Antitrinitarians

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Antitrinitarians or non-Trinitarians ( Greek αντί anti 'against' and Latin trinitas 'Trinity, Trinity, Trinity') are Christians who, according to their understanding of God , do not recognize the dogma of the Trinity of God , which was adopted at the Council of Nicaea (325) or reject it as heresy .

Several forms of anti-Trinitarianism can be distinguished, such as modalism , which identifies the Father and Jesus with one another, or adoptionism , according to which Jesus and God are not of the same nature. The latter position can be ascribed to the Arians and, in modern times, the Unitarians . Both views are heresies from a Trinitarian perspective. And Islam can also be described as anti-Trinitarian teaching; in the Koran the idea of ​​the Trinity is expressly rejected.

Theological arguments

Many arguments against the Trinity were put forward by the Arians as early as the 4th century , but they are mainly preserved as quotations in the texts of their opponents. Arius (260-330), after whom this theological school is named, saw the Son as created by God. He argued more philosophically than biblically, pointing out that the Trinity contradicted the Aristotelian syllogism and was therefore illogical. Therefore he wanted to hold fast to the unity and uniqueness of God. In the Bible, he mainly referred to the book of Proverbs 8:22:

" 2 [...] at the entrance to the houses she [wisdom] calls out loud: 4  [...] my voice goes out to all people: 5  [...] get wise, [...] take reason! […] 12  I, wisdom, […] discover knowledge and good advice. […] 14  […] I am the insight, with me there is power. […] 16  through me the rulers perform their office […] 18  wealth and honor are with me, esteemed possessions and happiness; 19  My fruit is better than gold and fine gold […] 22  The Lord created me in the beginning of his ways, before his works in primeval times; 23  in the earliest times I was formed, at the beginning, at the origin of the earth. 24 When the primal seas were not yet, I was born when the springs did not yet exist, those rich in water. 25  Before the mountains were sunk, before the hills I was born. 26  He had not yet made the earth, nor the fields and all the clods of the mainland. "

- Prov 8.22  EU

The personified wisdom says at this point about itself that it was born of God before the works of primeval times. Arius interpreted wisdom as an Old Testament expression of Jesus Christ.

  • Non-Trinitarians cite passages in the Bible that are intended to prove that God the Father is superior to his Son Jesus, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all. Irenäus (~ 135–200) writes about Eph 4: 6: “In this way there is a God the Father who is above everything and through everything and in everything. For above all is the Father, and he himself is the head of Christ. ”Non-Trinitarians believe that God the Father is greater than Jesus Christ. Already because of Jesus' saying: The Father is greater than me. ( Jn 14:28) equality between the father and his son is impossible. Irenaeus writes on John 14:28: “... that we learn from him (Christ) that the Father is the Most High. 'The father is bigger than me'. That is why our Lord taught that the Father is also superior to all with regard to his knowledge. ”God - the Father - sent his Son, but the Son never sends his Father. That is a clear sign of submission. Jesus testified several times that the Father had sent him ( John 5:36; 17.3; 17:18).
  • God is immutable, he is spirit (Jn 4:24). Justin the Martyr (133 - approx. 163) did not consider Jesus to be “of the same nature”, but only recognized him as the second place after the immutable and eternal God, the creator of the world. His Son, who in the strict sense of the word is his Son, the Logos, who was with him before all creation, was begotten when he created and ordered everything through him in the beginning; he is called Christ because he was anointed and because through him God arranged everything.
  • Jesus is God's word, which is also called Logos (Jn 1), and the mediator between God and man: for there is “one” God and “one” mediator between God and man, namely the man Christ Jesus (1. Epistle of Paul to Timothy 2,5). The mediator with the Father one , but not one (John 10, 30). Novatian (approx. 200-258) said of John 10:30: “He also says 'one', and the heretics should remember that he does not say 'one'. As a neuter, 'one' denotes the harmony in a community and not the uniqueness of the person ... the statement 'one', however, should go to the harmony with each other and the agreement in thinking and the connection in love. That is why father and son really form a unit through their unanimity and love. "
  • In the case of the apostle Paul , too, there was no equation of “father” and “son”. He writes: "As soon as everything is subject to him, then the Son himself will also submit to him who has subjected everything to him, so that God may be everything in everyone". Paul speaks of "God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" and calls God "the head of Christ" in the same sense that Christ is the head of man. It is also significant that Paul almost always reserves the predicate of God for the Father alone. For example, 1 Cor 8 : 6 says : Although there are many gods and many masters, we (Christians) have only one God, namely the Father. Clement of Alexandria (approx. 150–215) wrote Jn 17.3 as follows: “One must ... impress upon the soul the greatest and most important of the teachings leading to eternal life, which consists in the knowledge that the eternal God is the giver of eternal goods and the first and highest and the one and good is God. Therefore the Lord exhorts those who strive for true life to first get to know him whom no one recognizes but the Son and to whom the Son reveals' (Mt 11:27), then secondly after God the greatness of the Savior ... to capture".

