Michael Servetus had written books proving that the churches’ teaching on the Trinity was unscriptural. He said: “The papistical Trinity, infant baptism, and the other sacraments of the Papacy, are the doctrines of demons.”

Why Did They Reject the Trinity?

Like Servetus before them, though, the Socinians were most renowned for rejecting the churches’ teaching on the Trinity. Why did they? Their reasoning followed two lines. First and foremost, they saw that it was unscriptural.

To this day scholars readily admit that the Bible contains no reference to any Trinity, that it was the result of ‘creative theology,’ an attempt to fuse fourth-century “Christianity” with Greek philosophy. What place could such a teaching have in a movement to restore pure Christianity? None.

As one historian said of Servetus: “In place of a doctrine whose very terms​—Trinity, hypostasis, person, substance, essence—​were not taken from the Bible but invented by philosophers, and whose Christ was little more than a philosophical abstraction, he wished to get men to put their faith in a living God, in a divine Christ who had been a historical reality, and in a Holy Spirit forever working in the hearts of men.” He believed the three were one only in the sense of John 17:21 and considered holy spirit to be God’s active force, not a person.

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Michael Servetus​—his books proved the Trinity doctrine false

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By courtesy of U.S. National Library of Medicine