One clarification first: I am not claiming the Trinity was invented at Nicaea and had no prior Christian basis whatsoever. That is not the argument. Both Athanasius and Arius arrived in Nicaea, each claiming to defend the faith they had received. The apostles themselves did not establish two conflicting doctrines of God.

What happened was a genuine evolution—each step building on the last, each drawing on reasoning and imagination rather than returning to Scripture. Both men were following departures from the original faith. What follows is the documented record of the major steps in that evolution, each one moving further from the Shema rather than upholding it intact.

The Test of the Rock

Biblical doctrine—since the days of the apostles—has no visible history of human hands at work. It was declared, commanded, and confirmed—delivered once, intact, from the apostles, and settled, and is the only teaching true believers have been given authority to defend:

Jude 1:3: “Contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.”

1 Corinthians 3:11: “No other foundation can anyone lay than that which has been laid, which is Jesus Christ.”

Matthew 16:18: “On this rock I will build my assembly.”

Jesus built his assembly on a rock—not on a doctrine under perpetual construction.

A rock has no chisel marks. Mt. Rushmore does. It is a chiseled monument to man’s imagination. What follows is a documented record of chisel marks—each one dated, each one sourced, each one moving further from the Shema rather than upholding it intact. That is not the earnest contending for once-delivered, revealed truth. That is the construction of a monument to human imagination.

Justin Martyr (~100–165 AD) provided one of the earliest chisel marks on Christian theology. He did not arrive at a completed Trinity. He arrived at a subordinationist triad—a hierarchically organized system of divine beings in which the second and third were dependent on and inferior to the first. That incomplete version then required further modification by those who came after him, none of whom ever returned to the biblical foundation to recover God’s simple, original command of ‘one He.’

That is the documented evidence of a constructed belief system under evolution, not revelation.

The Documented Source of Justin’s Theology

Scholar Marian Hillar is direct about where Justin got his ideas:

“When Justin mentions that Christians believe in the Triad…he refers directly to the discussion among his contemporary Middle Platonists. We have testimony of this discussion preserved in the fragments of the philosophical writings of Numenius of Apamea in Syria (fl. ca 150 C.E.)… Numenius…influenced the Christian apologist, Justin…”
“Numenius: Immediate Source of Justin’s Theology
“Numenius…developed further such concepts of Greek philosophical tradition (as One, Demiurge, Father, Logos, Mother, World Soul) into a theological system by introducing explicitly a system of hierarchical cosmic entities, two or three Gods…
“There is a complete correlation between the two systems, that of Justin and that of Numenius…” —Hillar.

I showed that complete correlation in the scorecard in Chapter Five. Here it is confirmed by Marian Hillar. Not a partial resemblance. Not a coincidental similarity. A complete correlation between Justin’s theology and the pagan philosopher Numenius.

Henry Chadwick, a Trinitarian historian, confirms Justin’s role as the entry point, note the phrase ‘first announced’:

“The future lay with the program first announced by Justin Martyr, by which the Church would make common cause with Platonic metaphysics and Stoic ethics…” —Chadwick, 69-70.

Justin’s Own Testimony Against the Jewish Source

Modern Trinitarians frequently claim that the multi-personal God came from Jewish sources. Justin himself refutes that claim in his own words. He accused all Jews of not knowing God, specifically to clear the way for his philosophical substitution:

“And all the Jews even now teach that the nameless God spake to Moses…because the Jews knew not what the Father was, and what the Son…” —Justin, Chapter 63.

Justin then goes further, removing God the Father from any direct communion with creation—exactly as Numenius had done with his transcendent First Cause:

“The Word of God is His Son…he declared whatever we ought to know…The Jews, accordingly, being throughout of opinion that it was the Father of the universe who spake to Moses, though he who spake to him was indeed the Son of God…are justly charged…with knowing neither the Father nor the Son.” —Justin, Chapter 63.

Compare that with Numenius’ view: “The First God may not undertake creation, and therefore the First God must be considered as the Father of the Creating Divinity.”

Now compare that idea with Scripture:

“Don’t we all have one father? Hasn’t one God created us?” (Malachi 2:10)

“Yahweh, your Redeemer, and he who formed you from the womb says: “I am Yahweh, who makes all things; who alone stretches out the heavens; who spreads out the earth by myself.” (Isaiah 44:24)

Now Jesus:

John 4:22: “We worship that which we know, for salvation is from the Jews.”

John 8:54: “It is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say that he is our God.”

Clearly, Justin did not get his idea of a second God from Jewish sources whom he said were “throughout of [the] opinion that it was the Father…who spake to Moses”. To the contrary, he renounced Jewish understanding completely. And in doing so, he directly contradicted Jesus’s own testimony.

