![\"\"](\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/lord-guitar.jpg\" "\\"lord")
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After what has been said in the foregoing pages, we are prepared to re-assert, in conclusion, that the modern doctrine of the Trinity is not found in any document or relic belonging to the church of the first three centuries<\/strong>. Letters, art, usage, theology, worship, creed, hymn, chant, doxology, ascription, commemorative rite, and festive observances, so far as any remains, or any record of them are preserved, coming down from early time, are, as regards this doctrine, an absolute blank<\/strong>. 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 co-equal Trinity… no undivided Three, – co-equal, infinite, self-existent, and eternal. This was a conception at which the age had not arrived. It was of later origin. (Alvan Lamson, The Church of the First Three Centuries<\/a>: Or, Notices of the Lives and Opinions of Some of the Early Fathers, With Special Reference to The Doctrine of the Trinity; Illustrating Its Late Origin and Gradual Formation<\/em>, pp. 466-7, emphases added)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
These posts<\/a> may clarify Lamson’s point. In short, those early Christians\u00a0did believe in<\/strong> the Father, Son, and in the spirit of God (variously understood). In that sense, they “believed in the Trinity.” By the end of the 2nd century, they could use terms like trinitas<\/em> and trias<\/em> to refer to the plurality of those three. What they did not believe in<\/strong>, was the one God as the Trinity – that is, in a triune God containing \/ existing in \/ being composed of three equally divine persons, sharing the divine nature.<\/p>\n
That is, they were not trinitarians<\/a><\/strong>.<\/a> They did – most of them – believe the one true God to be one and the same as the Father (and not also one and the same as the Son and Spirit). They were unitarians.<\/a><\/p>\n
See Lamson’s book<\/a> for many of the very interesting historical details. I believe the linked edition is the latest and best, although it has intrusive footnotes by the editors which were done after Lamson’s death.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After what has been said in the foregoing pages, we are prepared to re-assert, in conclusion, that the modern doctrine of the Trinity is not found in any document or relic belonging to the church of the first three centuries. Letters, art, usage, theology, worship, creed, hymn, chant, doxology, ascription, commemorative rite, and festive observances,… Read More »the concept of a triune God an anachronism in the first three centuries<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3873,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21,4,14,7,3,43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bible","category-heresy-orthodoxy","category-history","category-quotes","category-theories","category-unitarianism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3872"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36553,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3872\/revisions\/36553"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}