The Incoherence of the trinity and biblical corruption

Regarding the doctrine of the trinity:

1 Thessalonians 5:21 (KJV), “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good”?

“God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:24).

a) Author and theology professor James White writes: “We hang a person’s very salvation upon the acceptance of the doctrine . . . No one dares question the Trinity for fear of being branded a ‘heretic’ . . . We must know, understand, and love the Trinity to be fully and completely Christian” (The Forgotten Trinity, 1998, pp. 14-15, emphasis added throughout unless otherwise noted).

b) Author and theology professor Harold Brown writes: “It has proved impossible for Christians actually to understand the doctrine or to explain it in any comprehensive way. The doctrine of the Trinity . . . surpasses our human ability to understand and that must be respected as a divine mystery” (Heresies: Heresy and Orthodoxy in the History of the Church, 2003, p. 128).

c) Religious writer A.W. Tozer, in his book The Knowledge of the Holy, states that the Trinity is an “incomprehensible mystery” and that attempts to understand it “must remain forever futile.” He admits that churches, “without pretending to understand,” have nevertheless continued to teach this doctrine (1961, pp. 17-18).

d) Cyril Richardson, professor of church history at New York’s Union Theological Seminary, though a dedicated Trinitarian himself, said this in his book The Doctrine of The Trinity: “My conclusion, then, about the doctrine of the Trinity is that it is an artificial construct . . . It produces confusion rather than clarification; and while the problems with which it deals are real ones, the solutions it offers are not illuminating. It has posed for many Christians dark and mysterious statements, which are ultimately meaningless, because it does not sufficiently discriminate in its use of terms” (1958, pp. 148-149).

e) The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia acknowledges that “‘trinity’ is a second-century term found nowhere in the Bible, and the Scriptures present no finished trinitarian statement” (1988, Vol. 4, “Trinity,” p. 914)

f) The HarperCollins Bible Dictionary tells us, “The formal doctrine of the Trinity as it was defined by the great church councils of the fourth and fifth centuries is not to be found in the NT [New Testament]” (Paul Achtemeier, editor, 1996, “Trinity”).

g) The HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism states: “Today, however, scholars generally agree that there is no doctrine of the Trinity as such in either the OT [Old Testament] or the NT [New Testament] . . . It would go far beyond the intention and thought-forms of the OT to suppose that a late-fourth-century or thirteenth-century Christian doctrine can be found there . . . Likewise, the NT does not contain an explicit doctrine of the Trinity” (Richard McBrien, general editor, 1995, “God,” pp. 564-565).

h) The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, in its article on the Trinity, explains: “Neither the word Trinity nor the explicit doctrine appears in the New Testament . . . The doctrine developed gradually over several centuries and through many controversies . . . It was not until the 4th century that the distinctness of the three and their unity were brought together in a single orthodox doctrine of one essence and three persons” (1985 edition, Micropaedia, Vol. 11, p. 928).

i) Historian and science fiction writer H.G. Wells, in his noted work The Outline of History, points out, “There is no evidence that the apostles of Jesus ever heard of the trinity—at any rate from him” (1920, Vol. 2, p. 499).

j) The Oxford Companion to the Bible states: “Because the Trinity is such an important part of later Christian doctrine, it is striking that the term does not appear in the New Testament. Likewise, the developed concept of three coequal partners in the Godhead found in later creedal formulations cannot be clearly detected within the confines of the canon *” (Bruce Metzger and Michael Coogan, editors, 1993, “Trinity,” p. 782).

k) Shirley Guthrie, Jr., professor of theology at Columbia Theological Seminary, writes: “The Bible does not teach the doctrine of the Trinity. Neither the word ‘trinity’ itself nor such language as ‘one-in-three,’ ‘three-in-one,’ one ‘essence’ (or ‘substance’), and three ‘persons,’ is biblical language. The language of the doctrine is the language of the ancient church taken from classical Greek philosophy” (Christian Doctrine, 1994, pp. 76-77).”

