Becoming a Trinitarian

The teaching of the Trinity looms large in my life because I was raised in a non-trinitarian family. Indeed my grandpa was also non-trinitarian; he died too early for me to appreciate what he might have to say about this teaching but the family attended an early Pentecostal church in Melbourne founded in 1907 that seemed to have the view that it would only quote scripture with regard to its beliefs and nothing else.

I say the latter because their statement of belief did not make definitive statements about God the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost but simply quoted scripture. (Interestingly, this church was very open to Trinitarians worshipping with them and was not hostile or antagonistic towards them; nor did it actively speak against Trinitarianism.)

It took me some time to work my way out of this frame of belief and it came about through a most unusual way. Although my family's belief about Jesus' deity was my no means identical with that of the Jehovah's Witnesses it had certain similarities.

In the 1960s, Witnesses were active in visiting homes and trying to get them to join their Kingdom Halls and being unhappy to become embroiled in argument for which I was equipped I purchased, Why I Left Jehovah's Witnesses by Ted Dencher (1966). Dencher had a chapter on why he believed in the deity of Christ which was to bring a momentous change in my beliefs. My family believed in the deity (godhood) of Christ too but they also believed in Christ's essential subordination. They understood God the Father to be Almighty but Jesus to be only 'the Mighty God' (Isa 9.6-7).

The Rights and Wrongs of Subordination
Orthodox Christian belief is much more nuanced than my family gave it credit for. I once heard a Muslim arguing against the deity of Christ and many of his New Testament quotations I had heard quoted with approval within my family!

But what Muslims and unorthodox Christians fail to understand is that Jesus in the flesh was subordinated to the Father (Phil 2.5-7; Heb 2.9) and no orthodox Christian believer should find that unacceptable. Hence, all the passages such as the Father being greater than the Son (Jn 14.28) and the idea of the Son proceeding forth from God (Jn 8.42) are perfectly in line with this subordinate state that Jesus adopted in coming to us in the flesh.

But to take the above Philippians passage (Phil 2.6-7) further: Jesus is said to be in very nature God before his incarnation but did not attempt to use his divine prerogatives for his own betterment but humbled himself. In Hebrews, Jesus is also said to be 'the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person' (Heb 1.3).

Names and Titles of Christ
What stunned me about Dencher's presentation was that he identified the number of times that Jesus uses names and titles reserved only for God. For example, who is the First and the Last? The Old Testament says in Isaiah 44.6, that Jehovah, YHWH, is the 'First and the Last'; but when we look at Revelation 22 we find that Jesus uses this same title if the chapter is read through carefully noting who the various speakers are (Rev 22.7; 12; 16; 20)!! Jesus says he is coming soon (v12) and then identified himself in verse 16.

Just these few differences with what I had been taught made me begin to question that family tradition which was held on both sides of the former generation. I value what I have learned from them but couldn't continue to believe what clearly I came to see was not scriptural. However, breaking away from my family's teachings was not easy.