe in the Trinity? Three Gods in one... I MEAN, he fairly
shouted correcting himself. I mean three persons in one
God.
Well, of course, the lady acknowledged impatiently. She
pointed her finger at the man again. He knows what I mean.
I mean we believe in Christ Jesus and he doesnt. [A Funny
Thing Happened to the Church: The Critic edited by Joel Wells,
Toronto, Ontario, Macmillan Co., 1969, pp. 48-50].

16
 .

2
.
,

The three-faced Christian Trinity.

16
 Twenty-one
Other Views of Christian Monotheism
Anyone who can worship a trinity and insist that his religion is a
monotheism can believe anythingjust give him time to rationalize it.
Robert A. Heinlein, JOB: A Comedy of Justice.

Judaism

Jewish polemics in the Middle Ages offer a clear indication of

the Jewish view of Christianity as basically a polytheistic religion
with a monotheistic veneer. [David Berger, The Jewish-Christian
Debate in the High Middle Ages. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society
of America, 1979, p. 26.]
Medieval Jewish polemicists argued [that] the Christian
teaching of the Trinity actually implied multiplicity [of gods] even
though belief in the unity of God was stressed. [Daniel J. Lasker,
Jewish Philosophical Polemics Against Christianity in the Middle Ages . New
York: Ktav Publishing House, 1977, p. 83].

The medieval Jewish philosopher Dawud ibn Marwan al-

Huqammiz described the Trinity as pure polytheism. [Ishrun
Magalat, Treatise 9 of Twenty Treatises].

Moses Maimonides, the foremost intellectual figure of

medieval Judaism, regarded Christianity as a form of proscribed
polytheism, even for gentiles.
David Novak commented:
In his aversion to what he considered Christian dilutions of
pure monotheism, especially in its doctrine of the Trinity, much
of Maimonides philosophical critique of Christian theology is
similar to Islamic arguments against it. In his earlier work,
Maimonides translated his theoretical disdain of Christianity

16
 into practice. He deemed Christians to be idolaters and
bemoaned the fact that political necessity forced many
European Jews to live in Christian societies. [The Law of Moses
prohibited Jews from associating with idolaters.]
[David Novak, Jewish-Christian Dialogue: A Jewish Justification.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1989, p. 57, and The Mind of
Maimonides, First Things, February 1999.]

Islam
The core Moslem believe is: God is One. He is indivisible and
inseparable. There is no God but He. While Moslems agree with
Jews that Judaism is monotheistic and Jews with Moslem that Islam
is monotheistic, Moslems and Jews can muster no such agreement
with Christianity. Moslems hold that Christians worship more than
one God and are therefore polytheists. They will be punished for
this. The Koran says: Certainly they disbelieve who say: Surely
Allah is the third of the three; [when] there is no god but the one
God. [Glorious Koran, Surah Maidah, chapter 5, verse 73.]
The Koran declares:
...the Christians say: The Messiah is the son of Allah.... How
perverse they are! They have taken as lords beside Allah...the
Messiah, son of Mary, when they were bidden to worship only
one God. [Glorious Koran, Surah IX,verses 30-32]

Brown

together in a different form: one person, God the Father, plus one
person, God the Son, plus one person, God the Holy Ghost,
equals one person, God the What? Is this English or is this
gibberish?
It is said that Athanasius, the bishop who formulated this
doctrine, confessed that the more he wrote on the matter, the

16
less capable he was of clearly expressing his thoughts regarding
it. [Brown, Who Invented The Trinity? How the concept of the Trinity
was introduced into the Christian doctrine, The Religion of Islam.]

Muhammed Asadi wrote:

Christians generally imagine God the Father as an elderly
gentleman, God the Son as a baby in a crib or a man on a cross,
and God the Holy Spirit as a dove. No matter how hard you try,
you can never super-impose these three distinct pictures as
one.... Three persons can never be one person.... It is claimed that
Jesus is not a part of God but 100% God on his own, so also the
Holy Ghost and the Father. But then it is concluded that they are
not three but one God. The premise of the statement does not
support its conclusion about there being one God. It makes the
assertion about the trinity impossible to prove logically and
reduces it to just words, which cannot have any meaning.
[Asadi, The Koran and the Bible: Is Jesus God?]

Abdal Hakim Murad declared

...the Nicene talk of a deity with three persons, one of whom
has two natures, but who are all somehow reducible to
authentic unity, quite apart from being rationally dubious,
seems intuitively wrong. God, the final ground of all being,
surely does not need to be so complicated....

The term son of God, frequently invoked in artistic and

medieval thinking to prop up the doctrine of Jesuss divinity, was
in fact similarly unpersuasive: In the Old Testament and in wider
Near Eastern usage it can be applied to kings, pharaohs, miracle
workers and others. Yet when St. Paul carried his version of the
Christian message beyond Jewish boundaries into the wider
gentile world, this image of Christs sonship was interpreted not
metaphorically, but metaphysically. The resultant tale of
controversies, anathemas and political interventions is complex;

16
but what is clear is that the Hellenized Christ, who in one nature
was of one substance with God, and in another nature was of one
substance with humanity, bore no significant resemblance to the
ascetic prophet who had walked the roads of Galilee some three
centuries before.3 [Murad,The Trinity: A Muslim Perspective,
Text of a lecture given to a group of Christians in Oxford,
England.]

Aisha Brown wrote:

Christianity has digressed from the concept of the Oneness of God,

however, into a vague and mysterious doctrine that was formulated
during the fourth century. This doctrine, which continues to be a
source of controversy both within and outside the Christian religion, is
known as the Doctrine of the Trinity. Simply put, the Christian
doctrine of the Trinity states that God is the

The Trinity? How the concept of the Trinity was introduced into the
Christian doctrine, The Religion of Islam.]

Shaykh Shazad Khan wrote:

Christians claim to be monotheists but their doctrine of trinity proves
problematic.... The problem has two aspects: logical incoherence and
implications of tritheism. The doctrine of the Trinity seems to be
logically incoherent as it states that the Godhead is composed of three
separate and distinct Persons who are each fully God and yet there are
not three gods but only one God. The Father is not the Son or the
Spirit and is fully God, the Son is not the Father or the Spirit and is fully
God, and the Son is not the Hellenized Christ, who in one nature was

16
 of one substance with God, and in another nature was of one
substance with humanity, bore no significant resemblance to the
ascetic prophet who had walked the roads of Galilee some three
centuries before. [Murad, The Trinity: A Muslim Perspective (Text
of a lecture given to a group of Christians in Oxford, England)].

So we see that Jewish and Moslem critics assess Trinitarianism

to be in the end a form of tritheism.

Western Critics

Catholic theologian and priest Hans Kng pointed out that the
dogma of the Trinity is one reason why the churches have been
unable to make any significant headway with non-Christian
peoples. He stated:
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 [persons] 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 Gods oneness and uniqueness
that can only dilute or nullify that oneness and uniqueness.
[Kng, Christianity and the World Religions: Paths of Dialogue with
Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. Orbis Books.]

Colin Edwart Gunton explained:

The doctrine of the Trinity has in the West come into
increasing question... there has for long been a tendency to
treat the doctrine as a problem rather than as encapsulating
the heart of the Christian Gospel.

16
 [Gunton, The Promise of Trinitarian Theology. Continuum
International Publishing Group, 1997, p. 32. Gunton, 1941-2003,
was a British Systematic Theologian and Professor of Christian Doctrine
at Kings College, London.]
Martin Borrhaus (Cellarius), born in Stuttgart, Germany,
published in 1527 De Operibus Dei (Concerning Gods Works). It
was the first book to openly question the doctrine of the Trinity.
Predating On the Errors of the Trinity by Servetus by 4 years, it
contributed to the founding of Unitarianism, the faith in one God.
Spanish physician Michael Servetus (1511-1553) was the first
European to correctly describe the function of pulmonary
circulation. He was also versed in theology. Servetus studied the
Holy Scriptures, and was surprised to find no reference to the word
Trinity. Hence, he questioned the validity of one of the
fundamental dogmas of Christianity: We must not impose as
truthscontended Servetusconcepts over which there are
doubts.

According to Servetus, trinitarians had turned Christianity into a

form of tritheism. In 1531 Servetus published at Hagenau in the
Alsace a work called On the Errors of the Trinity. He insisted that
Christian theologians foisted on us three beings, three Gods
under the pretense of unity. [Servetus, On the Errors of the Trinity:
The Two Treatises of Servetus on the Trinity, edited by Earl Morse Wilbur.
Cambridge: Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1932, and Servetus,
Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia.]

