"In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty and in all other things love."
- Augustine

For most orthodox churches; the essentials are the Trinity and the atonement of Christ expressed in the Gospel.

Jesus of Nazareth affirmed this One God belief in his life and ministry.

At the baptism of Jesus enters another powerful figure; the Holy Spirit.

The word "trinity" is a term used to denote the Christian doctrine that God exists as a unity of three distinct persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each of the persons is distinct from the other yet identical in essence.

The identical in essence is huge; many false teaching come as a result of making any one of the three different in essence.

The triune nature of God is a “ground zero” doctrine. There are many heresies that originate from a deviation of belief One God; three persons. Mormonism, Jehovah Witness are the major ones. Who Jesus is in relation to God the Father in both of these religions are truly unorthodox.

Orthodox Christianity revolves around the triune nature of the Godhead.

In the book, No God But One, Nabeel Qureshi gives these five facts to understand who the One True God is:

• There is only one God
• The Father is God
• Jesus is God (Col. 1:15-20)
• The Holy Spirit is God
• These three are distinct persons

person is not the same as being.

Your being is the quality that makes you what you are (Human)
but your person is the quality that makes you who you are (Vince)

Mormonism
teaches that God used to be a man on another world, and that he became a god by following the laws and ordinances of his god on his home world. He brought his wife to this world, a woman he had married on the other world. She is essentially a goddess.

In his present god-state, he rules our world. He has a body of flesh and bones. Since god and his wife are both exalted persons, they each possess physical bodies. In their exalted states as deities, they produce spirit children that grow and mature in the spiritual realm. The first spirit born was Jesus.

Jehovah's Witness doctrines
1 There is no Trinity; The Holy Spirit is God's impersonal active force
2 Jehovah's first creation was his 'only-begotten Son'. . . was used by Jehovah in creating all other things; Jesus was Michael the archangel who became a man; Jesus was only a perfect man, not God in flesh; Jesus did not rise from the dead in his physical body
3 Jesus was raised "not a human creature, but a spirit"; Jesus did not die on a cross but on a stake; Jesus returned to earth, invisibly, in 1914

Islam
Monotheistic; but not Trinitarian (Jesus is no “God”); nor is the Holy Spirit. This Allah in a pure sense is not the same as Jehovah God of Christians.

Variations:

Modalism: God is one person (the Father), manifested to us sometimes also as “Son” and “Spirit”. Son and Spirit are inferior tot he Father.

Tritheism: God is three persons; with no unity of essence

• The Trinity
◦ God is three persons.
◦ Each person is divine.
◦ There is only one God.

• Each of the three persons is completely divine in nature though each is not the totality of the Godhead.
• Each of the three persons is not the other two persons.
• Each of the three persons is related to the other two but are distinct from them.

The Apostles’ Creed
(third or fourth century)

I believe in God the Father Almighty
Maker of heaven and earth.

And in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord;
Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost,
Born of the Virgin Mary,
Suffered under Pontius Pilate,
Was crucified, dead, and buried;
He descended into Hell.
The third day he rose again from the dead;
He ascended into heaven,
and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty;
From there he shall come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Ghost;
the holy catholic Church;
the communion of saints;
the forgiveness of sins;
the resurrection of the body;
and the life everlasting. Amen.

The Nicene Creed
(A. D. 325; revised at Constantinople in A. D. 381)

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty;
Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only begotten Son of God,
Begotten of the Father before all worlds;
God of God, Light of Light,
Very God of Very God,
Begotten, not made,
Being of one substance with the Father;
By whom all things were made;
Who, for us men and for our salvation,
Came down from heaven,
And was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary,
And was made man;
And was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate;
He suffered and was buried;
And the third day he rose again,
According to the Scriptures;
And ascended into heaven,
And sitteth on the right hand of the Father;
And he shall come again, with glory,
To judge both the quick and the dead;
Whose kingdom shall have no end.

And we believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life;
Who proceedeth from the Father [and the Son];
Who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified;
Who spake by the prophets.
And we believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins;
And we look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. Amen.