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Does the Trinity Matter?

Posted By reynor | Filed Under Quotes & Excerpts 

May 19th, 2008 by Marcellino D’Ambrosio, Ph.D. for Catholic Exchange

Many are ready to give a polite nod of some sort to Jesus of Nazareth. Most honor Him as a great moral teacher. Many even confess Him as Savior. But the Incarnation of the Eternal God? Second Person of the Holy Trinity? God can’t be one and three at the same time. Such a notion is at worst illogical, at best meaningless. “This was all invented by the Roman Emperor Constantine in 313 AD,” scoffs a motley crew ranging from the Jehovah’s Witnesses to the Da Vinci Code.

Of course this charge has no historical leg to stand on. St. Ignatius of Antioch wrote seven brief letters around 110AD in which he called Jesus “God” 16 times.

True, the word “Trinity” is not in the bible. But everywhere the New Testament refers to three distinct Persons who seem to be equally divine, yet one (see 2 Cor 13:13). So over 100 years before Constantine, a Christian writer named Tertullian coined the term “Trinity” as a handy way to refer to this reality of three distinct, equal Persons in one God. It stuck.

But if the doctrine of the Trinity is authentically biblical, is it relevant? Does it really matter?  Continue reading here.

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