Admitting therefore these three, which after their fashion

they call Persons, they freely admit a plurality of beings, a
plurality of entities, a plurality of Essences, a plurality of
substances, and taking the word of God strictly, they will have
a plurality of Gods....
Three to be one, and one to be three. A Father not to be
older than His Son, and the Son to be the same age and equal
to his father; and One proceeding from both to be equal to

16
both; to believe three persons in one nature, and two natures
in one person....
How much this tradition of Trinity has alas! been the
laughing stock of Mohammedons [Moslems] only God knows.
The Jews also shrink from giving adherence to this fancy of
ours, and laugh at our foolishness about the Trinity, and on
account of its blasphemies, they do not believe that [Jesus] is
the Messiah promised in their Law. And not only the
Mohammedons and the Hebrews, but the very beasts of the
field, would make fun of us, did they grasp our fantastic
notion, for all the workers of the Lord bless the One God.
[John Redwood, Reason, Ridicule and Religion: The Age of
Enlightenment in England, 1660-1750. London: Thames & Hudson,
1976, p. 162.
The god of the Trinitarians is a 3-headed monster and a
deception of the devil. (Servetus may have been thinking of
Cerberus, the three-headed dog who guarded the gates of the
underworld.)
On 24 October, 1553, Dr. Servetus was sentenced to death in
Geneva, Switzerland. He was slowly burned to death with green
logs for denying the Trinity and infant baptism.

The Spanish theologian and physician Michael Servetus

declared:
The doctrine of the Trinity can be neither established by logic
nor proved from Scriptures, and is in fact inconceivable....
[Servetus, On the Errors of the Trinity: The Two Treatises of
Servetus on the Trinity. Edited by Earl Morse Wilbur.
Cambridge: Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1932]
The doctrine of the trinity [Servetus] felt to be a Catholic
perversion and himself to be a good New Testament Christian in
combating it.... According to his conception, a trinity composed
of three distinct persons in one God is a rational impossibility....
[John B. Noss, Man's Religions. Macmillan, 6th edition, 1980].

16
Although John Locke held many Christian beliefs, he rejected
the Trinity and original sin. This highly influential philosopher
got Newton to write an anti-trinitarian tract. Locke arranged to
have this work published anonymously in Holland; however, in
the end Newton decided this was too dangerous. This strongly
suggests that Locke too was by this time an Arian or unitarian.
(Locke, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.)

Enlightenment

Intellectuals of the Enlightenment were generally Deists. They

believed in God but rejected the divinity of Jesus Christ and the Trinity.
They believed the Scriptures were man made, and God could be known
only through his work; that is, nature. Thats why they called him the
God of Nature or, as Jefferson put it in the Declaration of
Independence, Natures God.

According to Fred Sanders, a modern proponent of the

Trinity:
The brightest minds of the Enlightenment found the
doctrine of the Trinity to be hopelessly pre-modern and

16
irrational, a dead piece of tradition that could not survive into
modernity. Thomas Jefferson spoke for the educated classes
when he sneered at the incomprehensible jargon of the
trinitarian arithmetic which encumbered his simple view of
God. [Sanders, Theology: The Modern Doctrine of the Trinity.
scriptoriumdaily.com.]

Enlightenment thinkers who considered Christianity polytheistic

included Jean Meslier, Paul-Henri dHolbach and Voltaire.
Jean Meslier (1664-1729), who died a Catholic parish priest, left a
manuscript that was summarized by Voltaire. He recapped Mesliers
exposition of the doctrine of the Trinity. This dogma posits three
distinct personages, each equally and completely God, yet each with
distinct functionalities. God came first, God begat Christ, and
through the work of both God and Christ the Holy Spirit came to
exist. Yet, all three are held to be coeternal. Governed by the law of
causality and principle of non-contradiction, Meslier found this
doctrine to be both absurd and repugnant in that it contradicts
both rules. Granting this contradiction, it is only through faith then
that a Christian can come to reconcile himself with the mystery of
the doctrine of the trinity. And such faith, Meslier argued, requires
that an individual relinquish his claim to reason or common sense.
Meslier believed that the dogmas of the Catholic Church are loaded
with records of extravagance (fantasy)the Trinity, for example.
How can three people make one when the Father engenders the
Son, hence ought to precede him. This belief, Meslier wrote,
denotes real paganism! [Voltaire published his expurgated
version as Extraits des sentiments de Jean Meslier, 1762.]

According to Meslier,
Roman Christianity teaches that there is only one God, yet three divine
persons each one being God. This doctrine is absurd, for if there are
three who are truly God, then there are three Gods, not one God. If
there is only one God, it is false to say there are three who are God.
[A. J. Mattill, Jr., The Most Singular Phenomenon, The American
Rationalist, May/June 1999.]

16
Paul Heinrich Dietrich Baron dHolbach (1723-1789) asked,
...is it true that Christianity admits but one God, the same which
was revealed by Moses? Do we not see Christians adore a threefold
divinity, under the name of the Trinity? The supreme God begat from
all eternity a son equal to himself; from these two proceeds a third
equal to the two first; these three Gods, equal in perfection, divinity,
and power, form nevertheless, only one God. To overturn this system,
it seems sufficient only to show its absurdity. Is it but to reveal such
mysteries as these that the Godhead has taken pains to instruct
mankind? Have opinions more absurd and contrary to reason ever
existed among the most ignorant and savage nations? In the mean
time, however, the writings of Moses contain nothing that could
authorize the construction of a system so wild. It is only by having
recourse to the most forced explanations that the doctrine of Trinity is
pretended to be found in the Bible. As to the Jews, contended with
the only God which their legislator has declared to them, they have
never attempted to create a threefold one.... [Baron dHolbach,
Christianity Unveiled: Being an Examination of the Principles and
Effects of the Christian Religion, Chapter VII, Of the Mysteries of the
Christian Religion, 1761. New York: Gordon Press, 1974.]
Baron dHolbach exclaimed,
What has been said of [God] is either unintelligible or perfectly
contradictory; and for this reason must appear impossible to every
man of common sense. [Baron dHolbach, The System
of Nature, 1770.]

According to Meslier,
Roman Christianity teaches that there is only one God, yet three divine
persons each one being God. This doctrine is absurd, for if there are
three who are truly God, then there are three Gods, not one God. If
there is only one God, it is false to say there are three who are God.
[A. J. Mattill, Jr., The Most Singular Phenomenon, The American
Rationalist, May/June 1999.]

Paul Heinrich Dietrich Baron dHolbach (1723-1789) asked,

16
 ...is it true that Christianity admits but one God, the same which
was revealed by Moses? Do we not see Christians adore a threefold
divinity, under the name of the Trinity? The supreme God begat from
all eternity a son equal to himself; from these two proceeds a third
equal to the two first; these three Gods, equal in perfection, divinity,
and power, form nevertheless, only one God. To overturn this system,
it seems sufficient only to show its absurdity. Is it but to reveal such
mysteries as these that the Godhead has taken pains to instruct
mankind? Have opinions more absurd and contrary to reason ever
existed among the most ignorant and savage nations? In the mean
time, however, the writings of Moses contain nothing that could
authorize the construction of a system so wild. It is only by having
recourse to the most forced explanations that the doctrine of Trinity is
pretended to be found in the Bible. As to the Jews, contended with
the only God which their legislator has declared to them, they have
never attempted to create a threefold one.... [Baron dHolbach,
Christianity Unveiled: Being an Examination of the Principles and
Effects of the Christian Religion, Chapter VII, Of the Mysteries of the
Christian Religion, 1761. New York: Gordon Press, 1974.]
Baron dHolbach exclaimed,
What has been said of [God] is either unintelligible or perfectly
contradictory; and for this reason must appear impossible to every
man of common sense. [Baron dHolbach, The System
of Nature, 1770.]

