Mainline Christianity defends the Trinity doctrine more vigorously than any other. In the past it has killed many who refused to agree with the Trinity doctrine. Few people understand the doctrine, even though they can repeat it. The Trinity doctrine, as explained by the Catholic and Orthodox churches, is so confusing to rational minds that Islam converted 2/3's of the Christian world to its non-Trinitarian, Abrahamic faith. Why is the Trinity doctrine considered so important by all the major churches of Christendom? How is it essential to salvation? Why is it so important to defend it vigorously? Jim Penton thought about the matter, and I'll post his comment here with my own thoughts below.
To: ChannelC dicussion board
From: Dr. M. James Penton (Jim Penton)
Date: Friday July 14, 2006 (5:50am)Flatlander asks why most churches insist on the Trinity, and they do. The World Council of Churches won't admit any movement that doesn't accept the Trinity. So let me suggest why.
Up till the Constantinian Revolution within the Church, there was no way in which religious conformity could be enforced. Certain individuals were shunned by most congregations, but they could go off and form their own movements as did Tertullian in later life after having been a Montanist. However, after Constantine came to power Orthodoxy became a matter enforced by the state. So if you didn't go along with what an emperor felt, you could be persecuted and eventually, as centuries passed, be put to death. That does not explain the roots of Trinitarian thinking, however.
According to Gregg and Groh in their book titled Early Arianism, Alexander and Athanasius believed that Christ had to be God in the Trinitarian sense: co-eternal and co-equal with the Father in order for mankind to be saved. Reading Athanasius, I think they are right. For the Alexandrian Trinitarians held onto a very Greek idea. That was essentially that everything in the physical universe was degenerating and passing into nothingness. I suppose this was an early version of the second law of thermodynamics. Thus the only person who was immortal and unchangeable was God. Consequently God had to become man in order for Him to communicate His nature to humanity, so that those who became one in him through baptism and holy communion could be saved. Athanasius specifically said that Christ had become man so that humans could become God. Hence Trinitarianism in its original form stressed the idea of the divinization of members of the Church, something that is commonly taught in Eastern Orthodoxy to this day and is Roman Catholic doctrine as well. However, it is not stressed and most Catholics and Protestants know nothing about this basis of Trinitarianism or, more specifically, the concept of the incarnation as taught by most churches.
Gregg and Groh argue that Arius taught that Christ was the first of many brethren and that we get saved not by taking on divinity as Athanasius taught but, rather, by following Christs example. To most Christians today this makes better sense whether they are Trinitarians or non-Trinitarians (unitarians ?).
Over the centuries the basic reasons for Trinitarianism were generally forgotten, but Trinitarianism marked Christendom as distinct from both Judaism and Islam. (And by the way, there is some suggestion that anti-Trinitarianism in such places as North Africa may have helped Islam convert many Christians to that religion.) But when the reformation came, anti-Trinitarianism developed quickly again. Most of us are somewhat familiar with the story of Michael Servetus and some may know of the Socians in Poland. But few are aware that some of the Anabaptists were anti-Trinitarians. In the seventeenth century, unitarianism spread to the Netherlands and from there to England. Interestingly, some of Englands great men such as Milton, Newton, and Whiston developed Neo-Arianism, although they had to be careful about their opinions because denying the Trinity was a high crime.
In the next century many clergy within the Church of England became Unitarian in outlook. In part, this was because of the rationalism of the European Enlightenment that had such an impact on Western thinking and seemed more biblical as well. To many Trinitarianism just didnt make sense. Thus when independence came to the United States, and there was a recognition of the importance of religious freedom, non-Trinitarianism in many forms blossomed. Many New England Congregational Churches became Unitarian (at first Neo-Arian, then deistic, then goodness knows what). On the frontier the Christian Connexion developed, out of which many Adventists came. Barton Stone, whose movement joined with the Campbells to for the Churches of Christ, was non-Trinitarian. But for both traditional reasons and because of fear of Enlightenment rationalism conservative churches, both Catholic and Protestant, damned any form of non-Trinitarianism, and I feel that is why many fundamentalists, Catholics and others go off the reservation when someone or some group decides to reject the Trinity. Then too, the groups that have rejected it have not always been of the best popular odor. The Unitarians have often gone off into non-belief and have become little more than a set of social clubs. The Witnesses are not popular, and neither is the Church of Christ from the Philippines. Other groups such as the Christadelphians and Church of God Faith of Abraham are hardly known.
Then there is Liberal Christianity within the scholarly world of the major churches. It too has often rejected Trinitarianism, and this has caused a backlash within more fundamentalist circles. So there are many reasons why the churches hang on to Trinitarianism, even though most of there members have no idea why. Furthermore, few have any understanding of Trinitarian doctrine because it is so complicated. Thus, when many clergy to preach sermons on Trinity Sunday, they start out by saying that while they dont understand the doctrine, they believe it.
I plan to post my thoughts on this later tonight. Jim Penton has touched the tip of an iceberg, which I hope to reveal the general outlines of.