Date: 01 Dec 1997
From: Carmen Chimento
Date: 01 Dec 1997
18. Concerning the myth of the trinity, let me begin by saying that anyone who states that God is not unity, that God is not indivisible, is worshiping a god who is also not innascent. A god who is not innascent is a false god, by definition of the true God. The real and true God of the New Christian Theology is the God described in my book, Beyond the Universe (The New Christian Theology). He is the God that Christ worshiped, and not the mythical god created many years after Christ's death, a mythical god that included the deification of Christ, the creation of another god called "the holy spirit", and combined they are worshiping a triune god, consisting of three persons, each one co-equal to the other. The deification of Jesus was a process that did not take place while Christ was alive. It happened many years later. The process evolved first by changing his real name, the name he was born with, from Jehoshua, (the Biblical name for Joshua) of Joseph of David of Nazareth, to Jesus, the son of Zeus, Je (son of), Sus (Zeus). Some will argue that Jesus does not mean son of Zeus, but they were not alive then to understand the Greek gods and goddesses, and the Greek culture, for no one can give an explanation as to why Jehoshua can be translated from Hebrew into English as Joshua, but that Jehoshua cannot be translated from the Greek to Joshua. If we honestly and objectively look at church history, we soon realize that once the church got through the marketing stage of its development of the deification of Christ, by pacifying the pagans through this name switching, it then simply redirected not the meaning of his name, but his person to be the "the son of God", knowing full well that he was a human being such as you and I.
Since triune gods existed long before the church, it is only natural that the doctrine of the trinity would evolve from antecedent myths, since there is no other rational explanation for a religion to want to split God into three beings, except to conform to the wishes of those pagans whom the church was wishing to convert. (Please note that paganism then and paganism now bear no resemblance to each other.) There have even been discussions on other websites concerning the early suggested version of the trinity to consist of God the father, God the virgin mother, and God the son. But a case could strongly be made by those opposing that proposition, that if Jesus were truly God, then Mary was God's mother and therefore existed before God, and so on. Perhaps that was not a viable option, because several questions would follow, such as, what happens to Ann, Mary's mother? Shouldn't she be higher than Mary since she is Mary's mother and God's grandmother and would have existed even before Mary and God? But somehow, the argument goes, it was decided that the third god would be the holy spirit instead, to keep the triune god myth going. Be that as it may, whether one believes in the trinity or not, one cannot refute the evolutionary process of mythical triune gods up to and including the time of the formation of the early church, and many years afterwards, up to and including the present. This argument is being presented so that you may look at all the perspectives, and in no way is this argument, the evolution of the myth of the trinity, necessary to prove or disprove the trinity. It is merely presented to provide another explanation of why a illogical and theologically absurd concept was invented.
For example, in the Hindu religion which began many centuries before Judaism and Christianity, there are three gods, Brahma, Shiva, and Visnu, (the Creator, the Preserver, and the Destroyer). However, to be fair, Brahma, Shiva and Visnu are not considered gods in the sense of the Greek gods, but they are considered outward manifestations of the same Universal Spirit called Brahman, yet they are "three" distinguishable manifestations with three different names. Nevertheless, there is this triune aspect to the Hindu religion.
Many centuries before Christ, in Mesopotamia there were the three great gods; Anu who ruled the sky, Enlil who ruled the earth, and Ea who ruled the waters. In Babylonia, gods were worshiped in threes, and this religious influence was obviously the basis for the same groupings of gods in Egypt (Osiris, Isis, and Horus), Greece and Rome with their Zeus, Apollo, Jupiter, Venus, Thor, Cupid, and so on in groups of threes. In fact, after Paul died, many Christians left the church to follow their previously held pagan beliefs, and those beliefs also began to invade Christianity. It's obvious that it would be easier for them to paganize Christianity much more easily than it would be to Christianize the pagan religion. Consequently, one would not be dismayed to find that they began to slowly paganize Christianity, and many pagan holidays were introduced into the Christian calendar to coincide with pagan holidays, such as Easter and Christmas, and so on. So the temptation to paganize was too much to resist, and from a marketing standpoint, one could easily understand how wise it would be, strategically, to give the masses what they wanted. If they wanted three gods, they can have them in Christianity . . . why have them leave the church? No problem! You want three gods, you got 'em! At first glance, this may appear to be an exercise in using whatever means available to justify an end, defying the Christian principle that the end could never justify the means. This thought has merit only from the viewpoint that as we shall see later, one particular Roman emperor, a pagan who worshiped the sungod, used the church to hold his empire together, and in the end, it was the church who used him, although they could not foresee this.