Voltaire (Franois-Marie Arouet), (16941778) thought the idea of

three persons in one substance balderdash, nonsense, ridiculous,
absurd and insane. He characterized the Trinity as chimerical ideas
and metaphysical fancies. He described the system of dogmas which
support the concept of the Trinity as the most monstrous edifice that
has ever dishonored reason. [Voltaire on Religion: Selected Writings.
Edited by Kenneth W. Appelgate. New York: Frederick Ungar
Publishing Co., 1974, pp. 168-190.]
The doctrine of the Trinity is [a] glaring logical contradiction,
declared Voltaire in a letter to Frederick the Great of Prussia. God is
one and three at the same time. His threeness in no way detracts from
his onenessand vice-versa.

16
Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd, and bloody
religion that has ever infected the world, he wrote to Frederick.
In his Relation du banissement des Jsuites de la Chine [Account of the
banishment of the Jesuits from China], Voltaire gives a humorous
account of the Jesuit Rigolet instructing the Chinese Emperor in the
Christian faith: As His Majesty puzzles over the Christian worship of
two Gods, a carpenter [Jesus] and a pigeon, Rigolet hastens to add a
third, the father of the other two.... [Then] Rigolet burdens His
Majestys tolerance with an ultimate absurdity: au fond, ces trois dieux
nen font quun [the three Gods are one].
[William H. Trapnell, Christ and His Associates in Voltairian
Polemics.]
In regard to the doctrine of the Most Holy Trinity, Voltaire stated in his
Dictionnaire Philosophique:
That nothing is more contrary to strict reason than what is taught
among Christians about the Trinity of persons in a single divine
essence, the second of which was begotten by the first, and the third
of which proceeds from the two others.
That this unintelligible doctrine is nowhere found in scripture.
That there are several distinct persons in the Divine Essence, and
that it is not the eternal who is the only True God, but that the Son and
the Holy Ghost must be added to him, is to introduce the crudest and
most dangerous error into the church of Jesus Christ, since it
manifestly encourages polytheism.

That it implies a contradiction to say that there is only one God and
that nevertheless there are three persons, each of which is truly God.

That this distinction, one essence and three persons, was never in
scripture....
That it must not be believed that the most rigid and the most
convinced Trinitarians themselves have any clear idea of the manner
in which the three hypostases [persons] subsist in God without
dividing his substance and consequently without multiplying it.
That Saint Augustine himself, after he had advanced a thousand
reasonings as false as they are obscure on this subject, was obliged to
admit that nothing intelligible could be said about it. Then they quote

16
[Augustines] words, which are in fact very singular: When it is
asked, says he, what are the three, human language is found
inadequate, and there are no terms to express them: yet it is said that
there are three persons, not in order to explain something, but
because we must speak and not remain silent. Dictum est tres
personae, non ut aliquid diceretur, sed ne taceretur (De Trinitate, Vol.
IX).
That the modern theologians have not elucidated this matter any
better.
That when they are asked what they understand by this word
person, they explain it only by saying that it is a certain
incomprehensible distinction that causes one to distinguish in a
numerically single nature a Father, a Son, and a Holy Ghost.
That the explanation they give of the terms to beget and to
proceed is not more satisfactory since it comes down to saying that
these terms indicate certain incomprehensible relationships between
the three persons of the Trinity.

That from all this we can gather that the basic argument between
them and the orthodox turns on the question whether there are in God
three distinctions of which we have no notion and between which
there are certain relationships of which we do not have any notion
either.
That it would be wiser to abide by the authority of the apostles, who
never spoke of the Trinity, and to banish from religion for ever all
terms which are not in the scriptures, such as Trinity, person, essence,
hypostasis, hypostatic and personal union, incarnation, generation,
procession, and so many more like them, which, being absolutely
meaningless, since they have no real representative in nature, can
provoke only false, vague, obscure and incomplete ideas in the
understanding.
The Founding Fathers of the United States
How did the American Founding Fathers view the concept of the
Holy Trinity?
Samuel Adams believed in the Trinity; however, the Deists George
Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James
Wilson, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine did not. [Jim Peterson,

16
The Revolution of Belief: Founding Fathers, Deists, Orthodox
Christians, and the Spiritual Context of 18th Century America, 2007.]
The Early American Presidents were Deists. They believed in the
God of Nature and rejected the divinity of Jesus Christ and therefore
the Holy Trinity.
The founders of our nation were nearly all Infidels, and that of the
presidents who had thus far been elected [Washington; Franklin;
Adams; Jefferson; Madison; Monroe; Adams; Jackson] not a one had
professed a belief in Christianity... said Rev. Bird Wilson. [The
Reverend Doctor Bird Wilson was an Episcopal minister in Albany, NY.]
Historian Gregg Frazier argues that the leading founders were
neither Christians nor Deists but rather supporters of a hybrid theistic
rationalism. [Founding Fathers of the United States, Wikipedia.]
(The Christian right is trying to rewrite the history of the United States
as part of its campaign to force its religion on others. They try to
depict the founding fathers as pious Christians who wanted the United
States to be a Christian nation, with laws that favored Christians and
Christianity. [Steven Morris, The Founding Fathers Were Not
Christians, Free Inquiry, Fall, 1995.]

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) became a Deist early in life. He

wrote in his Autobiography:
Some books against Deism fell into my hands; they were said to be the
substance of sermons preached at Boyles lectures. [Robert Boyle
(1627-1691) was a British physicist who endowed the Boyle Lectures
for defense of Christianity.] It happened that they wrought an effect
on me quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the
arguments of the deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to
me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a
thorough deist. Franklin, "Autobiography," published in The
American Tradition in Literature, seventh edition, McGraw-Hill, p. 180.]
Like all Deist, Franklin had no faith in the Trinity.
Jonathan Mayhew (17201766) was Americas first great Unitarian
minister and as such an opponent of the doctrine of the Trinity. He
coined the battle cry No taxation without representation and wrote
A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission,,,to the Higher Powers
(rulers have the right to reign only so long as their reign is just).

16
President John Adams later called this the spark that ignited the
American Revolution. [Famous American Unitarians, American
Unitarian Reform unitarianreform.com! ]
George Washington
When Congress sat in Philadelphia, President George Washington
(1732-1799) attended the Episcopal church. The rector, Rev. Richard
M. Abercrombie, reported, on the days when the sacrament of the
Lords Supper was to be administered, Washingtons custom was to
rise just before the ceremony commenced, and walk out of the
church.
Paul F. Boller Jr. wrote:
Unlike Thomas Jeffersonand Thomas Paine, for that
matterWashington never even got around to recording his belief
that Christ was a great ethical teacher. His reticence on the subject
was truly remarkable. Washington frequently alluded to Providence in
his private correspondence. But the name of Christ, in any
correspondence whatsoever, does not appear anywhere in his many
letters to friends and associates throughout his life. [Boller, George
Washington & Religion, Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas,
TX, 1963, pp. 74-75.]
After George Washingtons death, his pastor Dr. Abercrombie was
interrogated about the Presidents religion by the Rev. Dr. Bird Wilson.
He replied, Sir, Washington was a Deist.
Thomas Paine (1737-1809) declared,
...the Christiane mythological idea of a family of gods, and the
Christian system of arithmetic, that three are one, and one is three, are
all irreconcilable...to the divine gift of reason, that God hath given to
man.... [Pain, The Age of Reason, Part I.]
Paine continued:
Of all the systems of religion that were ever invented, there is none
more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more
repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than this thing
called Christianity....when, according to the Christian Trinitarian
scheme, one part of God is represented by a dying man, and another
part, called the Holy Ghost, by a flying pigeon, it is impossible that
belief can attach itself to such wild conceits....

16
 The book called the book of Matthew, says chapter iii, verse 16,
that the Holy Ghost descended in the shape of a dove. It might as well
have said a goose; the creatures are equally harmless, and the one is as
much nonsensical as the other.... [Paine, The Age of Reason, Part II,
Conclusion.]

Thomas Paine called the Christian creed a strange fable and absurd
jargon. He rejected the divinity of Jesus because he saw no evidence
in its favor. [If Jesus Christ is not divine, the Trinity is, of course,
impossible.]
Where is the evidence that the person called Jesus Christ is the
begotten Son of God? The case admits not of evidence either to our
senses or to our mental faculties: neither has God given to man any
talent by which such a thing is comprehensible. It cannot therefore be
an object for faith to act upon, for faith is nothing more than an assent
the mind gives to something it sees cause to believe in fact.
[Letter of Thomas Paine to Andrew A. Dean, August 1806.]

