The teaching of the Orthodox Church on the Holy Trinity. About the Holy Trinity God is one in the persons of the Holy Trinity

The dispute about the Trinity, which manifested itself in the struggle between Arius and Athanasius, has its roots in the past. The early Fathers of the Church, as we have seen, did not have a clear idea of ​​the Trinity of the Godhead. Some of them conceived of the Logos as an impersonal mind which became personal at the time of the creation of the world, and others regarded Him as a Person, as eternal as the Father, sharing the Divine essence, but at the same time they saw Him in a certain subordination to the Father. The Holy Spirit was not at all involved in their reasoning. important. They spoke of Him chiefly in connection with the work of redemption carried on in the hearts and lives of believers. Some considered Him to be subordinate not only to the Father, but also to the Son. Tertullian was the first theologian to clearly affirm the tripersonality of God and the essential unity of the three Persons. But even he failed to clearly formulate the doctrine of the Trinity.

In the meantime Monarchianism had appeared with its emphasis on the unity of God and the true Divinity of Christ, and in this there was an actual denial of the Trinity in the proper sense of the word. Tertullian and Hippolytus fought their views in the West, while Origen dealt a decisive blow to them in the East. They defended the Trinitarian doctrine as expressed in the apostolic creed. But even Origen's doctrine of the Trinity was not entirely satisfactory. He firmly held the view that both the Father and the Son were Divine hypostases or personal existences, but he did not quite succeed in giving a Scriptural idea of ​​the relationship of the three Persons to the one essence of the Godhead. Although he was the first to explain the relationship of the Father to the Son using the concept of "eternal generation", he did not escape some subordination of the Second Person to the First in the field of their essence. The Father transmitted to the Son only secondary types of divinity, which can be called god (theos), but not completely God (hotheos). He sometimes even speaks of the Son as “the second Theos.” This was the greatest flaw in Origen's doctrine of the Trinity, and it served as the starting point for Arius. Another, less fatal flaw is his assertion that the begetting of the Son is not a necessary act of the Father, but results from His sovereign will. He, however, was careful not to introduce the idea of ​​temporary succession. In his teaching about the Holy Spirit, he departed even further from Scripture. He not only made the Holy Spirit dependent even on the Son, but also numbered Him among the things that the Son made. One of his sayings can be understood to mean that the Holy Spirit was simply a creation.

2. NATURE OF THE DISPUTE

a) Arius and Arianism

The Great Trinitarian Controversy is usually called the Arian Controversy because it was caused by the anti-Trinitarian views of Arius, the Alexandrian presbyter, an experienced debater, although not a deeply spiritual one. His main idea was the monotheistic principle of the Monarchians, that there is only one unborn God, one beginningless Being, Who had no beginning of His existence. He distinguished between the Logos inherent in God, as His divine energy, and the Son, or Logos, Who became incarnate. The latter had a beginning: He was begotten by the Father, which in Arius's account was equivalent to the statement that He was created. He was created out of nothing before the creation of the world, and for this reason is neither eternal nor of Divine essence. The greatest and first of all created beings, He was called into existence so that through Him the world could be created. He is therefore subject to change, but chosen by God for His foreseen merits and called the Son of God in view of His future glory. According to the dignity of His adoption, He is entitled to the worship of people. Arius sought support for his views in Scripture, in those texts that seem to present the Son as inferior to the Father:

Etc. 8.22 (Septuagint version).

Matt. 28.18.

Mk. 13.32.

OK. 18,19.

In. 5.19.

In. 14.28.

1 Cor. 15.28.

b) Opposition to Arianism

First of all, Arius was opposed by his own bishop, Alexander, who affirmed the true divinity of the Son and at the same time adhered to the doctrine of eternal sonship through birth. Over time, however, his real opponent turned out to be the deacon of Alexandria, the great Athanasius, who emerges from the pages of history as a strong, unbending and unyielding fighter for the truth. Seberg attributes his great strength to three things: 1) the stability and sincerity of his character; 2) the solid foundation on which he stood in his understanding of the unity of God, which preserved him from the idea of ​​subordination so typical of his time, and 3) the unfailing tact with which he taught men to recognize the nature and significance of the Person of Christ. He understood that to consider Christ as a creation meant to deny that faith in Him brings a person into a saving union with God.

He emphasized with great force the unity of God and insisted on the creation of the idea of ​​the Trinity, which would not threaten this unity. The Father and the Son have the same Divine essence, and it is incorrect to speak of a “second God.” But while emphasizing the unity of God, he also recognizes three different hypostases (persons) in God. He refused to believe in the pre-eternally created Son of the Arians and asserted the independent and eternal personal existence of the Son. At the same time, he meant that the three hypostases in God cannot be considered as separate in any sense, since this would lead to polytheism. According to Athanasius, both the unity of God and the differences in his Being are best expressed in the term “consubstantiality.” This expresses clearly and unambiguously the idea that the Son is of the same essence as the Father, but it also recognizes that the two may differ in other respects, such as in personal existence. Like Origen, he taught that the Son was begotten, but, unlike Origen, he described this birth as an internal and therefore necessary and eternal act of God, and not one that simply depended on His own will.

Athanasius was inspired and determined by his theological views not only by the requirement of logical consistency. The driving force in his creation of truth was of a religious nature. It was his soteriological convictions that naturally gave rise to his theological principles. His main conviction was that union with God is necessary for salvation and that no creation, but only He who is God Himself, can unite us with God. Therefore, as Seberg says, “only if Christ is God in the full sense of the word and without any qualifications, then God entered into humanity, and only then communion with God, forgiveness of sins, the Truth of God and immortality were undoubtedly granted to man” ( History of Doctrines, vol. 1, p. 211).

3. CATHEDRAL OF NICEA

The Council of Nicea was convened in 325 g . to resolve this dispute. The problem was clearly defined, as will be seen from a brief presentation of it. The Arians rejected the idea of ​​the eternal (timeless) origin of the Son, and Athanasius argued exactly this. The Arians said that the Son was created from non-existence, but Athanasius maintained that He came from the essence of the Father. The Arians denied that the Son was of the same essence as the Father, but Athanasius argued precisely this, that He was consubstantial with the Father.

In addition to the parties opposing each other, there was a large group of “middle”; it actually constituted the majority of the Council and was under the leadership of the church historian Eusebius of Caesarea. This party is also known as the Origen party, since it stood on the principles of Origen. This party leaned toward Arianism and opposed the doctrine that the Son is consubstantial with the Father. She offered a statement previously written by Eusebius, which in every way coincided with the text of the party of Alexander and Athanasius, with one exception; They suggested that instead of the word “consubstantial” we use the word “similar in essence”, i.e. that the Son is like the Father. After long discussions, the emperor finally, with his authority, tipped the scales in favor of Athanasius and thereby ensured his victory.

The Council adopted the following position on the controversial issue: “We believe in one God, the Almighty Father, Creator of everything visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, begotten, unmade, of one essence with the Father,” etc. This was a clearly stated position. The term “consubstantial” could not be understood otherwise than that the essence of the Son is identical (identical) with the essence of the Father. This term placed the Son on the same level as the Father as an uncreated Being and recognized Him as God.

4. CONSEQUENCES

a) Unsatisfactory solution

The decision of the Council did not end the dispute, but actually marked the beginning of it. The settlement of the dispute under the firm hand of the emperor could not satisfy anyone, and the duration of the peace was in great doubt. It turned out that the definition of the Christian faith depended on imperial whim and even on palace intrigue. Athanasius himself, although victorious, was not satisfied with this method of resolving church disputes. He would rather convince the opposing party by the force of his evidence. The further course of events clearly showed that indeed a change in the emperor’s mood or even a bribe could change the entire course of the dispute. And the party that won may experience a sudden fall. This is exactly what happened constantly in subsequent history.

b) Temporary victory of semi-Arianism in the Eastern Church

The central and great figure in the Trinitarian controversy after Nicaea was Athanasius. He was the greatest man of his time, far superior to all others: an astute theologian, of strong character and a man of who had the courage to defend his convictions and who was ready to suffer for the truth. The Church gradually became to some extent Arian, but predominantly semi-Arian, and the emperors usually took the side of the majority, so that they said about Athanasius: “Athanasius is against the whole world.” This worthy servant of God was sent into exile five times, and his post was inherited by unworthy sycophants who were a dishonor to the Church.

Opposition to the Nicene Solution was divided into several parties. Cunningham says: “The bravest and most honest Arians argued that the Son is of a different essence than the Father (they are heterogeneous); others believed that He was not like the Father (different), and some, who are usually called semi-Arians, admitted that He was like the Father; but they all unanimously refused to accept the Nicene definition, because they were against the Nicene doctrine of the true and genuine Divinity of the Son, and saw and felt that the Nicene phraseology (i.e., "consubstantial") accurately and unconditionally expressed it, although they sometimes said that they have other objections to the use of this word" (Historical Theology, vol. 1, p. 290).

The Semi-Arians predominated in the Eastern part of the Church. The West, however, took a different view and was faithful to the Council of Nicaea. This can be explained, first of all, by the fact that while the East was strongly influenced by the subordinationism of Origen, the West was mainly influenced by Tertullian, and therefore the West developed a type of theology that was more in agreement with the views of Athanasius. In addition, however, the rivalry between Rome and Constantinople must be taken into account. When Athanasius was expelled from the East, he was received with open arms in the West; and the Councils of Rome (341) and Sardis (343) certainly confirmed his teaching.

Athanasius's cause in the West was, however, weakened by the elevation of Marcellus of Ancyra to the rank of conqueror in the field of Nicene theology. He returned again to the old distinction between the eternal and impersonal Logos inherent in God, which was revealed in the Divine energy in the work of Creation, and the Logos that became Person at the Incarnation; he denied that the term "procession" could be applied to a pre-existent Logos, and therefore he forbade the application of the name "Son of God" to the incarnate Logos; He also believed that at the end of His incarnate life, the Logos returned to His pre-mundane relationship with the Father. Apparently his theory vindicated the Origenists or Eusebius by bringing the charge of Sabellianism against their opponents, and was thus an instrument for widening the gap between East and West.

Were some attempts have been made to close this gap. Councils were convened at Antioch and adopted the Nicene definitions, although with two important exceptions. They defended the consubstantiality and procession of the Son through the action of the will of the Father. This, of course, could not satisfy the West. Other Councils and Synods followed, at which the Eusebians sought in vain Western recognition of the removal of Athanasius and developed other creeds of a conciliatory, mediatorial type. But all was in vain until Constantius became sole emperor, and by cunning and force he managed to bring the Western bishops into agreement with the Eusebians at the Synods of Arles and Milan (355).

c) Low tide after high tide

Victory again proved to be a dangerous thing for a wrong cause. It actually became a signal for a split in the anti-Nicene party. The heterogeneous elements of which it consisted were united in their opposition to the Nicene party. But as soon as the external pressure disappeared, their lack of internal unity became obvious. The Arians and Semi-Arians did not agree with each other, and there was no unity among the latter. At the Council of Sirma (357) there was an attempt was made to unite all parties, putting aside the use of such terms as “essence,” “consubstantial,” and “co-existent,” as being beyond human understanding. But the dispute had gone too far to be settled in this way. The real Arians now showed their true colors and thus sent the conservative part of the Semi-Arians to the Nicene camp.

Meanwhile, a young Nicene party arose, consisting of people who were students of the Origen school, but were grateful to Athanasius and the Nicene symbol for a more perfect interpretation of the truth. Among them, the main ones were three Cappadocians - Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus. They saw the source of misunderstanding in the use of the term "hypostasis" as synonymous with both "essence" and "personality", and therefore limited its use to only the description of the personal existence of the Father and the Son. Instead of starting with “consubstantiality,” as Athanasius did, they began with three “hypostases” (persons) in the Godhead and tried to subsume them under the doctrine of the Divine “essence.” Both Gregory compared the relationship of the Persons in the Godhead with the essence of God, with the relationship of three people to their common humanity. And precisely because they emphasized the three hypostases in God, they freed the Nicene teaching from the touch of Sabellianism in the eyes of the Eusebians, and the Personality of the Logos turned out to be sufficiently protected. At the same time they persistently affirmed the unity of the three Persons in the Godhead and illustrated this in various ways.

d) Dispute about the Holy Spirit

Until now, there has not yet been a serious consideration of the issue of the Holy Spirit, although different, divergent opinions on this have been expressed. Arius considered the Holy Spirit to be the first created being, produced by the Son, which was in full agreement with the opinion of Origen. Athanasius argued that the Holy Spirit was of one essence with the Father, but the Nicene Symbol contains only the vague statement “I believe in the Holy Spirit” about Him. The Cappadocians followed in the footsteps of Athanasius and energetically defended the consubstantiality of the Holy Spirit. Hilary of Poitiers in the West argued that the Holy Spirit, Who penetrates the depths of God, could not be alien to the Divine essence. Quite the opposite opinion was expressed by Macedonia, Bishop of Constantinople, who declared that the Holy Spirit is a creature subordinate to the Son; but his opinion was considered heretical, and his followers began to be called “pneumatomachs” (the word is derived from two others: “pneuma” - spirit and “maha” - to speak badly about someone). When in 381 g . The Ecumenical Council was convened in Constantinople, it approved the Nicene symbol and, under the leadership of Gregory of Nazianzus, adopted the following formula regarding the Holy Spirit: “And we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Life-Giver, proceeding from the Father, with the Father and the glorified Son, speaking through the prophets.”

e) Completion of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit

The approval of the Council of Constantinople turned out to be unsatisfactory in two respects:

1) the word “consubstantial” was not used, so that the same essence of the Holy Spirit and the Father was not directly stated;

2) the relationship of the Holy Spirit to the other two Persons was not determined.

There was a position that the Holy Spirit comes from the Father, but at the same time it was neither denied nor asserted that He also comes from the Son. There was not complete unanimity on this issue. To say that the Holy Spirit proceeds only from the Father seemed to deny the essential unity of the Son with the Father; and to say that He also proceeds from the Son would seem to place the Holy Spirit in a more dependent position than the Son, and this would be a violation of His Divinity. Athanasius, Basil and Gregory of Nyssa affirmed the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father, without in any way opposing the teaching that He also proceeds from the Son. But Epiphanius and Marcellus of Ancyra positively defended precisely this teaching.

Western theologians generally believed that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son; and at the Synod of Toledo in 589 g . the famous “filioque” (“And from the Son”) was added to the Constantinople symbol. In the East, the doctrine of John of Damascus was finally formulated: there is only one Divine essence, but three Persons, or Hypostases. They must be considered as realities of the Divine, but not correlated with each other, as three people would be. They are one in every respect except their mode of existence. The Father is characterized by the fact that He came from no one, the Son by His birth from the Father, and the Spirit by His “procession.” The relationships of Personalities are described by John of Damascus as interpenetrating, without mixing. Despite his categorical rejection of subordinationism, John of Damascus still speaks of the Father as the Source of the Godhead and presents the Spirit as proceeding from the Father through the Logos. In all this there is a remnant of Greek subordinationism. The East never accepted the filioque of the Synod of Toledo. This was the stone on which the West and the East crashed (split).

The Western concept of the Trinity found its final completion in Augustine's great work On the Trinity. He also emphasizes the unity of essence and the Trinity of Persons. Each of the three Persons has this essence in full, and therefore they are identical both in essence and in the Personality of each in relation to the other two. This is not like three human persons, each of whom has only part of the common human nature. Moreover, one Person never is and cannot be without others; the dependency relationship between them is reciprocal. The divine essence belongs to each of them, but from a different point of view, as the Begetter, the Begotten, or existing through inspiration. Between the three hypostases there are relations of interpenetration and interdwelling. The word "Person" does not satisfy Augustine in defining the relations that exist between the three; however, he continues to use it, as he says, “not to express their relationship, but in order not to remain silent about it.” In this concept of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit is naturally seen as coming not only from the Father, but also from the Son.

  • What different views of the Logos and His relationship to the Father prevailed before Nicaea?
  • Compare the doctrine of the Trinity and Origen and Tertullian. What is the flaw in Origen's teaching?
  • What is Arius' concept of God? How does his view of Christ relate to this?
  • What scriptures did Arius refer to?
  • What exactly was decided at the Council of Nicaea?
  • What really interested Athanasius in this dispute?
  • How did Athanasius understand the issue of atonement?
  • Why was it so important to use the term “consubstantial” rather than “co-essential”?
  • Why were the Arians so opposed to this term? Why did they call it "Sabellianism"?
  • What was the valuable contribution of the Cappadocians to this debate?
  • How should we view the “anathema” at the end of the Nicene Creed?
  • How was the question of the relationship to other Persons of the Holy Spirit resolved in the East and how - in the West? Why did the East oppose the filioque?
  • Does John of Damascus' doctrine of the Trinity differ from Augustine's?