Hopefully you are starting to see the problems with Justin’s system. But we haven’t finished with the evidence.

Justin’s Subordinationism—The First Chisel Mark is Incomplete

Hillar’s conclusion is critical:

“Justin…insisted on the subordination of these two Pneumas to the First Pneuma, God the Father. Thus, there is no trace of the post-Nicaean Trinity in Justin’s writings understood as the triune divinity, but a hierarchically organized triad…The Logos and the Holy Pneuma had subordinate ranks, being in the second and third place, respectively, and entirely dependent on the will of God the Father.” —Hillar.

“Justin’s theology derived from the Hellenistic interpretation of the scriptural material and constitutes the first step leading to Nicaea.” —Hillar.

The first step—not the destination. Justin did not believe in a coequal Trinity. He believed in a subordinated triad derived from Numenius. If Justin had lived in the fourth century, Nicene Trinitarians would have condemned him as a heretic alongside Arius. Yet today’s Trinitarians claim Justin as one of their earliest proofs—because he represents “the first step toward Nicaea.”

Someone will say, “See, the philosophers didn’t believe in a coequal Trinity exactly like Christian Trinitarians believe.” I’m not saying they did. But Gregory of Nyssa—one of the chief architects of the Trinity at Constantinople in 381 AD—documented exactly what was done in his own words:

“The truth passes in the mean between these two conceptions, destroying each heresy, and yet accepting what is useful to it from each…the Jewish dogma is destroyed by the acceptance of the Word, and by the belief in the Spirit; while the polytheistic error of the Greek school is made to vanish by the unity of the Nature.” —Gregory, 1, 3

Elements taken from pagan philosophy. Elements taken from Jewish theology. The result that emerged from their workbench was something neither philosophers, Jews, nor earlier Christians had ever believed. Jewish monotheism was explicitly destroyed in the process. The result was assembled and imposed by imperial decree.

“The formula ‘one ousia in three hypostaseis’ was crafted on the workbench of theologians; and even for them, it is more of a convenient abbreviation than the last word that might be uttered…In standard Greek, and in Christian theological usage for much of the fourth century, the words ousia and hypostasis were synonyms. The history of the formula is the history of the growth of a distinction in meaning between them, and the fact that the Cappadocians had to struggle to explain the distinction shows that it was anything but obvious.” —Lienhard, 103.

“Crafted on the workbench of theologians” is this scholar’s admission of the defacing of the Rock established by Christ and his apostles. In simpler terms, it means they hammered out their god by chiseling away what had previously been established until one “He” was no longer recognizable.

The point is that modern Trinitarians cite Justin as evidence that the Trinity was always believed, and that Nicaea merely “codified what was always believed.” But that is a cover-up, and that makes it a lie. And no lie is of the truth. What was “initially believed” by those early attempts to merge philosophy and the Bible, according to their own scholars, was an incomplete, subordinationist, philosophically derived triad—not a coequal Trinity. Neither Justin’s nor Tertullian’s (covered next) doctrine was merely “codified” at Nicaea. It was reconstructed there on a word imposed by Satan’s legal heir, following a tradition Justin had laid two centuries earlier of adopting theological materials from pagan philosophy.

Chadwick also documents that Justin’s language was immediately recognized as disturbing by the Christians of his own day:

“Justin had boldly spoken of the divine Logos as ‘another God’ beside the Father…Such language was disturbing. One of the central issues in conflict with Gnosticism had been the question of whether there is more than one ultimate first principle. The orthodox had insisted that there is no first principle other than God the Creator, no coequal…but a single monarchia. Justin’s language appeared to prejudice this affirmation.” —Chadwick, 85-86.

Note carefully what Chadwick calls ‘orthodox’ here. The orthodox position—before Justin’s innovation—was a single monarchia: one first principle, no coequal. That is precisely the Biblical Unitarian position today. The Trinitarians did not preserve orthodoxy. They redefined it and claimed the title for their own, just like they did with the word “monotheism.” And having redefined orthodoxy, they made what was previously orthodoxy into heresy. You just read the documentation of that swap. So, no, Trinitarianism was not what was always believed.

The point being: we Unitarians didn’t leave what was originally orthodoxy. Those who abandoned original orthodoxy left us for the gods around them—exactly what God warned against in Deuteronomy 13—and then turned around and called us the problem. And why are “we” now the problem? It’s simply because we are the ones who still believe that when God commanded that He is ‘one He,’ we still take Him at His word, regardless of what those who have been influenced by outside sources claim to the contrary.

