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This
article first appeared on another Christian apologetics
discussion form at the Christian Apologetics and
Research Ministry (CARM) where it was posted by
the author himself, who contributes to this forum
under the name of "Alethia."
Here he refutes standard Trinitarian answers to
the question "Why didn't God mention the Trinity
in His Word, the Bible?" Take careful note of
his initial premise: that "The idea of God as
three coequal and coeternal 'persons'
is never mentioned in Scripture."
This is a problem which Trinitarians have yet
to solve. Their proposed solutions are many and
varied - but none of these will resist the force
of a logical cross-examination.
The idea of God as three coequal and coeternal
“persons” is never mentioned in Scripture. None
of the creedal concepts that make up Trinitarian
dogma can be found directly in Scripture. It is
not just the lack of the word itself, it is the
lack of any direct statement of the concept in
any words whatsoever.
So why then did God fail to mention the Trinity
anywhere in Scripture?
I think we can safely assume that He did not merely
forget to tell us about it.
Could it possibly be because it was just not important
enough to bother wasting a few verses on here
and there? Well, if it wasn’t important to God,
why would it be important to you or me?
The most common rationalizations of this problem
that I hear from Trinitarians are:
#1 You shouldn’t
try to dictate to God how he reveals himself.
Indeed I do not. If He didn’t reveal himself as
a Trinity, I trust he did not expect to be understood
as a Trinity.
#2 You can’t describe God in a single verse.
True enough, but irrelevant. You certainly could
describe God as triune in a verse or two. Men seem
to have managed to figure out a statement of the
Trinity, so presumably God could have managed as
well or better, if He had wanted to. Most Trinitarians
can give me a brief one or two sentence summary
of the doctrine. Surely God could have found a way
to say it if it were what He wanted us to understand.
#3 While the Trinity is not taught directly
in Scripture, it can be supported from Scripture.
That is circular. It doesn’t address the question.
If God intended us to understand it, why didn’t
He say so? To support it from Scripture, we would
first have to know what it was we were supposed
to be trying to support, and without a man-made
statement of the Trinity, we would never know it.
People seek to support the Trinity from Scripture
only because they already believe in it.
#4 The word Trinity is not in the Bible,
but the concept is.
This is a red herring or straw man. It is not just
the word which is not there. There is no statement
of the concept in any words at all. It has to be
assembled from widely scattered, fragmentary, deductions,
inferences, and human reasoning. There is no statement
of a three-in-one god in Scripture, regardless of
words.
#5 There are lots of other doctrines that
aren’t directly stated in Scripture either.
This is a great one. This is just saying that you
believe lots of things that aren’t in the Bible.
So, you believe lots of unscriptural things. Yes,
you probably do.
A typical example of this form of illogic is in
a Lutheran pamphlet entitled “Why Baptize Children?”
It uses this defense:
“The objectors to the Baptism of babies say:
‘Show me a single Scripture passage in which the
Baptism of infants is commanded, and we will baptize
babies.’ But they cannot show us a single passage
in Scripture where God is called the ‘Triune God,’
and yet the whole Christian Church believes in
the Triune God.”
Actually, the Lutheran pamphlet there employs both
#4 and #5 at the same time, keying in on the word
‘Triune’ rather than the concept. They defend one
unscriptural teaching by referring to another commonly
accepted but unscriptural teaching.
#6 Everybody already knew about, so there
was no need to mention it in Scripture.
Oh? And we know this how? Since it is never mentioned
in Scripture, how would one determine that everyone
already knew about it? And how could they have known
about it, since it was never mentioned in any recorded
utterance of any representative of God? Nor in fact
was it even directly described by any Christian
writer for centuries afterwards.
It was certainly not mentioned by any Jewish writer,
‘wisdom Christology’ notwithstanding. There was
no Hebrew Trinity. If “everybody knew about it,”
they certainly did a great job of keeping it to
themselves. Why? Also, does this excuse imply that
Scripture speaks only of those things that Christians
did not already
know about?
#7 The creeds were written only in response
to heresy.
Actually I’m not sure what relevance this statement
has to the problem, but it is a frequent response.
Much of the New Testament was written in response
to various heresies. Why did it miss this one? Why
should the Trinity be of importance only as a negative
response to opposition?
The idea seems to be that it is not important that
you believe it, only important that you do not disbelieve
it. Ignorance is fine. This sounds like the Church
at work alright – ignorance of the masses are fine,
just don’t let them start reading the Bible for
themselves.
Numbers 6 & 7 have an underlying assumption that
should be strongly questioned and doubted by any
reasonable person. The unstated assumption is that
there was a whole hidden oral tradition outside
of Scripture which is the actual means of transmission
of the “real” gospel. The obvious but unspoken idea
behind this is that “tradition” of the “church”
is at least equally as valid a path for the transmission
of the gospel as is Scripture itself.
The Roman Catholic Church of course teaches this
explicitly and directly. I would think that Protestants
would be more doubtful of it, but they seem to buy
into it as well for this one doctrine. How they
reconcile that with the rejection of Catholicism,
I do not know. Actually, this idea of an unwritten
oral gospel was a Gnostic tradition, argued against
by other Christians in the early centuries.
It is clear that for 6 & 7 to be reasonable assertions,
one must assume that “everyone” knew about this
very important doctrine to the extent that it was
not worth mentioning again. For that to be true,
we would have to relegate Scripture to a position
of a repository of trivia – a place to read about
the facts of lesser importance, but not a particularly
necessary or very important source of teaching.
After all, it fails to mention what is the most
essential dogma of orthodox Christendom (along with
other such things as infant baptism).
We should therefore expect that it would fail to
mention many other important doctrines, and what
do you know? It does indeed fail to mention a number
of other of the dogmas that Christendom today believes.
I would draw a different from conclusion from that:
That Christendom is in error in many respects.
Is the assumption that “everybody knew about the
Trinity” at all reasonable? For it to be true, either
the Jews of the first century also believed in it,
but never wrote about it and totally forgot about
it soon after, or else there had to have been a
silent mass conversion of those Jews who were the
majority of the early church, without the Apostles
and Evangelists ever putting a word of it down on
paper. The Apostles dealt with all other sorts of
heresies and apostasies in Scripture. The bulk of
the Epistles are directed at correcting errors such
as Judaism, Gnosticism, and doubts about resurrection
and Christ’s return.
Surely along with being wrong about the need to
continue to keep the Law of Moses, some of those
Jews would have been at least a little bit hazy
as to finding out that God was really three instead
of the One they had previously believed. But the
Apostles never bothered to correct them. Jesus continued
to preach “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”
The God of the New Testament is still the God of
Israel, the same as the God of the Old Testament.
It seems that neither Jesus nor his Apostles felt
any need to directly clarify the supposedly triune
God to the Jews.
Of course, there really aren’t any “Bible Only”
Trinitarians. There are a few who claim to be, but
that claim is patently false. It escapes me why
they bother attempting to argue their doctrine from
a Bible Only standpoint, when their doctrines very
obviously come from their tradition rather than
from Scripture. They should just do a better job
of justifying tradition as their source of doctrine,
and admit that the Bible is not their true source.
If anyone has any better explanations, excuses or
rationalizations, I would be interested to hear
them. None of these are any good at all. |
