The doctrine of the trinity

God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit

An essential doctrine!

Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the Muslims all preach AGAINST the doctrine, Jesus was NOT God!

Council of Nicaea in 325 AD

• Called by Emperor Constantine of the Byzantine Empire
• Called to examine the Arian controversy
• Resulted in the Nicene Creed which established the doctrine of the trinity.

The ecumenical First Council of Nicaea of 325 declared Arianism to be a heresy. The great majority of Christians had no clear views about the nature of the Trinity and they did not understand what was at stake in the issues that surrounded it. Arius’s basic premise is that only God is independent for his existence. Since the Son is dependent he must therefore be called a creature. Arians put forward a question for their belief: “Has God birthed Jesus willingly or unwillingly?” This question was used to argue that Jesus is dependent for his existence since Jesus exists only because God wants him to be.

Atmosphere of the times

• Christianity had just become the official religion of the Byzantine Empire
• Isaiah 19:23 had come true for the first time in History!
• Bishops called from all over the known world
• Presided over by Hosius of Corduba (Spain) and Pope Alexander 1 of Alexandria
• Located in Nicaea, now Izink Turkey (north west corner near Istanbul)
• 318 attendees
• Lasted from May to August
• Created the Nicene Creed

BTW: Isaiah 19:23 – “In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian will come into Egypt and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians will serve with the Assyrians.

If you think about it, this is a pretty incredible prediction, which came true during the Roman Empire. This prediction basically says that people from Damascus Syria will be able to freely travel to Egypt and vice versa. This is impossible today, but was possible for several hundred years during the Bizantine Empire and was possible during the council of Nicaea.

Nicene Creed:

Nicene Christianity regards Jesus as divine and “begotten of the Father”. The Nicene Creed was adopted to resolve the Arian controversy, whose leader, Arius, a clergyman of Alexandria, “objected to Alexander’s (the bishop of the time) apparent carelessness in blurring the distinction of nature between the Father and the Son by his emphasis on eternal generation”. Following the formulation of the Nicene Creed, Arius’ teachings were henceforth marked as heresy. The Nicene Creed of 325 explicitly affirms the Father as the “one God” and as the “Almighty,” and Jesus Christ as “the Son of God”, as “begotten of[…] the essence of the Father,” and therefore as “consubstantial with the Father,” meaning, “of the same substance” as the Father; “very God of very God.” The Creed of 325 does mention the Holy Spirit but not as “God” or as “consubstantial with the Father.” The 381 revision of the creed at Constantinople (i.e., the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed), which is often simply referred to as the “Nicene Creed,” speaks of the Holy Spirit as worshipped and glorified with the Father and the Son.

The Creed (381):

We 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 the Father before all worlds, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, consubstantial 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 and of the Virgin Mary, and was made man; he was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and 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; from thence he shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end. And in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified, who spake by the prophets. In one holy catholic and apostolic Church; we acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; we look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

All of us who attended mainstream churches at one time or another probably recited this creed as part of the service. I won’t make you do that but the creed is worth remembering. These notes will be available on my blog “theGodMeter.com” if you want to see the creed again, or you can look it up on Wikipedia like I did.

Basically, we are introduced to the doctrine in Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” The word “God” here in Hebrew is “el-o-heem” which is PLURAL, meaning God the Father, God the Son. And God the Holy Spirit.

The Torah asserted the ONEness of “el-o-heem” in Deut 6:4 – “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one!”. The word LORD is “Ye-Ho-Vaw” which means “I am that I am” being the name God gave Moses on Mt. Sinai and the word God being “el-o-heem” being PLURAL. I would paraphrase this saying “The great Jehovah our Gods, Jehovah is ONE”. In other words, a Singular God who is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, Not a pantheon of gods or idols like the Babylonians, the Greeks and the Romans had.

And God created us in his image: Genesis 1:26 – “Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness…” which is Body, Soul, and Spirit.

Jesus asserted his place in the “el-o-heem” by saying in John 10:30 “I and the Father are One”.

Continuing in John 10:31 Then the Jews took up stones again to stone Him. 32Jesus answered them, “Many good works I have shown you from My Father. For which of those works do you stone Me?”

33The Jews answered Him, saying, “For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy, and because You, being a Man, make Yourself God.”

34Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, “You are gods” ’? 35If He called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken), 36do you say of Him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’? 37If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me; 38but if I do, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, that you may know and [f]believe that the Father is in Me, and I in Him.” 39Therefore they sought again to seize Him, but He escaped out of their hand.

The reason that not accepting the trinity is a problem is because it diminishes the importance of Jesus and reduces his role in establishing Christian doctrine. Without the trinity, people can insert their own beliefs in along with the things Jesus taught. Jesus was not just a good teacher, not just a prophet, but God incarnate. To believe otherwise is not Christianity in my opinion. The trinity makes “saved by faith not by works” (Eph 2:8) critical. It also reinforces the fact that our sins our forgiven and since only God can forgive sin, Jesus being God, can forgive us our sins.

Every doctrine that excludes the trinity, inserts salvation by works and ignores faith. I mean, wouldn’t it be easy to travel to Mecca and walk around a black cube 7 times, and be saved? We all want some prescription that saves us, but really, who wants to trust an believe an invisible God that requires us to go through the process of sanctification? We cannot boast about about that!

In Eph 2:8 – For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9not of works, lest anyone should boast. 10For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

Also:

In 1 Cor 1:26 “or you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. 27But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; 28and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, 29that no flesh should glory

in His presence. (no man should boast before God – NASB) 30But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption— 31that, as it is written, “He who glories, let him glory in the Lord.

Disclaimer:

I don’t know if Baptist denominations support the Nicene creed or not, although I would be very surprised if they didn’t in principal. Our Pastor is in Long Island so I didn’t get a chance to talk to him about this. I would just say, that if anything I said disagrees with our pastor, he is right, and I am not. The Baptist denominations do support the doctrine of the trinity however.