Yo! The word 'Trinity' is not even found in the Bible!

[7djengo7]

Despite the fact that the words 'Trinity' and 'Triune' are nowhere to be found in the Bible (as has been so often pointed out by many attention-begging simpletons who've loudly earned a right to the title, "Captain Obvious"), we, nevertheless, find many people teaching that God is NOT a Trinity, that God is NOT Triune.

We hear it said that the fact that the word 'Trinity' is not in the Bible entails that the doctrine named by the word 'Trinity' was not taught by God's prophets and apostles in the Bible. It is, when you think about it for a minute, really quite amusing, to see how anti-Trinitarians are shooting themselves in the foot by imagining they have a boast in the absence of the word 'Trinity' in the Bible.

We hear it said that the apostles of Christ never even heard of the Trinity. Is that so? Well, then, it necessarily follows that the apostles of Christ never preached against, nor wrote against, the Trinity; the apostles of Christ were never anti-Trinitarians. For an anti-Trinitarian to tell you that the apostles of Christ never even heard of the Trinity is for the anti-Trinitarian to concede that the Bible is absolutely useless for the purpose of combating Trinitarianism.

We hear it said that the Trinity was an invention of the fourth century. Is that so? That would necessitate that anti-Trinitarianism was, also, invented no earlier than the fourth century; that there were no anti-Trinitarians prior to the fourth century.

 

[Bradley D]

God, His Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit all have something in common. I believe that is Spirit (pneuma). How that works I do not believe anyone will be able explain that perfectly here on earth. Perhaps the concept of trinity was an attempt to do so.

 

[assuranceagent]

God, His Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit all have something in common. I believe that is Spirit (pneuma). How that works I do not believe anyone will be able explain that perfectly here on earth. Perhaps the concept of trinity was an attempt to do so.

Merely "having something in common," as though God were not a unity and could be divided into parts, some of which were shared among the persons of the Trinity, fails the test of orthodoxy. Further, saying that "WHAT" they have in common is Pneuma, when one of the persons is, in fact, the Holy Spirit and God is said to BE Spirit begs the question whether Pneuma is something each person can HAVE, or whether it is something each person or some persons ARE.

God is eternal Trinity. Three persons, one essence. The Father is not the Son. The Son is not the Spirit. The Spirit is not the Father. Yet all are God and God is one. This is the orthodox confession of the doctrine articulated in the Athanasian creed. And since the early creeds were codifications of currently confessed doctrines at their time, and not in any way formulation of new doctrine, I think it's not only safe, but essential to confess the Trinity as that which has been held "everywhere, always, and by all" who hold to Christian orthodoxy. It's a hill we die on.

That's the confessional argument, but beyond that, it can be argued logically and theologically that the Trinity is absolutely essential for our faith and for biblical teaching to cohere in the first place, not to mention its necessity for the intelligibility of worldview. But those are longer and more involved arguments that I don't have time to expand upon right now in this, my first post on TOL in like a million years.