The Doctrine Of The Trinity

Even during numerous exiles, Athanasius continued to be a vigorous defender of Nicene Christianity against Arianism. Athanasius then famously said "Athanasius against the world". The Cappadocian Fathers also took up the torch; their Trinitarian discourse was influential in the council at Constantinople.Up until about 360, theological debates mainly dealt with the Divinity of Jesus, the 2nd person of the Trinity. However, because the Council of Nicaea had not clarified the divinity of the Holy Spirit, the 3rd person of the Trinity, it became a topic of debate.

One of the major topics of discussion in the early church was about the nature of God. Some people questioned the oneness of God and did not believe that there is one essence in all three persons of God. Some other people did not believe that there are three persons of God. The major heresies all fit on a scale between two opposites. These opposites consist of Monarchianism and Tritheism. The heresies eventually led the church to establish the doctrine of Trinity in the Council of Nicaea held in the year 325 A.D. Even though the heresies between the two extremes were appealing, the Catholic Church rejects them and teaches the doctrine of Trinity.

The book does not thoroughly explain the doctrine of the Trinity. What the author seems to convey is how to understand the Trinity itself, but the concept of it. The author explains that we as humans are incompatible to fully understand the reality of the trinity, which leaves us to look at the models that God has revealed to us in the Bible. "If

I will like to crave your indulgence to the fact that "Nicene concept of Trinity" is never stated in the Bible, and it is that early Christians as well as the scriptures clearly points out the fact that Jesus was fully divine and pre-existent. For the fact that, none of the early Christian theologians fully asserted the doctrine of the Trinity, not even a speculation about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. According to the father of the paganism description of Trinity "God can in no way be described." (Schindler 148).

God the Son is revealed in the Christian Scriptures. God the Spirit is revealed in the Church. The Trinitarian doctrine states that there are three co-eternal, equal persons in God, which is the notion of unity within community. The Trinitarian doctrine was further developed and defined at the councils of Nicaea in 325 CE and Constantinople in 381 CE. God was always trinity, however gradually this reality became known through revelation. Jesus calls God and speaks of the spirit which indicates a plurality in God. The difficulty is reconciling the concept of monotheism with the notion of God existing as three persons. The divine essence is common to all three, however the three persons have attributes or properties which distinguished them eg Fatherhood, sonship and sanctifying power. Once essence means that the actions (creation, redemption, sanctification) are attributable to all. Mutual relations is the concept that the terms Father and Son are not titles but expressions of a relationship and thus all three persons are co-equal

Although the consubstantial nature of Jesus and God was confirmed at Nicaea, it wasn’t definitively defined because Arians responded with another heretical view: Jesus and God were homoiousious. The belief that God and Jesus were only similar in nature allowed for subordinationism to manifest, which was a heresy that asserted God the Father was superior to Jesus and the Holy Spirit (Williams, 2001, p.133). So this belief accepts the Trinity but has misinterpreted the orthodox declaration of the idea. Arius told of the unequal glories amongst each “distinct being” within the Trinity (Williams, 2001, p.102). This was scorned by Athanasius who knew of the homoousious relationship through scripture (Colossians 2:9), which is how God expresses

The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox temples offer numerous center convictions with respect to Jesus Christ, including his celestial and human instincts, his virginal conception, his passing and resulting restoration, and his foreseen come back to earth. Both categories likewise perceive the teachings communicated in the initial seven ecumenical boards. At the foundation of the Great Schism between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox houses of worship was the routes in which the thought of the Trinity was communicated. While the Eastern Orthodox Church stressed the particular personhood of every individual from the Trinity, the Roman Catholic Church accentuated the Trinity 's solidarity of pith. The houses of worship additionally contrasted on the interminable virginity of Mary and additionally the way of unique sin.

