Who is the “us”?

As mentioned in the first section, Why People Believe in the Trinity, a significant factor was their inability to under­stand how God can be the father of Je­sus, and Jesus himself can be Divine, without having more than one person in the God­head.  I have attempted to show that the doctrine of the Trinity is not derived from Biblical texts (Hopefully, the reader ac­quired an ac­curate understanding of what the word GOD means and also an understanding of Who Je­sus really Is in the first section). If the doctrine of the Trinity did not come from the Bible, where did it come from?  I am convinced that the doctrine of the Trinity is the product of a merging of pagan philo­sophical thought and Christian the­ology.  Therefore, discussion of this next point will be treated as a his­torical argument and not an ar­gument of the Bible.  Though this discus­sion is totally dif­ferent from the Biblical discussion just com­pleted, it is vi­tally im­portant in understanding how the alleged plurality of God be­came the doctrine of the historical orthodox Christian church.

Instead of making an attempt to further explain how God was the father of Jesus, Jesus was God, and yet there were not two gods but one GOD; I will show why and how the early church leaders could not understand this simple and basic truth.  I will document how the incorrect and un-Biblical understanding of the nature of God came to be the established doctrine of the Church.  I will show how the Bible was never the primary source of informa­tion or inspiration in the evolution of the doctrine of the Trinity.  The question of “How can Jesus be Di­vine, and yet God be a solitary one?” is at the very root of the problem.  Had it not been for this ques­tion, the discussion of Elo­him and echad would never have arisen. In fact, the Trinitarian interpreta­tion of Elohim and echad was born out of the ques­tion “How can Jesus be Divine, and yet, God be a solitary one?” in an attempt to substantiate the doc­trine of the Trinity in the Old Testament.

The doctrine of the Trinity is lauded as “a funda­mental doctrine of the orthodox Christian Church,” as though the doctrine has always ex­isted and been accepted by the masses; this is not true. If a timeline would be constructed from the year 4,000 B.C. to the present time, it would be discovered that the Trinitarian argument did not come into ex­istence until at least after the death of the apostles of Jesus (after 100 A.D.).  Historical documentation or dis­cussion on the plurality of God in the time of Abra­ham, Moses, Jesus, Matthew, Mark, Luke, Peter, Paul, or John does not exist. If Trinitarians lived during the time of Jesus or of the apostles, they would have been considered hereti­cal, and out­side the orthodoxy of the Church. The teaching of Trini­tarian theology has been prevalent for less than 1,900 years of the estimated total years of his­tory.  During the time of Trinitarian influence, the voices of opposing believ­ers have been suppressed through the in­fluence of philoso­phy, anathematization, persecu­tion, execution, and destruction of their written mate­rials. 

The Trinity was not introduced to the Church in its completed form; the first phase of discussion on God’s plurality was the question of the nature of Je­sus Christ. Was he human? Was he divine?  If he was hu­man, how could he be divine? If he was di­vine, how could the monotheism of the Bible be pre­served? The question of the divinity of the Holy Spirit did not become an issue until after the question of the nature of Jesus Christ had been answered. This question was dealt with during the Coun­cil of Chalcedon in 381 A.D. The doctrine of the Trin­ity became sophisticated and complicated; the under­standing of the one true God remained simple, yet was ignored.  As the doctrine of the Trinity pro­gressed with time, the under­standing of God’s true nature re­gressed. This occurred as the result of an inability to understand God’s relation­ship with Je­sus, His Son.

Since the doctrine of the Trinity did not exist until after the apostles of Jesus were deceased, it is appro­priate to de­clare it to be a post-apos­tolic doctrine. It is my opinion that there are three stages in the influ­ence of the post-apostolic church on the doctrine of current church doctriene; they are: 1. The influence of philosophy  on the post-apostolic church fathers. 2. The pressure exerted by the post-apostolic church leaders and in the resulting creeds of the church throughout post-apostolic his­tory. 3. The persecution of any doctrinal deviation from the accepted doctrinal view, or for that matter, anyone interpreted by the powers of the church to be a nonconformist. Again, these influences would never have existed if the church fathers had an accurate, Biblical understanding of the relationship be­tween Jesus the man, and God his Father.