The Truth About the Trinity - How Jesus Became God
(Please read this section carefully as this concept is a very important part of Christian faith)
The trinity being one of the fundamental beliefs of most Christians yet is understood the least in terms of its origin by most Christians. Below is the factual history as to how the ‘Trinity’, that God, The Son and the Holy spirit are all One. Below is the work of historians and details everything you need to know about the Trinity.
1) After Jesus’ Death
Barely 2 decades after Jesus’ death and/or resurrection, Paul wrote “Many believers were already turning away to a different Gospel” (Galatians 1:6). He wrote that he was forced to contend with “false apostles, deceitful workers” who were fraudulently “transforming themselves into apostles of Christ” (2 Corinthians 11:13). One of the major problems he had to deal with was “false brethren” (2 Corinthians 11:26).
By the late first century we then see John struggling with those against Christianity and false preachers of Christianity who were practically stopping true Christianity from being practiced;
3 John 9-10 “I wrote to the church, but Diotrephes, who loves to be first, will not welcome us. So when I come, I will call attention to what he is doing, spreading malicious nonsense about us. Not satisfied with that, he even refuses to welcome other believers. He also stops those who want to do so and puts them out of the church.”
It wasn’t long before the number of true Christians became a minority and many were in hiding. Whilst the false Christians, Christian by name only, were open to speak and give their views. As a result of the false Christians, the true teachings of Christianity were starting to change, containing practices and beliefs rooted from ancient paganism and started to result in a different Christianity from what was taught.
Historian Jesse Hurlbut says of this time of transformation: “We name the last generation of the first century, from 68 to 100 A.D., ‘The Age of Shadows,’ partly because the gloom of persecution was over the church, but more especially because of all the periods in the [church’s] history, it is the one about which we know the least. (The Story of the Christian Church, 1970, p. 33).
So this ‘new’ and ‘very different’ church now was growing strong, had many followers, It would grow in power and influence, and within a few short centuries would come to dominate even the mighty Roman Empire.
By the second century, faithful members of the Church, Christ’s “little flock” (Luke 12:32),had largely been scattered by waves of deadly persecution. They held firmly to the biblical truth about Jesus Christ and God in heaven, though they were persecuted by the Roman authorities as well as those who professed Christianity but were in reality teaching “another Jesus” and a “different gospel” (2 Corinthians 11:4; Galatians 1:6-9).
The above was the setting in which the Trinity emerged as we will now learn.
2) The False Christians on the Rise
In those early decades and the emergence of false Christians and preachers, with the mixing of paganism into the new ‘false’ Christianity, ideas emerged such as Was He man? Was He God? Was He God appearing as a man? Was He an illusion? Was He a mere man who became God? Was He created by God the Father, or did He exist eternally with the Father?
All of these ideas had their group of people backing them. The belief of the original Church was lost as new beliefs, many borrowed or adapted from pagan religions, replaced the true and original teachings of Jesus and the apostles.
During this period and debate regarding who Jesus really was, most if not many of the trust Christians were outnumbered and driven underground by persecution, hence they had little voice.
For this very reason we see debates during that period not between ‘true Christians’ vs ‘false Christians’, but rather we see debates between ‘false Christians’ vs ‘false Christians’, meaning either way, the outcome was going to be false.
A classic example of this was the dispute over the nature of Christ that led the Roman emperor Constantine the Great to convene the Council of Nicaea (in modern-day western Turkey) in A.D. 325.
For 300 years after Jesus there was no mention of the trinity or teachings of the trinity in the church in this period, not a single mention! Why? Because it did not exist until the false Christians were able to finally get their way at the Council of Nicaea. Lets read on...
3) Constantine the First Christian Emperor
Constantine who was known to be the ‘first Christian emperor’ was actually, a sun-worshiper who was only baptized on his deathbed. During his reign he had his eldest son and his wife murdered. He was also anti-Semitic, referring in one of his edicts to “the detestable Jewish crowd” and “the customs of these most wicked men”—customs that were in fact rooted in the Bible and practiced by Jesus and the apostles.
Being an emperor at a period of great turmoil, his number one priority was to unite his people to stop the fall of the empire. He recognised that religion was a good way to keep the empire united and hence this was, in fact, one of his primary motivations in accepting and sanctioning the “Christian” religion which had now drifted far away from the original teachings of Jesus.
