In my opinion, the Biblical evidence against the trinity is compelling.
And yet the majority of professing Christians are trinitarian; and moreover,
they stigmatize non-trinitarians as non-Christian, many claiming that
non-trinitarians are automatically a ‘sect’. Clearly enough, neither the
word ‘trinity’ nor the wording of the trinitarian formula were known to New
Testament Christianity. In a sense, Jesus ‘became’ God to many Christians
all because a group of bishops decided it was so. But why did this happen?
And why was there so much angst to label those who didn’t accept the trinity
as heretics? Having read around the history of the early centuries of
Christianity, the following are some suggested reasons:
1. There was a
mixture of paganism and Christianity, to make the changeover from paganism
to nominal Christianity less controversial and more painless. I’ve given
some specific examples of this in a European context below.
2. There was
an element of genuine misinterpretation. As you read through the New
Testament chronologically, it becomes apparent that the Lord Jesus is spoken
of in ever more exalted language. For example, the term “son of man” is a
favourite of the Gospel writers to describe the Lord Jesus. But it occurs
only once in the later New Testament. Mark, the first Gospel, never calls
Jesus “Lord”- but “Lord” is Paul’s most common title of Jesus some years
later. John’s Gospel, clearly written after the other three, uses much more
exalted language about the Lord Jesus than the earlier Gospels. The growth
in perception of the greatness of Jesus is also perhaps reflected in the way
that Revelation, the last inspired book of the New Testament, employs the
most exalted language about Jesus. Both Paul and Peter show a progressive
fondness in their choice of words for terms which exalt Jesus higher and
higher. And presumably this trend continued after their death, as believers
realized more and more that the carpenter from Nazareth had in fact been
God’s Son, and is now the exalted King of Heaven and earth. The penny
dropped that in fact “we can never exalt Christ too highly”, as Robert
Roberts put it in the 19th century. But… and it’s a big but. The language of
exaltation can reach a point where Jesus is no longer Jesus, but somehow God
Himself. Further, it’s my observation that intellectual failure very often
has an underlying psychological basis. To make Jesus God was one thing, but
to accept the doctrine of three Gods in one, the trinity, was another. And I
submit that this intellectual failure was rooted, even unconsciously, in a
desire for an easier ride. It is after all extremely demanding to accept
that a man, born into all our dysfunction, could be perfect; that from the
larynx of a Palestinian Jew there could come forth the words of God
Almighty. It’s a challenge, because we too are human; and if this was how
far one of us could rise, above all the things that hold us down, that
retard our growth towards the image of God Himself… then He is setting us an
example so challenging that it reaches into the very core of our being,
uncomfortably, inconveniently and even worryingly. To have a Jesus who was
in fact not truly human, but just acting out, a Jesus who was really God and
not man… this removes so much of the challenge of the real, human Christ.
The human desire to believe in a god rather than a man is demonstrated
in Israel’s attitude to Moses. They complained about “this Moses, the man
that brought us up out of the land of Egypt”; and therefore made the golden
calf, proclaiming: “These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out
of the land of Egypt” (Ex. 32:1,4). Note in passing how they created one
calf, but worshipped it as gods plural. They committed the trinity fallacy
of many centuries later. They couldn’t handle a saviour who was human, like
them, and so they decided that a god had been their saviour, who existed as
a plurality, gods, within a unity, i.e. the golden calf.
