My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

[SteveII]

What do you think is the % of Christians the believe in the Trinity? I bet you have no clue.

Correct! I have no fucking idea.

I'm shocked.  Including Catholic, Protestant, and Eastern Orthodox, more than 99%. Kind of undercuts the whole "they don't even know what they believe" stupid comments.

[Nay_Sayer]

Correct! I have no fucking idea.

I'm shocked.  Including Catholic, Protestant, and Eastern Orthodox, more than 99%. Kind of undercuts the whole "they don't even know what they believe" stupid comments.

Where are you getting that percentage from?  Wait, I'm receiving a divine message from the eternal wisdom of FSM  "Tis from the deepest chasm of his arse".  So it was said so it shall be.

RAmen

[SteveII]

I'm shocked.  Including Catholic, Protestant, and Eastern Orthodox, more than 99%. Kind of undercuts the whole "they don't even know what they believe" stupid comments.

Where are you getting that percentage from?  Wait, I'm receiving a divine message from the eternal wisdom of FSM  "Tis from the deepest chasm of his arse".  So it was said so it shall be.

RAmen

Catholics and Eastern Orthodox believe in the trinity, There are only a few protestant groups that don't believe in the trinity. With 2.3 billion Christians, 1% would be 23,000,000. Those groups are not that big. The constant charge that there are so many opinions within Christianity on the subject is stupid.

[Crossless2.0]

Where are you getting that percentage from?  Wait, I'm receiving a divine message from the eternal wisdom of FSM  "Tis from the deepest chasm of his arse".  So it was said so it shall be.

RAmen

Catholics and Eastern Orthodox believe in the trinity, There are only a few protestant groups that don't believe in the trinity. With 2.3 billion Christians, 1% would be 23,000,000. Those groups are not that big. The constant charge that there are so many opinions within Christianity on the subject is stupid.

I agree.

I think it's equally stupid to pretend that the doctrine is necessarily baked into Christian belief or was there from the beginning of the movement, and not something cobbled together as a "solution" to a long-standing problem for the church. The number of people who subsequently embraced the doctrine, after the church had effectively labeled alternative understandings as heresies and rooted them out, is neither impressive nor compelling.

[SteveII]

Catholics and Eastern Orthodox believe in the trinity, There are only a few protestant groups that don't believe in the trinity. With 2.3 billion Christians, 1% would be 23,000,000. Those groups are not that big. The constant charge that there are so many opinions within Christianity on the subject is stupid.

I agree.

I think it's equally stupid to pretend that the doctrine is necessarily baked into Christian belief or was there from the beginning of the movement, and not something cobbled together as a "solution" to a long-standing problem for the church. The number of people who subsequently embraced the doctrine, after the church had effectively labeled alternative understandings as heresies and rooted them out, is neither impressive nor compelling.

That's a very bad argument. Of course the doctrine of the Trinity is baked into Christian belief. ALL the support for it comes from the NT. Here's the test: would anyone trying to work up a systematic theology from the NT words of Jesus and overall events come to a different conclusion if they did not know anything about traditional theology? The answer is no--because it would have happened by now. The NT is the most carefully studied group of documents ever. The doctrine of the trinity is practically universal.

[Crossless2.0]

I agree.

I think it's equally stupid to pretend that the doctrine is necessarily baked into Christian belief or was there from the beginning of the movement, and not something cobbled together as a "solution" to a long-standing problem for the church. The number of people who subsequently embraced the doctrine, after the church had effectively labeled alternative understandings as heresies and rooted them out, is neither impressive nor compelling.

That's a very bad argument. Of course the doctrine of the Trinity is baked into Christian belief. ALL the support for it comes from the NT. Here's the test: would anyone trying to work up a systematic theology from the NT words of Jesus and overall events come to a different conclusion if they did not know anything about traditional theology? The answer is no--because it would have happened by now. The NT is the most carefully studied group of documents ever. The doctrine of the trinity is practically universal.