    • Literature

  • Bull, Defense of the Nice Faith.
  • Scott The Nicene Theology, pp. 213-384.
  • Faulkner, Crises in the Early Church, pp. 113-144.
  • Cunningham, Historical Theology, I, pp. 267-306.
  • McGiffert, A History of Christian Thought, I, pp. 246-275.
  • Harnack, History of Dogma, III, pp. 132-162.
  • Seeberg, History of Doctrines, I, pp. 201 - 241.
  • Loofs, Dogmengeschiedenis, pp. 140-157.
  • Shedd, History of Christian Doctrine, I, pp. 306-375.
  • Thomasius, Dogmengeschichte, I, pp. 198-262.
  • Neander, History of Christian Dogmas, I, pp. 285-316.
  • Sheldon, History of Christian Doctrine, I, pp. 194-215.
  • Orr, Progress of Dogma, pp. 105-131.

    • II . THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY IN LATER THEOLOGY

    1. THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY IN LATIN THEOLOGY

    Later theology did not add anything significant to the doctrine of the Trinity. There were deviations from the truth and subsequent changes in wording. Rosselin applied to the Trinity the nominalist theory that universals are merely subjective concepts, and thus he sought to avoid the difficulty of connecting numerical unity with the distinction of Persons in God. He regarded the three Persons of the Godhead as three significantly different individuals who can be said to be one only by origin and name. Their unity is the unity of will and strength. Anselm rightly objected to this that such a position logically leads to tritheism, and emphasized the fact that universal concepts represent truth and reality.

    If Rosselin proposed a nominalistic interpretation of the doctrine of the Trinity, then Gilbert of Poitiers explained it from the point of view of moderate realism of the Aristotelian type, that is, asserting that universals exist in specific phenomena. He made a distinction between the Divine essence and God and compared their relationship with the relationship of humanity and individuals. The divine essence is not God, but the form of God, or that which makes Him God. This essence or form (the Latin word "form" means that which makes a thing what it is) is common to the three Persons, and in this respect they are one. As a result, he was accused of teaching Tetratheism.

    Abelard spoke about the Trinity in such a way that he was accused of Trinity-Sabellianism. He appears to have identified three Persons in the Godhead with the qualities of power, wisdom and goodness. The name of the Father expresses power (strength), the Son - wisdom and the Holy Spirit - kindness. At the same time, he also uses expressions that implicitly express that the differences in the Godhead are real, personal differences, but he uses illustrations that clearly point in the direction of modalism.

    In Thomas Aquinas we find the usual presentation of the doctrine of the Trinity, and this was the prevailing view of the Church at that time.

    2. THE TEACHING OF THE TRINITY DURING THE REFORMATION

    Calvin discusses the doctrine of the Trinity at length in his Institutes (1st volume, 13th chapter) and defends the doctrine formulated by the Early Church. In general he preferred not to go beyond the simple statements of Scripture on this subject and therefore during his first stay in Geneva he even avoided using the words "Person" and "Trinity". However, in his Institutes he defends these terms and criticizes those who abhor them. Karolyi accused him of being an Arian, which was completely groundless. Calvin affirmed the absolute equality of the Persons in the Godhead and even supported the view of the independent existence of the Son, implying that it was the personal existence of the Son, not His essence, that was begotten. He says that “the essence of both the Son and the Holy Spirit is unbegotten” and that “the Son, as God, apart from consideration of His Person, is self-existent; but as the Son, we say, He is from the Father. Thus, His essence has no origin, but the source of His Person is God Himself" (Instructions, 1-13, 25). It is sometimes said that Calvin denied the eternal origin of the Son. This statement is based on the following passage: “What is the use of arguing about whether the Father always begets, seeing that it is foolish to imagine a constant act of generation, when it is obvious that three Persons existed in one God from Eternity” (Instructions, 1-13, 29). But this statement was hardly intended to deny the eternal generation of the Son, since he clearly teaches this in other parts. It is more likely that this is simply an expression of disagreement with the Nicene debate about eternal birth as a constant movement, always completed and yet never completed. Warfield says, “Calvin seems to find this concept difficult, if not entirely meaningless” (“Calvin and Calvinism”). The doctrine of the Trinity, as formulated by the Church, finds its expression in all Reformed creeds and most fully and with the greatest accuracy - in Chapter III B of the Helvetic Creed.

    In the sixteenth century, the Socinians declared that the doctrine of three Persons having a common essence was devoid of logic and contrary to reason, and tried to reject it on the basis of texts quoted by the Arians. But they went further than the Arians in denying the pre-existence of the Son and believed that Christ, in His being and by nature, was simply a man, although He possessed a special fullness of the Spirit, had a special knowledge of God and at His Ascension received power over everything. They defined the Holy Spirit as a virtue, “the energy flowing from God to people.” In their concept of God they were the forerunners of modern Unitarians and Modernists.

    In some places, subordinationism has again come to the fore. Some Arminians (Eliscopius, Curcellius, Limborchus), believing that all three Persons had the same Divine nature, attributed, however, some advantage over the other Persons to the Father, in order, dignity and power of supremacy. In their understanding, belief in equality of status necessarily led to tritheism.

    3. THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY AFTER THE REFORMATION PERIOD

    In England, Samuel Clarke, court preacher under Queen Anne, published 1712 g . his work on the Trinity, where he approached the Arian view of subordination. He speaks of the Father as the supreme and only God, the only Source of all things, power and authority. Next to Him, there originally existed a second Divine Person, called the Son, who derives his existence and his qualities from the Father, not by simple necessity or by nature, but by the expression of the selective will of the Father. He refuses to concern himself with the question whether the Son was begotten from the essence of the Father, or whether he was created out of nothing; whether He existed from eternity or only to all worlds. Along with these two there is a third Person who has his essence from the Father through the Son. He is subordinate to the Son both by nature and by the will of the Father.

    Some New England theologians criticized the doctrine of eternal birth. Emmons even called it "a perpetual nonsense," and Moses Stewart declared that the expression was an obvious linguistic contradiction of the language, and that their most eminent theologians, for forty years past, had opposed it. He himself did not like this expression, because he considered it as the opposite of the true equality of the Father and the Son. The following words seem to express his point of view: "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are words which signify the distinctions in the Godhead manifested to us in the work of redemption, and are not intended to mark the eternal relations in the Godhead as they are in themselves." .

    Sabellian interpretations of the Trinity can be found in Swedenborg, who denied the Trinity in essence and said that when we say Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we are simply pointing out differences in the eternal God-man who took on human flesh in the Son and acted through the Holy Spirit; one can also find Sabellianism in Schleiermacher, who says that God Himself, as an unknown unity underlying all things, is the Father, God, who enters into creative personal existence in man, and especially in Jesus Christ, - this is the Son, and God, like the life of the risen Christ in the Church, is the Holy Spirit; Hegel, Dorner and others have similar views. Ritschl and many modernists of our time again have the views of Pavel Samosatsky.

    Questions for further study

  • In what sense do the scholastics view the doctrine of the Trinity as a mystery?
  • Why does Rosselin deny the numerical unity of God's essence?
  • How does the Church view his teaching?
  • Why was Gilbert of Poitiers accused of tetratheism (quadrtheism)?
  • What was the nature of Abelard's Sabellianism?
  • How did the Church react to his teaching?
  • Did the scholastics consider the divine essence of the Son or His personal existence as the purpose of origin?
  • What distinction do they make between the procession of the Son and the procession of the Spirit?
  • What connection do they express with the term “circumincessio” (continuous, constant origin)?
  • How does Calvin define personhood in the Trinity?
  • How does he understand the origin of the Son?
  • Where do we see that the doctrine of the Trinity develops along Arian lines, where along Sabellian lines, and where along the line of a purely economic Trinity?

    • Literature

  • Seeberg, History of Doctrines, II, cf. Index.
  • Otten, Manual of the History of Dogmas, II, pp. 84-99.
  • Sheldon, History of Christian Doctrine, I, pp. 337-339; II, pp. 96-103, 311-318.
  • Cunningham, Historical Theology, II, pp. 194-213.
  • Fisher History of Christian Doctrine, cf. Index.

    • The essence of the dogma

    The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, which is the dogma of the Holy Trinity, occupies a central place in the liturgical practice of many Christian churches and is the basis of Christian doctrine. According to the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed:

    • God the Father is the creator of all things (visible and invisible)
    • God the Son is eternally born of God the Father
    • God the Holy Spirit comes from God the Father.

    According to the teachings of the church, God, one in three persons, is an incorporeal invisible spirit (John 4:24), living (Jer. 10; 1 Thess. 1:9), eternal (Ps. 89:3; Exod. 40:28; Rom. 14:25), omnipresent (Ps. 139:7-12; Acts 17:27) and all-good (Matt. 19:17; Ps. 24:8). It is impossible to see it, since God does not have in himself such things as the visible world consists of.

    « God is light and in Him there is no darkness"(John 1:5). God the Father is not born and does not come from another Person; The Son of God is eternally born from God the Father; The Holy Spirit comes eternally from God the Father. All three Persons are completely equal in essence and properties. Christ is the Only Begotten Son of God, born “before all ages,” “light from light,” eternally with the Father, “consubstantial with the Father.” There always was and is the Son, just like the Holy Spirit. Through the Son, all things were created: “In Him all things were,” “and without Him nothing came into being” (John 1:3. God the Father creates all things through the Word, i.e. His Only Begotten Son, under the influence of the Holy Spirit: “ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God"(John 1:1). The Father was never without the Son and the Holy Spirit: “ Before Abraham was, I am"(John 8:58).

    Despite the common nature of all the Persons of the Holy Trinity and Their equivalence (“equality and co-thronehood”), the acts of pre-eternal birth (of the Son) and procession (of the Holy Spirit) differ in an incomprehensible way from each other. All Persons of the indivisible Trinity are in ideal (absolute and self-sufficient) mutual love - “God is love” (1 John 4:8). The birth of the Son and the procession of the Spirit are recognized as eternal, but voluntary properties of the divine nature, in contrast to how God out of nothing (not from His Nature) created the countless angelic world (invisible) and the material world (visible by us) according to His good will (according to His love), although he could not have created anything (nothing forced Him to do this). Orthodox theologian Vladimir Lossky states that it is not the abstract Divine nature (forced) that produces three Persons, but vice versa: Three supernatural Persons (freely) assign absolute properties to their common Divine nature. All the faces of the Divine Being remain unfused, inseparable, inseparable, unchangeable. It is unacceptable to represent the three-personal God either as three-headed (since one head cannot give birth to another and exhaust a third), nor as tripartite (Reverend Andrew of Crete in his canon calls the Trinity simple (non-composite)).

    In Christianity, God is united with his creation: “ On that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you."(John 14:20)), " I am the true Vine, and My Father is the Vinedresser; Every branch of Me that does not bear fruit He cuts off; and every one that bears fruit he cleanses, that it may bear more fruit. Abide in Me and I in you"(John 15:4-6)). Based on these gospel verses, Gregory Palamas concludes that “ God exists and is called the nature of all things, for everything participates in Him and exists by virtue of this participation.».

    Orthodox doctrine believes that during the incarnation (incarnation) of the second hypostasis of the Holy Trinity of God the Son into the God-man Jesus Christ (through the third hypostasis of the Holy Trinity of God the Holy Spirit and the Most Pure Virgin Mary), during the earthly life of the Savior, during His suffering on the cross, bodily death, His descent into hell, during His resurrection and ascension to Heaven, the eternal relations between the Persons of the Holy Trinity did not undergo any changes.

    The doctrine of the Trinity God is given with complete certainty only in the New Testament, but Christian theologians find its beginnings in the Old Testament revelation. In particular, a phrase from the book of Joshua "The God of gods is the Lord, the God of gods is the Lord"(Joshua 22:22) is interpreted as confirming the triune nature of God.

    Christians see indications of the involvement of Christ and the Holy Spirit in the divine nature in the teaching about the Angel of Jehovah (Gen. 16:7 ff.; Gen. 22:17, Gen. 22:12; Gen. 31:11 ff.; Exod. 3: 2 words; Ex. 63:8), the angel of the Covenant (Mal. 3:1), the name of God who dwells in the temple (1 Kings 8:29; 1 Kings 9:3; 2 Kings 21:4), the glory of God, filling the temple (1 Kings 8:11; Isa. 6:1) and especially about the Spirit of God emanating from God, and finally, about the Messiah Himself (Isa. 48:16; Isa. 61:1; Zech. 7:12) .

    History of the formation of the dogma

    Pre-Nicene period

    The beginning of the theological revelation of the dogma of the Trinity is laid by St. Justin the Philosopher († 166). In the word “Logos” Justin finds the Hellenic-philosophical meaning of “reason”. In this sense, the Logos is already a purely immanent divine principle. But since Justin one-sidedly presents only the external world as the subject of divine thinking, then the Logos emanating from the Father becomes dubious in relation to world-making. “The Son is born when God in the beginning created all things through Him.” The birth of the Son, therefore, although it precedes creation, is in close relationship with it and seems to take place before creation itself; and since the will of the Father appears to be the cause of birth, and the Son is called the servant of this will, He becomes in a relationship of decisive subordination - έν δευτέρα χώρα (in second place). In this view one can already discern erroneous directions, in the struggle against which the proper revelation of the dogma was finally accomplished. Both the Jewish-religious view, brought up on the Old Testament revelation, and the Greek-philosophical one equally gravitated towards the recognition of an absolute monarchy in God. The only difference was that Jewish monotheism came from the concept of a single divine will, and philosophical speculation (which found its completion in Neoplatonism) understood absolute being in the sense of pure substance.

    Formulation of the problem

    The Christian doctrine of the Redeemer as the incarnate Son of God posed a difficult task for theological speculation: how to reconcile the doctrine of the divine nature of Christ with the recognition of the absolute unity of the Divine. There were two ways to solve this problem. Coming from the concept of God as a substance, it was possible to pantheistically or deistically imagine the Logos as participating in divine existence; Based on the concept of God as a personal will, one could think of the Logos as an instrument subordinate to this will. In the first case there was a danger of turning the Logos into an impersonal force, into a simple principle inseparable from God; in the second case, the Logos was a separate personality from God the Father, but ceased to be a participant in the inner divine life and being of the Father. The fathers and teachers of the ante-Nicene period did not give a proper formulation of this question. Instead of clarifying the internal, immanent relationship of the Son to the Father, they focused more on clarifying His relationship to the World; Insufficiently revealing the idea of ​​the independence of the Son as a separate divine hypostasis, they weakly emphasized the idea of ​​His complete consubstantiality with the Father. Those two trends that are noticeable in Justin - on the one hand, the recognition of the immanence and equality of the Son with the Father, on the other, His decisive placing in subordination to the Father - are observed in them in an even more dramatic form. With the exception of St. Irinius of Lyons, all writers of this period before Origen, in revealing the doctrine of the relationship of the Son to the Father, adhere to the theory of the difference between Λόγος ένδιάθετος and Λόγος προφορικός - the Internal Word and the spoken Word. Since these concepts were borrowed from the philosophy of Philo, where they had the character not of purely theological, but rather of cosmological concepts, church writers, when operating with these concepts, paid more attention to the latter - their cosmological side. The utterance of the Word by the Father, understood as the birth of the Son, is conceived by them not as the moment of the internal self-revelation of God, but as the beginning of revelation ad extra. The basis for this birth lies not in the very essence of God, but in His relation to the world, and the birth itself seems to be a matter of the will of the Father: God wanted to create the world and gave birth to the Son - he spoke the Word. These writers do not express a clear consciousness of the idea that the birth of the Son is not only generatio aeterna, but also sempiterna (always present): birth seems to be an eternal act, but taking place, so to speak, on the border of finite life. From this moment of birth, the Logos becomes a real, separate hypostasis, whereas at the first moment of its existence, as Λόγος ένδιάθετος, it is conceived more as a property of only the spiritual nature of the Father, by virtue of which the Father is a rational being.

    Tertullian

    This doctrine of the dual Word was developed with the greatest consistency and sharpness by the Western writer Tertullian. He contrasts the internal Word not only with the spoken Word, as with previous writers (Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus of Antioch), but also with the Son. From the moment of just the utterance - the “birth” - of the Word, God and the Word enter into the relationship of Father and Son. There was a time, therefore, when there was no Son; The Trinity begins to exist in its entirety only from the moment of the creation of the world. Since the reason for the birth of the Son in Tertullian seems to be the desire of God to create the world, it is natural that subordinationism appears in him, and, moreover, in a sharper form than in his predecessors. The Father, giving birth to the Son, already determined His relationship to the world as the God of revelation, and for this purpose, in the birth itself, he humiliated Him a little; The Son, precisely, includes everything that philosophy recognizes as unworthy and unthinkable in God, as an absolutely simple being and supreme of all conceivable definitions and relationships. Tertullian often presents the relationship between the Father and the Son as a relationship of a part to the whole.

