|
Challenge
of the Week - updated June 1, 2009
Four
Sources of Curious Mention of the Trinity
#
1 - Harper-Collins Bible Dictionary (1996 Edition)
"It is only with the fathers of the church in the third and fourth
centuries that a full-fledged theory of the Incarnation develops.
Attempts to trace the origins still earlier to the Old Testament
literature cannot be supported by historical scholarship. The formal
doctrine of the Trinity as it was defined by the great Church Councils
of the fourth and fifth centuries is not to be found in the New
Testament."
#
2 - Harper-Collins Bible
Encyclopedia of Catholicism
– (1995 Edition):
“Today,
however, scholars generally agree that there is no doctrine of the
Trinity as such in either the Old Testament or the New Testament.
It would go far beyond the intention and thought-forms of the Old
Testament to suppose that a late-fourth-century or thirteenth-century
Christian doctrine can be found there.
Likewise, the New Testament does not contain an explicit doctrine
of the Trinity.”
#
3 - Encyclopedia International
– (1982 Ed., Vol. 18, p.226):
“The
doctrine of the Trinity did not form part of the apostles preaching as
this is reported in the N.T.”
#
4 - New International
Encyclopedia
– (Vol.23, p.47, 477):
“The
Trinity doctrine, the
Catholic Faith is this:
We worship one in trinity, but there is one person of the
Father, another of the
Son and another of the Holy
Ghost – the Glory equal; the Majesty coeternal.
The doctrine is not found in its fully developed form in the
Scriptures.
Modern theology does not seek to find it in the O.T.
At the time of the Reformation the Protestant Church took over
the doctrine of the Trinity, without serious examination.”
|
