Must We Believe In the Trinity To Be Saved?

Over the years, I’ve had many conversations with trinitarian friends about their view of the godhead, and biblical issues that I see with it. A common argument that’s made is that if we hold different views about the ontological nature of God, then we don’t believe in the same God, and therefore at least one of us is guilty of idolatry. This leads to a question of unity between trinitarians and non-trinitarians. And it ultimately leads into a discussion about salvation, whether or not someone must believe in the trinity to be saved.

Unlike most trinitarians, I do not view this as a dividing line between true and false Christianity. Making that case is difficult, given the breadth of revelation that we have about salvation, and the history of how people have thought about these issues; there’s a lot of material and nuance to cover. I’m going to try to examine this question in the full context of redemptive history, and along the most common lines of reasoning that trinitarians put forward to make this a critical issue; hopefully my thoughts will aid further discussions between trinitarians and non-trinitarians, and provide some opportunity for grace between brethren.

The first thing to recognize is that there’s a lot of unclear language that’s thrown around in our day, as Christians struggle to define what Christianity is, and what it is not. Terminology such as “primary vs secondary” doctrines is often used to separate theological ideas into two categories — those which are central to the Christian faith (primary doctrines), and those which reflect areas where genuine Christians can disagree. This is done out of a desire to separate Christianity from other religions (e.g. Islam, Mormonism etc.), while allowing a degree of unity between groups that are generally believed to be different sects within the same religion (Baptist, Calvinist etc.).

There are a lot of problems with those classification schemes, not the least of which being a lack of biblical revelation on how to determine which doctrines are critical, and which are not. The trinity is never explicitly taught in scripture, so how can we know if it is a primary or secondary doctrine?

Another important point of ambiguity is the question of what “primary” means. If the trinity is considered a primary doctrine, does that mean that you must believe in the trinity to be saved, or that a Christian church or group must affirm the trinity to be considered part of the same religion? This is an important distinction that we see in other areas of doctrine. For example, many evangelicals will point out that the Roman Catholic Church, in the Council of Trent, clearly affirms a gospel based on good works, and anathematizes anyone who preaches salvation by grace alone. This contradicts the clear teaching of scripture (Eph 2:8-10). Does that mean all catholics are non-christians? Many (such as myself) would say “no,” having known plenty of catholics with an evidently genuine faith in Christ, who are simply inconsistent with their church’s teaching.

So in conversations about essential Christian doctrine, it’s important to define our terms. For this article, I’ll be looking at essential doctrine through the lens of personal salvation, because salvation is what ultimately defines a person’s relationship to Christ, and to the body of Christ. In particular, I’ll examine two common trinitarian claims, that you either have to believe in the trinity to be saved, or come to believe in the trinity post-salvation, as an evidence of saving faith.

Most trinitarian evangelicals in our day seem to have a more nuanced definition of salvation than their historic counterparts, because of our recent return to an emphasis on the new birth as the cause of salvation, rather than other issues like one’s relationship to the Church. Focus on the new birth tends to produce a reductionist theology of salvation doctrines, such that we try to find a bare minimum number of ideas that need to be communicated and believed in order to bring someone into the Christian faith. A person is saved with a minimal understanding of Christian doctrine, then grows in his/her understanding through Bible study, teaching, and the work of the Spirit.

As a result, people today don’t usually claim that you have to believe in the trinity to be saved. We have too much evidence of deathbed conversions, children coming to know Jesus, and other scenarios where the theology of the trinity is never communicated or grasped prior to conversion. For my part, I gave my life to Christ at the age of three, and I don’t recall ever thinking about the doctrine of the trinity until college, despite there being evident fruit of the Spirit in my life.

With that said, it’s worth noting that many historic trinitarians (and perhaps those in older traditions) do claim that you must believe in the trinity to be saved. For example, the widely accepted Athanasian Creed says the following:

Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic faith. Which faith unless every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. And the catholic faith is this: that we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity…

So that in all things, as aforesaid; the Unity in Trinity, and the Trinity in Unity, is to be worshipped. He therefore that will be saved, let him thus think of the Trinity…

This is the catholic faith; which except a man believe truly and firmly, he cannot be saved.