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), the third U.S. President, wrote to

theologian James Smith:
No historical fact is better established, than that the doctrine of
one God, pure and uncompounded, was that of the early ages of
Christianity.... The hocus-pocus phantasm of a God like another
Cerberus, with one body and three heads, had its birth and growth in
the blood of thousand and thousands of martyrs.... In fact, the
Athanasian paradox that one is three, and three but one, is so
incomprehensible to the human mind, that no candid man can say he
has any idea of it, and how can he believe what presents no idea? He
who thinks he does, only deceives himself. He proves, also, that man,
once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against
absurdities the most monstrous.... With such persons, gullibility, which
they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason, and the mind
becomes a wreck. [Letter of Thomas Jefferson to James Smith, Dec.
8, 1822. In Greek and Roman mythology Cerberus is a three-headed
hound guarding the gates of the Underworld.]

16
I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the
world, wrote Jefferson, and do not find in our particular superstition
one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded on fables and
mythology. [Letter of Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Woods.]

Jefferson wrote to John Adams, the second U.S. President:

It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in
the platonic mysticisms that three are one and one is three, and yet
that the one is not three and the three are not one.... [ Letter of
Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, August 22, 1813, Works, Vol. IV, p.
205, Randolphs edition.]
The reply of John Adams to Thomas Jefferson shows that he didnt
believe in the Trinity either:
The human understanding is a revelation from its maker, which can
never be disputed or doubted.... This revelation has made it certain
that two and one make three, and that one is not three nor can three
be one.... [Letter of John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, September 14,
1813.]
[In regard to the Trinity] Tom, had you and I been 40 days with Moses,
and beheld the great God, and even if God himself had tried to tell us
that three was one...and one equals three, you and I would never have
believed it. We would never fall victims to such lies. [ Same]
John Adams (1735-1826) also wrote:
The Pythagorean, as well as the Platonic philosophers, probably
concurred in the fabrication of the Christian Trinity.
President James Madison declared,
Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for
every noble enterprise. [Letter of James Madison to William Bradford,
April 1, 1774.]
Paul Revere, who warned the Minutemen of the incursion of the
British, was a Unitarian and as such did not believe in the Trinity.
Ethan Allen, the Revolutionary War leader of the Green Mountain
Boys, didnt believe in the Trinity either. He said that he was a Deist,
the reality of which I have never disputed, being conscious that I am
no Christian. He wrote the book Reason: the Only Oracle of Man

Unitarians

16
 The faith known as Unitarianism derives from Christianity minus the
divinity of Jesus. Unitarians reject the Trinity as contrary to
monotheism. The doctrine of the Trinity is thought by some (e.g. the
Unitarians) to be incompatible with the monotheism taught by Jesus
Christ.... (Monotheism, The Standard American Encyclopedia,
Walter Miller, editor-in-chief. Chicago: Standard American Library,
1937, Vol. 9).
Joseph Priestley (17331804), the discoverer of oxygen, preached in
Unitarian churches and supported this religion for most of his life. He
encouraged the foundation of Unitarian chapels throughout Great
Britain. In 1791, an anti-Unitarian mob attacked and burned Priestleys
home, library and laboratory, sending him into exile. He founded two
Unitarian churches when he settled in Pennsylvania. Priestley wrote:
In the mean time, this doctrine of the Trinity wears so disagreeable an
aspect, that I think every reasonable man must say with the excellent
Archbishop [of Canterbury John] Tillotson, with respect to the
Athanasian Creed, I wish we were well rid of it.
For Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) his period as a Unitarian
dates from his days at Jesus College. He wrote much of his finest
poetry while occupying Unitarian pulpits in the west of England. An
annuity provided for him by the Unitarian layman, Thomas
Wedgwood, enabled him to devote himself to writing.
Dr. William Ellery Channing (17801842) expounded the tenets of the
Unitarian movement, which included not only the rejection of the
Trinity but also the belief in human goodness and the subjection of
theological ideas to the light of reason.

Other Writers on the Trinity

Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), the great German poet, wrote:
The medieval scholastics declared, one times one is one, and they
proved it, but they added smilingly that this is really nothing but a
misconception of the human mind, which always errs when it
contradicts the pronouncements of the ecumenical councils: One
times one is three, and that is the real truth, as has long been revealed
to us, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost!
[Deutschland I. Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in
Deutschland. In Heinrich Heines smtliche Werke in zwlf Bnden,

16
edited by Gustav Karpeles. Leipzig, Max Hesses Verlag, undated, Vol.
7, p. 43 (translated by G. Grassl).
On another occasion Heine described a disputation between Frater
Jose, the Guardian of the Franciscans, and Rabbi Juda of Navarre. It
occurred in Toledo before the King and Queen of Spain, with the loser
being obligated to convert to the religion of the winner:

Disputation

Frater Jose:
He explains that the Godhead contains three persons,
who, however, can turn themselves into one when necessary
a mystery only he can understand
who has escaped the prison of reason and its chains.

Rabbi Juda:
The three-in-one doctrine wont interest our people
who have studied trigonomitry from their youth.
That your gods are only three is quite modest, I agree.
Your elders after all worshipped gods beyond recall.

Bruder Jose:
Er erzhlt, dass in der Gottheit drei Personen sind enthalten
die jedoch zu einer einzgen, wenn es passend, sich gestalten. .
Ein Mysterium, dass nur von demjengen wird verstanden,
Der entsprungen ist dem Kerker der Vernunft und ihren Banden.
.
Rabbi Juda:
Die Dreieinigkeitsdoktrin kann fr unsre Leut nicht passen,
die mit Regula-de-tri sich von Jugend auf befassen.
Dass in deinem Gotte nur drei Personen sind enthalten,
Ist bescheiden noch, sechstausend Gtter gab es bei den Alten.

16
[Heine, Disputation, Heines Werke in Fnf Bnden, Erster Band,
Gedichte in zeitlicher Folge. Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau-Verlag, 1964,
Vol. 1, pp. 326-340 (Translation by G. Grassl).]
Heine thought the old gods werent so bad; commenting on his
student days in Germany, he declared:
I did well in mythology. I dearly loved the godly rabble.... To tell the
truth, since we had to memorize the old gods anyway, we might as
well have kept them. I dont know if there is much advantage to our
New Roman Tridolatry.... [Heine, IdeenDas Buch Le Grand,
Heines Werke in Fnf Bnden, Dritter Band. Berlin and Weimar:
Aufbau Verlag, 1964, Vol. 3, p. 29 (translation by G. Grassl).

The British Poet Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) called the Trinity, a

confused metaphysical speculation which puzzles us. He rejected the
theology of the Trinity on the ground that this belief cannot be
verified, and he called the Trinity the fairy-tale of the three Lord
Shaftesburys. [Arnold, Literature and Dogma. Lord Shaftesbury was a
noted British philanthropist and reformer.]

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899) wrote:

Christ, according to the faith, is the second person in the Trinity,
the Father being the first and the Holy Ghost third. Each of
these persons is God. Christ is his own father and his own son.
The Holy Ghost is neither father nor son, but both. The son was
begotten by the father, but existed before he was
begottenjust the same before as after. Christ is just as old as
his father, and the father is just as young as his son. The Holy
Ghost proceeded from the Father and Son, but was equal to the
Father and Son before he proceeded, that is to say, before he
existed, but he is of the same age as the other two. So it is
declared that the Father is God, and the Son and the Holy Ghost
God, and these three Gods make one God. According to the
celestial multiplication table, once one is three, and three time
one is one, and according to heavenly subtraction if we take
two from three, three are left. The addition is equally peculiar:
if we add two to one we have but one. Each one is equal to
himself and to the other two. Nothing ever was, nothing ever
can be more perfectly idiotic and absurd than the dogma of the

16
 Trinity. [Ingersoll, The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll.
Dresden Memorial Edition. NY: The Ingersoll League, 1929, Vol.
IV, pp. 266-267.]

