In a question on Christianity StackExchange here, a user asks:
According to non-Trinitarians, if God’s nature is not adequately portrayed by trinitarian theology, then why did God allow such an erroneous understanding of His nature to become so widespread among the members of the Church, the Bride of His Son? If God has the power and the prerogative to intervene in historical events, then why hasn’t God made use of His divine privileges to ensure that the correct doctrine about His nature achieves widespread acceptance?
What follows is the answer I posted, very slightly edited. You can see the original here.
This answer draws and expands upon key points made by Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772), an 18th century scientist, philosopher, and theologian. During his theological period, which covered the last three decades of his life, Swedenborg rejected the Nicene Trinity of Persons. Instead, he taught a Trinity of “essential components” in a single Person of the Lord God Jesus Christ. For a plain English explanation of Swedenborg’s Trinity, please see:
Who is God? Who is Jesus Christ? What about that Holy Spirit?
Summary
The Council of Nicaea
Swedenborg believed that by the time of the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, when the Trinity of Persons first began to be established as orthodox Christian doctrine, the Christian Church was fast becoming corrupted by a desire for power and wealth on the part of its leaders. This caused its leaders to adopt doctrines such as the Trinity of Persons that would allow them to arrogate the power of Christ to themselves.
The alternative to the Trinity of Persons was Arianism, which ultimately denied the divinity of the Son, and thus of Christ. The primary doctrinal reason the Council of Nicaea was called was to condemn and reject the teaching of Arius about the Godhead. If this had not been done, Christianity would have died altogether.
By adopting the Trinity of Persons, a corrupt Christian leadership would still preach that Jesus is divine. The common people, who listen in simplicity to what their clergy teach them, could still be saved by a Christian faith and life.
In short, the reason God allowed the Trinity of Persons to become the primary doctrine of the Christian Church even though it is unbiblical and false is that the alternative was to allow the Christian Church to be rapidly destroyed, leaving the sheep without a shepherd.
Now for a fuller version.
1. Christ’s church is founded upon a belief in his divinity
In Matthew 16:13–20 we read:
When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”
They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”
“But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.
The Roman Catholic Church commonly interprets this exchange to mean that Christ would found his church on Peter. It and other churches that claim apostolic succession believe that this gives the Church the authority to wield the power of Christ in administering the matters of the Christian Church, its people, and their salvation.
Swedenborg entirely rejected this interpretation. Instead, he said that it was Peter’s statement, “You are the Messiah [or the Christ], the Son of the living God,” upon which Christ was saying he would found his church.
In this understanding of Matthew 16:13–20, the Christian Church would be founded upon the belief that Jesus Christ is divine, and is God. If Christ is not divine, the Christian Church has no foundation.
Incidentally, Swedenborg also rejected the idea that the keys to the kingdom of heaven were given to Peter personally, and that this gave the Church the power to open and close heaven to people. Rather, he said that the passage refers to Christ’s power to save “people who from a heartfelt faith have that confession of Peter” (Apocalypse Revealed #798).
2. Arianism threatened the foundation of the Christian Church
To this day, scholars debate exactly what doctrine about God Arius taught. However, due to teachings widely attributed to him—that the Son was subordinate to the Father, and that he was a creature of God (i.e., a created being)—the general tendency of Arianism was to make Christ less than God. This doctrine, followed to its logical conclusion, would ultimately result in the rejection of Christ’s divinity.
Therefore if Arianism had been allowed to prevail in the church, it would have destroyed the foundation of the Christian Church, and the Church would have quickly fallen into ruins.
3. The Trinity of Persons fully affirmed the divinity of the Son of God.
In order to combat the Arians and their doctrine, the opposing Christian leaders had to formulate a doctrine that unequivocally affirmed the divinity of the Son of God. This the Trinity of Persons did, by proclaiming that the Son of God was begotten from eternity (which is not a biblical teaching), was a distinct “Person” of God (which is also not a biblical teaching), and was of the same substance as the Father (which draws more on Greek and Roman philosophy than on the Bible).
Although this doctrine introduced heresy after heresy into the church, it preserved the Christian Church’s existence by affirming the divinity of Jesus Christ. This saved the church’s foundation from destruction, and the church from rapid collapse.