But now Constantine faced a new challenge. Religion researcher Karen Armstrong explains in A History of God that “one of the first problems that had to be solved was the doctrine of God . . . a new danger arose from within which split Christians into bitterly warring camps” (1993, p. 106)
Now follows the great debate at the Council of Nicaea.
4) The Council of Nicaea
Constantine convened the Council of Nicaea in the year 325 as much for political reasons—for unity in the empire—as religious ones. The primary issue at that time came to be known as the Arian controversy.
“In the hope of securing for his throne the support of the growing body of Christians he had shown them considerable favour and it was to his interest to have the church vigorous and united. The Arian controversy was threatening its unity and menacing its strength. He therefore undertook to put an end to the trouble. It was suggested to him, perhaps by the Spanish bishop Hosius, who was influential at court, that if an assembly were to meet representing the whole church both east and west, it might be possible to restore harmony.
“Constantine himself of course neither knew nor cared anything about the matter in dispute but he was eager to bring the controversy to a close, and Hosius’ advice appealed to him as sound” (Arthur Cushman McGiffert, A History of Christian Thought, 1954, Vol. 1, p. 258).
Arius, a priest from Egypt, taught that Christ, because He was the Son of God, must have had a beginning and therefore was a special creation of God. Further, if Jesus was the Son, the Father must be older. Therefore, if the father was older, existed before and is the one who created Jesus, must be God alone, and therefore Jesus was not God but a creation of God without a father, just as Adam who was a creation by God without both a father or mother.
On the other hand, Athanasius also from Egypt, argued and stated Jesus, God the Father and the Holy Spirit were one, and all 3 were God.
Karen Armstrong explains in A History of God: “When the bishops gathered at Nicaea on May 20, 325, to resolve the crisis, very few would have shared Athanasius’s view of Christ. Most held a position midway between Athanasius and Arius” (p. 110).
As emperor, Constantine was in the unusual position of deciding church doctrine even though he was not really a Christian. (The following year is when he had both his wife and son murdered, as previously mentioned, and remember he was baptised on his deathbed).
Historian Henry Chadwick attests, “Constantine, like his father, worshipped the Unconquered Sun” (The Early Church, 1993, p. 122). As to the emperor’s embrace of Christianity, Chadwick admits, “His conversion should not be interpreted as an inward experience of grace . . . It was a military matter. His comprehension of Christian doctrine was never very clear” (p. 125).
When it came to the Nicene Council, The Encyclopaedia Britannica states: “Constantine himself presided, actively guiding the discussions, and personally proposed . . . the crucial formula expressing the relation of Christ to God in the creed issued by the council . . . Overawed by the emperor, the bishops, with two exceptions only, signed the creed, many of them much against their inclination” (1971 edition, Vol. 6, “Constantine,” p. 386).
With the emperor’s approval, the Council rejected the minority view of Arius and, having nothing definitive with which to replace it, approved the view of Athanasius—also a minority view. The church was left in the odd position of officially supporting, from that point forward, the decision made at Nicaea to endorse a belief held by only a minority of those attending.
The groundwork for official acceptance of the Trinity was now laid—but it took more than three centuries after Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection for this unbiblical teaching to emerge!
However, this was not the end, the two divide doctrines were still fought about for the following 60 years resulting in more Christians killing Christians than pagans who had killed Christians.
5) Ongoing debate led to another council
In the year 381, 44 years after Constantine’s death, Emperor Theodosius the Great convened the Council of Constantinople (today Istanbul, Turkey) to resolve these disputes. Gregory of Nazianzus, recently appointed as archbishop of Constantinople, presided over the council and urged the adoption of his view of the Holy Spirit.
Not much is known about this council but Gregory of Nazianzus was certainly hoping to get some acceptance of his belief that the Holy Spirit was co-existing with God and are the same being.
“Whether he dealt with the matter clumsily or whether there was simply no chance of consensus, the ‘Macedonians,’ bishops who refused to accept the full divinity of the Holy Spirit, left the council . . . Typically, Gregory berated the bishops for preferring to have a majority rather than simply accepting ‘the Divine Word’ of the Trinity on his authority” ( A.D. 381: Heretics, Pagans and the Dawn of the Monotheistic State, 2008, p. 96).
