Quote:
Originally Posted by Evangelical
There is nothing "biblically orthodox" about saying one must believe in the Trinity doctrine to be saved. The Athanasian creed, written in 500 AD, claims that to be saved one must believe in the Trinity doctrine as stated, in addition to believing in Christ. That doesn't seem like much of a protection or "border" to me.
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And on this you would be correct. For all that this or any other creed says, it is only belief in Christ that brings salvation. It is not in the doctrines.
However, there has always been some who will question salvation based on what it believed. If the "error" or heresy is too extreme, we declare them to be unsaved because they don't believe in the Jesus we think the Bible is describing.
And to insist that it must be understood in the detail that this particular creed states it is too much.
But at the same time, this creed is interesting in that it does not truly define much. Rather it gives characteristics to the Father, Son, and Spirit, then insists that those characteristics also belong to them jointly as one. Less a clear definition than an admission that there is something beyond human understanding. So its holdings are less certain than you might like to say they are.
But your argument is that it is "simply" one way and not the other. That there can be only one [fill in the blank]. But there are also three. It is not so simple and to say more than it is a mystery is to be caught excluding part of the whole because we don't understand it.