The difficulty with this kind of a stark view of salvation is that the doctrine of the trinity developed over the course of several centuries, after the apostolic age, as the Church wrestled with questions about the divinity of Christ, various non-Christian heresies, and the nature of God. The earliest defenders of the trinity themselves had significant doctrinal issues that today would be considered heretical, with e.g. Athanasius denying or ignoring that Jesus had a human soul, proffering the little gods theory, and having a somewhat gnostic view of the condition of man. There was clearly a lot of confusion in the early church surrounding the nature of God and the natures of Christ, so it’s difficult to make trinitarian belief a precondition of salvation, without also discarding the salvation of several generations of Christians. The later development of trinitarian theology doesn’t automatically make it false or unbiblical. My point here is that we need to be honest about the implications of requiring belief in the trinity to be saved, and avoid reading it anachronistically into apostolic doctrine.

Furthermore, whatever might be said of the apostolic views of God, no one that I’m aware of tries to make that case that believers in the Old Testament held to a trinitarian model. There may be passages that support the doctrine, in e.g. scriptures that speak of God in a plural sense (Gen 1:26). But the trinity isn’t expressly taught anywhere in the old or new testaments, and it certainly wasn’t believed by old testament saints. If one must believe in the trinity to be saved, how then were old testament saints able to escape the judgement of God? This standard would require us to eternally damn a great cloud of faithful witnesses, like Abel, Noah, Joseph, Daniel, Esther, and countless others.

Considerations like these have led modern trinitarians to generally take a more reserved path. It isn’t that you have to affirm the trinity to be saved. Rather, you have to avoid denying it. CARM gives the following helpful overview of the position:

In one sense you do not have to believe in the Trinity to be a Christian, but in another sense you do. Let me explain. The Bible does not tell us that we must believe in the Trinity in order to become saved; that is, to become a Christian. On the other hand, true Christians will end up believing in the Trinity because it is the proper teaching concerning God’s nature that has been revealed to us in Scripture. So, though someone may not understand the Trinity when he or she becomes a Christian, eventually he will end up believing in it because he’s a Christian.

The doctrine of the Trinity is the proper biblical teaching concerning the nature of God. It is one of the defining elements of the Christian faith. The Trinity, like the deity of Christ (John 8:24; John 1:1, 14; Colossians 2:9), Christ’s physical resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:14, 17), and justification by faith alone in Christ alone (Romans 3:28; 4:1-5; 5:1; Galatians 2:21), are among the essential doctrines of the Christian faith. To deny any of these is to deny what makes Christianity Christian. But, I want to make it clear that we believe these things because they are true and because the Holy Spirit who indwells Christians bears witness of truth (John 14:26; 15:26).

It is not believing in the Trinity that makes us Christian. Rather, it is being a Christian (and being indwelt by the Holy Spirit) that enables us to believe in the Trinity. So, in one sense it’s not a requirement to affirm the doctrines the Trinity in order to become saved. However, the true Christian will not deny the doctrine of the Trinity because the Holy Spirit will bear witness of truth (John 15:26) in the Trinity as true. This would mean that anyone who claims to be a Christian but openly and continually rejects the doctrine of the Trinity, is probably not truly saved.

— Do you have to believe in the Trinity to be a Christian?

This is an incredibly helpful and nuanced view that very closely parallels my own understanding of how Christians relate to doctrinal truth. It isn’t that there is a set of core doctrines that must be believed in order for a person to be born again. Rather, there is a fundamental shift that happens in that person’s character, which changes how he relates to truth — loving and obeying truth rather than loving and obeying error (Rom 2:8, Jhn 16:13). So in theory, if the trinity is true, and sufficiently central to the Christian faith, then at some point every Christian will come to believe in the trinity, whether in this life or the next. But someone who openly and consistently rejects the trinity, in the face of unrefuted evidence of its accuracy, would give evidence that he’s someone who hasn’t experienced that shift in character.