1. The real origins of this idea many debates, council meetings, and killings by the church and eventually the following took place:
2. Professor Ryrie, also cited earlier, writes, “In the second half of the fourth century, three theologians from the province of Cappadocia in eastern Asia Minor [today central Turkey] gave definitive shape to the doctrine of the Trinity” (p. 65). They proposed an idea that was a step beyond Athanasius’ view—that God the Father, Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit
3. were coequal and together in one being, yet also distinct from one another.
4. These men—Basil, bishop of Caesarea, his brother Gregory, bishop of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus—were all “trained in Greek philosophy” (Armstrong, p. 113), which no doubt affected their outlook and beliefs (see “Greek Philosophy’s Influence on the Trinity Doctrine,” beginning on page 14).
5. In the year 381, 44 years after Constantine’s death, Emperor Theodosius the Great convened the Council of Constantinople (today Istanbul, Turkey) to resolve these disputes. Gregory of Nazianzus, recently appointed as archbishop of Constantinople, presided over the council and urged the adoption of his view of the Holy Spirit.
6. Historian Charles Freeman states: “Whether he dealt with the matter clumsily or whether there was simply no chance of consensus, the ‘Macedonians,’ bishops who refused to accept the full divinity of the Holy Spirit, left the council . . . Typically, Gregory berated the bishops for preferring to have a majority rather than simply accepting ‘the Divine Word’ of the Trinity on his authority” (A.D. 381: Heretics, Pagans and the Dawn of the Monotheistic State, 2008, p. 96).
7. The teaching of the three Cappadocian theologians “made it possible for the Council of Constantinople (381) to affirm the divinity of the Holy Spirit, which up to that point had nowhere been clearly stated, not even in Scripture” (The HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism, “God,” p. 568).
8. With the few sources, one wonders how many more distortions and corruption has been done to the scriptures? We need to take note of the following assertion regarding the evolution of the church:
9. “For fifty years after St. Paul’s life a curtain hangs over the church, through which we strive vainly to look; and when at last it rises, about 120 A.D. with the writings of the earliest church fathers, we find a church in many aspects very different from that in the days of St. Peter and St. Paul” (The Story of the Christian Church, 1970, p. 33).*

• "No Apostle would have dreamed of thinking that there are three divine Persons" (Emil Brunner, Christian Doctrine of God, Dogmatics, Vol. 1, p. 226).
• "Theologians agree that the New Testament also does not contain an explicit doctrine of the Trinity" (Encyclopedia of Religion, Vol. 15, p. 54).
• "The New Testament writers...give us no formal or formulated doctrine of the Trinity, no explicit teaching that in one God there are three equal divine persons.... Nowhere do we find any Trinitarian doctrine of three distinct subjects of divine life and activity in the same Godhead" (Fortman, The Triune God, pp. xv, xvi, 16).
• "Neither the word Trinity nor the explicit doctrine appears in the New Testament" (The New Encyclopedia Britannica, 1985, Vol. 11, p. 928).
• "As far as the New Testament is concerned one does not find in it an actual doctrine of the Trinity" (Bernard Lohse, A Short History of Christian Doctrine, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966, p. 38).
• "The New Testament does not contain the developed doctrine of the Trinity" (The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, ed. Colin Brown, Zondervan, 1976, Vol. 2, p. 84).
• "The Bible lacks the express declaration that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are of equal essence" (Karl Barth, cited in the New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, above).
• "Jesus Christ never mentioned such a phenomenon, and nowhere in the New Testament does the word Trinity appear. The idea was only adopted by the Church three hundred years after the death of our Lord" (Arthur Weigall, The Paganism in our Christianity, G.P. Putnam and Sons, 1928, p. 198).
• "Primitive Christianity did not have an explicit doctrine of the Trinity such as was subsequently elaborated in the creeds" (New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, Vol. 2, p. 84).
• "The early Christians, however, did not at first think of applying the TRINITY idea to their own faith. They paid their devotions to God the Father and to Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and they recognized the...Holy Spirit; but there was no thought of these three being an actual Trinity, coequal and united in One" (Arthur Weigall, The Paganism in Our Christianity, p. 197).
• "At first the Christian faith was not Trinitarian…It was not so in the apostolic and sub-apostolic ages, as reflected in the New Testament and other early Christian writings" (Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, ed. James Hastings, 1922, Vol. 12, p. 461).
• "The formulation ‘One God in three Persons’ was not solidly established, certainly not fully assimilated into Christian life and its profession of faith, prior to the end of the 4th century.... Among the Apostolic Fathers, there had been nothing even remotely approaching such a mentality or perspective" (New Catholic Encyclopedia, 1967, Vol. 14, p. 299).
• "Fourth-century Trinitarianism did not reflect accurately early Christian teaching regarding the nature of God; it was, on the contrary a deviation from this teaching" (The Encyclopedia Americana, p. 1956, p. 2941).
• "The New Testament gives no inkling of the teaching of Chalcedon. That council not only reformulated in other language the New Testament data about Jesus’ constitution, but also reconceptualized it in the light of the current Greek philosophical thinking. And that reconceptualization and reformulation go well beyond the New Testament data" (A Christological Catechism, Paulist Press, p. 102).\

Is Jesus God?

Jesus never said "I am God." He always claimed to be the Messiah, the Son of God.

• "Jesus is not God but God’s representative, and, as such, so completely and totally acts on God’s behalf that he stands in God’s stead before the world…The gospel [of John] clearly states that God and Jesus are not to be understood as identical persons, as in 14:28, ‘the Father is greater than I’" (Jacob Jervell, Jesus in the Gospel of John, 1984, p. 21).
• "Apparently Paul did not call Jesus God" (Sydney Cave, D.D., Doctrine of the Person of Christ, p. 48).
• "Paul habitually differentiates Christ from God" (C.J. Cadoux, A Pilgrim’s Further Progress, pp. 40, 42).
• "Paul never equates Jesus with God" (W.R. Matthews, The Problem of Christ in the 20th Century, Maurice Lectures, 1949, p. 22).
• "Paul never gives to Christ the name or description of ‘God’" (Dictionary of the Apostolic Church, Vol. 1, p. 194).
• "When the New Testament writers speak of Jesus Christ, they do not speak of Him nor do they think of Him as God" (J.M. Creed, The Divinity of Jesus Christ, pp. 122-123).
• "Karl Rahner [leading Roman Catholic spokesman] points out with so much emphasis that the Son in the New Testament is never described as ‘ho theos’ [the one God]" (A.T. Hanson, Grace and Truth, p. 66).
• "The clear evidence of John is that Jesus refuses the claim to be God…Jesus vigorously denied the blasphemy of being God or His substitute" (J.A.T. Robinson, Twelve More New Testament Studies, pp. 175, 176).
• "In his post-resurrection heavenly life, Jesus is portrayed as retaining a personal individuality every bit as distinct and separate from the person of God as was his in his life on earth as the terrestrial Jesus. Alongside God and compared with God, he appears, indeed, as yet another heavenly being in God’s heavenly court, just as the angels were — though as God’s Son, he stands in a different category, and ranks far above them" (Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 1967-68, Vol. 50, p. 258).
• "What, however, is said of his life and functions as the celestial Christ neither means nor implies that in divine status he stands on a par with God Himself and is fully God. On the contrary, in the New Testament picture of his heavenly person and ministry we behold a figure both separate from and subordinate to God" (Ibid., pp. 258, 259).
• "The fact has to be faced that New Testament research over, say, the last thirty or forty years has been leading an increasing number of reputable New Testament scholars to the conclusion that Jesus...certainly never believed himself to be God" (Ibid., p. 251).
• "When [first-century Christians] assigned Jesus such honorific titles as Christ, Son of Man, Son of God and Lord, these were ways of saying not that he was God but that he did God’s work" (Ibid., p. 250).
• "The ancients made a wrong use of [John 10:30, "I and the Father are one"] to prove that Christ is...of the same essence with the Father. For Christ does not argue about the unity of substance, but about the agreement that he has with the Father" (John Calvin, Commentary on John).
• "The Pauline Christ who accomplishes the work of salvation is a personality who is both human and superhuman, not God, but the Son of God. Here the idea, which was to develop later, of the union of the two natures is not present" (Maurice Goguel, Jesus and the Origins of Christianity, Harper, 1960).
• "Jesus is never identified simpliciter [absolutely] with God, since the early Christians were not likely to confuse Jesus with God the Father" (Howard Marshall, "Jesus as Lord: The Development of the Concept," in Eschatology in the New Testament, Hendrickson, p. 144).

Is the Holy Spirit a Third Person?

It is completely misleading to read into the Bible a third Person, the Holy Spirit. "The spirit of Elijah" (Luke 1:17) is not a different person from Elijah. Nor is "the Spirit of God" a different person from the Father. The Holy Spirit is the operational presence of the mind and influence of God as well as His character. It is God extended to His creation.

