If anything proves the validity of Occam’s Razor,i it’s contemplating the astounding attempts over two millennia to square Christianity’s circle, or rather triangle. Trinitarianism: one God existing in three coequal, coeternal, consubstantial divine persons: God the Father, God the Son (Jesus Christ) and God the Holy Spirit, three distinct persons (hypostases) sharing one essence/ substance/ nature. The ‘what’ is one, the ‘who’ is three.

The Old Testament has been interpreted as referring to the Trinity in many places. One of these is the prophecy about the Messiah in Isaiah 9. The Messiah is called ‘Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.’ Some Christians see this verse as meaning the Messiah will represent the Trinity on Earth. This is because Counselor is a title for the Holy Spirit (John 14:26), the Trinity is God the Father, Jesus, Son, the Prince of Peace, the Counselor Spirit.

But this trinitarianism is very different from the Hindu Brahma (creator), Vishnu (sustainer), Shiva (destroyer), or the Roman Diana.

It was only formulated in the 3rd c by Tertullian, based on the New Testament (NT) writings from the late 1st c/ early 2nd c. They contain several Trinitarian formulas, including Matthew 28:19, most clearly in 1 John 5:7. But modern Biblical scholarship largely agrees that 1 John 5:7, found in Latin and Greek texts after the 4th c and found in later translations such as the King James translation, cannot be found in the oldest Greek and Latin texts. Verse 7 is known as the Johannine Comma, which most scholars agree to be a later addition by a later copyist. This verse reads: Because there are three in Heaven that testify – he Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit – and these three are one. This verse is absent from the Ethiopic, Aramaic, Syriac, Slavic, Armenian, Georgian, and Arabic translations of the Greek New Testament. Ditto Matthew28. The debates later moved from the deity of Jesus Christ to the equality/ inferiority of the Holy Spirit with the Father and Son. Need I say more?

A perusal of Wikipedia page Nontrinitarianism (i.e., non orthodox Trinitarianism) identifies close to a hundred variations on the theme, trying to convince that 3 really is 1. My favorites:

*Arianism, popular until the Council of Nicaea, argued that the pre-existent Son of God was directly created by the Father, before all ages, and that he was subordinate to God the Father. Arius’ position was that the Son was brought forth as the very first of God’s creations, and that the Father later created all things through the Son.

*The Adoptionist theory was perhaps the most popular in the 2nd-3rd cc, which holds that Jesus was adopted as the Son of God at his baptism, his resurrection, or his ascension, but this theory died out when it was declared a heresy in the 4th c when the 4th c Nicene Crede was agreed in Constantinople, the capital of Christianity.

*Ebionites (1st-4th cc) observed Jewish law, denied the literal virgin birth and regarded Jesus as the Jewish Messiah and the greatest prophet of God. Period.

*Socinianism taught that Jesus was the sinless Messiah and redeemer, and the only perfect human son of God, but that he had no pre-human existence. They interpret verses such as John 1:1 to refer to God’s plan existing in God’s mind before Christ’s birth, and that it was God’s plan that ‘became flesh’, as the perfect man Jesus.

*Unitarianism holds that Jesus was inspired by God in his moral teachings and that he is the savior of humankind, but he is not equal to God himself.

*Many Gnostic traditions held that the Christ is a heavenly Aeon but not one with the Father. Docetists asserted that Christ was born without any participation of matter and that all the acts and sufferings of his life, including the Crucifixion, were mere appearances.

Christian heterodoxy flowered throughout the Middle Ages despite Pauline police. The democratic egalitarian spirit-filled Jesus movement slowly atrophied into the repressive, bureaucratic Catholic Church, culminating in the 6th c Gelasuis Decree, a list of distrusted and rejected works not encouraged for church use, which banned 60 books including 9 gospels, 4 sets of apostolic acts and 3 revelations, as well as 35 heretics.

Underlying this debate through the centuries were real questions:

*Is Jesus God?