    Origen

    The same duality of direction in the disclosure of dogma is also noticed in the most prominent representative of the pre-Nicene period - Origen († 254), although the latter renounces the theory of the difference between the internal and spoken Word. Adhering to the philosophical view of Neoplatonism, Origen thinks of God as an absolutely simple beginning, as an absolute enad (perfect unity), the highest of all conceivable definitions. The latter are contained in God only potentially; their active manifestation is given only in the Son. The relationship between the Father and the Son is therefore conceived as the ratio of potential energy to actual energy. However, the Son is not simply the activity of the Father, the actual manifestation of His power, but a hypostatic activity. Origen decisively ascribes a special Person to the Son. The birth of the Son seems to him, in the full sense of the word, to be an inherent act taking place in the inner life of God. By virtue of divine immutability, this act exists in God from eternity. Here Origen decisively rises above the point of view of his predecessors. With the formulation of the teaching given by him, there is no longer any room left for the thought that Λόγος ένδιάθετος was not at some time at the same time Λόγος προφορικος. Nevertheless, this victory over the theory of the dual Word was not yet decisive and complete: the logical connection between the birth of the Son and the existence of the world, on which this theory rested, was not completely broken by Origen. By virtue of the same divine immutability by which Origen recognizes the birth of the Son as an eternal act, he considers the creation of the world equally eternal and places both acts in such a close connection that he even confuses them with each other and in their first moment merges them to the point of indistinguishability. The creative thoughts of the Father are presented not only as contained in the Son - the Logos, but are also identified with His very hypostasis, as components of one whole, and the Son of God is considered as an ideal world. The force that produces both acts is represented by the all-sufficient will of the Father; The Son turns out to be only an intermediary through whom the transition from the absolute unity of God to the plurality and diversity of the world becomes possible. In the absolute sense, Origen recognizes only the Father as God; only He is ό Θεός, αληθινός Θεός or Αυτόθεος, the Son is only simply Θεός, δεύτερος Θεός, God only by participation in the Divinity of the Father like other θεο ί, although, as the first to be deified, he surpasses the latter to an immeasurable degree in his glory. Thus, from the sphere of absolute Deity, the Son was relegated by Origen to the same category with created beings.

    Monarchianism

    Holy Trinity Monastery of Jonas. Kyiv

    The opposition of these two directions appears with complete clarity if we take them in their one-sided development on the one hand in Monarchianism, on the other in Arianism. For monarchism, which sought to bring to rational clarity the idea of ​​the relationship of the trinity to the unity in the Divine, church teaching seemed to conceal a contradiction. Economy, the dogma about the Divinity of Christ, according to this view, was a negation of the monarchy, the dogma about the unity of the Divinity. In order to save the monarchy, without unconditionally denying economy, two possible ways seemed to be: either the denial of the personal difference of Christ from the Father, or the denial of His Divinity. Whether to say that Christ is not God, or vice versa, that He is precisely the one and only God Himself - in both cases, the monarchy remains intact. According to the difference between these two ways of solving the issue, monarchians are divided into two classes: modalists and dynamists.

    Monarchianism modalistic

    Modalistic monarchianism in its preparatory stage found expression in the patripassianism of Praxeus and Noetus. In their view, the Father and the Son are different only secundum modum. The One God, insofar as he is thought of as invisible, unborn, is God the Father, and insofar as he is thought of as visible, begotten, is God the Son. The basis for such modification is the will of God Himself. In the mode of the unborn Father, God appears before his incarnation; in the act of incarnation He enters into the mode of the Son, and in this mode He suffered (Pater passus est: hence the very name of this faction of modalists, Patripassians). Modalistic monarchianism finds its completion in the system of Sabellius, who for the first time introduced the third hypostasis of the Trinity into the circle of his contemplation. According to the teachings of Sabellius, God is a monad alien to all differences, which then extends outward into a triad. Depending on the demands of the world government, God takes on this or that person (πρόσωπον - mask) and conducts the corresponding conversation. Living in absolute independence as a monad, God, starting from Himself and beginning to act, becomes the Logos, which is nothing more than the principle underlying further forms of revelation of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. As Father, God revealed Himself in the Old Testament; in the New Testament He took upon Himself the face of the Son; the third, finally, form of revelation in the person of the Holy Spirit occurs from the moment the Holy Spirit descends on the apostles. Each role ends when the need for it has passed. When, therefore, the goal of revelation in the person of the Holy Spirit is achieved, this mode will cease to exist, and the “reduction” of the Logos into the former monad will follow, that is, the return of the latter to the original silence and unity, tantamount to the complete cessation of the existence of the world.

    Monarchianism is dynamic

    In a completely opposite way, dynamic monarchianism tried to reconcile the monarchy in God with the doctrine of the Divinity of Christ, whose representatives were Theodotus the tanner, Theodotus the banker, Artemon and Paul of Samosata, from whom this form of monarchialism received its highest development. To save the monarchy, the Dynamists directly sacrificed the Divinity of Christ. Christ was a simple man, and, as such, if he existed before his appearance in the world, it was only in divine predestination. There can be no question of the incarnation of the Divine in Him. The same divine power (δύναμις) that had previously acted in the prophets acted in Him; only in Him was it in incomparably more complete measure. However, according to Theodotus the Younger, Christ is not even the highest phenomenon of history, for above Him stands Melchizedek, as a mediator not of God and men, but of God and angels. In this form, monarchianism no longer left room for the Trinity of revelation, resolving the trinity into an indefinite plurality. Pavel Samosatsky combined this view with the concept of Logos. Logos, however, for Paul is nothing more than the only known side in God. He is approximately the same in God as the human word (understood as a rational principle) is in the human spirit. Consequently, there can be no question of the substantial presence of the Logos in Christ. Between the Logos and the man Jesus, only a relationship of contact could be established, a connection in knowledge, in will and action. Logos is conceived, therefore, only as the principle of the influence of God on the man Jesus, under which the moral development of the latter takes place, which makes it possible to apply divine predicates to him [In this form of monarchianism one can see a great similarity with the latest theories of German theology. Ritschl's theory, which is widely used, is essentially no different from the views of Paul of Samosat; the theologians of the Richlian school go even further than the dynamists when they deny the fact of the birth of Christ from the Virgin, which was recognized by these latter.].

    Formation of Creeds

    In Eastern theology, the final word belonged to John of Damascus, who tried to understand the concept of the unity of being with the trinity of persons in God and to show the mutual conditionality of the existence of hypostases, the doctrine of περιχώρησις - the interpenetration of hypostases. The theology of medieval scholasticism believed that its entire task in relation to the dogma of T. was to indicate the exact boundaries of permissible expressions and turns of speech, which cannot be transgressed without falling into one or another heresy. Having torn dogma away from its natural soil - from Christology, it contributed to the fact that it lost its lively interest in the religious consciousness of believers. This interest was reawakened only by modern German philosophy, especially Hegel. But this same philosophy showed in the best possible way what the Christian doctrine of the Trinity God can turn into, once it is torn away from the soil on which it grew, and they try to derive it from mere general concepts of reason. Instead of the Son of God in the biblical sense, Hegel has a world in which Divine life is realized; instead of the Holy Spirit, there is an absolute philosophy in which God comes to Himself. The Trinity was here transferred from the sphere of divine existence to the region of the exclusive human spirit, and the result was a decisive denial of the Trinity. It should be noted that this dogma was adopted at the first ecumenical council by vote, that is, by a show of hands, after the dogma on the divine essence of Jesus Christ was issued at the same council.

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  • A.M. Leonov

    • The Holy Trinity– God, one in essence and threefold in Persons (); Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

    Three Persons have:
    – one will (desire and expression of will),
    - one force,
    – one action: any action of God is one: from the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. The unity of action in relation to God should be understood not as a certain sum of three mutually solidary actions of Persons, but as a literal, strict unity. This action is always just, merciful, holy...

    The Father is the source of the existence of the Son and the Holy Spirit

    The Father (being beginningless) is the only beginning, the source in the Holy Trinity: He eternally gives birth to the Son and eternally gives birth to the Holy Spirit. The Son and the Holy Spirit simultaneously ascend to the Father as one cause, while the origin of the Son and the Spirit does not depend on the will of the Father. The Word and the Spirit, in the figurative expression of the saint, are the “two hands” of the Father. God is one not only because His nature is one, but also because those Persons who are from Him ascend to a single person.
    The Father has no greater power or honor than the Son and the Holy Spirit.

    True knowledge of God the Trinity is impossible without the internal transformation of man

    Experienced knowledge of the Trinity of God is possible only in the mystical through the action of the Divine, to a person whose heart is cleansed of. The Holy Fathers experienced an experience in contemplating the One Trinity, among them we can particularly highlight the Great Cappadocians (,), St. , prp. , prp. , prp. , prp. .

    Each of the Persons of the Trinity does not live for Himself, but gives Himself without reserve to the other Persons, while remaining completely open to their response, so that all three coexist in love with each other. The life of Divine Persons is interpenetration, so that the life of one becomes the life of another. Thus, the existence of the God of the Trinity is realized as love, in which the individual’s own existence is identified with self-giving.

    The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is the basis of Christianity

    An Orthodox Christian every time confesses the truth about the Holy Trinity, making the sign of the cross through.

    From a more specific perspective, this knowledge is necessary:

    1. For a correct, meaningful understanding of the Holy Gospel and the Apostolic Epistles.

    Without knowing the basics of the doctrine of the Trinity, it is impossible not only to understand the preaching of Christ - it is even impossible to understand who this Evangelist and Preacher really is, who Christ is, whose Son He is, who His Father is.

    2. For a correct understanding of the content of the Books of the Old Testament. Indeed, despite the fact that the Scripture of the Old Testament mainly reports about God as the One Ruler, it nevertheless contains passages that can be exhaustively interpreted only in the light of the teaching about Him as the Trinity in Persons.

    Such places include, for example:

    a) the story of God’s appearance to Abraham in the form of three strangers ();

    b) the verse of the psalmist: “By the Word of the Lord the heavens were established, and by the Spirit of His mouth all their power” ().

    In fact, the Holy Books of the Old Testament contain not two or three, but many such passages.

    (It is worthy of note that the concept “Spirit” does not always designate the third Person of the Holy Trinity. Sometimes this designation means a single Divine action).

    3. To understand the meaning and meaning. Without knowledge of the teachings about the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, it is impossible to understand by whom and to whom this Sacrifice was offered, what is the dignity of this Sacrifice, what is the price of ours).

    If a Christian's knowledge were limited to the knowledge of God as the One Ruler, he would be faced with an insoluble question: why did God sacrifice Himself?

    4. Without knowledge of the Divine Trinity, it is impossible to fully understand many other provisions of Christianity; for example, the truth that “God is love” ().

    If we, out of ignorance of the doctrine of the Trinity, knew about God only as the One, then we would not know to Whom, outside of relation to the world, His infinite extends, to Whom it poured out before the Creation of the world, in eternity.

    If we believed that God's Love extends only to His creation, in particular to man, it would be easy to slip into the idea that He is the Lover and not the (infinite in Himself) Love.

    The doctrine of the Trinity tells us that God has always abided and abides in intra-Trinity Love. The Father eternally loves the Son and the Spirit; Son - Father and Spirit; Spirit - Father and Son. At the same time, Each Divine Hypostasis also loves Itself. Therefore, God is not only the One who pours out Divine Love, but also the One on whom Divine Love is poured out.

    5. Ignorance of the doctrine of the Trinity serves as a breeding ground for misconceptions. Weak, superficial knowledge of the doctrine of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit is also not a guarantee against evasion. The history of the Church contains a lot of evidence of this.

    6. Without knowing the teachings about the Holy Trinity, it is impossible to engage in missionary work, in fulfillment of the commandment of Christ: “Go, teach all nations...” ().

    How to explain the doctrine of the Holy Trinity to a non-Christian?

    It is noteworthy: even pagans and atheists can agree with the statement that there is rationality in the structure of the world. In this regard
    This analogy can serve as a good apologetic tool.

    The essence of the analogy is as follows. The human mind expresses itself through thought.

    Usually human thought is formulated in words. With this in mind, we can say: the human thought-word is born by the mind (from the mind) in the likeness of how the Divine Word (God the Word, the Son of God) is born by the Father, from the Father.

    When we want to express our thought (voice it, pronounce it), we use our voice. In this case, the voice can be called the expresser of thought. In this one can see the similarity with the Holy Spirit, Who is the Exponent of the Word of the Father (the Exponent of God the Word, the Son of God).

    According to legend, when he was walking along the seashore, reflecting on the mystery of the Holy Trinity, he saw a boy who dug a hole in the sand and poured water into it, which he scooped up from the sea with a shell. St. Augustine asked why he was doing this. The boy answered him:
    “I want to scoop the whole sea into this hole!”

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    Orthodox doctrine of the Holy Trinity

    The exclusive feature of Christianity is not only the belief in One God (as Muslims and Jews also believe), but the belief in God the Trinity. The dogma of the Holy Trinity expresses the divinely revealed truth that “God is one in essence, but trinity in Persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the Trinity is consubstantial and indivisible.”

    This truth is more broadly expressed in the fact that in God there are Three Persons (Hypostases): Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Each Person of the Holy Trinity is God, but They are not three Gods, but one Divine Being.

    As already mentioned, the Three Divine Persons are distinguished by personal (hypostatic) properties, which are expressed in the following terms: in the Father - unbornness, son's - birth from the Father, from the Holy Spirit - origin from the Father. Thanks to these properties, Persons differ from each other, and we recognize Them as special Hypostases.

    The birth of the Son and the procession of the Spirit are neither a one-time act nor a process extended over time, since the Divinity exists outside of time.

    The doctrine of the Trinity in the Old Testament was only indicated, but not expressed in its entirety, since the revelation of the Trinity is connected with the doctrine of Christ. Before the Incarnation, the truth about God the Trinity was not fully revealed to humanity.

    The New Testament convincingly testifies to the trinity (plurality) of the Persons of the Holy Trinity. Examples include:

    The commandment about baptism, which the Lord gives to His disciples after the Resurrection: “ Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit"(Matthew 28.19);

    Description of the Baptism of the Lord in the Jordan, when the Father and the Spirit testified about the Son (Matthew 3.16–17);

    Testimony in the Apostolic Epistles: “ The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all"(2 Cor. 13.13).

    From the book Dogmatic Theology author Voronov Liveriy

    From the book Patrolology Course author Sidorov Alexey Ivanovich

    From the book Dogmatic Theology author Davydenkov Oleg

    3.1.3. Orthodox teaching about the Person of the Redeemer

    From the book Introduction to Patristic Theology author Meyendorff Ioann Feofilovich

    3.4.2. Orthodox teaching on the relationship of grace to freedom What is the Orthodox view of the relationship between grace and freedom? The tradition of the Eastern Church has always affirmed the synergy of Divine grace and human freedom: “We are fellow workers (????????) with God” (1 Cor 3:9). St.

