An Appeal to Trinitarian Christians

In reading this link on Osama Abdallah's site, he goes and post a article from Jeff Rath on the Trinity. Ironically Mr. Rath is guilty of intentionally twisting every quote he has on this page which he claims refuted the Trinity. Osama explicitedly claims that he posts true material but when you see this page and the quotes actually posted, we will see that Osama doesn't research any of his material and he intentionally post topics that agree with his theology. This is very intruiging and once you see the quotes in their entirety it will be real embarrasing to see how both Mr. Rath and Osama uses material which says the opposite of what they claim including heretics who aren't qualified on the topic along with not mentioning what these heretics believed.

As we will examine in this article, the opposite is the case of what Mr. Rath is actually saying. For Osama, if early Christians believed in a subordinate son, this itself refutes Islam which claims that God does not have a son. So we must ask Osama why are you using material which believes that Jesus is the son of God when Islam says that he isn't? If the Quran claims that Jesus never was the son or didn't claim that he was the Son why is early Christianity along with the historical account along with Mr. Rath's testimony disagreeing with you? By trying to refute the Trinity, Osama has just refuted the Quran which lies and claims that Christians never worshipped Jesus as the Son of God.

Lets actually look at the historical definition of the Trinity to see if it is actually three gods:

Based on Christian and historical doctrine which Mr. Rath and Osama claim to use, the Trinity is 3 persons in ONE God not 3 Gods, which would be tritheism. In ancient Babylon and Greece, which I am very familiar with as a former honor student in Early World History, there is no Trinity in which 3 gods are worshipped at the same time as ONE God. There are many examples of 3 gods but this is tritheism. In order for Mr. Rath to refute the Trinity he must present us with an example of 3 gods being ONE, not his opinion and then claming that Tritheism is a trinity.

The trinity is not having having any gods before God but is having the Son of God who actually gave this commandment as the Angel of Yahweh, before his incarnation, as the true co-equal partner with his father.

We will discuss this in greater detail at the end of this article but for the time being lets expose Mr. Rath along with Osama Abdallah for misquoting.

This quote is found in the Jehovah Witness book on the Trinity. Read the Quote in full context:

Lamson, Alvan: The Church of the First Three Centuries

No need to misrepresent the opinions of one of their own! But it is deceptive to mention that a misquote is from a Trinitarian but not tell you when they are quoting from a fellow Arian. To quote a Unitarian theologian, as an authority to prove the pagan origin of Trinity, is about as trustworthy and believable as quoting the a Catholic Bishop to prove that Peter was the first Pope! Now lets continue with their next quote which they claim refutes the Trinity:

What both Osama and Mr. Rath don't tell you is that Buzzard is a Christadelphian which is a modern day heretic cult of Christianity. Muslims would want us to quote the Nation of Islam as authorities on Islam but they appeal to heretics? Amazing. Look at Mr. Buzzard's quote and its deception on another issue dealing with Trinity:

Buzzard, Anthony: Who is Jesus?

So Mr. Buzzard believes in God but that his thoughts became flesh, which refutes both Mr. Rath and Osama who believe that Jesus isn't God like his father. A person coming from God himself who becomes flesh is biolgoically God also. Amazing!!

Jesus isn't the father, he is the Son, they are two seperate persons who are both God. This doesn't disprove trinity, it proves that certain Christian heretic thinking is false dealing with the Trinity.

Since Noss believes the story of Moses isn't from God nor the inspiration of the Torah, then he refutes Osama's book the Quran which claims that Moses was a prophet of Allah. Also notice that Mr. Rath would agree with a bible hater if he is a unitarian Christian would he? Another one of anti-Trinitarian quotes exposed.

"TRINITY. The word Trinity is not found in the Bible, and, though used by Tertullian in the last decade of the 2nd century, it did not find a place formally in the theology of the Church till the 4th century. It is, however, the distinctive and all comprehensive doctrine of the Christian faith and gathers up into the seam of a single grand generalization with respect to the being and activity of God all the major aspects of Christian truth' (Lowry). Theology seeks to define the subsistence of God by stating that God is one in His essential being, but that the divine essence exists in three modes or forms, each constituting a Person, yet in such a way that the divine essence is wholly in each Person. I. DERIVATION: a. In the Old Testament: Though the doctrine is not developed in the Old Testament, it is implicit in the divine self disclosure from the very beginning. But in accordance with the historical character or the divine revelation it is presented at first only in a very rudimentary form. this is found not only in isolated passages but interwoven in the entire organism of the Old Testament revelation. The earliest foreshadowing is contained in the narrative of the creation, where Elohim is seen to create by means of Word and Spirit (Gn. i. 3). Here we are for the first time introduced to the Word put forth as a personal creative power, and to the Spirit as the bringer of life and order to the creation. There is revealed thus early a threefold centre of activity. God as Creator thought out the universe, expressed His thought in a Word, and made His Spirit its animating principle, thus indicating that the universe was not to have a separate existence apart from God or opposed to Him. It is thought that Gn. i. 26 ('And God said, Let us make man in our image and after our likeness') implies that a revelation of the Triune God had been given to man when first created, inasmuch as he was to be given the divine fellowship, but that the consciousness was afterwards lost with the loss of his original righteousness. Both the creative activity of God and His government are at a later stage associated with the Word personified as Wisdom (Pr. viii. 22 ff.; Jb. xxviii. 2327), and with the Spirit as the Dispenser of all blessings and the source of physical strength, courage, culture, and government (Ex. xxxi. 3; Nu. xi. 25; Jdg. iii. 10). The threefold source revealed in creation became still more evident in the unfolding of redemption. The revelation of redemption was entrusted to the tnal'ak Yahweh, the Messenger of Yahweh, sometimes referred to as the Angel of the covenant. We do not claim that in every Old Testament passage in which it appears the designation refers to a divine being, for it is clear that in such passages as 2 Sa. xxiv. 16; 1 Ki. xix. 5; 2 Ki. xix. 35, the reference is to a created angel invested with divine authority for the execution of a special mission. In other passages (e.g. Gn. xvi. 7, xxiv. 7, x1viii. 16) the Angel of Yahweh not only bears the divine name but has divine dignity and power, dispenses divine deliverance and accepts homage and adoration proper only to God. The Spirit of God is also given prominence in connection with revelation and redemption, and is assigned His office in the equipment of the Messiah for His work (Is. xi. 2, x1ii. 1, Ixi. 1) and of His people for the response of faith and obedience (Joel ii. 28; Is. xxxii. 15; Ezk. xxxvi. 26, 27). Thus the God who revealed Himself objectively through the Angel Messenger revealed Himself subjectively in and through the Spirit, the Dispenser of all blessings and gifts within the sphere of redemption. The threefold Aaronic blessing (Nu. vi. 24) must also be noted as perhaps the prototype of the New Testament apostolic blessing." ... "c. In the New Testament: Preparatory to the advent of Christ, the Holy Spirit came into the consciousness of God fearing men in a degree that was not known since the close of Malachi's ministry. John the Baptist, more especially, was conscious of the presence and calling of the Spirit, and it is probable that his preaching had a trinitarian reference: he called for repentance towards God, faith in the coming Messiah, and spoke of a baptism of the Holy Spirit, of which his baptism with water was a symbol. The agency of the Spirit in the incarnation is disclosed to Mary (Lk. i. 35), together with the intimation that the Son born of her would be called 'the Son of the Highest', and that 'the Lord God (would) give unto him the throne of his father David'. Thus the Father and the Spirit were disclosed as operating in the incarnation of the Son. At the baptism in the Jordan the three Persons can be distinguished: the Son being baptized, the Father speaking from heaven, and the Spirit descending in the objective symbol of a dove. Jesus, having thus received the witness of the Father and the Spirit, received authority to baptize with the Holy Spirit. John the Baptist would seem to have recognized very early that the Holy Spirit would come from the Messiah, and not merely with Him. The third Person was thus the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ. In His public ministry, as well as in His private teaching of the Twelve, Jesus constantly directed attention to the Father as the One who sent Him on His mission and from whom He derived His authority (Jn. v. 19, 20). In His disputation with the Jews He claimed that His own Sonship was not simply from David, but from a source that made Him David's Lord, and that it had been so at the very time when David uttered the words (Mt. xxii. 43). This would indicate both His deity and preexistence. Christ bore ever clearer testimony to the Person and office of the Spirit as His own ministry was drawing to a close (Jn. xv, xvi), and He designates Him as both the Spirit from the Father and the Spirit from Himself (Jn. xv. 26). This is the basis of Christian belief in the 'double procession' of the Spirit. The fellowship of the Father and the Spirit appears in the work of redemption as revealed by Christ, the Father sending the Son to undertake the work, and the Father and the Son sending the Spirit apply the salvation which Christ wrought. It thus became evident why the God of the covenant was revealed as triune, since salvation was seen to rest upon each of the Persons in the Godhead. Christ's trinitarian teaching received its most clear and concise expression in the baptismal formula: baptizing into 'the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost' (Mt. xxviii. 19). Baptizing 'into the name' is a Hebrew form of expression, rather than a Greek, and it carries with it what would seem a complete break with Judaism in including under a singular name not only the Father, but the Son and the Holy Ghost. The outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost brought the personality of the Holy Spirit into greater prominence and at the same time shed new light from the Spirit upon the Son. The apostolic conception of the Holy Ghost and of His relation to the Father and the Son is clear from Acts. Peter, in explaining the phenomenon of Pentecost, represents it as the activity of the Trinity. 'This Jesus ... being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear' (Acts ii. 32, 33). It is not too much to say that the apostolic Church was built upon faith in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. In the Epistles of Paul, Peter, John, James, and Jude, as well as in the Epistle to the Hebrews, redemption is uniformly traced to the threefold Source, and each Person appears as the object of worship and adoration. The apostolic benediction, 'The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all' (2 Cor. xiii. 14), not only sums up the apostolic teaching, but it interprets the deeper meaning of the Trinity in Christian experience, the saving grace of the Son as that which gives access to the love of the Father and the communion of the Spirit. II. FORMULATION: As already indicated, Scripture does not give us a fully formulated doctrine of the Trinity, but it contains all the elements out of which theology has constructed the doctrine. The teaching of Christ bears testimony to the true personality of each of the distinctions within the Godhead and also sheds light upon the relations existing between the three Persons. It was left to theology to formulate from this a doctrine of the Trinity. The necessity to formulate the doctrine was thrust upon the Church by forces from without, and it was, in particular, its faith in the deity of Christ, and the necessity to defend it, that first compelled the Church to face the duty of formulating a full doctrine of the Trinity for its rule of faith." (New Bible Dictionary, J. D. Douglas & F. F. Bruce, Trinity, p 1298)

Not only do Mr. Rath and Osama fail to supply critical information which misleads the reader & Give false impression that if intimate details of trinity are not in the Bible that Jesus is a creature. This is known as Deceptive quote & False Dilemma: Trinitarian. It's amazing how in order to disprove Trinity both unitarian Christians and Muslims must intentionally lie and leave out quotes to prove their point.

First lets look at the quote dealing with the Americana encyclopedia before we will address the catholic dictionaries:

Encyclopedia Americana

TRINITY, The central and characteristic Christian doctrine of God is that He exists in Three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. ("Holy Ghost" is the traditional English translation of Sanctus Spiritus and means the same as "Holy Spirit.") At the same time, the Christian church insists that God is One in "sub- stance" (Latin substantia, existence or inner essence), and thus combines in it "mystery" (a formula or conception which really transcends human understanding) the truths set forth in the Holy Scriptures. It is probably a mistake to assume that the doctrine resulted from the intrusion of Greek metaphysics or philosophy into Christian thought; for the data upon which the doctrine rests, and also its earliest attempts at formulation, are much older than the church's encounter with Greek philosophy. The earliest development of the doctrine may in fact be viewed its an attempt to preserve the balance between the various statements of Scripture, or their implications, without yielding to views which, though logical enough, would have destroyed or abandoned important areas of Christian belief. The simplest affirmation is that God is "Three in One, and One in Three," without making use of such technical terms, derived from law or philosophy, as "substance" or "person." God is Father, and the Father is God; God is Son, and the Son is God; God is Spirit, and the Spirit is God. The statement is often seen, in Latin, in early stained-glass church windows, with three circles at the corners of it triangle and an inner circle connected with each (Fig. 1). The doctrine thus graphically symbolized might perhaps better be described as that of the divine "Triunity" rather than the "Trinity." At best the terms "substance" and "person" are themselves only symbolic, and point to a mysterious reality which cannot be either literally described or mathematically formulated. Furthermore, these two terms are, in English, only the rough equivalents of their Latin originals, which had far wider connotations than the English words now possess. The term "Trinity" (Greek Trias) was first used by Theophilus of Antioch (fl. c. 180 A.D.), and provide a convenient term of reference, though it did not provide a definition. The scriptural data for the doctrine of God begins in the Old Testament, which lays the greatest emphasis upon pure monotheism: God is One (as in the sacred Sheina, "Hear, 0 Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord"; Deuteronomy 6:4). The prophetic religion of Israel steadily rose high above the polytheistic and often immoral pagan cults of the surrounding world. Hence the attempt to combine the worship of Yahweli, Israel's one and only God, with that of pagan gods, or to introduce or, once introduced, to retain, pagan ideas or religious customs was strongly resisted by the prophets and psalmists. Eventually, Judaism emerged from the long struggle as a religion with one and only one God, the purest monotheism in the ancient world. Such expressions as "Let us make man" (Genesis 1:26) is probably only an echo of the early Hebrew, conception of a divine court, the "company of heaven," supernatural or angelic beings surrounding God in heaven. There was no other God beside Him (Deuteronomy 32:39; Isaiah 46:9). This theistic faith is completely taken for granted in the New Testament and in the early Christian creeds. Instead of a reversion in the direction of polytheism, with a plurality of divine beings, the development of Trinitarian doctrine was guided by the same principle of divine revelation as that reflected in the Old Testament, that is, from plurality to unity. For the early Christian belief that Jesus was divine, the Son of God, and that as the risen, glorified Messiah or Lord, He was now at the right hand of God: required the use of theistic language. The oldest surviving fragment of an early Christian liturgical prayer is probably "Our Lord, come" (Maranatha, I Corinthians 16:22; compare Revelation 22:20); it implies that prayer was addressed to the risen, glorified Christ. The Aramaic title Mar or Lord (Greek Kyrios; I Corinthians 12:3) was a term or title regularly used in religious worship. A similar situation existed in the language used of the Holy Spirit. Though at first impersonal (compare Acts 8:15-16, 10:44), as if the Spirit could be referred to as "it," in time the language of Christian preaching, teaching, and worship clearly involved the conception of a divine person. The Spirit from God, sent by God, was also divine, and therefore was God. Such formulas as Paul's "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit" (11 Corinthians 13:14) are not necessarily theological, that is, metaphysical or philosophical, but they clearly point the direction in which Christian thought was inevitably moving." ... "The Athanasian Creed was the most explicit of the creedal statements of the doctrine of the Trinity. Still later controversies, such as the one which provided the pre-text for division between Eastern and Western Christianity, namely, the debate over the language to be used of the Holy Spirit its "proceeding from the Father and the Son," rather than "through the Son," rest upon variant interpretations of the language of Scripture, and not upon some abstruse metaphysical theory - though metaphysics was often introduced in support of views already adopted. The full development of Trinitarianism took place in the West, in the Scholasticism of the Middle Ages, when an explanation was under-taken in terms of philosophy and psychology, especially of the recovered Aristotelianism of the 13th century. The classical exposition is found in the works of St. Thomas Aquinas, whose views on this subject have dominated most of later Christian theology, both Roman Catholic and Protestant. (Encyclopedia Americana, Trinity, p116)