Ingersoll continued:
As we are compelled by Christian truth to acknowledge the
Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost each by himself to be God
and Lord, so we are all forbidden by the Catholic religion to say
that there are three Gods or Lords.... In order to be saved it is
necessary to believe this. What a blessing that we do not have
to understand it. [Ingersoll, The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll.
Vol. I, p. 494].
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) stated in The Devils
Dictionary:
Trinity, n. In the multiplex theism of certain Christian churches,
three entirely distinct deities consistent with only one.... The
Trinity is one of the most sublime mysteries of our holy religion.
In rejecting it because it is incomprehensible, Unitarians betray
their inadequate sense of theological fundamentals. In religion
we believe only what we do not understand, except in the
instance of an intelligible doctrine that contradicts an
incomprehensible one. In that case we believe the former as a
part of the latter.
H. G. Wells (1866-1946), later famous for his contribution to
science-fiction, wrote in The Outline of History, We shall see
presently how later on all Christendom was torn by disputes
about the Trinity. There is no evidence that the apostles of
Jesus ever heard of the Trinity, at any rate from him.
Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956) thought the old polytheism
lingers on in the preposterous concept of the Trinity, defectively
concealed by metaphysical swathing that are worse, if
anything, than the i 2. [Mencken, Treatise on the Gods. New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965, p. 284.

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899) wrote:

Christ, according to the faith, is the second person in the Trinity,
the Father being the first and the Holy Ghost third. Each of
these persons is God. Christ is his own father and his own son.
The Holy Ghost is neither father nor son, but both. The son was
begotten by the father, but existed before he was
begottenjust the same before as after. Christ is just as old as
his father, and the father is just as young as his son. The Holy

16
Ghost proceeded from the Father and Son, but was equal to the
Father and Son before he proceeded, that is to say, before he
existed, but he is of the same age as the other two. So it is
declared that the Father is God, and the Son and the Holy Ghost
God, and these three Gods make one God. According to the
celestial multiplication table, once one is three, and three time
one is one, and according to heavenly subtraction if we take
two from three, three are left. The addition is equally peculiar:
if we add two to one we have but one. Each one is equal to
himself and to the other two. Nothing ever was, nothing ever
can be more perfectly idiotic and absurd than the dogma of the
Trinity. [Ingersoll, The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll.
Dresden Memorial Edition. NY: The Ingersoll League, 1929, Vol.
IV, pp. 266-267.]

Ingersoll continued:
As we are compelled by Christian truth to acknowledge the
Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost each by himself to be God
and Lord, so we are all forbidden by the Catholic religion to say
that there are three Gods or Lords.... In order to be saved it is
necessary to believe this. What a blessing that we do not have
to understand it. [Ingersoll, The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll.
Vol. I, p. 494].
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) stated in The Devils
Dictionary:
Trinity, n. In the multiplex theism of certain Christian churches,
three entirely distinct deities consistent with only one.... The
Trinity is one of the most sublime mysteries of our holy religion.
In rejecting it because it is incomprehensible, Unitarians betray
their inadequate sense of theological fundamentals. In religion
we believe only what we do not understand, except in the
instance of an intelligible doctrine that contradicts an
incomprehensible one. In that case we believe the former as a
part of the latter.
H. G. Wells (1866-1946), later famous for his contribution to
science-fiction, wrote in The Outline of History, We shall see
presently how later on all Christendom was torn by disputes
about the Trinity. There is no evidence that the apostles of
Jesus ever heard of the Trinity, at any rate from him.
Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956) thought the old polytheism
lingers on in the preposterous concept of the Trinity, defectively
concealed by metaphysical swathing that are worse, if

16
anything, than the i 2. [Mencken, Treatise on the Gods. New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965, p. 284.
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899) wrote:
Christ, according to the faith, is the second person in the Trinity,
the Father being the first and the Holy Ghost third. Each of
these persons is God. Christ is his own father and his own son.
The Holy Ghost is neither father nor son, but both. The son was
begotten by the father, but existed before he was
begottenjust the same before as after. Christ is just as old as
his father, and the father is just as young as his son. The Holy
Ghost proceeded from the Father and Son, but was equal to the
Father and Son before he proceeded, that is to say, before he
existed, but he is of the same age as the other two. So it is
declared that the Father is God, and the Son and the Holy Ghost
God, and these three Gods make one God. According to the
celestial multiplication table, once one is three, and three time
one is one, and according to heavenly subtraction if we take
two from three, three are left. The addition is equally peculiar:
if we add two to one we have but one. Each one is equal to
himself and to the other two. Nothing ever was, nothing ever
can be more perfectly idiotic and absurd than the dogma of the
Trinity. [Ingersoll, The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll.
Dresden Memorial Edition. NY: The Ingersoll League, 1929, Vol.
IV, pp. 266-267.]

Ingersoll continued:
As we are compelled by Christian truth to acknowledge the
Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost each by himself to be God
and Lord, so we are all forbidden by the Catholic religion to say
that there are three Gods or Lords.... In order to be saved it is
necessary to believe this. What a blessing that we do not have
to understand it. [Ingersoll, The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll.
Vol. I, p. 494].
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) stated in The Devils
Dictionary:
Trinity, n. In the multiplex theism of certain Christian churches,
three entirely distinct deities consistent with only one.... The
Trinity is one of the most sublime mysteries of our holy religion.
In rejecting it because it is incomprehensible, Unitarians betray
their inadequate sense of theological fundamentals. In religion
we believe only what we do not understand, except in the
instance of an intelligible doctrine that contradicts an

16
 incomprehensible one. In that case we believe the former as a
part of the latter.
H. G. Wells (1866-1946), later famous for his contribution to
science-fiction, wrote in The Outline of History, We shall see
presently how later on all Christendom was torn by disputes
about the Trinity. There is no evidence that the apostles of
Jesus ever heard of the Trinity, at any rate from him.
Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956) thought the old polytheism
lingers on in the preposterous concept of the Trinity, defectively
concealed by metaphysical swathing that are worse, if
anything, than the i 2. [Mencken, Treatise on the Gods. New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965, p. 284.
Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of
reason to believe.Voltaire.
Faith is the effort to believe what your common sense tells you
is not true. Elbert Hubbard.
Metaphysics is almost always an attempt to prove the
incredible by an appeal to the unintelligible.H. L. Mencken.

Paul N. Tobin explained:

The Christian conception of God as a trinity is not found in the
Bible but is the result of centuries of theological battles
culminating in the council of Nicaea in 325 CE.1
C. Dennis McKinsey declared:
The Trinitarian belief that God is Unity, subsisting in three
persons: The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghostall three are
one God, equal in power and gloryrepresents one of the most
incredible, albeit crucial conceptions in all of Christendom.
Many observers throughout history have stressed the irrational
involved.2 2. McKinseys Biblical Errancy: A National Periodical
Focusing on Biblical Errors,
Contradictions and Fallacies, etc., Issue No. 15, The Trinity,
March 1984 (McKinsey is author of The Encyclopedia of Biblical
Errancy, Prometheus Books).
A. J. Mattill Jr. wrote:
Roman Christianity teaches that there is only one God, yet
three divine persons each one being God. This doctrine is
absurd, for if there are three who are truly God, then there are
three Gods, not one God. If there is only one God, it is false to
say there are three who are God.3 2. Mattill Jr. The Most
Singular Phenomenon, The American Rationalist, May/June
1999.

16
Three are God, according to the Athanasian Creed, but they add
to only one. The Father is God, uncreated, unlimited, eternal,
and almighty. The Son is God, uncreated, unlimited, eternal,
and almighty. The Holy Ghost is God, uncreated, etc. Each one
is called God, and each one has all the attributes of God
uncreated, unlimited, eternal and almighty. But we are
forbidden...to say there are three Gods. He, therefore, that
will be saved, let him thus think of the Trinity. Salvation
depends on our counting correctly. Forget about what you
learned in the first grade. Remember: 1+1+1=1 if you would
avoid the fiery pit.
The idea that three Persons could be one God, who is also a
person, may seem crazy and impossible. It reminds one of
Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll (1737-1832):
I cant believe THAT! said Alice.
Cant you? the Queen said in a pitying tone. Try again: draw
a long breath, and shut your eyes.
Alice laughed. Theres no use trying, she said: one CANT
believe impossible things. I daresay you havent had much
practice, said the Queen. When I was your age, I always did
it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes Ive believed as
many as six impossible things before breakfast. [Charles
Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll), Through the Looking Glass,
Chapter V.]

2. Mattill Jr. The Most Singular Phenomenon, The American

Rationalist, May/June 1999.
According to the doctrine of the Trinity, God is one and three.
He is uni trinoque Domino (the one-and-three Lord). When I
contemplate this ineffable mystery, I am moved to exclaim:
One is God and God is three,
theologians so decree.
Three-in-one and one-in- three: Threesome personality.
God is one and God is threesome.
There is rime, but where is reason?
Other Views of Christian Monotheism

16
 New Advent: Catholic Encyclopedia.
One of the main, fundamental, key doctrines of the Christian faith is the belief
in the
3
Trinity. . Southern Baptist Church, The Doctrine of the Trinity.

