What is the Trinity?
I think the most important place to start is explaining what the Trinity is. Despite being one of the main features of Christianity and also plastered everywhere as the name of churches and private schools across the country, I have learned over the years that some people genuinely don't know what it is. The idea of the Trinity is simply that God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are all God at the same time but are all different entities. Confusing? It should be. The idea itself is paradoxical and contradicting. How could 3 people be different yet the same person? To further compound this, Jesus frequently refers to himself as the Son of God, not just God and even says that His Father is greater than Him (John 14:28).
Essentially, we derive the Trinity from the constant use "Trinitarian Formulas" throughout the New Testament. These phrases always mention the Father, Son and Holy Ghost and talk about them doing something as if they were one entity. Paul the Apostle also blesses all of his letters by way of Trinitarian Formulas. However, the last (and maybe most important) piece of evidence that proves the existence of the Trinity is actually not in the New Testament. It is actually in Deuteronomy Chapter 6. Referred to as the "Shema Yisrael" in Jewish tradition, it is often used to start Jewish prayers and states “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one (Deut 6:4)." This confirmation that God is one entity thus leads to the only conclusion that the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, while separate parts of the Godhead, are indeed one entity.
Why Was it Controversial?
As you have probably guessed by now, this conclusion requires a lot of heavy thought. While I doubt many people question it today, as I have shown, it takes a lot of critical thinking to get to this point. As such, the idea of an omnipotent monotheistic God being in fact 3 separate entities garnered it's fair share of skepticism. In fact, some large modern churches still identify as nontrinitarians including the Church of the Latter Day Saints, Seventh Day Adventists, Oneness Pentecostals, Church of God and the Church of Christ Scientists (Christian Science Church).
The most common case against the Trinity is that it is never mentioned in the Bible. While this is true, I have already proven that this is no hinderance to the fact that it can be proven true by inference.
Others may argue that early Christians were nontrinitarian and that is true. Many of them were Unitarians (one God) or Binitarian (Two Gods; usually Jesus and God were the same while the Holy Spirit was separate). However, Constantine declared the Trinity to be truth in 380 AD as part of the Nicene Creed (which established Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire), so the church has been on the Trinity bandwagon for a while now. During this time, pro-Trinity arguments far outnumbered nontrinitarian arguments and thus the majority of Christians accepted it as it is not stated in the Bible, but does not contradict it either.
Since then, nontrinitarians have dwindled but do appear throughout history. The first nontrinitarians, known as the Arians (not to be confused with the Aryans of Nazi Germany), concentrated in the Germanic regions following the Nicene Creed. However they were practically extinct by 500 AD due to the spread of Catholicism through Europe. It has also reappeared in the 11th century in Gnosticism, the 18th during the Enlightenment and the 19th century Second Great Awakening in the US, where a lot of modern nontrinitarianism comes from.
Why Does My Bible Have the Trinity in It? I Thought You Said It Wasn't Mentioned in The Bible?
Some of you may have gotten this far and are upset that I didn't mention the verse 1 John 5:7 which states, "For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one." Seems like a justification of the Trinity in the Bible exists after all, huh? Well, not really.
See, this exact verse does not exist in the original Greek manuscripts of 1 John. In fact, this verse does not exist in any manuscript written before the 4th Century, which so happens to be around the time the Roman Empire declared the Trinity to be the official view of the Church. In the original Greek manuscripts and modern Bibles the verse reads only as "For there are three that testify:" before going into Verse 8 "the Spirit and the water and the blood; and these three agree."
Funny enough, these manuscripts that include the verse don't have it written within the passage. This addition is written in the margins of the manuscript (also known as a gloss) which often were used by scribes to help explain the meaning of certain words in the verse or the verse as a whole, similarly to how we annotate our Bible with notes today. This addition to scripture is carried through the earliest Latin and English translations of the Bible, including the KJV. However, many newer translations include this part of Verse 8 in the margins or completely omit it as it is not a true part of the Bible.
Historically, this alternate verse has been widely disregarded since the dissertation of Sir Isaac Newton (yes, the guy that discovered gravity, but he was also a respected theologian). In his 1690 letter to John Locke, Newton points out that Eastern Churches that used Greek Bibles lacked that version of the verse and that the KJV verse seems out of place compared to the preceding and following verses. The full KJV passage reads as "6 This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth. 7 For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. 8 And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one." As you can read, this makes little sense as Verse 6 talks of water and blood but the point Paul makes is delayed to verse 8 by an interjection that seems completely unrelated to the argument in the latter part of verse 7. Compare this to the original manuscript I mentioned earlier, which sounds like a complete and coherent thought. As such, Newton labeled this addition as a "corruption" to the scripture.
So when you read that relic of the KJV, know that early Christians agreed with you that the Trinity is truth! However, also know it did not come from the author of 1 John.
Conclusion
The Trinity is a core principle of our faith. It is a beautiful thing as the state of communion between God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit is what allows for Salvation as well as Sanctification. Without it, such would not be possible as the sacrifice would not have been great enough. It took Jesus, who was fully God yet fully human to scratch out our sin. So go out and be comforted in the good news that the Trinity brings!
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