4. The Trinity of Persons was the result of a corrupted church leadership
By the time the Council of Nicaea was called in 325 AD, the Christian Church had long since lost the brotherly love that had bound the early Christians together. It was now divided into warring camps, each attacking, anathematizing, and excommunicating the others.
In this atmosphere, the leadership of the Church could not accept the simple faith of the early Christians that Jesus Christ was “God with us” (Matthew 1:23), and that “in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9). Such a faith would require the complete humility of the Church’s leaders at the feet of the Lord God Jesus Christ.
But these were not humble men. The Christian Church was fast becoming a State Church under the Roman Emperor Constantine. Its leaders wanted the power that association with the power of Rome would give them.
It would take too much time to explain how the Trinity of Persons allowed them to arrogate Christ’s power to themselves. For now, just two points:
- It was a strategy of “divide and conquer”: divide God into three, and then conquer the church and the world using that dogma.
- By making the human nature of Jesus like the humanity of any other man, it allowed the church leaders, as mere human beings, to step into the shoes of Jesus, and wield his power over the laypeople of the Christian Church.
On the practical level, it is a matter of history that from the time of Nicaea onward, armed with the doctrine of the Trinity of Persons and the power of the State, the Christian Church steadily accumulated more and more worldly wealth and power, until kings bowed down to popes, and the church was fabulously wealthy while the common people lived in poverty.
5. This made it possible for a corrupt church leadership to still preach Christ to the people
The Christian Church became more and more corrupt and worldly from the time of Nicaea onward. And yet, there were millions of ordinary good people—the sheep of the Lord’s pasture—under its tutelage.
Because Christian leaders had adopted the Trinity of Persons, they continued to preach to the common people that Jesus Christ was divine. The common people did not understand the highly abstract and confusing doctrine of the Trinity of Persons. They only absorbed a belief that Jesus is the Son of God, and that believing in him and living by his commandments was the path to salvation.
6. The Trinity of Persons made it possible for good people to be saved even though the leadership of the Christian Church was increasingly corrupt
This is why God allowed the Trinity of Persons to become the reigning doctrine about God in the historical Christian Church.
It was a doctrine that the leadership of the church, which was motivated primarily by power and wealth, could accept, because it allowed them to arrogate Christ’s power to themselves, and thus lord it over the people.
But it was also a doctrine that allowed laypeople of simple faith to accept Jesus as their God and Savior, and be saved by that faith and a life according to it.
The leadership of the Christian Church had become “like unmarked graves, which people walk over without knowing it” (Luke 11:44). Laypeople could have a simple saving faith in Jesus even as their leaders in the clergy brought spiritual death upon themselves by continually striving for wealth and power.
This vast accumulation of wealth and power by the Christian clergy, and the corruption that accompanied it, is a matter of history—as anyone who reads the ugly history of the Christian Church with objective eyes can see.
And yet, despite the rampant corruption among the clergy, millions of ordinary Christians of good heart and simple faith could continue to be saved, and make their eternal home in the heavenly kingdom of God.
This is the wisdom and power of divine providence, which uses evil humans and their false doctrines to accomplish God’s own good and eternal goals.
7. Sources in Swedenborg’s writings
The above answer is my formulation as a Swedenborgian scholar and minister. Swedenborg’s statements on this subject are scattered throughout his writings, and require some familiarity with his overall theology to fully appreciate.
However, for those who wish to go to the source, here are several key passages in Swedenborg’s theological writings:
- Divine Providence #262 discusses the proposition that “Doubts about divine providence may be raised by the fact that all Christendom worships one God in three persons, which is really three gods.”
- Divine Providence #257 discusses the proposition that “Strict materialists justify their rejection of divine providence by observing that in many nations where Christianity is accepted, there are people who claim divine power for themselves and want to be worshiped as gods and who call upon the dead.”
- True Christianity #632 discusses the proposition that “The concept of a faith that assigns us the merit and justice of Christ the Redeemer first surfaced in the decrees of the Council of Nicaea concerning three divine persons from eternity; from that time to the present this faith has been accepted by the entire Christian world.”
- True Christianity #636 discusses the proposition that “The concept of a faith that assigns the merit of Christ was completely unknown in the apostolic church that existed before the Council of Nicaea; and nothing in the Word conveys that concept either.”