We have already discussed Mr. Buzzard above so lets know look at the Catholic Encyclopedias in greater detail:

Catholic Encyclopedia’s and Dictionaries

1. Attempts have been made recently to apply the more extreme theories of comparative religion [pagan similarities] to the doctrine of the Trinity, and to account for it by an imaginary law of nature compelling men to group the objects of their worship in threes. ... It seems needless to give more than a reference to these extravagant views, which serious thinkers of every school reject as destitute of foundation. (The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1912, Vol. 15, p 47-49)
2. PROOF OF DOCTRINE FROM SCRIPTURE-A. New Testament.-The evidence from the Gospels culminates in the baptismal commission of Matt., xxviii, 20. It is manifest from the narratives of the Evangelists that Christ only made the great truth known to the Twelve step by step. First He taught them to recognize in himself the Eternal Son of God. When His ministry was drawing to a close, He promised that the Father would send another Divine Person, the Holy Spirit, in His place. Finally, after His resurrection, He revealed the [trinity] doctrine in explicit terms, bidding them go and teach all nations, "baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost" (Matt. 28:19). The force of this passage is decisive. That "the Father" and "the Son" are distinct Persons follows from the terms themselves, which are mutually exclusive. The mention of the Holy Spirit in the same series, the names being connected one with the other by the conjunctions "and . . . and", is evidence that we have here a Third Person co-ordinate with the Father and the Son, and excludes altogether the supposition that the Apostles understood the Holy Spirit not as a distinct Person, but as God viewed in His action on creatures. The phase "in the name" [Greek] affirms alike the Godhead of the Persons and their unity of nature. (The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1912, Vol. 15, p 47-49)
3. It is incredible that the phrase "in the name" should be here employed, were not all the Persons mentioned equally Divine. More over, the use of the singular, "name", and not the plural, shows that these Three Persons are that One Omnipotent God in whom the Apostles believed. (The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1912, Vol. 15, p 47-49)
4. The supernatural appearance at the baptism of Christ is often cited as an explicit revelation of Trinitarian doctrine, given at the very commencement of the Ministry. This, it seems to us, is a mistake. The Evangelists it is true, see in it a manifestation of the Three Divine Persons. (The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1912, Vol. 15, p 47-49)
5. Besides these passages there are many others in the Gospels which refer to one or other of the Three Persons in particular, and clearly express the separate - personality and Divinity of each. (The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1912, Vol. 15, p 47-49)
6. The Divinity of Christ is amply attested not merely by St. John, but by the Synoptists. (The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1912, Vol. 15, p 47-49)
7. St. John’s testimony is yet more explicit than that of the Synoptists. He expressly asserts that the very purpose of his Gospel is to establish the Divinity of Jesus Christ (John, xx 31). In the prologue he identifies Him with the Word, the only begotten of the Father, Who from all eternity exists with God, Who is God (John, i, 1-18). (The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1912, Vol. 15, p 47-49)
8. Rationalist critics lay great stress upon the text: "The Father is greater than I" (xiv, 28). They argue that this suffices to establish that the author of the Gospel held subordinationist views, and they expound in this sense certain texts in which the Son declares His dependence on the Father (v, 19; viii, 28). In point of fact the doctrine of the Incarnation involves that, in regard of His Human Nature, the Son should be less than the Father. No argument against Catholic doctrine can, therefore, be drawn from this text. (The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1912, Vol. 15, p 47-49)
9. In regard to the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, the passages which can be cited from the Synoptists as attesting His distinct personality are few. ... But in Luke, 12:12 "The Holy Ghost shall teach you in the same our what you must say" (Matt. 10:20, and Luke, 24:49), His personality is clearly implied.(The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1912, Vol. 15, p 47-49)
10. We have in these chapters the necessary preparation for the baptismal commission. In them the Apostles are instructed not only as to the personality of the Spirit, but as to His office towards the church. (The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1912, Vol. 15, p 47-49)
11. It is evident that, were the Spirit not a Person, Christ could not have spoken of His presence with the Apostles as comparable to His own presence with them (xiv, 16, 17). Again, were He not a Divine Person it could not have been expedient for the Apostles that Christ should leave them, and the Paraclete take His place (xvi, 7). (The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1912, Vol. 15, p 47-49)
12. In certain texts the coordination of Father, Son, and Spirit leaves no possible doubt as to the meaning of the writer. Thus in II Cor, xiii, 13, St. Paul writes: "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the charity of God and the communication of the Holy Ghost be with you all." Here the construction shows that the Apostle is speaking of three distinct Persons. Moreover, since the names God and Holy Ghost are alike Divine names, it follows that Jesus Christ is also regarded as a Divine Person. (The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1912, Vol. 15, p 47-49)
13. In the Apostolic writings theos may almost be said to be treated as a proper name of God the Father, and Kurios of the Son (of. e. g. I Cor xii 5 6); in only a few passages do we find kurios used of the Father (I Cor., iii, 5; vii, 17) or theos of Christ. (The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1912, Vol. 15, p 47-49)
14. The doctrine as to the Holy Spirit is equally clear. That His distinct personality was fully recognized is shown by many passages. Thus He reveals His commands to the Church's ministers: " As they were ministering to the Lord and fasting the Holy Ghost said to them: Separate me Saul and Barnabas" (Acts, xiii, 2). He directs the missionary journey of the Apostles: "They attempt to go into Bithynia, and the Spirit of Jesus suffered them not" (Acts, xvi, 7; of. Acts, v, 3; xv, 28; Rom., xv, 30). Divine attributes are affirmed of Him. (The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1912, Vol. 15, p 47-49)
15. To sum up: the various elements of the Trinitarian doctrine are all expressly taught in the New Testament. The Divinity of the Three Persons is asserted or implied in passages too numerous to count. (The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1912, Vol. 15, p 47-49)
16. The early Fathers were persuaded that indications of the doctrine of the Trinity must exist in the Old Testament and they found such indications in not a few passages. Many of them not merely believed that the Prophets had testified of it, they held that it had been made known even to the Patriarchs. (The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1912, Vol. 15, p 47-49)

1. The word Trinity (tri’as) first occurs in Theophilus of Antioch (" Ad Autol." ii. 15, PG, vi-1078 ; of. Tertullian " De Pud." 21, PL, ii. 1026), who wrote about 180, but the doctrine, which the word expresses appears in the New Testament and has its roots in the Old Testament. The Doctrine in the Old Testament.- ... "Jehovah said to the angels, ministering before Him, who were created on the second day of the creation of the world, "Let us make man in our image."' This view has met with the approval of some modern scholars, but there is no mention of angels in the context, and the notion of angelic agency in creation is Babylonian and Persian, but not Biblical. ... The real origin of this plural form is obscure, but anyhow Petavius most rightly refuses to see in it any allusion to a plurality of Divine Persons. The word for a human master is also often plural, and the same plural form of the word God with a singular verb is used of Dagon (Jud. xvi. 23). ... In a few passages the Old Testament ascribes Divine attributes to the Messiah, and this, as the Messiah is sent by and is distinct from God (the Father), implies a duality of Persons in God. Some places often adduced, although their true sense and reference to our Lord are certain to us from the light of the New Testament, are scarcely conclusive in and by themselves. (A Catholic Dictionary, William E. Addis & Thomas Arnold, 1960, p 822-830)
2. The Trinity in the New Testament. ... Christ in the Synoptic Gospels certainly claims attributes which can hardly be less than divine... In Rom. 9:5, as commonly translated, we have the strongest statement of Christ's divinity in St. Paul, and, indeed, in the N.T. ; " Whose are the Fathers, and from whom is the Christ according to the flesh, who is the God over all blessed for ever, Amen." We cannot enter on a discussion of the rendering here. In any case, the text cannot be conclusively urged, against an opponent. There is no reason in grammar or in the context which forbids us to translate " God who is over all, be blessed for ever, Amen"---& doxology suddenly introduced, but quite in St. Paul's manner (Gal. 1. 5; of Rom. i. 25 ; 2 Cor. xi. 31). ... The divinity and distinct existence of the Word are most clearly taught in St. John's Gospel. (A Catholic Dictionary, William E. Addis & Thomas Arnold, 1960, p 822-830)
3. But is a personal existence clearly attributed to the Spirit? No doubt, all through the N.T. his action is described as personal. He speaks (Mk. xiii 11 ; Acts viii. 29), bears witness (Rom. viii. 16; 1 Jn. v. 6), searches (I Cor. ii. 10), decides (Acts xv. 28), helps and intercedes (Rom. viii. 26), apportions the gifts of grace (1 Cor. xii. 11). Most of these places furnish no cogent proof of personality. ... In the fourth Gospel, however, this personal existence is stated more fully and plainly ... I will ask the Father and He will give you another advocate, that Her may be with you for ever, the Spirit of truth. I will not leave you orphans, I will come to you " (v. 16-18). "Advocate " is the same name given in 1 Jn- to Christ Himself, our advocate with the Father, and in each case the name is a personal one. ... Trinitarian formulae occur throughout the N.T. books. ... The persons of the Trinity are further mentioned together by St. Paul (2 Cor. 13:13) and by St. Peter (I Ep. i. 1-2). (A Catholic Dictionary, William E. Addis & Thomas Arnold, 1960, p 822-830)
4. Considering the strict Monotheism of the NT.,-such language implies the divinity, as well as the personality, of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and they are sufficient warrant for refusing to believe that N.T. writers did not know the doctrine, because they did not, like St. John, state it explicitly. (A Catholic Dictionary, William E. Addis & Thomas Arnold, 1960, p 822-830)
5. The Semi-Arians, who thought it enough to admit the Son's likeness to the Father, but would not allow the second Person to be equal to or consubstantial with the first, were driven by the force of logic, to make the Holy Ghost a creature. (A Catholic Dictionary, William E. Addis & Thomas Arnold, 1960, p 822-830)