Today, non-Trinitarian positions are often based on the fact that the Bible never mentions a triune God anywhere in the Old or New Testament:

  • The Bible itself does not contain any doctrine of the Trinity; this was only developed later.
  • The doctrine of the Trinity cannot be derived from biblical texts either, because in the Bible there are “not even traces of a doctrine of the Trinity”.
  • In the opinion of non-Trinitarians, neither the sermon of Jesus nor the Palestinian Christianity that is close to him contains any starting points for a doctrine of the Trinity.
  • Karl Barth writes: "The Bible lacks the express statement that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are of the same nature."
  • Regardless of their biblical omission, non-Trinitarians consider the doctrine of the Trinity to be illogical. Karl-Heinz Ohlig writes: “In the light of the doctrine of the Trinity, the biblical monotheistic faith appears at least contradictory or even called into question: God and two god-like beings? Tritheism in disguise, belief in three gods !? The Christian theological interpretations of 'Trinity' always appear very complicated and incomprehensible. Even the image of water in three forms is of little help and offers free space for a mysterious, secret character of the doctrine of the Trinity (often so wanted by Christian theologically). "

history

Antiquity

Even in antiquity , the Trinity was the subject of numerous internal church debates. The representatives of Arianism in particular rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. However, Arianism died out in the 8th century.

Modern times

It was only against the background of humanism and the Reformation that anti-Trinitarian communities emerged again. The outstanding representative of the anti-Trinitarians was Michael Servetus , who was arrested in 1553 while on a trip to Geneva. Because of his rejection of the doctrine of the Trinity in his book "De trinitatis erroribus" accused by Catholic and Protestant theologians as a heretic , he was burned alive in Geneva at the instigation of the city council. There were also anti-Trinitarian tendencies in the Reformation Anabaptist movement . An example is the Mennonite preacher Adam Pastor . However, the vast majority of Anabaptists were Trinitarian. In Italy, anti-Trinitarians as well as Protestants were persecuted by the Inquisition . The persecuted often evaded to Eastern Europe, like the doctor Giorgio Biandrata († 1585) to Transylvania, where he later accused the radical anti-Trinitarian Franz Davidis of heresy despite Sozzini's attempts to mediate . Fausto Sozzini († 1604), who created the Socinians' movement, was also influential . In Poland-Lithuania from 1548 anti-Trinitarian parishes emerged, which from 1565 also had their own church structure. The Polish anti-Trinitarians were known as the Polish Brothers . Matteo Gribaldi and Petrus Gonesius played a major role in the formation of the Polish Unitarians . An anti-Trinitarian church was also established in Hungary and Transylvania in the 16th century. The Transylvanian Unitarian Church still exists today.

However, the Polish Socians were expelled in the course of the Counter Reformation and many emigrated to North America via the Netherlands and England, which led to the establishment of Unitarian churches in Great Britain ( General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches ) and in North America ( American Unitarian Association ) Has. Under the influence of transcendentalism and after the merger with the Universalist Church , today's Unitarian Universalists emerged . The deism emerging in the Enlightenment in England may also have played a role, as did a liberal reaction to the Great Awakening in the USA. Some of the early statesmen and presidents of the United States were avowed Unitarians. Even Isaac Newton was Unitarian and anti-Trinitarians, which at times threatened even its position in Cambridge because it was impossible for him to take the actually prescribed for his position ordinations. He conducted extensive theological studies but did not publish it and kept his position a secret.

Even in recent times, many critics regard the doctrine of the Trinity as an old pagan concept (see below), which, after a long dispute and without a biblical basis, found its way into Christian dogmatics. This led u. a. Alexander Hislop in his book The Two Babylons (1858). Karl-Heinz Ohlig , Adolph Ernst Knoch a . a. see the biblical basis as non-existent or too weak to be able to turn the doctrine of the Trinity into a binding dogma. They claim that the dogma of the Trinity created unnecessary ambiguity and misunderstanding: It obscures the simple message of Almighty God and His onlyborn Son.

