The doctrine of the Trinity is the most complex and difficult question in orthodox theology. It is not to be found in a concrete form in the Old or the New Testament, but has to be reached by a process of deduction or inference. It originated in Christian theology in an anthropomorphic sense of God and a confusion of Jesus with the Christ, though it only assumed a verbal aspect toward the end of the second century, in the writings of Theophilus of Antioch, and later in those of Tertullian. It is not so much on anything that Christ Jesus himself said that the doctrine is based, as on the claims supposed to have been made, in his behalf, by the evangelists and the writers of the Epistles. Therefore the whole doctrine becomes one of interpretation. Once the admission is made that Spirit is the ultimate of matter, in other words that you can gather grapes from a thorn, the limit of illogical deduction is reached. Then the fact that Jesus spoke of "my Father, and your Father" amounts to no more than that he should have said, to the rich young man. "Why callest thou me good? none is good, save one, that is, God." Indeed, it may be said that the theory of three persons in one is arrived at by accepting everything in the New Testament which seems to support the argument, and ignoring everything that does not. As for the third person in the Trinity, the argument is entirely one of inference. "Once grant a real personal distinction between the Father and the Son," writes a distinguished theologian, "and it is easy to believe it also of the Spirit as revealed by the Son." The weak point of the argument lies, of course, in the first two words. Once you grant the premise you wish to prove, there is no particular difficulty about the deduction. The simple fact is that, as Mrs. Eddy writes, on page 256 of Science and Health, "The theory of three persons in one God (that is, a personal Trinity or Tri-unity) suggests polytheism, rather than the one ever-present I am. Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord.'"
The primitive Christian, it is quite clear, was untroubled by the Trinity. He knew it simply as a pagan dogma. The doctrine was reached later through a process of deduction by the Fathers. And, of course, it is not based exactly upon nothing. When the teaching of the unity of good is clearly understood, it will be seen that God, divine Principle, must be manifested in innumerable ways. The Hebrew people, like all the peoples of the East, were great users of symbols, and the figure three was unquestionably associated with peculiar reverence. The worshipers of the false gods had a fashion of dividing these gods into groups of three, and it was quite in accordance with the trend of primitive thought that when the Israelites adopted monotheism they should appropriate the sacred number as typical of the Deity. When Christianity was first preached, something of the same sort seems to have taken place, not amongst its original exponents, but in later years as it began to spread across the world. Then the sacred days and the customs of paganism were freely appropriated, and it was not unnatural that Theophilus of Antioch should have realized an advantage in discovering all the forces of the pagan trinities in the one God of Christianity.
Now the Bible describes God as the Giver of all life, and consequently as Life; as the source of all truth, and so as Truth; and as the emanator of all love, and so as Love. Life, Truth, and Love are, consequently, synonyms for Principle, Father-Mother God; Truth representing the Father, and Life and Love the Mother. Thus, as Mrs. Eddy writes, on page 331 of Science and Health, "Life, Truth, and Love constitute the triune Person called God,—that is, the triply divine Principle, Love. They represent a trinity in unity, three in one,—the same in essence, though multiform in office: God the Father-Mother; Christ the spiritual idea of sonship; divine Science or the Holy Comforter. These three express in divine Science the threefold, essential nature of the infinite."
