The Holy Trinity is one of the central towers of the modern Christian faith. To not accept the Trinity is seen by main stream Christians as heresy and is something that makes one not, a Christian, unsaved.
I do not believe in the Trinity but have no worries about salvation. I am a Christian, a follower of Jesus Christ, a believer in the one, all powerful God. I trust that belief in God, trust in Jesus and good works will see me through. God will save whom God will save.
I believe that the Trinity is a false doctrine and that the single God of the Unitarian Christian Church is the one supported by both scripture and reason.
History
Before the fourth century there was no universal acceptance of the doctrine of the Trinity. There were, as there are now, many who disagreed with the idea of the Trinity. The Emperor Constantine and the Nicaea Councils basically imposed Trinitarianism on Christianity and it became the official doctrine of the church for over a thousand years. Dissenters were punished, banished and killed as heretics.
However, the Trinity is NOT supported by the Bible. Jesus does not say that he is God and refers to God as being greater than he, of having sent him.
The Bible
Scripture is fallible. It is inexact. The copies we have today contain translation and copying errors. For example: did Solomon have four thousand stalls for horses or forty thousand. One verse gives one value, another the other. One verse says that no one has seen God, another says that There are many other contradictions. The Bible also contains many factual errors, such as the Earth being unmoving. At all levels, the Earth moves. Tectonic plates roam the surface, and the Earth itself travels through space. The Devil could not show Jesus all the nations of the earth from the top of a high mountain. Such is impossible on a globe. There are no waters above and below a solid firmament - the Hebrew word for the firmament is Rakia (a beaten thing, i.e. made of beaten metal) There are no windows of the sky through which God allows rain to fall or through which He drops snow and hail from his storehouses of the same (Job 38:22) So, we can not take every single word as being absolutely correct. We have to take the whole of what the Bible tells us and pick off the bits that don't fit with the rest, Similarly, we consider the words of people actually present as having greater value than those reported of someone else or describing events long ago - e.g. the creation, the story of which is obviously the description of simpler human beings who had little knowledge of the physical world. Of greatest importance of all are the words of Christ himself. They are reported by others, obviously, but as Christians, the words of Christ - when repeated by enough witnesses and fitting His overall message - carry the greatest weight. Yes, even the words of Christ may be discarded if inconsistent. If someone is reported to say "Never harm an enemy" a thousand times, and that is attested by multiple witnesses, then we can safely say that one person saying "Always kill your enemies", just once, should be treated with great caution and even discarded. The New Testament is, to Christians, the most important of the two main sections of the Bible.
One also has to be very careful when reading phraseology from the past and interpreting it in modern English. Language defines how we think and deal with concepts.
The evidence
So what does scripture say about the nature of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit?
Let's start before Jesus was even born as a human man. "In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God". Only John tells us this. But what doe sit mean?
God is eternal. God has no beginning and no end. If God had a beginning then where did God come from? What existed before God? What created God? In Hebrew, one of the names of God is "El Olam", the everlasting God, forever, perpetual, old, ancient. "from everlasting to everlasting you are God" says Psalm 90. 1 Timothy "Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen." God has always existed.
So then, what does John mean by "In the beginning", the beginning of what? God has no beginning. If the Logos was always with God then why not say so? Since the Logos (the word) was WITH God, it can not be God, the Father. If it was then why mention it? But John also says that it was God. Or did he mean God like, of a similar origin, of the same ethereal substance, from the same realm. Just because one entity is made of the same 'stuff' as another that does not mean that it is the same entity. I am made of the same biological material as every other living thing on this planet and yet I am a separate being. So it seems that the Word was the same stuff as God, was with God, but had a beginning and was not actually God.
What did Jesus say?
John 14:28 "You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I will come to you.’ If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I.". Jesus clearly indicates that he is distinct from the Father, that the Father is greater than he is and that the Father is in a different location. By any reasonable understanding, Jesus is a subservient, distinct being to God the Father.
John 4:34 "My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work"
John 14:28 "My Father is greater than I."
John 20:17 "I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God."
John 13:3 "Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he was come from God, and went to God"
John 5:30 "By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me" Clearly, Jesus is a special being, sent by God. Indeed here, he claims not to be able to do anything without the will of God.
Jesus did not formulate his message, God did: John 12:49 "For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak."
John 17:6 "I have manifested Your name to the men whom You gave Me out of the world; they were Yours and You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word. 7"Now they have come to know that everything You have given Me is from You;"
John 12:29 "For I did not speak of my own accord, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it".
1 Corinthians 15:28 "And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all.".
Jesus is in a special relationship with God, not part of God. He refers to God being in him and He in God. However, he also asks that we be allowed to be in God:
"I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in me through their word; that they may all be one; even as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you sent me. "The glory which you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as we are one; I in them and you in me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that you sent me, and loved them, even as you have loved me"
This passage also indicates that the oft quoted phrase "My father and I are one" (John 10:30) does not mean that God and Jesus are part of a single being. Jesus asks that human beings all be one too.
Matthew 11:27 "All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal him."
"The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand."
"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me." ALSO in me. God and Jesus are not the same being.
1 Timothy 2:25 "For there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human".
Matthew 3:17 "And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased." God is pleased with Jesus and loves him. God is not in love with himself!
Philipians 2:9-11 "“Wherefore God (the heavenly Father) also hath highly exalted Him (Jesus), and given Him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus the Messiah is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” The father exalted Jesus to a position of high power. Jesus is separate from man but also from God from whom his power comes.
Jesus is the anointed one, the Messiah. But Acts 10:37-38 states that "You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him." Yes, Jesus is the Messiah but that means anointed. We see here that God anointed Jesus with the Holy Spirit and power. Jesus has power but that which is given to him by God. Anointing usually means making holy with oil. But God anoints Jesus via the Holy Spirit and grants him power.
John 8:17-18 "Even in your law it has been written that the testimony of two men is true. I am He who testifies about Myself, and the Father who sent Me testifies about Me." Jesus is saying that the law considers the testimony of two individuals to be truth. He states that he is telling the truth and his witnesses are himself and the Father. Again, he and the father are separate beings.
Acts 7:55 "But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.". Jesus is standing at the right hand of God in Heaven. They are two distinct beings.
Colosians 3:1 "Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God."
Matthew 27:46 "And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
John 8:40 "But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God."
Jesus says that he is not as good as God is. Matthew 19:17 "But he said to him, “Why do you call me good? There is none good except God alone. But if you want to enter life, keep the commandments.”
Matthew 26:39 "Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will."
And on and on. Jesus is clearly not God. If he is then he is pleading with himself.
One of the biggest messages of Christians is that God so loved the world that he gave his only son. Leaving aside the fact that God knew perfectly well that he would raise Jesus from the dead (Romans 10:9 "If you declare with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved."), if Jesus is God then God made no sacrifice, gave nothing, since Jesus, according to Trinitarians, is God himself. If a human gave a son then it is a permanent loss here on Earth. A loss in which there is no contact between parent and child and no guarantee of ever meeting again. It MAY be that God will resurrect our loved one, but God decides who will and will not be resurrected. We can only hope. Most Christians today assume that not everyone will be saved. Indeed, some extreme Christian groups believe only a small number of the predestined elect will be saved. A human giving up a child would be an enormous sacrifice. For God, whether Jesus is God or not, the sacrifice is minimal. If Jesus is God then there is no sacrifice at all. If Jesus is the special creation, son of God, then the sacrifice is only slightly more severe. God knows that He will raise Jesus and, being omnipresent, God is never apart from Jesus, dead or alive.
If Jesus is God then of what relevance is the lineage of Joseph? It is Mary whose family is relevant if she was impregnated by God, via the Holy Spirit. Why does the Bible record the family of Joseph if, as Matthew 1:18 says "When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.". That is, Mary was pregnant before she and Joseph ever consummated their marriage. The Bible seems to originally say that Jesus was born of Joseph and Mary but the story of Jesus being created by God within Mary has been tacked on.
So, how do Trinitarians say that Jesus is God?
Well, they quote the my father and I are one example. But, as above, being one does not mean being the same being. Jesus asks that all humans become one also. We claim to be one in the body of Christ. We are not literally one.
Jesus forgave sins, and only God can forgive sins. No, God anointed Jesus with the Holy Ghost and power. He delegated power to Jesus just as Jesus delegated power to Peter (Matthew 18:18 ""Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.". That doesn't mean that Peter became Jesus or that he became God. Jesus granted power to Peter. In the same way, the Centurian in the Roman army is not the Emperor when he commands men or conquered peoples. He is a delegate of the Emperor. The Emperor grants him the right to do certain things. God grants powers to Jesus who delegates them further to Peter. Matthew 9:6 "But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (then saith he to the sick of the palsy,) Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house"
One of the reasons that Jesus is supposed to have to be God is so that his sacrifice is great enough to appease God. This is one argument that makes little sense. Jesus is not just God-like but actual God. So God sacrifices himself to himself to appease himself. That is complete nonsense.
Jesus existed before the world. This is irrelevant. The word, logos, Jesus was with God before the world was made. That simply means that the being Jesus predates the world, as explained above, it says nothing about God and Jesus being the same being.
"baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" is supposed to indicate that God, Jesus and Holy Ghost are one. This is only one interpretation. This is a list of three items in whose 'name' people are baptized. That doesn't mean that they are all the same being. It does not even mean that the Holy Ghost is a person. The Irish Sea has a name but it isn't a person. Spain is the name of a country but land was claimed in its name. Astronauts left a plaque on the moon in the name of all mankind. Human beings are not all one entity but individuals that make up a group. People can logically be baptized in the name of the group.
Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. This is supposed to indicate that Jesus is God. But Jesus says "Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. And I know that You always hear Me, but because of the people who are standing by I said this, that they may believe that You sent Me.". It is claimed, as if self evident, that only God can reanimate the dead. If God gives Jesus power then Jesus can do anything including raising the dead. Jesus himself says that even we could raise the dead if our faith is strong enough: "Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you." Nothing will be impossible for you.
"And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us” The Word was with God, the Word had a beginning. The Word may have been god-like but it was not THE source of all power - God the Father.