• "Although this spirit is often described in personal terms, it seems quite clear that the sacred writers [of the Hebrew Scriptures] never conceived or presented this spirit as a distinct person" (Edmund Fortman, The Triune God, p. 9).
• "Nowhere in the Old Testament do we find any clear indication of a Third Person" (The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1912, Vol. 15, p. 49).
• "The Jews never regarded the spirit as a person; nor is there any solid evidence that any Old Testament writer held this view…The Holy Spirit is usually presented in the Synoptic gospels (Matt., Mark, Luke) and in Acts as a divine force or power" (Edmund Fortman, The Triune God, pp. 6, 15).
• "The Old Testament clearly does not envisage God’s spirit as a person…God’s spirit is simply God’s power. If it is sometimes represented as being distinct from God, it is because the breath of Yahweh acts exteriorly…The majority of New Testament texts reveal God’s spirit as something, not someone; this is especially seen in the parallelism between the spirit and the power of God" (New Catholic Encyclopedia, 1967, Vol. 13, pp. 574, 575).
• "On the whole the New Testament, like the Old, speaks of the spirit as a divine energy or power" (W.E. Addis and Thomas Arnold, A Catholic Dictionary, 1960, p. 810).
• "The third Person was asserted at a Council of Alexandria in 362...and finally by the Council of Constantinople of 381" (A Catholic Dictionary, p. 812).
• "[Matt. 28:19] proves only that there are the three subjects named,...but it does not prove, by itself, that all the three belong necessarily to the divine nature, and possess equal divine honor…This text, taken by itself, would not prove decisively either the personality of the three subjects mentioned, or their equality or divinity" (McClintock and Strong, Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature, 1987, Vol. X, p. 552).

Is the Trinity in the Old Testament?

• "There is in the Old Testament no indication of distinctions in the Godhead; it is an anachronism to find either the doctrine of the Incarnation or that of the Trinity in its pages" ("God," Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. 6, p. 254).
• "Theologians today are in agreement that the Hebrew Bible does not contain a doctrine of the Trinity" (The Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Mircea Eliade, Macmillan Publishing Company, 1987, Vol. 15, p. 54).
• "The doctrine of the Trinity is not taught in the Old Testament" (New Catholic Encyclopedia, 1967, Vol. XIV, p. 306).
• "The Old Testament tells us nothing explicitly or by necessary implication of a Triune God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit... There is no evidence that any sacred writer even suspected the existence of a [Trinity] within the Godhead... Even to see in the Old Testament suggestions or foreshadowings or ‘veiled signs’ of the Trinity of persons, is to go beyond the words and intent of the sacred writers" (Edmund J. Fortman, The Triune God, Baker Book House, 1972, pp. xv, 8, 9).
• "The Old Testament is strictly monotheistic. God is a single personal being. The idea that a Trinity is to be found there is utterly without foundation." (L.L. Paine, A Critical History of the Evolution of Trinitarianism, Houghton Mifflin, and Co, 1900.)
• "There is no break between the Old Testament and the New. The monotheistic tradition is continued. Jesus was a Jew, trained by Jewish parents in the Old Testament scriptures. His teaching was Jewish to the core; a new gospel indeed but not a new theology…And he accepted as his own belief the great text of Jewish monotheism: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one God" (L.L. Paine, A Critical History of the Evolution of Trinitarianism, Houghton Mifflin, and Co., 1900, p. 4).
• "The Old Testament can scarcely be used as authority for the existence of distinctions within the Godhead. The use of ‘us’ by the divine speaker (Gen. 1:26, 3:32, 11:7) is strange, but it is perhaps due to His consciousness of being surrounded by other beings of a loftier order than men (Isa. 6:8)" (A.B. Davidson, "God," Hastings Dictionary of the Bible, Vol. II, p. 205).
• "From Philo onward, Jewish commentators have generally held that the plural [Gen. 1:26, ‘Let us make man....’] is used because God is addressing his heavenly court, i.e., the angels (cf. Isa. 6:8). [This is also the explanation given by the NIV Study Bible] From the Epistle of Barnabas and Justin Martyr, who saw the plural as a reference to Christ, Christians have traditionally seen this verse as foreshadowing the Trinity. It is now universally admitted that this was not what the plural meant to the original author" (Gordon Wenham, Word Commentary on Genesis, p. 27).

