Is God a Trinity? – Peter Nathan, Jeannette B. Anderson vision.org

The doctrine of the Trinity – where did this “extrabiblical dogma” come from? For those that ask “why,” the doctrine of the Trinity is difficult to unravel. As we look back, around a century after the time of Emperor Constantine and the council of Nicaea (325 C.E.), there was still little consensus of God’s nature by “Church leaders” and brief mention of the Holy Spirit. The nature of God had been heavily debated for over 300 years without any semblance of what we know as the “trinity” in today’s understanding. Enter now fourth century Augustine; heavily influenced by Greek philosophy that “understood the gods in terms of sacred trios or triads,” namely as the One, the Intellect, and the Soul. It took another eight hundred years for the trinity doctrine as we know it to be realized through Thomas Aquinas who took Hebrew scriptures out of Hebrew context and viewed them through a Hellenistic approach of that time. The Trinity dogma is a truly evolutionary doctrine slowly morphing over the course of a millennium to that which we know today. Now scriptures most referenced to support the Trinity do not speak of the nature of God and those speaking of God’s nature do not speak of the holy spirit. In fact, the Bible never speaks of the personhood of the spirit except through mistranslations. Greek translators would insert “he” instead of “it” when referring to the Spirit. It’s fitting, through all the Greek influence, that this article ends with this warning from the apostle Paul: “Don’t let anyone capture you with empty philosophies and high-sounding nonsense that come from human thinking and from the spiritual powers of this world, rather than from Christ.”