The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1912

New Catholic Encyclopedia, 1965

A Catholic Dictionary, William E. Addis & Thomas Arnold, 1960

I. THE DOGMA of the Trinity-The Trinity is the term employed to signify the central doctrine of the Christian religion-the truth that in the unity of the Godhead there are Three Persons the Father the Son, and the Holy Spirit, these three Persons being truly distinct one from another. Thus, in the words of the Athanasian Creed: "the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and yet there are not three Gods but one God." In this Trinity of Persons the Son is begotten of the Father by an eternal generation, and the Holy Spirit proceeds by an eternal procession from the Father and the Son'. Yet, notwithstanding this difference as to origin, the Persons are co-eternal and co-equal: all alike are uncreated and omnipotent. This the Church teaches is the revelation regarding 'God's nature which Jesus Christ, the Son of God came upon earth to deliver to the world: and which she proposes to man as the foundation of her whole dogmatic system. In Scripture there is as yet no single term by which the Three Divine Persons are denoted together. The word [tri'as] (of which the Latin trinitas is a translation) is first found in Theophilus of Antioch about A. D. 180. He speaks of "the Trinity of God [the Father], His Word and His Wisdom" ("Ad. Autol.", 11, 15, P. G., VI, 1078). The term may, of course, have been in use before his time. Shortly afterwards it appears in its Latin form of trinitas in Tertullian. ... It is manifest that a dogma so mysterious presupposes a Divine revelation. When the fact of revelation, understood in its full sense as the speech of God to man, is no longer admitted, the rejection of the doctrine follows as a necessary consequence. For this reason it has no place in the Liberal Protestantism of today. The writers of this school contend that the doctrine of the Trinity, as professed by the Church, is not contained in the New Testament, but that it was first formulated in the second century and received final approbation in the fourth, as the result of the Arian and Macedonian controversies (cf. e. g. Harnack, "Hist. of Dogma", tr., IV, i, appendix; idem, "Constitution and Law of the Church", ...) In view of this assertion it is necessary to consider in some detail the evidence afforded by Holy Scripture. Attempts have been made recently to apply the more extreme theories of comparative religion [pagan similarities] to the doctrine of the Trinity, and to account for it by an imaginary law of nature compelling men to group the objects of their worship in threes. ... It seems needless to give more than a reference to these extravagant views, which serious thinkers of every school reject as destitute of foundation. II PROOF OF DOCTRINE FROM SCRIPTURE-A. New Testament.-The evidence from the Gospels culminates in the baptismal commission of Matt., xxviii, 20. It is manifest from the narratives of the Evangelists that Christ only made the great truth known to the Twelve step by step. First He taught them to recognize in himself the Eternal Son of God. When His ministry was drawing to a close, He promised that the Father would send another Divine Person, the Holy Spirit, in His place. Finally, after His resurrection, He revealed the [trinity] doctrine in explicit terms, bidding them go and teach all nations, "baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost" (Matt. 28:19). The force of this passage is decisive. That "the Father" and "the Son" are distinct Persons follows from the terms themselves, which are mutually exclusive. The mention of the Holy Spirit in the same series, the names being connected one with the other by the conjunctions "and . . . and", is evidence that we have here a Third Person co-ordinate with the Father and the Son, and excludes altogether the supposition that the Apostles understood the Holy Spirit not as a distinct Person, but as God viewed in His action on creatures. The phase "in the name" [Greek] affirms alike the Godhead of the Persons and their unity of nature. Among the Jews and in the Apostolic Church the Divine name was representative of God. He who had a right to use it was invested with vast authority: for he wielded the supernatural powers of Him whose name he employed. It is incredible that the phrase "in the name" should be here employed, were not all the Persons mentioned equally Divine. More over, the use of the singular, "name", and not the plural, shows that these Three Persons are that One Omnipotent God in whom the Apostles believed. Indeed the unity of God is so fundamental a tenet alike of the Hebrew and of the Christian religion, and is affirmed in such countless passages of the Old and New Testaments, that any explanation inconsistent with this doctrine would be altogether inadmissible. The supernatural appearance at the baptism of Christ is often cited as an explicit revelation of Trinitarian doctrine, given at the very commencement of the Ministry. This, it seems to us, is a mistake. The Evangelists it is true, see in it a manifestation of the Three Divine Persons. Yet, apart from Christ's subsequent teaching, the dogmatic meaning of the scene would hardly have been understood. Moreover, the Gospel narratives appear understood to signify that none but Christ and the Baptist were privileged to am the Mystic Dove, and hear the words attesting the Divine sonship of the Messias. Besides these passages there are many others in the Gospels which refer to one or other of the Three Persons in particular, and clearly express the separate - personality and Divinity of each. In regard to the First Person it will not be necessary to give special citations: those which declare that Jesus Christ is God the Son affirm thereby also the separate personality of the Father. The Divinity of Christ is amply attested not merely by St. John, but by the Synoptists. As this point is treated elsewhere (see Jesus Christ), it will be sufficient here to enumerate a few of the more important passages from the Synoptists, in which Christ bears witness to His Divine Nature. (1) He declares that He will come to be the judge of all men (Matt., xxv, 31). In Jewish theology the judgment of the world was a distinctively Divine, and not a Messianic, prerogative. (2) In the parable of the wicked husbandmen, He describes Himself as the son of the householder, while the Prophets, one and all, are represented as the servants (Matt., xxi, 33 sqq.). (3) He is the Lord of Angels, who execute His commands (Matt., xxiv, 31). (4) He proves the confession of Peter when he recognizes Him, not as Messias-a step long since taken by all the Apostles-but explicitly as the Son of God: and He declares the knowledge due to a special revelation from the Father (Matt., xvi, 16 17). (5) Finally, before Caiphas He not merely declares Himself to be the Messias, but in reply to a second and distinct question affirms His claim to be the Son of God. He is instantly declared by the high priest to be guilty of blasphemy, an offence which could not have been attached to the claim to be simply the Messias (Luke, XXI 66-71). St. John’s testimony is yet more explicit than that of the Synoptists. He expressly asserts that the very purpose of his Gospel is to establish the Divinity of Jesus Christ (John, xx 31). In the prologue he identifies Him with the Word, the only begotten of the Father, Who from all eternity exists with God, Who is God (John, i, 1-18). The immanence of the Son in the Father and of the Father in the Son is declared in Christ's words to St. Philip: " Do you not believe, that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me?" (xiv, 10), and in other passages no less explicit (xiv, 7; xvi, 15; xvii, 21). The oneness of their power and their action is affirmed: "What things so ever he [the Father] doth, these the Son also doth in like manner" (v, 19. Cf. x, 38); and to the Son no less than to the Father belongs the Divine attribute of conferring life on whom He will (v, 21). Inx, 29, Christ expressly teaches His unity of essence with the Father: "That which my Father hath given me, is greater than all . . . I and the Father are one." The words, "That which my Father hath given me", can, having regard to the context, have no other meaning than the Divine Nature, possessed in its fullness by the Son as by the Father. Rationalist critics lay great stress upon the text: "The Father is greater than I" (xiv, 28). They argue that this suffices to establish that the author of the Gospel held subordinationist views, and they expound in this sense certain texts in which the Son declares His dependence on the Father (v, 19; viii, 28). In point of fact the doctrine of the Incarnation involves that, in regard of His Human Nature, the Son should be less than the Father. No argument against Catholic doctrine can, therefore, be drawn from this text. So, too, the passages referring to the dependence of the Son upon the Father do but express what is essential to Trinitarian dogma, viz., that the Father is the supreme source from Whom the Divine Nature and perfections flow to the Son. (On the essential difference between St. John's doctrine as to the Person of Christ and the Logos doctrine of the Alexandrine Philo, to which many Rationalists have attempted to trace it see LOGOS.) In regard to the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, the passages which can be cited from the Synoptists as attesting His distinct personality are few. The words of Gabriel (Luke, i, 35), having regard to the use of the term, "the Spirit", in the Old Testament, to signify God as operative in His creatures, can hardly be said to contain a definite revelation of the doctrine. For the same reason it is dubious whether Christ's warning to the Pharisees as regards blasphemy against the Holy Spirit (Matt., xii, 31) can be brought forward as proof. But in Luke, 12:12 "The Holy Ghost shall teach you in the same our what you must say" (Matt. 10:20, and Luke, 24:49), His personality is clearly implied. These passages, taken in connexion with Matt., xxviii 19 Postulate the existence of such teaching as we find in the discourses in the Cenacle reported by St. John (xiv-xvi). We have in these chapters the necessary preparation for the baptismal commission. In them the Apostles are instructed not only as to the personality of the Spirit, but as to His office towards the church. His work is to teach them whatsoever He shall hear (xvi 13), to bring back to their minds the teaching of Christ (xiv, 26) to convince the world of sin (xvi, 8). It is evident that, were the Spirit not a Person, Christ could not have spoken of His presence with the Apostles as comparable to His own presence with them (xiv, 16, 17). Again, were He not a Divine Person it could not have been expedient for the Apostles that Christ should leave them, and the Paraclete take His place (xvi, 7). Moreover, notwithstanding the neuter form of the word [Greek], the pronoun used in His regard is the masculine [Greek]. The distinction of the Holy Spirit from the Father and from the Son is involved in the express statements that He proceeds from the Father and is sent by the Son (xv, 26; cf. xiv. 16, 26). Nevertheless, He is One with Them: His presence with the Disciples is at the same time the presence of the Son (xiv, 17, 18), while the presence of the Son is the presence of the Father (xiv, 23). In the remaining New Testament writings numerous passages attest how clear and definite was the belief of the Apostolic Church in the three Divine Persons. In certain texts the coordination of Father, Son, and Spirit leaves no possible doubt as to the meaning of the writer. Thus in II Cor, xiii, 13, St. Paul writes: "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the charity of God and the communication of the Holy Ghost be with you all." Here the construction shows that the Apostle is speaking of three distinct Persons. Moreover, since the names God and Holy Ghost are alike Divine names, it follows that Jesus Christ is also regarded as a Divine Person. So also, in I Con, xii, 4-11: "There are diversities of graces, but the same Spirit; and there are diversities of ministries, but the same Lord: and there are diversities of operations, but the same God, who worketh all [of them] in all [persons]". (Cf. also Eph., iv; 4-6; 1 Pet., i, 2, 3.) But apart from passages such as these, where there is express mention of the Three Persons the teaching of the New Testament regarding Christ and the Holy Spirit is free from all ambiguity. In regard to Christ, the Apostles employ modes of speech which, to men brought up in the Hebrew faith, necessarily signified belief in His Divinity. Such, for instance, is the use 'of the Doxology in reference to Him. The Doxology, "To Him be glory for ever and ever " (cf. I Par xvi 36 * xxix 11 -Ps. ciii, 3 1; xxviii, 2), is an expression of praise offered to God alone. In the New Testament we find it addressed not alone to God the Father, but to Jesus Christ (II Tim., iv, 18; 11 Pet iii 18- Apoc i,6, Heb., xiii, 20, 21), and to God the Father and to Christ in conjunction -(Apoc v, 13; vii, 10). Not less convincing is the use of the title Lord Kurios. This term represents the Hebrew Adonai, just as God (theos) represents Elohim. The two are equally Divine names (cf. I Con, viii, 4). In the Apostolic writings theos may almost be said to be treated as a proper name of God the Father, and Kurios of the Son (of. e. g. I Cor xii 5 6); in only a few passages do we find kurios used of the Father (I Cor., iii, 5; vii, 17) or theos of Christ. The Apostles from time to time apply to Christ passages of the Old Testament in which kurios is used, e. g., I Cor, x, 9 (Num., xxi, 7), Heb., i, 10-12 (Ps. ci,26-28); and they use Such expressions as "the fear of the Lord " (Acts, ix 31 * Il Cor v 11 - Eph., v, 21), "call upon the name of the Lord, " indifferently of God the Father and of Christ (Acts, ii, 21; ix, 14; Rom., x, 13). The profession that "Jesus is the Lord" ([Greek] Rom., x 9 [Greek], I Cor. xii, 3) is the acknowledgment of Jesus as Jahweh (Lebreton, "Origines", 272 sq.) - The texts in which St. Paul affirms that in Christ dwells the plenitude of the Godhead (Col., ii, 9), that before His incarnation He possessed the essential nature of God (Phil., ii, 6), that He " is over all things, God blessed for ever" (Rom., ix, 5), tell us nothing that is not implied in many other passages of his Epistles. The doctrine as to the Holy Spirit is equally clear. That His distinct personality was fully recognized is shown by many passages. Thus He reveals His commands to the Church's ministers: " As they were ministering to the Lord and fasting the Holy Ghost said to them: Separate me Saul and Barnabas" (Acts, xiii, 2). He directs the missionary journey of the Apostles: "They attempt to go into Bithynia, and the Spirit of Jesus suffered them not" (Acts, xvi, 7; of. Acts, v, 3; xv, 28; Rom., xv, 30). Divine attributes are affirmed of Him. He possesses omniscience and reveals to the Church mysteries known only to God (I Cor., ii,10); it is He who distributes charismata (I Con, xii, 11); He is the giver of supernatural life (11 Con, iii, 6); He dwells in the Church and in the souls of individual men as in His temple (Rom., viii, 9-11; 1 Con, iii, 16, vi, 19). The work of justification and sanctification is attributed to Him (I Con, vi, 11; Rom., xv, 16), just as in other passages the same operations are attributed to Christ (I Cor. i,2; Gal., ii, 17). To sum up: the various elements of the Trinitarian doctrine are all expressly taught in the New Testament. The Divinity of the Three Persons is asserted or implied in passages too numerous to count. The unity of essence is not merely postulated by the strict monotheism of men nurtured in the religion of Israel ' to whom "subordinate deities" would have been unthinkable; but it is, as we have seen, involved in the baptismal commission of Matt., xxviii, 19, and, in regard to the Father and the Son, expressly asserted in John, x, 38. That the Persons are co-eternal and co-equal is a mere corollary from this. In regard to the Divine processions, the doctrine of the first procession is contained in the very terms Father and Son: the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and Son is taught in the discourse of the Lord reported by St. John (xiv-xvii) (see HOLY GHOST). B. Old Testament.-The early Fathers were persuaded that indications of the doctrine of the Trinity must exist in the Old Testament and they found such indications in not a few passages. Many of them not merely believed that the Prophets had testified of it, they held that it had been made known even to the Patriarchs. ... Some of these, however, admitted that a knowledge of the mystery was granted to the Prophets and Saints of the Old Dispensation ... It may be readily conceded that the way is prepared for the revelation in some of the prophecies. The names Emmanuel (Isa., vii, 14) and God the Mighty (Isa ix, 6) affirmed of the Messias make mention of the Divine Nature of the promised deliverer. Yet it seems that the Gospel revelation was needed to render the full meaning of the passages clear. Even these exalted titles did not lead the Jews to recognize that the Saviour to come was to be none other than God Himself. The Septuagint translators do not even venture to render the words God the Mighty literally, but give us, in their place, "'the angel of great counsel". A still higher stage of preparation is found in the doctrine of the Sapiential books regarding the Divine Wisdom. In Prov., viii, Wisdom appears personified, and in a manner which suggests that the sacred author was not emploring a mere metaphor, but had before his mind a real person (cf. verses 22, 23). Similar teaching occurs in Ecclus., xxiv, in a discourse which Wisdom is declared to utter in "the assembly of the Most High", i. e. in the presence of the angels. This phrase certainly supposes Wisdom to be conceived as a person. The nature of the personality is left obscure but we are told that the whole earth is Wisdom’s kingdom, that she finds her delight in all the works of God, but that Israel is in a special manner her portion and her inheritance (Ecclus., xxiv, 8-13). In the Book of the Wisdom of Solomon we find a still further advance. Here Wisdom is clearly distinguished from Jehovah: "She is . . . a certain pure emanation of the glory of the almighty God . . . the brightness of eternal light, and the unspotted mirror of God's majesty, and the image of his good ness " (Wis., vii, 25, 26. Cf. Hebrews i 3) She is moreover, described as "the worker of all things" [Hebrew] , an expression indicating that the creation is in some manner attributable to her. Yet in later Judaism this exalted doctrine suffered eclipse, and seems to have passed into oblivion. Nor indeed can it be said that the passage even though it manifests some knowledge of a second personality in the Godhead, constitutes a revelation of the Trinity. For nowhere in the Old Testament do we find any clear indication of a Third Person. Mention is often made of the Spirit of the Lord, but there is nothing to show that the Spirit was viewed as distinct from Jahweh Himself. The term is always employed to signify God considered in His working, whether in the universe or in the soul of man. The matter seems to be correctly summed up by Epiphanius, when he says: "The One Godhead is above all declared by Moses, and the twofold personality (of Father and Son) is strenuously asserted by the Prophets. The Trinity is made known by the Gospel" ("Haer.", lxxiv., P. G., XLII, 493). (The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1912, Vol. 15, p 47-49)

• "Scholars have always recognized Greek influence not on Christian teaching, but on its "mental cast," its "phraseology and ideas" (New Catholic Encyclopedia. vol 14, p58)

