4th Century...Trinity
The Christian doctrine of the Trinity teaches the unity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as three persons in one Godhead. The doctrine, one of the most important in the Christian faith, states that God is the Triune God, existing as three persons, or in the Greek hypostases, but as one being. Saying that God exists as three persons but is one God means that God the Son and God the Holy Spirit exactly duplicate the nature or being of God the Father in every way. Whatever attributes or power God the Father has, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit have as well. "Thus, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are also eternal, omnipresent, omnipotent, infinitely wise, infinitely holy, infinitely loving, omniscient."
The New Testament does not have an explicit doctrine of the Trinity. However, Southern Baptist theologian Frank Stagg emphasizes that the New Testament does repeatedly speak of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit to "compel a trinitarian understanding of God."
The doctrine developed from the biblical language used in New Testament passages such as the baptismal formula in Matthew 28:19 and took substantially its present form by the end of the 4th century as a result of controversies in which some theologians, when speaking of God, used terms such as "person", "nature", "essence", "substance", terms that had never been used by the Apostolic Fathers, in a way that the Church authorities considered to be erroneous.
Trinitarianism contrasts with Nontrinitarian positions which include Binitarianism (one deity/two persons), Unitarianism (one deity/one person), the Oneness belief held by certain Pentecostal groups, Modalism, and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' view of the Godhead as three separate beings who are one in purpose rather than essence.
source: Wikipedia
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