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1. "Hebrew and Muslim monotheism is unitarian - God exists as one being [one person]." - Encyclopedia International, Grolier, v. 8, 1966 ed.
2. "It seems unquestionable that the revelation of the mystery of the Trinity was not made to the Jews." - Dictionnaire de Theologie Catholique (Dictionary of Catholic Theology), quoted in 15 Aug. 1984 WT, p. 28.
3. "As we have seen, Christianity inherited the monotheism of Israel, but gradually developed it by the elaboration of the doctrine of the Trinity." - p. 619, v. 6, 1941, Encyclopedia Americana.
4. From its earliest development in Christendom down till today the trinity doctrine has been viewed with disdain by Jews as a clear contradiction of "the essence of Judaism." "It is at this point that the gulf between the Church and the synagogue opens before us in all its depth and significance .... The teaching of the divinity of Jesus Christ is an unpardonable offence in the eyes of Judaism." - The Jewish People and Jesus Christ, Jakob Jocz. (Awake! 6/22/91, p. 5)
5. "The dogma of the Trinity is of relatively recent date. There is no reference to it in the Old Testament .... One can even say that it is a conception foreign to primitive [earliest] Christianity." - Professor Louis Reau of the Sorbonne (France's leading university), in Iconographie de l' Art Chretien, v. 2, Book 1, p. 14. (See Awake! 22 Sept. 1962, p. 7.)
5a. "Exegetes and theologians today are in agreement that the Hebrew Bible [the Old Testament] does not contain a doctrine of the Trinity ... Although the Hebrew Bible depicts God as the father of Israel and employs personifications of God such as Word (davar), Spirit (ruah), Wisdom (hokhmah), and Presence (shekhinah), it would go beyond the intention and spirit of the Old Testament to correlate these notions with later trinitarian doctrine.
"Further, exegetes and theologians agree that the New Testament also does not contain an explicit doctrine of the Trinity. God the Father is source of all that is (Pantokrator) and also the father of Jesus Christ; `Father' is not a title for the first person of the Trinity but a synonym for God....
"It is incontestable that the [Trinity] doctrine cannot be established on scriptural evidence alone." - The Encyclopedia of Religion, Macmillan Publishing Co., 1987, volume 15, p. 54.
6. "Neither the word Trinity, nor the explicit doctrine as such, appears in the New Testament, nor did Jesus and his followers intend to contradict the Shema in the Old Testament: `Hear, O Israel: The Lord [Jehovah] our God is one Lord.' Deut. 6:4 .... 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." - The New Encyclopedia Britannica, 1985, Micropedia, vol. 11, p. 928. [see CREEDS for a discussion of some trinitarians' attacks on this quote.]
7. "Trinity, a word not found in Scripture but used to express the doctrine of the unity of God as subsisting in 3 distinct persons. Not only is the word `Trinity' not in Scripture, but there is no isolated exposition on this attribute of God in either testament. It is an inferred doctrine, gathered eclectically from the entire Canon." - p. 630 of the highly trinitarian publication, Today's Dictionary of the Bible, Bethany House Publishers, 1982.
8. "[The Trinity Doctrine] is not ... directly and immediately the word of God." - (p. 304) "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. But it is precisely this formulation that has first claim to the title the Trinitarian Dogma. Among the Apostolic Fathers [those very first Christians who had known and been taught by the Apostles and their disciples], there had been nothing even remotely approaching such a mentality or perspective." - New Catholic Encyclopedia, p. 299, v. 14, 1967.
9. "In the NT there is no direct suggestion of a doctrine of the Trinity." - p. 344, An Encyclopedia of Religion, Ferm (ed.), 1945.
10. The trinitarian reference work, The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, 1986, Zondervan, admits: "The NT does not contain the developed doctrine of the Trinity. `The Bible lacks the express declaration that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are of equal essence and therefore in an equal sense God himself. And the other express declaration is also lacking, that God is God thus and only thus, i.e. as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. These two express declarations which go beyond the witness of the Bible, are the twofold content of the Church doctrine of the Trinity.'.... It also lacks such terms as `trinity' ... and homoousios which featured in the Creed of Nicaea (325) to denote that Christ was of the same substance as the Father." And "All this underlines the point that primitive Christianity did not have an explicit doctrine of the trinity such as was subsequently elaborated in the creeds [after 325 A. D.] of the early church." - p. 84, v. 2.