So what we have is this: in the three hundred years after the crucifixion of Christ, there was no doctrine of the trinity in the church. It wasn't until the year 325 A.D. that the emperor of the Roman Empire, Constantine, called the church bishops together because he noticed a division among his people, some supporting the divinity of Christ, and others not. As a politician, he could not have a divided empire. Constantine himself was not a Christian, he was like his father and worshiped the "unconquered sun", in other words he was a sun worshiper, and remained so until just before his dying days, whereupon he was baptized a Christian. So a pagan emperor, dictated what was to be formulated at the Council of Nicaea concerning Christian beliefs. The beginning of the trinity, Christ's divinity became an article of faith for the first time, against much opposition, especially by the followers of Bishop Arius. To be fair to Constantine's complete motivations, he supposedly saw a vision of a cross before a major battle and he believed that sign was the reason for his success and why he was so influential in spreading Christianity, even though he was not a Christian himself, except for the last remaining days of his life. How strange that if he believed in the sign that he saw he did not embrace Christianity. Nevertheless, now that the church adopted the doctrine of Christ's divinity, it would not be until the Council of Constantinople in 381, over seventy years later, that the holy spirit was elevated to co-equal status with God and Christ. Even then, it was not widely accepted and many church members were violently persecuted for their opposition to it. So the doctrine of the trinity was essentially forced upon the Christians, first by the emperor Constantine in his insistence on deifying Christ, and then by the church hierarchy seventy years later in elevating the holy spirit into the godhead. In fact, the eastern church in Jerusalem was under the leadership (the bishops and priests) of relatives of Christ through Mary's bloodlines, but not through Joseph's, and included Christ's brothers, sisters, cousins, and uncles. For several centuries, this bloodline ruled the church in the mideast. They held to the observance of Jewish customs, as did Christ, for example, when he celebrated the passover before his crucifixion. They did not affirm the doctrine of the trinity or Christ's divinity. Years later, after Christ's original church spread throughout the mideast, this church refused to accept the teachings of Christ's divinity that were coming out of the western church, and they were systematically executed or starved to death for their beliefs by the Roman soldiers under the influence of the bishops of the western church. So that by the fourth or fifth century, Christ's original church essentially became non-existent. The New Testament today is not a testament to the life of Christ, but a testament to the mythological conceptions of the pagan emperor Constantine and his power hungry bishops. Since the original church consisting of Christ's relatives became extinct by design, it is obvious as to why there are no records available from their point of view objecting to Christ's divinity and the trinity itself.
The trinity was supposedly defined by the most powerful bishop under Constantine, Bishop Athanasius, and is known as the Athanasian creed, although it is highly disputed that he was in fact the author of it. In principal, it states: "We worship one God in Trinity. The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God; and yet they are not three gods, but one God." However, one must search long and deep to find the Athanasian Creed in existence in the other eastern churches before the 12th century, irrespective of the name of the Creed. At best, some attribute its composition to clergymen in southern France or Spain in the 6th century, or thereabouts, in German liturgy in the 9th century, and in Rome much later. Nevertheless, whether Athanasius wrote the creed, or whether it was written in his honor, it is not the exact dates or who wrote it that are important concerning the doctrine of the trinity as manifested in a creed, it is the creed itself. For example, a math major would be insulted if you told him/her that one god, plus one god, plus one god are equal to one god.. Why? Because 1 + 1 + 1 = 3 . . . 1+1+1 does not equal one. Never did, never will. If "the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God", there are three distinct persons mentioned as being God, and it all add up to three gods, not one.
Biblical References That Prove God is One, and That God is Non-human
Luke 24:39 "Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see I have." And as he said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.
