Can someone fill me in on which verses are used to support the idea of the Trinity?
Thank you,
-Ben
Well, there’s Mathew 28:19:
And here’s a link to the 1917 Catholic Encyclopedia’s take on the question. They clearly regard Matthew 28:19 as important, but also discuss some other New Testament passages.
This being Great Debates, we can no doubt have a lively discussion about just when some of those passages were written and so forth. The exact nature of the relationship between Jesus the Messiah and God the Father was one which the early Christians kicked around quite a bit; even those who agreed on the basic idea of “God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit” wound up having some lengthy discussions of what exactly all that means in the context of a monotheistic religion.
Since I’m not sure what Ben’s question really is, it’s best to start simply. If Ben is really content, in this ONE case, to accept the Bible as documentation…
The word “Trinity” is never used in the Bible. But the three members of the Trinity are well documented.
First, there’s Yahweh, the one and only god, the creator of Heaven and Earth. He’s the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He’s the god that Jesus calls the Father. I think we can all agree that He’s well documented in the Old Testament.
Second, there’s Jesus, the Son. His life, words, and deeds are chronicled in the Gospels. Read the Gospels, and then accept them as true, or dismiss them as fantasy- but it’s pretty obvious from the Gospels why early Christians concluded that Jesus Himself was divine.
Third, there’s the Holy Spirit, whose coming Jesus foretells in the Gospels, and whose coming is documented in the Pentecost story in Acts of the Apostles.
Now that we have our Trinity components down, other questions arise. Are Yahweh, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit three different gods? Does that make Christianity a polytheistic religion? The answer is no- Christians believe there is exactly one god, who has chosen to manifest himself to humanity in three forms: the aforementioned Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This one God made himself know to the Jews, and gave them the Law. That same God chose to become human, in the person of Jesus. That same God sends forth his spirit through the sacraments (ALL Christians believe that Baptism is such a sacrament, some sects believe that Communion and other rites are, also).
Ben: Ask, and it shall be given you, as somebody said somewhere. 
Although the answer is not particularly useful…
Now, here’s where we get into problems. That’s a King James Version quote, translated from the Textus Receptus (best available recension of the Bible in the original languages as of 1600). However, with later discoveries of manuscripts and more critical analysis played, the following is how that bit reads with apparent late additions excised, from the New Revised Standard Version:
However, please note that until the late Nineteenth Century, the Textus Receptus was the authoritative Bible manuscript, and hence the KJV the authoritative English translation (among Protestants; I believe historically Catholics depended on the Vulgate during that period; Tom can speak to that if it matters to our point.)
So:
- A Trinitarian formula in the words of Jesus is found in the Great Commission (in MEBuckner’s post above).
- A precise definition of the Trinity is found in the First Epistle of John (according to the authoritative version of Scripture during the formative period of most denominations).
- A logical inference as to how three persons fit together as one God is made. Astorian represents the Antiochan interpretation of this quite clearly (nice job, by the way!); I dealt with the Alexandrine interpretation at this thread.
Be glad to go into this more, but in general almost all Christian churches, including the fundamentalists, are quite aware that the Trinity is not spelled out in Scripture – just implied in such a way that, according to their premises, it’s a foregone conclusion from what Scripture does say.
I myself find adherence to the Dogma of the Trinity as an element of faith to be an unnecessary excrescence. I believe in the Trinity – i.e., I believe in one God manifesting Himself (or, acceptably, Herself – the Godhead is beyond gender) in three distinct ways, and to leave the details of His internal organization to His own preferences.
Whether, of course, any of this bears relation to the real world is a separate debate – but I’ve tried to answer according to the spirit of the OP, which did not, to me, seem intended as polemic.
As regards the idea that the three are one and so on (not an intuitively logical concept; there is one god, but three persons, but each person is wholly God, not [sup]1[/sup]/[sub]3[/sub] of God, and there aren’t three Gods):
There are quite a number of instances where God (YHWH) is described as having done X (or being the only one who can do X) in the OT, but the NT says Jesus did X (or is the only one who can do X).
(I’ll find some examples of this later if you want me to).
Of course, it could be argued that these are merely contradictions, but I would disagree on the grounds that they appear deliberate.
And yet, Jesus draws a clear distinction that He apparently does not believe is trivial in this passage: “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” (Mark 13:32, cf Matthew 24:36). Poly, I’d be interested in the “official” take on this. I presume that mine is likely off-base.
Here’s a good example of what I mentioned:
Genesis 1:
Isaiah 44:
Isaiah 48:
John 1:
Just FTR, I’m not about to argue for a literal interpretation of biblical creation.
Generally, this is viewed as evidence that Jesus truly “put off” his Godhead to be fully human, so that while he was carrying out his ministry on earth, he was not aware of all the things which he certainly knew as God. (In this light, his miracles are the result of the Father acting through the faith that Jesus had in him.)
(There is, of course, no single interpretation that is accepted by all.)
The traditional Christian view is that Jesus, though divine, was fully human. And while he possessed a divine nature, and had knowledge of God’s thoughts and plans not available to other men, he was NOT born omniscient!
Baby Jesu didn’t know how to walk or talk- he had to learn those things the same way any little child does. Young Jesus couldn’t read- he had to learn that at school, like every other little Jewish boy.