11. "The earliest Apostolic teaching and the type of doctrine which seems long to have prevailed among the Churches of Judaic origin and cast was only to a very slight degree dogmatic and brought no enlarged or corrected doctrines touching the nature of God or the character of men. Indeed no New Testament authors ever approach these themes as if intending to communicate fresh truth, but rather to confirm and apply truth already commonly apprehended [including, of course the essential truth of exactly who our God really is - Jn 17:3; 2 Thess. 1:8; Ps. 83:18]." - p. 184, v. 20, Encyclopedia Americana, 1944, "New Testament Theology."
12. "The early form of the Apostle's Creed consisted of `I believe in God the Father Almighty, and in Christ Jesus his Son, our Lord, and in holy spirit, holy church, and resurrection of the flesh.'" - An Encyclopedia of Religion, Ferm (ed.), p. 208, 1945 ed. [see CREEDS study].
13. "... the doctrine of the Trinity was of gradual and comparatively late formation; that it had its origin in a source entirely foreign from that of the Jewish and Christian scriptures; that it grew up, and was ingrafted on Christianity, through the hands of the Platonizing Fathers; that in the time of Justin [c. 100-165 A. D.], and long after, the distinct nature and inferiority [in comparison to the Father only, of course] of the Son were universally taught; and that only the first shadowy outline of the Trinity had then become visible." – p. 34, The Church of the First Three Centuries, Alvan Lamson, D.D. (see WT 15 Oct. 1978, p. 32.)
14. The Illustrated Bible Dictionary (Protestant) says: "The word Trinity is not found in the Bible .... It did not find a place formally in the theology of the church till the 4th century .... Although scripture does not give us a formulated doctrine of the Trinity, it contains all the elements out of which theology has constructed the doctrine."
15. "The trinity of persons within the unity of nature is defined in terms of `person' and `nature' which are G[reek] philosophical terms; actually the terms do not appear in the Bible. The trinitarian definitions arose as the result of long controversies in which these terms and others such as `essence' and `substance' were erroneously applied to God by some theologians." - Dictionary of the Bible (Macmillan Publishing Co., New York, 1965), p. 899.
16. Weigall relates many instances of the trinity concept in pre-Christian pagan religions and then states: "The early Christians, however, did not at first think of applying the idea to their own faith." And, "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; and the origin of the conception is entirely pagan." - The Paganism in our Christianity, pp. 197,198, Arthur Weigall.
16a. “By the middle of the 3rd century A.D. the churches had either departed from, or had travestied certain doctrines of the Christian faith. In order to increase the prestige of the apostate ecclesiastical system pagans were received into the churches apart from regeneration by faith, and were permitted largely to retain their pagan signs and symbols.” - p. 248, An Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, W.E. Vine (trinitarian),Thomas Nelson, Inc.
17. "When the writers of the New Testament speak of God they mean the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. When they speak of Jesus Christ, they do not speak of him nor do they think of him as God." - John M. Creed, Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge, in his book, The Divinity of Christ, p. 123. The clear distinction between the only true God and his Messiah, however, is (if possible) even more obvious in the Old Testament.
18. "That the historical Jesus did not present himself as God incarnate is accepted by all [theologians] ... Christian laymen today are not fully aware of it." And "[Jesus] did not teach the doctrine of the trinity." - John Hick, Professor of Theology at Birmingham University, in The Myth of God Incarnate (See 1977 WT, p. 687.)
19. "If Paganism was conquered by Christianity, it is equally true that Christianity was corrupted by paganism. The pure Deism of the first Christians (who differed from their fellow Jews only in the belief that Jesus was the promised Messiah) was changed by the Church at Rome, into the incomprehensible dogma of the trinity. Many of the pagan tenets, invented by the Egyptians and idealized by Plato, were retained as being worthy of belief." - The History of Christianity, (Preface by Eckler).