TRINITY, HOLY. The mystery of the Trinity consists in this, that God, being numerically and individually one, exists in three Persons, or, in other words, that the Divine essence, which is one and the same in the strictest and most absolute sense, exists in three Persons, really distinct from each other, and yet each really identical with the same Divine essence. The Father is unbegotten, the Son begotten, the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and Son. Each Person is really distinct from the other, each is the true, eternal God, and yet there, is only one God. We can understand how three individual men are distinct from each other and yet possess humanity in common. The unity of the three Divine Persons is, altogether different. When we speak of them as one God, we mean not only that each is God, but that each is one and the, same God, and herein is the mystery, incomprehensible to any created intelligence. The word Trinity (tri’as) first occurs in Theophilus of Antioch (" Ad Autol." ii. 15, PG, vi-1078 ; of. Tertullian " De Pud." 21, PL, ii. 1026), who wrote about 180, but the doctrine, which the word expresses appears in the New Testament and has its roots in the Old Testament. The Doctrine in the Old Testament.- (a) Catholics, from the Fathers downwards, full of faith in the Holy Trinity, and knowing that the author of the New Testament is also the author of the Old, have naturally been prepared to find traces of the doctrine in the ancient Scriptures, and have often satisfied themselves that such traces exist in cases where scholarship proves the possibility or even the correctness of another interpretation. In what follows, we have, kept constantly in view the least an adversary must admit, the least which grammatical and historical considerations require us to see in any particular text. Passages there an, quoted by the Fathers, in which God speaks of Himself in the plural Such are Gen. i. 26, iii. 22, xi. 7; Is. vi. 8-In the first two the Fathers generally see aft allusion to the Trinity, most of them do so in the third, a few only in the fourth, which is, generally understood as addressed to the seraphim who am mentioned in the context (references in Petavius, " De Trin." 1!. 7). Let us take the first passage from Genesis, the strongest, as Petavius thinks, among them all. And God said, Let us make man in our image." The New Testament gives no exposition of the words. The oldest explanation is found in Philo, and adopted in the Targum of Pseudo-Jonathan, which paraphrases the words thus: "Jehovah said to the angels, ministering before Him, who were created on the second day of the creation of the world, "Let us make man in our image."' This view has met with the approval of some modern scholars, but there is no mention of angels in the context, and the notion of angelic agency in creation is Babylonian and Persian, but not Biblical. Another very popular view in modem times is that God uses the plural, just as kings do, as a mark of dignity (the so-called "plural of majesty"), but it is only late in Jewish history that such a form of speech occurs, and then it is used by Persian and Greek rulers (Esdr. iv. 18; 1 Mace. x. 19). Nor can the plural be regarded as merely indicating the way in which God summons Himself to energy, for the use of the language is against this (Gen. ii. 18; Is. xxxiii. 10). The most recent explanation is that of Dillmann (ad loc.), who thinks that God, in the solemn moment of man's creation, addresses Himself as the complex of Divine energies and powers. Akin to the arguments drawn from the above texts is that from the fact that the Hebrew word for God is plural, while it is usually construed with a singular verb. The real origin of this plural form is obscure, but anyhow Petavius most rightly refuses to see in it any allusion to a plurality of Divine Persons. The word for a human master is also often plural, and the same plural form of the word God with a singular verb is used of Dagon (Jud. xvi. 23). Lastly, under this head we may mention the "Holy, holy, holy" of Is. vi., the triple blessing in Num. vi. 24. and the apparent distinction between God and God in Gen. xix. 24: " And Jehovah rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulphur and fire from Jehovah from the heavens." The first two places may only allow that three, like seven and ten, was a favourite (of. Jer. viii 4) and perhaps a sacred number among the Hebrews; in Gen. xix. 24, the repetition of the words "from Jehovah " is perhaps merely an old and emphatic equivalent for "from Himself." Its meaning is much the same as that of the words which follow it -viz. from "the heavens," ... In a few passages the Old Testament ascribes Divine attributes to the Messiah, and this, as the Messiah is sent by and is distinct from God (the Father), implies a duality of Persons in God. Some places often adduced, although their true sense and reference to our Lord are certain to us from the light of the New Testament, are scarcely conclusive in and by themselves. The Trinity in the New Testament.-The absolute unity of God was and is the great article of Israel's faith, and it is asserted with equal emphasis throughout the New Testament (Rom. xvi. 27 ; I Tim. vi. 15 seq. ; John xvii. 3). If, then, the New Testament towhee the real, distinct, and divine personality of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, this comes to teaching the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity. 1. The Son or Word of God-The first three Gospels and the Acts describe Jesus as the " Son of God," a title which primarily implies this Messianic office. Because He is the Christ, death cannot bind Him (Acts ii. 24) ; He is "the, prince of life " (iii. 15). After. His resurrection, He "receives all power in heaven and earth " (Mt. xxviii. 18). Nowhere, however, is His pre-existence, much less His eternal generation, asserted in terms, but Christ in the Synoptic Gospels certainly claims attributes which can hardly be less than divine (see, particularly, Mt. xi. 27). In the earlier Epistles of St. Paul, his pre-existence is clearly affirmed. Through Him are all things" (I Cor. viii. 6) He is the image of God " (2 Cor. iv. 4) He is the Lord " (I Cor. xii. 3 ; Rom. x. 9) ; He is absolutely sinless (2 Cor. v. 21) He is " the Spirit " (2 Cor. iii. 17)-i.e. the Holy Spirit is His Spirit, the living principle of His working and indwelling. In Rom. 9:5, as commonly translated, we have the strongest statement of Christ's divinity in St. Paul, and, indeed, in the N.T. ; " Whose are the Fathers, and from whom is the Christ according to the flesh, who is the God over all blessed for ever, Amen." We cannot enter on a discussion of the rendering here. In any case, the text cannot be conclusively urged, against an opponent. There is no reason in grammar or in the context which forbids us to translate " God who is over all, be blessed for ever, Amen"---& doxology suddenly introduced, but quite in St. Paul's manner (Gal. 1. 5; of Rom. i. 25 ; 2 Cor. xi. 31). In the Apocalypse we find the term Logos " peculiar in the N.T. to the Johannic writings (xix. 13, " Word of God; " not, however, J %or, as in the Gospel). He is the " beginning of the creation of God " (iii. 14), though this phrase seem to imply priority in dignity rather than in existence.' He is " Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end " (xxi. 6), the same phrase which Is used (1. 11) of the Almighty." in the Epistle to the Hebrews the "Logos " is not used as a personal name, but the ideas prominent in the Book of Wisdom recur here, are applied to Christ, and united to the doctrine of his generation as the Son of God before the world was made. Thus, Wisdom (vii. 26) is the "effulgence [Greek] of eternal light," " the unstained mirror of the working of God," and "the image of his goodness " ; and so (Heb. i.) the Son is the " effulgence " [Greek] of God's glory, "the stamp " or expressed image of " his sub-stance." As Wisdom is the " artificer of all things " (Wisd. vii. 21), so through the Son all things were made, and He upholds all things by the " word of his power " [Greek]. Not only is the Son, because Son, raised above the angels, but lie is addressed as God (v. 8), and the description of God's. majesty (Ps. cii. 26-28) is applied to Him. Somewhat similar is the aspect which the doctrine assumes in the later Pauline Epistles, particularly in that to the Colossians, in which Christ is " the centre of the universe, of the, spiritual and corporeal world " (the words are Hilgenfeld's). ... The divinity and distinct existence of the Word am most clearly taught in St. John's Gospel. The Word (absolutely only in i. I and i. 14) existed before all time ; " in the beginning," before things were made, He was. This existence was a personal one, for the Word is no more attribute, like the, reason or wisdom of God, but was [Greek] in active communication with God. (For the force of [Greek] compare Mk. vi. 3, ix. 19 ; Mt. xiii. 56, xxvi. 55 -1 1 Cor. xvi. 6; Gal. i. 18, iv. 18.) As the spoken word is distinct from him who utters it, so was the Word distinct from God the, Father [Greek]. Yet in nature or essence He is one with the Father-" the Word was God" (theos); " all things came into being through Him," and this without any exception, And the continuance of things, no less than their origin, depends on Him-"That which was made was life in Him." As He Is the Word or perfect expression of God the Father's being before creation, so, after It, He is the source of all spiritual illumination (1. 9) ; and lastly, He " became flesh and tabernacled among us," replacing the partial revelations of the past by one which was full and perfect. He in Son an well as Word, but His sonship is different from that which is common to believers. He is Son in the strict sense, with the same nature as Me Father; whence He is " the only-begotten from the Father ... .. the only-begotten Son " (or, perhaps, " the only-begotten God " ; so Westcott and Hort, i. 14, iii. 16, 18; see also I Jn. iv. 9). He and the Father " are one " (x. 30) ; to have seen Him is to have seen the Father (xiv. 9). All that had been previously revealed in the Bible, all the results of extra-biblical speculation in the Jewish Church, are here combined-the "Word" of the Hebrew Bible and of the Targams; the [Greek] or " reason " of Philo, the creative Wisdom of Proverbs and the Deutero-Canonical books. And the Bible, in one of its latest books, is the exposition of an idea which can be traced back to the words with which the Bible, as we have it, begins: " In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and God said, Lot there be light, and there was light." 2. The Spirit of God.-On the whole, the New Testament, like the Old, speaks of the Spirit as a divine energy or power particularly in the heart of man. The Spirit rests on Christ, and is a power within Him distinct from. Himself (Mt. iii. 16, xii. 28; Lk. iv. 1-14; Jn. i. 32), having first caused His miraculous conception (Lk. i., &c.) The Spirit is imparted to Christ's disciples, the citizens of the Messianic kingdom, and is their guide (I Pet. i. 12 ; Acts ii. 4 Beg., xv. 28 ; of. v. 2). This divine Spirit is clearly distinguished from the Spirit or conscience of man (Rom. viii 16), and the authority of the Spirit is identified with that of God Himself (Mt. xii. 31 ; Acts v. 3, 9 ; I Cor. U 16 ; but of. Exod. xvi 8 ; 1 Thess. iv. 8). But is a personal existence clearly attributed to the Spirit? No doubt, all through the N.T. his action is described as personal. He speaks (Mk. xiii 11 ; Acts viii. 29), bears witness (Rom. viii. 16; 1 Jn. v. 6), searches (I Cor. ii. 10), decides (Acts xv. 28), helps and intercedes (Rom. viii. 26), apportions the gifts of grace (1 Cor. xii. 11). Most of these places furnish no cogent proof of personality. The spirit of God and Christ (Gal. iv. 6) may be said to do what He operates through man ; and again, we must not forget that the N.T. personifies mere attributes such as love (I Cor. xiii. 4), and sin (Rom. vii. 11), nay, even abstract and lifeless things, such as the law (Rom. iii. 19), the water and the blood (1 Jn. v. 8). However, if we look well to the passage above quoted from St. Paul (I Cor. xii. 11) we find that the Spirit is distinguished from 'the gate of the Spirit, and that personal action is predicated of Him: "All these things one and the same Spirit worketh, dividing to each separately, as He [the Spirit] wills" Poetical personification would be quite out of place here, and Meyer rightly treats the words as decisive. In the fourth Gospel, however, this personal existence is stated more fully and plainly (oh. xiv.). Even the author of the article on the Trinity in Sohenkel's "Dictionary of the Bible" (Bibel-Lexicon," art. Dreieinigkeit), though he writes to show that the doctrine of the Trinity is not Biblical, admits that the-hypostatical existence of the Holy Spirit is taught here. " I will ask the Father and He will give you another advocate, that Her may be with you for ever, the Spirit of truth. I will not leave you orphans, I will come to you " (v. 16-18). "Advocate " is the same name given in 1 Jn- to Christ Himself, our advocate with the Father, and in each case the name is a personal one. In essence He is one with Christ, so that when He comes, Christ comes too. But He is not, as the writer just quoted thinks, represented as one in person with the glorified, Christ; on the contrary, He is "another advocate," 3. Trinitarian formulae occur throughout the N.T. books. Baptism is to be given " into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit " (Mt. xxviii. 19; cf. 1 Cor. i. 13-15, x. 2), which indicates the prevalent idea of baptism, as bringing the baptized into relation with living persons. The persons of the Trinity are further mentioned together by St. Paul (2 Cor. 13:13) and by St. Peter (I Ep. i. 1-2). Considering the strict Monotheism of the NT.,-such language implies the divinity, as well as the personality, of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and they are sufficient warrant for refusing to believe that N.T. writers did not know the doctrine, because they did not, like St. John, state it explicitly. ... The Semi-Arians, who thought it enough to admit the Son's likeness to the Father, but would not allow the second Person to be equal to or consubstantial with the first, were driven by the force of logic, to make the Holy Ghost a creature. To them, difference in order implied difference in nature, and hence, if the second Person, because second, was only like the Father, the third, because third, could not be even like, with the same exclusive likeness which belonged to the Son. And so Macedonius admitted that " the Son was God, both in all things and in essence like the Father, but he declared that the Holy Ghost had no part in the same prerogatives, calling Him servant and minister " (Sozomen, " H. E." iv. 27). The true divinity of the third Person was asserted at a Council of Alexandria in 362, by two. synods at Rome under Pope Damasus, and finally by the Council of Constantinople of 381, in a decree accepted by the whole Church. (Hefele-Leclercq, ii. 1-48.) (A Catholic Dictionary, William E. Addis & Thomas Arnold, 1960, p 822-830)

What neither Muslims nor Unitarians will tell you is that their is no credible Catholic Encyclopedia that disproves the Trinity. Only misquotations will help them in their arguments and nothing more.

Jesus never intended to contradict the Shema because he believed in the Holy Trinity. Now lets look at all of the Britanica quotes and show you how Mr. Rath along with the JW he copies this from, while giving this to Osama, actually misquote this great reference:

Encyclopædia Britannica

1. New Encyclopedia Britannica, 1979, Trinity, Vol. X, p.126
2. Encyclopædia Britannica, 1971, Constantine, Vol. 6, p. 386
3. New Encyclopedia Britannica, 1979, Christianity, Vol. 4, p.485
4. New Encyclopedia Britannica, 1979, Christianity, Vol. 4, p.480
5. New Encyclopedia Britannica, 1979, Constantine the Great, Vol. 5, p.71
6. New Encyclopedia Britannica, 1979, Arianism, Vol. I, p.509

"Trinity, the doctrine of God taught by Christianity that asserts that God is one in essence but three in "person," Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Neither the word Trinity, nor the explicit doctrine as such, appears in the New Testament, nor did Jesus and his followers intend to contradict the Shema in the Old Testament: "Hear, 0 Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord" (Deut. 6:4). The earliest Christians, however, had to cope with the implications of the coming of Jesus Christ and of the presence and power of God among them-i.e., the Holy Spirit, whose coming was connected with the celebration of the Pentecost. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were associated in such New Testament passages as the Great Commission: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them mi the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Matt. 28:19); and in the apostolic benediction: "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all" (II Cor. 13:14). Thus, the New Testament established the basis for the doctrine of the Trinity. The doctrine developed gradually over several centuries and through many controversies. Initially, both the requirements of monotheism inherited from the Old Testament and the implications of the need to interpret the biblical teaching to Greco-Roman paganism seemed to demand that the divine in Christ as the Word, or Logos, be interpreted as subordinate to the Supreme Being. An alternative solution was to interpret Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as three modes of the self-disclosure of the one God but not as distinct within the being of God itself. The first tendency recognized the distinctness among the three, but at the cost of their equality and hence of their unity (subordinationism); the second came to terms with their unity, but at the cost of their distinctness 'as "persons" (modalism). It was not until the 4th century that the distinctness of the three and their unity were brought together in a single orthodox doctrine of one essence and three persons. The Council of Nicaea in 325 stated the crucial formula for that doctrine in its confession that the Son is "of the same essence [homoousios] as the Father," even though it said very little about the Holy Spirit. Over the next half century, Athanasius defended and refined the Nicene formula, and, by the end of the 4th century, under the leadership of Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus (the Cappadocian Fathers), the doctrine of the Trinity took substantially the form it has maintained ever since." (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1979, Trinity, Vol. X, p.126)

