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Is the doctrine of the Trinity taught in the New Testament?
“For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one” (1 John v, 7).
This is the only passage in the New Testament which clearly teaches the doctrine of the Trinity, and this passage is admitted by all Christian scholars to be an interpolation.
When the modern version of the New Testament was first published by Erasmus it was criticised because it contained no text teaching the doctrine of the Trinity. Erasmus promised his critics that if a manuscript could be found containing such a text he would insert it. The manuscript was “found,” and the text quoted appeared in a later edition. Concerning this interpolation Sir Isaac Newton, in a letter to a friend, which was afterward published by Bishop Horsley, says: “When the adversaries of Erasmus had got the Trinity into his edition, they threw by their manuscript as an old almanac out of date.”
Alluding to the doctrine of the Trinity, Thomas Jefferson says: “It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in the Platonic mysticism that three are one and one is three, and yet, that the one is not three, and the three not one.... But this constitutes the craft, the power, and profits of the priests. Sweep away their gossamer fabrics of fictitious religion, and they would catch no more flies” (Jefferson’s Works, vol. iv, p. 205, Randolph’s ed.).
Again Jefferson says: “The hocus-pocus phantasm of a God, like another Cerberus, with one body and three heads, had its birth and growth in the blood of thousands and thousands of martyrs” (Ibid, p. 360).