Friday, November 11, 2016

Why I'm Not Taking the Time or Spending the Energy to Debate the Trinity

Most commenters on this blog stay on topic. I appreciate that. One of the unwritten rules of blog interaction is that the topic of the post should also be the topic of the comments.

A few times recently at least one commenter has repeatedly called into question the doctrine of the Trinity. This would be fine if I had, in fact, been blogging about the Trinity. However, I was not (and thus I did not post all of the anti-Trinity comments). It has been a long time since the Trinity was the primary focus of any blog post of mine.

While I love the Trinity, I have no intention of taking the time or spending the energy on debating this doctrine. Why not? There are several reasons. First and primarily, I believe the doctrine is very clear according to scripture. One great example occurs at Jesus' baptism. I could go on and on. It is so clear that debating it is pointless.

Furthermore, within the church as a whole this is a largely settled debate. The church has agreed on the truth of the Trinity for hundreds upon hundreds of years. This is different, for example, from the debate about ecclesiology. Numerous dissenters have always existed against institutional Christianity since very early on (see here for more on that). Not so for the Trinity. I'm not suggesting that all Christians have always been convinced of the truth of the Trinity, but rather that no significant number has failed to adhere to it.

I'm also not going to debate the Trinity because plenty of other paces exist to do so. If you desire to bring up the topic, please do so there. Beyond that, I simply see no benefit in the debate. I don't know what can be gained by discussing in detail something that is, at least in my mind, so clear scripturally. I'd rather talk about, and wrangle over, something that needs to be discussed: the state of the church.

So there it is. If you want to debate the Trinity please do so in other forums. This is not the place. Thank you.

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