Why define "Christian" in Trinity-centeric way?

Jane_Doe said:

Thanks again everyone for the responses. I'm really being struck by the diversity of opinions here.

Another follow up question: in your theological view, can a person be a Christian and not be a trinitarian? (Note: I'm asking if they can be a Christian in general, including an unorthodox one).

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To get the perfect answer, you need to define "What is the benefit of being labelled a Christian ?"

May be it's primitive question to many of you but I personally need to understand

Jesus: "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name {singular} of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit." Matthew 28:19

The label is no advantage, the reality has eternal consequences.

drstevej said:

The label is no advantage, the reality has eternal consequences.

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Thanks for the answer

I understood it's good sequences
So believing in Trinity is show stopper to have these good sequences

Okay I gotta say Whoa here people there is a lot of misinformation here that has taken this topic off the OP, and shows some modern misunderstanding about the history of the Trinitarian Doctrine.

1) The word "person" or "persons" is not in the The Creed of Nicea written about 325AD. Nor do the words appear in the Nicene - Constaninopolitan creed (commonly known as the Nicene Creed used in modern liturgical churches). So why you all are off on the persona think is beyond me.

2) In answer to the original OP. By the 300 AD Christianity had developed to have many different theologies on the divinity and humanity of Christ - from the Gnostics to the Arians and Modalists, just to mention very few. Constantine tasked the bishops to get together and settle the issue. So they did. Basically here is the conclusions.

• The Bible mentions God in the form of "The Father" (as referred to by Jesus), "The Son", and the "Holy Spirit" as mentioned in the New Testament writings. In the New Testament there only one place in the Bible that reference to all three is given at the same time. (more on that later). There are verses declaring the Father and Son are one, or the Son and Spirit are one, or the Father and Spirit are one. But no verse in the Bible declaring all three are one. (I'm a Trinitarian Christian so don't get mad at me for that statement, it just is the way it is.)
• The council of the Bishops (The Lateran Councils) stated it can be shown that all three are one by what these verses say.
• There is one God - so the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three ways that God has revealed the divine to us.
• When one part of the Trinity takes action the other two are also acting in that action. (I know kind of a weird way to say it). What it means is when God created the cosmos the Son was there creating and also the Holy Spirit. Genesis 1:2b "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." (KJV) John 1:1-4 "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people." As these two verses illustrate all three parts of the Trinity were in action together.
• The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are in a relationship together so the will of one is the will of the others.
  
• How is it 3 in 1? That is the mystery we don't understand it but this is how God has been revealed to humanity so we need to be faithful to it.

3) Trinitarian Doctrine was not completely accepted but it did decide what was considered Orthodox doctrine (teaching) for Christianity.

4) So one can be a Christian - Christ follower. They can even not accept the Trinity and still be a Christian and saved for that matter as it is God that saves us, there is nothing we can do to be righteous as that is done by Christ and Christ alone. As the saying goes, "There is nothing you can do, or fail to do, to cause God to stop loving you."

• So for example, Mormons are considered Christians - they do follow Christ's commands. However they do not accept the Trinity. There are other Christian denominations, for example the Apostalic Church and Jesus Alone teachings that do not accept the Trinitarian doctrine. Because of this they are not considered mainstream or Orthodox Christians. But by definition they are Christians - Christ Followers.

5) On a couple of side notes:

• Why do we not use terms like Mother or Creator/Redeemer/Sustainer as the title for the parts of the Trinity?

Wow, that was a lot. But I think needed to be covered. My credentials on this is I went to seminary and have a Masters in Divinity. I had a very tough Doctrine teacher and he demanded that we understood the Trinitarian doctrine as really most denominations (especially my own the United Methodist Church) and Christians are really weak on it.

I'm sure I have not covered everything. But I hope this answers your question Jane_Doe, and at the same time helps to clear up some of the misconceptions on the Trinitarian doctrine that has been given in this thread.

Finally, I need to ask. Who said if you do not accept the Trinity you will go to hell? I'm not even sure this is a teaching of the Greek Orthodox who are the strongest Trinitarian Christians there are.

Jane_Doe said:

Thanks again everyone for the responses. I'm really being struck by the diversity of opinions here.

Another follow up question: in your theological view, can a person be a Christian and not be a trinitarian? (Note: I'm asking if they can be a Christian in general, including an unorthodox one).

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Yes.

Jane_Doe said:

Another follow up question: in your theological view, can a person be a Christian and not be a trinitarian? (Note: I'm asking if they can be a Christian in general, including an unorthodox one).

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I would say yes, because the only way to the Father is through Jesus Christ. And the only way to have the Holy Spirit is through Jesus Christ. But it is bad theology nonetheless.

John 14:6-7
Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me. 7"If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him."
John 1:14
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Ephesians 2:18-22
For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father. 19 Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God; 20 And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone;21 In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: 22 In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.

Opps sorry I forgot to add in there the more on that later about verses in the Bible refering to the Trinity.

The only one is in Matthew 29:19 when Christ tells the disciples to go into all the nations baptizing them in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost/Spirit. But this is really pretty well established that the phrase Father, Son and Holy Spirit are interjected into the passage by later Christians, since this Trinitarian language really didn't come about until later. (I know some of you take issue on me with that because of your innerrancy believes. But its there, its even missing in some of the older variants, so deal with it.) It is viewed that when one is baptized if they are not baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Then it is not a Christian baptism, and I agree as this passage is in the Bible to baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and it is the established Christian doctrine.

Jane_Doe said:

Wow, thanks everyone for the outpouring of responses. I have to work late tonight, but will go through them thoroughly tomorrow. After a brief skim though, I did want to clarify my question--

My question is WHY use the Trinity as the primary metric of whom is a Christian vs not. I'm not asking what the Trinity is (though I appreciate the info).