The key issue of course is whether or not the trinity is actually true. It’s one thing to say that a majority of Christians today (and throughout history) have believed in the trinity. It’s another thing altogether to say that the trinity is actually, objectively true. Church history is replete with examples of long-standing error taking root in Church doctrine; majority isn’t the judge of truth.

Because no one human (apart from Christ) is qualified to definitively state what is and is not true, when engaging with other people in doctrinal debates, I find it more helpful to make arguments in favor of my viewpoint, and ask the other side to respond to those arguments. This is what Paul did in Galatians, when dealing with Christians who were being seduced away from his understanding of the gospel. Paul didn’t give a unilateral judgement based on his own authority, or even that of a church council (though he did affirm that the other leaders in Jerusalem were in agreement). To the contrary he said, “even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.” (Gal 1:8). He even brought an example of when Peter (of all people) departed from the true gospel in his actions, to show that human beings are not the ultimate judge of truth (Gal 2:11-14).

Rather than appeal to human authority, Paul appealed to logic. Starting in chapter 3, Paul works through a series of arguments for why the Galatians were being inconsistent in their own understanding, by submitting to the law of Moses as Gentiles. This included discussions on,

• The work of the Spirit in their own lives, apart from the law.
• Abraham’s righteousness apart from the law
• The difference between the covenant of Moses and the covenant of promise / salvation
• The evident selfish motives of those preaching another gospel
• Old Testament typology
• Countering objections about lawless Christianity

Paul laid out a series of arguments, and challenged those preaching a different doctrine to answer his arguments. As that debate was allowed to happen, he was confident that the Galatian church “will take no other view, and the one who is troubling you will bear the penalty, whoever he is.” (Gal 5:10) He could have this confidence because true Christians are those who love truth, even when it means admitting that we’re wrong, or facing a severe consequence. Certainly we don’t always reflect that aspect of God’s character, since we are all still in a process of being sanctified. But to an increasing degree, as a Christian grows in his knowledge and love of the truth, we should see him reach greater and greater consensus with other truth-lovers.

If on the other hand, someone is presented with arguments in favor of a doctrine, has no reasonable rebuttal, but stubbornly refuses to yield — this is evidence of the sin nature we inherited from Adam, from when mankind first bowed the knee to error. That evidence is seen all the time in Christian circles, so like any other aspect of the fall, it shouldn’t be viewed as categorical proof of an unregenerate heart. Christians still sin. But if someone’s life is consistently marked with a refusal to yield to good arguments, then we can become increasingly confident that his heart is not oriented toward a love of truth, and respond appropriately.

So if the trinity is true, then proponents will show evidence of its accuracy by providing evidence and arguments in its favor. God doesn’t ask us for blind faith, but rather faith built on solid evidence. And to be sure, there is plenty of good evidence for the doctrine of the trinity, so it’s understandable that someone who holds that view of the godhead might be confident enough to claim that all Christians will eventually become trinitarians. I disagree, and through this website have provided multiple lines of reasoning that show problems with trinitarian thought, and biblical evidence for an alternative view. Because I’ve endeavored to carefully, thoughtfully, and biblically deal with trinitarian claims and arguments, I believe this shows evidence that I love truth, and that I’m simply at a different place in this area of sanctification than my trinitarian brothers.

If I were to reject trinitarian arguments without sufficiently dealing with them, it would show evidence of a heart in sin against the truth, and perhaps an unregenerate one. By the same token, if trinitarians reject my arguments without sufficiently dealing with them, it will show evidence of a heart in sin against the truth, and perhaps an unregenerate one. It’s the orientation of our hearts that relates to the new birth, not the surface-level question of if I need to believe in the trinity to be saved.