20. "Christianity did not destroy Paganism; it adopted it .... From Egypt came the ideas of a divine trinity, …. the adoration of the Mother and Child…." – p. 595, The Story of Civilization: vol. 3, Simon and Schuster Inc., by noted author and historian Will Durant.
21. "A passage in the work `Against Heresies,' written by Saint Irenaeus, who died about 202 .... says of the Christians of his day: `All teach one and the same God the Father, and believe the same oeconomy [`creator's plan'] of the incarnation of the Son of God, and know the same gift of the Spirit, and meditate on the same precepts, and maintain the same form of constitution with respect to the Church...'" - p. 174, vol. 8, 1944, Encyclopedia Americana. - Irenaeus also wrote: "But there is only one God .... he is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ [compare John 17:1, 3, NEB]." - p. 111 of A Short History of the Early Church, by strong trinitarian Dr. H. R. Boer, 1976. Even trinitarian historian W. H. C. Frend admits: "Irenaeus's monotheism was Hebraic rather than Greek" - p. 245, The Rise of Christianity, Fortress Press, 1985. - See the CREEDS study, "Irenaeus."
22. "Wherever in the New Testament the relationship of Jesus to God, the Father, is brought into consideration, whether with reference to his appearance as a man or to his Messianic status, it is conceived of and represented categorically as subordination [to God]." - Professor Martin Werner of the University of Bern, writing in The Formation of Christian Dogma, 1957.
23. "[In the early days of Christianity] one believed in the Father, in the Son and in the Holy Spirit, but no tie was available to unite them together. They were mentioned separately. Prayers were addressed, for example, to the Father who `alone,' according to the statement of Clement of Rome, `was God' [cf. Jn 17:3, NEB; 1 Cor 8:6]." - Revue d' Histoire et de Litterature Religieuses (Review of History and of Religious Literature), May-June, 1906, pp. 222, 223. (See Awake! 22 Sept., 1962, p. 7.) "Clement, St., Pope of Rome (ca. 92-101) .... St. Clement is looked upon as the first of the `Apostolic Fathers'." - p. 177, An Encyclopedia of Religion.
The writing of Clement of Rome is "the earliest and most valuable surviving example of Christian literature outside the New Testament" and "was widely known and held in very great esteem by the early Church. It was publicly read in numerous churches, and regarded as being almost on a level with the inspired scriptures." - pp. 17, 22, Early Christian Writings, Staniforth, Dorset Press, New York.
24. Cardinal Newman was "one of the most influential English Catholics of all time ... universally revered at the time of his death." - The Columbia Viking Desk Encyclopedia, 1968, v. 2, p. 758. Cardinal Newman wrote that the Christian creeds before Constantine's time (4th century A. D.) did not make any mention of a trinity understanding. "They made mention indeed of a Three; but that there is any mystery in the doctrine, that they are coequal, co-eternal, all increate, all omnipotent, all incomprehensible, is not stated, and never could be gathered from them." - The Development of Christian Doctrine, p. 15. (See Awake! 8 Jan. 1973, p. 16.)
25. The Apostles' Creed (and other very early creeds) grew out of very early baptismal questions. "Around the year A. D. 200, the candidate for baptism answered questions before being baptized as follows:
"[1] Do you believe in God the Father Almighty? [Answer:] I believe.
"[2] Do you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was born of the Holy Spirit and the ****** Mary, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate and died, and rose the third day living from the dead, and ascended into heaven and sat down at the right hand of the Father [Ps. 110, Acts 2:32-36], and will come to judge the living and the dead? [Answer:] I believe.
"[3] Do you believe in the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Church, and the resurrection of the flesh? [Answer:] I believe.
"This form of questioning the candidate began in Rome. In the course of time, questions were changed into a statement or declaration. The beginning of the Apostles' Creed is found in this development. For a long time the creed that came into being in this way was known as the Roman Creed. [This earliest Roman Creed was still in substantial agreement with the above Baptismal Questions even as late as 341 A. D. - see The International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia, vol. 1, p. 204, Eerdmans.] As need arose, other beliefs were added. The form in which the Apostles' Creed exists today dates from about the fifth century." - A Short History of the Early Church, Dr. H. R. Boer (Trinitarian), pp. 75-76, 1976, Eerdmans Publishing Co. (Cf. p. 280, Augustus to Constantine, Robert M. Grant, Harper & Row, 1990.)
