Did you get that from The Da Vinci Code? That is not true anyway.
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M*W: No. I haven't read The Da Vinci Code, and I don't plan to. I did go see the movie, but I didn't think it was that good. The early church fathers didn't come up with the idea that Jesus was divine until long after the Council of Nicea which took place in 325 AD.
These are excerpts from an essay by Jeff Rath in 1998 entitled "
The Historical Background of the Trinity":
"The current mainstream teaching in Christianity is that God is a coequal, coeternal, one-substance trinity, and that Jesus Christ is God. This doctrine is considered by many as the cornerstone of Christianity, but where did this doctrine come from? The historical record is overwhelming that the
church of the first three centuries did not worship God as a coequal, coeternal, consubstantial, one-substance three in one mysterious godhead.
The early church worshipped one God and believed in a subordinate Son. The trinity originated with Babylon, and was passed on to most of the world's religions. This polytheistic (believing in more than one god) trinitarianism was intertwined with Greek religion and philosophy and slowly worked its way into Christian thought and creeds
some 300 years after Christ. The idea of "God the Son" is Babylonian paganism and mythology that was grafted into Christianity. Worshipping "God the Son" is idolatry, and idolatry is Biblically condemned; it breaks the first great commandment of God of not having any gods before him (Exodus 20:3). Then
three centuries after Christ the corrupt emperor Constantine forced the
minority opinion of the trinity upon the council of Nicea. The Christian church went downward from there; in fact some of the creeds and councils actually contradict each other. The council of Nicea 325 said that "Jesus Christ is God," the council of Constantinople 381 said that "the Holy Spirit is God," the council of Ephesus 431 said that "human beings are totally depraved," the
council of Chalcedon 451 said that "Jesus Christ is both man and God." If you follow the logic here then first you have Jesus Christ as God, then you have man totally depraved, and then you have Jesus Christ as man and God. If Jesus Christ is both man and God does this mean that God is also totally depraved? Well maybe the doctrine of the coequal, coeternal, one-substance, mysterious
three in one triune godhead is deprived of any historical foundation tying it into the Christianity of the Bible and the Christianity of the first three centuries. However the historical information ties the trinity into various pagan origins."
Next is an excerpt by Alvan Lamson in 1865 on "
The Church of the First Three Centuries"
" . . . The modern doctrine of the Trinity is not found in any document or relic belonging to the Church of the first three centuries. . . so far as any remains or any record of them are preserved, coming down from early times, are, as regards this doctrine an absolute blank. They testify, so far as they testify at all, to the supremacy of the father, the only true God; and to the inferior and derived nature of the Son. There is nowhere among these remains a coequal trinity. . . but no un-divided three, -- coequal, infinite, self-existent, and eternal.
This was a conception to which the age had not arrived. It was of later origin."
"During the
first three centuries, Christians did not believe that Jesus Christ was coequal, and coeternal with God, or that he was God the Son, they believed that Jesus Christ was subordinate to God, and that he had a beginning, that he was born. Those that believed otherwise were the exception."
Another excerpt by Williston Walker, "
A History of the Christian Church" 2nd Ed. 1985 states:
"AD 200. . Noetus had been
expelled from the Smyrnaean church for teaching that Christ was the Father, and that the Father himself was born, and suffered, and died."
(My side note to these excerpts is that the concept of Jesus's divinity began with the concept of the trinity. Those who lived in the first century did not believe Jesus was divine).
New Bible Dictionary states: "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."
". . . it is not a biblical doctrine in the sense that any formation of it can be found in the Bible, . . ."
"Scripture does not give us a formulated doctrine of the trinity, . . ."
The New Catholic Encyclopedia dated 1967 states:
"The formulation 'one God in three persons'
was not solidly established, certainly not fully assimilated into Christian life and its profession of faith,
prior to the end of the 4th century."
(Jesus's contemporaries (if he existed) did not believe him to be divine. That idea arose with the advent of the trinity.