Non-Trinitarian Beliefs

In the German-speaking area there are also individual congregations and groups that represent non-Trinitarian teachings:

  • Modern Gospel Center
  • Friends of concordant word proclamation, eV
  • Unitarian Church in Berlin

Well-known opponents of the Trinity

Year of death behind the name

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Giuseppe Alberigo (ed.): History of the Councils. From the Nicaenum to Vatican II . Fourier, Wiesbaden 1998, p. 29-31 .
  2. ↑ Against the Heresies, Book V, Chapter 18. 2
  3. ↑ Against the Heresies, Book V, Chapter 18. 3
  4. ↑ Justin, Second Apology
  5. ↑ De Trinitate - On the Triune God, chapter 27
  6. ↑ Stromateis: Theologische Realenzyklopädie, Vol. 8.
  7. ↑ Häring, Kuschel: Trinity. In: Dictionary of Christianity. 1988, p. 1279 [1280].
  8. ↑ Helmut Fischer: Do Christians have three gods? Origin and understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity. Theological Publishing House, Zurich 2008, p. 52.
  9. ↑ Karl-Heinz Ohlig: One God in three persons? Mainz 1999, p. 28.
  10. ↑ The Christian dogmatics in draft. Volume One: The Doctrine of the Word of God.
  11. ↑ One God in Three Persons? From the Father of Jesus to the “mystery” of the Trinity.
  12. ^ For example Richard Westfall : Isaac Newton. In: Gary Ferngren (Ed.): The history of science and religion in the western tradition. Garland Publishing 2000, or Westfall Never at rest. 1980, p. 318 (Newton identified with Arius, both emotionally and intellectually.)
  13. ↑ Alexander Hislop: From Babylon to Rome: The Origin of the Roman Catholic Religion . 2nd Edition. CLV, Bielefeld 2002, ISBN 3-89397-377-X ( Online [PDF; accessed on December 5, 2008] English: The Two Babylons; or, the Papal Worship proved to be the worship of Nimrod and his wife . Translated by Sabine Paul, First complete English edition: 1858; English ISBN 1-881316-36-X ).
  14. ↑ Karl-Heinz Ohlig: One God in three persons? From the Father of Jesus to the 'mystery' of the Trinity . 1st edition. Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, Mainz 1999, ISBN 3-7867-2167-X (Also in the Exodus edition with ISBN 3-905577-33-X ).
  15. ^ Frank Ballmer: Isaac Newton and the unhappy trinity. In: gottlos.blog.de . May 9, 2008, archived from the original on July 5, 2014 ; accessed on September 19, 2019 (original website no longer available). “Against the Trinity dogma of his church, the young Newton had surreptitiously studied Arianism. He hated Athanasius. He passionately denounced Trinitarianism as a 'false, infernal religion', its confessors are 'idol worshipers, blasphemers and spiritual fornicators', the most vicious and depraved kind of people on earth. ”The author names his source: Harro Heuser: Der Physiker Gottes - Isaac Newton or The Revolution of Thought . 1st edition. Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 2005, ISBN 3-451-05591-0 (Herder spectrum).
  16. ↑ Josef Hofmiller: Experiments in the Gutenberg-DE project “For Emerson it is important from the start that he was a Unitarian; only this explains the regular course of his external and internal experiences. "
  17. ↑ David Lloyd: Book Review: Pyre for a God Made of Straw. In: Vision - Journal For A New World . Archived from the original on October 29, 2013 ; Retrieved December 5, 2008 (original website no longer available). “[...] other faith communities emerged (especially in the English-speaking areas) - such as Congregationalists, Independents, Unitarians, Methodists and Quakers. It was undermined even more by philosophers such as John Locke (1632-1704), who found doctrines such as Original Sin and the Trinity (Trinity) to be logically questionable and sought a more solid philosophical basis for religion. "
  18. ^ Wolfgang Stage : The prophets are coming . 2nd Edition. Christian Literature Distribution eV, Bielefeld 1995, ISBN 3-89397-240-4 ( Online [PDF; 567 kB ; accessed on September 19, 2019]). “In the 1950s he (Paul Cain) probably worked in conjunction with William Branham, whom he still calls the 'greatest prophet of the 20th century', although Branham denied the Trinity of God and also taught that Abel of Adam, but Cain was begotten by the devil on the same day and 'thereby all mankind was defiled.' ”Scripture cites as the source for this passage: Richard Fisher: A Lock at Spiritual Pandemonium . October – December. Personal Freedom, Outreach 1994, pp. 1 .