Didn’t the church always believe in the Trinity?
The Objection Lab · Objection X of X
Didn’t the church always believe in the Trinity?
Stated first the way its strongest advocate states it. Then your turn.
“The church has always believed in the Trinity, and Oneness is an old heresy the early church rejected.”6 verses answer it
I · The steelman
Their case, at full strength
“The church has always believed in the Trinity, and Oneness is an old heresy the early church rejected.”
The councils did not invent the Trinity; they defended what the church already confessed. Jesus commanded baptism “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Matt 28:19), and Paul blessed the church with the grace of the Lord Jesus, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Ghost (2 Cor 13:14). The early church manual known as the Didache gives the same baptismal formula.1 Justin Martyr describes baptism in the name of the Father, of Jesus Christ and of the Holy Spirit.2 Theophilus of Antioch speaks of a divine triad around AD 180.3
Doctrine develops, but development is not invention. When Noetus, Praxeas and Sabellius taught that the Father and the Son are one person, the church’s teachers answered them in writing, and Noetus and Sabellius were put out of fellowship.45 Nicaea and Constantinople gave precise words to a faith held from the beginning.
II · Drill it
Answer it. Ninety seconds.
Write what you would say if you heard this tonight. The clock starts with your first word; the ring is only a guide.
0 words
Read further
- Ten Objections to Oneness, Answered · this objection in the essay
- Oneness Theology: A Working Compendium
A short but complete map of Oneness theology: the one God of Israel, manifested in flesh as Jesus Christ. It works through the Hebrew and Greek of the key Old and New Testament texts, the typology of the angel, the tabernacle and the priesthood, and the apostolic practice of baptism in Jesus’ name. Each contested text is set beside the strongest Trinitarian reading before it is answered.