Of all the world's religions, none contain more pride than the Catholic Church. There seems to be no length a Catholic apologist will not go to to make their Church appear not only relevant, but actually essential. "You need us because there are too many denominations that are not us." "You need us because we gave you the Bible." "You need us because Christ built His Church upon Peter, whom we're going to claim our Pope is the successor of." One of the strangest arguments I've ever heard following this trend is that, without Catholicism, we can't really believe in the Trinity.
Now, we're going to set aside the elephant in the room for a moment. I know it's waving its trunk around, stamping its feet, and screaming for attention, but it's just going to have to sit in the corner and shut up for now. How many apologists do you know who depend on the Catholic Church to defend the Trinity? Personally, I've been doing this job for 11 years. By contrast, I've been directly opposing Catholicism for a measly 4. Over that decade, I have encountered many anti-Trinitarians. I have debated Muslims on the Trinity. I have debated Mormons on the Trinity. I have had one single encounter with a trio of Jehovah's Witnesses, with whom I debated the Trinity. Atheists, seizing upon an opportunity, often address the Trinity. Now, in all of these debates, which source do you think I bring up the most?
If you answered the Bible, you are absolutely correct. The Bible teaches the Trinity so explicitly, it stops just short of using the actual word. But as I have previously shown, the word itself is not necessary, and is actually irrelevant. The word "Trinity" is a description of a pre-existing concept, just as the word "tiger" does not need to exist for tigers to exist. As the saying goes, "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet". In fact, you can even call the Trinity "the Godhead", which does indeed appear in the Bible (Romans 1:20; Colossians 2:9), and both the doctrine and the scriptures will be completely unaffected. The argument for the Trinity is simple: The Bible explicitly tells us there is one God, always has been, and always will be. Yet, it identifies three distinct persons as God: The Father, the Son (who pre-existed His mortal body) and the Holy Spirit. If there is only one God, yet there are three distinct persons identified as being co-equal God, then the Trinity is a fact.
So, now onto the elephant in the room. Knowing that the Trinity is a Biblical fact, how can the Catholic Church claim to be essential for it? The only possible answer is they believe, whether consciously or not, that their Church actually has the authority to make up new doctrines, and that once those doctrines have been made up, they become binding on the Church as a whole. Furthermore, Catholic apologists using this argument must believe the Trinity is one such made up doctrine.
The actual truth is, as we have just established, the Trinity is a Biblical fact. An irrefutable one, at that. If you honestly study the entire Bible, there is no other conclusion you can draw but that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are three distinct, and yet coequal beings that are together one single God. Nevertheless, certain heretics have previously gone into the world to deny this basic truth, which has provoked councils to convene and publish official statements in its favour. But these statements do not, and I repeat, do not invent the Trinity. Neither are they required to give the Trinity authority.
What's especially ironic here is that if it could be demonstrated that scripture did not teach the Trinity, and that the Catholic Church really did make it up, it would be just one more heresy that the actual Church could discard. Much like we do with actual imaginations of the Catholic Church. Of course, since the Trinity isn't a figment of Catholic imagination, but a genuine revelation from God, it is more likely the Catholic Church will eventually reject it than that I will. Nevertheless, if Catholicism invented the Trinity, it would be discarded with Purgatory, the Papacy, the Marian dogmas, and a variety of other falsehoods the Catholic Church has added over time.
So, in reality, this argument is just one in a long list of arguments that shows the pride of the Catholic Church. Claiming they are so relevant that we need them to establish the Trinity actually backfires, as it legitimises the false claims of anti-Trinitarians that the Trinity is a man made doctrine invented by Catholics long after the Bible was finished. What more evidence do we need that Catholicism is a false religion? If your religion is so corrupt that even your arguments require you to effectively admit "we're making this up as we go along", you need a better religion. May I suggest Christianity, the faith that was delivered "once for all to the saints" (Jude 1:3), complete with the doctrine of the Trinity, in the first century?