2. Believers being able to handle snakes and drink deadly poison The New Testament manuscripts for the Gospel of Mark have multiple endings. The shortest ending is found in the oldest complete copies of the New Testament, known as the Vaticanus (350 CE) and Sinaiticus (360 CE), which stop at verse 16:8. Most of the later manuscripts contain some additional verses, Mark 16:9-20, which are not always the same and seem to have been added to the Gospel at later points in time. It is these additional verses that mention that believing Christians will be able to survive handling snakes and drinking deadly poison: And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name, they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.” [Mark 16:17-18]It’s because of these verses that there are churches in America that handle venomous snakes as a test of faith. Sadly, many Christians have died doing such acts.Here is the footnote regarding the ending of Mark’s Gospel from the New International Version of the Bible:The earliest manuscripts and some other ancient witnesses do not have verses 9–20. Nowhere else in the New Testament does it say that believers will be able to survive handling snakes and drinking deadly poison.

3. The story of the adulteressJohn 8:2-11 is the story of a woman that is about to be stoned on the accusation of adultery. In these verses, Jesus, when questioned about her punishment, utters the famous words “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone”. This whole story is another later addition as the earliest New Testament manuscripts do not contain it. In fact, the story does not even exist in any manuscripts before the 5th century, and the vast majority of those prior to the 8th century lack the story. Here is a footnote regarding this verse from the New International Version of the Bible: The earliest manuscripts and many other ancient witnesses do not have John 7:53—8:11. A few manuscripts include these verses, wholly or in part, after John 7:36, John 21:25, Luke 21:38 or Luke 24:53. Without these verses, we can find no other examples of Jesus not following the Old Testament laws dealing with crime and punishment.

4. Jesus and omniscience So far we have looked at examples where the scribes have added words to the New Testament. In this example, we look at a case where words have been removed. Here is Matthew 24:36 as read in the New International Version of the Bible: But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. [Matthew 24:36]Now, contrast this with the reading in the King James Version which is missing the words “nor the Son”:

But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. [Matthew 24:36]Note that in the Greek manuscripts that the KJV are based upon, the words “nor the son” have been omitted. Here is a footnote regarding this verse from the New International Version of the Bible:

Some manuscripts do not have nor the Son. The NIV contains the correct reading. The words “nor the son” should be included because it is represented by the best and earliest manuscript (Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus) and it is also present in Mark 13:32. The evidence suggests that the omission in the later manuscripts was a theologically motivated change by scribes in order to preserve Jesus’ omniscience because they didn’t like the idea that Jesus is inferior to God in knowledge.**What the Qur'an has to say about the Gospel?**And We sent, following in their footsteps, Jesus, the son of Mary, confirming that which came before him in the Torah; and We gave him the Gospel, in which was guidance and light and confirming that which preceded it of the Torah as guidance and instruction for the righteous. [Qur’an 5:46]The verse above shows that the Qur’an speaks of the original revelation given to Jesus, peace be upon him, in an extremely positive light. The original Gospel is described as being “guidance” and a “light”, just as all divinely inspired Scriptures are. The Qur’an also confirms that the Christians, who were entrusted with safeguarding the Gospel, were responsible for corrupting it: So woe to those who write the “scripture” with their own hands, then say, “This is from Allah,” in order to exchange it for a small price. Woe to them for what their hands have written and woe to them for what they earn. [Qur'an 2:79]This verse of the Qur’an would have sounded like a conspiracy theory to most Christians living in the 7th century. Today there is a remarkable convergence of what the Qur’an says about the Gospel and what modern scholarship says. Today we see this Qur’anic verse with its historical insight vindicated by manuscript discoveries and advances in textual criticism. Today various Biblical scholars are affirming that people wrote it with their own hands and attributed it to Jesus and thus to God.

Conclusion I invite Christians to ponder the following point. If God wanted you, and indeed the whole of mankind, to have the original words of the New Testament, then why didn’t He preserve the words? As has been demonstrated above, the modern-day New Testament is not the pure words of God as originally revealed to Jesus, but rather the corrupted words of copyists and scribes. The answer to the question of why God did not preserve the original revelation given to Jesus is that it was only ever meant to be a time-bound message which served as a temporary placeholder until the coming of the Qur’an. It is only the Qur’an, God Almighty’s last and final revelation to mankind, that is timeless. God has promised mankind that He will protect and preserve the Qur’an: Indeed, it is We who sent down the Qur’an and indeed, We will be its guardian. [Qur'an 15:9]

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