Before I say anything though I will preface: I extremely highly supremely doubt your salvation status depends on your beliefs on the trinity. I can’t emphasize this enough: God cares about where your heart is with him, not about your exact views on how the cosmos is structured.

In other words, he wants us to be trying our best to follow the commandments outlined in the scriptures, not be endlessly arguing with each other about the exact nature of God.

Clearing Misconceptions

To be clear, I am not saying Jesus is only like a prophet or something. My view on Jesus exactly aligns with the scriptures: Jesus is the only begotten son of God (John 3:16, Matthew 16:16, 1 John 4:14-15) and Jesus is the creator of the world (Mosiah 3:8, Hebrews 1:2, Moses 1:33). We can only gain salvation through Jesus (2 Nephi 2:6–8, John 14:6, Acts 4:12, 2 Nephi 31:21, Mosiah 3:17, Alma 38:9), because he bore our sins (Alma 11:40, Isaiah 53:4–5, 1 Peter 2:24, 1 Corinthians 15:3, Mosiah 14:4–5, Alma 7:11–13, Jacob 4:11) and overcame death for all (1 Corinthians 15:20–22, Revelation 1:18, 2 Timothy 1:10, Hebrews 2:14, 2 Nephi 9:6–7, Mosiah 16:7–8, Helaman 14:15–17).

What do the Scriptures say about the Trinity

Jesus describes himself as the intercessor between man and God, rather than himself being directly God (1 Timothy 2:5, John 14:6, Romans 8:34, Hebrews 7:25, 1 John 2:1)

Jesus addresses God as if God is a separate person (John 3:16, John 3:35, John 5:22-23, John 8:17-18, John 14:28, Mark 13:32, Matthew 26:39, 1 John 4:9-10 )

Jesus sits on the right hand of God (Mark 16:19, Acts 7:55–56, Romans 8:34, Ephesians 1:20, Colossians 3:1, Hebrews 10:12)

Jesus as the only begotten son of God (not God himself) (John 1:18, John 3:16, John 3:18, 1 John 4:9)

Another point worth mentioning: yes, there are scriptures that discuss how Jesus is one with the Father. However, the subsequent verses then tell us how Jesus’s disciples can become one with Jesus if they follow his commandments (John 17:20-26, John 14:20). Likewise, we also see that the Father is one with the word (scriptures), and his spirit is one with the water and blood (baptism and the atonement) in 1 John 5:7-8. Therefore, being one with God means being aligned with him.

Council of Nicaea

Before Roman Emperor Constantine I convened the Council of Nicaea, not believing in the doctrine of the trinity was actually pretty common among Christians. In fact, Constantine himself (who was of course a Christian) didn’t believe the trinity. So, actually, many early Christians didn’t believe in the Trinity.

Why this view is taught

God saves us if our hearts are in alignment with him, not because we deserve to be saved through works, nor simply by faith (faith without works is dead – James 2:17-20). To align our hearts with God we have to try our best to follow the commandments.

However, modern preachers don’t say this because they don’t want to offend people who don’t follow the commandments – an offended congregation won’t give a preacher money. Therefore, they overly emphasize the faith part (hyper grace), and don’t even tell people the commandments (many aren’t even taught that premarital sex is against biblical teaching).

The fruit is that they teach that having the EXACT RIGHT knowledge of God is what saves us – not our heart posture or attempts to overcome since. Hence, the obsession with the Trinity.

This doctrine takes modern Christianity to dark places. The divorce rate of normal Christians is 51% but for Mormons is 7%. Modern Christians actually have a higher divorce rate than all other religions including atheism. But of course, they don’t worry about this because they think that having exactly the right view of the trinity forgives them for overall being significantly more wicked than even the unbelievers.

If Modern Christians are trying even less to follow the commandments than even non believers, God isn’t going to be like “it is completely fine that you aren’t trying to follow my scriptures whatsoever, because at least you have a super accurate view of the godhead”. God is actually going to say: your having exactly correct views of doctrine was vastly less important than your attempts to follow said doctrine. Since you have made no attempt to follow my doctrine, then you can’t truly call me your Lord ye accursed.

Sorry for the hate here (lol), but Christians have attempted to exclude me from sports teams, speech and debate clubs, robotics clubs, private schools, and even online forums because of my views on the Trinity. I am just so done being lectured about how I am a terrible person for my beliefs when 1) my beliefs are actually more supported by the scriptures; 2) the people lecturing me tend to be making vastly less efforts to follow the scriptures than people who are part of my religion.

God doesn’t tell us much about himself in the scriptures, but gives us a vast amount of commandments

· We don’t truly know the name of God.
· We don’t know (exactly) what his face looks like.
· If the Trinity is true, we still don’t grasp how it actually works (seeing there are no scriptures on the topic).
· If the Trinity is false (meaning Jesus actually is the only begotten son of God rather than the physical body representation of God), then other questions arise, such as the existence of heavenly mother.
· What we will do in heaven.
· We don’t entirely understand God’s relationship with Satan or how the war in heaven started.
· We don’t understand how the Atonement works.

However, we get a huge amount of commandments from God which I have written about here:

In my view, God purposely hasn’t told us about himself because he is worried about the exact type of thing that has already happened: people obsessing over having the exactly correct view of God’s nature to the exclusion of the commandments.

Translation Problems

As I outline below, much of the modern texts of the Bible (such as the NLT, NIV, NLV, and ESV) have been corrupted to make the trinity seem like it is true. So use the King James Version instead! For further context, I detail the scholarship behind why new versions are mistranslated more in Spiritual Warfare.

John 1:18

The original text of John 1:18 reads:
18 No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.

However, modern versions corrupt the text to make it say that Christ is himself God, rather than the only begotten son:

NIV Version
18 No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and[a] is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.

NLT Version
18 No one has ever seen God. But the unique One, who is himself God,[a] is near to the Father’s heart. He has revealed God to us.

Titus 2:13

As you can see in the below verses, a strategic subtraction of “our” and additional comma makes this verse sound as if it refers to just one deity rather than two.

Titus 2:13 KJV
13 Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;

NIV Version
13 while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ,

* similar versions for the other new English translations.

2 Peter 1:1

In this verse, a strategic repositioning of the word “our” again makes it seem like it refers to only one deity in the newer translations.

2 Peter 1:1 KJV
1 Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ:

NIV Version
1 Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours:

* similar versions for the other new English translations.

Philippians 2:6

As you can see, the below changes make it seem like Jesus is the same entity as God rather than separate.

Philippians 2:6 kjv
6 Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:

NIV Version
Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;

* similar versions for the other new English translations.

In Summary

A huge amount of scriptures where Jesus describes God and his relationship with God don’t make sense if we assume Jesus is the same as God. I will go so far as to say that almost all scriptures where Jesus references God don’t make sense if we believe Jesus is the same as God.

Therefore, instead I will align my views with exactly what an extremely large amount of scriptures say: Jesus is not the same as God, because he is the only begotten Son of God and the mediator between God and man.

If so many scriptures don’t make sense if the trinity is true, then I highly doubt God will be offended at me for not believing in the trinity.

It is (theoretically) possible that after all the trinity turns out to be true anyway. But, as said, I extremely highly supremely doubt your salvation status depends on your beliefs on the trinity (though believing that Jesus is your Savior and that it is only through him that you are saved is of course important).