If you had never been taught about a trinity, or three gods in one, or God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, but rather had just begun reading the New Testament without any sort of interference (for none of these words occur in the Greek New Testament), you would never have come to any conclusion about there being a trinity.
This is the discovery that I found, that there is no such thing as the DOCTRINE of the Trinity to be found in the Greek New Testament. I say this despite the fact as a Catholic I was taught it, used to believe it, and argued with my limited knowledge in its favour. But being taught it, believing it and arguing for it, doesn’t make it true. The fact is that you can teach anybody just about anything: Witness the Jihadi Muslims of the world.
I started changing my thinking on the Trinity as I began my study of the Greek of the New Testament. I was finding scripture which cut across the major tenants of this doctrine. All of these differences can be read about in the document below.
Every major doctrine found in the New Testament (NT) bears a key word taken from the NT itself, except one, the Doctrine of the Trinity. The word ‘Trinity’ occurs no where in the Greek NT nor any English translations. Even the Doctrine of the Trinity titles: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, occur no where in the NT Greek. Further to this, the concept of three ‘persons’ in one Godhead is not to be found, alluded to or even suggested anywhere. Finally, the concept that these three are co-equal in all respects is profoundly at odds with NT scripture.
The doctrine is wholly man made in man’s attempt to come to grips with the mystery of the Almighty God. And for all Trinitarians, it obviously is a mystery, since every discussion I have ever had with Trinitarians always gravitates to these final words: it’s a mystery, we are never meant to understand. Nevertheless, nearly every christian denomination has this doctrine as first on the list of their beliefs, yet no one can adequately argue its case. I hasten to add, that the existence and function of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit is not disputed, only what this doctrine weaves around these three.
The doctrine does us a great disservice by acting as a filter before the eyes of our mind, many times biasing our comprehension of the text against what has actually been written in the text.
These days, people go to their English translations to find scripture which they use to ‘prove’ the Doctrine of the Trinity, all the time assuming the doctrine already exists. Very few people have ever gone to the Greek scripture to just listen to what it has to say, for if they did, they would be left wondering how we ever came to have such a Doctrine.
This web page documents this prime discovery, that there is no such teaching as the Doctrine of the Trinity in Greek New Testament scripture. This discovery was initiated by answering one very simple question: Who is THE God? It is a legitimate question for the NT Greek speaks often of one called The God. The answer can not be found in our English translations since the English word, the, (called the definite article) has been removed by translators hundreds of times when it is in the Greek and, even worse, it has been added hundreds of times when not in the Greek.
This discovery is presented on this page as a single downloadable .pdf article of 169 (A4) pages called, The God of Our Lord Jesus Christ. It is a long document simply because over 45% are scriptural quotes written in full and sometimes repeated in other parts of the document. At no time in this document have I ever tried to disprove this doctrine. I have simply looked at what the Greek has to say and will let you draw your own conclusions.
Since many people will not read this whole document, I have added the Contents Listing as a separate downloadable item, so that readers can see what issues are tackled in this article. Click on the headings to read the full article or the Contents Listing.