24:41 While they were still incredulous for joy and were amazed, he asked them, "Have you anything here to eat?" They gave him a piece of baked fish; he took it and ate it in front of them.
If the son is Jesus, and the son is God, and God is a spirit, and Jesus is telling them that he has flesh and bones and is not a spirit, and then proceeds to eat a piece of baked fish, which a spirit could not do, who is it that can then declare without smirking that Christ believed he was God?
Galatians 3:20 Now there is no mediator when only one party is involved, and God is one.
1 Corinthians 8:4 So about the eating of meat sacrificed to idols: we know that "there is no idol in the world," and that "there is no God but one."
John 4:23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth; and indeed the Father seeks such people to worship him. 4:24 God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and truth."
Hosea 11:9 I will not give vent to my blazing anger, I will not destroy Ephraim again; For I am God and not man, the Holy One present among you;
Numbers 23:19 God is not man that he should speak falsely, nor human, that he should change his mind. Is he one to speak and not act, to decree and not fulfill?
Malachai 2:10 Have we not all the one Father? Has not the one God created us? Why then do we break faith with each other, violating the covenant of our fathers?
Ephesians 4:5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
1 Timothy 2:5 For there is one God. There is also one mediator between God and the human race, Christ Jesus, himself human,
Theological Contradictions in the Trinity Doctrine
If as stated in the Athanasian creed "The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God", then let us suppose that one of the three is innascent, and for God to be God, He must possess the attribute of innascency, the Uncaused Cause.. For this example, we will assume that the Father is innascent. That means the Father is the Primary Cause, the Uncaused Cause Who existed from all eternity. Since there is only one Uncaused Cause that existed from all eternity, then the Uncaused Cause is unity, He must be one, and cannot be divisible, otherwise He cannot be the Uncaused Cause. Then how were the son and the holy spirit caused if there is only one Prime Cause Who is innascent, and whom we agree is the Father? Neither the son or the holy spirit could be innascent, because there can only be one Uncaused Cause, for if there are more than one Uncaused Cause, we would be presented with a theological absurdity. By the same token, if the Father is innascent, then He is also omnipotent because the Uncaused Cause was the Cause for all creation and His power must be infinite, otherwise He would be compelled by something outside of Himself, but in His essence, there never was, nor is there now, nor will there ever be anyone or anything outside of Himself that compels Him to act. He acts only from the laws of His own nature and is compelled by no one, otherwise He would not be God. In the beginning, which there never was with respect to God, He was infinitely happy with His perfections and needed nothing to complete His perfection, because perfection means you cannot become more perfect, and God was and is absolutely perfect. To say that God needed to have two other persons is inferring that God is imperfect because he would be having a need, but He does not.
Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica, a brilliant document except for his treatise on the trinity, states that there is a relational nature in God. I maintain that this is an invention of his. Why? Well, for one, how was he able to justify that the father was god, the son was god and the holy spirit was god if he already knew that God is unity and indivisible. He gets around this by saying that although they are all co-equal, they are all one. He states: "From what has been said, then, one must hold that in the divine nature three Persons subsist: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; and that these three are one God, distinguished from one another by relations only. For the Father is distinguished from the Son by the relations of paternity, and innascibility; the Son from the Father by the relations of sonship; the Father and the Son from the Holy Spirit by spiration, so to say; and the Holy Spirit from the Father and Son by the possession of love; by this He proceeds from each of Them."
My rebuttal is simple. Thomas begins by saying that "one must hold that in the divine nature three Persons subsist". Why must one hold that an indivisible God Who is the First Cause, the Uncaused Cause, why must we hold that there are three indivisible beings, three First Causes or three first Uncaused Causes? Why must we believe something that is on the face of it an oxymoron? How could there be one Uncaused Cause AND three uncaused causes? How can one person be indivisible AND be comprised of three persons? God is either one or He is not one, and if He is not one He is not God, by definition. Aquinas was attempting to divide an indivisible God. Aquinas was trying to justify the Athanasian creed and fell far short because he became entangled in the web he tried to weave, irrespective of his deep convictions and sincerity. Which is why, in my opinion, he simply gave up and stated: "That God is threefold and one is solely an item of belief and it can in no way be demonstrated, although some arguments can be given that are not necessarily convincing, or even very probable, except for a believer."