    From the book Testimonies about the dead, about the immortality of the soul and about the afterlife author Znamensky Georgy Alexandrovich

    The Doctrine of the Trinity The main merit of St. Athanasius consists in his struggle against Arianism. While there is not a single Orthodox bishop left in the Eastern Church, he? one against all? courageously defended the Orthodox Nicene faith, which proclaimed the consubstantiality of the Father and

    From the book Soul after Death author Seraphim Hieromonk

    The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity and Christ The works “Against Eunomius” and “To Aulavius” represent a polemic against Arianism. In this polemic, Saint Gregory, like the other Cappadocian Fathers, sought to show that the Nicene term “consubstantial”, ?????????, did not imply

    From the book Catholicism author Rashkova Raisa Timofeevna

    The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity Augustine wrote his book “On the Trinity” at the end of his life. It sums up his entire concept of God. This book subsequently became the basis of the classical Western, “psychological” understanding of the Holy Trinity. This is how the Trinity abides: reason, love, knowledge;

    From the book Great Teachers of the Church author Skurat Konstantin Efimovich

    The Orthodox teaching about the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. The existence of God has equally solid evidence both in the history of mankind, in the data of external experience, and in the testimony of our own soul. The more a person deepens into the knowledge of God in nature, the more

    From the book of Saint Gregory the Wonderworker, Bishop of Neocaesarea. His life, works, theology author Sagarda Nikolai Ivanovich

    II. Orthodox teaching about angels We know from the words of Christ Himself that at the moment of death the soul is met by Angels: A beggar died and was carried by Angels to Abraham’s bosom (Luke 16:22). Also from the Gospel we know in what form the Angels appear: Angel of the Lord ... his appearance was like lightning, and

    From the book Origen's Doctrine of the Holy Trinity author Bolotov Vasily Vasilievich

    Doctrine of the Trinity The central dogma of the Catholic Church is the dogma of the Trinity. According to the teachings of the Church, one God exists in three unfused and indivisible persons - the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Of great importance for the understanding of the Trinity by the Western Church were the ideas

    From the book Orthodox Pastoral Ministry by Kern Cyprian

    The Teaching about God, the Holy Trinity The teaching of Blessed Diadochos about God is inextricably linked with his teaching about the Holy Trinity. God is incomprehensibly different from all creation and immeasurably superior to it. He is not limited by any place, “he is not delayed by walls.” He "is everywhere and in everything, and beyond

    From the book The Dogmatic System of St. Gregory of Nyssa author Nesmelov Viktor Ivanovich

    Doctrine of the Holy Trinity In the fight against Arianism, Saint Ambrose decisively became a preacher of the dogmatic definition of religion of the First Ecumenical Council. Therefore, in his Trinitarian scheme, the central place is occupied by the doctrine of the Second Person, of His Divinity. Emphasizing

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    CHAPTER IV. Doctrine of the Holy Trinity. St. Gregory, with the accuracy and certainty possible for him, revealed the teaching about each Person of the Holy Trinity individually and Their mutual relationships, both in the immanent life of the Divine and in manifestation in the world. Now, as a conclusion from

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    II. ORIGEN'S TEACHING ABOUT THE HOLY TRINITY

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    Orthodox teaching on passions Patristic asceticism, in its centuries-long experience, developed a teaching on passions as the source of sin in us. The ascetic fathers were always interested in the original source of this or that sin, and not in the evil deed itself that had already been carried out. This last one is

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    IV. TEACHING ABOUT THE HOLY TRINITY.

    All about the Trinity

    All about the Trinity, or rather the whole truth about the teaching and belief in the Trinity. The article will show how this doctrine plays a role in the worship of God, and will also provide truthful and reliable information that every self-respecting person should know.

    Should you believe in the Trinity?

    Do you believe in the Trinity? Most people in Christendom believe. Indeed, for centuries, the doctrine of the Trinity has been the main teaching of various churches.

    Given this, you might think that there could be no question here. But they exist, and lately even some of the supporters of this doctrine have been adding fuel to the fire of controversy.

    Why should such a topic interest us? Because Jesus himself said: “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent.” Therefore, our future depends on whether we know the true essence of God, and this means that we need to fully understand the issue of the Trinity. So why not do this? (John 17:3).

    Ideas about the Trinity vary. But in general this doctrine says that the Godhead exists as three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and yet it is one God.

    According to the teaching, all these three persons are co-existent, omnipotent and uncreated, all existing eternally in the Divine.

    Others, however, say that the doctrine of the Trinity is false, that the Most High God is a separate, eternal and omnipotent person. According to such people, before becoming a man, Jesus was, like the angels, a separate spiritual person created by God, and therefore he must have had a beginning. They teach that Jesus was never in any way equal to the Most High God, he was and always remains subordinate to God.

    They are also convinced that the holy spirit is not a person, but the spirit of God, his active force.

    Supporters of the doctrine of the Trinity say that it is based not only on religious tradition, but also on the Bible. Critics of this doctrine argue that
    it is not biblical, and one historical work even says: “The origin of [the Trinity] is entirely pagan” (“The Paganism in Our Christianity”).

    If the doctrine of the Trinity is true, then to say that Jesus was never equal with God as part of the Godhead is to disparage Jesus. But if this teaching is false, then to call anyone equal to the Most High God is to humiliate God, and even worse to call Mary “Mother of God.” If the doctrine of the Trinity is false, then it is offensive to speak of God as one book says: “If [people] do not keep this Faith whole and undefiled, then [they] will undoubtedly die forever. The Catholic faith is this: we worship one God in the Trinity” (“Catholicism”).

    Therefore, there are good reasons to learn the truth about the Trinity. But before we understand the origins of this doctrine and its claims to truth,
    it will be useful to define more precisely what this teaching is. What is the Trinity? How do its supporters explain this doctrine?

    How is the doctrine of the Trinity explained?

    The Roman Catholic Church states: “The term “Trinity” is used to designate the main dogma of the Christian religion... Accordingly, the Athanasian Creed states: “The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God.” However, there are not three Gods, but one God.” In this Trinity... Persons are coeternal and co-existent: all alike uncreated and omnipotent” (“Catholic Encyclopedia”).

    Almost all the churches of Christendom agree with this. The Greek Orthodox Church, for example, also calls the Trinity “fundamental
    dogma of Christianity" and even says: "Christians are those who accept Christ as God." One work of the same church says: “God is triune.
    […] The Father is God. The Son is God. The Holy Spirit is God” (“Our Orthodox Christian Faith”).

    Thus, the Trinity means “one God in three Persons.” It is believed that each of these Persons had no beginning, but exists forever. Each
    the Almighty, none of them is greater or less than the others.

    Is it difficult to follow the train of thought? Many sincere believers find this teaching confusing, counterintuitive, and unlike anything in their
    life. They wonder: how can it be that the Father is God, Jesus is God, the holy spirit is God, and yet there are not three, but only one God?

    "Beyond Human Understanding"

    Such confusion is widespread. The Encyclopedia Americana notes that the doctrine of the Trinity is considered a doctrine that is “beyond human understanding.”

    This is also the opinion of many of those who recognize the Trinity. Monsignor Eugene Clark says: “There is one God and three Gods. There is nothing like this in creation, that’s why we are not able to understand it, we can only accept it.” Cardinal John O'Connor states: "We know that this is a deep mystery that we are not yet closer to understanding." Pope John Paul II also speaks of the “incomprehensible mystery of God the Trinity.”

    Therefore, one dictionary says: “Believers in the doctrine of the Trinity cannot agree on exactly how to define this doctrine, or, more precisely, how exactly it should be explained” (“A Dictionary of Religious Knowledge”).

    It is clear why the New Catholic Encyclopedia says: “In the seminaries of the Roman Catholic Church there are hardly any teachers
    theological theory about the Trinity, which would not be addressed from time to time with the question:

    “How can we preach the Trinity?” And if this question indicates the confusion that reigns among the students, then perhaps it is equally indicative of the confusion that reigns among their professors.”

    The validity of this observation can be seen if you go to the library and read works written in defense of the Trinity. Countless pages are devoted to attempts to explain this teaching. But, having spent a lot of time and effort wandering through the labyrinths of incomprehensible theological terms and explanations, researchers are left with nothing.

    Jesuit Joseph Bracken notes on this matter: “The priests who spent so much effort studying ... the Trinity in the seminary, as they should
    to expect, they did not dare to speak about this teaching from the pulpit to their flock even on the feast of Trinity. […]

    Why bother people by talking about something they won’t understand anyway?” He also says, “The Trinity is a matter of formal faith and has little or no impact on everyday Christian life and worship” (“What Are They Saying About the Trinity?”). But this is the “main dogma” of the churches!

    Catholic theologian Hans Küng notes that the Trinity is one of the reasons why churches cannot achieve significant success among non-Christians. He says: “Even knowledgeable Muslims simply cannot understand the idea of ​​the Trinity, just as Jews have not yet been able to comprehend it.

    […] The distinctions that the doctrine of the Trinity makes between one God and three hypostases do not convince Muslims; they are not enlightened, but rather confused, by theological terms borrowed from Syriac, Greek and Latin. Muslims consider all this to be a play on words. […]

    Why is it necessary to add anything to the concept of the unity and exclusivity of God, if this only negates his unity and exclusivity? (“Christentum und Weltreligionen”).

    "God is not a God of disorder"

    How could such a confusing teaching come about? The Catholic Encyclopedia says: “So mysterious a dogma presupposes divine revelation.”

    Catholic scholars Karl Rahner and Herbert Forgrimler write: “Strictly speaking... the Trinity is a mystery... which cannot be known without revelation and which even after revelation cannot be fully understood” (“Kleines Theologisches Wörterbuch”).

    However, the assertion that if the doctrine of the Trinity is such a confusing mystery, then it must have arisen as a result of God's revelation,
    raises another serious problem. Why? Because God's revelation itself does not allow such a view of God, saying: “God is not God
    disorder" (1 Corinthians 14:33).

    Taking these words into account, let us think: would God create such a confusing doctrine about himself that even experts cannot explain it?
    Hebrew, Greek and Latin?

    Moreover, do people really need to be theologians in order to ‘know the one true God and Jesus Christ whom he sent’? (John 17:3). If yes, then
    Why did few of the educated Jewish religious leaders accept Jesus as the Messiah?

    It was not they who became his faithful disciples, but humble farmers, fishermen, tax collectors, and housewives. These simple people were so confident in what Jesus taught them about God that they could teach it to others and were even willing to die for their faith (Matthew 15:1-9; 21:23-32, 43; 23:13-36 ; John 7:45-49; Acts 4:13).

    Is this biblical teaching?

    If the doctrine of the Trinity is true, it must be clearly and consistently presented in the Bible. Why? Because, as the apostles stated, the Bible is
    it is God's revelation of himself to humanity. And since we need to know God in order to worship him correctly, we can expect the Bible to clearly explain who he is.

    Believers living in the first century considered the Holy Scriptures to be trustworthy revelation from God. It was the basis of their beliefs, the decisive authority. For example, when the apostle Paul preached to the people in the city of Berea, “they received the word with all diligence, examining the Scriptures daily,
    Is this really so?” (Acts 17:10, 11).

    Jesus himself set the example by basing his teachings on Scripture, repeatedly saying, “It is written.” He “explained to them what was said about Him in everything
    Scripture" (Matthew 4:4, 7; Luke 24:27).

    So Jesus, Paul, and the first century believers taught the people from Scripture. They knew that “all Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16, 17; see also 2 Peter 1 :20, 21; 1 Corinthians 4:6; 1 Thessalonians 2:13).

    If the Bible can correct, then it must clearly teach such an important doctrine as the doctrine of the Trinity. But do theologians and historians themselves believe that this teaching is biblical?

    Trinity in the Bible?

    One Protestant publication says: “The word Trinity does not appear in the Bible... It did not officially enter the theology of the church until the 4th century.”
    (“The Illustrated Bible Dictionary”). And in a well-known Catholic work it also says that the Trinity is “not ... a word spoken directly and directly
    God" (New Catholic Encyclopedia).

    The Catholic Encyclopedia also notes: “There is really no single term in Scripture that designates the Three
    Divine Faces together. The word τρίας [trías] (which is translated into Latin as trinitas [trinitas]) first appears in the writings of Theophilus
    Antioch around 180 AD. e. […] After some time, the Latin form trinitas appears in the writings of Tertullian.”

    However, this does not prove that Tertullian taught the Trinity. One Catholic work, for example, notes that some of Tertullian's words
    subsequently used by others to describe the Trinity. And then this work gives the following warning: “But from the fact that he used these words, one must not draw hasty conclusions, since he does not apply these words to the theological theory of the Trinity” (“Trinitas-A Theological Encyclopedia of the Holy Trinity” ).

    The Hebrew Scriptures Testify

    If the word "Trinity" is not found in the Bible, does it at least have a clear idea of ​​the Trinity? What do the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) show, for example?

    One encyclopedia states: “Theologians today agree that there is no doctrine of the Trinity in the Hebrew Scriptures of the Bible.” (“The Encyclopedia of Religion”). And the New Catholic Encyclopedia also says: “There is no dogma about the Holy Trinity in the Old Testament.”

    Likewise, Jesuit Edmund Fortman admits in his book The Triune God: “The Old Testament... neither directly nor indirectly speaks of a Triune God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. […]

    There is no evidence that any of the holy writers even suspected the existence of [the Trinity] in the Godhead. […] To see in the [Old Testament] indications or allusions to the trinity of persons, or its “veiled signs” means going beyond the words and meaning of the holy writers” (emphasis added).

    A study of the Hebrew Scriptures confirms these words. This means that in the first 39 books of the Bible, which constitute the reliable canon of divinely inspired
    There is no clearly stated doctrine of the Trinity in the Hebrew Scriptures.

    Greek Scriptures Testify

    But perhaps the Trinity is clearly spoken of in the Christian Greek Scriptures (New Testament)?

    One encyclopedia says: “Theologians agree that there is no clearly stated doctrine of the Trinity in the New Testament” (“The Encyclopedia of Religion”).

    Edmund Fortman states: “The writers of the New Testament... did not formulate the official dogma of the Trinity and did not clearly teach that in one God there are three coequal divine persons. […] We will nowhere find any dogma about three separate divine persons existing and acting in one Godhead.”

    The New Encyclopædia Britannica says: “In the New Testament there is neither the word Trinity nor any express doctrine of it.”

    Bernhard Lohse writes: “As for the New Testament, there is no real dogma of the Trinity to be found in it” (“Epochen der Dogmengeschichte”).

    One dictionary similarly states: “There is no stated doctrine of the Trinity in the New Testament. “There is no express statement in the Bible that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the same in essence [said Protestant theologian Karl Barth]” (“The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology”).

    Yale University professor Washburn Hopkins confirmed: “Jesus and Paul were obviously not familiar with the doctrine of the Trinity ... they say nothing about it” (“Origin and Evolution of Religion”).

    Historian Arthur Wygall notes: “Jesus Christ never mentioned such a phenomenon, and nowhere in the New Testament does the word “Trinity” appear. This idea was not accepted by the Church until three hundred years after the death of our Lord" (“The Paganism in Our Christianity”).

    So, neither in the 39 books of the Hebrew Scriptures nor in the canon of 27 inspired books of the Christian Greek Scriptures is there a clear doctrine of the Trinity.

    Did the first Christians teach this?

    Did the first Christians teach the Trinity? Let's see what historians and theologians say:

    "In early Christianity there was not such a clear doctrine of the Trinity as was later developed in the creeds" (The New International Dictionary of
    New Testament Theology").

    “The early Christians, however, did not at first think of applying the idea [of the Trinity] to their own faith. They were devoted to God the Father and Jesus Christ the Son
    God, and also recognized... the Holy Spirit; but there was no idea that these three constituted a real Trinity, being coequal and united in One” (“The Paganism in Our Christianity”).

    “At first the idea of ​​the Trinity was not inherent in the Christian faith... As can be seen from the New Testament and other Christian writings of early times, the idea of ​​the Trinity did not exist either in apostolic times or immediately after them” (“Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics").

    “The formulation “one God in three Persons” was firmly entrenched and finally entered Christian life and religion only at the end of the 4th century. […]

    There was nothing among the teachings of the Apostolic Fathers that even remotely resembled such a mentality or perspective" (New Catholic
    encyclopedia").

    What the Ante-Nicene Fathers Taught

    The Ante-Nicene Fathers were recognized as the leading religious teachers of the first centuries after the birth of Christ. What they taught is of interest to us.

    Justin Martyr, who died around 165 AD. e., called Jesus before his coming to earth a created angel, who is “different from God, who created all things.” Justin said that Jesus was inferior to God and "never did anything except what the Creator...wished him to do or say."

    Irenaeus, who died around 200 AD. e., said that before becoming a man, Jesus existed separately from God and was subordinate to him.

    Irenaeus pointed out that Jesus is not equal to “He who is the true and only God,” who “is above all and besides whom there is no other.”

    Clement of Alexandria, who died around 215 AD. e., called God “the uncreated, eternal and one true God.” He said that the Son “stands next to the only omnipotent Father,” but is not equal to him.

    Tertullian, who died around 230 AD. e., taught that God has superiority in everything. He wrote: “The Father is different from the Son (different) because he is greater; how the one who generates is different from the one who is generated; the one who sends is different from the one who is sent.” Tertullian also said: “There was a time when the Son was not. […] Before the appearance of everything else, God was one.”

    Hippolytus, who died around 235 AD. e., said that God is “one God, the first and only, Creator and Lord of all,” who “had nothing equal to him in time [the same duration]… But he was One, in himself; who, having willed, created what did not exist before,” for example, he created the one who later became the man Jesus.

    Origen, who died around 250 AD. e., said that “the Father and the Son are two persons ... two beings, as far as their essence is concerned” and that “compared to the Father [the Son] is a very small light.”

    Summarizing this historical evidence, Alvan Lamson writes: “The doctrine of the Trinity current today ... finds no support in the words of Justin [Martyr]: and this observation can be applied to all the Ante-Nicene Fathers, that is, to all Christian writers of the three centuries after the birth of Christ.

    True, they speak of the Father, the Son and... the Holy Spirit, but not as coequal, not as one being, not as Three in One, as is recognized today by those who believe in the dogma of the Trinity. Just the opposite is true” (“The Church of the First Three Centuries”).