The thesis then would be that any doctrinal debate could be used to provide evidence of a person’s salvation, or lack thereof; you don’t need to limit the examination to an arbitrary list of so-called “primary” doctrines of the faith. For example, Reformed and Dispensational debates, though generally viewed as “secondary” issues, give us an equal opportunity to view how people from each side respond to good and bad arguments from their opponents. If someone holds his viewpoint with humility, and a willingness to learn and grow when faced with a good objection, this shows evidence of a heart that loves truth more than it loves being seen as right. If someone stubbornly ignores good arguments, showing more loyalty to historic creeds or his own flawed understanding of truth, then there’s clearly an idolatrous heart issue that needs to be dealt with.

My motive in suggesting this shift isn’t to reduce the importance of doctrine in general, or specific doctrines that truly do seem to be more central to the Christian faith. I’m trying to develop a nuanced understanding of salvation, that sufficiently covers all of the people throughout history who have been eternally saved, not just those in the current church age. Moving our focus from a list of essential doctrines, to examining a person’s response to truth, helps us to more elegantly explain the varied instances of salvation that we see throughout scripture and history.

So while I understand, for example, the critical importance of a doctrine like justification through faith in Christ alone, I struggle with requiring that doctrine as a precondition of salvation, or even as an eventual fruit of salvation in this lifetime. How do we explain biblical accounts of people who have been saved apart from that knowledge? For example, Jesus viewed the Ninevites of Jonah’s day as being truly repentant and eternally saved, despite living under a significantly reduced gospel message.

The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here. (Mat 12:41)

From the record we have, Nineveh received a message that had nothing to do with eternal judgement and salvation, but rather the in-time judgement of their city for its wickedness. There was no message of grace, no discussion of Jesus’ propitiation on the cross; they were simply told, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown” (Jon 3:4) Through their faith in the preaching of this message, they saved not only their city from God’s temporal wrath, but according to Christ, even their eternal lives were spared from eternal judgement.

Later in the above Matthew passage, Jesus also said that the Queen of Sheba would rise from the dead in judgement over his generation of Israelites. In her case there was no repentance mentioned, though surely that took place as part of her pursuit of truth. Rather, the reason for her resurrection is that “she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon.” She demonstrated a genuine desire to know the truth, and when she heard that it could be found in Israel’s wise king, she made a long, hard journey to consider the matter for herself.

The faith of Abraham is perhaps the most important example to consider, due to its centrality to Paul’s arguments about eternal salvation. Abraham’s faith was in God, but the particular doctrines he knew at the time were significantly less than our current, central holdings of Christianity. According to Paul, the following discussion between Abraham and God represents the moment that he received righteousness from God, which in Paul’s theology was a key aspect of Abraham’s salvation (Rom 4).

But Abram said, “O Lord GOD, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” And Abram said, “Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir.”

And behold, the word of the LORD came to him: “This man shall not be your heir; your very own son shall be your heir.” And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”

And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness. (Gen 15:2-6)

What was it that Abraham believed in this passage? While he certainly had some knowledge of God from his prior experiences, the actual doctrine that gave him righteousness was that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars.

From what I can tell in this example and others, the point at which a person is saved is the point at which they believe God. The focus isn’t on the particular doctrines believed, but rather the character of the person being believed — that God is true. In the fall, Adam and Eve oriented their own hearts, and those of their descendants, against God as the source of truth, believing the lie (Gen 3:1-7, Rom 1:25. Repentance unto salvation then reflects a fundamental shift back to our original state, of believing the truth — regarding God as true, even when his views and commands contradict our own. As Paul said, “Let God be true though every one were a liar” (Rom 3:4).

