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Comment by BizarreByte | Hacker News Reader

The trinity is a fundamental Christian belief, not just Catholic. If one doesn’t believe it than most won’t consider them Christian. This is a huge reason why Mormonism is it’s own thing.

I don’t believe anymore as an adult, but this was taught right away when I was a kid going to the Catholic Church. I don’t think you could find a catholic who doesn’t know what the trinity is.

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The trinity is the Orthodox belief. The history of Christianity is full of “heretical” beliefs about the Godhead. Also there is solid evidence that first century Christians did not hold a trinitarian position

Not religious in any way - from this perspective the trinity (as nailed down by the council of Nicaea) sounds like a triumvirate of gods + mental acrobatics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea#Agenda

It's an interesting historical and political question though, since it was the core question of the First Council of Nicea which Constantine used to establish an orthodoxy for his empire. That single church lasted for almost 700 years before splitting in two.

> That single church lasted for almost 700 years before splitting in two.

It…didn’t, though; there was a schism (Macedonian) within 7 years, not 700, of Nicaea, and there were even schisms that created separate long-lasting Churches on the side rejecting the view of the part of the Church that survived in union until the Catholic/Orthodox split much sooner than 700 years (e.g., the Nestorian schism in 431 and the Church of the East which survives to this day; the Chalcedonian/Monophysite schism in 451, from which the Oriental Orthodox churches still survive, etc.)

There was already split when Paul joined the church. Just those original Jewish branches (like Ebionites) did not survived to this age.

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