The Christian community in the first three centuries after the death of Jesus was a seething pool of rancorous and raucous discussions, flagrantly varying sects, and multiple incompatible opinions as to exactly who Jesus was and exactly what he stood for. Was he a human who had shown us the way toward a Godly life? Was he a representative of God who had come to earth to show humans the way? Was he something somewhere in between? Was God distant and unknowable or was God an imminent part of our world? Who was divine and who was not? The Emperor Constantine, who had himself become a Christian convert after propitiously winning a battle in 312, made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. As such, it began to prosper, but these heated arguments and radical schisms as to who was heretical and who was not were not conducive to the health of the Roman Empire. So Constantine told all the Bishops to convene, thrash it out, and reach a consensus as to what the Church believed and what it didn’t believe.
The majority of those Bishops who convened at Nicea in 325CE held the position that Jesus was a human who had led a perfect life, up to the ultimate end of giving up his life for those who remained, so that they had been shown the path to a perfect life. They held that Jesus was a human who had become divine. This meant that his followers also had the opportunity to become divine as they emulated his life. The Bishop Athanasius had a far different view. He believed that Jesus was the Christ who was God on earth. Athanasius was a more commanding figure, and managed to force his views on the other delegates. They had to agree on something or else receive the wrath of the Emperor. There were only three abstentions from the final vote. The Trinity was born, not because it was so, but because it fit the needs of their male dominated society. The Official Pronouncement was that Jesus, God and the Holy Ghost were all the same thing in different forms. The mythology had taken root. Constantine may have been pleased, but the human race has suffered from this Nicean debacle since.
The concept of a Trinitarian God had been present for a long time before the Nicean Council adapted it to their particular needs. Most of those had been female Goddesses, beginning as far back as seven millennia BCE. Although pictured in various forms by various names, most of them were a Trinity of Girl, Nurturing Woman and Old Crone. In Indian mythology the Goddess took the form of Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer. In pre-Columbian Mexico the Goddess was a birth-giver, mother and death-bringer. In Babylonia the Trinity was the Son, Moon and Star. In Greece the God Helios was the sun, the Goddess Selene the moon, and the Goddess Aphrodite the star, forming a Trinity God-Goddess. Gnostic versions of the Trinity followed the Father-Mother-Son pattern. In some of the early Christian sects the Trinity consisted of God, Mary and Jesus. Not until the Christian era did all-male Trinities become popular. The Bishops at the Nicean Council had ample precedent to choose from when they elected to create a Christian Trinity. They chose that Trinity which allowed them to create a male dominated intercessor religion. They screwed up. They made Jesus more that he was, and by inference, make themselves more that they were. They created a mythology which bears absolutely no meaning as to the real world we live in.
This is our world, full of murder, rape, looting, plunder, bombs, massacres, genocide, prejudices and hatreds. There is someone willing to harm us or take away whatever we have every day. Every day is full of challenges as to how to deal with conflict and resentment. Every day we struggle with finding a way to overcome these obstacles yet still lead a good life. We need direction as to how we contribute to life to make it better for ourselves and all those others who inhabit this planet. It isn’t easy. Those who extend themselves to provide help for others are degraded or killed for their efforts. How do you make the world a better place when everybody is always fighting? What are the moral guidelines we are supposed to follow in this trying world? Don’t tell us that our guide for this life is some ethereal tripartite figure off in some Netherland Neverworld that doesn’t exist and has no relationship to our world.
The doctrine of the Trinity has been a catastrophe for the Christian church, not so much because it is such fanciful mythology we can give it no credence, but more because it has no meaning for us in our lives. God and Jesus are Ghostly, out there somewhere else, providing us no sustenance or direction. That allows those humans who accept this religion to make up their own guidelines, believing that whatever they do, no matter how criminal or horrible, has to be all right because they have this Divine Ghost on their side. What a tragedy. The Christian church has brought violence and destruction upon the world, all in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. There have been the tortures of the Inquisitions, the Crusade massacres, the “witches” burned at the stake. Irish Protestants and Catholics are killing each other. The President of the United States believes that we have the right to invade other countries in order to force our way of life on them, because our way is better. We have God on our side; this allows us to go protect our oil interests, wherever they may be. How depraved.
There is merit to the concept that there is something in this universe that controls all things. There is guidance in the humanistic morals of Jesus. The concept of a single God was an advance in understanding over previous God concepts. But let us not get lost in Divinity Clouds. This is not a universe of intelligent design. This is a universe of unintelligent design. We are complex forms of life that have evolved over the last four billion years, and we have only one home in this universe, our planet earth. The only God that exists is the God of Chance, who callously judges all things and cares personally about no things. It is up to us. We either learn to treat all other humans, all other life and our planet home with love, compassion and respect, or we are goners. God is for us if we learn to live peacefully with each other. God is against us if we fight and kill each other. It is time for the death of the Ghostly Trinity and the Personal God. If we are to survive, we need to move on in life, beyond those primitive concepts.