The previous description of the trinity does not occur in the bible. The specialized language describe the trinity was developed in the fourth century and expressed in various creeds issued by church councils of that time. I believe that many words were not found in the bible; even bible is not even stated in the bible. But, that doesn’t mean that we don’t use them to describe the attributes of God. We can’t say that because trinity is not stated in the bible, it can’t be

This Christian sect maintained that in the doctrine of the Trinity, the Son was not co-equal or co-eternal with the Father, but only the first and highest of all finite beings, created out of nothing by an act of God's free will. (Adamson 1960, p. 270) Arians, dominated in the Eastern Empire, whereas the Orthodox Church, which were dominate in the Western Empire, firmly believed in the Holy Trinity – that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit were equal. This belief threatened the Orthodoxy dogma of the early Christian church. At stake was the unity of the Roman empire, Constantine wrote letters to the Orthodox Bishop Alexander and to Arius, urging them to come to an agreement and forgive each other. That effort failed, he then convened an ecumenical council of the entire Christian Church, and this was the first worldwide gathering of bishops. Constantine aided this historic gathering by paying the travel expenses of bishops coming from the far reaches of the

Irenaeus on the Trinity: "The Church, though dispersed throughout the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith: . . . one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them; and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who proclaimed through the prophets the dispensations of God, and the advents, and the birth from a virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead, and the ascension into heaven in the flesh of the beloved Christ Jesus, our Lord, and His manifestation from heaven in the glory of the Father ‘to gather all things in

It is important to note the defined goals of the Trinity. One being that God sent His Son, Jesus did not send God. Jesus tells us in John 6, that He came to do the will of His Father. Jesus was not doing His own selfish will but everything He did was for His Father. Jesus and God sent the Holy Spirit according to Jesus’ words in John 14:26, “But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you”. It is necessary to recognize the distinctions of the roles of the Trinity as if the roles were not distinctive there would be no Trinity.

In the fourth century, the Arian controversy caused considerable theological discussion and upheaval over the definition of faith. In an effort to bring unity, Emperor Constantine summoned a council to rule on Arius’s position, that “affirmed a kind of Trinity made up of three “divine” beings (Father, Son and Holy Spirit), only one of whom is truly God.” Through the guidance of Alexander of Alexandria and Athanasius, orthodox doctrine would prevail, and the emperor would decree that Arius’s teaching was heresy and banished him. Subsequently, the council recognized the necessity of writing an indisputable definition of faith, which affirmed orthodoxy against Arian heterodoxy. Alexander and Athanasius would be directly involved in this aspect of the proceedings. Although Alexander had prominence, Athanasius significantly affected the development of Trinitarian theology through his uncompromising opposition to Arianism. Additionally, his rhetoric as well as assistance to Alexander directly influenced the words chosen for the Nicene Creed. Therefore, this paper identifies the impact that Athanasius had in establishing the Nicene Creed as the unifying creed among the church at the First Council of Nicaea (AD 325).

Emperor Constantine the Great called for this council to address the concern over Arianism. The goal was to condemn Arianism, which declared Jesus to be fully man and not divine. Arius firmly believed that the Father alone is God and saw Jesus Christ as a creature made from nothing. (Extreme monotheism) As a result, the council drafted the first uniform Christian doctrine. The Creed of Nicea confirmed the divinity of Jesus to be one substance [homoousios] and one nature with the Father. However, this did not end the debate over the deity of Jesus Christ. Arianism did not simply fade away and the aftermath of Nicea resulted in the church splitting into two primary groups. The “Nicene party” accepted the full deity of Christ, but was confused about the trinity. The” Origenists” were clear on the trinity, but confused about the divinity of Christ. This came to be known as the “Arian

The Nicaea Council was gathered to settle The Arian crisis in 318. Arius, a priest of Alexandria, taught that Jesus Christ was not God, or any divine being, by suggesting that Jesus was not eternal, but a human being created prior to other humans, therefore He was different in nature from God, and was adopted by God. The concept of trinity was actually confirmed in the Bible. For example, the Gospels of John repeats that Jesus is God and calls him Lord, a title reserved for Yahweh. In addition, Jesus’s divinity was established by pre-Nicene church fathers, such as Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, Tertullian and Origen.

The concept of the Trinity was first formulated by St. Augustine in the Nicene Creed in seven statements: