Subject: so, you're saying that they go to hell? |
Bible Note: Tertullian was one of the early church fathers, who died about 225 (one hundred years before Nicaea). He was the first person on record to coin the word "Trinity" to signify the doctrine of the three-in-one God revealed in the Bible and testified to by the post-apostolic writers (he did so in his apologetic work "Against Praxeas"). He didn't "invent" the doctrine, either, because we see Trinitarian teachings in the writings of Clement of Rome (first century), Ignatius (one of John's disciples -- turn of the second century), and the authors of the Epistle of Barnabas and 2 Clement. When I said that God did not "create" the doctrine, I did not mean that it was created by men or that it was not true. God is uncreated and unchanging in His nature, so anything which describes God's being or his nature could not be created. If God is one Being eternally existing in three Persons, God didn't make himself that way, nor did man make him that way. He simply IS that way, and He has chosen to reveal himself as such to His people. Again, I am under no illusion that some people in the pulpit have trouble properly proclaiming the Trinity. A lot of them seem to have a great deal of trouble when it comes to even much easier biblical topics! But the issue is not whether some preachers can't get it right, or whether the church fathers dating back to the apostolic era had the Trinity right or not. The question is whether the essential teachings of trinitarianism can be discerned from Scripture. That is something that definitely won't fit into a 5,000-word post, but I encourage you to pick up James R. White's book _The Forgotten Trinity_ for a lengthy and scholarly defense of the doctrine from the pages of Scripture. By the way, I don't think pastors in 21st-century America would be hurting from not teaching the Trinity. Many of the most famous and wealthy pastors today (one whose initials are "T.D." comes to mind) are at best fence-sitters on the issue, and that certainly hasn't stopped the flow of "green stuff." Others outright deny all kinds of other clearly biblical teachings and still have huge followings (a certain minister in a Crystal Cathedral comes to mind). It is pretty apparent that the absence of sound, biblical doctrine will not hurt too many preaching careers here in the U.S.A. --Joe! |