To be clear, reducing salvation to a person’s response to truth (i.e. God’s word, in one form or another) is not meant to reduce the crucial importance of certain key doctrines, such as justification by faith alone through the finished work of Jesus on the cross. If Jesus did not pay the penalty for our sins on the cross, it would be impossible for Abram or any other man to be saved. That doctrine has to be true for salvation to be possible, but it doesn’t have to be known or believed in order for someone to avail himself of what Jesus did. Fundamentally, what is required from us is repentance — turning away from the self-centered orientation that we received from Adam, and turning back to God-centered orientation. God becomes the accepted authority over our lives rather than man. The impact that this has on our relationship to knowledge is that we become fundamentally committed to truth as the authority over our lives, rather than error.

This kind of a view of salvation is elegant, in that it handles various examples that don’t fit our modern understanding of salvation doctrines. But it also comes with some difficulties, particularly in how you identify whether you are believing in the true God, or an idol. If you can’t specify any bare-minimum doctrinal claims about the god in whom a new Christian is trusting, how can we make any distinction between Christians who trust in the God of the Bible, and adherents of other religions who worship a false god?

Those who believe you must affirm the trinity to be saved often argue the point by way of an analogy. Let’s say that your wife is a tall brunette with glasses. If you meet a man on the street who claims to know your wife, but says, “Yeah, she’s a short blonde with perfect eyesight,” then you know he must not really know your wife. In the same way, if someone claims to know God, but ascribes to him all kinds of inaccurate characteristics, then it’s clear that he doesn’t actually know God. If God truly exists as three persons who are one, and someone claims to know God but denies the trinity, then he must be worshipping a false God. Because faith in the true God is necessary for salvation, therefore you must believe in the trinity to be saved.

This is clever rhetoric, but it has a shallow understanding of how interpersonal relationships and references work. Given the above analogy, it’s entirely possible that the man on the street might have some sort of relationship with your wife, but simply believes some erroneous things about her. Perhaps the relationship is confined to a Facebook account, where she’s posted a fake picture of herself to facilitate a covert, online abortion ministry. I have several friends who do this, invading abortion support groups to identify abortion-minded mothers, and then use separate accounts to reach out to them with the gospel and an offer of Christian support. In such a situation, the man who claims to know your wife believes some erroneous things about her, but he’s still relating to the same person. Our identity is not defined by our attributes.

We see something like this going on in Job’s debate with his three friends. All five people in that discussion are clearly speaking about the same god, the true and the living God, the transcendent maker of the universe. Yet several of them, if not all of them, made various claims about him that were wrong, that misrepresented his character and attributes, and which made him very angry. It would be inaccurate to say that Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar worshipped a different God than Job and Elihu. Rather, God deals with them for their false and presumptuous representation of him.

After the LORD had spoken these words to Job, the LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite: “My anger burns against you and against your two friends, for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has. Now therefore take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and offer up a burnt offering for yourselves. And my servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly. For you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.”

So Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite went and did what the LORD had told them, and the LORD accepted Job’s prayer. (Job 42:7-9)

Clearly there is a difference between the object of a person’s worship, and the knowledge that person has of his god. Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar were not worshippers of Moloch, Baal, or other false gods. They were worshippers of the true and living God, who made presumptuous, inaccurate, and sinful claims about him.

Jesus also showed this in his discussion with the Samaritan woman. He affirmed that she worshipped the Father, the true and the living God, but she did so without an accurate knowledge of him.

The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.”

Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. (Jhn 4:19-23)

The Samaritans were different than other Gentile nations, in that they truly did worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, rather than false idols. But they did so with inaccurate knowledge. So we see that it’s possible for different people and groups of people to believe all kinds of errors about God, but still be referring to the same God. In the same way, we can see trinitarians and non-trinitarians hold discussions and debates about the nature and properties of God, without necessarily concluding that they’re speaking of two different gods. The distinction between the views may be important, such that God becomes very angry at one or more groups for misrepresenting him, as he did in the case of Job’s three friends. But in terms of how human language works, we can affirm that these groups are making claims about the same god, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Therefore someone who holds that Christians must believe in the trinity to be saved can’t appeal to idolatry in their arguments against all non-trinitarians. For my part, I am making claims about the same God, using the same Bible as the authority and foundation of my viewpoint, and simply come to a different conclusion about the nature of God than trinitarians, due to the limitations of human intellect.

