Nontrinitarianism
Various nontrinitarian philosophies, such as adoptionism and monarchianism, existed prior to the codification of the Trinity doctrine in AD 325, 381, and 431, at the Councils of Nicaea, Constantinople, and Ephesus.
[citation needed] The doctrine of the Trinity, as held in mainstream Christianity, is not present in the other major monotheistic Abrahamic religions.
Justin Martyr, Theophilus of Antioch, Hippolytus of Rome and Tertullian in particular state that the internal Logos of God (Gr.
Although nontrinitarian beliefs continued and were dominant among some peoples—for example, the Lombards, Ostrogoths, Visigoths and Vandals—for hundreds of years, the Trinity doctrine eventually gained prominence in the Roman Empire.
[47] After the First Council of Nicaea, Roman Emperor Constantine I issued an edict against Arius' writings, which included systematic book burning.
Nontrinitarians (both Modalists and Unitarians) assert that Athanasius and others at Nicaea adopted Greek Platonic philosophy and concepts, and incorporated them in their views of God and Christ.
[55] The author H. G. Wells, 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.
The Geneva City Council, in accord with the judgment of the cantons of Zürich, Bern, Basel, and Schaffhausen, condemned Servetus to be burned at the stake for this and his opposition to infant baptism.
[61]The New Catholic Encyclopedia states: The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is not taught [explicitly] in the [Old Testament] [...] The formulation 'one God in three Persons' was not solidly established [by a council] [...] prior to the end of the 4th century.
[64]The Anchor Bible Dictionary states: One does not find in the NT the trinitarian paradox of the coexistence of the Father, Son, and Spirit within a divine unity.
[67] At Deuteronomy 6:4 (the Shema Yisrael, quoted by Jesus at Mark 12:29), the plural form of the Hebrew word "God" (Elohim) is used, generally understood to denote majesty, excellence, and the superlative.
[69] At Deuteronomy 6:4, the Tetragrammaton appears twice in this verse, leading Jehovah's Witnesses and certain Jewish scholars to conclude that belief in a singular (and therefore indivisible) supremely powerful God is essential to the Shema.
Non-trinitarians claim a mistranslation of the second part of John 1:1 which, when literally translated word-for-word reads "and the word [logos] was with the God [ho theos]."
It is argued by Trinitarians that the appearance of "Father, Son, and Spirit" together in Paul's prayer for Grace on all believers, and are considered essential for salvation, that the verse is consistent with a triune godhead.
[89] "The term 'Trinity' is not in the Bible",[90] and some nontrinitarians use this as an argument to state[citation needed] that the doctrine of the Trinity relies on non-biblical terminology, and that the number three is never clearly associated with God necessarily, other than within the Comma Johanneum which is of spurious or disputed authenticity.
[92] Nontrinitarians accept what Pier Franco Beatrice wrote: "The main thesis of this paper is that homoousios came straight from Constantine's Hermetic background.
The Plato recalled by Constantine is just a name used to cover precisely the Egyptian and Hermetic theology of the "consubstantiality" of the Logos-Son with the Nous-Father, having recourse to a traditional apologetic argument.
'[3][61][96] Nontrinitarian views about the Holy Spirit differ from mainstream Christian doctrine and generally fall into several distinct categories.
[100][101][102] The two titles "Father" and "Holy Spirit" (as well as others) are said to not reflect separate "persons" within the Godhead, but rather two different ways in which the one God reveals himself to his creatures.
[116] Mormonism, particularly its largest sect, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has a complex relationship with mainstream Christianity, due in part to its nontrinitarianism.
[120] They say the development of the idea of a co-equal triune godhead was based on pagan Greek and Platonic influence, including many basic concepts from Aristotelian philosophy incorporated into the biblical God.
"[121][122] However, Trinitarians have argued that the words attributed to Aristotle differ in a number of ways from what has been published as the philosopher's original text in Greek,[123][124][125] which omits "let us use this number in the worship of the gods", and are not supported by translations of the works of Aristotle by scholars such as Stuart Leggatt, W. K. C. Guthrie, J. L. Stocks, Thomas Taylor and Jules Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire.
say there is a widely acknowledged synthesis of Christianity with Platonic philosophy evident in trinitarian formulas appearing by the end of the 3rd century.
[citation needed] Stuart G Hall (formerly Professor of Ecclesiastical History at King's College, London) describes the subsequent process of philosophical/theological amalgamation in Doctrine and Practice in the Early Church (1991), where he writes: The apologists began to claim that Greek culture pointed to and was consummated in the Christian message, just as the Old Testament was.
You can rake through Greek literature, and find (especially in the oldest seers and poets) references to 'God' which are more compatible with monotheism than with polytheism (so at length Athenagoras.)
You can adapt a piece of pre-Christian Jewish apologetic, which claimed that Plato and other Greek philosophers got their best ideas indirectly from the teachings of Moses in the Bible, which was much earlier.
This theory combines the advantage of making out the Greeks to be plagiarists (and therefore second-rate or criminal), while claiming that they support Christianity by their arguments at least some of the time.
"[132]In his Introduction to the 1964 book Meditations, the Anglican priest Maxwell Staniforth discussed the profound influence of Stoic philosophy on Christianity.
In particular: Again in the doctrine of the Trinity, the ecclesiastical conception of Father, Word, and Spirit finds its germ in the different Stoic names of the Divine Unity.
The Church had only to reject the last of these terms to arrive at its own acceptable definition of the Divine Nature; while the further assertion 'these three are One', which the modern mind finds paradoxical, was no more than commonplace to those familiar with Stoic notions.