"Constantine: On June 15, 313, he issued at Nicornedia (Izmit) an edict (often misleadingly called the edict of Milan) proclaiming the common policy, agreed between the two emperors at Milan, of full toleration for all religions and restitution of wrongs done to the Christians. Constantine himself went further, making lavish donations to the churches and granting immunities to the clergy. Conversion- The reasons for Constantine's conversion to Christianity have been much debated. Some believe that it was an astute stroke of policy, designed to win the support of the Christians, or a wise act of statesmanship aimed at buttressing the decaying fabric of the empire with the strength of the Christian church. Neither view is very likely, for the Christians, especially in the west, were a small and unimportant minority and the churches weak and divided. Constantine's motives can be best divined from his voluminous letters and edicts on religion, whose authenticity has been proved. From these it appears that from 313 he regarded himself as the chosen servant of the "Highest Divinity" (whom he identified with the God of the Christians), who had given him victory over his enemies and raised him to supreme power, and believed that the prosperity of the empire and of himself, to whose care it had been committed, would be increased by God if his worship were properly conducted, and would be endangered if God were moved to wrath by its neglect. This belief is most simply explained by the story Constantine himself many years later told his biographer Eusebius of Caesarea and confirmed upon oath. When he was contemplating his attack on Maxentius and considering whence he should obtain divine aid, he saw a cross of light superimposed upon the sun. This vision, whatever its nature, was decisive in his conversion, evidenced in the favours he henceforth showered on the Christian church. During the decade following his conversion Constantine's legislation shows many signs of Christian influence. For example, he repealed the legislation of Augustus that penalized celibates, legalized bequests to the church and gave full validity to manumission performed in a church. He even gave powers of jurisdiction to bishops, allowing either party to transfer a suit to the cognizance of a bishop, whose verdict should be final and executed by the civil authority. He also made Sunday a public holiday according to Christian practice, although he emphasized its sacredness to the sun. It was probably at this period that he built and lavishly endowed the Basilica Constantiniana and its baptistery, the Fons Constantini, in the palace of the Laterani in Rome. Religious Policy. Constantine was soon involved in ecclesiastical controversy, in particular that associated with Donatus (see DONATISTS). In 313 a group of African bishops led by Majorinus, who claimed to be bishop of Carthage, submitted to him charges against Caecilian, the rival bishop of Carthage, and asked him to appoint judges to decide the dispute. Constantine was already aware of the schism and on the suggestion of his ecclesiastical adviser, Ossius, bishop of Cordoba, he had confined his benefactions to Caecilian's party, but he accepted the petition of the other group and appointed as judges the bishops of Rome, Arelate (Arles), Augustodunum (Autun) and Colonia (Cologne). The bishop of Rome, having called in 15 Italian bishops in addition, pronounced in favour of Caecilian, but the defeated party, now led by Donatus, Majorinus' successor, appealed. Constantine summoned a larger council of bishops at Arles (314), and they again decided in Caecilian's favour. The Donatist party now appealed to Constantine himself. He eventually agreed to hear the case, and again condemned the Donatists. When they remained recalcitrant, he endeavoured to suppress them by force, but they welcomed martyrdom. In 321 he ended the persecution, announcing that he would leave the dissidents to the judgment of God. Constantine was convinced, doubtless by Ossius, that dissension in his church was deeply displeasing to God. It was the traditional duty of the emperor to maintain the pax deorum, and Constantine assumed that he had to win and retain for the empire the favour of God. He used the bishops as experts to pronounce on the religious issue, as his pagan predecessors had used the pontifices or the augurs, but he himself selected and summoned the bishops, received appeals on their decision and took what executive action he thought fit, Victory over Licinius and Foundation of Constantinople.Constantine and Licinius were soon at variance. In 314-315 there was a war in Pannonia in which Constantine on the whole gained the upper hand: Licinius had to cede to him the two dioceses of Pannonia and Moesia as the price of peace. In 317 Constantine's two elder sons, Crispus and Constantine, were jointly given the title of Caesar with Licinius' son Licinius, but relations gradually deteriorated. Licinius, uncertain of the loyalty of his Christian subjects. began to persecute them, and Constantine in a war against the Goths violated Licinius' territory in Thrace. In 324 Constantine attacked, and, fighting under the protection of the labarum, his armies were victorious at Adrianople (modern Edirne) in Thrace (July 3) and on Sept. 18 at Chrysopolis (Oskiidar), situated opposite Byzantium across the Bosporus. Licinius surrendered and in 325 he was executed for an alleged attempt at revolt. Soon after his victory Constantine began to rebuild Byzantium on a magnificent scale, renaming it Constantinople (q.v.). He spent great wealth on his new foundation, and to adorn it robbed many pagan shrines of their statues and columns; the city was formally dedicated on May 11, 330. It symbolized a break with the pagan past which was identified with Rome, and heralded the beginning of a new Christian empire. Constantine states in one of his laws that he founded the new city "by the command of God," and he doubtless conceived it as a memorial and thank offering for the final victory whereby God had granted him rule over the whole empire. As such it was from the start a Christian city, unsullied by pagan sacrifice and amply endowed with magnificent churches. Coin types suggest that it was regarded as a sister to Rome, and it may have been called New Rome from the beginning. But it did not share Rome's constitutional privileges under Constantine. It had no prefect of the city until 359 and no senate. but was primarily an imperial residence. Arianism: Council of Nicaea and its Consequences. Immediately after his victory over Licinius Constantine had redressed the wrongs inflicted on the Christians during the recent persecutions and supplied funds for enlarging and rebuilding the churches in all the eastern provinces. He remembered from his youth that the church was far larger and more flourishing in the east than in the west, and he had hopes that the eastern bishops would be able to resolve the intractable Donatist problem. It was therefore with dismay that he discovered that the eastern churches were divided by a much more widespread dispute, the doctrinal controversy between Alexander, bishop of Alexandria, and one of his priests, Arius (see ARIUS; ARIANISM). Not understanding the theological points at issue Constantine first sent a letter to the two parties rebuking them for quarreling about minute distinctions, as he believed them to be, about the nature of Christ, and urging them to agree to differ, as did pagan philosophers. Ossius, who carried this letter to Alexandria, soon discovered that the dispute was too serious to be thus resolved, and summoned a large council of Syrian bishops at Antioch (325). They condemned Arius, but before they had concluded their deliberations, Constantine decided to convoke a still larger council at Ancyra (Ankara) in Galatia. Shortly afterward he resolved to hold a universal (ecumenical) council of all, the churches at Nicaea in Bithynia: this city was chosen as being more convenient for the bishops of Italy and the west who had been summoned, and for the emperor himself, who intended to be present. The Council of Nicaea met on May 20, 325. Constantine himself presided, actively guiding the discussions, and personally proposed (no doubt on Ossius' prompting) the crucial formula expressing the relation of Christ to God in the creed issued by the council, "of one substance with the Father" (see CREED). Overawed by the emperor, the bishops, with two exceptions only, signed the creed, many of them much against their inclination. The council also dealt with a number of lesser schisms and heresies, laying down the conditions on which their adherents might be readmitted to the church; endeavoured to settle the date of Easter; and regulated various questions of ecclesiastical precedence and organization. Constantine banished Arius and his partisans, confiscated the Arian churches and banned the cult of recusant schismatics and heretics. Constantine regarded the decisions of Nicaea as divinely inspired. As long as he lived no one dared openly to challenge the creed of Nicaea, but the expected concord did not follow. Those who disliked the Nicene formula took every opportunity of attacking its principal adherents and succeeded in condemning several of them on charges of doctrinal error or uncanonical conduct. Their chief victim was Athanasius, who became bishop of Alexandria in 328 (see ATHANASIUS, SAINT). At first Constantine supported him, acquitting him of several charges, but he eventually lost patience. The emperor's cherished aim was to reconcile Arius with the church, but Athanasius stubbornly refused to accept Arius' vaguely worded submission. At last, in 335, Constantine summoned a council of bishops at Tyre to investigate various charges against Athanasius and ordered him to appear. The council condemned him; he appealed to Constantine himself, who banished him to Gaul. In the same year at a council at Jerusalem Arius was readmitted to communion. During the last decade of his reign Constantine became increasingly pious. He devoted more and more of his time to completing his religious education, reading the scriptures and theological works supplied by Eusebius of Caesarea, listening to sermons and himself delivering homilies to his court. He continued to spend lavishly on building churches, at Rome, Constantinople, Antioch and the holy places in Palestine. He showed marked favour to Christians, thereby causing a flood of interested conversions. At the same time his attitude to his pagan subjects became more severe. Shortly after his victory over Licinius be issued an edict urging all his subjects to adopt the Christian faith, but at the same time he confirmed his policy of toleration to paganism (although in contemptuous language) and forbade overzealous Christians to disturb the pagan cult. He nevertheless destroyed three famous temples, at Aegae in Cilicia and at Apheca and Heliopolis in Phoenicia, and in 331 confiscated all the temple treasures, even stripping the cult statues of their gold; he probably also seized the temple endowments. Before the end of his reign he may even have banned sacrifice." (Encyclopædia Britannica, 1971, Constantine, Vol. 6, p. 386)

"The Holy Trinity: The basis for the doctrine of the Trinity: The Christian doctrine of the Trinity has its ultimate foundation in the special religious experience of the Christians in the first communities. This basis of experience is older than the doctrine of the Trinity. It consisted of the fact that God came to meet Christians in a threefold figure: (1) as Creator, Lord of the history of salvation, Father, and Judge, who revealed himself in the Old Testament; (2) as the Lord who, in the figure of Jesus Christ, lived among men and was present in their midst as the "Resurrected One"; and (3) as the Holy Spirit, whom they experienced as the power of the new life, the miraculous potency of the Kingdom of God. The question as to how to reconcile the encounter with God in this threefold figure with faith in the oneness of God, which was the Jews' and Christians' characteristic mark of distinction over against paganism, agitated the piety of ancient Christendom in the deepest way. It also provided the strongest impetus for a speculative theology-an impetus that inspired Western metaphysics throughout the centuries. In the first two centuries a series of different answers to this question stood in juxtaposition; at first none of them was thought through speculatively. The diversity in interpretation of the Trinity was conditioned especially through the understanding of the figure of Jesus Christ. According to the theology of the Gospel According to John, the divinity of Jesus Christ constituted the departure point for understanding his person and efficacy. The Gospel According to Mark, however, did not proceed from a theology of incarnation but instead understood the Baptism of Jesus Christ as the adoption of the man Jesus Christ into the Sonship of God, accomplished through the descent of the Holy Spirit. The situation became further aggravated by the conceptions of the special personal character of the manifestation of God developed by way of the historical figure of Jesus Christ; the Holy Spirit was viewed not as a personal figure but rather as a power and appeared graphically only in the form of the dove and thus receded, to a large extent, in the Trinitarian speculation. Introduction of Neoplatonic themes. In the Johannine understanding, Christ as the Logos, under the influence of Neoplatonic Logos philosophy, became the subject of a speculative theology; there thus developed a speculative interest in the relationship of the oneness of God to the triplicity of his manifestations. This question was answered through the Neoplatonic metaphysics of being. The transcendent God, who is beyond all being, all rationality, and all conceptuality, divests himself of his divine transcendence; in a first act of becoming self-conscious he recognizes himself as the divine nous (mind), or divine world reason, which was characterized by the Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus as the "Son" who goes forth from the Father. The next step by which the transcendent God becomes self-conscious consists in the appearance in the divine nous of the divine world, the idea of the world in its individual forms as the content of the divine consciousness. In Neoplatonic philosophy both the nous and the idea of the world are designated the hypostases (essences, or natures) of the transcendent God. Christian theology took the Neoplatonic metaphysics of substance as well as its doctrine of hypostases as the departure point for interpreting the relationship of the "Father" to the "Son" in terms of the Neoplatonic hypostases doctrine. This process stands in direct relationship with a speculative interpretation of Christology in connection with Neoplatonic Logos speculation (see also PLATONISM AND NEOPLATONISM). The assumption of the Neoplatonic hypostases doctrine meant from the beginning a certain evaluation of the relationships of the three divine figures to one another, because for Neoplatonism the process of hypostatization is at the same time a process of diminution of being. In flowing forth from his transcendent source, the divine being is weakened with the distance from his transcendent origin. Diminution of being is brought about through approach to matter, which for its part is understood in Neoplatonism as non-being. In transferring the Neoplatonic hypostases doctrine to the Christian interpretation of the Trinity there existed the danger that the different manifestations of God-as known by the Christian experience of faith: Father, Son, Holy Spirit-would be transformed into a hierarchy of gods graduated among themselves and thus into a polytheism. Though this danger was consciously avoided and, proceeding from a Logos Christology, the complete sameness of essence of the three manifestations of God was emphasized, there arose the danger of a relapse into a triplicity of equally ranked gods, which would displace the idea of the oneness of God. - Attempts to define the Trinity. The Arian controversy. By the 3rd century it was already apparent that all attempts to systematize the mystery of the divine Trinity with the theories of Neoplatonic hypostases metaphysics led to ever new conflicts. The high point, upon which the basic difficulties underwent their most forceful theological and ecclesiastically political actualization, was the so called Arian controversy. Arius (died 336) belonged to the Antiochene school of theology, which placed strong emphasis upon the historicity of the man Jesus Christ. In his theological interpretation of the idea of God, Arius was interested in maintaining a formal understanding of the oneness of God. In defense of the oneness of God, he was obliged to dispute the sameness of essence of the Son and the Holy Spirit with God the Father, as stressed by the theologians of the Neoplatonically influenced Alexandrian school. From the outset, the controversy between both parties took place upon the common basis of the Neoplatonic concept of substance, which was foreign to the New Testament itself. It is no wonder that the continuation of the dispute on the basis of the metaphysics of substance likewise led to concepts that have no foundation in the New Testament such as the question of the sameness of essence (homoousia) or similarity of essence (homoiousia) of the divine persons. The basic concern of Arius was and remained disputing the oneness of essence of the Son and the Holy Spirit with God the Father, in order to preserve the oneness of God. The Son, thus, became a "second God, under God the Father"-i.e., he is God only in a figurative sense, for he belongs on the side of the creatures, even if at their highest summit. Here Arius joined an older tradition of Christology, which had already played a role in Rome in the early 2nd century-namely, the so-called angel-Christology. The descent of the Son to Earth was understood as the descent to Earth of the highest prince of the angels, who became man in Jesus Christ; he is to some extent identified with the angel prince Michael. In the old angel-Christology the concern is already expressed to preserve the oneness of God, the inviolable distinguishing mark of the Jewish and Christian faiths over against all paganism. The Son is not himself God, but as the highest of the created spiritual beings he is moved as close as possible to God. Arius joined this tradition with the same aim-i.e., defending the idea of the oneness of the Christian concept of God against all reproaches that Christianity introduces a new, more sublime form of polytheism. This attempt to save the oneness of God led, however, to an awkward consequence. For Jesus Christ, as the divine Logos become man, moves thereby to the side of the creatures-i.e., to the side of the created world that needs redemption. How, then, should such a Christ, himself a part of the creation, be able to achieve the redemption of the world? On the whole, the Christian Church rejected, as an unhappy attack upon the reality of redemption, such a formal attempt at saving the oneness of God as was undertaken by Arius. The main speaker for church orthodoxy was Athanasius of Alexandria (died 373), for whom the point of departure was not a philosophical-speculative principle but rather the reality of redemption, the certainty of salvation. The redemption of man from sin and death is only then guaranteed if Christ is total God and total man, if the complete essence of God penetrates human nature right into the deepest layer of its carnal corporeality. Only if God in the full meaning of his essence became man in Jesus Christ is deification of man in terms of overcoming sin and death guaranteed as the resurrection of the flesh. Augustine, of decisive importance for the Western development of the Trinitarian doctrine in theology and metaphysics, coupled the doctrine of the Trinity with anthropology. Proceeding from the idea that man is created by God according to his own image, he attempted to explain the mystery of the Trinity by uncovering traces of the Trinity in the human personality. He went from analysis of the Trinitarian structure of the simple act of cognition to ascertainment of the Trinitarian structure both of self-consciousness of man and of the act of religious contemplation in which man recognizes himself as the image of God. The Trinity as successive phases of revelation. A second model of Trinitarian doctrine-suspected of heresy from the outset-which had effects not only in theology but also in the social metaphysics of the West as well, emanated from Joachim of Fiore. He understood the course of the history of salvation as the successive realization of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in three consecutive periods of salvation. This interpretation of the Trinity became effective as a "theology of revolution," inasmuch as it was regarded as the theological justification of the endeavour to accelerate the arrival of the third state of the Holy Spirit through revolutionary initiative. The Athanasian concept of the Trinity. The final dogmatic formulation of the Trinitarian doctrine in the so-called Atbanasian Creed (c. 500), una substantia-tres personae ("one substance -three persons"), reached back to the formulation of Tertullian. In practical terms it meant a compromise in that it held fast to both basic ideas of Christian revelation-the oneness of God and his self-revelation in the figures of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit-without rationalizing the mystery itself; In the final analysis the point of view thereby remained definitive that the fundamental assumptions of the reality of salvation and redemption are to be retained and not sacrificed to the concern of a rational monotheism. Characteristically, in all periods of the later history of Christendom in which a rationalistic philosophy was achieved and the history of salvation aspect of the Trinitarian question receded, anti-Trinitarian currents returned. Many, to some extent, consciously rejoined ties with Arius: the Humanist Enlightenment of the 16th century, and the so-called anti-Trinitarians of the Italian Renaissance. A direct connection exists between anti-Trinitarianism and 18th-century research into the life of Jesus. The oldest life of Jesus researchers in the 18th century, such as Venturini, Karl Bahrdt and Reimarus, who portrayed Jesus as the agent of a secret enlightenment order that had set itself the goal of spreading the religion of reason in the world, were at the same time anti-Trinitarians and pioneers of the radical rationalistic criticism of dogma. The Kantian critique of the proofs of God contributed further to a devaluation of Trinitarian doctrine. In the philosophy of German Idealism, G.W.F. Hegel, in the framework of his attempt to raise Christian dogma into the sphere of the conceptual, took the Christian Trinitarian doctrine as the basis for his system of philosophy and, above all, for his interpretation of history as the absolute spirit's becoming self-conscious. In more recent theology, the doctrine of the Trinity has been actually supplanted by a monochristism, which was achieved among the followers of dialectical theology in Europe and North America. In the so-called theology of death of God of the 1960s, the faith in a transcendent God, and thereby faith in the Trinity as well, were depreciated. Christian dogma was interpreted purely anthropologically and was reduced to the idea of human togetherness-a delayed victory of a philosophy of religion over Christian dogma, which for-got or gave up its own foundations. The transcendence of God, however, has been rediscovered by science and sociology; theology in the 1970's has endeavoured to overcome the purely anthropological interpretation of religion and once more to discover anew its transcendent ground. Theology has thereby been confronted with the problem of Trinity in a new form, which, in view of the Christian experience of God as an experience of the presence of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, cannot be eliminated. (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1979, Christianity, Vol. 4, p.485)

