The Christian Trinity Doctrine

[Bikewer]

We know that some of the early Christian groups, (mostly the Gnostics) considered the Old Testament god to be an aberrant outcast from the "true" gods, an insane rogue as Ehrman says.
This mainly due to Jehovah's well-demonstrated proclivities toward violence and genocide...
Though the Gnostics lost out in the overall scheme of things, perhaps their objections had some impact.
By dividing "God" up into a triune figure, they could emphasize the nice aspects of Jesus while leaving a rather nasty "father" in reserve just in case someone got uppity....

 

[JJM 777]

For those who have absolutely nothing better to do in life than examine this issue, here are some helpful links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nontrinitarianism
http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/Trinity/id/1897697
http://www.onenessweb.com/apostolicpillar//articles/trinity.html

 

[ImaginalDisc]

The dogma of the Trinity just happened to be the central tennet of the winning side of a brutal, centuries-long, sectarian war of unconscionable bloodshed as "heretics" guilty of the crime of disagreement with the Nicene creed over the characteristics of an invisible friend were wiped out to maintain Christendom's stance on the subject of a 4th century debate which requires ignoring numerous Biblical passages which state or imply the division between God and Jesus.

Not that fourth century Christian theologians were adverse to counting things and using logic. . .

"The good Christian should beware the mathematician and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of hell." - "St." Augustine

Like the fact that we're writing in English as opposed to French, and other features of our culture, it's an accident of history and it's a part of our culture because the winning murderers happened to prefer it.

 

[slyjoe]

Maybe the early Christinsanes actually discovered fractional dimensions. For example, take a ball of string.
1. At great distance, it looks like a point (1 dimension)
2. A little closer, it looks like a circle (2 dimensions)
3. Even closer, it looks like a sphere (3 dimension)

So, holy trinity = ball of string. (Just don't pull on it).

 

[ceo_esq]

Not that fourth century Christian theologians were adverse to counting things and using logic. . .

The word mistranslated as "mathematicians" in your quotation from Augustine actually refers to fortune-telling astrologers and numerologists, not mathematicians. I expect that Augustine would have been about the last person to smear mathematicians as such.

Like the fact that we're writing in English as opposed to French, and other features of our culture, it's an accident of history and it's a part of our culture because the winning murderers happened to prefer it.

Even in the completely novel event that your assessment of this history were accurate, you're misleadingly implying that the theological outcome of these struggles could easily have gone another way, which seems unlikely. It's hard to see how even the most successful and well-developed heretical movements with an antitrinitarian aspect (probably Albigensianism and related views in the Middle Ages), even if left unmolested, would ever have supplanted Trinitarian orthodoxy generally.