- Swedenborg discusses the meaning of “Peter” and “the keys” in Matthew 16:13–20 in a number of places in his theological writings. Three of his clearest statements in rebuttal of the Roman Catholic Church’s interpretation of these verses occur in Secrets of Heaven #2760; Apocalypse Revealed #768, 798.
Each of these passages offers source material on the reasons God allowed the Trinity of Persons to become the reigning doctrine in the Christian Church even though it is a human tradition that is unbiblical and false. Keep in mind that this material was written in the 18th century, and did not have the benefit of some of our present-day scholarship about Christian history.
For further reading:
- Who is God? Who is Jesus Christ? What about that Holy Spirit?
- What is the Biblical basis for disbelief in the doctrine of the Trinity?
- Is the Doctrine of the Trinity Polytheistic?
- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
- Dethroning the Imperial god of Constantine and Calvin
- The Logic of Love: Why God became Jesus
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Lee Woofenden is an ordained minister, writer, editor, translator, and teacher. He enjoys taking spiritual insights from the Bible and the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg and putting them into plain English as guides for everyday life.
Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life 
Dear Lee
Thank you much for this last post. I will read it and tell you my opinion thereafter. How are you and your wife doing? I became completely orphan last year. Now I live on in the same flat I used to live with my parents. Generally, I am satisfied with the way of my present living. I still teach English, sometimes German, play and practise table tennis and on occasions look for a suitable female counterpart. Then, of course, philosophy remains a central topic in my life, which means reading, thinking and a little writing, too.
The best wishes for 2024 to you and your friends. (Have you finished your university studies?)
Radko (from Czechia)
Hi Radko,
Good to hear from you again, my friend. Sorry to hear about both your parents being gone now. But glad to hear that you’ve made a good living situation for yourself. I do wish you all good things as you move forward.
Thanks for asking about us. This has been a year of great changes for us. Long story short, we are no longer living in Africa. It became too difficult to stay there because like many countries around the world, the countries of southern Africa are in a phase of closing their doors to foreigners. On January 2 we left South Africa for South America, where we hope to make a life for ourselves.
On the positive side, our more stable life here should make it possible for me to resume posting new articles on the blog.
When I read this post, I saw http://theologyandtech.com/2023/04/26/an-introduction-to-the-trinity/ in the “More from WordPress.”
Hi World Questioner,
It’s a great article . . . other than the fact that it’s wrong in just about everything it says. 😉
God is not a Trinity of Persons, nor does the Bible ever say God is. God is also not “simple,” but consists of many parts. See:
Was Adam Anatomically in God’s Image?
Also, the Apostles whom Jesus commanded to baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit always baptized people in the name of Jesus, as we can see in the Acts. Clearly “Jesus” is the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. This is something that Nicene Christians seem to have missed. Unless they believe that the Apostles disobeyed the final commandment given to them by their Lord before he ascended up to heaven.
Was the “father and of the son and of the holy spirit” a later addition to Matthew 28:19, as that article claims?
Hi World Questioner,
Probably not. But the trinitarian formula in 1 John 5:7–8 certainly was a later addition. See:
Wikipedia -> Johannine Comma
https://www.quranicstudies.com/historical-jesus/the-quranic-verses-that-refute-the-divinity-of-jesus/ – why would God allow the spread of a religion that denies the divinity of Jesus Christ?
I sure hope the Qur’an is heavily mutated, and that the original words of Muhammad affirm the divinity of Jesus Christ, and that any tradition of Muhammad denying divinity of Christ are corrupt.
What about https://www.islam-guide.com/ch3-10-1.htm?
What do those verses mean then?
Hi World Questioner,
It would take a long time and a long post to respond about all of the Bible verses quoted or referred to in the linked article. But if its Muslim authors are claiming that no one in the Bible believed that Jesus is God, why did they not quote the one passage where it is made most obvious that at least one of his followers did believe that Jesus was God?
Here Thomas, one of the original twelve disciples, addresses Jesus as “my Lord and my God.” And Jesus does not correct him, but rather upbraids him for requiring visual evidence before he will believe that this is true.
