The Trinity Is Not A Biblical Belief

[ummtaalib]

The Trinity Is Not A Biblical Belief

 

 

…Major western encyclopedias and dictionaries, written in the Christian West, by mainly Western Christians, admit to these facts:

 

The New Encyclopedia Britannica: “Neither the word Trinity nor the explicit doctrine 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). …The doctrine developed gradually over several centuries and through many controversies. …It was not until the 4th century that the distinctness of the three and their unity were brought together in a single orthodox doctrine of one essence and three persons. …By the end of the 4^th century … the doctrine of the Trinity took substantially the form it has maintained ever since.” 1 

 

The Encyclopedia Americana: “Christianity derived from Judaism and Judaism was strictly Unitarian . The road which led from Jerusalem to Nicea 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.” 2   

 

The Columbia Encyclopedia: “Trinity … the doctrine is not explicitly taught in the New Testament.” 3

 

The New Catholic Encyclopedia: “The formula itself does not reflect the immediate consciousness of the period of origins; it was the product of 3 centuries of doctrinal development … The formulation ‘one God in three Persons’ was not solidly established, certainly not fully assimilated into Christian life and its profession of faith, prior to the end of the 4th century. But it is precisely this formulation that has first claim to the title the Trinitarian dogma. Among the Apostolic Fathers, there had been nothing even remotely approaching such a mentality or perspective.” 4 

 

Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics: “In the New Testament we do not find the doctrine of the Trinity in anything like its developed form, not even in the Pauline and Johannine theology.” 5 

 

Encyclopedia International: “The doctrine of the Trinity did not form part of the apostles’ preaching, as this is reported in the New Testament.” 6 

 

New Bible Dictionary: “The word Trinity is not found in the Bible, and, though used by Tertullian in the last decade of the 2nd Century, it did not find a place formally in the theology of the Church till the 4th century.” 7 

 

Dictionary of the Bible: “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 4th and 5th centuries AD and hence is not explicitly and formally a biblical belief.” 8 

 

New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology: “The NT does not contain the developed doctrine of the Trinity … primitive Christianity did not have an explicit doctrine of the Trinity such as was subsequently elaborated in the creeds of the early church.” 9

 

The Oxford Companion to the Bible: “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… While the New Testament writers say a great deal about God, Jesus and the Spirit of each, no New testament writer expounds on the relationship among the three in the detail that later Christian writers do.” 10