The central doctrine of most Protestant and Catholic churches for
many centuries has been that of the Trinity. This doctrine is so
important that the Catholic Encyclopedia states: “This [the
Trinity], the Church teaches, is the revelation regarding Gods
nature which Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came upon earth to deliver
to the world: and which she [the Catholic Church] proposes to
man as the foundation of the whole dogmatic system.”
Both Catholic and Protestant theologians quote Theophilus of Antioch
(circa 1 80 A.D.) as the first person to write about this most
important doctrine. But isn't it strange that such a major doctrine
was avoided in religious writings for nearly two centuries? That is
almost as long as the United States has been a nation.
Furthermore, Theophilus’ allusion to the traditional Trinity
— “the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost” — is
quite nebulous at best. Notice what Theophilus wrote in commenting
about the fourth day of creation in the first chapter of Genesis:
“And as the sun remains ever full, never becoming less, so does
God always abide perfect, being full of all power, and understanding,
and wisdom, and immortality, and all good. But the moon wanes
monthly, and in a manner dies, being a type of man; then it is born
again, and is crescent, for a pattern of the future resurrection. In
like manner also the three days which were before the luminaries, are
types of the trinity, of God, and His Word, and His wisdom”
(Ante-Nicene Fathers, “Theophilus to Autolycus”).
Here is the first statement by a theologian that is supposed to teach
the doctrine of the Trinity. But does his statement really teach
this?
Read it — simply. He does not say that God is a Trinity of
persons, or that the Holy Spirit is a part of that Trinity. He just
refers to God, His Word and His wisdom.
Theologians have tried to imagine into this unusual statement
“their Trinity” — and yet even the editors of the
Ante-Nicene Fathers state in a footnote that the word translated
“wisdom” in English is the Greek word sophia which
Theophilus elsewhere used in reference to the Son, not the Holy
Spirit.
Theophilus could not possibly have gotten the idea of a Trinity from
the Bible — if he really did have a Trinity of persons in mind,
which appears unlikely from the preceding statement — as the
Bible nowhere even alludes to God being a Trinity.
From the time of Theophilus, it was several hundred years before this
doctrine became a part of the Catholic dogma. It was in the last
twenty-five years of the FOURTH century that “what might be
called the definitive trinitarian dogma ‘one God in three
persons’ became thoroughly assimilated into Christian life and
thought” (New Catholic Encyclopedia, “Holy
Trinity”).
From this it is evident that this “central doctrine” of
Catholicism and Protestantism was not a part of the “faith which
was once delivered unto the saints” (Jude 3) during or prior to
the time of Jude, but was added by later theologians.
The doctrine of the Trinity was not what Jesus Christ “came upon
the earth to deliver to the world.” He came to preach the good
news of His soon-coming Kingdom, to establish His true Church, to
give His life as a sacrifice for all who repent, and to give Gods
Holy Spirit to those who are baptized — the Spirit that empowers
believers to be ONE with the Father and the Son.