The doctrine of the Trinitythat God the Father, God the Son, and God
the Holy Spirit are each equally and eternally the one true Godis admittedly
difficult to comprehend, and yet is the very foundation of Christian Truth. 4
.
Mircea Elliade, The Encyclopedia of Religion. New York: MacMillan, 1987, Vol.
15, p. 53. .

The doctrine of the Trinity is the summary of Christian faith in God....

5
. Henry Morris and Martin Clark, The Bible Has the Answer. Master
Books, 1987.
The Trinity is the specifically Christian understanding of God. 6 .
Darren C. Marks, Bringing Theology to Life: Key Doctrines for Christian
Faith and Mission. Inter Varsity Press

The doctrine of the Trinity is one of the most important fundamental

beliefs of the Christian Church. 7 . Vincent McCann, Spotlight Ministries,
Prenton, CH43 7SA, United Kingdom. Spotlightministries.org.uk

The doctrine of the Trinity is the distinctive mark of the Christian religion,
setting it apart from all the other religions of the world. 8910 . J. Hampton
Keathley III, The Trinity (Triunity) of God. Biblical Studies Press, 1997.

... the doctrine of the Trinity separates Christianity from any other type
of theism. And, most importantly, its the only view that adequately

3 . Southern Baptist Church, The Doctrine of the Trinity.

4 . Henry Morris and Martin Clark, The Bible Has the Answer. Master Books, 1987.
5 . Mircea Elliade, The Encyclopedia of Religion. New York: MacMillan, 1987, Vol. 15, p. 53.
6 . Darren C. Marks, Bringing Theology to Life: Key Doctrines for Christian Faith and Mission.
Inter Varsity Press.
7 . Vincent McCann, Spotlight Ministries, Prenton, CH43 7SA, United Kingdom.
Spotlightministries.org.uk
8 . J. Hampton Keathley III, The Trinity (Triunity) of God. Biblical Studies Press, 1997.
9 . Father Greg Crosthwait, Anglican priest, What Difference Does the Trinity Make? Probe
Ministries, 1900 Firman Drive, Suite 100, Richardson, Texas 75081, www.probe.org.

10 . The Nature of God and the Explanation of Why Evil Is Present in This World, Section VI,
Chapter 2.

16
describes Gods work in salvation. 9 . Father Greg Crosthwait, Anglican priest, What Difference Does the

Trinity Make? Probe Ministries, 1900 Firman Drive, Suite 100, Richardson, Texas 75081, www.probe.org.

Although the doctrine of the Trinity cannot be directly proved, Today,

most mainstream Christian denominations have continued to stress the
importance of the doctrine of the Trinityas one of their most cherished
and inviolate doctrines. 1 . The Nature of God and the Explanation of Why Evil Is Present in This World,

Section VI, Chapter 2.

16
1

APPENDIX B

Declarations of Faith of Selected American Denominations

There is but One Living and True God, the Great Creator, and
there are three persons in the Godhead. The Father, the Son, and
the Holy Ghost. Congregational Holiness Church

There is but one true and living God, an eternal Being, a Spirit
without body, indivisible, of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, the
Creator and Preserver of all things, visible and invisible. In this
Godhead there is a Trinity, of one substance and power, and coeternal,
namely, the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Ghost.
Evangelical Congregational Church

On the basis of the Holy Scriptures we teach the sublime article of

the Holy Trinity; that is, we teach that the one true God...is the Father
and the Son and the Holy Ghost, three distinct persons, but of one and
the same divine essence, equal in power, equal in eternity, equal in
majesty, because each person possesses the one divine essence
entire.... We hold that all teachers and communions that deny the
doctrine of the Holy Trinity are outside the pale of the Christian
Church.
Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church, 1932

This church confesses the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy
Spirit. Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

The fundamental truth of the Orthodox Church is the faith

revealed in the
True God: the Holy Trinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America

We trust in the one triune God.

16
 Presbyterian Church (USA)

We believe the one God reveals himself as the Trinity: Father, Son and
Holy Spirit, distinct but inseparable, eternally one in essence and
power.
The Evangelical United Brethren Church

...there is one Divine Essence which is called and which is God:

eternal, without body, without parts, of infinite power, wisdom, and
goodness, the Maker and Preserver of all things, visible and invisible;
and yet there are three Persons, of the same essence and power, who
also are coeternal, the Father the Son, and the Holy Ghost....
Lutheran Augsburg Confession

There is but one living and true God, the maker and preserver of
all things. And in the unity of this Godhead there are three persons: the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. These three are one in eternity,
deity, and purpose;
everlasting, of infinite power, wisdom, and
goodness. Free
Methodist Church

We believe that there is one God, eternally existent in three persons:

Father, Son and Holy Ghost.
The World Evangelical Congregational Fellowship

God is revealed to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit each with

distinct personal attributes, but without division of nature, essence
or being. Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1858

We believe that there is one, and only one, living and true
God...that in the unity of the Godhead there are three persons, the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; equal in every divine perfection,
and executing distinct and harmonious offices in the great work of
redemption.

16
 The New Hampshire Baptist Confession, 1833:

We believe that the Godhead eternally exists in three persons

the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spiritand that these three are one
God, having precisely the same nature, attributes, and perfections, and
worthy of precisely the same homage, confidence, and obedience.
Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas, Texas
God the Father is the fountainhead of the Holy Trinity. The
Scriptures reveal the one God is Three PersonsFather, Son, and Holy
Spiriteternally sharing the one divine nature.
The Orthodox Church

In this divine and infinite Being there are three subsistencies, the
Father, the Word or Son, and the Holy Spirit. All are one in substance,
power, and eternity; each having the whole divine essence, yet this
essence being undivided.
The Baptist Confession of Faith, 1689

We believe in the one living and true God, both holy and loving,
eternal, unlimited in power, wisdom, goodness, the Creator and
Preserver of all things. Within this unity there are three persons of one
essential nature, power and eternitythe Father, the Son and the Holy
Spirit.
The Weslyan Church

There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body,
parts, or passions; of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; the Maker,
and Preserver of all things both visible and invisible. And in the unity
of this Godhead there be three Persons, of one substance, power, and
eternity; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America

In the unity of the Godhead there be three Persons of one

substance, power, and eternity: God the Father, God the Son, and God
the Holy Ghost. The Father is of none, neither begotten nor

16
proceeding; the Son is eternally begotten of the Father; the Holy Ghost
eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son.
The Westminster Confession of Faith, 1646

16
 APPENDIX C

Some Invocations of the Blessed Trinity

I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of
the Holy Spirit. Amen. [ Baptismal
Formula]

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it
was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be world without end.
Amen [ Glory be to the Father. From the
Rosary.]

May almighty God bless you--the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit. Amen. [Blessing at the conclusion of worship services.
Priests make the sign of the cross over the congregation while giving this
blessing. Prelates and the Pope make this sign three times; once for
Father, once for Son and once for the Holy Ghost.]

Glory to God in the highest, and peace to his people on earth.

Lord God, heavenly King, almighty God and Father,
we worship you, we give you thanks, we praise you for your glory.
Lord Jesus Christ, only son of the Father, Lord God, Lamb of God,
you takes away the sins of the world: have mercy on us;
you are seated at the right hand of the Father: receive our prayer.
For you alone are the Holy One, you alone are the Lord, you alone
are the Most High, Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit, in the glory
of God the Father. [Glory to God in the Highest. From the Catholic
Mass]

Glory to you God the Father. Supreme King, creator of the heavens
and the earth....
Glory to you God the Son of the Heavenly Father, my most loved
Lord Jesus Christ....

16
 Glory to you God the Holy Spirit, Spirit of the Father and of the
Son, Voice of the Wisdom of God.... [ Litany of the Most Holy
Trinity]

Let us pray to the one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
that our lives may bear witness to our faith.
Father, you sent your Word to bring us truth
and your Spirit to make us holy.
Through them we come to know the mystery of your life.
Help us to worship you, one God in three Persons,
by proclaiming and living our faith in you.
We ask you this, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
one God, true and living, forever and ever. [Collect for Trinity
Sunday]

God the Father of Heaven, Have mercy on us.