*Was it Jesus who was crucified?

*If so, then did he physically resurrect as apostles claimed?

The above nontrinitarians are all closer to Islam than the official Pauline creed. Most claim Jesus as ‘son of God’ in some sense, but with God supreme, using Jesus as intermediary. Ebionites Jewish Messianism is probably closest to Islam, where Jesus is the ‘greatest prophet’ only. And the Unitarians, a 17th c offshoot of the 16th century, the Radical Reformation, and which gave birth to Anabaptist groups like the Hutterites, Amish and Mennonites. The Ebionites and Unitarians are ‘Christianity without Paul’ or ‘Islam without Muhammad’, though the Unitarians’ actual beliefs are so lax that it’s fine to reject pretty well everything (virgin birth, miracles, resurrection), making it more a liberal humanism.

Interestingly, later Protestant heretics, the Anabaptist Hutterites and Amish, were rediscovered during Covid, as they refused vaccines, relying on (medieval) herd immunity. While infections were high, death rates from the virus are lower because their older people live with family and extended family and not in old people’s homes, and usually maintain a healthier lifestyle. Lev Tolstoy was a big fan of the Anabaptist Mennonites, and gave the income from his final novel Resurrection to them so they could emigrate to North America, freed from serving in the Russian imperial army.

In The Gospel in Brief: The life of Jesus (1881), Tolstoy asks:

What is it to me if Christ was resurrected? The questions important to me are:

*What should I do?

*How should I live?

Man is the son of an infinite source not by the flesh but by the spirit. Therefore man should serve this source in spirit … True life is outside of time, exists only in the present.

Tolstoy was excommunicated by the Orthodox Church for his heretical thoughts. The New Testament is stinking filth with buried jewels. But he sees himself as a true believer: the Jesus message transcends all answers from other cultures. My study is like reassembling a broken statue. The teachings of a great man must express clearly that which others only expressed unclearly. Socrates is clear. Christianity is not. The dogma — trinity, pentecost, seven sacraments for salvation, the communion ritual. They are not in Jesus’ teachings. Why did people turn Jesus into God? Tolstoy’s answer: The teachings were so transformative, they mistook the messenger of it as a God. Don’t look for inner peace from my study, he warns, but truth.

Tolstoy knew and respected Muslims. They recognize Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, who made clear meaning of Moses and Jesus’ revelations. The Muslim looks at teachings of Jews and Christians for what agrees with his mind and heart.

There were many Christian and Jewish stories circulating during Muhammad’s lifetime, and hadiths relate how the Prophet spoke with Christians and Jews. Muslim apologists argue that any overlaps between the Quran and such sources hark back to the original Truth behind them and that that Truth is what the Quran reveals. Fair enough, but it is still interesting to see how close to the Truth various popular narrations or actual Christian or Jewish texts came, as precursors of the Quran.

Pauline ‘pagan Christianity’ became a strict orthodoxy by the 2nd c, but alternative versions of Jesus’ message were strong until the 9th c, surviving in the eastern sects with a colorful array of gospels and apocalypses. Ironically it was the Reformation and the printing press that proved lethal for Christian heterodoxy. Colorful was out and it was much easier to control what was read when everything was now printed (and approved).

The apocryphal works were prompted by the need of alternative narratives to fill in blanks or mull over theological problems not adequately explained. Things Jesus should have said or done if had the time. ‘What would Jesus do?’ The theological need produced the required texts.

Philip Jenkins, in The many faces of Christ: The thousand-year story of the survival and influence of the lost gospels (2015), shows how the James/Jacob version of Jesus’ Messianism through the years was trying to keep the central monotheistic legacy in tact. That kind of ‘Christianity’ would not have made Jews the outcasts of Europe (and the monsters of today in Israel) as happened.

Rejecting Paul’s innovations offends Christians, as Tolstoy warned, but it is necessary to overcome the bigotry that came........

© Eurasia Review