“Jehovah God is one, and Jesus Christ is his creature Son, and the
holy spirit is Jehovah’s active force, and therefore the doctrine of a
trinity is unchristian and really of pagan origin.”¹
In the view of the Witnesses, the Council of Nicaea formally accepted the
doctrine of the Trinity in 325 AD. Of course, the Jehovah’s Witnesses
claim that the originator of the ‘pagan’ doctrine of the Trinity is Satan
himself:
“The plain truth is that this is another of Satan’s attempts to keep
God-fearing persons from learning the truth of Jehovah and his Son,
Christ Jesus. No, there is no trinity.”²
The fact that the doctrine of the Trinity is a mystery does not of itself
render it unchristian or an absurdity. We can in this life know many things
about the Trinity through the lights of faith and reason, yet we can never
hope to fully understand it as it touches upon the very nature of God
Himself: “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face” (1 Cor.
13:12). The opponents of the Trinity themselves create absurdity and
confuse the debate by often misrepresenting its meaning, for example, by
stating that it is “three gods in one person” or “three persons in one.”
As for the word ‘Trinity,’ it simply means ‘threefold.’ ‘Trinity’ does not
appear in the Scriptures, nevertheless, the doctrine of the Trinity certainly
does. The first recorded use of the word ‘Trinity’ in relation to God was by
St. Theophilus of Antioch (c. 180 AD). He speaks of “the Trinity (Trias):
God, His Word, and His Wisdom.” Most probably, the word ‘Trinity’ was
in use even before this time, and soon after it appears in the West in the
Latin form Trinitas.
The doctrine of the Trinity was unknown to the Jews during Old Testament
times, and so the clearest Scriptural evidence for it is found in the New
Testament. However, there are a number of Old Testament verses where
the Trinity looms implicitly as a mystery that retrospectively becomes
apparent in the light of Christ’s subsequent revelation. For example, the use
1
Let Your Name be Sanctified, p. 300. Taken from John Francis Coffey, The
Gospel According to the Jehovah’s Witnesses, The Polding Press, Melbourne,
1979, p. 18.
2
The Word––Who is He? According to John, p. 7, quoted in J. F. Coffey, p. 18.
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