So we’ve seen that some people worship false gods, and other people worship the true god, but include false ideas about him. As we’re evaluating various religions in the world, how can we tell the difference?

In most of his writings, Paul engaged with people who had a useful knowledge of the old testament, and so there’s a lot groundwork that he didn’t have to lay in relating to them. In Acts 17 however, we see him relating to people with no such knowledge of God. Like his letter to the Galatians, we see him use reasoning as the method of building truth about God. The primary difference is that the Athenians simply had less revelation of God to work with, so he began with more elemental truths about God.

So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.

The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for “‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, “‘For we are indeed his offspring.’

Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” (Act 17:22-31)

Paul certainly made statements about God without arguing for them, to summarize his basic teaching. But in a key area of concern, namely the idolatry of Athens, he reasoned with them, showing the inherent illogical nature of idolatry. This is very similar to what early Christian apologists would do in longer form, as Christianity competed with the pantheon of Rome.

So considering the thesis developed in this article, that there is one doctrine that a person must believe to be saved, Paul’s example helps us to see how that doctrine deals with the problem of idolatry. The belief that “God is true” places God as the authority over a new Christian’s life, and good doctrine will begin to grow out of that life. But one will object, which god is given that authority? How do we prevent a false god from taking his place?

Those who want to claim that one must believe in the trinity to be saved will appeal to doctrinal standards affirmed by church consensus, a la “We have to make concrete claims about God, based on the Bible, and require all worshippers of God to adhere to those standards.” This is helpful when the standards are accurate, but as we’ve seen, it’s problematic when viewing the full breadth of people who have been saved with varying degrees of knowledge concerning God.

Paul’s example shows us that idolatry is inherently self-refuting; this is also seen in greater depth, in God’s own discussion of the subject through the prophets. Believing that God is true automatically rules out worship of Zeus, Moloch, Artemis etc., because the worship of these false gods is illogical. The process to bring someone back to worship of the true God is therefore to reason with him, to show him that his views cannot be sustained as true. If someone acknowledges his error, as some did in Paul’s case (Act 17:34), then this shows that he has a heart that is “groping after God.” If not, he shows evidence of a heart that’s still in rebellion against him.

There is much more that can and should be discussed on this topic, but at this point we can try to answer the question at hand. Do all Christians need to believe in the trinity to be saved? I see no biblical evidence that salvation is dependent on one’s view of the godhead. As some trinitarians have suggested, it’s certainly proper to look at how professing Christians relate to truth — viewing God and his word as the authority, vs themselves and their own beliefs. Therefore, if the trinity is true, and sufficiently central to Christian doctrine, then one might reasonably expect all Christians to eventually come to believe in it, whether in this life or the next. But that is a big “if,” and there is plenty of good reason to doubt the accuracy of trinitarian theology.

Even if the trinity is true, it is unreasonable to expect all Christians to affirm the doctrine in this life, just as it’s unreasonable to expect all Christians to affirm Calvinism, or Arminianism, or any other theological system where there is significant complexity and room for debate. Love of the truth is only one ingredient needed to develop good doctrine. We also need sharp, logical minds, good understanding of the scriptures and their contexts, self-reflection, and time to work error out of our existing knowledge base. Many Christians lack one or more of these ingredients due to the fall, different giftings, and other attributes that have no bearing on his/her salvation.

Rather than require people to believe in the trinity to be saved, or any other doctrine, a more accurate test would be to examine his response to good arguments when the doctrine is taught and defended. This allows us to grant salvation to people with less knowledge and historic development of theology, such as newly converted Christians and old testament saints. It also allows those with reasonable arguments against the trinity to remain a part of the Christian community while the body of Christ continues to improve its understanding of scripture and the God who authored it. Let God be true, and every doctrine of man contingent upon him.