There are some on this website who have propounded the idea that God has ceased creating by virtue of what is said in Genesis 2:2 "Since on the seventh day God was finished with the work he had been doing, he rested on the seventh day from all the work he had undertaken". They propose to change the word "rested" to "ceased", so that it would then read that God had "ceased on the seventh day from all the work he had undertaken" If God rested, it would question His omnipotency for having a need to rest, otherwise why would He rest, but if the word rested is changed to ceased, they would then not have to defend God's need to rest. But then it would question His immutability because we would then have God changing from "the state of doing" to "the state of ceasing doing", and either interpretation is absurd. To those who question God's omnipotency, it would be much easier for them to question His attributes of infinite mercy and infinite justice, an insolvable paradox because they are infinitely opposed to each other, at least it may seem so to those who do not know God. That is my honest opinion.
And so, we have the Father being innascent, unity and omnipotent. Now let us apply these attributes to the son, because as stated in the creed, "the Son is God". Now if we have the son possessing innascency, we now have two prime causes, because innascency implies non-generation, that is, having always existed, and therefore, being the Prime Cause. But since there is only one Prime Cause, and we have acknowledged in our example that the Father is the Prime Cause, then the Son cannot be the Prime Cause, else we have two prime causes, and back we go to a theological absurdity. Or if we assume the Father is unity and indivisible, how can the son be God also, and not violate the Father's indivisibility or unity attribute? The son cannot be God, else the Father is divisible and by force would not be God. Or if we assume the Father is omnipotent, then if the son is God, the son is also omnipotent. If the Father is omnipotent, then nothing outside of the Father can compel Him to act, but He would be forced to act because we now would have two persons, the Father and the son, possessing infinite, unlimited and unbounded power, and only one person can possess those attributes, for if two possessed them, it would again be a theological absurdity for each would be limiting and placing bounds on the other, and there would be incursions into each other's power, and again, you can see how ridiculously absurd the scenario becomes when you introduce yet another person into the equation.
There will be some who will answer these obviously irrefutable arguments by saying that they do not mean that the Father, son, and holy spirit are three persons, what they mean is that they are three personalities but of the same substance. This also will not fly because there is only one and can only be one personality in God. He is one and He is indivisible both in person and personality. Then there will be others who will attempt to revise their arguments to say that God is one but that the Father, son and holy spirit are three manifestations of the same substance. That will not fly either, because the manifestations of God are infinite and eternal and therefore the question has nothing to do with His substance or His essence. It is a smokescreen to confuse those who wish to know, love and serve God. God is not the God of confusion!
Conclusion
There is only one God Who has an infinite number of attributes and each attribute is infinite and eternal. Christ was a messenger of God, just as human as any other human being, but was very close to God, in the same way as Muhammad, Lao-tze, and so many other of God's prophets. Christ did not die for our sins, he died trying trying to deliver a message from God, the message being that we should love God with all of our hearts, minds, and souls and our neighbor in the same way as we love ourselves. If everyone practices his teachings, Christ will not have died in vain. If everyone praises, glorifies, or worships Christ instead of praising, glorifying, and worshiping God, then Christ will have died in vain. Praise God from Whom all blessings flow.
Only God knows whom He has welcomed into Heaven, and whom He will welcome into Heaven. Each person can receive the gift of God's spirit, God's holy spirit, God's holy grace, or Karma as His holy spirit is called in the east, by following the simple rules, as pointed out by Christ and all the other prophets of God.
Since there is only one God, it is blasphemous to teach that there are several gods, especially after being made aware of it. The justice of God will require, according to His laws, proper punishment for whomsover confuses His creatures by propagating those false doctrines, and the worshiping of false gods, triune or otherwise. His justice is real, it is final, and lasts forever. Let those who have ears with which to hear . . . listen. For whom will the bell of God's justice toll?
In the one true God,
Carmen Chimento
Please refer to my other answer to the question concerning the Athanasian Creed.