History of the doctrine of the Trinity

In the Bible there is no passage of Scripture that demonstrates and explains the full doctrine of the Trinity and thus it has been the intention of theologians and the early church doctrines to try to render an understanding to the enigma of ‘One God’ (Fortman, 1972).The slow evolution of the doctrine of the Trinity from its beginning is a result of the constraints of linguistic and theoretical theology (Hunt, 2004).

The purpose of this report is to outline the historical evolution of understandings of the Trinity from the New Testament to the present day.

The Apostolic Fathers indicated clearly and presented evidence of their belief in the ‘three pre-existent beings’. Most of them were clear in their divinity of Christ, but did not define the distinct personality of the divinity of the Holy Spirit and did not have an evident understanding of ‘divine person’ and ‘divine nature’

The Apostolic Fathers indicated clearly and gave evidence of their belief in the ‘three pre-existent beings’. Most of them were clear in their divinity of Christ but did not define the distinct personality of the divinity in the Holy Spirit and did not have an evident understanding of ‘divine person’ and ‘divine nature’. There was no Trinitarian doctrine put forth as they had no consciousness of a Trinitarian issue. In using a two model (Binitarian) of pre-existent Logos to explain Jesus as the Son of God and his divinity in relation to the Father they inadvertently created an inferiorising notion that allowed the term ‘subordinationism’ to be connected to their ideas (Fortman, 1972).

Origen, a great theologian of the East, spurned the two-stage theory he moved to an alternative Platonic hierarchical framework for the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. By...

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