Edit: reading through here, it seems that many posters do not use the Nicean Creed as their definition of who and who isn't a Christian. So, I'll ask a second question: if not the Nicean creed, what do you use to define who is a Christian, and why?

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For me, I have been using Luke 10-27 as the defining break point, if they even try try to Love God and love their neighbor as themselves, I would say they are followers of Jesus, even if they have not heard of Jesus or the Gospel before. And to this point yes if a Muslim follow that, I would say he is my brother in Christ (I think among the 3 Muslims I talked to on this forum, only 1 accepts this).

brocke said:

What is political about the creed and if it was political what was the goal or objective in writing it?

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The emperor had hoped that Christianity would form a religion that could unite the empire. The conflict between Arians and Trinitarians upset him because it split the Church, preventing it from playing the role he wanted. The purpose of the Council of Nicea was to unite Christians. The Nicene Creed was effectively a peace treaty, representing a compromise the most people except Arius himself and a few of his followers could accept.

That's not to say that I agree with the rest of what RightTruth said. The basic Trinitarian approach went back before Nicea. It developed progressively as a result of the attempt to produce a theological basis for Christianity that was sufficiently sophisticated to appeal to people trained in Greek culture and philosophy. You can make an argument that Christianity lost something in being translated from a Jewish to a Greek background. But Constantine wasn't responsible for doing that. That was already the mainstream Christian approach by the time Nicea met.

Note by the way that Nicea didn't instantly solve the problem. In fact after Constantine died, the Church moved in an Arian direction. However in the long run that proved to be only temporary, and Nicea came to be seen as the definition of orthodoxy (along with Chalcedon and other later standards).

brocke said:

Really and how is that possible since the Nicene Creed was written in 325AD and the first appearance of the Apostle Creed was in 340AD and it wasn't until about 390AD before anyone mentioned it was written by the Apostle's? What is political about the creed and if it was political what was the goal or objective in writing it?

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The Apostles' Creed is actually much later than that. Though creeds much like the Apostles' Creed, such as the Old Roman Symbol had been around long before Nicea.

Though of course Righttruth's point is false regardless since the Creed of Nicea isn't a corruption of anything, it's simply a confession of faith in the same fashion as earlier (and later) confessional statements. The basic creedal structure we see both in the Old Roman Symbol and later in the Nicene Creed were arrived at as baptismal confessions, such as we see in St. Hippolytus' Apostolic Traditions, or earlier in the personal confession of St. Irenaeus in his work against the Gnostics.

As such thinking of the Nicene or Niceno-Constantinoplian Creed as corruptions ignores the basic evolution of creeds in the ancient Church, and the specific points being raised and addressed in response to the Arian and Macedonian heresies.

-CryptoLutheran

Even though the word trinity does not exist in the bible the concept does. The trinity is the three forms of god. God the father, God the son and God the spirit.

God made it this way so the wise would know/see it. God has made his wisdom seem foolish to the 'wise' human. Human wisdom is foolish to God

ewq1938 said:

Actually it does appear in scripture through the use of the Greek word for "three" and then lists the Father Son and HS.

The English word "trinity" originates from the Latin word "trinitas" which means "the number three, a triad, three".
In the Greek it is "treis" (pronounced as TRICE) which means "a set of three" or "the number three".

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Wow learnt something. Thankyou for that

You are a marvel. I almost forgot about that passage. There is so much to God, He never stops amazing me.

Thank you Christ for smart ppl

ewq1938 said:

Here is a little more:

1Jn_5:7 For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.

G5140
treis tria
trice, tree'-ah
A primary (plural) number; “three”: - three.

In scripture the Greek word for three is "treis" (pronounced as TRICE) and translated into Latin it became "trinitas" which means "the number three, a triad, three". Eventually it became "three" in English related to the prefix "Tri" which also means three from which the English word Trinity originates. Since scripture states "three that bear record in heaven" and lists the Father, Son and Holy Spirit as those three we can firmly know the Trinity is a scriptural term originating from the Greek for the word "three".

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Careful. This is known as the Comma Johanneum, it is recognized as a very late interpolation into the text of 1 John. In fact when Erasmus was putting together his critical Greek text he refused to include the Comma in the first two editions because he was unable to find any support for it in the Greek manuscripts he was working with--though it was found in the Vulgate, hence the pressure to include it. He only finally relented and included it in later editions when he was supplied a Greek manuscript, said to be dated to the 14th or 15th century, with its inclusion.

This is why it is included in early Bible translations such as the Luther Bible, the Tyndale, and the Authorized Version (KJV), because of those translators relying on Erasmus' critical text. However it is noticeably not found in more modern translations specifically because it is known today to be spurious, without manuscript support--and we have far more and much older manuscripts to work with than Erasmus did five hundred years ago. It is rather noticeably absent, not only among the older Alexandrian text types, but even the more numerous and common Byzantine text types.

The controversy surrounding the Comma is both old and complex, this Wikipedia article does a decent job addressing it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma_Johanneum

The general theory is that the Comma entered into the Latin textual tradition through scribal error, originally as a marginal note that a later scribe mistakenly thought was part of the text and thus inserted it. The ancient Fathers when they quote or refer to the passage in 1 John almost always read from verse 6 to verse 8, that the three who bear witness are the Spirit, the water, and the blood. Most of the ancient Fathers are entirely silent, which is not itself an argument; though some suppose that this would have been particularly helpful in the theological debates against the heretics, and yet there is only silence on the matter.

What should be cautioned is modern Christians using such a doubtful and spurious text as a positive Trinitarian proof text. While the content of the Comma is certainly true, theologically; its spurious nature and almost certain inauthenticity renders it poor as a proof text.

-CryptoLutheran