GOD THE SON: Dogmatic teachings about the figure of Jesus Christ go back to the spontaneous faith experiences of the original church. The faithful of the early church experienced and recognized the incarnate and resurrected Son of God in the person of Jesus. The disciples' testimony served as confirmation for them that Jesus really is the exalted Lord and Son of God, who sits at the right hand of the Father and will return in glory to consummate his Kingdom. Different interpretations of the person of Jesus: The Antiochene school. From the beginning of the church different interpretations of the person of Jesus have existed alongside one another. The Gospel According to Mark, for example, understands Jesus as the man upon whom the Holy Spirit descends at the Baptism in the Jordan and who is declared the Son of God through the voice of God from the clouds. All later Christological attempts of the theological school of Antioch have followed this line of interpretation. They proceed from the humanity of Jesus and view his divinity in his consciousness of God, founded in the divine mission that was imposed upon him by God through the infusion of the Holy Spirit. The Alexandrian school. Another view is expressed by the Gospel According to John, which regards the figure of Jesus Christ as the divine Logos become flesh. Here, the divinity of the person of Jesus is understood not as the endowment of the man Jesus with a divine power but rather as the result of the descent of the divine Logos- a pre-existent heavenly being- into the world: the Logos taking on a human body of flesh so as to be realized in history. This view was adopted by the catechetical school of Alexandrian theology. Thus it was that the struggle to understand the figures of Jesus Christ created a rivalry between the theologies of Antioch and Alexandria. Both schools had a wide sphere of influence, not only among the contemporary clergy but also in monasticism and among the laity Characteristically, Neaorianism (a heresy founded in the 5th century), with its strong emphasis upon the human, aspects of Jesus Christ arose from the Antiochene school, whereas Monophysitism (a heresy founded in the 5th century), with its one-sided stress upon the divine nature of Christ, emerged from the Alexandrian school of theology. The Christological controversies. The many suggestions for resolving the, Christological problem, with which the history of dogma is minutely occupied, cannot be enumerated because of the limitations of space. This is because new intermediate solutions constantly were proposed between the two extreme positions of Antioch and Alexandria. As in the area of the doctrine of the Trinity, the general development of Christology has been characterized by an astonishing plurality of views and formulations. Also, the creeds of the major churches have by no means agreed with each other word for word. After Constantine, the great ecumenical synods occupied themselves essentially with the task of creating, in ever new drafts, uniform formulations binding upon the entire imperial church. Even the Christological formulas, however, do not claim to offer a rational, conceptual clarification; instead they emphasize clearly three facts in the mystery of the sonship of God. These are: first, that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is completely God, that in reality "the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily" in him (Col. 2:9); second, that he is completely man; and third, that these two "natures" do not exist beside one another in an unconnected way but, rather, are joined in him in a personal unity. Once again, the Neoplatonic metaphysics of substance offered the categories so as to settle conceptually these various theological concerns. Thus, the idea of the unity of essence (homoousia) of the divine Logos with God the Father assured the complete divinity of Jesus Christ. Thus, the mystery of the person of Jesus Christ could be grasped in the formula: two natures in one person. The concept of person, taken from Roman law, served to join the fully divine and fully human natures of Christ into an individual unity. Christology is not the product of abstract, logical operations but instead originates in the liturgical and charismatic sphere of prayer, meditation, and asceticism. Not being derived primarily from abstract teaching, it rather changes within the liturgy in ever new forms and in countless hymns of worship- as in the words of the Easter liturgy: 'The king of the heavens appeared on earth out of kindness to man and it was with men that he associated. For he took his flesh from a pure virgin and he came forth from her, in that he accepted it. One is the Son, two-fold in essence, but not in person. Therefore in announcing him as in truth perfect God and perfect man, we confess Christ our God.'" (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1979, Christianity, Vol. 4, p.480)

