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trinity The triune nature of god is a touchstone of Christian orthodoxy. Any theology that denies the trinity or interprets it in a nonstandard way is heresy. According to orthodoxy, Jesus, while himself both fully god and fully mortal, is also one of three divine persons, each distinct, each fully god, and each unified as the one god. He is the son, the second person, after the father (the first person) and before the holy spirit (third). His mortality makes his sacrifice genuine. His divinity makes his worship acceptable. The trinity has roughly nothing to do with anything Jesus taught. The doctrine was built up layer by layer and formulated council by council, but it does not appear in the new testament (except where it has been piously inserted). It has been a constant source of schism and heresy, while also serving as a point of common agreement among Greek orthodox, Roman catholic, and Protestant. The trinity is so central to Christianity that the first order of business for the first Christian emperor was to get the priests to stop arguing about it. Constantine called the first ever bishops’ council with representatives from all across the newly-Christian Roman empire, and they gave him the unifying trinitarian creed that he wanted. Only it didn’t unify. The bishops kept fighting it out for over a hundred years, swaying first one way, then another. When the heretics were finally defeated, they took their message to the Goths and converted the Germanic tribes to their version of Christianity. These tribes would later merge with the Roman church, but not before they got to add one little word to the Nicene creed, “filioque.” This phrase, indicating that the holy spirit processed from the son as well as from the father, would in turn contribute to the religious rift between the Roman west and Greek east. With the heretics defeated, the church faced another trinitarian controversy. Since the trinity was a new idea, its implications weren’t worked out. Christians split over how to define Christ’s nature. In the 400s, a big shot monk in Constantinople named Eutyches caused trouble with his talk about Christ having one nature. Through political back-and-forth, he was convicted of heresy, acquitted, and convicted again. The bishops’ council at Chalcedon (451) finally put an end to his heresy by defining Christ as having two natures. This ruling, however, promptly caused a schism, with the “oriental” churches. The two-nature version of the trinity was so controversial that the only way the bishops could make it universal was to exclude these bishops, including the pope of Alexandria. Since these arcane interpretations of Jesus’ nature are basically arbitrary, bishops could freely decide to go either way, allowing them to jump one way or another for political reasons. Schisms that were nominally about Jesus’ dual nature were actually more about the local bishops showing independence from the two Romes, old Rome and Constantinople. Martin Luther inadvertently doomed the trinity with his call to return to the text of the bible and to hold all church tradition up to the authority of the scripture alone. He took out purgatory. Even Roman catholics now leave out the fire-and-brimstone stuff and retreat to a more or less intense experience of being purified. But as the trinity took centuries to compose, so it also took centuries for the trinity to fall apart. Luther launched the reformation in the 1500s, and the trinity was almost immediately under fire from Francis David in Transylvania. He was ahead of his time and died a martyr, but three hundred years later in the United States the advance on the trinity would become widespread. In the 1800s, the United States generated a variety of utopian and religious movements, including several nontrinitarian takes on Christianity. Unitarians read the bible liberally and attempted to live out a deist religion purportedly akin to Jesus’ own. Joseph Smith taught the Mormons to believe in the father, son, and holy spirit, but with the father and son understood to be men of flesh and bone. Jehovah’s Witnesses started taking the bible literally, even the crazier bits. Taking scripture straight, instead of getting it processed by the bishops, naturally makes them heretics. They portray Jesus in new testament style: god’s number one creation and humanity’s savior. Mary Baker Eddy washed out the whole issue with Christian science, in which the physical nature of Jesus disappears along with the physical nature of the world at large. Today, liberal Christians might describe Jesus as the holy man that God chose to exalt by raising him from the dead, perhaps spiritually rather than physically. He may be the unique son of god, but he’s not person number two of the trinity. The momentous issue that shook the empire and split the church is dismissed as the result of conflicts of church and state. Jesus’ actual teaching, meanwhile, has been working its magic.
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contents table of contents you're already looking at it introduction for the inquisitive reader biographical overview who he was and wasn't
afterlife not Jesus' concern animal sacrifice bloodless religion apocalypse did Jesus preach hellfire? baptism sin wash for Jesus and others beatitudes Jesus' words and others' words beloved disciple witness for the un-gospel bible scripture old and new bishop the unjesus body focus on the physical Buddha Jesus' close kin charity key Christian virtue and legacy of Jesus The Da Vinci Code secret (and false) messages divorce women's status dreams convenient literary device Elijah Jewish prophet with his own second coming equality ancient source of modern egalitarianism exorcist Jesus and demons failure reinterpreting Jesus as a failure faith from trust to blind belief father Jesus on titles of honor Francis of Assisi the most Christlike Christian Gandhi the 20th century's most Christly holy man Galilee Jesus' inauspicious homeland gentiles Jesus' inadvertent audience god how Jesus became god golden rule key to Jesus' success gospels competing accounts heaven from sky to spiritual home hell revenge fantasy humanism Jesus' legacy inerrant Christian treatment of scripture Thomas Jefferson ethics of Jesus Jewish guilt Christian libel John's gospel the un-gospel John the baptist, see John the washer John the washer Jesus' apocalyptic mentor Judaism libeled religion of Jesus kingdom of god what Jesus promised Lao Tzu poet of the cosmic way logos jesus as the word of god C. S. Lewis famous, flawed trilemma little drummer boy Luke beats Matthew logos Jesus as the divine word LORD Yahweh transitioning to the one god of all Luke's gospel the all-around best gospel Mark's gospel the gospel that lost its point Mary of Magdala women, visions, and sex massacre of the innocents bloodshed starts early Matthew's gospel best gospel for church reading Mormon, see Joseph Smith Moses Jewish lawgiver Muhammad a prophet who got it right mystery Orpheus and transubstantiation oppression origin of Jesus' compassion The Passion of the Christ Luke as buzzkill Paul revealer of the revealer private and public public Jesus and secret Christ relativism the secret power of the golden rule sacrifice Jesus' death and Christian sacrament Albert Schweitzer Jesus as a failure sheol dark pit of death show Jesus' deeds as put-ons slavery abolished by Jesus' efforts Joseph Smith flesh-and-blood Jesus Socrates secular Jesus son of god on close terms with the man upstairs soul, see body synoptics three gospels that agree temple center of Jewish religion trinity unifying and divisive doctrinre vision, see dreams Yahweh, see LORD Zoroaster Persian dualistic holy man
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