3. Remember
that the trinity was adopted at the Council of Nicea in AD325. This Council
was called by Constantine after he decided he wished to turn the official
religion of the Roman empire from paganism to Christianity. Not long before
that Council, Christians had been cruelly persecuted. Some of the delegates
at that Council even bore on their faces and in their bodies the marks of
that persecution. The pagans had [falsely] accused the Christians of making
Jesus into a God whom they worshipped. Pliny had reported how they “chant
antiphonally a hymn to Christ as to a god” (1). In the pagan Roman world,
only the Jews refused to worship other gods on the basis that there was only
one true God. The fact the Christians did the same led to the perception
that they too thought that there was only one God, just that they called Him
‘Christ’. The Jews likewise wrongly assumed that anyone claiming to be the
Son of God was claiming to be God (Jn. 10:33-36; 19:7)- even though Jesus
specifically corrected them over this! As often happens, the perceptions of
a group by their enemies often come to define how the group perceive
themselves. Constantine was a politician and a warrior. He wasn’t a Bible
student, nor a theologian, in fact he wasn’t even a very serious Christian
(1a). Although he accepted Christianity, he said he didn’t want to be
baptized because he wanted to continue in sin. He seems to have figured that
Christianity was the right thing for the empire. So, Christianity, here we
come. Constantine, and many others who jumped on the ‘Christian’ bandwagon,
shared the perception of Christ which had existed in the pagan world which
they had grown up in. And the pagan perception, as Pliny and many others
make clear, was that Jesus was a kind of God. And so when Constantine
presided over the dispute amongst the bishops at Nicea about who Jesus was,
he naturally assumed that the ‘Jesus is God Himself’ party were in fact
traditional Christians.
4. The true Christian believer has ever been
under pressure from the world. Paul wrote words of eternal relevance when he
asked that we not allow the world to press us into its’ mould, but rather
allow Christ to transform us. The acceptance of the trinity was a result of
the world pressurizing the church. The Roman and Jewish worlds which
surrounded the Christians had a way of divinizing human figures. If you
concluded a man had been a hero, then you applied Divine language to him- a
form of what the Greeks had called apotheosis. This is why some of the
Rabbinic commentary on men like Moses and Elijah use God-like language about
them, although clearly the intention was not to make them equal to the one
and only God of Israel whom they believed in. There’s no lack of evidence
that Christians did this with regards to Jesus, indeed there are examples of
it in the New Testament. And it has also been observed that some of the
exalted Jewish language used about Moses- e.g. “the one for and on account
of whom the world was created”- was purposefully appropriated by Paul and
applied to Jesus(2). Such glorified figures were also spoken of with the
language of pre-existence, as if they had existed from the beginning of
creation, even though that wasn’t literally the case. They were “ascribed a
prior, heavenly status or existence, however that was understood” (3). But
as Christianity generally turned against the Jews, as Jewish Christians were
thrown out of the church or returned to the synagogues, the actual human
roots of Jesus were overlooked. The Jewish background to the language of
exaltation used about Him was no longer appreciated. Instead, Christ
remained in the minds of many Christians just with the Divine titles
attached to Him; and so they ended up concluding that He was God Himself.
Why? Because they overlooked the Jewish origins of Jesus, and the Old
Testament background to Him; and because they preferred to stick with forms
of wording which were comfortable and familiar to them, rather that
searching out the meaning behind those words. And today, nothing much has
changed. Still Christians remain almost wilfully ignorant of the basic
principle of ‘God manifestation’ which is found throughout Scripture,
whereby Divine language can be used of a person without making them God
Himself.
Vincent Taylor analyzes Paul’s hymn of praise to the Lord Jesus
in Phil. 2:6-11 and concludes that it is an adaptation of a Jewish hymn
which spoke of “the appearance of the Heavenly Man on earth” (4). Paul was
writing under inspiration, but it seems he purposefully adapted a Jewish
hymn and applied it to Jesus- to indicate the status which the Lord Jesus
should truly be ascribed. Col. 1:15-20, another poetic fragment which is
likewise misunderstood by those seeking to justify the false idea of a
personal pre-existence of the Lord, has also been identified as a Jewish
hymn which Paul modified (5). We must remember that Paul was inspired by God
to answer the claims of false teachers; and he was doing so by using and
re-interpreting the terms which they used. Nearly all the titles of Christ
used in the letter to the Hebrews are taken from Philo or the Jewish book of
Wisdom (6). The writer to the Hebrews is seeking to apply them in their
correct and true sense to the Lord Jesus. This explains why some titles are
used which can easily be misunderstood by those not appreciating this
background. For example, Philo speaks of “the impress of God’s seal”, and
Hebrews applies this to the Lord Jesus. The phrase has been misinterpreted
by trinitarians as meaning that Jesus is therefore God; but this wasn’t at
all the idea behind the title in Philo’s writings, and neither was it when
the letter to the Hebrews took up the phrase and applied it to Jesus. This
sort of thing goes on far more often than we might think in the Bible-
existing theological ideas are re-cast and re-presented in their correct
light, especially with reference to the Lord Jesus. Arthur Gibson notes that
“there is an important second level within religious language: it is a
reflection upon, a criticism of, a correction of, or a more general
formulation of, expressions which previously occur” (7). He even shows that
the very Names ‘Yahweh’ and ‘El’ were an allusion to earlier contemporary
gods of a similar name and meaning- but the only true God, Yahweh, the El of
Israel, alludes to these false notions and presents them as applying solely
to Himself.