I said "necessarily baked into Christian belief" and stand by that. Of course the Trinity is derived from the NT (specifically out of a need to square John's high-Christology with those gospels that don't embrace it) but it's simply historically false to suggest that this was the only possible outcome of that effort. There were several previous theological positions meant to answer the same problem. I suspect a big reason you don't see people today widely and spontaneously embracing Docetism, to take but one example, is that this view was proscribed centuries ago and subsequent generations of priests, ministers, and laypeople have simply inherited the view that "obviously" the Trinity is the only sensible answer left standing. But councils of priests settling on one answer in a dispute that amounts to little more than imaginative literary criticism (the polite version) or mental masturbation (the less polite version) and declaring alternative viewpoints to be heresies doesn't fill me with much confidence.

You believe it. That's nice for you. But your belief is, itself, historically contingent. Left to your own devices and a NT, I rather doubt you alone would have stumbled across this particular solution.

[The Grand Nudger]

Mormons and JWs alone exceed the numbers you gave for non trinitarian christians.  Further..you are commenting on doctrinal positions..not the beliefs of adherents...which are commonly at odds with their respective institutions. Christology has become a deliciously convoluted mess after the schisms of these last two millenia.

That a position arrived upon through cynical political engineering over a thousand years ago has become a norm among those traditions spiritual successors is a non-event. This argument from consensus and tradition in no way establishes the truth of that position or negates those who hold contrapositive positions which more easily derive from a larger number of direct citations in magic book. Unfortunately, for a majority of that time..to repeat what magic book plainly says and deny the trinity was a crime punishable by execution.

The deification of the character of jesus was a product of second century syncretic mysticism. This is made apparent in magic book itself, in the transformation from marks jesus to johns jesus, and subsequently in the legendary fiction of acts.

[Angrboda]

Correct! I have no fucking idea.

I'm shocked.  Including Catholic, Protestant, and Eastern Orthodox, more than 99%. Kind of undercuts the whole "they don't even know what they believe" stupid comments.

Seven out of ten respondents in LifeWay’s survey affirmed the doctrine of the Trinity—that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three Persons but one God, and six in ten agreed that Jesus is both human and divine. Their orthodoxy—and consistency—ended there. More than half went on to indicate that Jesus is “the first and greatest being created by God,” a heresy known as Arianism, which the Council of Nicaea condemned in 325 A.D.

Of course, most of these accidental blasphemers aren’t preparing to revise the resulting Nicene Creed and preach a creaturely Christ. Rather, bizarre contradictions like this illustrate how many Americans don’t understand or even care what the Trinity means (although they say they believe in it, likely out of habits learned growing up in church).

Survey Finds Most American Christians Are Actually Heretics

61% of statistics are made up!

---

Mormons and JWs alone exceed the numbers you gave for non trinitarian christians.  Further..you are commenting on doctrinal positions..not the beliefs of adherents...which are

No, they don't. Mormons and JWs make up about 1.1% of Christians worldwide. Other large non-trinitarian denominations account for about 0.4%.

[The Grand Nudger]

Enough for me.  Steve placed non trinitarians at less than 1%..which can;t be the case even if we imagine that every member of a trinitarian church believes exactly what they;re supposed to...and we know they don;t.

The idea of a godman just isn;t aging well.

[Anomalocaris]

Where are you getting that percentage from?  Wait, I'm receiving a divine message from the eternal wisdom of FSM  "Tis from the deepest chasm of his arse".  So it was said so it shall be.

RAmen

Catholics and Eastern Orthodox believe in the trinity, There are only a few protestant groups that don't believe in the trinity. With 2.3 billion Christians, 1% would be 23,000,000. Those groups are not that big. The constant charge that there are so many opinions within Christianity on the subject is stupid.

Wow, they all putatively wrestled with the pig but 1% of the emerged without being totally covered in shit.