SHOW ME WERE YOU FIND THE WORD TRINITY IN THE BIBLE!

June 23, 2017
Trinity

QUESTION:

The word ‘Trinity’ is not found in the Bible?

ANSWER:

This is true, but the idea is clearly demonstrated and present in Sacred Scripture. Even though the word is not explicitly used the doctrine is implicitly taught. The Jehovah’s Witnesses et al fall into the ‘word thing fallacy’ – which means that if the word is not used the thing is not there.

As the Catholic Church matured and grew, so did the theological vocabulary she used to speak about her doctrines. Terms such as “Trinity” were developed as a way to precisely express what the Church meant by “God.” And though the Church’s understanding of her teaching deepened and developed, she did not “invent” new doctrines. Rather, she inferred truths with certitude from other truths (namely ‘Sacred Tradition). Some of these truths, such as that there is only one God, are explicitly taught in the Bible as well as Sacred Tradition. There is an organic development of doctrine in the Catholic Church (though it never changes or ceases to mean what it once did). The First Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325) authoritatively defined as dogma the doctrine of the Trinity because it was being challenged at the time by a heretic, not because it was being invented out of whole cloth.

These days, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Oneness Pentecostals, Jews, Muslims and other religious groups try to convince people that the Catholic Church “invented” the doctrine of the Trinity, but that is simply false. The truth about the Trinity could not be “invented” by the Catholic Church any more than the truth about the law of gravity could have been invented by the Church — it has always been true; revealed by God Himself.