Philosophy: Once Forbidden, Eventually Becomes Necessary

The Apostle Paul wrote:

“Be careful that you don’t let anyone rob you through his philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the elemental spirits of the world, and not after Christ.” (Colossians 2:8)

“…In the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom didn’t know God…” (1 Corinthians 1:21)

A generation after Justin Martyr’s school in Rome, Clement was heading the Christian catechetical school in Alexandria. The following quote from Charles Bigg shows how the sentiment toward philosophy had shifted in that generation from the biblical rejection of human philosophy to not merely tolerance, but open endorsement, to the point of calling it necessary:

“…Clement [of Alexandria, Christian and philosopher]…strenuously asserted not only the merits of Philosophy in the past but its continuous necessity in the Church…Science is the correlative of Duty. And though Scripture is the all-sufficient guide, even here the Christian must borrow assistance from the Schools. For Philosophy is necessary to Exegesis…But their great Platonic maxim, that ‘nothing is to be believed which is unworthy of God,’ makes reason the judge of Revelation…. Accordingly they put the letter of the Bible in effect on one side, wherever, as in the account of Creation or of the Fall, it appeared to conflict with the teaching of Science…Their object is to show, not that Common Sense is enough for salvation, but that neither Faith without Reason nor Reason without Faith can bring forth its noblest fruits…” —Bigg, 50-52.

Paul’s warning to Timothy seems to directly point to exactly the appeal to human philosophy that Paul warned of: “Timothy, guard that which is committed to you, turning away from the empty chatter and oppositions of what is falsely called knowledge” (1 Timothy 6:20).

This is especially fitting, since Clement openly adopted gnosis (“knowledge”) as his own watchword, even speaking of the mature believer as the “true gnostic,” repurposing the very term Paul warned against.

Those chisel marks represent chains. Every departure from God’s commandment through human reasoning didn’t liberate anyone—it bound them to a god assembled by philosophers working entirely outside of Scripture, the apostles’ teaching, and the Holy Spirit.

Summary—In this chapter, I have documented:

✦ That Justin Martyr (~100–165 AD) provided one of the earliest chisel marks on Christian theology—not a completed Trinity, but a subordinationist triad hierarchically derived from the pagan philosopher Numenius.

✦ That scholar Marian Hillar identifies Numenius as the immediate source of Justin’s theology, and that there is a complete correlation—not a partial resemblance—between the two systems.

✦ That Henry Chadwick, a Trinitarian historian, confirms Justin as the entry point for the church’s merger with Platonic metaphysics and Stoic ethics—using the phrase “first announced.”

✦ That Justin himself refutes the claim that his multi-personal God came from Jewish sources—explicitly accusing all Jews of not knowing God, in direct contradiction of Jesus’s own testimony in John 4:22 and John 8:54.

✦ That Justin removed God the Father from any direct role in creation—mirroring Numenius’s transcendent First Cause—in direct contradiction of Malachi 2:10 and Isaiah 44:24.

✦ That Justin’s own theology was not the Nicene Trinity—it was a subordinationist triad in which the Logos and Spirit were entirely dependent on and inferior to the Father. Had Justin lived in the fourth century, Nicene Trinitarians would have condemned him as a heretic alongside Arius.

✦ That the Christians of Justin’s own day found his language of “another God beside the Father” disturbing—because the orthodox position before Justin was a single monarchia: one first principle, no coequal.

✦ That the Trinitarians did not preserve orthodoxy—they redefined it, claimed it, and relabeled the original orthodox position as heresy. The documentation of that swap is provided by Chadwick himself.

✦ That Gregory of Nyssa confirmed the workbench nature of the Trinitarian formulation—explicitly stating that elements were taken from both pagan philosophy and Jewish theology, and that Jewish monotheism was destroyed in the process.

✦ That Clement of Alexandria (as documented by Charles Bigg), one generation after Justin, began claiming that Philosophy is necessary to Exegesis, thus overturning Paul’s warnings against the same.

Justin said the Jews did not know God. Jesus said they did. Justin then replaced the God the Jews knew with the Logos of philosophy and reinterpreted the Father to correspond with the transcendent First Cause of Numenius. That is a historical fact. Trinitarians cover it up or trivialize it. That may make Justin a hero in their eyes. But in the eyes of God, it makes him one of those whom He explicitly warned against:

“If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you… saying, “Let’s go after other gods” (which you have not known), “and let’s serve them,” you shall not listen to the words of that prophet, or to that dreamer of dreams.” (Deuteronomy 13:1–4)

What God forbade is exactly what Justin did, and taught others to do. The question for you is, who are you going to listen to, God, or dreamers like Justin Martyr?

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