It’s simply not true that no one in the Bible believed that Jesus was God.
Consider also that this conversation was recorded in the Gospel of John, who was another one of Jesus’ followers—in fact, one of the inner circle of Jesus’ disciples. If John had not also come to believe that Jesus is both his Lord and his God, he never could have written this passage in his Gospel.
However, it is not coincidental that it was only after the resurrection that one of Jesus’ disciples addressed him as “God.” Before that, Jesus was not fully God, and it would not have been correct to address him as “God.” See:
What Does it Mean that Jesus was “Glorified”?
During Jesus’ lifetime, before the Crucifixion and Resurrection, he was partly finite human and partly God. It was only after the Resurrection that he was fully God. Without the doctrine of the glorification, which Swedenborg covers very fully, but which is unknown in Nicene Christianity, and therefore in other religions such as Islam, it is easy to read the Gospels as if Jesus is not God, because until the very end of the Gospel story Jesus was not fully God, and he was partly created and human. The statements he makes about himself being less than God are made when his consciousness was primarily in his human side. But when his consciousness was primarily in his divine side, he made statements in which he and the Father are one, and those who have seen him have seen the Father.
So the first point is that the writers of the article do not know about Jesus’ glorification, so they read many statements in the New Testament as being absolute statements about Jesus, when in fact they were about Jesus before his process of glorification, or becoming fully divine, was complete.
The second point—and it’s a big one—is that by the time Islam was founded in the early seventh century, the pagan and polytheistic belief in a Trinity of Persons had defeated all others in the Christian world, and had become settled doctrine among Christians. It was therefore necessary for Muhammad and the Qur’an to reject the divinity of Christ in order to maintain their belief in one God.
This continues to be true right up to today. As long as the Trinity of Persons is considered correct biblical doctrine in the Christian world, Muslims, Jews, and any other non-Christian monotheists will continue to reject the divinity of Christ because it would mean accepting that there is more than one God, which they will not do.
It is the Trinity of Persons itself that drives people who want to worship one God away from Christianity, and causes them to reject Christ as the human presence of God.
If Swedenborg’s understanding of the Trinity had existed when Islam was founded, none of this would have been necessary, because Muhammad would have understood that Jesus is not a separate “Person” of God, meaning a second God, but was, rather, God the Father himself come to earth to save his people.
This is the main reason for the rejection of Jesus’ divinity among Muslims. And it is caused by “Christians” themselves, who have long since abandoned what the Bible teaches about who Jesus was. Right when Jesus was born, the Gospel of Matthew tells us that he will be “God with us” (Matthew 1:23). And that’s exactly who he was and is.
I should add that this also explains the passages about no one seeing God or the Father at any time. That is true, but the Muslim authors of this article do not understand how it is true. When the Father and the Son are contrasted to each other, the Father means the core unknowable divinity of God, whereas the Son means the knowable human presence of God. It would be similar if I said to you, “You can’t see my soul, but my body, which you can see, expresses my soul. This is the meaning of Jesus’ words:
and:
Read from a spiritual perspective rather than a material perspective, this does not mean that the Son is not God. In fact, the first passage explicitly says that the Son is God. Rather, it means that the Son is the human presence of God, just like your body is the human presence of your soul, and expresses it. There aren’t two separate people that are you, “World Questioner the Soul” and “World Questioner the Body.” Your soul and your body together are you—along with your words and actions—which, in God, are the Holy Spirit.
Third, it should be said that the early Christians did not have any well-developed theological or doctrinal understanding of who Jesus was. They did view him as God in some way, but they didn’t know exactly how he was God. That’s why there are so many statements in the Acts and the Epistles that make it sound like Jesus and the Father are two different beings, and that Jesus is less than the Father.
But even these statements, if read from a spiritual point of view, have the truth within them.
For example, about the Son being less than the Father, that’s because the Father is God’s love, and the Son is God’s wisdom—and as Paul himself said, “the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13). In us, also, our love is the greatest thing, and our understanding is second to it. As the article points out, Jesus himself said that love for God and the neighbor are the most important things.
If, instead of thinking of the Father and the Son as two separate beings, as the trinitarians do, we think of them as two different parts of the same being, then these statements make perfect sense: God’s love is God’s greatest part, and God’s wisdom is second to it. This doesn’t make God two beings. It makes God a layered being, just as we humans—who are made in the image and likeness of God—have many layers.