An Encyclopedia of Religion confirms the above and adds that "in the fourth century, the myth of composition by the twelve apostles appears." And, "The final form of the Apostles' Creed was reached in Gaul whence it returned to Rome in the eighth century. The traditional text can hardly be traced beyond the sixth century". - pp. 33, 208, 1945 ed.
Here then, is the true confession of the earliest Christian congregations in Rome itself. These are the beliefs one must have before he can even be baptized! Number one, of course, is that most essential question: `Who is the God you worship?' It is "God the Father Almighty"!
Certainly, if there had been any thought in the Christian community of this city (that over 100 years later would force the teaching of a trinity concept upon the entire church) the question would have been something like "Do you believe in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit who are Almighty?" or "Do you believe God is one and God is three: The Father, The Son, The Holy Spirit?"!!
But there is no suggestion of such a thing. God is "God the Father Almighty" - period!!
Then we go to question #2 in these essential baptismal questions. It is entirely about Jesus but in no way even implies that he is God or equal to God! In fact, it clearly designates him as separate from God ("Son of God") and, of course, separate from the Father, who is God (Jesus sat down at the right hand of the Father). Certainly, if Jesus were thought to be God, it would have been as clearly stated in this question as were the other required beliefs about Jesus in this question that a candidate must answer before being baptized!
Then we go to question #3. Do we see even a hint of the essential knowledge of a 3-in-one God: that the Holy Spirit is a person who is equally God? No! In fact, we see a question dealing with important things!
Question number one deals with the most important belief about the individual who, alone, is the God we must worship.
Question number two is a question about the second most important belief (and about the second most important person in existence).
And question number three is about the next most important beliefs: The holy spirit, The holy church, and the resurrection. That these three things are lumped together is highly significant!
A trinitarian might say (although clearly false from context alone) that each of the three questions deals with one aspect of the Trinity. But question number three alone shows the falsity of such a statement. If this question were truly speaking of believing in the Godhood of the Holy Spirit, it certainly would not include the church and the resurrection equally in that very same statement.
Now notice this admission by another trinitarian scholar and church historian:
"Besides Scripture and tradition one finds at the end of the second century another entity of fundamental significance for the doctrine of the church, namely the creed .... One of the oldest creeds to be canonized in a particular church was the old Roman baptismal creed, which is generally designated as Romanum (R) .... an early form of this confession read as follows:
"`I believe in God, the Father, the Almighty;
And in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord,
And in the Holy Ghost, the holy church, the resurrection of the flesh.'
"In this form the old Roman confession probably originated not later than the middle of the second century." Toward the end of the 2nd century the information about Jesus (`who was born of the Holy Spirit, etc.' as found in the quote from trinitarian Boer above) was added to R. "More or less similar creeds were extant in most of the Christian congregations of the West .... Later the wording of R became generally accepted in the West." The East (the original home of Judaism and Christianity), however, had a slightly different form. The original eastern creed read as follows:
"`I believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, of whom everything [else] is,
and in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, through whom everything [else] is,
and in the Holy Ghost.'
".... Hence the formula of faith was intended primarily for the instruction of candidates for baptism. This leads to a further point, namely, that the creed functioned as a formal summary of the Christian faith. It was the criterion of faith upon which catechetical instruction was based." - pp. 33-35, A Short History of Christian Doctrine, Bernard Lohse, Fortress Press, 1985.
Please notice that this "summary of the Christian faith" hundreds of years after the death of Christ affirms one God only: the Father only!
So, just as the complete lack of any single clear statement of a trinity idea for the all-important knowledge of God (Jn 17:3) in the entire Bible shows that the Bible writers did not believe any such thing, so does the complete lack of such a suggestion in the baptismal questions about the most important, basic beliefs of a Christian 100 years after the last book of Scripture had been written also show that these early Christians (even in Rome at that time) had no concept of a three-in-one (or even a two-in-one) God!!