    Thus, the Bible and history clearly show that the doctrine of the Trinity was unknown in biblical times and for several centuries after.

    How did the doctrine of the Trinity develop?

    You may now be wondering: If the doctrine of the Trinity is not biblical, then how did it become a dogma in Christendom? Many believe that this dogma was formulated at the Council of Nicea in 325 AD. e.

    But it is not so. The Council of Nicea did declare that Christ had the same essence as God, and this statement laid the foundation for the later theological theory of the Trinity. But at that council the dogma of the Trinity was not adopted, because then the holy spirit was not mentioned as the third person of the triune Godhead.

    The role played by Constantine at Nicaea

    For many years there was strong resistance to the idea that Jesus was God, based on the Bible. Eager to end
    Due to disagreements, the Roman Emperor Constantine summoned all the bishops to Nicaea. Only part of the bishops came to the meeting, about 300 people.

    Constantine was not a Christian. It is believed that he later converted to Christianity, but was baptized only when he was on his deathbed. Henry
    Chadwick says of him: “Like his father, Constantine worshiped the Invincible Sun... his conversion cannot be considered as the result of an internal
    location... He was guided by military considerations. He never fully understood Christian teaching, but he was confident that the God of Christians would grant victory in battle" (“The Early Church”).

    What role did this unbaptized emperor play at the Council of Nicaea? The Encyclopedia Britannica says: “Constantine himself presided,
    actively led the discussion and personally proposed... the key formulation about the relationship of Christ to God in the symbol that was adopted at the council, “[that Christ is] one essence with the Father.”... Trembling before the emperor, the bishops, with the exception of only two, signed the symbol, and many They did it against their will.”

    Thus, the role of Constantine was decisive. After two months of bitter religious disputes, this pagan politician intervened in the dispute and
    decided the case in favor of those who claimed that Jesus was God. But why? Of course, not because of any biblical beliefs. “Constantine understood practically nothing about Greek theology,” says one book (“A Short History of Christian Doctrine”). What he realized was that religious divisions threatened his empire, and he wanted to unite his domains.

    However, none of the bishops who gathered at Nicaea spoke about the Trinity. They ruled only on the nature of Jesus, but not on the role of the holy spirit. If the Trinity were a clear biblical truth, shouldn't these bishops have brought it to the attention of the council?

    Further developments

    After the Council of Nicaea, debate on this topic continued for decades. For a time, those who believed that Jesus was not equal to God even managed to regain favor with themselves. But later Emperor Theodosius decided the matter not in their favor. He took the creed adopted at the Council of Nicea as the basis for the creed of his empire and, in order to clarify its wording, convened in 381 AD. e. Cathedral of Constantinople.

    At this council it was decided that the holy spirit was on the same level with God and Christ. For the first time, the Trinity of Christendom came into the spotlight.

    And yet, even after the Council of Constantinople, the Trinity did not become a generally accepted creed. Many resisted accepting this teaching and thereby incurred severe persecution. It was only in later centuries that the doctrine of the Trinity was formulated in the creeds.

    The Encyclopedia Americana states: “The final formation of the theological theory of the Trinity occurred in the West within the framework of scholasticism
    The Middle Ages, when they tried to explain this theory in philosophical and psychological terms."

    Afanasiev Creed

    The dogma of the Trinity was formulated more fully in the Athanasian Creed. Athanasius was a priest who supported Constantine in Nicaea. The symbol bearing his name says: “We honor one God in trinity... The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God. However, there are not three Gods, but one God.”

    Knowledgeable scholars, however, agree that this symbol was not composed by Athanasius. The New Encyclopædia Britannica says: “The Eastern Church did not know about this symbol until the 12th century. Since the 17th century, scholars have generally agreed that the Athanasian Creed was not written by Athanasius (who died in 373), but was probably composed in southern France in the 5th century. […]

    During the 6th and 7th centuries the influence of this code seems to have extended mainly to southern France and Spain. In the 9th century it was used in church liturgies in Germany and somewhat later in Rome.”

    Thus, centuries passed from the time of Christ before the doctrine of the Trinity became widespread in the Christian world. But what were they guided by?
    making decisions? The Word of God or clerical and political motives? Washburn Hopkins replies: "The ultimate orthodoxy
    the definition of the Trinity was, by and large, a matter of church policy” (“Origin and Evolution of Religion”).

    Apostasy was foretold

    The shameful history of the formation of the doctrine of the Trinity is consistent with what Jesus and his apostles predicted for the time that would come after them.

    They said that there would be an apostasy, a deviation, a departure from true worship that would continue until the return of Christ, and then, before the coming of God's day of destruction of this system of things, true worship would be restored.

    About this “day,” the Apostle Paul said: “That day will not come, unless a falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed” (2 Thessalonians 2:3, 7).

    Later he predicted: “After my departure, fierce wolves will come among you, not sparing the flock; and from among yourselves men will arise who will speak perverse things, so as to draw away the disciples after themselves” (Acts 20:29, 30). Other disciples of Jesus also wrote about this apostasy and his "man of sin" -
    clergy. (See, for example, 2 Peter 2:1; 1 John 4:1-3; Jude 3, 4.)

    Paul also wrote: “The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires they will heap up for themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they will turn away their ears from the truth and turn aside to fables” (2 Timothy 4:3, 4).

    Jesus himself explained what was behind this apostasy from true worship. He said that he had sown good seeds in the field, but the enemy, Satan,
    will sow tares in the same field. With the first sprouts of wheat, the tares also appeared. Therefore, it was to be expected that before the harvest, until the time when
    Christ will correct everything, there will be a deviation from pure Christianity (Matthew 13:24-43).

    The Encyclopedia Americana states: “The theological theory of the Trinity that emerged in the fourth century did not accurately reflect the original Christian teaching about the nature of God; on the contrary, this theory was a deviation from this teaching.” Where did this deviation come from? (1 Timothy 1:6).

    What influenced this?

    In ancient times, as far back as Babylonia, many people worshiped pagan gods grouped into three, or triads. It was also widespread in Egypt, Greece and Rome centuries before Christ, during his life and after his death. And after the death of the apostles, such pagan beliefs began to penetrate Christianity.

    Historian Will Durant notes: “Christianity failed to destroy paganism; it took it over. […] From Egypt came ideas about the trinity
    deities."

    And Siegfried Morenz writes: “The attention of Egyptian theologians was almost completely focused on the trinity... The three gods were united and treated as one being, addressing him in the singular. This shows a direct connection between the spiritual power of the Egyptian religion and Christian theology” (“Ägyptische Religion”).

    This also influenced the way in which clerics such as Athanasius formulated the ideas that led to the doctrine of the Trinity in Alexandria, Egypt, in the late third and early fourth centuries. Their own influence also spread, so that Morenz calls “Alexandrian theology an intermediate link between the Egyptian religious heritage and Christianity.”

    The preface to Edward Gibbon's History of Christianity states: "If paganism was conquered by Christianity, then
    It is equally true that Christianity was corrupted by paganism. The pure deism of the first Christians... was transformed by the Church of Rome into an incomprehensible
    dogma of the trinity. Many pagan principles introduced by the Egyptians and idealized by Plato have been preserved as worthy of belief.”

    One dictionary notes that, according to many, the Trinity is “a distortion borrowed from pagan religions and grafted onto the Christian faith.”
    (“A Dictionary of Religious Knowledge”). And another work says: “The origin of [the Trinity] is entirely pagan” (“The Paganism in Our Christianity”).

    This is why James Hastings wrote: “In Indian religion, for example, we find the trinity of Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu; and in the Egyptian religion -
    Osiris, Isis and Horus... And the idea of ​​God as a Trinity is found not only in historical religions.

    One is reminded, in particular, of the Neoplatonic idea of ​​the Supreme or Ultimate Reality,” which “is presented in a triune form” (“Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics”). But what does the Greek philosopher Plato have to do with the Trinity?

    Platonism

    Plato supposedly lived from 428 to 347 BC. e. Although he did not teach the Trinity as such, his philosophy prepared the way for it. Later, philosophies grew rapidly that included the tripartite beliefs and were influenced by Plato's ideas about God and nature.

    One French dictionary speaks of Plato’s influence as follows: “It seems that Plato’s trinity, which itself was only a reconstruction of the more ancient
    trinities of earlier peoples, became a rational philosophical trinity of symbols, giving rise to three hypostases, or divine persons, which are taught in
    Christian churches. […]

    This Greek philosopher's idea of ​​a divine trinity... is to be found in all the ancient [pagan] religions" ("Nouveau Dictionnaire Universel").

    Of the influence of this Greek philosophy it is said: “The doctrines of the Logos and the Trinity were given form by the Greek Fathers, who... were greatly influenced, directly or indirectly, by the philosophy of Plato... That errors and distortions crept into the Church from this very source is irrefutable” (“The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge").

    “The doctrine of the Trinity was formed gradually, and it happened comparatively late... this doctrine originates from a source that has nothing to do with the Jewish and Christian Scriptures... it was formed and introduced into Christianity by the efforts of the Fathers, who were influenced
    philosophy of Plato" (“The Church of the First Three Centuries”).

    By the end of the 3rd century AD. e. “Christianity” and Neoplatonic philosophies became inseparable. As Adolf Harnack says, church teaching is “firmly rooted in the soil of Hellenism [the pagan Greek worldview]. Thus it became a secret for the vast majority of Christians” (“Grundriß der Dogmengeschichte”).

    The church said its new teachings were based on the Bible. But Harnack says: “In reality, she legitimized in her midst Hellenic speculation, superstitious views and customs of pagan sacramental worship.”

    Andrew Norton says about the Trinity: “We can trace the history of the origin of this doctrine and find its source, not in Christian revelation, but in the philosophy of Plato ... The Trinity is not the teaching of Christ and his Apostles, but a fiction of the school of later followers of the teaching of Plato” ( "A Statement
    of Reasons").

    So, in the 4th century AD. e. The apostasy predicted by Jesus and the apostles flourished.

    The formation of the doctrine of the Trinity was just one proof of this. Apostate churches began to adopt other pagan ideas, such as hellfire, the immortality of the soul, and idolatry.

    Spiritually speaking, Christendom has entered the prophesied age of darkness, dominated by the growing “man of sin”—the clergy (2 Thessalonians 2:3, 7).

    Why didn't God's prophets teach this?

    Why did none of God's prophets teach God's people the doctrine of the Trinity for thousands of years? After all, couldn't Jesus have used his powers as a Great Teacher to explain the Trinity to his followers?

    If this were the “central article” of the faith, would God inspire the writing of hundreds of pages of the Bible and yet not use any of the instructions written in it to teach people about the doctrine of the Trinity?

    Should Christians believe that, centuries after Christ and after the completion of the inspired Bible, God will support
    the formation of a doctrine that its servants did not know about for thousands of years; a teaching that is an “unfathomable mystery” “beyond human understanding”; a teaching that admittedly has pagan roots and is “largely a matter of church politics”?

    History clearly testifies: the doctrine of the Trinity is a deviation from the truth, it is an apostasy.

    What does the Bible say about God and Jesus?

    If an unbiased reader were to read the Bible from beginning to end, would he himself come to the conclusion that God is triune? Not at all.

    It would be absolutely clear to an unprejudiced reader that only God is the Most High, the Creator, a separate person, unlike anyone else, and that Jesus, even during his pre-human existence, is also a separate and individual person, a creation subordinate to God.

    God is one, not three

    The biblical teaching that there is only one God is called monotheism. Church history professor L. L. Payne shows that monotheism in its purest form leaves no room for the Trinity: “The Old Testament is strictly monotheistic. God is a separate person. The idea that the trio could be found there... is completely unfounded."

    Did anything happen to monotheism after Jesus came to earth? Payne replies: “On this point there is no break between the Old and New Testaments. The monotheistic tradition continues. Jesus was a Jew, raised by his parents in the spirit of the Old Testament scriptures.

    His teaching was traditionally Jewish; certainly he presented a new gospel, but not a new theology. […] And he was convinced of the truth of the sublime verse of Jewish monotheism: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one God.”

    These words are found in Deuteronomy 6:4. In the Synodal edition this verse reads like this: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” Nothing in
    The grammatical structure of this verse does not give reason to assume that we are talking about more than one person.

    In the words of the Christian apostle Paul there is also no indication of any change in the nature of God, even after Jesus came to earth.
    Paul wrote, “God is one” (Galatians 3:20; see also 1 Corinthians 8:4-6).

    Thousands of times the Bible speaks of God as one person. When he speaks, he speaks as an undivided personality. This is expressed in the Bible very clearly. God says: “I am Jehovah, this is My name, and I will not give My glory to another” (Isaiah 42:8, NIV). “I am Jehovah your God... You shall have no other gods before Me” (Exodus 20:2, 3, AMP) (emphasis added).

    If God really had three persons, then why would all the inspired writers of the Bible need to speak of him as one person? Wouldn't that be cheating?

    Surely, if God were three persons, he would have the writers of the Bible write this so clearly that there would be no doubt about it. At least those who wrote the Christian Greek Scriptures must have done this, since they had personal contact with God's own Son. But they didn't.

    From the words of the writers of the Bible, the exact opposite is quite clear: God is one Person; a unique, indivisible Personality who has no equal. “I am Jehovah, and there is no other; there is no God besides Me” (Isaiah 45:5, NASB). “You, whose name is Jehovah, alone are high above all the earth” (Psalm 83:19, PP).

    A God who is not made up of several Gods

    Jesus called God “the only true God” (John 17:3). He never spoke of God as a deity consisting of several persons. This is why in the Bible no one other than Jehovah is called Almighty.

    Otherwise the word “omnipotent” would lose its meaning. Neither Jesus nor the holy spirit is ever called this way, because only Jehovah is the Almighty. In Genesis 17:1 he declares, “I am God Almighty.” And Exodus 18:11 (AM) says: “Jehovah is greater than all gods.”

    In the Hebrew Scriptures, the word 'elohʹah (god) has two plural forms, 'elohim (gods) and 'elohʹeh (gods of something or someone).

    These plural forms usually refer to Jehovah and are then translated into the singular "God." Do these plural forms refer to the Trinity? No.

    William Smith says: “The strange idea that ['elohim] refers to a trinity of persons in the Godhead is unlikely to find support among scholars today. It is either what philologists call the plural denoting greatness, or an indication of the fullness of God's power, the totality of all the powers exercised by God" (A Dictionary of the Bible).

    Of the word 'elohim it is said: "It is almost always required to be followed by a singular verb predicate and a singular adjective attribute" (The American Journal of Semitic Languages ​​and Literatures).

    As an example, the title elohim appears 35 times in the creation account, and each time the verb describing God's words and actions is singular (Genesis 1:1-2:4). This journal concludes: “['Elohim] should be explained rather as an intensifying plural indicating power and greatness.”

    The word elohim does not mean “persons,” but “gods.” Therefore, those who claim that this word implies the Trinity become polytheists, worshiping more than one God. Why? Because in this case there must be three gods in the Trinity. But almost all believers in the doctrine of the Trinity reject the view that the Trinity consists of three separate gods.

    In the Bible, the words 'elohim and 'eloheh' are also applied to some false idol gods (Exodus 12:12; 20:23). And in some cases, these words may refer to just one false god, as when the Philistines referred to “Dagon their god ['eloheh]” (Judges 16:23, 24).

    Baal is called “the god ['elohim]” (1 Kings 18:27). Moreover, this word is also applied to people (Psalm 82:1, 6). Moses was told that he would
    “God ['elohim]” for Aaron and Pharaoh (Exodus 4:16; 7:1).

    Obviously, the use of the titles 'elohim and 'eloheh' for false gods and even for people did not imply that each of them represented many gods; Likewise, the application of the titles 'elohim and 'eloheh' to Jehovah does not imply that he is more than one person, especially in view of all the other evidence contained in the Bible on the subject.

    Jesus is a separate creation

    When Jesus was on earth, he was a man, only perfect because his life force was transferred into Mary's womb by God (Matthew 1:18-25). But this was not the beginning of his existence. Jesus spoke of himself as “coming down from heaven” (John 3:13).

    So it is only natural that he later said to his followers, “What if you see the Son of Man [Jesus] ascending to where he was before?” (John 6:62).

    Thus, before Jesus came to earth, he existed in heaven. But was he one of the persons of the omnipotent eternal triune Godhead? No, because the Bible clearly shows that during his pre-human existence, Jesus was a created spirit person, just as the angels were spirit persons created by God. Neither angels nor Jesus existed before their creation.

    During his pre-human existence, Jesus was “the firstborn of every creation” (Colossians 1:15). He was "the beginning of God's creation"
    (Revelation 3:14). The word "beginning" [Greek. archi] cannot be interpreted to mean that Jesus was the 'beginning' of God's creation.

