Welcome everyone to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. We’ve lately been going through the Jehovah’s Witnesses booklet called “Should You Believe In The Trinity?” We’re on the topic now of if the Trinity is clearly a Bible teaching and under the heading that matches the title of this post. Let’s see what the Watchtower has to say.
The first reference is from a Protestant work called “The Illustrated Bible Dictionary.” Of course, no page number is cited, but the quotes in the brochure goes as follows:
The word Trinity is not found in the Bible . . . It did not find a place formally in the theology of the church till the 4th century.
Anyone interested in what they left out?
The word Trinity is not found in the Bible, and though used by Tertullian in the last decade of the 2nd century, it did not find a place formally in the theology of the church till the 4th century. It is, however, the distinctive and all-comprehensive doctrine of the Christian faith…
Now I’d have no problem as is however with saying that the word is not found in the Bible. (Much like the term “Theocratic Kingdom”) I’d also have little problem with saying that it didn’t become a formal term until around the fourth century, although Tertullian and others did use it prior. I am not interested in the word but in the concept.
What’s the next line?
And a Catholic authority says that the Trinity “is not . . . directly and immediately [the] word of God.”
The quote comes from one earlier about Seminarians having a hard time explaining the Trinity in its Thomistic interpretation. What is instead said is that the doctrine is in there implicitly which is what Trinitarians have always claimed. No one has claimed that there is chapter and verse and therefore true, although some do point to the Johannine Comma to be fair.
The next statement is that the word first appears in Theophilus in 180 A.D. and that shortly afterwards it appears in its Latin form, trinitas, in Tertullian.
I have no problem with this but I just wonder what difference it makes. Because a word is not there, it does not mean the concept that can be signified by that word is not present. We can easily coin a term later to describe something that at one time is not understood and go back and find evidence for that concept later. Absence of a word is not the same as absence of a concept.
The Watchtower points out that this does not mean that Tertullian did not teach the Trinity. I agree. We will look at Tertullian later as the Watchtower does spend some time discussing the church fathers. (Much like you can spend some money at a gumball machine however. For them, one quote is enough to prove the whole case)
My conclusion is that the Watchtower is still just stacking the deck. They do not use this standard when they teach about the theocratic kingdom. Could it be that they’re actually doing something like picking and choosing? Surely not!
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