Thus, simultaneously with the Reformation, the so-called anti-Trinitarianism (its other name is Unitarianism) appeared in the Western Christian world. In contrast to the ancient monarchians, who did not so much rebel against the dogma of the Holy Scriptures. The anti-Trinitarians of the 19th century set the anti-Trinitarians of the 19th century the task of destroying the belief in the Holy Trinity, which had not yet been defined. Trinity. In the anti-Trinitarian movement of the sixteenth century, two streams can be distinguished. One branch of it bears the stamp of mysticism, while the other branch of it rests exclusively on the principles of rational thinking.

A taxonomist of anti-Trinitarian principles with a mystical tinge was the scientist and Spanish physician Michael Servetus in the sixteenth century. The Church, he reasoned, has perverted the true Teaching of the Holy Spirit. Trinity, as well as Christianity in general. The teaching of the Scriptures to the Trinity, in his opinion, does not consist in the fact that there are three independent divine hypostases in God, but in the fact that God is one in nature and hypostasis, namely the Father, {p. 126} The Son and the Spirit are not persons separate from the Father, but only His various manifestations or modes. For his false teaching, Servetus Calvin was burned at the stake (October 27, 1553).

The views of anti-Trinitarianism with a more strictly rational character in the system were presented by Faust Socins († 1604), which is why the followers of this trend are also known as the Socinians. The Socinian doctrine is often a rationalistic doctrine. A person does not have to believe that he does not put up with his reason. The dogma of the Holy Scriptures. The Socinians find the Trinity especially contrary to reason. Instead of the dogma of the Holy Scriptures, which was rejected solely on the basis of rational considerations. They themselves offered such a teaching to the Trinity. God is one, one divine being and one divine person. This one God is precisely the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Son of God is only the personification of the historical Jesus Christ, while Christ is a simple man, only born in a special way, a sinless man. He can be called God in the same improper sense as the sons of God in the Holy Scriptures. In the Scriptures, and even as Jesus Christ Himself, all believers are called (Jn 10:34). In comparison with the other sons of God, He is only the beloved Son of God par excellence. The Holy Spirit. there is a certain divine breath, or force, acting in believers from God the Father through Jesus Christ.

The teaching of the anti-Trinitarians is also joined by the teaching of the Trinity of the Arminians, so called after the professor of theology at the University of Leiden, Jacob Arminius (1560-1609), who laid the foundation for this sect. The Church's teaching on the Trinity seemed contradictory to these sectarians in the sense that, while assimilating to all the persons of the Trinity equality in divinity, it at the same time ascribes guilt to the Father, birth to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. — procession. They resolved this perplexity by repeating the ancient subordinationism in essence between the persons of the Trinity, i.e., that the Son and the Spirit are inferior to the Father in divinity and borrow their divine dignity from Him.

In the 17th century, with the strengthening of rationalism in general, a new, extremely peculiar sect was formed in Protestantism, which, in connection with the distortion of the whole of Christianity, also distorted the doctrine of the trinity of God, the sect of the followers of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772). Swedenborg considered himself an extraordinary messenger of God, called upon to proclaim a doctrine which was superior to all previous revelations, but under the guise of revelation from above in the essence of the matter he expounded in his writings his own views. As for all anti-Trinitarians, the doctrine of the Trinity appeared to Swedenborg as an extreme perversion by the Church of the authentic teaching of the Holy Trinity. The Scriptures are to God and to those who are contrary to reason. His own understanding of this dogma is as follows. There is only one God (i.e., one divine hypostasis). This one God took on a human form and a bodily form in the form of Jesus Christ, subjected Himself to all temptations, entered into a struggle with the spirits of hell and conquered them; He also suffered death on the cross (evidently a repetition of ancient patripassianism) and through all this freed the human race from the power of the forces of hell. Under the Spirit of the Holy Spirit. in his opinion, of course, in the Bible is that effect on people which has produced and is producing the revealed word and the former revelation of God Himself, i.e. the appearance of God in the flesh in the form of Jesus Christ.

With the emergence of the so-called idealist philosophy, they appeared in the West in the teaching of the Holy Scriptures. New false teachings to the Trinity. Attempts to substantiate and clarify the essence of this dogma according to the principles of reason alone led to the fact that in these explanations only terms remained of the Christian dogma, in which pantheistic concepts alien to the dogma and even the persons of the Holy Spirit were embedded. The Trinity was impersonal. For Hegel, for example, the Christian Trinity is the absolute idea (eternal knowledge) in three states: the idea in itself, in its abstraction, is the Father, the idea incarnated in the external world is the Son and His incarnation, and the idea which is conscious of itself in the human spirit, the Holy Spirit.

Thus, reason alone is insufficient in the deepest mysteries of faith. All errors regarding the dogma of the Holy Scriptures. The Trinity, and the most recent and the most recent of them, proceeded from the same source, namely, from the violation by reason of the boundaries which it must maintain in relation to revelation in general. The dogma of the Trinity is the sacrament of the sacraments (supra rationem), which reason must never forget.

§ 24. The teaching of the Church of St. The Trinity and the Composition of This Teaching

The dogma of the Holy Scriptures. The Trinity is set forth by the Church in all three symbols now used in it, but with the greatest fullness and separateness, in the so-called Symbol of St. Athanasius, and precisely as follows:

"This catholic faith is: that we may worship the one God in the Trinity, and the Trinity in unity, merging hypostases below, dividing essence below. For there is another hypostasis of the Father, another of the Son, another of the Holy Spirit. But the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one divinity, equal to glory, co-majesty with majesty. James the Father, such is the Son, such is the Holy Spirit... Thus: God the Father, God the Son, God and the Holy Spirit: there are not three gods, but one God... The Father is not created from anyone, nor created, or inferiorly begotten. The Son is from the Father Himself, neither created nor created, but begotten. The Holy Spirit is not created from the Father, not created, inferiorly begotten, but proceeding. And in this Trinity there is nothing first or last, nothing more or less, but the three hypostases are whole, co-existent in essence and equal."

The entire teaching of the Holy Scriptures. The Trinity, set forth in this symbol, obviously boils down to the following three propositions:

I. God is threefold, and this trinity consists in the fact that in God there are three persons or hypostases: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

II. Each person of the Trinity is God, but they are not three gods, but one divine being.

III. All persons of the Trinity differ from each other in personal characteristics.