    In the writings of John included in the Bible, various forms of the Greek word archiʹ appear more than 20 times and always carry the general meaning of “beginning.” Yes, God created Jesus as the beginning of his invisible creations.

    Let's see how closely these references to the origin of Jesus are connected with the words of the figurative “Wisdom” in the biblical book of Proverbs: “I, Wisdom, am the first that the Lord created. I was born before the mountains appeared and before the hills appeared. I appeared before the Lord created the fields of the earth and the first specks of dust” (Proverbs 8:12, 22, 25, 26, CoP).

    Although the one who was created by God is represented in these verses as “Wisdom,” most scholars agree that this is a rhetorical figure designating Jesus as a spiritual creature before he came to earth.

    Speaking during his pre-human existence as “Wisdom,” Jesus goes on to say that he was “next to him [God] as a skillful helper” (Proverbs 8:30, CoP). Consistent with this role as a skilled helper, Colossians 1:16 (NA) speaks of Jesus that “through Him” God created all things in heaven and on earth.

    So, through this skilled worker, as if his junior partner, Almighty God created everything else. The Bible summarizes it this way: “We have one God, the Father, from whom are all things... and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things” (1 Corinthians 8:6, NA) (emphasis added).

    Of course, it was to this skilled helper that God spoke with the words: “Let Us make man in Our image” (Genesis 1:26). Some argue
    that the words “let us do” and “to ours” in this verse point to the Trinity. But if you say: “Let’s do something for ourselves,” hardly anyone will think that you have several personalities combined into one.

    You simply mean that two or more people will do something together. In the same way, when God said “let us create” and “ours,” he was simply addressing another person, his first spiritual creation, the skillful helper, the Jesus who existed before he came to earth.

    Is it possible to tempt God?

    Matthew 4:1 says that Jesus was “tempted by the devil.” After showing Jesus “all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them,” Satan said, “All these things I will give you if you will fall and worship me” (Matthew 4:8, 9). Satan tried to get Jesus to betray God.

    But what kind of test of devotion could there be if Jesus himself were God? How could God rebel against himself? No. But angels and men could rebel against God, and they did. The temptation of Jesus only made sense if he was not God, but a separate person with his own free will; a person who, like any angel or person, could, if desired, commit treason.

    On the other hand, it is impossible to imagine that God could sin and betray himself. “His works are perfect... God is faithful... He is righteous and true” (Deuteronomy 32:4). Therefore, if Jesus were God, he could not be tempted (James 1:13).

    Without being God, Jesus could commit treason. But he remained faithful, saying: “Get behind Me, Satan; for it is written: ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and serve Him only’” (Matthew 4:10).

    How big was the ransom?

    One of the main reasons why Jesus came to earth is directly related to the Trinity. The Bible says, “There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all” (1 Timothy 2:5, 6).

    Jesus, who was no more and no less than a perfect man, became a ransom that exactly compensated for what Adam had lost - the right to a perfect human life on earth. Therefore, the apostle Paul could rightly call Jesus “the last Adam,” adding: “As in Adam all die, so in Christ all shall live” (1 Corinthians 15:22, 45).

    Jesus' perfect human life was exactly the kind of "redemption" that God's justice required. Even human justice requires that the punishment correspond to the evil committed.

    But if Jesus had been part of the Godhead, the ransom price would have been immeasurably greater than what God's Law required (Exodus 21:23-25; Leviticus 24:19-21). It was not God who sinned in Eden, but only perfect man, Adam. Therefore, in order to truly satisfy the demand of God's justice, exactly the same ransom was needed - a perfect man, the “last Adam.”

    Thus, when God sent Jesus to earth as a ransom, he intended Jesus to be the one to satisfy the demand
    justice: not an incarnation of deity, not a god-man, but a perfect man, standing “lower than the angels” (Hebrews 2:9, CoP; compare Psalm 8:6, 7). How could any portion of the supreme Deity, whether Father, Son, or holy spirit, ever become inferior to the angels?

    “Only Begotten Son” - what does it mean?

    The Bible calls Jesus the “only begotten Son” of God (John 1:14; 3:16, 18; 1 John 4:9). Believers in the doctrine of the Trinity say that since God is eternal, then the Son of God is also eternal. But how can anyone, being a son, be the same age as his father?

    Supporters of the doctrine of the Trinity argue that in the case of Jesus, the word “only begotten” takes on a different meaning, different from the definition of the word “to give birth”, which is given in the dictionary: “To give life to someone, becoming a father” (“Dictionary of Modern Russian Literary Language” in 17 volumes).

    They say that in the case of Jesus it carries a “sense of eternal relationship,” a kind of relationship between father and only son, but not on the basis of birth (Vine, Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words). Does this seem logical? Can a person be a relative?
    father of someone without giving birth to him?

    Moreover, why is the same Greek word translated "only begotten" used in the Bible (and Vine acknowledges this without any explanation) to describe the relationship between Isaac and Abraham? Hebrews 11:17 speaks of Isaac as the “only begotten” son of Abraham. There is no doubt that Isaac was the only begotten in the truest sense of the word, and not equal to his father in age and position.

    One work states that the main Greek word translated "only begotten" that was applied to Jesus and Isaac is the word
    monogenes, derived from the word monos, which means “one,” and the word ginomai, a root word meaning “to give birth,” “to come into being” (Strong, “Exhaustive Concordance”).

    Consequently, the word monogenes is defined as “the only begotten, the only begotten, that is, the only child” (Robinson, “A Greek and English Lexicon of the New Testament”).

    The dictionary, edited by Gerhard Kittel, states: “[Monogenes] means ‘sole descendant’, i.e. having no brothers or sisters.”
    (“Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament”).

    This dictionary also states that in John 1:18; 3:16, 18 and 1 John 4:9, “Jesus' relationship with the Father is not simply compared to the relationship that exists between an only child and his father. This is the relationship of the only begotten with the Father.”

    So Jesus, the only begotten Son, had a beginning. Almighty God may rightly be called the Giver of Life, or Father, in the same sense as an earthly father, such as Abraham, who gave life to a son (Hebrews 11:17). Therefore, when the Bible speaks of God as the “Father” of Jesus, it means exactly what it says: that they are two different persons. God is elder. Jesus is the youngest - in time, position, power and knowledge.

    If you think about the fact that Jesus was not the only spiritual son of God created in heaven, then it becomes clear why in relation to Jesus it was
    the expression “only begotten Son” is used.

    Many other created spirit creatures, angels, are also called “sons of God” in the same sense in which Adam was called, because their life force comes from Jehovah God, the Origin or Fountain of life.—Job 38:7; Psalm 35:10 ; Luke 3:38). But they were all created through the “only begotten Son,” the only one who was directly begotten of God (Colossians 1:15-17, NIV).

    Was Jesus considered God?

    In the Bible, Jesus is often called the Son of God, but no one in the first century ever considered him God the Son. Even the demons who believe “that there is one God” knew from their experiences in the spiritual realm that Jesus was not God. Therefore, they correctly addressed Jesus as a separate person—the “Son of God” (James 2:19; Matthew 8:29).

    And when Jesus died, the Roman soldiers standing nearby, who were pagans, had enough knowledge to confirm the truthfulness of the words they heard from the followers of Jesus, but not that Jesus was God, but that “he was truly the Son of God” ( Matthew 27:54).

    Therefore, the expression “Son of God” refers to Jesus as a separate created person and not as part of the Trinity. Being the Son of God, Jesus could not be God himself, because John 1:18 says, “No man has ever seen God.”

    The disciples considered Jesus to be “the one...mediator between God and men,” not God (1 Timothy 2:5). By definition, a mediator is someone other than those who need mediation, so it would be illogical for Jesus to be the same person as one of the parties he is trying to reconcile. Then he would pretend to be someone he is not.

    The Bible talks about the relationship between God and Jesus clearly and consistently. Only Jehovah God is Almighty. He personally created Jesus as he existed before he came to earth. So Jesus had a beginning and could not possibly be equal to God in power or eternity.

    Is God Always Greater Than Jesus?

    Jesus never claimed to be God. All his statements about himself show that he did not consider himself equal to God in anything - neither in strength, nor in knowledge, nor in time.

    In every period of existence, whether in heaven or on earth, Jesus' words reflect his submission to God. God always stands above, Jesus, created by God, below.

    Jesus was different from God

    Jesus repeatedly showed that he was a creation separate from God, and that above him, Jesus, there was a God—the God he worshiped and called “Father.” When Jesus prayed to God, that is, the Father, he called him “the only true God” (John 17:3). As recorded in John 20:17, he said to Mary Magdalene, “I ascend to My Father and your Father, and to My God and your God.”

    This relationship is confirmed by the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 1:3: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Since Jesus had God, his Father, Jesus could not at the same time be this same God.

    The Apostle Paul did not hesitate to speak of Jesus and God as completely different persons: “We have one God the Father... and one Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 8:6). The apostle shows the difference when he says, “Before God and the Lord Jesus Christ and the elect angels” (1 Timothy 5:21). Just as Paul speaks of Jesus and the angels in heaven, so Paul speaks of Jesus and God as individuals.

    Also noteworthy are the words of Jesus recorded at John 8:17, 18. He says: “It is written in your law that the testimony of two men is true; I testify of Myself, and the Father who sent Me testifies of Me.” With these words, Jesus shows that he and the Father, that is, Almighty God, must be two different entities. How else could they be two witnesses?

    Moreover, Jesus showed that he was not one person with God by saying, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone” (Mark 10:18).

    With these words, Jesus emphasized that no one, not even himself, is as good as God. The extent to which God is good distinguishes him from Jesus.

    Servant Subject to God

    Jesus spoke words like these many times: “The Son can do nothing in Himself, unless He sees the Father doing it” (John 5:19). “I came down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of the Father who sent Me” (John 6:38). “My teaching is not Mine, but His who sent Me” (John 7:16).
    Is not the one who sends greater than the one who is sent?

    This relationship is clearly described in Jesus' parable of the vineyard. Jesus likened God, his Father, to the owner of a vineyard who went away, leaving the vineyard in the care of the vinedressers, who were the Jewish clergy. When the owner later sent the slave to the vineyard to collect fruit, the winegrowers beat the slave and sent him back empty-handed.

    Then the owner sent another slave, then a third, and the winegrowers treated both of them the same way. Finally the owner decided: “I will send my beloved son [Jesus]; perhaps when they see him they will be ashamed.” But the evil vinedressers said: “This is the heir; Come, let us kill him, and his inheritance will be ours. And they brought him out of the vineyard and killed him” (Luke 20:16).

    Thus, Jesus clearly showed that he was just one whom God sent to do his will, just as a father sends an obedient son. Followers of Jesus always considered him a servant, subordinate to God, not equal to him. They prayed to God for His Holy Servant Jesus, Him whom He had chosen as Christ, and for signs and wonders performed in the name of His Holy Servant Jesus (Acts 4:23, 24, 27, 30, CoP).

    God is higher at all times

    At the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry, as he was emerging from the water after being baptized, the voice of God was heard from heaven, saying: “This is my beloved Son,
    in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:16, 17). Did God say that he himself was his own son, that he favored himself, that he sent himself? No, God, the Creator, said that he, as a superior, favored the inferior, his Son Jesus, in the work entrusted to him.

    Jesus pointed out the Father's supremacy with these words: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me; for He has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor” (Luke 4:18). Anointing means the granting of power or authority by a superior to someone who does not already have power. Here God is clearly supreme because he anointed Jesus, giving him authority that he never had before.

    Jesus made clear the superiority of his Father when the mother of two of his disciples asked Jesus to seat them on his right and left when he came into the Kingdom. Jesus answered, “It is not up to Me to give to sit at My right hand and on My left, but to whom My Father has prepared” (Matthew 20:23). If Jesus were Almighty God, he could control these places. But Jesus could not do this because God was in charge of them, and Jesus was not God.

    A powerful example of Jesus' subordination is his prayers. Shortly before his death, Jesus showed who was superior by saying in prayer: “Father! Oh, that You would deign to carry this cup past Me! Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:42). Who did he pray to? Parts of yourself? No, Jesus prayed to another person, his Father, a God whose will was greater and might be different from his own, the only one who could “pass this cup past” him.

    Just before his death, Jesus exclaimed: “My God, My God! Why have you forsaken me? (Mark 15:34). Who was Jesus speaking to? To yourself or to a part of yourself? Of course, the cry “My God” was not made by someone who considered himself God. And then, if Jesus was God, then who left him? Himself?

    It is pointless. Jesus also said: “Father! into Your hands I commend My spirit” (Luke 23:46). If Jesus was God, then why did he need to surrender his spirit to the Father?

    After his death, Jesus spent three incomplete days in the tomb. If he were God, then the words of Habakkuk 1:12 (CoP) would be wrong: “You are my Holy God, who never dies!” But the Bible says that Jesus died and was unconscious in the tomb. Who raised Jesus from the dead?

    If he was truly dead, he could not resurrect himself. On the other hand, if he was not dead, then his apparent death would be impossible
    pay ransom for Adam's sin. But Jesus paid the ransom in full because he really died. So it was “God who raised Him [Jesus] up, breaking the bonds of death” (Acts 2:24).

    The superior God Almighty raised the inferior, his servant Jesus, from the dead.

    Does Jesus' ability to perform miracles, such as resurrecting people, indicate that he was God? The apostles, prophets Elijah and Elisha also possessed such power, but at the same time they remained just people. God gave the prophets, Jesus, and the apostles the power to perform miracles to show that He supported them. But this did not make any of them part of the many-faced Divinity.

    Jesus didn't know everything

    Prophesying the end of this system of things, Jesus said, “But of that day or hour no one knows, not the angels of heaven, not the Son, but only the Father” (Mark 13:32). If Jesus were an equal part of the Godhead, he would know everything the Father knows. But Jesus did not know everything because he was not equal with the Father.

    Likewise, in Hebrews 5:8 (JIV) we read that Jesus “learned obedience through all that he suffered.” Can you imagine that God needs
    was there anything to learn? No, but Jesus needed to learn because he did not know everything that God knew. Jesus also needed to learn something that God never needs to learn—obedience. God never needs to obey anyone.

    The difference in knowledge between God and Christ also existed when Jesus was raised to heavenly life with God. Let's pay attention to the first words
    the last book of the Bible: “The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him” (Revelation 1:1).

    If Jesus were part of the Godhead, would he need another part of the Godhead - God - to give him revelation? Surely he would have known all about this revelation, just as God did. But Jesus didn't know because he wasn't God.

    Jesus remains in submission

    Before becoming a man and then on earth, Jesus submitted to God. After the resurrection, he still remains in subordination, occupying a secondary position.
    position.

    Speaking about the resurrection of Jesus, Peter and those with him said to the Jewish Sanhedrin: “God has exalted him [Jesus], seating him at his right hand.”
    (Acts 5:31, CoP). Paul wrote, “God exalted Him to the highest position” (Philippians 2:9, CoP).

    If Jesus were God, how could he be exalted, that is, given a higher position than he previously occupied? He would already be an exalted part of the Trinity. If Jesus had been equal to God before his exaltation, then after his exaltation he would have become greater than God.

    Paul also said that Christ has entered “into heaven itself to appear now in the presence of God for us” (Hebrews 9:24). If you stand in front of someone, can you be the same person? No. You must be a different, separate being.

    Likewise, Stephen, before being stoned, “looked up into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:55).
    It is clear that he saw two separate persons, but did not see the holy spirit, did not see the Trinity Godhead.

    The message recorded in Revelation 4:8-5:7 shows God sitting on his heavenly throne, but Jesus is not sitting there. He must approach God
    to take the scroll from his right hand. From this it is clear that in heaven Jesus is not God, but a completely different person.

    In accordance with the above, in the “Bulletin of the John Rylands Library” published in Manchester (England)
    states: “After his resurrection to heavenly life, Jesus is described as a person who retained his individuality as special and separate from
    the individuality of God as it was during Jesus' life on earth.

    Next to God and in comparison with God, he appears, of course, as a separate, angelic, heavenly being in the heavenly court of God, although, being the Son of God, he belongs to a different category and occupies a much higher position than them. (Compare Philippians 2:11, CoP.)

    The Bulletin also states: “However, what is said of his life and duties as the heavenly Christ does not mean or imply that in divine status he stands on a par with God himself and is God.

    On the contrary, in the way his heavenly personality and his
    service, both his independent existence and his subordination to God are revealed.”

    In the endless future life in heaven, Jesus will remain a servant under God. The Bible says it this way: “Then will be the end, when He [Jesus in heaven] shall deliver up the kingdom to God the Father... ...Then the Son Himself also shall be subject to Him who put all things in subjection to Him, that God may be all in all" (1 Corinthians 15:24, 28) .