John 17:5 "And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began." Jesus existed before the world began but he asks for the Father to glorify him as he was glorified when Jesus was with the Father. He speaks to another entity, the presence of which gives him glory. Similarly, John 17:24 "Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world." This again shows that Jesus was older than the world, (He may have been the mechanism or agent, by which the world was made) but he was given his people, God loved him. He was a separate entity.
"Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority; but the Father who dwells in me does his works." This is supposed to show that Jesus and God are one, but I can not see how. The idea of 'in' indicating sameness is simply inconsistent. We speak of Jesus Christ being in us, or say that we are one in the body of Christ. As above Jesus asks God that all who follow him be allowed to be one with the father. Being one does not mean being the same being. The father acts through Jesus. Jesus says perfectly clearly that he does not speak with his own authority but with that of the Father within him. We all have Jesus, the father and potentially, the Holy Spirit working within us. That does NOT make us GOD, so why does God or the Spirit acting through Jesus make him God?
If God and Jesus are equal then why does Jesus not know the day and the hour that the world will pass away? He says in Mark 24:36 that no one knows the hour except his Father.
What is the Holy Spirit?
The third element of the Trinity is the Holy Spirit, an entity that has no individual name. Jesus is absolutely more clear about the distinction between himself and the Holy Spirit than he is about the distinction between himself and the "Father".
John 15:26 "But when the Helper comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of Me.". Jesus sees the Holy Spirit as a separate being that he, Jesus, will send from the Father that will reveal truth of Jesus.
John 14:26 "But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.". The Spirit appears to be meant as some sort of entity that will reveal information to the followers of Jesus and remind them of the things that Jesus taught, It is the Helper, the other comforter. It is not God, is not Jesus and it doesn't have its own name.
John 14:16-17 "And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever -- the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you." Clearly, Jesus asks God, a third party, for the Spirit of Truth to be sent to live in his followers.
It is truly bizarre to argue that Jesus is praying to himself, for himself to send himself to live in his followers.
Acts 2:33 "Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear." Jesus sits, separately at the right hand of God. He is given the promised Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not a person but some sort of entity given to Jesus. It is poured out on the followers, granting foresight, power and the ability to speak in tongues. Pourer and poured are not the same thing.
Titus 3:6 "He poured out this Spirit on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior"
If the Holy Spirit is a separate conscious entity then why does Paul, who wrote so much of the New Testament, ignore 'him'? In all epistles Paul refers to himself as an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the will of God.In all cases he sends his readers "grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ". The wording is virtually identical in all thirteen epistles although in a couple Paul augments grace and peace with mercy. If there is a trinity of co-equal beings then why does Paul only ever refer to two of them?
Conclusions
The fact that Jesus has all authority in Heaven and Earth, does not mean that he is God. It just means that God has delegated power to Jesus. This is the same as a reagent acting on behalf of a King or an ambassador doing the same.
It is obvious through out the Bible that we learn of two main actors, God the father and Jesus the 'son'. The Holy Spirit seems to be some sort of spiritual force that acts in the world. It can manifest as a dove (as in when Christ was baptized) and it can inhabit the body of followers to give power and understanding. If it is a separate, sentient being then followers are basically possessed. Similarly, if this sentient being is what makes people aware of the truth of God then people are not responsible for their own actions. Why does the spirit, unless it is weak, not simply reveal the truth to everyone?
For three hundred years after Christ, many Christians believed that Jesus was a separate being to God. Only in the fourth century was the Trinitarian doctrine imposed and disbelievers labelled heretics and punished. Prior to that, many people recognized the Biblical support for the Unitarian Christian belief. there is one God. "Hear oh Israel, the Lord our God is ONE!"
God wishes us to understand God, to know God. But the Catholic Church and its offshoots have maintained that the doctrine of the Trinity is the supreme mystery at the heart of Christianity. Why the mystery? Although some of the writings of John might be taken to indicate Jesus was God, why didn't God just tell people straight out in the Old Testament? Why were the Jews not corrected when God told them of himself? Why did Jesus not come straight out and say, I am God?
The most that could be claimed is that Jesus and God exist together in God like state. Jesus was the Word - according to John only of the four Gospel writers. If this was such an important concept and God influenced the creation of scripture then why did only John write of it? The authorship of John is disputed and possibly occurred after all the others. It also has a very different account of the last supper to that presented in the other Gospels. Probably written in the late first century it is a developed theology written between 50 and 70 years after the death of Christ.
All the evidence appears to support the idea that the three elements of the Trinity are separate beings. Their interactions indicate that they are not aspects of the same being. Jesus intercedes with God on our behalf while seated at the right hand of God. If they are both in Heaven then why does Jesus need to communicate with God?
The only thing that we can possibly say about Jesus was that he was a prexisting entity that was 'transmitted' to the physical world by the medium of the Holy Spirit, God's power acting in the world. Jesus is a powerful being, granted power by God, and reanimated after crucifixion by God - exactly as scripture says. But Jesus is less than God. All power comes from the single God. Jesus had a beginning. God was and will be, eternal.
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