Constantine the Great: Constantine I the Great, the first Roman emperor to profess Christianity, initiated not only the evolution of the empire into a Christian state but also provided the impulse for a distinctively Christian culture that prepared the way for the growth of Byzantine and Western medieval culture. He was born on February 27 of an unknown year, but probably in the later AD 280s, at Naissus (modern Nig in Yugoslavia) in the province of Upper Moesia, on the strategic road leading from Pannonia through Sirmium and Singidunum. (Belgrade) to Byzantium. He was a typical product of the military governing class of the later 3rd century, the son of Flavius Valerius Constantius, an army officer, and his wife (or concubine) Helena. In AD 293, when Constantine was still a boy, his father was raised to the rank of Caesar, or deputy emperor, and was sent to serve under the Augustus (emperor) Maximian in the west. At the same time he had to separate from Helena in order to marry a stepdaughter of Maximian; and Constantine was brought up in the Eastern Empire, at the court of the senior emperor Diocletian at Nicomedia (modern Izmit in Turkey). Constantine was seen as a youth by his future panegyrist, Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, passing with Diocletian through Palestine on the way to a war in Egypt; later, as a young officer, Constantine took part in a successful campaign on the lower Danube. Career and conversion. Constantine's experience as a member of the imperial court a Latin speaking institution in the eastern provinces left a lasting imprint on him. Educated to less than the highest literary standards of the day, he was always more at home in Latin than in Greek: later in life he was in the habit of delivering edifying sermons, which he would compose in Latin and pronounce in Greek from professional translations. Christianity he encountered in court circles as well as in the cities of the east; while from 303, during the great persecution of the Christians that began at the court of Diocletian at Nicomedia and was enforced with particular intensity in the eastern parts of the empire, Christianity was a major issue of public policy. It is even possible that members of Constantine's family were Christians. Constantine himself was said to have converted his mother: his father's conduct in Britain during the persecution is uncertain; but the name of a half-sister of Constantine, Anastasia, has been thought to show Christian influence. In 305 the two emperors, Diocletian and Maximian, resigned, to be succeeded by their respective deputy emperors, Galerius and Constantius. The latter were replaced by Maximinus Daia in the east and Severus in the west, Constantine being passed over. Constantius now requested his son's presence from Galerius: this was grudgingly conceded, and Constantine made his way through the territories of the hostile Severus to join his father at Boulogne. They then crossed together to Britain and fought a campaign in the north before Constantius' death at York in 306. Immediately acclaimed emperor by the army, Constantine now threw himself into a complex series of civil wars in which Maxentius, the son of the old Western emperor Maximian, rebelled at Rome, with his father's help suppressing Severus, the deputy emperor, who was replaced by Licinius. When Maximian was rejected by his son, he joined Constantine in Gaul, only to betray him and be forced to commit suicide (310). Constantine, who had in 307 married Maximian's daughter Fausta as his second wife, invaded Italy in 312 and after a lightning campaign defeated his brother-in-law Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge near Rome. He then confirmed an alliance that he had already entered into with Licinius (Galerius having died in 311). Licinius, after defeating his rival Maximinus Daia, became Eastern emperor but lost territory in the Balkans to Constantine in 316. After a further period of tension, Constantine attackea Licinius in a second war of 324, routing him at Adrianople and Chrysopolis and becoming sole emperor until his death in 337. Throughout his life, Constantine ascribed his success to his conversion to Christianity and the support of the Christian God. The triumphal arch erected in his honour at Rome after the defeat of Maxentius ascribed the victory to the "inspiration of the Divinity" as well as to Constantine's own genius. A statue set up at the same time showed Constantine himself, holding aloft a cross and the legend, "by this saving sign I have delivered your city from the tyrant and restored liberty to the Senate and people of Rome." After his victory over Licinius in 324, Constantine wrote that he had come from the farthest shores of Britain as God's chosen instrument for the suppression of impiety, and in a letter to the Persian king Shapur II, he proclaimed that, aided by the divine power of God, he had come from the borders of the ocean to bring peace and prosperity to all lands. Constantine's adherence to Christianity was closely associated with his rise to power. He fought the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in the name of the Christian God, having received instructions in a dream to paint the Christian monogram on his troops' shields. This is the account given by the Christian apologist Lactantius; a somewhat different version, offered by Eusebius, tells of a vision seen by Constantine during the campaign against Maxentius, in which the Christian sign appeared in the sky with the legend, "In this sign, conquer." Despite the Emperor's own authority for the account, given late in life to Eusebius, it contains anachronisms and is in general more problematic than the other: but a religious experience on the march from Gaul is suggested also by a pagan orator, who in a speech of 310 referred to a vision of Apollo received by Constantine at a shrine in Gaul. Yet to suggest that Constantine's conversion was "politically motivated" means little in an age in which every Greek or Roman expected that political success followed from religious piety. The civil war itself fostered religious competition, each side enlisting its divine support; and it would be thought in no way unusual that Constantine should have sought divine help for his claim for power and divine justification for his acquisition of it. What is far more remarkable is Constantine's subsequent development of his new religious allegiance to a quite extreme personal commitment. Commitment to Christianity. After the defeat of Maxentius, Constantine met Licinius at Milan to confirm a number of political and dynastic arrangements. A product of this meeting was the so called Edict of Milan, extending toleration to the Christians and the restoration after the persecution of their personal and corporate property. The extant copies of this decree are actually those posted by Licinius in the eastern parts of the empire. But Constantine went far beyond the joint policy agreed upon at Milan. By 313 he had already donated to the Bishop of Rome the imperial property of the Lateran, where a new cathedral, the Basilica Constantiniana (now S. Giovanni in Laterano) soon rose. The Church of St. Sebastian was also probably begun at this time: and it was in these early years of his reign that Constantine began issuing laws conveying upon the church and its clergy fiscal and legal privileges and immunities from civic burdens. As he said in a letter of, 313 to the proconsul of Africa, the Christian clergy should not be distracted by secular offices from their religious duties ". . . for when they are free to render supreme service to the Divinity, it is evident that they confer great benefit upon the affairs of state." In another such letter, to the bishop of Carthage, Constantine mentioned the Spanish bishop Hosius, important later in the reign as his adviser and possibly since he may well have been with Constantine in Gaul before the campaign against Maxentius-instrumental in the conversion of the Emperor. Constantine's personal "theology" emerges with particular clarity from a remarkable series of letters, extending from 313 to the early 320s, concerning the Donatist schism in North Africa. The Donatists maintained that those priests and bishops who had once lapsed from the Christian faith could not be readmitted to the church. Constantine's chief concern was that a divided church would offend the Christian God and so bring divine vengeance upon the Roman Empire and Constantine himself. Schism, in Constantine's view, was "insane, futile madness," inspired by the Devil, the author of evil. Its partisans were acting in defiance of the clemency of Christ, for which they might expect eternal damnation at the Last Judgment (this was a Judgment whose rigours Constantine equally anticipated for himself). Meanwhile, it was for the righteous members of the Christian community to show patience and longsuffering. In so doing they would be imitating Christ, and their patience would be rewarded in lieu of martyrdom for actual martyrdom was, as Constantine observed, no longer open to Christians in a time of peace for the church. Throughout, Constantine had no doubt whatever that to remove error and propagate the true religion was both his personal duty and a proper use of the imperial position. Such pronouncements, expressed in letters to imperial officials and to Christian clergy, make untenable the view that Constantine's religious attitudes were even in these early years either veiled, confused, or compromised. Openly expressed, his attitudes show a clear commitment. Constantine's second involvement in an ecclesiastical issue followed the defeat of Licinius as promptly as the involvement in Donatism followed that of Maxentius; but the Arian heresy, with its intricate explorations, couched in difficult Greek, of the precise nature of the Trinity, was as remote from Constantine's educational background as it was from his impatient, urgent temperament. The Council of Nicaea, which opened in May 325 with an address by the Emperor, had already been preceded by a letter to the chief protagonist, Arius of Alexandria, in which Constantine stated his opinion that the dispute was fostered only by excessive leisure and academic contention, that the point at issue was trivial and could be resolved without difficulty. His optimism was not justified: neither this letter nor, despite its subsequent authority, the Council of Nicaea itself, nor the second letter, in which Constantine urged acceptance of its conclusions, was adequate to solve a dispute in which the participants were as intransigent as the theological issues were subtle. Indeed, for 40 years after the death of Constantine, Arianism was actually the official orthodoxy of the Eastern Empire. The Council of Nicaea coincided almost exactly with the celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the reign of Constantine, at which, returning the compliment paid by the Emperor's attendance at their council, the bishops were honoured participants. But Constantine's visit to the West in 326, to repeat the celebrations at Rome, brought the greatest political crisis of the reign. During his absence from the East, for reasons that remain obscure, Constantine had his eldest son, the deputy emperor Crisplls, and his own wife Fausta, Crispus' stepmother, slain. Nor was the visit to Rome a success. Constantine's refusal to take part in a pagan procession offended the Romans; and when he left after a short visit, it was never to return. These events set the course of the last phase of the reign of Constantine. Already after his defeat of Licinius he had renamed Byzantium as Constantinople: immediately upon his return from the West he began to rebuild the city on a greatly enlarged pattern, as his permanent capital and the "second Rome." The dedication of Constantinople, in May 330, effectively confirmed the divorce, which had been in the making for over a century, between the emperors and Rome, the traditional capital of the empire. Rome had for long been unsuited to the strategic needs of the empire: it was now to be left in splendid isolation, as an enormously wealthy and prestigious city still, as time would show, the emotional focus of the empire, but of limited political importance. It was perhaps in some sense to atone for the family catastrophe of 326 that Constantine's mother, Helena, embarked soon afterward on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Her journey was attended by almsgiving and pious works; above all, it was distinguished by her, church foundations, on the Mount of Olives at Jerusalem and at the Cave of the Nativity at Bethlehem, By the initiative of another lady of the imperial house, Constantine's mother-in-law Eutropia, a church was also built at Mamre, where, according to an interpretation of Genesis shared by Constantine and Eusebius, Christ had first shown himself to men in God's appearance to Abraham; but the most famous of these foundations followed the sensational discovery of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. The discovery was taken up with enthusiasm by Constantine. In a letter to Macarius, bishop of Jerusalem, the Emperor instigated the building of a great new basilica at the spot, offering unlimited help with labour and materials and personal suggestions as to design and decoration. Constantine's interest in church building was expressed also at Constantinople, particularly in churches of the Holy Wisdom (the original Hagia Sophia) and of the Apostles. At Rome, the great church of St. Peter was begun in the later 320s and lavishly endowed by Constantine with plate and property. Meanwhile, churches at Trier, Aquileia, Cirta in ' Numidia, Nicomedia, Antioch, Gaza, Alexandria, and elsewhere owed their development, directly or indirectly, to Constantine's interest. The Emperor was always an earnest student of his religion and spent hours discussing it with bishops. Even before the defeat of Licinius he had summoned to Trier the aged theologian and polemicist Lactantius, to be the tutor of Crispus. In later years, he wrote to Eusebius to commission new copies of the Bible for the use of the growing congregations at Constantinople. He composed a special prayer for his troops and went on campaign equipped with a mobile chapel in a tent. He issued numerous laws relating to Christian practice and susceptibilities: for instance, abolishing the penalty of crucifixion and the practice of branding certain criminals, "so as not to disfigure the human face, which is formed in the image of divine beauty"; enjoining the observance of Sunday and saints' days; extending privileges to the clergy while suppressing at least some of the more offensive pagan practices. Constantine had hoped to be baptized in the River Jordan, but perhaps because of the lack of opportunity to do so together no doubt with the reflection that his office necessarily involved responsibility for actions hardly compatible with the baptized state delayed the ceremony until the end of his life. It was while preparing for a campaign against Persia that he fell ill at Helenopolis. When treatment failed, he made to return to Constantinople but was forced to take to his bed near Nicomedia. There, Constantine received baptism, putting off the imperial purple for the white robes of a neophyte; and he died on May 22, 337. He was buried at Constantinople in his Church of the Apostles, whose memorials, six on each side, flanked his tomb. Yet this was less an expression of religious megalomania than of Constantine's literal conviction that he was, in a quite precise sense, the successor of the evangelists, having devoted his life and office to the spreading of Christianity. Assessment. The reign of Constantine must be interpreted against the background of his clear and unambiguous personal commitment to Christianity. This is not to say that his public actions and policies were entirely without ambiguity. Roman opinion expected of its emperors not innovation or revolution but the preservation of traditional ways; Roman media of propaganda and political communication were conditioned, by statement, allusion, and symbol, to express these expectations. It is significant, for instance, not that the pagan gods and their legends survived for a few years on Constantine's coinage but that they disappeared so quickly: the last of them, the relatively inoffensive "Unconquered Sun" had been eliminated within little over a decade after the defeat of Maxentius. Some of the ambiguities in Constantine's public policies were therefore exacted by the respect due to established practice and by the difficulties of expressing, as well as of making, total changes suddenly. The suppression of paganism, by law and by the sporadic destruction of pagan shrines, is balanced by particular acts of deference, such as the permission given in 326 to a pagan Athenian to use the imperial transport service to visit the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings in Egypt (a traditional centre of pagan "pilgrimage"). A town in Asia Minor mentioned the unanimous Christianity of its inhabitants in support of a petition to the Emperor; while, on the other hand, one in Italy was allowed to hold a local festival incorporating gladiatorial games and to found a shrine of the imperial dynasty although direct religious observance there was firmly forbidden. In an early law of Constantine, priests and public soothsayers of Rome were prohibited entry to private houses; but another law, of 320 or 321, calls for their recital of prayer, "in the manner of ancient observance," if the imperial palace or any other public building were struck by lightning. Traditional country magic was tolerated by Constantine as salutary in object and inoffensive in practice. Classical culture and education, which were intimately linked with paganism, continued to enjoy enormous prestige and influence; provincial priesthoods, which were as intimately linked with civic life, long survived the reign of Constantine. Constantinople itself was predominantly a Christian city, its dedication celebrated by Christian services; yet its foundation was also attended by a famous pagan seer, Sopatros, who seems to have been requested to devise rites for the dedication of the new city. An objective assessment of Constantine's secular achievements is not easy partly because of the predominantly religious significance with which the Emperor himself invested his reign, partly because the restlessly innovatory character that dissenting contemporaries saw in his religious policy was also applied by them to the interpretation of his secular achievement. Some of Constantine's contributions can, in fact, be argued to have been already implicit in the trends of the last half century. So may be judged the further development, taking place in his reign, of the administrative court hierarchy and an increasing reliance upon a mobile field army, to what was considered the detriment of frontier garrisons. The establishment by Constantine of a new gold coin, the solidus, which was to survive for centuries as the basic unit of Byzantine currency could hardly have been achieved without the work of his predecessors in restoring political and military stability after the anarchy of the 3rd century. Perhaps more directly linked with Constantine's own political and' dynastic policies was the emergence of regional praetorian prefectures with supreme authority over civil financial administration but with no direct control over military affairs: this they yielded to new magistri, or "masters," of the cavalry and infantry forces. The reduction of the prefects' powers was seen by some as excessively innovatory; but the principle of the division of military and civil power had already been established by Diocletian. A real innovation, from which Constantine could expect little popularity, was his institution of a new tax, the collatio lustralis. It was levied every five years upon trade and business and seems to have become genuinely oppressive. A lavish spender, Constantine was notoriously openhanded to his supporters and was accused of promoting beyond their deserts men of inferior social status. Yet he was not the first emperor to incur this criticism. More to the point is the accusation that his generosity was only made possible by his looting of the treasures of the pagan temples as well as by his confiscations and new taxes; and there is no doubt that some of his more prominent supporters owed their success, at least partly, to their timely adoption of the Emperor's religion. The foundation of Constantinople, an act of crucial long-term importance, was very much Constantine's personal achievement. Yet it, too, had been foreshadowed; Diocletian had already enhanced Nicomedia to an extent that was considered to. challenge Rome., The city itself exemplified the "religious rapacity" of the Emperor, being filled with the artistic spoils of the Greek temples; while some of its public buildings and some of the mansions erected for Constantine's supporters soon showed signs of their hasty construction. Its Senate, too, created to match that of Rome, for long lacked the aristocratic pedigree and prestige of its counterpart. In military policy, Constantine enjoyed unbroken success, with triumphs over the Franks, Sarmatians, and Goths to add to his victories in the civil wars; the latter, in particular, show a bold and imaginative mastery of strategy. Constantine was totally ruthless toward his political enemies, while his legislation, apart from its particular concessions to Christian sentiment, is mainly notable for a brutality that becomes only too characteristic of late Roman enforcement of law. Politically, Constantine's main contribution was perhaps that, in leaving the empire to his three sons, he reestablished a dynastic succession; but it was secured only by a sequence of political murders immediately after his death. Above all, Constantine's achievement was perhaps greatest in social and cultural history. It was the development, after his example, of a Christianized imperial governing class that, together with his dynastic success, most firmly entrenched the privileged position of Christianity; and it was this movement of fashion, rather than the enforcement of any program of legislation, which was the basis of the Christianization of the Roman Empire. Emerging from it in the course of the 4th century were two developments that contributed fundamentally to the nature of Byzantine and Western medieval culture: the growth of a specifically Christian, biblical culture that took its place beside the traditional Classical culture of the upper classes; and the extension of new forms of religious patronage, as initiated by Constantine, between the secular governing classes and bishops, Christian intellectuals and holy men. Constantine left much for his successors to do; but it was his personal choice made in 312 that determined the emergence of the Roman Empire as a Christian state. It is not hard to see why Eusebius regarded his reign as the fulfillment of divine providence nor to concede the force of Constantine's assessment of his own role as that of the thirteenth Apostle. Constantine would not have objected to being told that he had changed the course of history. (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1979, Constantine the Great, Vol. 5, p.71)

Arianism, a Christian heresy first proposed early in the 4th century by the Alexandrian presbyter Arius. It affirmed that Christ is not truly divine but a created being. The fundamental premise of Arius was the uniqueness of God, who is alone self-existent and immutable; the Son, who is not self-existent cannot be God. Because the Godhead is unique, it cannot be shared or communicated so that the Son cannot be God. Because the Godhead is immutable, the Son, who is mutable, being represented in the Gospels as subject to growth and change, cannot be God. The Son must, therefore, be deemed a creature who has been called into existence out of nothing and has had a beginning. Moreover, the Son can have no direct knowledge of the Father since the Son is finite and of a different order of existence. According to its opponents, especially Athanasius, Arius' teaching reduced the son to a demigod, reintroduced polytheism (since worship of the Son was not abandoned), and undermined the Christian concept of redemption since only he who was truly God could be deemed to have reconciled man to the God-head. The controversy seemed to have been brought to an end by the Council of Nicaea (AD 325), which condemned Arius and his teaching and issued a creed to safeguard orthodox Christian belief. This creed states that the Son is homoousion io Patri ("of one sub-stance with the Father"), thus declaring him to be all that the Father is: he is completely divine. In fact, however, this was only the beginning of a long-protracted dispute. From 325 to 337, when Constantine died, the Arian leaders, exiled after the Council of Nicaea, tried by intrigue to return to their churches and sees and to banish their enemies. They were partly successful. From 337 to 350 Constans, sympathetic to the orthodox Christians, was emperor in the West, and Constantius II, sympathetic to the Arians, was emperor in the East. At a council held at Antioch (341), an affirmation of faith that omitted the homoousion clause was issued. Another council was held at Sardica (modern Sofia) in 342, but little was achieved by either council. In 350 Constantius became sole ruler of the empire, and under his leadership the Nicene party (orthodox Christians) was largely crushed. The extreme Arians then declared that the Son was "unlike" (anomoios) the Father. These Anomoeans succeeded in having their views endorsed at Sirmium in 357, but their extremism stimulated the moderates, who asserted that the Son was "of similar substance" (homoiousios) with the Father. Constantius at first supported these Homoiousians but soon transferred his support to that of the Father. The Christology of Jehovah's Witnesses, also, is a form of Arianism; they regard Arius as a forerunner of Charles Taze Russell, the founder of their movement. (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1979, Arianism, Vol. I, p.509)

Mr. Rath and Osama are guilty of quoting the exact opposite of what Britannica actually says about the Trinity!! These men are great liars of Satan!!!!

The term ONE God doesn't mean that God is necessarily ONE PERSON, look at this definitions of one:

The historical definition of ONE has never meant just a single numerical thing ONLY! One can be a unit or a group. Both of these are more than a single numerical ONE, but are as ONE working together.

Muslims and unitarians love to present just part of the definition to Trinitarians however liars like them fell to tell you that there more to it than that. God is never spoken of as being a single numerical person in the Bible. God uses plural verbage, etc to express himself virtually all the time.

Mr. Rath takes little bits of McKenzie's and leaves the false impression in the mind of the reader that McKenzie agreed with the idea of the Trinity being false. However read this showing all the relevant quotes:

McKenzie, John L.: Dictionary of the Bible

"Trinity. The trinity of God is defined by the Church as the belief that in God are three persons who subsist in one nature. The belief as so defined was reached only in the 4th and 5th centuries AD and hence is not explicitly and formally a biblical belief. The trinity of persons within the unity of nature is defined in terms of "person" and "nature" which are Gk philosophical terms; actually the terms do not appear in the Bible. The trinitarian definitions arose as the result of long controversies in which these terms and others such as "essence" and "substance" were erroneously applied to God by some theologians. The ultimate affirmation of trinity of persons and unity of nature was declared by the Church to be the only correct way in which these terms could be used. The elements of the trinity of persons within the unity of nature in the Bible appear in the use of the terms Father*, Son*, and Spirit*. The personal reality of the Spirit emerged more slowly than the personal reality of Father and Son, which are personal terms. On the application of the name of Spirit to the Son in the Pauline writings Cf SPIRIT. The unity of nature does not appear as a problem in the Bible, and indeed could only arise when a philosophical investigation of the term nature as applied to God was begun. In the NT the Father is "the God" (Gk ho theos), and Jesus is "the Son of the God" (ho hyios tou theou). The Spirit is "the spirit of the God" or "the holy spirit," in this context a synonymous term. Deity is conceived not in the Gk term of nature but rather as a level of being, "the holy"; between this level and the level of "flesh" there is an impassable gulf. Impassable, that is, by man; it is bridged by Jesus, the Son, who renders it possible for men to be adopted sons. Without an explicit formula the NT leaves no room to think that Jesus is Himself an object of the adoption which He communicates to others. He knows the Father and reveals Him. He therefore belongs to the divine level of being; and there is no question at all about the Spirit belonging to the divine level of being. What is less clear about the Spirit is His personal reality; often He is mentioned in language in which His personal reality is not explicit. This distinction between God and flesh is the NT basis for the affirmation of the unity of nature; the very identification of the Father with "the God" shows that the NT writers intend to distinguish the Son and the Spirit from the Father. The NT does not approach the metaphysical problem of subordination, as it approaches no metaphysical problem. It offers no room for a statement of the relations of Father, Son, and Spirit which would imply that one of them is more or less properly on the divine level of being than another. In Jewish thought of the time the son and the spirit are angels; it does not even take the trouble explicitly to deny it. At the same time, it is necessary to recall that in Catholic belief the trinity of persons within the unity of nature is a mystery which ultimately escapes understanding; and in no respect is it more mysterious than in the relations of the persons to each other. "Son" and "Spirit" do not express perfect identity and are not intended to express it; the distinction of persons is not merely numerical but reposes upon a mysterious personality or character in each one which is unknown in its ultimate reality. The Church has declared that any statement of this distinction which reduces the divinity of any of the persons is a false statement; equally false would be a statement which would deny their personal distinction. The notions of Father, Son, and Spirit are revealed that we may know God better; and the theologian should explore these ideas. The OT does not contain suggestions or foreshadowing of the trinity of persons. What it does contain are the words which the NT employs to express the trinity of persons such as Father, Son, Word, Spirit, etc. A study of these words shows us how the revelation of God in the NT advances beyond the revelation of God in the OT. The same study of these words and their background is the best way to arrive at an understanding of the distinction of persons as it is stated in the NT." (Dictionary of the Bible, John L. McKenzie, Trinity, p899)

GOD: NT. The word theos is used to designate the gods of paganism. Normally the word with or without the article designates the God of the Old Testament and of Judaism, the God of Israel: Yahweh. But the character of God is revealed in an original way in the NT; the originality is perhaps best summed up by saying that God reveals Himself in and through Jesus Christ. The revelation of God in Jesus Christ does not consist merely in the prophetic word* as in the OT, but in an identity between God and Jesus Christ. Jn 1:1"-18 expresses this by contrasting the word spoken by the prophets with the word incarnate in Jesus. In Jesus the personal reality of God is manifested in visible and tangible form. In the words of Jesus and in much of the rest of the NT the God of Israel (Gk. ho theos) is the Father* of Jesus Christ. It is for this reason that the title ho theos, which now designates the Father as a personal reality, is not applied in the NT to Jesus Himself; Jesus is the Son of God (of ho theos). This is a matter of usage and not of rule, and the noun is applied to Jesus a few times. Jn 1:1 should rigorously be translated "the word was with the God [= the Father], and the word was a divine being." Thomas invokes Jesus with the titles which belong to the *Father, "My Lord and my God" (Jn 20:28). "The glory of our great God and Savior" which is to appear can be the glory of no other than Jesus (Tt 2:13) * And the identity of Jesus and the Father is expressed clearly without the title in Jn 10:30, "1 and the Father are one." The application of the noun is less certain in Rm. 9:5; Paul's normal usage is to restrict the noun to designate the Father (cf I Co 8:6), and in Rm 9:5 it is very probable that the concluding words are a doxology, "Blessed is the God who is above all." 2 Pt 1: 1 is slightly more ambiguous than Tt 2:13, to which it is not strictly parallel; it may be rendered "our God and Jesus Christ savior." The pronoun "this" in I Jn 5:20 is easily referred to God, who is implicit in Jn 5:19, although "Jesus Christ" is the nearest noun. It should be understood that this usage of ho theos touches the personal distinction of the Father and the Son and not the divinity i.e., the divine sonship of Jesus Christ. The identity of ho theos (theos) with the Father appears in the large number of texts in which the word is joined with father: Rm 1 -'7; 15:6; 1 Co 1: 3; 15:24; 2 Co 1: 2 f; Gal 1: 3; Eph 1: 2; 5:20; 6:23; Phl 1: 2; 2: 11; Col 1:2 f; 2 Th 1:2; 2 Tm 1:2; Tt 1:4; Phm 3; Js 1: 27; 1 Pt 1: 2 f; 2 Jn 3. The revelation of God in and through Jesus Christ is often expressed in the complete union of Jesus with God and of the entire integration of the mission of Jesus with the will of God. God sends Jesus (Jn 3:34; AA 7:35), constitutes Him (AA 10:42), demonstrates Him (AA 2:22), seals Him (Jn 6:27), exalts Him (AA 5:3 1; Phl 2:9); Jesus comes from God (Jn 8:42; 3:2; 9:16, 33; 13:3; 16:27 f). God pardons in Jesus (Eph 4:32), empowers Him (Mt 28:18; Jn 3:35; 5:22; 13:3; Eph 1:21 ), reconciles in Him (2 Co 5:19). The Christian belongs to Christ, and Christ belongs to God (I Co 3:23). In Christ the fullness I] of deity dwells bodily (Col 2:9). In His preexistent state Christ existed in the form of God (Phl 2:6). In Jesus Christ therefore not only the word of God is made flesh, but all of the saving attributes of Yahweh in the OT. In Him God is known (Cf. knowledge) in a new and more intimately personal manner, and through Him God is attained more nearly; for He speaks of "my Father and your Father, my God and your God" (Jn 20:17). (Dictionary of the Bible, John L. McKenzie, God, p317)

Again Mr. Rath and Osama give a false impression that if intimate details of trinity are not in the Bible that Jesus is a creature. However, neither one has read the whole book:

Bowman, Robert M.: Why You Should Believe In The Trinity

Selected quotes mislead reader to wrong conclusion & Give false impression that if intimate details of trinity are not in the Bible that Jesus is a creature. Osama appeals to Mr. Rath who appeals to the Jehovah Witness who are guilty of making deceptive quotes and false statments. Read this:

Brown, Colin: New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology

What they deceptively left out of the quote:

Actually Mr. Rath has to twist quotes to make the Trinity seem like it doesn't exist. The scripture isn't devoid of any hint of trinity, it affirms the Trinity. If Osama or Mr. Rath want to prove that the Trinity is false, surely they can do this without misquoting. Of course enemies of God have to result to lies to prove their point. The Greeks didn't use the word trinity nor did the Babylonians, Trinity is a Latin word not a Babylonian or Greek word. Mr. Rath doesn't even know where the word originated from so how can he tell us that Trinity is from these cultures? Hilarious.

We've already discussed Mr. Mckenzie, please see above to reitirate and see how this point is also misquoted.

Gives false impression that the majority who opposed the Nicene creed believed Jesus is a creature and portray Constantine as practically the author of the Nicene Creed.

Frend, W.H.C.: The Rise of Christianity

Though the exact course of events is uncertain, it seems that the bishops soon found themselves divided into three main groups. There was Arius and his immediate supporters, perhaps numbering about twenty in all. At the other extreme, and of about the same strength, were the anti-Origenist clerics who found a spokesman in Marcellus of Ancyra and included Atbanasius who came as Alexander's attendant. The great majority of the Eastern clergy were ultimately disciples of Origen. Future generations have tended to dub them "Semi-Arian." In fact they were simply concerned with maintaining the traditional Logos-theology of the Greek-speaking Church, and they mistrusted the fanatical anti-Arianism of Marcellus of Ancyra and Eustathius of Antioch. The situation was very confused. The debates, it was said a century later, resembled a battle in the dark, no one knowing whether he was striking at friend or foe." But quite early on, the Council decided that Arius's theology was unacceptable. Then, Eusebius of Caesarea, probably with the idea of clearing himself of the charges of heresy which he had faced earlier in the year at Antioch, brought to Constantine's notice the baptismal creed of his own Church. This was accepted as an orthodox statement, but recent research suggests that it was not in fact used as the basis of the eventual creed of Nicaea. The real problem which faced the drafting committee-for such indeed they were-was to exclude Arius's ideas. Unfortunately, there were many statements defining the nature of the Son with which Arius could agree. He could accept that Christ "was before all ages" (i.e., a purely temporal concept) and even that he was God from God or the power and image of the Father (i.e., divinity derived from God) but not that he was "truly God from God." It was at this stage that Constantine made his momentous suggestion. Might not the relationship of Son to Father be expressed by the term homoousios ("of the same substance" ). Its use, however, by the Sabellian bishops of Libya had been condemned by Dionysius of Alexandria in the 260s, and, in a different sense, its use by Paul of Samosata bad been condemned by the Council of Antioch in 268. It was thus a "loaded" word as well as being unscriptural. Why Constantine put it forward we do not know. The possibility is that once again he was prompted by Hosius, and he may have been using it as a "translation" of the traditional view held in the West, that the Trinity was composed of "Three Persons in one substance," without inquiring further into the meaning of these terms. The Emperor bad spoken, and no one dared touch the creed during his lifetime. The great majority of the Eastern bishops found themselves in a false position. Their embarrassment is shown by the letter which Eusebius of Caesarea wrote to his flock, explaining why he had agreed. They could see to it that extreme supporters of the Nicene formulas were removed from authority but the text was sacrosanct. It read: "We believe in one God, the Father All-sovereign, maker of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, only begotten, that is from the substance of the Father God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten, not made, of one substance with the Father, through whom all things were made, things in heaven and things on earth: who for us men and for our salvation, came down and was made flesh, and became man, suffered, and rose on the third day, ascended into the heavens; is coming to judge the living and dead. And in the Holy Spirit. And those who say, "There was when be was not," and "Before be was begotten he was not," and that "He came into being from what is not" ("nothingness"), or those that allege, that the son of God is "of another sub-stance or essence," or "created," or "changeable," or "alterable," these the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathernatizes." The Emperor exerted all his influence toward securing unanimity; and at length only two bishops stood out. These were old friends of Arius, and they were excommunicated. But two other senior bishops, Eusebius of Nicomedia and Tbeognis of Nicaea, refused to sign the sentences directed against Arius and they too fell under imperial displeasure. Their opposition showed, however, that Nicene theology would not be completely acceptable to the East. (The Rise of Christianity, 1985, W.H.C. Frend, p140-141)

The Trinity doesn't come from Greek thinking, it developed later in the Latin Roman World. Trinity is just the term to describe the nature of God in the Bible. It isn't a self inflicted wound. Mr. Rath and his misquotations are.

All the quote says is that one pagan (Plato) borrowed his trinity from another pagan! Jw's project the false impression that the same source would exempt them from borrowing from Plato in other areas too! Read:

Lachatre, M. Nouveau Dictionnaire Universel (New Universal Dictionary)

Jw's and Christadelphians along with Osama and Mr. Rath should be spanked for quoting Hislop as saying trinity came from the Pagans! Hislop's actual view is that God revealed Himself as Trinity from the beginning to the patriarchs calling trinity "original patriarchal faith" and that the pagans corrupted it!

We've already exposed Mr. Rath's Platonic theory above. No more need to discuss it here.

Actually Mr. Rath and Osama have been mixing and interpreting quotes which we've shown above with Mr. Mckenzie who claims the exact opposite of what both Rath and Osama claim. If they want to debunk the Trinity they should please read the books first before posting something they stole elsewhere.

Both of these were discussed above. Mr. Rath just copied quotes and builded arguments from them without even reading them.

To Peter, Jesus was not only a man but also the source of life itself. In 2 Peter 1:2 and 1:11, Peter also writes:

Mr. Rath along with Osama, who supports him, is now appealing to a Jehovah Witness to say that the Trinity is pagan!! Of course neither one of them mentioned this in their argument. Of course we expect a sect of herectics to disagree with the Bible since they are heretics.

Wierwille, Dr. Victor Paul: 1. Jesus Christ is Not God. 2. Forgers of the Word

Because Arius believed that Jesus was created doesn't mean that this is the truth is it Mr. Rath? No. Arius was a heretic and its hilarious that Osama appeals to a person like Mr. Rath to provide him with this information since Bahullah the founder of Bahaism believed that he was to succeed Islam as its final prophet. So basically the Trinity is false because Arius didn't believe it right? The rest of Mr. Buzzard argument is discussed earlier, no need to reiterate it.

By using this quote Mr. Rath intentionally tries to give his reader a false impression however lets look at this quote in whole:

Bettenson, Henry: Documents of the Christian Church

Both of these quotes were discussed aboved in great detail already.

Again after quoting his Jehovah Witness sources Mr. Rath appeals to Arius to refute the belief of the Trinity. I never forget what my English teacher said in doing a research paper, the opinion of a person isn't valid at all in refuting or proving any subject. Mr. Rath says that the Bible claims that God is ONE and ONLY ONE, its amazing that he can't present a single verse which claims that GOD IS ONLY ONE PERSON. Also since we've already seen the definition of ONE, we must again ask him and Osama, how do you know that ONE means just a single numerical thing since it can be a group or a unit working as ONE?

Well maybe Mr. Rath forgot to read this:

Not only did the Bible call Jesus God but it says that Jesus laid the foundations of the earth. Mr. Rath reads his bible less than what he read when he miscopies his quotes.

Again Mr. Rath makes an accusation without historically proving it. God the Son isn't a Babylonian title since there is no reference anywhere in cuneiform tablets using this term. The Babylonians would specify their god to which a son was associated with. They never would say God the Son because it would explain which God they were talking about. It's amazing that Mr. Rath didn't do any research to prove his points.

Mr. Rath also is guilty of making Mr. Marr seem like he is against the Trinity when He is for it!! Also We have seen how Alexander Hislop believed that the Trinity existed before Pagan Babylon and was an original revelation. Read up top to see more, this was discussed already.

First Rath assumes that the Trinity was an error by misquoting and then he appeals to trintiarians who claim the opposite of what he says? This is hilarious. We've shown earlier that the Trinity didn't began at the council of Nicea, there were more misquotes by Mr. Rath.

If Osama is to quote Mr. Rath why is Muhammad told by the Quran to ask the people of the Book if he had any doubt about his revelations? If Christianity is pagan than Islam is Pagan since Muhammad came to confirm it right? Using the deception put forth by both of these guys we are forced to conclude this. It's amazing how they have just refuted both their beliefs. Hilarious.

We've already refuted the theory of constantine starting the trinity as well as looked at all of these sources above. Once source not looked at is Mr. Woodrow. The selective quoting gives the false impression of what both the author is saying and the facts of history:

Woodrow, Ralph: Babylon Mystery Religion

Mr. buzzard was discussed earlier but the argument of Constantine still holds no weight since it has already been proven that Mr. Rath had to post out of content to make him seem like the inventor of the modern-Trinity doctrine. He had to set up a strawman argument and then refute it for his unsuspecting audience. Hilarious.

All the previous quotes have been discussed above already however we must set Mr. Rath straight with his lie about Arianism being widely accepted. Arianism hasn't been established in history as nothing more than a small sect started by Arius. I challenge both Osama and Mr. Rath to show us where Arianism had such a large following.

Not only do these scripture refute Islam and Allah claiming to have a son but read this information daling with this:

However, Yahweh the redeemer is different from Yahweh:

Notice here in this verse we see that their is NONE besides God but yet Yahweh says that the LORD OF HOSTS. in the third person, is HIS REEDEMER. Since Yahweh is the only redemer then the NT reveals to us that Jesus is Yahweh.

So much for the theory of Jesus not being preexistent as well as being God in the Bible.

Mr. Rath is so guilty in misquoting information until it is ridiculous. It's also odd to see that Osama agrees with Rath using Paul since Muslims believe that Paul was the founder of the Trinity!! Therefore we have conflicting views which shows us that unitarians will even sacrifice their integrity along with lying to disprove the Trinity. The tables answering all of this misquotations comes from the great site called Encyclopaedia of Anti-Trinitarian Deceptive quoting! You can reach the Link below. Mr. Rath and Osama are appealing to Jehovah witnesses to refute the Trinity. It's funny how the word Jehovah isn't even the name of God but ironically a mistranslation along with being a sect that didn't begin until the 1900s. Hilarious. God Bless All.

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