Gregory soon became ill and had to withdraw from the council. Who would preside now? “So it was that one Nectarius, an elderly city senator who had been a popular person in the city as a result of his patronage of the games, but who was still not a baptized Christian, was selected . . . Nectarius appeared to know no theology, and he had to be initiated into the required faith before being baptized and consecrated” (Freeman, pp. 97-98).
Bizarrely, a man who up to this point wasn’t a Christian was appointed to preside over a major church council tasked with determining what it would teach regarding the nature of God!
6) The Trinity becomes official
The teaching of the three Cappadocian theologians “made it possible for the Council of Constantinople (381) to affirm the divinity of the Holy Spirit, which up to that point had nowhere been clearly stated, not even in Scripture” (The HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism, “God,” p. 568).
The council adopted a statement that translates into English as, in part: “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 ages . . . And we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets . . .”
With this declaration in 381, which would become known as the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, the Trinity as generally understood today became the official belief and teaching concerning the nature of God.
Thus, Emperor Theodosius—who himself had been baptized only a year before convening the council—was, like Constantine nearly six decades earlier, instrumental in establishing major church doctrine. As historian Charles Freeman notes: “It is important to remember that Theodosius had no theological background of his own and that he put in place as dogma a formula containing intractable philosophical problems of which he would have been unaware. In effect, the emperor’s laws had silenced the debate when it was still unresolved” (p. 103).
7) Other beliefs of God banned
Now Theodosius would not allow any other views of God or Jesus.
He issued his own law that read: “We now order that all churches are to be handed over to the bishops who profess Father, Son and Holy Spirit of a single majesty, of the same glory, of one splendor, who establish no difference by sacrilegious separation, but (who affirm) the order of the Trinity by recognizing the Persons and uniting the Godhead” (quoted by Richard Rubenstein, When Jesus Became God, 1999, p. 223
Another edict from Theodosius went further in demanding adherence to the new teaching: “Let us believe the one deity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, in equal majesty and in a holy Trinity. We authorize the followers of this law to assume the title of Catholic Christians; but as for the others, since, in our judgement, they are foolish madmen, we decree that they shall be branded with the ignominious name of heretics, and shall not presume to give their conventicles [assemblies] the name of churches.
“They will suffer in the first place the chastisement of the divine condemnation, and the second the punishment which our authority, in accordance with the will of Heaven, shall decide to inflict” (reproduced in Documents of the Christian Church, Henry Bettenson, editor, 1967, p. 22).
Thus, we see that a teaching that was foreign to Jesus Christ, never taught by the apostles and unknown to the other biblical writers, was locked into place and the true biblical revelation about the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit was locked out. Any who disagreed were, in accordance with the laws of the emperor and church authorities, branded heretics and dealt with accordingly.
8) The Holy Spirit
Continuing from the above the debated then shifted from the divinity of Jesus to what the nature of the Holy Spirit was. In that regard, the statement issued at the Council of Nicaea said simply, “We believe in the Holy Spirit.” This “seemed to have been added to Athanasius’s creed almost as an afterthought,” writes Karen Armstrong. “People were confused about the Holy Spirit. Was it simply a synonym for God or was it something more?” (p. 115).
Then came the development of the 3-in-1 concept,
Professor Ryrie, also cited earlier, writes, “In the second half of the fourth century, three theologians from the province of Cappadocia in eastern Asia Minor [today central Turkey] gave definitive shape to the doctrine of the Trinity” (p. 65). They proposed an idea that was a step beyond Athanasius’ view—that God the Father, Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit were coequal and together in one being, yet also distinct from one another.
These men—Basil, bishop of Caesarea, his brother Gregory, bishop of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus—were all “trained in Greek philosophy” (Armstrong, p. 113), which no doubt affected their outlook and beliefs
9) The verse about the Trinity thrown out
In 1 John 5:7 “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one..”
These words were thrown out of the RSV Bible as a fabrication. Why? Because it was realised by scholars later that this was a ‘note’ made in the 6th century and was later added into the bible as an actual verse. Now after many centuries it has been removed by 30 scholars backed by 50 denominations! How many more mistakes have gone unnoticed. For centuries those who believed in this verse and have now died believing in a false verse.