5. The argument between Arius (non-trinitarian) and
Athanasius (trinitarian) was more political than it was theological or
Biblical. There was a power struggle between the two men. Once Christianity
became the state religion of the Roman empire, power within the church
became political power. These two Christian leaders both had significant
followings; and they both wanted power. The followers of the two groups
fought pitched battles with each other in the urban centres of the empire.
There are numerous accounts of Athanasius’ followers beating and murdering
non-trinitarian Christians in the lead up to the Council of Nicea, torturing
their victims and parading their dead bodies around (8). The trinitarian
Athanasius was by far the more brutal. “Bishop Athanasius, a future saint…
had his opponents excommunicated and anathematized, beaten and intimidated,
kidnapped, imprisoned, and exiled to distant provinces” (9). As in any power
struggle, the opponents of both sides became vilified and demonized; the
issue of how to formulate a creed about the nature of Jesus became a matter
of polemics and politics, with the non-trinitarians being described in the
most vitriolic of language. Non-trinitarians were accused of “rending the
robe of Christ”, crucifying Him afresh, and far worse. Sadly this spirit of
vilification of those who hold another view has continued to this day, with
many trinitarians refusing to accept any non-trinitarian as a Christian.
Arius complained in a letter that “We are persecuted because we say that Son
had a beginning, but that God was without beginning” (10). At the Council of
Nicea, Bishop Nicholas- who later became the legendary saint of Christmas in
much of Europe- slapped Arius around the face (11). It would be wrong to
think of the dispute as a matter of learned men of God disagreeing with each
other over a matter of Biblical interpretation. Athanasius, who had the ear
of Constantine more than Arius, was out for victory. He therefore
emotionalized the issue and used every manner of politics and destruction of
his opponents in order to get Constantine to come down on his side, exile
Arius for heresy, and therefore leave him as the senior churchman of the
Roman empire- which meant major political power, in an empire which had
newly adopted Christianity and sought to enforce it as the empire’s
religion. Often I hear the comment ‘Well this matter was all looked into
long ago, and wise Christians weighed it up and came to a prayerful
conclusion, which tradition Christians rightly follow and uphold’. The
history of the matter is quite different. Athanasius compounded his physical
attacks on Arius’ supporters, his burning of their churches etc, with a
series of personal slanders against the leading non-trinitarians, calling
them seducers, rapists, frequenters of prostitutes, etc (12). If the
argument was really just about the interpretation of Scripture, there
needn’t have been all this personal attacking and politicking and rioting.
Clearly, the issue of accepting the trinity was all about power politics.
6. Constantine was a politician, not a Bible student. "Constantine's goal
was to create a neutral public space in which Christians and pagans could
both function... creating a stable coalition of both Christians and
non-Christians" in the Roman empire (13). He also realized that Christianity
itself had to be united if it were to be the state religion, and so he
wanted there to be only one view on this contentious issue of who Jesus was.
