History

One of the more frustrating aspects of discussing the Trinity and its biblical quality is the seeming dominance that Church history has over the mind of the Christian. It isn’t always the case that a debate about the Trinity will be decided by historic influences, but often the debate is over before it has begun, because the Trinity is not allowed to be wrong. The purpose of the debate in such cases isn’t to determine if the Trinity is biblically accurate, or how accurate it is, and where there may be problems, as one would find in other discussions over other theological systems. Rather, the goal is to determine how far from the trinitarian standard the opponent is, so that the defender of the Trinity can know how best to correct his/her errors.

The historic power of the Trinity over the mind of the Christian is something that must be broken before productive discussions about its biblical quality can move forward. The Trinity needs to be moved from an implicit status of infallibility to that of a fallible theological system, like Dispensationalism or Calvinism. The Trinity is not an explicitly revealed doctrine in the Bible. Rather, it is a systematic attempt to reconcile large bodies of biblical data, which is a very fallible and error-prone process. Thus the Trinity’s accuracy is dependent not only on the inerrancy of scripture, but also on the quality of the human reasoning that goes into tying the relevant passages together.

Other systems of theology enjoy permission in Christian culture to discuss, debate, and weigh their biblical quality, because there is no universal or historic consensus that binds the conscience of every Christian to them. In the same way, it needs to be recognized that sincere, intelligent, and biblically-driven Christians can look at the trinitarian system and disagree with the way it handles scripture.

An analysis of Church history can help to undermine the infallibility that is commonly granted to the Trinity, because its greatest historic proponents had their own theological flaws and baggage that show them to be mere men of their time. They were sincere, intelligent, and biblically-driven Christians, but they were not inerrant in their understanding of scripture. In many cases, they would be considered heretical by modern standards of theology.

Thus while the core of Trinity Berean is meant to argue biblically against the trinitarian system, this history section is meant to serve as a rhetorical device to undermine the implied infallibility of the Trinity’s early defenders. As such, the articles often focus on a variety of theological issues unrelated to the Trinity, that simply show the Church fathers to be highly fallible. These articles are not meant to be smear pieces against the character of godly men. Rather, they are made relevant only because of the inappropriate degree of infallibility that is often granted to the doctrine of God that they produced and defended.