Is the Trinity an essential doctrine?

[Dmckay]

II Timothy 3:16-17 16 "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: 17 That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works."KJV

II Timothy 3:16-17 16 "All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; 17 so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work." NASV

I apologize for this post that makes no sense in this context. This is what happens when your are trying to respond to several threads at the same time. I am not going to delete it, since all that does is delete the post and leave a question in everyone's mind of why the poster said something and then deleted it. Just mark it up to senile dementia.

 

[IgnatiusOfAntioch]

Absolutely essential. The incarnation depends on it.

 

[Blackhawk]

Absolutely essential. The incarnation depends on it.

Yes except that not only the incarnation but Christianity depends upon it.

 

[Blackhawk]

sorry duplicate post

 

[Grigorii]

Dearest to Christ Gopjeff,

Greetings,

Just a quick question that I wanted to get other people's take on: Is belief in the Trinitarian nature of God an essential Christian doctrine?

Yes. It is.

It is one of the dividing lines between Christian or non-Christian. As St. Evagrios the Solitary has said (paraphrase):"Life is a journey towards the Holy Trinity."

If one's life journey takes one elsewhere, that one is not heading towards Christ, nor His Father, nor His Spirit; but unfortunately, straight into the arms of the evil-one.

Fr. Sergius Bulgakov explains in the following words:

Faith in Christ, as Son of God, is also faith in the Holy Trinity, in whose name baptism is administered, according to the Christ's commandment (Matt. 28:19). The Trinitarian faith is already implied in faith in the Son, Who is sent by the Father and Who sends the Holy Spirit. Christianity is the religion of the Holy Trinity to such a degree that the concentration of piety on the Christ alone has become a deviation already known by a special term as "Jesusism." It should be noted that, in the liturgical life of Orthodoxy, in the exclamations, the doxologies, the prayers, the name of the Holy Trinity predominates over the name of Jesus, which shows that the knowledge of Christ is inseparably connected with that of the Holy Trinity. God is a Spirit, Which has consciousness threefold and yet one, or equally a unity of life and of substance; and in that one-in-three, the special existence of three divine "hypostases" is reconciled with unity of self-consciousness. God is love. The Trinity possesses such a power of mutual love as to unite the three in one single life.

The dogma of the Holy Trinity is confessed by Orthodoxy in the form in which it was expressed at the time of the ecumenical councils and was fixed in the creed. Retaining these forms is not an archaism, for their supreme verity still imposes itself upon the religious and philosophical conscience of our time. This dogma is incompatible with rationalism, which seeks to attain divine things by means of categories of unity and of plurality; but this does not make the Trinitarian dogma something foreign to theological reasoning. We find in our own consciences, testimony so resplendent to the existence of the unity of the three "hypostases" (I — you — we) that this dogma becomes a necessity for thought and the point of departure of all metaphysics. The dogma of the Holy Trinity is not only a doctrinal form, but a living Christian experience which is constantly developing; it is a fact of the Christian life. For life in Christ unites with the Holy Trinity, gives a knowledge of the Father's love and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. There is no truly Christian life, apart from the knowledge of the Trinity; this is abundantly witnessed in Christian literature. Unitarianism is no longer Christianity and cannot be; and Orthodoxy can have nothing in common with it. As a matter of fact, recent Arianism-Jesusism and Unitarianism are allied and both are equally foreign to the Christianity of the Church.

It is of vital importance that our life is trinitarian, so that the witness of it may lead many into the Kingdom of Christ our God.

IC XC

Grigorii