I have always found it confusing that Christianity, which always claims to be monotheistic also claims that the Christian God is a Trinity or three in one. God is supposed to be three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit in one Divine Being. These three aspects are supposed to have exactly the same nature. They are all supposed to be eternal, omnipresent, omnipotent, infinitely wise, infinitely holy, infinitely loving, and omniscient.

The concept of the Trinity is not found in the Old Testament. Although the New Testament did not mention the Trinity or teach that God was three in one, the doctrine of the Trinity was derived from passages in the New Testament. There are passages in the Gospel of Matthew that say Christians should baptize in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.. Paul the Apostle, in Corithians, gives a blessing that mentions Jesus, God and the Holy Spirit. The Gospel of John contains numerous references to the divinity of Jesus and openly says that Jesus IS God. There are other passages that suggest that Jesus did not see himself as the equal to God. These Biblical references led to a debate over the nature of Jesus and God and their relationship in the early church.

One early group of Christians, the Adoptionists, believed that Jesus was a normal human being born of Joseph and Mary who became the Son of God when he was baptized. Another group, the Sabellianist, taught that the Father, Son and Holy Ghost were three different aspect of the divine as they interacted with humanity. God created the universe. In the Son, the divine took human form to save mankind. The Holy Spirit influence human affairs from heaven. A third group, Arianists, stated that there was a divine hierarchy with God at the top, Jesus under him and the Holy Spirit under Jesus. The conflict between these different groups was so intense that Constantine, the Roman Emperor, convened the Council of Nicaea in Asia Minor (Turkey) in 323 AD to force the different Christian factions to agree on the official church doctrine. The unity of Father, Son and the Holy Spirit won out and became church doctrine.

The biggest problem I have with the Trinity is that it does not make sense in terms of basic Christian ideas. The idea that Jesus died to save mankind is rooted in the ancient tradition of the scapegoat. A village would select a young unblemished sheep or goat. The sins of the village for the prior year would be symbolically given to the selected animal. Then the animal would be slaughtered as a sacrifice to whatever god they worshiped to remove the sins of the community. Jesus is presented as a scapegoat for all of humanity to remove the taint of original sin.

If Jesus was a man who hosted the spirit of God until he was crucified, then when he died on the cross, that would fulfill the idea of a scapegoat who suffered and died to free man from sin. On the other hand, if Jesus WAS God as the doctrine of the Trinity affirms, then he could NOT suffer or die and the whole crucifixion was a fiction. Stated simply, God sacrificed himself to himself in order to appease himself. This just does not make sense.