God the Son, Redeemer of the world, Have mercy on us.
God the Holy Ghost, Have mercy on us.
Holy Trinity, One God, Have mercy on us..
.[Litany of the Most Holy Trinity.]

Oh my God, I firmly believe that thou art one God

in three Divine Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.... [ Act of Faith.]

Most holy Trinity, Godhead indivisible,

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
our first beginning and our last end,
you have made us in accord
with your own image and likeness. [ Most Holy Trinity.]

Lob sei dem Vater und dem Sohn,

Und Heiligen Geist auf gleichem Thron.

16
im Wesen einem Gott und Herren,
den wir in drei Personen ehren.

Praise to Father and to Son,

And to Holy Ghost on same throne.
In essence One God and Lord
Whom we honor in three Persons.

[Praise to Father and to Son]

With all our hearts and voices we acknowledge, praise, and thank you, God
the Father un-begotten, God the only-begotten Son, God the Holy Spirit, the
Paraclete, O holy and undivided Trinity! 11
. [Praise and Thanks]

Holy Spirit, Divine Consoler, I adore you as my true God, with God the
Father and God the Son. I adore You and unite myself to the adoration you
receive from angels and saints.... [ Prayer for the Gifts of the Holy
Spirit]

Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!

Early in the morning our song shall rise to thee;
Holy, holy, holy! Merciful and mighty,
I bind unto myself the Name, the strong Name of the Trinity,
By invocation of the same, the Three in One and One in Three.
By Whom all nature hath creation,
Eternal Father, Spirit, Word:
Praise to the Lord of my salvation,
Salvation is of Christ the Lord. [From St. Patricks Breastplate]

11

16
Comments

16
 Blessed be God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit;
To Abba Father who chose Our Lady as His daughter and made her
Queen of all creatures and creation;
To the Incarnate Word who chose her as His mother and mediatrix of
His incarnation and salvific work;
To the Holy Spirit who chose her as His spouse, filled her with grace and,
together with the Father and the Son, made her Queen of the Most Holy
Trinity.12

Mary, the Mother of God, is intimately related to the members of the Holy
Trinity. The basic relationship among the three members of the Trinity is as
follows: Jesus is the only begotten Son of God the Father. The Holy Spirit is
the offspring of both God the Father and of God the Son. (Technically, he
proceeded from both the Father and the Son, but it comes down to the same
thing.)
The Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, and she bore Jesus. (The Holy Spirit is
referred to as the spouse of Mary, although they were never formally
married, and she was already engaged to her future husband Joseph.) Had
Mary been formally the wife of the Holy Spirit, she would have been the
daughter-in-law of God the Father from whom the Spirit proceeded. Since
Mary was not married to her impregnator, God the Holy Spirit could only be
called her common-law husband. And Mary could only be the common-law
daughter-in-law of God the
Father, the creator of the universe.)
The Holy Spirit, the spouse of Mary, was the father of Jesus, but he was
also the offspring of Jesus, because he proceeded from Jesus. Thus, the Holy
Spirit is both the Father of Jesus and also his offspring. And Jesus is both the
son of the Holy Spirit and his progenitor. Mary is also called the Mother of
God, because she is the mother of Jesus, who is God.
So Jesus has two fathers: God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. And God
the Holy Spirit has two fathers: God the Father and God the Son. But God the
Father has no father, instead he has two sons and one daughter-in-law. (Well,
not exactly according to the law, but God doesnt have to follow all the rules;
he is God after all.)

12 . From the Novena of the Most Holy Trinity.

16
 Mary has one husbandJoseph the carpenterand a quasi husbandGod
the Holy Spirit. Her son Jesus and the Spirit are brothers since both can trace
their origin to God the Father. Therefore, Jesus is not only Marys son but also
her brother-in-law.

APPENDIX D

Main Christian Creeds

The Old Roman Creed and the Apostles Creed

Although not written by the Apostles, the Apostles Creed and its shorter
predecessor the Roman Creed are the oldest extant creeds. They cite the three
members of the TrinityGod the Father, Christ Jesus his only Son and the
Holy Spirit. However, only the Father is named God; the other two are not
identified as part of a divine Trinity.

The Apostles Creed is frequently recited at Christian services.

The Old Roman Creed

I believe in God the Father Almighty;

and in Christ Jesus His only Son, our Lord,
Who was born from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary,
Who under Pontius Pilate was crucified and buried,
on the third day rose again from the dead,
ascended to heaven, sits at the right hand of the Father, whence He
will come to judge the living and the dead;
and in the Holy Spirit, the holy Church, the remission of sins, the
resurrection of the flesh (the life everlasting).

The Apostles Creed

I believe in God, the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, and in
Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered
under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried;
he descended into hell; on the third day he rose again from the dead;
he ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of God the Father
almighty; from there he will come to judge the living

16
and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting. Amen.

The Nicene Creed

The Nicene Creed is the most widely accepted brief statement of the Christian
Faith. It was initially drafted by the First Council of Nicaea (325) and revised by
the First Council of Constantinopolis (381). It announces explicitly the equality
of Jesus with the Father and the Holy Ghost. It does not mention a Trinity.
I believe in one God, the Father
Almighty, maker of heaven and earth,

and of all things visible and invisible;

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the

only begotten Son of God,
begotten of his Father before all
worlds,
God of God, Light of Light, very God of very
God, begotten, not made, being of one
substance with the Father; by whom all things
were made; who for us men and for our
salvation came down from heaven, and was
incarnate by the Holy Ghost
of the Virgin Mary,
and was made man;
and was crucified also for us under Pontius
Pilate; he suffered and was buried; and the
third day he rose again according to the
Scriptures, and ascended into heaven,
and sitteth on the right hand of the
Father; and he shall come again, with
glory, to judge both the quick and
the dead; whose kingdom shall have
no end.

And I believe in the Holy Ghost the Lord, and Giver of Life,

16
 who proceedeth from the Father [and the
Son]; who with the Father and the Son
together is worshipped and glorified;
who spake by the Prophets.
And I believe one holy Catholic and Apostolic
Church; I acknowledge one baptism for the
remission of sins; and I look for the resurrection
of the dead, and the life of the world to come.
Amen.

Comment on the Nicene Creed

Jesus was begotten by God the Father--Light of Light, very God of very
God. The Father begot God the Son like one light lights another. When one
burning taper ignites the wick of another taper, there are two lights. This
symbolizes the way the light of the Father ignites the light of the Son.
However, if there are two lights, why not two Gods?
The answer is simple: the subsequent Athanasian Creed forbids two Gods.
God the Son was born of God the Father declares the Nicene Creed. In a
human family, if a son is born of a father, we have two humansa father and
son. If God the Son was born of God the Father, why are there not two Gods?
See the subsequent Athanasian Creed.
Very God was born of Very God, declares the Nicene Creed. This sounds like
one
God was born of another God. But this would be two Gods, something
forbidden by the
Athanasian Creed. We may say one Divine Person (Jesus) was born of another
Divine Person (the Father). And while each Divine Person is God, we may not
say there are two Gods.

16
 The Athanasian Creed

The Athanasian Creed has been used by the Christian Church since the sixth
century. It is the first creed in which the equality of the three Persons of the
Trinity is explicitly stated. A medieval account credited Athanasius of
Alexandria, the famous defender of Nicene theology, as the author of the
Creed. However, it was probably written in Southern Gaul in the late fifth or
early sixth centuryat least 100 years after Athanasius.

...the Catholic Faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and
Trinity in Unity; Neither confounding the Persons; nor dividing the
Essence. For there is one Person of the Father; another of the Son;
and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of
the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one; the Glory equal, the
Majesty coeternal. Such as the Father is; such is the Son; and such is
the Holy Ghost. The Father uncreated; the Son uncreated; and the
Holy Ghost uncreated. The Father unlimited; the Son unlimited; and
the Holy Ghost unlimited. The Father eternal; the Son eternal; and
the Holy Ghost eternal. And yet they are not three eternals; but one
eternal. As also there are not three uncreated; nor three infinites,
but one uncreated; and one infinite. So likewise the Father is
Almighty; the Son Almighty; and the Holy Ghost Almighty. And yet
they are not three
Almighties; but one Almighty. So the Father is God; the Son is God;
and the Holy Ghost is God. And yet they are not three Gods; but one
God. So likewise the Father is Lord; the Son Lord; and the Holy Ghost
Lord. And yet not three Lords; but one Lord. For like as we are
compelled by the Christian verity; to acknowledge every Person by
himself to be God and Lord; So are we forbidden by the Catholic
Religion; to say, there are three Gods, or three Lords.... He therefore
that will be saved, let him thus think of the Trinity.... This is the
Catholic Faith; which except a man believe truly and firmly, he cannot
be saved.

