A description of the trait.

Evidence from the Bible detailing why God wants us to demonstrate it.

Examples of it found in the Bible.

A self-examination questionnaire.

Some ideas of how to grow more of it in our lives.

The Roman Catholic Church considers the Trinity to be a central doctrine of the Christian religion. Likewise most Protestant denominations teach the doctrine of the Trinity as well. But let’s look at the facts regarding this venerated doctrine. To many in the world of Christendom, a church cannot be considered valid without belief in the Trinity. But what do history and the Bible show us? Do churches offer convincing explanations that can stand the test of Scripture?

The Catholic Church instituted the doctrine, and over time it carried over into the majority of Protestant denominations. Hundreds of years transpired during its development. A long metamorphosis of terms and explanations occurred, and the church finally established a definition that gained wide acceptance and has changed little since around A.D. 400.

My Catholic Faith, a volume written in layman’s language by Louis LaRavoire Morrow, states that there is only one God (1963 edition). Then he explains further, “In God there are three Divine Persons—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. … In speaking of the ‘Persons’ in God, we do not use the term in exactly the same way we use it when speaking of people. We use it only for lack of a word to show our meaning better” (p. 30).

On the next page Morrow asserts, “The three Divine Persons are really distinct from one another.” Then a page later he writes, “The three divine Persons are perfectly equal to one another, because all are one and the same God.”

How can we understand three persons as one Being with one nature? We can’t! The book My Catholic Faith further says: “We cannot fully understand how the three divine Persons, though really distinct from one another, are one and the same God, because this is a supernatural mystery” (p. 33). Later on the same page we read, “The doctrine of the Blessed Trinity is a strict mystery; that is, we cannot learn it from reason, nor understand it completely, even after it has been revealed to us.”

The Church of God, a Worldwide Association, believes that all doctrines must stand the test of Scripture—that we must test or prove all things (1 Thessalonians 5:21). And that proof lies in the Bible. We should not just take someone’s word for it.

To see what the Scriptures say about the Godhead, please read our article “What Did the Apostles Believe About God?”

No scripture in the Bible truly supports this doctrine of the Trinity, which emanated from the mind of man and was influenced by philosophers like Plato. Athanasius, who wrote the creed accepted by the church in A.D. 325 at the Council of Nicaea (see below), was influenced by Platonic teaching, as were others who figured into the doctrine’s development.

Although we wouldn’t go so far as to say that it originated directly from Greek philosophers or pagan trinities, interestingly there are various parallel forms of the Trinity that predate the early church by many hundreds of years—Brahma/Shiva/Vishnu and Osiris/Isis/Horus, for example.

Please note the following quote from Substance and Illusion in the Christian Fathers by Christopher Stead: “The problem of Trinitarian origins is rather like the problem of Gnostic origins. In each case, we have a pattern of thought which emerges about the same time as Christ, but which has close affinities with pre-Christian or non-Christian thought; while the evidence of first-century documents is scanty and enigmatic, so that we can hardly be certain that the doctrine is exclusively or even predominantly a product of Christian inspiration.”