It was intolerable for him that Christians were rioting against each other
over it. The matter had to be resolved. One side had to be chosen as right,
and the other side must be silenced. He came down on the side of Athanasius
for political reasons- adopted the trinitarian creed for the church, and
exiled Arius. And so, Jesus ‘became’ God because of that. In the same spirit
of wanting a united church at all costs, Constantine agreed at Nicea a whole
range of other measures which were likewise not Biblical- e.g. that anyone
excommunicated by a Bishop in one province could never be accepted in
another province, and the appointment of “superbishops” in Alexandria, Rome
and Antioch who would decide all contentious issues in future. Personal
conscience and understanding didn’t matter; all Constantine wanted was a
united church, as he believed it would result in a united empire. One
empire, one religion- and therefore, that religion had to be united, and
dissent had to quashed. Someone had to be made out as totally right, and
someone as totally wrong. Sadly one sees today the very same mentality in so
many churches and local congregations. It’s all about power. The mess made
in early Christianity remains our sober warning in these last days.
Notes
(1) Pliny (the Younger), Epistles 10.96. English translation in A New
Eusebius: Documents Illustrative Of The History of The Church To AD 337 ,
ed. J. Stevenson (London: SPCK, 1974) pp. 13-15.
(1a) There's strong
historical evidence that Constantine was scarcely a Christian himself by the
time of the Council of Nicea. The idea is commonly held that he saw a vision
of Christ at the battle of Milvan Bridge in AD312 and then converted to
Christianity in gratitude, especially as Christ supposedly told him to lead
his soldiers with the sign of the cross. However, there is serious evidence
against this. After the battle, he claimed that "The supreme deity" had
helped him, and he placed "the heavenly sign of God" on his soldier's
shields. But histyorical sources dating from soon after the battle state
that this sign was not the cross, but the chi-ro sign, or labarum- the
emblem of the sun god. It was only many years later that Eusebius wrote a
biography of Constantine, in which he claimed that this hd actually been the
sign of the cross. After the battle in AD312, Constantine erected a
triumphal arch opposite the Colosseum in Rome to celebrate the victory- and
covered it with reliefs of Mars, Jupiter, Hercules [the gods of war], and
ascribed victory to the power of the Sun god. Depictions of the battle show
no soldier with any cross on his shield! As late as AD320, Constantine's
coins represented him with the crown of the 'Sol Invictus', the Sun god
cult. And was it co-incidence that he declared December 25th, the main
festival of the 'Sol Invictus', as the birthday of Jesus? Further, his new
capital, Constantinople, was committed to the care of the local protecting
deities, Rhea and Tyche- Constantine built temples for them all over his new
capital.
(2) See Larry Hurtado, One God, One Lord: Early Christian
Devotion And Ancient Jewish Monotheism (London: T&T Clark, 2003) pp. 71-92.
(3) N.A. Dahl, "Christ, Creation And The Church" in The Background Of The
New Testament , ed. W.D. Davies and D. Daube (Cambridge: CUP, 1964) pp.
422-443.
(4) Vincent Taylor, The Person Of Christ In New Testament
Teaching (London: Macmillan, 1959) p. 62.
(5) Evidence provided in Rudolf
Bultmann, Theology Of The New Testament Vol. 1 pp. 132, 176, 178.
(6) See
J. Moffatt, The Epistle To The Hebrews (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1924) pp.
11,38; C.K. Barrett, The New Testament Background (San Francisco: Harper
Collins, 1989 ed.) pp. 174-184.
(7) Arthur Gibson, Biblical Semantic
Logic (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981) p. 26. The same point is often
exemplified in J. Barr, The Semantics Of Biblical Language (Oxford: OUP,
1961).
(8) See R.P.C. Hanson, The Search For The Christian Doctrine Of
God: The Arian Controversy 318-381 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988) p. 386.
(9) Richard Rubenstein, When Jesus Became God (London: Harcourt, 2000) p. 6.
(10) Quoted in Rubenstein, ibid p. 58.
(11) Mentioned in Rubenstein,
ibid p. 77.
(12) These things are chronicled extensively in T.D. Barnes,
Constantine And Eusebius (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981) pp.
18-27 and throughout T.D. Barnes, Athanasius And Constantius: Theology And
Politics In The Constantinian Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1993).
(13) H.A. Drake, Constantine And Consensus (Oxford: OUP, 1995).
The same author concludes that Constantine realized that Christianity was
unstoppable, and therefore it was better to merge with it than seek to
destroy it. See his Constantine And The Bishops: The Politics Of Intolerance
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 2000).