This past summer saw significant controversy on the Internet over the doctrine of the Trinity .
Debate over the Trinity, from time to time, has given rise to some of the fiercest of church debates. Much of the theological energy of the fourth century was consumed with defeating the threat of Arianism. And in the 18th century a growing tide of rationalism led to what historian Philip Dixon has called a ‘fading of the trinitarian imagination’ and to the doctrine of the Trinity coming under heavy attack. Informed by the Enlightenment’s confidence in human reason, the intellectual mindset of this era either increasingly dismissed the doctrine of the Trinity as a philosophical and unbiblical construct of the post-Apostolic Church and turned to classical Arianism as an alternative perspective. Or they simply ridiculed it as illogical and argued for Deism or Unitarianism.
Even a stalwart Christian like Isaac Watts was clearly confused as to what to believe about the Godhead in his final years. Thankfully, there were communities that stood fast on the biblical truths summed up in the ancient creeds.