    Jesus Never Claimed to Be God

    The Bible's position is clear. Almighty God Jehovah is not only different from Jesus, but has always been superior to him. Jesus is always portrayed as a separate and inferior humble servant of God. This is why the Bible explicitly says that “the head of Christ is God,” just as “the head of every man is Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:3). And that is why Jesus said, “My Father is greater than I” (John 14:28).

    The fact is that Jesus is not God and never claimed to be. More and more scientists agree with this. As the John Rylands Library Bulletin states: “It must be admitted that in the course of New Testament scholarship over the last, say, thirty or forty years, a growing number of respected scholars have come to the conclusion that Jesus ... never believed himself to be God.”

    Of first-century Christians, the Bulletin says: “When they therefore called [Jesus] by such honorable titles as Christ, Son of Man, Son of God, and Lord, they did not express that he was God, but that he I was doing God's work."

    So, even as some theologians admit, the concept of Jesus as God contradicts the entire testimony of the Bible. According to the Bible, God is always superior, and Jesus is given the place of a subordinate servant.

    The Holy Spirit is the active power of God

    According to the doctrine of the Trinity, the holy spirit is the third person of the Godhead, equal to the Father and the Son. One work says: “The Holy Spirit is God” (“Our Orthodox Christian Faith”).

    The word most often used for "spirit" in the Hebrew Scriptures is the word ru'ach, meaning "breath, wind, spirit." In the Greek Scriptures the word pneuma has a similar meaning. Do these words indicate that the holy spirit is part of the Trinity?

    Acting force

    The Bible's use of the term "holy spirit" shows that it is a controlled force used by Jehovah God to carry out his many purposes. To some extent, this force can be likened to electricity - a force that can be adapted to perform a wide variety of tasks.
    Genesis 1:2 says that “the Spirit [Heb. The ruʹach] of God hovered over the waters.” In this case, the spirit of God was his active force, which gave shape to the Earth.

    God uses his spirit to enlighten those who serve him. David prayed, “Teach me to do Your will, for You are my God; Let Your good Spirit [ruʹach] guide me into the land of righteousness” (Psalm 143:10). When 70 able men were assigned to help Moses, God told him, “I will take from the Spirit [ruʹach] that is on you and put it on them” (Numbers 11:17).

    Men of God wrote prophecies “as they were moved by the Spirit [Gr. from pneuma] to the saints” (2 Peter 1:20, 21). Therefore Scripture is “breathed out by God” [Greek. Theopneustos, meaning "breathed in by God"] (2 Timothy 3:16). In addition, the holy spirit guided some people so that they saw visions or
    prophetic dreams (2 Samuel 23:2; Joel 2:28, 29; Luke 1:67; Acts 1:16; 2:32, 33).

    The Holy Spirit prompted Jesus to go into the wilderness after his baptism (Mark 1:12). The Spirit burned within God's servants like fire, urging them to action. And he helped them speak boldly and courageously (Micah 3:8; Acts 7:55-60; 18:25; Romans 12:11; 1 Thessalonians 5:19).

    Through his spirit, God executes judgments against people and nations (Isaiah 30:27, 28; 59:18, 19). The Spirit of God can penetrate anywhere, working for or against people (Psalm 139:7-12).

    "Excessive Power"

    The Spirit of God can give God's servants “abounding power” (2 Corinthians 4:7). This allows them to endure tests of faith and do things that they would not be able to do without this spirit.

    For example, Judges 14:6 says of Samson: “The Spirit of the Lord came upon him, and he tore the lion like a kid; but he had nothing in his hand.”
    Did a divine figure actually enter or take over Samson, causing his body to do what he did? No, according to another Bible translation, “the power of the Lord made Samson strong” (“Today’s English Version”).

    The Bible says that when Jesus was baptized, the holy spirit descended on him in the form of a dove, not in the form of a man (Mark 1:10). This active power of God enabled Jesus to heal the sick and raise the dead. Luke 5:17 says, “The power of the Lord was manifested in healing the sick.”

    The Spirit of God empowered Jesus' disciples to perform miracles. Acts 2:1-4 tells us that while the disciples were together at Pentecost, “suddenly
    there came a sound from heaven, as from a rushing mighty wind... And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.”
    So, the holy spirit gave Jesus and other servants of God the power to do what people normally cannot do.

    Not a person

    But aren't there verses in the Bible where the holy spirit is animated? There is, but note what the Catholic theologian Edmund Fortman says about this: “Although this spirit is often described as animate, the holy writers [of the Hebrew Scriptures] apparently never considered this spirit to be a separate person and did not represent it as a person in his labors" (“The Triune God”).

    Scripture often speaks of something inanimate as if it were animate. Wisdom is said to have children (Luke 7:35). Sin and death are said to reign (Romans 5:14, 21). Genesis 4:7 (as translated by The New English Bible) says, “Sin is the demon that lurks at the door,” so sin is animated as the evil spirit that lurks at Cain’s door.

    But, of course, sin is not a spiritual person; in the same way, the animation of the holy spirit does not make him a spiritual person.

    Likewise, at 1 John 5:6, 8, not only the spirit, but also “the water and the blood” are said to “bear witness.” But water and blood are clearly not personalities,
    neither is the personality and the holy spirit.

    This is consistent with the Bible generally speaking of the “Holy Spirit” as inanimate, e.g. the parallel between the holy spirit,
    water and fire (Matthew 3:11; Mark 1:8). People are encouraged to be filled with the holy spirit instead of getting drunk on wine (Ephesians 5:18). They are said to be filled with the holy spirit as well as with wisdom, faith, and joy (Acts 6:3; 11:24; 13:52).

    And 2 Corinthians 6:6 mentions the holy spirit among other qualities. Such expressions would not occur so often if the holy spirit were a person.

    Additionally, although some Bible verses say that the spirit speaks, other verses show that it is actually through men or angels (Matthew 10:19, 20; Acts 4:24, 25; 28:25; Hebrews 2:2 ). The action of the spirit in such cases is similar to the action of radio waves, with the help of which messages are transmitted between people located far from each other.

    Matthew 28:19 says, “In the name...of the Holy Spirit.” But the word “name” in both Greek and Russian does not always mean a personal name. When we say “in the name of the law,” we do not mean a person. We refer to the relevant law and its force. One work says: “The use here of the word 'name' (onoma) is common in the Septuagint and in the papyri to denote power or authority" (Robertson, Word Pictures in the New Testament).

    Therefore, one who is baptized “in the name of ... the Holy Spirit” recognizes the power of this spirit: that this spirit comes from God and acts according to God's will.

    "Comforter"

    Jesus spoke of the holy spirit as a “comforter” who would teach, guide, and speak (John 14:16, 26; 16:13). The Greek word Jesus used for “comforter” (paraʹkletos) is masculine. Therefore, when Jesus mentioned what this comforter would do, he used masculine personal pronouns (John 16:7, 8).

    On the other hand, when the neuter Greek word (pneʹma) is used to denote spirit, the Greek text appropriately uses the neuter pronoun, which indicates the inanimate nature of the spirit.

    Most translators who support the doctrine of the Trinity hide this fact and in John 14:17, as in many other places, give the word “spirit” the meaning of a living being, a person. This is expressed grammatically in Russian in the form of the accusative case. The accusative case of animate masculine nouns corresponds to the genitive case, and the accusative case of inanimate masculine nouns corresponds to the genitive case.
    nominative

    Although "spirit" here denotes the active power of God and is therefore an inanimate noun, in many
    In Bible translations, the accusative case of the word “spirit” corresponds to the genitive case (“spirit”), which erroneously indicates the animation of the spirit.

    Not part of the Trinity

    Various sources acknowledge that the Bible does not support the idea that the holy spirit is the third person of the Trinity. For example:

    “Nowhere in the Old Testament do we find a clear reference to a Third Person” (Catholic Encyclopedia).

    “The Jews never considered the spirit to be a person; There is no hard evidence that even any of the Old Testament writers thought so. […]
    Usually the Holy Spirit is presented in the Gospels and Acts as God’s power or might” (Catholic theologian E. Fortman).

    “The Old Testament does not give any idea of ​​the spirit of God as a person... The Spirit of God is simply the power of God.

    If he is sometimes described as separate from God, it is because the breath of Yahweh acts as an external force.” “In most of the verses of the New Testament, the spirit of God is depicted as something, not as someone; this is especially evident in the parallelism of the spirit and power of God” (New Catholic Encyclopedia) (emphasis added). “In general, in the New Testament, as well as in the Old, the spirit is spoken of as God’s energy or power” (Catholic Dictionary).

    Therefore, neither the Jews nor the early Christians considered the holy spirit to be part of the Trinity. This teaching appeared centuries later. As noted in the Catholic
    dictionary", "the third Person was approved at the Council of Alexandria in 362... and finally adopted at the Council of Constantinople in 381",
    that is, three and a half centuries after the disciples were filled with the holy spirit at Pentecost!

    So, the holy spirit is not a person and not part of the Trinity. The Holy Spirit is the active power of God, which he uses to accomplish his will. This power is not equal to God, but is always at his disposal and subordinate to him.

    What verses are used to support the doctrine of the Trinity?

    The doctrine of the Trinity is said to be proven by certain Bible verses. However, when reading such verses, it should be remembered that this doctrine is not supported by either biblical or historical facts.

    Three in one

    Three such “proving” verses are given in the New Catholic Encyclopedia, but it also admits: “The Old Testament does not teach the dogma of
    Holy Trinity. In the New Testament, the earliest evidence is found in the letters of Paul, mainly in 2 Cor. 13.13 [verse 14 in some Bibles] and 1 Cor. 12:4-6. In the Gospels, the proof of the Trinity is clearly found only in the baptismal formula in Matt. 28.19."

    The Synodal Edition lists three “persons” in these verses. 2 Corinthians 13:13 says, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and
    the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit with you all.”

    1 Corinthians 12:4-6 says, “There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit; and the services are different, but the Lord is the same; and the actions are different, but God is one and the same, working everything in everyone.” And Matthew 28:19 says, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

    Do these verses say that God, Christ, and the holy spirit constitute the Triune Godhead, that all three are equal in essence, power, and eternity? No, it is not said, just as listing three people - for example, Ivanov, Petrov, Sidorov - does not mean that they are three in one.

    References of this kind “prove only that there are three so-called subjects... but such references do not in themselves prove that these three subjects
    necessarily of the divine nature and worthy of equal divine honor" (McClintock and Strong, Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and
    Ecclesiastical Literature").

    Although this work supports the doctrine of the Trinity, it says of 2 Corinthians 13:13, “They cannot justly be said to have equal power, or equal nature.” And Matthew 28:18-20 says, “If taken separately, this passage does not conclusively prove that all three of these subjects are persons, nor their equality, nor their divinity.”

    In the account of Jesus' baptism, God, Jesus, and the holy spirit were also mentioned in the same context. Jesus saw the Spirit of God descending as
    a dove, and descended upon Him” (Matthew 3:16). However, this does not prove that they are three in one. Many times Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are mentioned together, but this does not make them one. Peter, James and John are mentioned together, but they also do not become one.

    Also, at the time of Jesus' baptism, the spirit of God came upon Jesus, which shows that Jesus was not anointed with the spirit before His baptism. But how then could he be part of the Trinity, in which he and the holy spirit were always one?

    Another reference that speaks of three subjects together is found in some older Bible translations at 1 John 5:7. However, scientists
    admit that these words were not originally in the Bible; they were added much later. In most modern translations this inserted verse
    rightly omitted.

    Other verses that are cited to support the doctrine of the Trinity deal with the relationship of only two subjects - the Father and Jesus. Let's look at some of these verses.

    “I and the Father are one”

    This verse, recorded at John 10:30, is often cited to support the doctrine of the Trinity, although it does not mention a third person. But Jesus himself explained,
    what he meant when he said that he was “one” with the Father.

    In John 17:21, 22 he prayed to God for his disciples: “That they may all be one; as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, so may they also be one in Us... ... May they be one, even as We are one.” Did Jesus pray for all his disciples to become one being? No, Jesus obviously prayed that they, just like he and God, would be one in thought and purpose. (See also 1 Corinthians 1:10.)

    In 1 Corinthians 3:6, 8, Paul says, “I planted, Apollos watered... But he who plants and he who waters are one.” Paul did not mean that he
    Apollos was two persons in one, he meant that they had a common goal.

    The Greek word that Paul used here and that is translated
    as “one” (hen), refers to the neuter gender and indicates community in cooperation. This is the same word that Jesus used in John
    10:30 to describe his relationship with the Father. And this is the same word Jesus used in John 17:21, 22. Therefore, when he used in these
    in places the word meaning “one” (hen), he spoke of unity in thoughts and goals.

    John Calvin, a believer in the Trinity, said of John 10:30: “The ancient thinkers misused this verse to
    evidence that Christ has... one essence with the Father. Because Jesus testifies not to the unity of essence, but to the agreement between him and the Father" (“Commentary on the Gospel According to John”).

    In the verses immediately following John 10:30, Jesus convincingly demonstrated that he was not claiming to be God with these words. Jesus asked the Jews who had come to this wrong conclusion and wanted to stone him: “Do you say to him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?” (John 10:31-36). Jesus claimed that he was not God the Son, but the Son of God.

    “Making Yourself equal to God”?

    Another verse cited to support the doctrine of the Trinity is John 5:18. It says that the Jews (as in John 10:31-36) wanted to kill Jesus because he “called God his Father, making himself equal with God.”

    But who said that Jesus made himself equal to God? Not Jesus. In the very next verse (19) he refutes this false accusation: “To this Jesus said...
    The Son cannot do anything on his own if he does not see the Father doing it.”

    With these words, Jesus showed the Jews that he was not equal to God and therefore could not do anything on his own initiative. Is it possible for someone equal to Almighty God to say that he “can do nothing of Himself”? (Compare Daniel 4:31, 32.)

    Interestingly, the context of John 5:18 and John 10:30 shows that Jesus was defending himself against false accusations made by Jews who, like those who believe in the doctrine of the Trinity, were drawing incorrect conclusions.

    "Equal to God"?

    Philippians 2:6 in the Synodal Edition (1876) says of Jesus: “He, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God.” This verse is also translated in the King James Bible, published in 1611.

    Some still use such translations to support the idea that Jesus was equal to God. But let's see how this verse sounds in other translations:

    1869: “Who, being in the form of God, did not think it necessary to encroach upon being equal with God” (Noise, The New Testament).

    1965: “He is truly of a divine nature! - never presumptuously made himself equal to God” (Friedrich Pfäflin, “Das Neue Testament”, revised edition).

    1968: “Who, although he was in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be eagerly pursued” (“La Bibbia Concordata”).

    1976: “He always had the nature of God, but he did not think that he should try to become equal with God by force” (“Today’s English Version”).

    1984: “Who, although he was in the form of God, did not admit the thought of encroaching on equality with God” (“New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures”).

    1985: “Who, being in the form of God, did not consider that equality with God should be encroached upon” (“The New Jerusalem Bible”).

    And yet some argue that even these more accurate translations imply that 1) Jesus was already equal with God, but did not seek to maintain it
    equality, or 2) he did not need to encroach on equality with God because he already had it.

    Ralph Martin says about this about the original Greek text: “It is doubtful, however, whether the meaning of the verb could be displaced from its original
    the meaning of “to seize”, “to appropriate” to the meaning of “to hold fast”” (“The Epistle of Paul to the Philippians”).

    Another work says: “Nowhere can one find a verse in which the word ἁρπάζω [harpazo] or any of its derivatives would have the meaning of “possessing,” “preserving.” It almost always means “to seize”, “to appropriate”. Thus, it is inadmissible to shift from the true meaning of the word “to encroach” to the completely different meaning of “to hold fast”” (“The Expositor’s Greek Testament”).

    From the above, it becomes clear that the translators who worked on such translations as the Synodal and the King James Bible distorted the rules,
    to support the doctrine of the Trinity. If we read the Greek text with an open mind, Philippians 2:6 does not say that Jesus thought it was appropriate to be equal with God, but quite the opposite - that Jesus did not think that such equality was appropriate.

    The correct meaning of verse 6 is made clear by its context (verses 3-5, 7, 8). The Philippians are exhorted: “With humility of mind, honor one another
    superior to yourself." Paul then cites Christ as an outstanding example of this behavior: “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.”

    What “feelings”? Is it not robbery to be equal with God? No, that would be exactly the opposite of what Paul was saying! Jesus, who considered God superior to himself, would never have encroached upon equality with God; instead, he “humbled Himself, becoming obedient even to the point of death.”

    Of course, these words cannot be attributed to any of the constituent parts of Almighty God. This was said about Jesus Christ, excellent personal
    the example of which Paul used to emphasize the main idea - the importance of humility and obedience to the Most High and Creator, Jehovah God.

