Note: This is part of a series on the Trinity from a rational, non-mystical perspective. See the index here.
Bart Ehrman is a former Christian. He’s a textual critic, so his perspective on the Trinity is interesting (and, of course, not expected to be theologically correct). So let’s look at what he says in “Is the Trinity in the Bible?” and see if his view matches what we’ve seen in our series so far. Does he agree with what we found so far in our discussion of James Attebury and James White?
I’ve said this many times. The nearly universal belief in the church is that the doctrine of the Trinity is a belief that is an incomprehensible mystery or even a logical paradox. Roman Catholic John C. Wright, who denied that the doctrine of the Trinity could be established on the basis of natural reason or scripture alone, once stated (emphasis added):
Indeed, that is very close to the official position of the Roman Catholic church (emphasis added):
“But his inmost Being as Holy Trinity is a mystery that is inaccessible to reason alone or even to Israel’s faith before the Incarnation of God’s Son and the sending of the Holy Spirit.”
Bart Ehrman believes something quite similar…
It is easy for non-Christians to laugh and call [the doctrine of the Trinity] nonsense. But the people who came up with the doctrine were not idiots. Most of the serious theologians who developed the full logic in the fourth and fifth centuries were deep thinkers and highly trained in philosophy. Many of them were smarter, frankly than you and me. Or at least me. They understood that the doctrine did not pass the normal standards of logic. And that applying those standards to it could not yield sense.
…
I’m not going to support the doctrine, obviously. I don’t believe in a God at all, let alone a Triune one. But it’s not nonsense. It’s far deeper than I’m going to be able to explain, partly because I don’t go that deep philosophically. But I will say that on the other hand, if anyone thinks they fully understand the doctrine, they almost certainly do not understand it. And all the analogies you hear (if you hear any) simply do not encapsulate the idea.
…but he curiously insists that the doctrine had a development with full logic, despite admitting that it doesn’t pass the normal standards of logic. The only explanation I have for this is that the doctrine of the Trinity is special pleading.
Regardless, Ehrman admits that applying the laws of logic to the doctrine of the Trinity makes no sense. In this, Erhman agrees with the conventional understanding of the Trinity held by the majority of Christians. And, he parts ways with the likes of James Attebury and James White.
But couched in this statement is something really interesting: that the doctrine of the Trinity was developed in the fourth and fifth century, corresponding to the rise of Roman Catholicism. That is precisely what we wanted to know in Part 1 of the series:
If Roman Catholicism arose late in the 4th century, then all of its core doctrines must be checked to ensure that they are not historical anachronisms. While most are fairly straightforward, one fundamental question remains: was the doctrine of the Trinity also an invention of later years?
“But, surely,” you say, “the doctrine of the Trinity is found in the pages of scripture!”
OK, so to start, I need to make a categorical statement about the doctrine of the Trinity, which may come as a surprise to some people: the doctrine is not explicitly taught anywhere in the Bible, and in fact is never even mentioned in the Bible.
…
These various views are necessarily deductions from various passages of the Bible that are interpreted differently.
…
So back to my point. There is nowhere in Bible that we have an explicit reference to the doctrine of the Trinity, that there are three persons in the godhead, and the three are actually one. With an exception. The doctrine of the Trinity DOES seem to be explicitly taught (or nearly explicitly taught) in 1 John 5:7. Here is what it says:
Right! There it is. That’s just about as explicit as can be. There are three. They are in heaven (meaning they are divine beings). They are God the Father, and the “Word” of God (i.e., Christ), and the Spirit. And those three are one. So the Trinity is indeed taught in the Bible, right?
I’ve studied this issue in depth. Almost every proof-text used to defend the Trinity in scripture suffers from one or more of these issues:
- Mistranslation
- Textual variant
- Ambiguity (e.g. language; context)
- Inductive inference (as opposed to explicit and/or deductive)
At most one or two are legitimately debatable as explicit references to the Trinity.
Ehrman likes to cite 1 John 5:7 because he’s a textual critic. Textual critics are concerned with finding textual variants and determining whether they are the original text or a later addition. 1 John 5:7 is such a famous textual variant, that it has its own name: the Comma Johanneum. It is essentially only found in Latin manuscripts and not any of the copies of the Greek originals. In fact, it is not found in any Greek manuscript before the 14th century. The oldest undisputed reference is found in Latin in the latter half of the 4th century, precisely where we would expect to find it if the doctrine of the Trinity arose with (the Latin wing of) Roman Catholicism.
The point is rather obvious. According to Ehrman there is no authentic verse in the Bible which describes God as a Trinity.
It’s very simple really. Christians over time developed more and more exalted views of Jesus, from being a human messiah, to being a human sacrificed for the sins of others, to being a human made into a divine being through exaltation to heaven, to being a divine being who appeared on earth, to being given a position and authority equal to the one God of all, to being the creator of the universe, to … well we are soon going to see to WHAT. It’s as high is it can possibly go.
Ehrman claims that the doctrine of the Trinity developed over time with Jesus getting more-and-more divine with each step. I take issue to his claims, naturally, but it is what it is. Here are a few more of his views:
The doctrine of the Trinity is not taught anywhere in the Bible, even if later theologians read it into the Bible. (As most Christians still do today.)
Jesus himself did not claim to be a divine being and his earthly followers did not see him as divine.
Jesus’ followers did not think merely that at the resurrection Jesus’ cadaver came back to life and he returned to earth; they believed, at the outset, that God had taken him (body and all) up to heaven. In ancient thought, anyone taken up to heaven was made divine: they live with the gods, or God, as an immortal being, no longer a mere mortal. Some of Jesus’ followers later came to think he had not “merely” been exalted to be divine, but that he was born as a divine being (his mother was a virgin whom God impregnated). Some later still came to think he existed before his birth and was a divine being with God who became human. Some thought that at his resurrection God had actually made him *equal* with himself in power and authority. Some thought that as a divine being before his birth he had been in the beginning with God and created the universe.
Ehrman is quick to explain that just because a development took place that this doesn’t mean it is wrong (or, for that matter, right). He’s merely describing what he sees as the correct view of history.
In any case, what we do find is that outside the church itself, the idea of a Trinity—where Jesus was both divine and human at the same time on earth—is not considered to be either historical or contained within the pages of the Bible.
Of course, it will surprise no one that non-Christians do not believe that Jesus existed and was God, in terms of actual history. If they did, they would be Christian! All we’ve established is that we can add historical evidence to the rational/logical case, with both standing against the conventional “by-faith” Trinitarian view.