1. "Hebrew and Muslim monotheism is unitarian - God exists as one being [one person]." - Encyclopedia International, Grolier, v. 8, 1966 ed.
2. "It seems unquestionable that the revelation of the mystery of the Trinity was not made to the Jews." - Dictionnaire de Theologie Catholique (Dictionary of Catholic Theology), quoted in 15 Aug. 1984 WT, p. 28.
3. "As we have seen, Christianity inherited the monotheism of Israel, but gradually developed it by the elaboration of the doctrine of the Trinity." - p. 619, v. 6, 1941, Encyclopedia Americana.
4. From its earliest development in Christendom down till today the trinity doctrine has been viewed with disdain by Jews as a clear contradiction of "the essence of Judaism." "It is at this point that the gulf between the Church and the synagogue opens before us in all its depth and significance .... The teaching of the divinity of Jesus Christ is an unpardonable offence in the eyes of Judaism." - The Jewish People and Jesus Christ, Jakob Jocz. (Awake! 6/22/91, p. 5)
5. "The dogma of the Trinity is of relatively recent date. There is no reference to it in the Old Testament .... One can even say that it is a conception foreign to primitive [earliest] Christianity." - Professor Louis Reau of the Sorbonne (France's leading university), in Iconographie de l' Art Chretien, v. 2, Book 1, p. 14. (See Awake! 22 Sept. 1962, p. 7.)
5a. "Exegetes and theologians today are in agreement that the Hebrew Bible [the Old Testament] does not contain a doctrine of the Trinity ... Although the Hebrew Bible depicts God as the father of Israel and employs personifications of God such as Word (davar), Spirit (ruah), Wisdom (hokhmah), and Presence (shekhinah), it would go beyond the intention and spirit of the Old Testament to correlate these notions with later trinitarian doctrine.
"Further, exegetes and theologians agree that the New Testament also does not contain an explicit doctrine of the Trinity. God the Father is source of all that is (Pantokrator) and also the father of Jesus Christ; `Father' is not a title for the first person of the Trinity but a synonym for God....
"It is incontestable that the [Trinity] doctrine cannot be established on scriptural evidence alone." - The Encyclopedia of Religion, Macmillan Publishing Co., 1987, volume 15, p. 54.
6. "Neither the word Trinity, nor the explicit doctrine as such, appears in the New Testament, nor did Jesus and his followers intend to contradict the Shema in the Old Testament: `Hear, O Israel: The Lord [Jehovah] our God is one Lord.' Deut. 6:4 .... 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." - The New Encyclopedia Britannica, 1985, Micropedia, vol. 11, p. 928. [see CREEDS for a discussion of some trinitarians' attacks on this quote.]
7. "Trinity, a word not found in Scripture but used to express the doctrine of the unity of God as subsisting in 3 distinct persons. Not only is the word `Trinity' not in Scripture, but there is no isolated exposition on this attribute of God in either testament. It is an inferred doctrine, gathered eclectically from the entire Canon." - p. 630 of the highly trinitarian publication, Today's Dictionary of the Bible, Bethany House Publishers, 1982.
8. "[The Trinity Doctrine] is not ... directly and immediately the word of God." - (p. 304) "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. But it is precisely this formulation that has first claim to the title the Trinitarian Dogma. Among the Apostolic Fathers [those very first Christians who had known and been taught by the Apostles and their disciples], there had been nothing even remotely approaching such a mentality or perspective." - New Catholic Encyclopedia, p. 299, v. 14, 1967.
9. "In the NT there is no direct suggestion of a doctrine of the Trinity." - p. 344, An Encyclopedia of Religion, Ferm (ed.), 1945.
10. The trinitarian reference work, The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, 1986, Zondervan, admits: "The NT does not contain the developed doctrine of the Trinity. `The Bible lacks the express declaration that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are of equal essence and therefore in an equal sense God himself. And the other express declaration is also lacking, that God is God thus and only thus, i.e. as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. These two express declarations which go beyond the witness of the Bible, are the twofold content of the Church doctrine of the Trinity.'.... It also lacks such terms as `trinity' ... and homoousios which featured in the Creed of Nicaea (325) to denote that Christ was of the same substance as the Father." And "All this underlines the point that primitive Christianity did not have an explicit doctrine of the trinity such as was subsequently elaborated in the creeds [after 325 A. D.] of the early church." - p. 84, v. 2.