Did Jesus know that America existed, that e = mc squared, that whales are mammals? Almost certainly not. He’d have had to learn those things the same way other people learned them.
Tom~ and Astorian give the gist of what is the “official” take on Jesus (AKA God the Son) having largely what is solely human knowledge (and being a person of his time and place).
The technical term for this putting off of divine knowledge is kenosis, which I understand is the Greek for “emptying.” The one point I’d add to what they said is that it would be the easiest thing in the world for an omnipotent God to make a humaniform golem to teach what He wanted taught – but the idea behind Jesus is a bit different: He became totally a human being, to show other humans what humanity is capable of. And in doing so, to show the love of God manifest in human form.
Advice given by Paul to the Christians at Philippi, which speaks very poetically to this idea:
Wow.
Turning the question on its head, one can readily identify which verses have bothered anti-Trinitarians. For instance, Isaac Newton wrote an unpublished work called An Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture specifically to cast doubt on two passages that could be used against his anti-Trintarian position. 1 John 5:7 has already been kicked about in the thread. The other was 1 Timothy 3:16
“And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit.”
(Authorised Version) As Newton’s title suggests, he regarded both passages as corruptions introduced into the unadulterated text.
Thanks, guys. The verses you gave answer my question nicely.
-Ben
In the original Greek manuscripts–Sinaitic, Vatican, Alexandrine–the entire text was in what we call today “capital” letters. (The lower-case Greek letters, I have read, are derived from quick writing of the capitals.)
The copyists used something of a shorthand system, understandable in an era when they didn’t have cut-and-paste, let alone letter type. For the Greek word, theos, “God,” this was the two Greek letters theta (a circle with a hyphenlike horizontal line in it) and sigma, then drawn like the Roman “C.” The modern Bible translations use “he” or perhaps “this one,” translating the Greek “hos.” And the abbreviated form of theos was drawn with a line over the two letters to indicate it was an abbreviation; I believe the same was done for Christos (Christ) and a few other words as well. It is easy to add the long line over the two letters and the short line in the letter omicron, the first letter in hos, to make it look like theta–much like a cattle rustler obliterating a brand on stolen cattle to hide the evidence. In fact, a microscopic examination of the passage 1 Timothy 3:16, mentioned above (translated “God was manifest in the flesh” in the Authorized Version) showed that the lines actually had been added there by a later hand!
A few other Bible texts not supporting the Trinity:
Exodus 33:20 (God speaking to Moses): “You are not able to see my face, for no one may see me and live.”
Habakkuk 1:12 (in more modern translations; the AV renders the text as emended by the Sopherim) “O my God, my holy one, you do not die.” (Cf. John 3:16, etc.)
Mark 15:34, AV: “And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?..My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
In John 10:30 Jesus did indeed say, “I and the Father are one.” In 17:22, however, he prayed that his disciples ‘may be one even as we [Almighty God and Jesus Christ] are one.’
In a discussion of Jesus’ mission in heaven after his time on earth, Paul (1 Cor. 15:28) notes that Jesus “will subject himself to him who subjected all things to him.”
John 14:28: “The Father is greater than I.” (The Greek word rendered “greater” here is meizon, which is translated in Strong’s Concordance as “greater.”
This sounds broadly consistent with Newton’s argument, which was that the word “God” did not appear here in the earliest manuscripts. For some reason, he blamed Macedonius, the patriarch of Constantinople banished in 512, for the later interpolation. (See The Newton Handbook by Derek Gjertsen, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986.)
Do you have a citation that the Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, Ephraemi, Borgianus, and several other texts were all modified by a later hand?
Nestle certainly indicates that hos is the preferred rendition despite the numerous versions that have theos, but I am curious about a claim that so many manuscripts were altered rather than simply assuming that most were copies of a single earlier error.
Originally posted by Tomndebb
You may be interested to know that, among others, the passages Mark 16:9-20 and John 7:53-8:11 appear in some texts and not in others. (This is why these two passages often appear in footnotes, or at least in brackets.) It was certainly one impetus leading to the development of printing, that whenever a manuscript was copied by hand, not only would old errors be retained, but new ones would creep in. (The spurious phrase at 1 John 5:7-8 appears in no Greek text before the 15th Century.)
Besides, the use of “God” instead of “he” at 1 Timothy 3:16 is not germane to the tone of Paul’s point here.
Originally posted by Tomndebb
You may be interested to know that, among others, the passages Mark 16:9-20 and John 7:53-8:11 appear in some texts and not in others. (This is why these two passages often appear in footnotes, or at least in brackets.) It was certainly one impetus leading to the development of printing, that whenever a manuscript was copied by hand, not only would old errors be retained, but new ones would creep in. (The spurious phrase at 1 John 5:7-8 appears in no Greek text before the 15th Century.)
Besides, the use of “God” instead of “he” at 1 Timothy 3:16 is not germane to the tone of Paul’s point here.
I apologize for entering that twice. The monitor I was using is slow to react. :o
I found the following series of articles by William Lane Craig to be very educational in this regard. I think that Dr. Craig was undeniably thorough in his treatment of this topic.
Greg Koukl of Stand To Reason also offers a vital discussion at this web page. Related articles can also be found here and here.