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My Trinitarian Testimony
I never used to believe in the Doctrine of the Trinity. I never used to believe in
it and that in spite of the fact that I was saved(I guess). I used to think that the Holy Spirit
was a power, and that Jesus was just a man...just a dude.
It was not just that I did not believe in the Doctrine, but my entire church itself
- the
Worldwide Church of God - itself did not believe and accept this Doctrine as truth.
We believed that this Doctrine was smuggled into Christianity from pagan greek philosophical ideas and as such was
a heresy. The truth was that God was one, and one only, and there were no persons
in the Godhead, and Jesus was still somehow God. What we believed was the Binity.
The funny thing about us was that in spite of these erroneous beliefs of ours, we were
still saved. 100% born from above. How that was possible is a story for another day.
Around 1995, our church went through what we call "the changes". This was a very
difficult period of doctrinal reexamination, where the leaders of our church came to the
conclusion that we were dead wrong in a number of our beliefs, the most important ones being our
position on the Friday sunset to Saturday sunset sabbath, and the Old Testament Holy
Days such as the Feast of Tabernacles, the Feast of Unleavened bread, and so on. (Yes, we
actually celebrated these amazing festivals. Many good times !) The changes did not just
affect our doctrines, but also affected our lifestyle. To put it bluntly, they
very painfully turned our lives upside down and inside out.
One of the beliefs that we also reexamined during these changes was our understanding
of the nature of God. This reexamination brought us face to face with the triune God of
Scripture. We came to realize that our ideas were erroneous, and that the Doctrine
of the Trinity was truth. Thus began my Journey into the Trinity.
I very readily accepted the Trinity as truth, with open arms. However, what I accepted,
I did not truly understand. If you asked what the Doctrine was, I would not have been able
to even begin explaining it to you. I accepted the doctrine, and that was that. I had no more
need to think about it. It was all OK. Ok, until...
A few years later, I was in a situation where I had to explain the ABC's of Xtianity
to an atheist Chinese graduate student. She found the whole idea of the Trinity incoherent.
"Huh ? Why are you telling me that there is only one God, and that Jesus and the Father are
both God ? Dont you mean two Gods ?" The questions were no so much questions of what,
but questions of why and how. I found myself scratching my head real hard, trying to
answer these questions. So, I turned to the Net. These were the early days of the WWW, when
there was not too much out there.
I searched for articles on the Trinity through numerous search engines. I searched, and
searched and searched, and all I found were hundreds of apologetics articles that stated
the same thing: Statement - The Father is God. Cite X # of scriptures. Statement - The
Holy Spirit is God. Cite X# of scriptures., and so on. While these articles were good for
people who came from a nontrinitarian Xtian background, they were not of much help in explaining the
Doctrine to the nonchristian. Moreover these articles were not helping me with the new set
of irritating questions... that were developing within me. What was the point of this
Doctrine anyway ? God is triune. So what ??? Big Deal. What is the relevance of this Doctrine to my
daily life ? Sure I accept it as truth, but that does not mean anything anyway. For intents
and purposes, it's useless.
After much reading, thinking, praying, the answers came. It started with seeing in
the Trinity a possible solution to The One and the Many, and then moved on to perichoresis,
and then on to personhood, and to Eastern Orthodox theology, and then on and on until this
site happened. Really the Trinity swallowed me alive, not I the Trinity. What was once the
most recondite, esoteric and arcane doctrine in my life, is the most life breathing, alive,
and practical doctrine around.
God Bless,
by A. Raj Rao
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