Father and in
relation to the human in Christ. The definitive formulations of
these relations came in a series of official church councils during
the 4th and 5th centuries – notably the one at Nicaea in 325 and the
one at Chalcedon in 451 – which stated the doctrines of the Trinity
and of the two natures of Christ in the form still accepted by most
Christians.
To arrive at these formulations, Christianity had to refine its thought and
language, creating in the process a philosophical theology, both in Greek
and in Latin, that was to be the dominant intellectual system of Europe for
more than a thousand years.
Belief in a triune Godhead became the only
accepted view of the nature of God. Anyone who believed otherwise would be
put to death. Although there have been those throughout history that have
not viewed the orthodox Trinitarian position as correct. In his article
Cosmic Codebreaker, Pious Heretic,
about Sir Isaac Newton (for Christian History Magazine), Karl Giberson
writes:
Newton began a sustained reflection on the Christian doctrines and decided
that the Anglican status quo was a thorough corruption of the true, original
Christianity.
These considerations led him to write over a million words on theology and
biblical studies – more than he wrote on any other subject.
Newton’s theological investigations convinced him that the doctrine of the
Trinity was bogus, a successful deception by St. Athanasius in the fourth
century. Newton argued that the Scriptures had been altered and early
Christian writers had been misquoted to make it appear that Trinitarianism
had been the original faith.