The complete doctrine of the Trinity as documented in Wikipedia is complicated, so complicated that only a few of high intellectual capacity can know it, as if it could be known. What makes it troublesome is that many churches have some form of litmus test regarding the Trinity to affirm or reject believers.  One such test is the Shield of the Trinity Wiki.  If you don’t completely subscribe to what is implied by this illustration, you failed the test and can be judged as a heretic.  Here are some sub-classifications contained within this doctrine: “Consubstantiation”, “communicatio Idiomatum”, “Hypostatic union”, “homoousios” (homo-ish-uos), “transcendency”, “immanency”, “economic Trinity”, “onotological Trinity, “etc. Thus it would behoove us to bypass the details of this doctrine, while holding to some of the basic truths of this doctrine, namely, the biblical references concerning the Father as God, the Son as God, and the Holy Spirit as God.   They can also be summed up nicely in the historical Nicene Creed. Briefly touching on some of these complex categories under the umbrella of the Trinity are:

Consubstantiation/Coessentiality – refers to the common properties of the divine persons of the Christian Trinity, and connotes that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are “of the same substance” (consubstantial), or “of the same essence” (coessential).

Communicatio Idiomatum – “communication of properties”, is the teaching that the attributes of both the divine and human natures are ascribed to the one person of Jesus.

Hypostatic union – Jesus is God in human flesh, not partly God/partly man, neither a combination/mixture of God and Man, nor a changed divine nature. His divine and earthly nature are separate yet act as a unit in one person, Jesus.

• homoousios – formulated at the first ecumenical council, at Nicaea in 325, to affirm that God the Son and God the Father are of the same substance, not partly divine (Arianism).

• transcendency – is the aspect of a deity’s nature and power that is wholly independent of the material universe, beyond all known physical laws.

• immanency – God is said to be fully present in the physical world and thus accessible to creatures in various ways.

• economic Trinity – Deals with the activity of God and the roles of the three persons with regard to creation and redemption.

• ontological Trinity – Ontology is the study of being, and the ontological structure of the Trinity as a unity without regard to God’s works of creation and redemption.

Is the trinity a valid Christian dogma? Even if it were, it is a thorny issue when reaching out to Muslims with the Gospel of Christ. I wouldn’t use the doctrine of the Trinity in defense against the unitarian monotheism of the Muslims. We can avoid offending Muslims in this area by not focusing on the trinity. We can be faithful to preaching the entire gospel without mentioning the word, trinity. Trinity Wiki shows the wikipedia definition of the trinity as accepted by most churches.

The Christian doctrine of the Trinity holds that God is not one but three coeternal consubstantial persons or hypostases—the Father, the Son (Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit—as “one God in three Divine Persons”. The three Persons are distinct, yet are one “substance, essence or nature” (homoousios). In this context, a “nature” is what one is, whereas a “person” is who one is. Those who hold to this doctrine are called Trinitarians.”

This doctrine of the trinity gets very complex when you dive into the details. There is the “immanent” Trinity that refers to God as separate from His Creation and the “economic” Trinity that speaks to the relationship between each member in the Trinity and their works in human history. You can read volumes of books on the Trinity in all its supposed aspects.

The Shield of the Trinity Wiki describes the diagram that illustrates this doctrine. The Shield of the Trinity or Scutum Fidei (Latin for “shield of faith”) is a traditional Christian visual symbol which expresses many aspects of the doctrine of the Trinity, summarizing the first part of the Athanasian Creed in a compact diagram. In late medieval England and France, this emblem was considered to be the heraldic arms of God (and of the Trinity). It depicts that the Father is God, The Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. It also depicts that the Son is neither the Father nor the Spirit, the Father is neither the Son nor the Spirit, and the Spirit is neither the Father nor the Son. Most churches insist you must believe this doctrine as expressed by the “Shield of the Trinity” or you are considered a heretic.

The doctrine of the trinity was created after the period of the Apostles. Thus, either God gave more enlightenment to the believers after the period of the Apostles or this post-Apostolic period doctrine is man-made, not God-given. One of the best ways to defend the Truth of the Gospel is to only accept things that are directly mentioned in the Bible. In line with this is one of the great themes of the Protestant Reformation, “sola scriptura”. Truth is only defensible from the biblical perspective.

In line with this, my simple line of reasoning is: If it’s not in the Bible, it’s not biblical. If it’s not in the Scriptures, it’s not Scriptural.

The trinity is mentioned nowhere in the Bible, but trinitarians would insist its implied everywhere. The doctrine of the trinity has roots dating back to the 2nd century and formally being dogma in the 4th century. Councils and Creeds were created in reaction to disagreements over the nature of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They became the underlying theology for creating the Christian dogma of the trinity.

Another argument against The Trinity as a required doctrine of the Church is the Church’s own words regarding that the “Canon is Closed”. The canon refers to the 66 books we have in the Bible and it maintains that there are no additions to it, now or in the future. Not only that but it also says that all matters of faith and doctrine can only be based upon the canon. So if the canon doesn’t mention the Trinity, why should the church institute it as a doctrine hundreds of years after the canon was closed?