11. "The earliest Apostolic teaching and the type of doctrine which seems long to have prevailed among the Churches of Judaic origin and cast was only to a very slight degree dogmatic and brought no enlarged or corrected doctrines touching the nature of God or the character of men. Indeed no New Testament authors ever approach these themes as if intending to communicate fresh truth, but rather to confirm and apply truth already commonly apprehended [including, of course the essential truth of exactly who our God really is - Jn 17:3; 2 Thess. 1:8; Ps. 83:18]." - p. 184, v. 20, Encyclopedia Americana, 1944, "New Testament Theology."
12. "The early form of the Apostle's Creed consisted of `I believe in God the Father Almighty, and in Christ Jesus his Son, our Lord, and in holy spirit, holy church, and resurrection of the flesh.'" - An Encyclopedia of Religion, Ferm (ed.), p. 208, 1945 ed. [see CREEDS study].
13. "... the doctrine of the Trinity was of gradual and comparatively late formation; that it had its origin in a source entirely foreign from that of the Jewish and Christian scriptures; that it grew up, and was ingrafted on Christianity, through the hands of the Platonizing Fathers; that in the time of Justin [c. 100-165 A. D.], and long after, the distinct nature and inferiority [in comparison to the Father only, of course] of the Son were universally taught; and that only the first shadowy outline of the Trinity had then become visible." – p. 34, The Church of the First Three Centuries, Alvan Lamson, D.D. (see WT 15 Oct. 1978, p. 32.)
14. The Illustrated Bible Dictionary (Protestant) says: "The word Trinity is not found in the Bible .... It did not find a place formally in the theology of the church till the 4th century .... Although scripture does not give us a formulated doctrine of the Trinity, it contains all the elements out of which theology has constructed the doctrine."
15. "The trinity of persons within the unity of nature is defined in terms of `person' and `nature' which are G[reek] philosophical terms; actually the terms do not appear in the Bible. The trinitarian definitions arose as the result of long controversies in which these terms and others such as `essence' and `substance' were erroneously applied to God by some theologians." - Dictionary of the Bible (Macmillan Publishing Co., New York, 1965), p. 899.
16. Weigall relates many instances of the trinity concept in pre-Christian pagan religions and then states: "The early Christians, however, did not at first think of applying the idea to their own faith." And, "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; and the origin of the conception is entirely pagan." - The Paganism in our Christianity, pp. 197,198, Arthur Weigall.
16a. “By the middle of the 3rd century A.D. the churches had either departed from, or had travestied certain doctrines of the Christian faith. In order to increase the prestige of the apostate ecclesiastical system pagans were received into the churches apart from regeneration by faith, and were permitted largely to retain their pagan signs and symbols.” - p. 248, An Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, W.E. Vine (trinitarian),Thomas Nelson, Inc.
17. "When the writers of the New Testament speak of God they mean the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. When they speak of Jesus Christ, they do not speak of him nor do they think of him as God." - John M. Creed, Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge, in his book, The Divinity of Christ, p. 123. The clear distinction between the only true God and his Messiah, however, is (if possible) even more obvious in the Old Testament.
18. "That the historical Jesus did not present himself as God incarnate is accepted by all [theologians] ... Christian laymen today are not fully aware of it." And "[Jesus] did not teach the doctrine of the trinity." - John Hick, Professor of Theology at Birmingham University, in The Myth of God Incarnate (See 1977 WT, p. 687.)
19. "If Paganism was conquered by Christianity, it is equally true that Christianity was corrupted by paganism. The pure Deism of the first Christians (who differed from their fellow Jews only in the belief that Jesus was the promised Messiah) was changed by the Church at Rome, into the incomprehensible dogma of the trinity. Many of the pagan tenets, invented by the Egyptians and idealized by Plato, were retained as being worthy of belief." - The History of Christianity, (Preface by Eckler).
