Mary in Denver, Colorado, listening on 1060 AM, you are on with Jimmy Akin. Hi,
I had a question about how to explain to someone who claims the Trinity is
unbiblical and that the Catholic Church adds the
verse about Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to Matthew's Gospel; how do we explain
that to them? And this is somebody that needs Scripture only. Okay, what--I was going to
ask, what kind of faith background is this person coming from? What kind of
religious organization do they belong to? Probably fundamentalist. Okay, most fundamentalists
do believe in the Trinity. There are some people who are--like, they're called
Oneness Pentecostals, that are sort of derived from the Protestant community
even though they're not really part of it anymore.
So you don't have a specific knowledge of the name of the Church this person
goes to? They're wandering around. They're wandering around. Okay, so they're kind of
free-ranging. Well, what I would say is a couple things. The first one is: if
someone says that the Trinitarian formula at the end of Matthew 28--this is
the last chapter in Matthew's Gospel, it's where Jesus says "Go into all the
nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit." That--if someone's saying that verse is was not in the original
manuscript, I'd say, "Okay, let's have some evidence for that." You can assert that,
but actually, textual scholarship and the history of how the texts of the Bible
developed is a very heavily studied field. And so if there--if it were true
that this was not in the original, then we should find evidence of manuscripts
from the ancient Church of Matthew that didn't have this verse. Because
there are verses in various books in the New Testament that seem to have come
along later, and we know that because we have manuscripts that don't contain
those verses. So I would challenge the person and say--I mean, in a nice way--but
I'd say, "If you want to say that, that's a very
striking claim; you need some evidence to back it up. So where are the manuscripts
that don't have this verse? And if there aren't any--if they all have this verse--
then you need to be prepared to take this verse seriously. And I understand it
may be convenient for your position to say, 'Well, this verse was added,' but
convenience is not a criterion of truth. It's not a good test for truth. You need
to go with the evidence." The second thing I would say to someone who was making
this argument is that our belief in the Trinity is not dependent on this one
verse. This verse could be completely ignored, and we would still be able to
prove the doctrine of the Trinity from elsewhere in the New Testament. Because
the doctrine of the Trinity involves several claims. It involves the claim
that there is one God--and that's easy to show from all kinds of verses, both Old
Testament and new; it involves the claim "the Father is God"--that's also very clear
from various verses; it involves the claim that the Son is God--and there are
verses that document that; and the claim that the Holy Spirit is God--and there
are verses that document that. It also involves the claim that the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Spirit are distinct from each other; so the Father is not the
Son, the Son is not the Holy Spirit, the Father is not the Holy Spirit. And those
also can be documented from a variety of different verses in the New Testament. So
even without Matthew 28--or any other single specific verse--we can show the
doctrine of the Trinity based on the teaching of the New Testament in
multiple places. And if you'd like examples of those verses, I can't really
rattle them off right now--and it would also be bad radio if I did--but go to
Catholic.com and type in the word "Trinity." You'll find verses there.
Also, check out my book "A Daily Defense," because in that book I go into the
biblical basis for each of these points: the divinity of Jesus, the divinity of
the Holy Spirit, the Trinity as a complete doctrine, and so that
information for you will be right there. Thank you very much, Mary.