No – the Trinity is not a biblical concept. The doctrine first emerged in Christian liturgy, and after some 250 years of oppression. “Christians sang hymns of praise to Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit alongside God. Calling Christ divine in this way entailed an act of political resistance. Until the “conversion” of Constantine Christianity was an illegal religion. Then the Emperor Constantine faced a political crisis in the early fourth century. His empire was in chaos because the church was divided, with various theologians and bishops vying for power, trying to maintain authority over as much of the church as possible.” The conflict in the church centered on the teachings of Arius, a theologian who held that God created the Son, that the Son is not eternal, and is of a similar but not the same substance as the Creator. Arius’ position had some real popularity; there was dissention in the churches and riots in the streets...
In June 325, Constantine opened the Council of Nicaea in Asia Minor to bring calm and stability and closure. Present were 300 bishops, mostly from the East because Constantine had wanted to exclude the western church members and so he called the council in the east, for a date so close that the westerners didn’t arrive until it was over. The council went a long way to securing the monarchical church, but the creed they developed had flaws, and did not resolve the political and theological crisis. In 381 Emperor Theodosius, therefore, called the Council of Constantinople, which reiterated the stand championed by the theologian Athanasius, that Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier are not of similar but the very same substance and nature. The resulting Niceno – Constantinopolitan Creed (known to us as the Nicene Creed) is the foundation of our doctrine of the Trinity. The controversy died down, the Arian position faded, and it was another 300 years, with the advent of Islam, before the next political challenge to the religious notion that “God is three.” [Living Pulpit, pp. 0-1.]
