@chaney3 saidAnytime doctrines are not clearly taught in the bible, it can only mean one thing, and that is that it is not critical for ones eternal life. The wise man will shy away from picking any one side and instead focus on doctrines that are in fact clearly taught and which are essential for life.
The Trinity is NOT in the Bible.
The Trinity is not in the bible and neither is it an important doctrine. Those who focus on taking sides here have gone astray.
-Removed-It was the Council of Nicea which chose precisely those scrolls to canonize, the ones which identified Jesus with the godhead, and destroyed the other gospels. Fortunately, a cache of other gospels did survive, and have been published as the Nag Hamadi Library. Every Christian should read them and thoroughly digest the alternative Christianities presented therein.
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@bigdogg saidThe people who wanted very much to gain influence were, quite obviously, the Roman bishops. They had a purely political agenda, nothing to do with saving souls. Christians had been persecuted, off and on, for three hundred years, when, all of a sudden, Constantine has a dream, his court interpreters, among them a Christian, give him various interpretations, and lo and behold, the Christian’s interpretation comes true. In gratitude, Constantine declares Christianity the state religion. The Roman bishops found themselves within inches of getting their fingers on the levers of power of the greatest civilization the world had seen up to that time, and they grabbed the opportunity with both hands to cement their power by canonizing the scrolls which supported THEIR position as God’s chosen ministers on Earth. A prize worth telling some fibs for. The spin did not somehow “catch on”; it was forced upon people by a cadre of power hungry bishops who immediately set about persecuting all the Christian variants which disagreed with their interpretation of the Jesus legend (and there were many at that time, alternative Christianities).
If you spin a narrative the right way, you gain influence over its believers.
That particular spin caught on big time.
Who had the most to gain if the belief should become widespread that Jesus was God? Precisely those who would later claim that one cannot have God for the father if he does not have the church (the Roman catholic church) for his mother.
Look at the scrolls they consigned to oblivion: the Gospel of Thomas for example makes no reference to miracles, no virgin birth, no resurrection, no association much less identification with the godhead; just ostensibly verbatim questions the apostles had asked and Jesus’s answers to them.
