The doctrine of the Trinity that there's one single God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit is central to modern Christianity.

But is it even in the Bible?

Today we're talking about the Trinity, what Bible verses are used to support the doctrine, and whether it's something that the historical Jesus would have recognized.

We also have our bonus segment at the end, which this week

is listeners questions. I'm going to be asking Bart, among other things, why the brother of Jesus

isn't more important than the Apostle Paul, a random dude that didn't even meet Jesus. Welcome to the

misquoting Jesus podcast with Bart Ehrman. But before we get to the scholarly response for the Trinity being in the Bible, I would like to ask,

how does your early teachers or mentors explain the Trinity to you in a way that felt convincing

at the time?

You know, I never had trouble getting convinced because I was raised with it from the time I had

heard anything about Christianity. I knew that there was this, time I had heard, you know, anything about Christianity,

I knew that there was this, there was a Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. What I hadn't gotten

my mind around and took a long time to realize that the doctrine of the Trinity was more

than just there being a Father, Son, and Spirit. But that in the churches I went to, that was, you know, it was just father, son, and spirit. And so you just kind of assumed it. And you probably didn't think much about it because you didn't realize, wait a second, there's three of them. And you're saying there's one God. And so I don't think, I don't think that really kind of occurred to me very much. So it took, it took like no convincing for me.

My sense is most people believe in the Trinity, believe in it because that's what they've been raised on.

That's certainly how, how I was raised.

And I think the way that I appreciated it being explained, not to me, because again, it was something that I was just, it's just a fact. But I was in a children's service one Sunday. As an adult, I was helping. And the, the Vicar was explaining it in terms of water being liquids, gas, and solid, but still all being water,

which I really liked. My partner at the time was a theologian and really, really didn't like it,

but I never actually got to the bottom of why that was a problem.

Well, it is a problem. But to make sure that we're...

It is a problem, but it's a problem for complicated reasons, so that's probably one didn't want. People have various analogies. That's probably the best analogy there is, but it doesn't work. Okay, seeing as I never had it adequately explained to me, could you tell me why it doesn't work? Well, we'll have to talk about what it is first, I guess. So the deal is it. Yeah, that's true. We should do the whole, what is the Trinity and then why is it not the same as water? And also, why is it not the Bible, which are, or is it in the Bible? You know, when you ask what is it in the Bible, it really depends on what you mean. And this is why it's going

to be important to understand what the doctrine actually is. Because you definitely have God,

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