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| ===Charles Spurgeon=== | | ===Charles Spurgeon=== |
| :''I no more believe in three Gods than I believe in thirty gods. There is but one God to me, and therefore I am in that sense a Unitarian, and Socinians have no right to the name merely because they deny the Godhead of our Lord Jesus. We believe Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to be one God; but Jesus Christ is God, and whosoever casts that truth away casts away eternal life. How can he enter into heaven if he does not know Christ as the everlasting Son of the Father? He must be God, since he has promised to be in ten thousand places at one time, and no mere man could do that.<ref>C. H. Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, Vol. XXX, 46 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1884).</ref> | | :''I no more believe in three Gods than I believe in thirty gods. There is but one God to me, and therefore I am in that sense a Unitarian, and Socinians have no right to the name merely because they deny the Godhead of our Lord Jesus. We believe Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to be one God; but Jesus Christ is God, and whosoever casts that truth away casts away eternal life. How can he enter into heaven if he does not know Christ as the everlasting Son of the Father? He must be God, since he has promised to be in ten thousand places at one time, and no mere man could do that.<ref>C. H. Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, Vol. XXX, 46 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1884).</ref> |
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| =The Limitations of the Doctrine=
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| The doctrine of the Trinity is the summary expression of what Christians have to say in answer to the question who God is and what God is in the divine life and in relation to what is not God.<ref>Colin E. Gunton, The Doctrine of Creation : Essays in Dogmatics, History and Philosophy (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2004), 155.</ref>However, William Branham felt that he could reject almost 2000 years of thought and study out of hand:
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| :''So they say... He said, "Well, Mr. Branham, you know, even the--the theologians can't explain it."
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| :''I said, "That's exactly right. The Word don't come to a theologian." Uh-huh. I said, "The Bible is all tied into the Revelation, 'Upon this rock I'll build My Church, and the gates of hell can't prevail against It.'" See? Amen, there you are. See? But then when it comes to those things... Oh, my!<ref>WHO.DO.YOU.SAY.THIS.IS_ PHOENIX.AZ V-6 N-9 SUNDAY_ 64-1227</ref>
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| However, it is important to understand that theologians believe that the doctrine of the Trinity is a very difficult issue:
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| :''We do not think it open to full explication in human thought. It is not wise to attempt more than is attainable. Yet the manifest prudence of this law has often been violated in strivings after an unattainable solution of this doctrine. We shall not repeat the error. Still, the divine Trinity is so manifestly a truth of Scripture, and so cardinal in Christian theology, that the question cannot be omitted. If a full solution cannot be attained, the facts may be so presented as not to appear in contradictory opposition. With this attainment, nothing hinders the credibility of the doctrine on the ground of Scripture.'' <ref>John Miley, Systematic Theology, Volume 1, 223 (New York: Hunt & Eaton, 1892)</ref>
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| :''How is it that the Father is God, that the Son is God, and that the Holy Ghost is God, and yet that there are not three Gods, but one God? I cannot tell you. I know it is so, for so it is revealed; but how it is so it is not for us to guess, because it is not revealed or explained. Our understanding can adventure as far as the testimony, and no farther. Many attempts have been made by divines to find parallels in Nature to the Unity and the Trinity of God, but they all seem to me to fail.
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| :''Perhaps the very best one is that of St. Patrick, who, when preaching to the Irish, and wishing to explain this matter, plucked a shamrock and showed them its three leaves all in one—three, yet one. Yet there are flaws and faults even in that illustration. It does not meet the case. It is a doctrine to be emphatically asserted as it is expounded in that Athanasian Creed; the soundness of whose teaching I do not question, for I believe it all, though I shrink with horror from the abominable anathema which assert that a man who hesitates to endorse it will “without doubt perish everlastingly.” It is a matter to be reverently accepted as it stands in the Word of God, and to be faithfully studied as it has been understood by the most scrupulous and intelligent Christians of succeeding generations.
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| :''We are not to think of the Father as though anything could detract from the homage due to him as originally and essentially divine, nor of the only begotten Son of the Father as though he were not “God over all, blessed for ever,” nor of the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son, as though he had not all the attributes of Deity. We must abide by this, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one Jehovah”; but we must still hold to it that in three Persons he is to be worshipped, though he be but one in his essence.<ref>C. H. Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, Vol. LXII, 315-16 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1916).</ref>
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| =Must one believe in the Trinity to be a Christian?= | | =Must one believe in the Trinity to be a Christian?= |