One of the inherent problems and tendencies we Gentile Christians have is the undeterred determination to explain and understand mysteries in the Bible (The Greeks desire knowledge, the Jews a sign). Now some of the mysteries have been unveiled by God. For instance, the mystery of the Church consisting of both Jew and Gentile. There are other mysteries that are not explained by God and so we Gentile Christians try to fill in the missing pieces. That is where we get into trouble creating doctrines that are not explicitly stated in the Bible and some of these doctrines result in damnable heresies. I think we err by doing this as we attempt to explore the “deep things of God”, perhaps without the invitation of the Holy Spirit. And if the Holy Spirit hasn’t invited us, we are likely to mess things up.

One example of a mystery we Gentile Christians attempt to resolve is “predestination” and “election”. Not much detail is given to us from the bible except that we were predestined through election to be saved in the foreknowledge of God. WOW! That is one heavy thought knowing that God knew us in advance and chose us. It boggles the human mind, which is bound by time and space. The problem is that some Christian Gentile scholars decided to dive further into understanding the details and implications of predestination and election even with the small amount of information given to us in the Bible. Hence, we draw conclusions that may not be biblical. Without going into detail, the entire Calvinism movement was pretty much created in this attempt to understand all the implications surrounding predestination and election resulting in non-biblical doctrines of “unconditional election” and “irresistible grace”. That’s the “U” and the “I” in the mnemonic, “TULIP”, which contain the 5 major points of Calvinism. Now my point here is not to focus on the serious errors with Calvinism, but rather to call attention to how we deviate from Scripture when we try to understand things that are too high for us to fully grasp. Only the eternal God, “the High and Lofty One Who inhabits Eternity” (Isaiah 57:15), not bound by time and space, can adequately comprehend these ideas about Himself and perhaps when we enter eternity we can understand it better then too, but not now. So let us keep what we don’t know in a pure conscience until that eternal day.

Now back to the trinity concept. Again, we Gentile Christians are trying to explain something that no one has been able to explain completely. In fact, Paul says this is still a mystery about the Godhead:

1 Timothy 3:16 KJV: And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.

My personal opinion here, not being dogmatic, is that I like to paraphrase this scripture like this: God came from eternity, entered human history, and then went back to eternity.

Even my stated opinion has self-confessed flaws. Trinitarians want you to believe it is no longer a mystery. They have solved it. But have they? Or have they stumbled over this and ironically, even the unsaved Jews with the veil still over the eyes of their minds still have it right with their grand theme, the Shema: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord” (Deut. 6:4)

This doctrine of the trinity also has implications to consider: If the doctrine of the trinity is valid and necessary to the church, why did God hide it from us for over 300 years and not explain it to us through the apostles? This implies that the church fathers in the post-apostolic age are really super apostles since we supposedly needed this doctrine of the trinity and it was unfortunate that the original apostles didn’t mention it.

Martin Luther, the reluctant trinitarian: Martin Luther said, “It is indeed true that the name ‘Trinity’ is nowhere to be found in the Holy Scriptures, but has been conceived and invented by man” (reproduced in The Sermons of Martin Luther, John Lenker, editor, Vol. 3, 1988, p. 406). Yet Martin Luther should be mostly described as a reluctant trinitarian. Martin Luther recognized the importance of the doctrines implied by the trinity, and even acknowledged the importance of the usage of the doctrine in the church, but nevertheless was hesitant on requiring the use of the word, trinity, in the church. He made allowance for others to use other words besides trinity to describe God but cautioned that they “must be careful to preserve and express the substance [of the trinity] which is at stake.” (Paul Althaus, noted scholar on Luther)

The implications of not being a trinitarian (Nontrinitarianism), could mean that one subscribes to a form of Modalistic Monarchianism or Sabellianism/Patripassianism. Both ascribe One God acting in different “modes or aspects” (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). Both acknowledge the Divinity of Jesus, but they differ on how these “mode” manifestations of God are carried out. The former says God moves dynamically from one mode to another, while the latter says God moves chronologically from one mode to the other. In Christianity, Sabellianism in the Eastern church or Patripassianism in the Western church is the belief that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three different modes or aspects of God. Both insist Jesus is the Yahweh of the Old Testament.

Perhaps in the spirit of Martin Luther, I also am a reluctant trinitarian. I would rather think of myself as neither a trinitarian, nor an anti-trinitarian. I recognize that denying some aspects of the Trinity do indeed lead down a heretical path in some form or fashion, but that should not be an automatic assumption. There are enough scriptures to detect heresy in this regard, and we do not need the doctrine of the trinity to do that for us.

It should be further noted that most official statements of faith from primary, evangelical, non-denominational churches, do not mention the trinity directly, but infer it through their stated doctrines of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. In this regard, I pray the trinity does not become a “litmus” test for being a genuine Christian.

I have no problem singing songs of praise to God that have the word, trinity, in it. And I kinda think God overlooks as a sin of ignorance this limitation of understanding by the Gentile Christians with respect to Him as the Trinity. Or perhaps maybe I’m wrong and the post apostolic church fathers do have a better understanding of God than the prophets and apostles, and I am the one needing mercy by my Trinity-believing brothers and sisters. God bless.