20. "Christianity did not destroy Paganism; it adopted it .... From Egypt came the ideas of a divine trinity, …. the adoration of the Mother and Child…." – p. 595, The Story of Civilization: vol. 3, Simon and Schuster Inc., by noted author and historian Will Durant.
21. "A passage in the work `Against Heresies,' written by Saint Irenaeus, who died about 202 .... says of the Christians of his day: `All teach one and the same God the Father, and believe the same oeconomy [`creator's plan'] of the incarnation of the Son of God, and know the same gift of the Spirit, and meditate on the same precepts, and maintain the same form of constitution with respect to the Church...'" - p. 174, vol. 8, 1944, Encyclopedia Americana. - Irenaeus also wrote: "But there is only one God .... he is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ [compare John 17:1, 3, NEB]." - p. 111 of A Short History of the Early Church, by strong trinitarian Dr. H. R. Boer, 1976. Even trinitarian historian W. H. C. Frend admits: "Irenaeus's monotheism was Hebraic rather than Greek" - p. 245, The Rise of Christianity, Fortress Press, 1985. - See the CREEDS study, "Irenaeus."
22. "Wherever in the New Testament the relationship of Jesus to God, the Father, is brought into consideration, whether with reference to his appearance as a man or to his Messianic status, it is conceived of and represented categorically as subordination [to God]." - Professor Martin Werner of the University of Bern, writing in The Formation of Christian Dogma, 1957.
23. "[In the early days of Christianity] one believed in the Father, in the Son and in the Holy Spirit, but no tie was available to unite them together. They were mentioned separately. Prayers were addressed, for example, to the Father who `alone,' according to the statement of Clement of Rome, `was God' [cf. Jn 17:3, NEB; 1 Cor 8:6]." - Revue d' Histoire et de Litterature Religieuses (Review of History and of Religious Literature), May-June, 1906, pp. 222, 223. (See Awake! 22 Sept., 1962, p. 7.) "Clement, St., Pope of Rome (ca. 92-101) .... St. Clement is looked upon as the first of the `Apostolic Fathers'." - p. 177, An Encyclopedia of Religion.
The writing of Clement of Rome is "the earliest and most valuable surviving example of Christian literature outside the New Testament" and "was widely known and held in very great esteem by the early Church. It was publicly read in numerous churches, and regarded as being almost on a level with the inspired scriptures." - pp. 17, 22, Early Christian Writings, Staniforth, Dorset Press, New York.
24. Cardinal Newman was "one of the most influential English Catholics of all time ... universally revered at the time of his death." - The Columbia Viking Desk Encyclopedia, 1968, v. 2, p. 758. Cardinal Newman wrote that the Christian creeds before Constantine's time (4th century A. D.) did not make any mention of a trinity understanding. "They made mention indeed of a Three; but that there is any mystery in the doctrine, that they are coequal, co-eternal, all increate, all omnipotent, all incomprehensible, is not stated, and never could be gathered from them." - The Development of Christian Doctrine, p. 15. (See Awake! 8 Jan. 1973, p. 16.)
25. The Apostles' Creed (and other very early creeds) grew out of very early baptismal questions. "Around the year A. D. 200, the candidate for baptism answered questions before being baptized as follows:
"[1] Do you believe in God the Father Almighty? [Answer:] I believe.
"[2] Do you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was born of the Holy Spirit and the ****** Mary, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate and died, and rose the third day living from the dead, and ascended into heaven and sat down at the right hand of the Father [Ps. 110, Acts 2:32-36], and will come to judge the living and the dead? [Answer:] I believe.
"[3] Do you believe in the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Church, and the resurrection of the flesh? [Answer:] I believe.
"This form of questioning the candidate began in Rome. In the course of time, questions were changed into a statement or declaration. The beginning of the Apostles' Creed is found in this development. For a long time the creed that came into being in this way was known as the Roman Creed. [This earliest Roman Creed was still in substantial agreement with the above Baptismal Questions even as late as 341 A. D. - see The International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia, vol. 1, p. 204, Eerdmans.] As need arose, other beliefs were added. The form in which the Apostles' Creed exists today dates from about the fifth century." - A Short History of the Early Church, Dr. H. R. Boer (Trinitarian), pp. 75-76, 1976, Eerdmans Publishing Co. (Cf. p. 280, Augustus to Constantine, Robert M. Grant, Harper & Row, 1990.)