    "I am"

    In John 8:58, some translations, such as the Synodal translation, quote Jesus as saying, “Before Abraham was, I am.” Did Jesus teach here?
    How do believers in the doctrine of the Trinity claim that he was known by the title "I am"? And does this mean, as they claim, that he was Jehovah in
    Hebrew Scriptures, because Exodus 3:14 (NAM) says, “God said to Moses, I am He that I am”?

    In Exodus 3:14, the phrase “I am” is used as a title for God, showing that he truly exists and fulfills what he has promised. In one work,
    of which Dr. J. G. Hertz was the publisher, it is said of this phrase: “To the captive Israelites it meant: “Although He has not yet shown you His power, He will do so; He is eternal and will definitely save you."

    Most modern translations follow Rashi [a French commentator on the Bible and Talmud], translating [Exodus 3:14] with the expression “I will be what I will be” (“Pentateuch und Haftaroth”).

    The expression in John 8:58 is markedly different from the expression in Exodus 3:14. Jesus did not use it as a name or title, but as an explanation of his existence before becoming a man. Let's see how these words from John 8:58 are rendered in other Bible translations:

    1869: “From the Time Before Abraham I Am” (Noise, The New Testament).

    1935: "I existed before Abraham was born!" (Smith and Goodspeed, The Bible-An American Translation).

    1965: “Before Abraham was born, I was already what I am” (Jörg Zink, “Das Neue Testament”).

    1981: "I lived before Abraham was born!" (“The Simple English Bible”).

    1984: “Before Abraham came, there was I” (“New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures”).

    1990: “I was before Abraham was born” (translation by L. Lutkovsky).

    So, the idea that the Greek conveys in this verse is that God's firstborn, Jesus, who was created “before all creation,” existed long before Abraham was born (Colossians 1:15; Proverbs 8:22, 23, 30 , CoP; Revelation 3:14).

    And again, the correctness of this understanding is evidenced by the context. At that time, the Jews wanted to stone Jesus for claiming that he “saw Abraham,” although, as they said, he was not yet 50 years old (verse 57). Jesus' natural reaction to this was to tell the truth about his age. Therefore, as one would expect, he told them that “he was before Abraham was born” (translation by L. Lutkovsky).

    "The Word was God"

    John 1:1 in the Synodal Edition reads: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” According to those who believe in the doctrine of the Trinity, this means that the “Word” (Greek: ho logos) who came to earth as Jesus Christ was none other than Almighty God.

    Note, however, that the correct understanding here again helps the context. Even the Synodal edition says that “the Word was with God” (our italics - Ed.). A person who is “with” another person cannot himself be that other person.

    In agreement with this, a journal edited by Jesuit Joseph Fitzmyer notes that interpreting the last part of John 1:1 to mean “God” would “contradict the previous part of the verse,” which states that the Word was with God ( "Journal of Biblical Literature").

    Let's also see how this part of the verse is rendered in other translations:

    1808: “and the word was god” (“The New Testament in an Improved Version, Upon the Basis of Archbishop Newcome’s New Translation: With a Corrected Text”).

    1864: “and God was the word” (Benjamin Wilson, “The Emphatic Diaglott”).

    1928: “and the Word was a divine being” (Maurice Godgiel, “La Bible du Centenaire, L’Evangile selon Jean”).

    1935: “and the Word was divine” (Smith and Goodspeed, “The Bible-An American Translation”).

    1946: “and of divine kind was the Word” (Ludwig Timme, “Das Neue Testament”).

    1950: “and the Word was God” (“New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures”).

    1958: “and the Word was God” (James Tomanek, The New Testament).

    1975: “and the god (or divine kind) was the Word” (Siegfried Schulz, “Das Evangelium nach Johannes”).

    1978: “and of a godlike kind was the Logos” (Johannes Schneider, “Das Evangelium nach Johannes”).

    In John 1:1, the Greek noun theosʹ (god) appears twice. The first time it refers to Almighty God, who had the Word (“and the Word [logos] was with God [the noun form theos]”). In this case, the word theosʹ is preceded by the word ton, a form of the definite article in Greek that refers to a specific person, in this case Almighty God (“and the Word was with [tone] God”).

    On the other hand, the second time the word theosʹ appears in John 1:1, there is no article before it. Therefore, literally it is translated “and the Word was God.” However, as we have already seen, in many translations the second word theosʹ (the nominal part of the compound predicate) is translated as “divine,” “godlike,” or “god.” On what basis is this done?

    Koine Greek, the common Greek language, had a definite article, but no indefinite article. Therefore, if before
    a noun representing the nominal part of a compound predicate does not have a definite article; depending on the context, this noun can be indefinite, that is, it expresses its belonging to a number of similar ones.

    One journal (Journal of Biblical Literature) states that expressions “in which the verb is preceded by a nominal part of a compound predicate without
    articles, as a rule, have a qualitative characteristic.” As the journal notes, this indicates that the logos can be called god-like.

    John 1:1 says, “It is so evident that the nominal part of a compound predicate is qualitative, that the noun [theosʹ] cannot be regarded as definite, that is, as expressing its singularity.”

    Thus, John 1:1 emphasizes the quality of the Word that it was “divine,” “godlike,” “god,” but not Almighty God.

    This is consistent with what is said in other parts of the Bible, showing that Jesus, who here acts as the representative of God and is called
    “By the Word”, he was an obedient subordinate who was sent to earth by the Supreme, Almighty God.

    There are many other Bible verses with the same grammatical structure, and almost all translators into other languages ​​translate the nominal part of the compound predicate so that it has a qualitative characteristic.

    For example, Mark 6:49, where the disciples saw Jesus walking on water, says, “They thought it was a ghost.” In Koine Greek there is no indefinite article before the word "ghost".

    But in order to harmonize the translation of this verse with the context, almost all translators into other languages ​​translate the nominal part of the compound predicate so that it has a qualitative characteristic. Likewise, since John 1:1 says that the Word was with God, it could not be God, but was “god” or “divine.”

    Theologian and scholar Joseph Henry Thayer, who worked on the American Standard Version Bible, said, “The Logos was the divine, not the Divine Being himself.” Jesuit John Mackenzie wrote: “John. 1:1 must be accurately translated... “the word was a divine being”” (Dictionary of the Bible).

    Breaking the rules?

    Some, however, argue that such a translation violates the rules of Koine Greek grammar published by Greek scholar E.
    Colwell in 1933. He argued that in Greek the nominal part of a compound predicate “has a [definite] article if it follows
    verb; if it precedes the verb, then it does not have a [definite] article.”

    By this Colwell meant that the nominal part of a compound predicate, which comes before the verb, should be understood as if it were preceded by
    definite article. In John 1:1, the second noun (theosʹs) is the nominal part of the compound predicate and precedes the verb - “and [theosʹs]
    was the Word." Therefore, Colwell argued, John 1:1 should be read “and God was the Word.”

    But let's look at just two examples found in John 8:44. There Jesus says about the Devil: “He was a murderer” and “He is a liar.” As in
    John 1:1, in the Greek text, the nouns (“murderer” and “liar”), representing the nominal parts of the compound predicates, precede the verbs (“was” and the omitted “is” in Russian).

    None of these nouns have an indefinite article before them, because there is no such article in Koine Greek. But in most translations the nominal part of the compound predicate is translated so that it has a qualitative characteristic, because the grammar of the Greek language and the context require it. (See also Mark 11:32; John 4:19; 6:70; 9:17; 10:1; 12:6.)

    Colwell was forced to admit this in relation to the nominal part of the compound predicate and said: “In this word order it is indefinite [with
    indefinite article] only if the context so requires.”

    So, even Colwell admits that, when the context requires it, in sentences with such a structure, translators may insert an indefinite article before the noun, or translate the nominal part of a compound predicate as,
    so that it has a quality characteristic.

    Does the context require that the nominal part of the compound predicate be translated this way in John 1:1? Yes, because, as the entire Bible testifies, Jesus
    - not Almighty God. Therefore, in such cases, the translator must be guided by the unquestionable rules of grammar issued by
    Colwell, but the context.

    Many scholars disagree with such made-up rules, as evidenced by many translations that insert an indefinite article into John 1:1 and other verses, or translate the nominal part of a compound predicate so that it has a qualitative characteristic. The Word of God does not agree with such rules.

    No contradiction

    Does the statement that Jesus Christ is “god” contradict the biblical teaching that there is only one God? No, because the word is sometimes used in the Bible to refer to powerful creatures. Psalm 8:6 says, “Almost likening them [people] to gods [Heb. 'elohim], that is, the angels.

    When Jesus responded to the Jews who accused him of making himself equal with God, he noted that “[in the Law God] called those to whom the word of God came gods,” that is, judges from among men (John 10:34 , 35; Psalm 81:1-6). Even Satan is called “the god of this age” in 2 Corinthians 4:4.

    Jesus occupies a position far above angels, imperfect men, and Satan. If they are called “gods”, powerful, then, of course,
    can be called the “god” of Jesus. Jesus' unique position in relation to Jehovah allows him to be called “the mighty God.”​—John 1:1; Isaiah 9:6.

    But doesn't the capitalized title "Mighty God" mean that Jesus is somehow equal to Jehovah God? Not at all. Isaiah simply prophesied that this would be one of the titles that would be applied to Jesus, and in Russian such titles are written with a capital letter.

    However, although Jesus is called “mighty,” only one can be “Almighty.” Calling Jehovah God “Almighty” would not make sense if there were not other persons who were also called gods, but who occupied a lower position.

    The John Rylands Library Bulletin, published in England, notes that, according to Catholic theologian Karl Rahner, although verses such as John 1:1 use theosʹ in reference to Christ, “in none of these cases does the word “Theos” is not used in a way that would identify Jesus with the one who appears throughout the New Testament as “ho Theos,” that is, with the Most High God.”

    The Bulletin adds: “If the New Testament writers believed that believers needed to acknowledge Jesus as ‘God,’ then how do we explain the almost complete absence of this particular form of recognition in the New Testament?”

    But what about the words of the Apostle Thomas, who, according to John 20:28, said to Jesus: “My Lord and my God!”? To Thomas, Jesus was like “god,” especially considering the unusual circumstances under which Thomas spoke these words.

    Some scholars believe that with these words Thomas simply expressed his amazement, and although he said them to Jesus, they were addressed to God. Be that as it may, Thomas did not consider Jesus to be Almighty God, because he, like all the other apostles, knew that Jesus never said that he was God, but taught that the “one true God” is Jehovah alone (John 17 :3).

    And again, context helps to understand this. A few days earlier, the resurrected Jesus had told Mary Magdalene to tell his disciples, “I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God” (John 20:17).

    Although Jesus had already been resurrected as a powerful spirit, Jehovah was still God to him. Jesus continued to speak of Him this way even in the last book of the Bible, after He had been glorified (Revelation 1:5, 6; 3:2, 12).

    Just three verses after Thomas's exclamation, John 20:31 makes the matter even clearer: “These are written, that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God,” and not Almighty God. And the word "Son" is used in its direct sense, as in the case of a literal father and son, and not in the sense of some mysterious part of the Triune Godhead.

    Must be consistent with the Bible

    Several other verses are said to support the doctrine of the Trinity. But, as with the verses already discussed, close examination reveals that this is not the case.

    Such verses only show that when considering any claims in support of the doctrine of the Trinity, one must ask oneself: Is this interpretation consistent with the consistent teaching throughout the Bible that Jehovah God alone is the Most High? If not, then this interpretation is wrong.

    It should also be remembered that not a single verse that is cited as evidence states that God, Jesus and the holy spirit are one
    whole in some mysterious Deity. No verse in the Bible says that all three are equal in essence, power and eternity. The Bible consistently portrays Almighty God, Jehovah, as the only Most High, Jesus as His created Son, and the holy spirit as God's active force.

    Worship God in a way that pleases Him

    Jesus said in prayer to God, “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent” (John 17:3). What do you need to know? “[God] wants all people to be saved and to come to an accurate knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4).

    This means that God wants us to know him and his intentions accurately and in accordance with divine truth. And the source of this truth is the Word of God - the Bible (John 17:17; 2 Timothy 3:16, 17). If people know exactly what the Bible says about God, they will not be like those of whom Romans 10:2, 3 says, “Have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.” Or those Samaritans to whom Jesus said, “You do not know what you worship” (John 4:22).

    Therefore, if we want to receive God's approval, we need to ask ourselves:
    Accurate knowledge of the truth gives the correct answers to these questions. Knowing these answers, we can worship God in a way that pleases Him.

    They dishonor God

    “I will glorify those who glorify Me,” says God (1 Samuel 2:30). Does calling someone his equal glorify God? Does calling Mary “Mother of God” and “Mediatrix… between the Creator and His creatures,” as can be read in the New Catholic Encyclopedia, glorify him?

    No, such views offend God. He has no equal, and he has no fleshly mother, since Jesus was not God. And there is no “Mediatrix,” because God has appointed only one “mediator between... [himself] and men,” Jesus (1 Timothy 2:5; 1 John 2:1, 2).

    Undoubtedly, the doctrine of the Trinity has complicated and blurred people's understanding of the true position of God. This prevents people from gaining accurate knowledge about
    The Master of the Universe, Jehovah God, and worship him the way he wants.

    The theologian Hans Küng said: “Why is it necessary to add anything to the concept of the unity and exclusiveness of God if this only negates his unity and exclusiveness?” But this is exactly what faith in the Trinity led to.

    Those who believe in the Trinity do not have “God in their minds” (Romans 1:28). The same verse says, “God gave them over to a corrupt mind to do evil things.”

    Verses 29 through 31 list some of these “bad things,” such as “murder, strife,” and that people are “treacherous,” “unloving,” and “unmerciful.” All this is typical for followers of those religions that teach the dogma of the Trinity.

    For example, believers in the dogma of the Trinity often persecuted and even killed those who rejected this dogma. But that is not all. During wars, they also killed their fellow believers. What could be more “obscene” than the fact that Catholics killed Catholics, Orthodox killed Orthodox, and Protestants killed Protestants, and all in the name of the same Triune God?

    Jesus said directly: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). The Word of God develops this idea, saying: “The children of God and the children of the devil are known by this: everyone who does not do righteousness is not from God, neither does he who does not love his brother.”

    The Bible likens those who kill their spiritual brothers to “Cain, who was of the evil one [Satan] and killed his brother” (1 John 3:10-12).

    So, teaching people confusing doctrines about God leads to actions that violate his laws. And indeed, what happened to the Christian
    world, is consistent with the description made by the Danish theologian Søren Kierkegaard: “Christendom has broken with Christianity without even realizing it.”

    The Apostle Paul accurately described the spiritual condition of Christendom today: “They say that they know God; but by deeds they deny, being vile and
    disobedient and incapable of doing any good work” (Titus 1:16).

    Soon, when God puts an end to this evil system of things, the Trinity-believing Christian world will be called to account. And he will be condemned for
    their deeds and teachings that dishonor God (Matthew 24:14; 25:31-34, 41, 46; Revelation 17:1-6, 16; 18:1-8, 20, 24; 19:17-21).

    Reject the Trinity

    Compromise with God's truth is impossible. Therefore, to worship God in a way that pleases him is to reject the doctrine of the Trinity. It contradicts the beliefs and teachings of the prophets, Jesus, the apostles, and the early Christians. It contradicts what God says about himself in his inspired Word. This is why God advises, “Remember that I am God, and there is none like Me” (Isaiah 46:9, NKJV).

    God does not want to make himself incomprehensible and mysterious. Rather, the more people become confused about who God is and what his intentions are, the more this plays into the hands of God’s Adversary, Satan the Devil, “the god of this age.” He is the one who spreads such false teachings to blind the minds of unbelievers (2 Corinthians 4:4).

    The doctrine of the Trinity also serves the interests of the clergy, who seek to maintain power over people, trying to present this doctrine as if only theologians can understand it. (See John 8:44.)

    Accurate knowledge about God leads to great changes. It frees us from teachings contrary to God's Word and from apostate organizations. As Jesus said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 8:32).

    By glorifying God as the Most High and worshiping him as he desires, we can avoid the fate that will soon befall an apostate Christian world.

    We, on the other hand, can hope for God's favor when this system comes to an end: “The world and its lust pass away, but he who does the will of God abides forever” (1 John 2:17).

    Live forever in heaven on earth

    God promises that those who honor him will live forever. “The righteous will inherit the earth, and will dwell in it forever,” God’s Word assures us (Psalm 36:29).

    But to be among the “righteous”, it is not enough for you to learn about the doctrine of the Trinity. You need to grow in the knowledge of God. Jehovah's Witnesses will be happy to help you with this if you are not already receiving such help.

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