The Trinity and modern evangelical eschatology are both extra-Biblical, a fact that surprises many Christians.

Anyone who has studied the history of early Christianity is aware of how intensely controversial the construction of the Trinity was. And when I say intensely controversial, I really mean murderously controversial. Various early Christian thinkers examined the writings that eventually became New Testament canon and attempted to nail down the idea of the Trinity. We can be amazed today to look back and see how violent they became over tiny differences in wording, differences that most of us would scratch our heads over as insignificant.

Yet early Christian leaders brought gladiators with them to church councils and had people beat up and murdered over these tiny differences.

Why? Because the doctrine of the Trinity is not contained in the Bible. It just is not there as Christians understand it today. Early Christians, in order to arrive at any kind of consensus, had to beat up and kill people.

Yet somehow today, we insist that it’s just obvious and in the Bible.

And eschatology? Christians who take end-time teaching as a matter of Biblical fact don’t know their Christian history. Before about 150 years ago, no Christian had ever thought about end times the way many Christians today do.

Many Christians today take eschatology as a matter of biblical fact, but modern understandings are constructed and largely extra textual.

Nobody who wasn’t already well soaked in that construction would be able to sit down with the Bible and reconstruct the same doctrines.