The Athanasian Creed is recited on Trinity Sunday, which is the first Sunday
after Pentecost in the Western liturgical calendar.

16
 Creed of the 11th Council of Toledo, 675

This Creed buttresses the divinity of Jesus. He is not only born of God the
Father but from his very womb. Although he is begotten of the Father, he is as
old as the Father, because the Son always existed alongside the Father.
Although the Son exists because of the Father, the two are equal in all things.
Although the Son has never begun to be been born, he continues to be born
ceaselessly.
We also confess that the Son was born, but not made, from the
substance of the Father, without beginning, before all ages, for at no
time did the Father exist without the Son, nor the Son without the
Father. Yet the Father is not from the Son, as the Son is from the
Father, because the Father was not generated by the Son but the
Son by the Father. The Son, therefore, is God from the Father, and
the Father is God, but not from the Son. He is indeed the Father of
the Son, not God from the Son; but the latter is the Son of the
Father and God from the Father. Yet in all things the Son is equal to
God the Father, for He has never begun nor ceased to be born. We
also believe that He is of one substance with the Father; wherefore
He is called homoousios with the Father, that is of the same being as
the Father, for homos in Greek means one and ousia means being,
and joined together they mean one in being. We must believe that
the Son is begotten or born not from nothing or from any other
substance, but from the womb of the Father,1 that is from His
substance. Therefore the Father is eternal, and the Son is also
eternal. If He was always Father, He always had a Son, whose Father
He was, and therefore we confess that the Son was born from the
Father without beginning. We do not call the same Son of God a
part of a divided nature, because He was generated from the Father,
but we assert that the perfect Father has begotten the perfect Son,
without diminution or division, for it pertains to the Godhead alone
not to have an unequal Son. This Son of God is also Son by nature,
not by adoption; of Him we must also believe that God the Father
begot Him neither by an act of will nor out of necessity, for in God
there is no necessity nor does will precede wisdom....

16
 Note: The Son...is God from the Father, declares this Creed. But we
may not say that he is a God or one God from the Father. To say, A
God implies the presence of other Gods, a heresy. We must confine
ourselves to the phrase God from the Father to avoid endangering
our soul.

1
1. Emphasis added.

APPENDIX E

The Trinity Around Us

Some historical American churches bearing the name Trinity:

Trinity Church at Wall Street and Broadway, Manhattan, NY.
Trinity Church, Back Bay, Boston.
Holy Trinity (Old Swedes Church), Wilmington, Delaware.
American universities:
Trinity University, Washington, D.C.
Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, Duke University, Durham,
NC. Trinity College, Hartford, Conn.

Other universities:
Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.
Trinity College, Cambridge, Great Britain.
Trinity College (The College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity),
Oxford, Great Britain.

16
 APPENDIX F

Voices on Faith, Creeds and Dogmas

We may define faith as the firm belief in something for which
there is no evidence. Where there is evidence, no one speaks of faith.
We do not speak of faith that two and two are four or that the earth is
round. Bertrand Russell.
Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to
believe.Voltaire.

Faith is the effort to believe what your common sense tells you is
not true. Elbert Hubbard.
All religious notions are uniformly founded on authority; all the
religions the world over forbid examination, and are not disposed that
men should reason upon them.DHolbach.
Metaphysics is almost always an attempt to prove the incredible by
an appeal to the unintelligible.H. L. Mencken.
"When he that speaks, and he to whom he speaks, neither of them
understand what is meant, that is metaphysics."Voltaire
The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not
only opposed to the scientific spirit, it is also opposed to all other
attempts at rational thinking.H. L. Mencken, Treatise on the Gods.
Take from the church the miraculous, the supernatural, the
incomprehensible, the unreasonable, the impossible, the unknowable,
the absurd, and nothing but a vacuum remains.Robert G. Ingersoll.

Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason
and common sense.Voltaire.

16
 CERBERUS
In Greek and Roman mythology Cerberus was a three-
headed hound who guarded the gates of the Underworld
preventing the dead from leaving. Dr. Servetus and Thomas
Jefferson compared the Trinity to Cerberus.

Twenty-one

Other Views

Jewish

Islam

The core Moslem believe is: God is One. He is indivisible and

inseparable. There is no God but He. While Moslems agree with Jews
that Judaism is monotheistic and Jews with Moslem that Islam is
monotheistic, Moslems and Jews can muster no such agreement about
Christianity. Moslems hold that Christians worship more than one God
and are therefore polytheists. They will be punished for this. The
Glorious Koran says:

16
Certainly they disbelieve who say: Surely Allah is the third of the three;
[when] there is no god but the one God, and if they desist not from what
they say, a painful chastisement shall befall those among them who
disbelieve. [Glorious Koran, Surah Maidah, chapter 5,
verse].

...the Christians say: The Messiah is the son of Allah.... How perverse
they are! They have taken as lords beside Allah...the Messiah son of
Mary, when they were bidden to worship only one God.

Abdal Hakim Murad declared:

...the Nicene talk of a deity with three persons, one of whom has two
natures, but who are all somehow reducible to authentic unity, quite
apart from being rationally dubious, seems intuitively wrong. God, the
final ground of all being, surely does not need to be so complicated....

The term son of God, frequently invoked in patristic and medieval

thinking to prop up the doctrine of Jesuss divinity, was in fact similarly
unpersuasive: In the Old Testament and in wider Near Eastern usage it
can be applied to kings, pharaohs, miracle workers and others. Yet when
St Paul carried his version of the Christian message beyond Jewish
boundaries into the wider gentile world, this image of Christs sonship
was interpreted not metaphorically, but metaphysically. The resultant
tale of controversies, anathemas and political interventions is complex;
but what is clear is that

16
Trinity Gallery
God the Father in a red robe holding up the naked God
the Son, who has just expired on his cross. The Holy Spirit
in the form of a dove comes in for a landing.

17
 THE DEAD GOD

God the Father holding up the dead God the Son (Jesus)
while being assisted by God the Holy Spirit in the form of a
young man with wings. The three divine persons are shown
at different ages, because, according to the Nicene Creed,
first came God the Father, who begot God the Son and the
two together brought forth God the Spirit. However, this
contradicts an article of the Athanasian Creed according to
which they are of identical age since they existed from all
eternity and are coeternal. By papal decree the Holy Spirit
may no longer be shown in the form of a human being.
 Alabaster sculpture of the Holy Trinity in the National
Gallery of Art, Washington. D.C. God the Father on his
throne holds up the crucified Jesus, while the Holy Spirit
pecks at his head.
Trinity from Palmyra, Syria, First Century C.E. Left to right: (1)
moon goddess (with sickle of the moon in her halo), (2) lord of
heaven and (3) sun goddess.
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The Most Blessed Trinity: God the Son holding a cross and blessing with three digits of his
right hand extended (the sign of the Trinity). God the Father with the triangular halo. God the
Dove beaming down on Son and Father. The globe, showing the Mediterranean Basin, serves
as a footstool for Father and Son. The thumb of the angel who holds up the globe points
toward Jerusalem, the place of Christs execution.
Jesus blesses with three digits of his right hand extended (the sign of the Trinity).

A Chinese Trinity
A fully clothed God the Son (Jesus) holds up the cross, while a
balding God the Father holds a globe with the Middle Kingdom
front and center. God the Dove is barely discernible above.
 The God Delusion Bantam Books

Contact: Brian Magee, 202-238-9088 ex. 105, Mobile: (202) 681-2425

bmagee@americanhumanist.org
(Washington, DC March 28, 2012) On March 23, 2012 Humanist Press
became the only publisher in the humanist/freethought/atheist market to offer
new titles as ebooks, making the electronic format the main focus of the
publisher. The move is part of an overall effort by Humanist Press to enter the
rapidly growing ebook market.
or is the Trinity like many other religious ideas designed to be impossible to be
disproved with any imaginable evidence? Three in One Daylight Atheism
Atheism Pages EbonDragon Musings