The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity - Origins and Development

This study, for the non-specialist reader, traces in a very readable way the human account of God’s revelation of himself through the Hebrew Scriptures, considering the significance of the plural passages, the loss of the spelling and pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton, YHWH and the effect on Scripture interpretation of the substitution of YHWH with the word “Adonai”. The writings of the Apostles and the fathers of the early Church are also studied, exploring key passages in the original Koine Greek. A trace of their struggles with disparate texts follows in order to understand the natures of Jesus and the Holy Spirit and the relationships between them and with God the Father. This account reveals how the understanding of these relationships led, even during the first Christian century, to an appreciation of the identity of God the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit and ultimately to the formation of the doctrine of the Trinity. During this process, the struggle of the first Church to be true to scripture and faithful to God was conducted in an atmosphere of hostility and persecution from several sources that often resulted in martyrdom for the faithful, all the while fighting heresy. As far as possible this text is based on contemporary sources, letting the early Church Fathers “speak for themselves”. It becomes clear as the history unfolds, that the main motive forces driving the work forward were, i) their desire to understand the nature of God, ii) to understand the relationships between Jesus, the Holy Spirit and God the Father, iii) opposition in many forms, especially heresy, and iv) principally the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The formulation of the Creeds of Nicaea and Constantinople did not, unfortunately, put an end to dispute and so the views of subsequent generations of theologians are also considered.