An Encyclopedia of Religion confirms the above and adds that "in the fourth century, the myth of composition by the twelve apostles appears." And, "The final form of the Apostles' Creed was reached in Gaul whence it returned to Rome in the eighth century. The traditional text can hardly be traced beyond the sixth century". - pp. 33, 208, 1945 ed.
Here then, is the true confession of the earliest Christian congregations in Rome itself. These are the beliefs one must have before he can even be baptized! Number one, of course, is that most essential question: `Who is the God you worship?' It is "God the Father Almighty"!
Certainly, if there had been any thought in the Christian community of this city (that over 100 years later would force the teaching of a trinity concept upon the entire church) the question would have been something like "Do you believe in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit who are Almighty?" or "Do you believe God is one and God is three: The Father, The Son, The Holy Spirit?"!!
But there is no suggestion of such a thing. God is "God the Father Almighty" - period!!
Then we go to question #2 in these essential baptismal questions. It is entirely about Jesus but in no way even implies that he is God or equal to God! In fact, it clearly designates him as separate from God ("Son of God") and, of course, separate from the Father, who is God (Jesus sat down at the right hand of the Father). Certainly, if Jesus were thought to be God, it would have been as clearly stated in this question as were the other required beliefs about Jesus in this question that a candidate must answer before being baptized!
Then we go to question #3. Do we see even a hint of the essential knowledge of a 3-in-one God: that the Holy Spirit is a person who is equally God? No! In fact, we see a question dealing with important things!
Question number one deals with the most important belief about the individual who, alone, is the God we must worship.
Question number two is a question about the second most important belief (and about the second most important person in existence).
And question number three is about the next most important beliefs: The holy spirit, The holy church, and the resurrection. That these three things are lumped together is highly significant!
A trinitarian might say (although clearly false from context alone) that each of the three questions deals with one aspect of the Trinity. But question number three alone shows the falsity of such a statement. If this question were truly speaking of believing in the Godhood of the Holy Spirit, it certainly would not include the church and the resurrection equally in that very same statement.
Now notice this admission by another trinitarian scholar and church historian:
"Besides Scripture and tradition one finds at the end of the second century another entity of fundamental significance for the doctrine of the church, namely the creed .... One of the oldest creeds to be canonized in a particular church was the old Roman baptismal creed, which is generally designated as Romanum (R) .... an early form of this confession read as follows:
"`I believe in God, the Father, the Almighty;
And in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord,
And in the Holy Ghost, the holy church, the resurrection of the flesh.'
"In this form the old Roman confession probably originated not later than the middle of the second century." Toward the end of the 2nd century the information about Jesus (`who was born of the Holy Spirit, etc.' as found in the quote from trinitarian Boer above) was added to R. "More or less similar creeds were extant in most of the Christian congregations of the West .... Later the wording of R became generally accepted in the West." The East (the original home of Judaism and Christianity), however, had a slightly different form. The original eastern creed read as follows:
"`I believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, of whom everything [else] is,
and in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, through whom everything [else] is,
and in the Holy Ghost.'
".... Hence the formula of faith was intended primarily for the instruction of candidates for baptism. This leads to a further point, namely, that the creed functioned as a formal summary of the Christian faith. It was the criterion of faith upon which catechetical instruction was based." - pp. 33-35, A Short History of Christian Doctrine, Bernard Lohse, Fortress Press, 1985.
Please notice that this "summary of the Christian faith" hundreds of years after the death of Christ affirms one God only: the Father only!
So, just as the complete lack of any single clear statement of a trinity idea for the all-important knowledge of God (Jn 17:3) in the entire Bible shows that the Bible writers did not believe any such thing, so does the complete lack of such a suggestion in the baptismal questions about the most important, basic beliefs of a Christian 100 years after the last book of Scripture had been written also show that these early Christians (even in Rome at that time) had no concept of a three-in-one (or even a two-in-one) God!!