--The Trinity is probably the most challenging doctrine of Christianity for most people, and that’s the reason that many reject it and that many others who think they accept it actually hold to a version of it that isn’t correct.
--Again, the basic idea is that God is one Being and three Persons. God is not more one or three, but fully both, and the way we go wrong is in erring to one or the other of these simultaneous truths.
--For example, some people (like Mormons) reject the Oneness of God by making the community into three separate Beings. This is the error of polytheism.
--Others (like Oneness Pentecostals) deny the distinctness of the Persons and say they are all just manifestations of a single Person in different contexts (or modalities, as theologians say). This is the error of modalism.
--But both of these errors are really just attempts to come up with a simpler view of the Divine than Scripture permits. And they aren’t really all that unique historically. Granted, at least Mormons and Oneness Pentecostals (not to be confused with other Pentecostals who do affirm the Trinity) acknowledge Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They just get Their Nature and Relationship wrong.
--But in history, every religion other than orthodox Christianity has taken one or the other of these sides. Hindus, Egyptians, Chinese, Romans, Greeks, and Scandinavians, for example, believed in a pantheon of gods.
--Much less common until fairly recently was the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic rejection of polytheism for monotheism, the belief in one God. But “mere” monotheism of the Jewish and Islamic variety is also a rejection of the Trinity.
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