Even referring to Jesus or the Son as a “creature” doesn’t make Jesus not God if we understand this spiritually rather than literally. Jesus is not literally a creature, as in a being created by God and separate from God. At least, the Jesus that still exists is not. (Jesus’ human side that came from his human mother Mary was created and finite and separate from God.) However, divine wisdom is “created” from divine love in the sense that divine wisdom flows from divine love.
People, especially intellectuals, commonly think that our thinking is independent of our emotions, and is rational and pure. But that’s far from the truth. In fact, our thinking flows directly from what we love and feel, giving it form and protection and outreach. Without love and emotion, we would have no thoughts at all. So in this sense, our thoughts are a “creation” of our loves and emotions.
I could go on, but I hope this is enough to show that the Bible actually does say that Jesus is God, but that this is obscured when:
To answer the first paragraph with a question, would Muslims guess that those verses were a additions to the Biblical text? Does the Qur’an ever teach that the Pentateuch/Torah and the New Testament are corrupt? Because that’s what Muslims believe.
Check out https://www.gotquestions.org/Quran-reject-Bible.html.
Jesus is not a demigod, is he? That’s a common misconception, right?
Many Christians teach that Jesus was 100% man and 100% God. Is that Biblical?
Hi World Questioner,
Where does it say that Muslims believe that the Pentateuch/Torah and the New Testament are corrupt? That’s not what the passages from the Qur’an quoted in the article you linked say.
No, Jesus is not a demigod, as some New Agers and such believe. Jesus is God.
The Bible doesn’t explicitly say that Jesus was 100% man and 100% God. But that is consistent with what the Bible does say, as long as it is applied to the glorified and resurrected Jesus Christ. For example, Paul says, referring to Christ:
I miscommunicated. I wanted you to see that GotQuestions teaches that the Qur’an affirms the Bible.
I regret posting the comment mentioning “heavily mutated.” I’ve been heartwrenched by comments of mine in the past.
Hi World Questioner,
As the old saying goes, “Every saint has a past, and every sinner a future.” 😀
Hi World Questioner,
The link isn’t working. But in general, it is not necessary for a religion to say that Jesus Christ is divine for it to lead people to heaven. That idea is based on false doctrines held to in today’s corrupt Christian Church. See:
Does John 3:18 Mean that All Non-Christians Go to Hell?
There are other articles along the same lines linked from the end of this one.
What do you think of http://dawahcollective.com/2022/12/07/the-historical-development-of-the-trinity-an-analysis/?
Hi World Questioner,
Presumably this article presents a generally accepted Muslim view of the Trinity of Persons. To quote the article, that view, boiled down, is that:
The Trinity of Persons is also seen by Swedenborg and Swedenborgians as a form of polytheism. See:
Is the Doctrine of the Trinity Polytheistic?
Where we disagree with Islam is in the idea that Jesus was not God, and was not worshiped as God. The article ignores passages in the New Testament that make this clear. It could hardly be clearer than when Thomas addresses Jesus as “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28). See also the first section of this article here:
Christian Beliefs that the Bible Does Teach
The article is mistaken in saying that the early Christians did not worship Jesus. This is stated right in the Gospels themselves. See Matthew 14:33; 28:9, 17; Luke 24:52; John 9:38.
What both Nicene Christianity and Islam lack is Swedenborg’s doctrine of the glorification of Jesus. On that, see:
What Does it Mean that Jesus was “Glorified”?
Jesus is not some second Person of God. Jesus is God. But only after the Resurrection and Ascension. During his earthly lifetime, he was partly finite human and partly infinite divine. But after his process of glorification was complete, he was the Divine Humanity, which is the human side of the one God. Or in plain terms, Jesus was the one God, in whom are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are parts of one God, not three different Persons of God. (The article is also wrong that God doesn’t have parts. God does have parts, but they make one God just as all the parts of our body make one body.)
However, what the article demonstrates is one reason why God arranged for Islam to arise and prevail in the Middle East (where Christianity originated) and the surrounding areas: By the seventh century when Islam was founded, Christianity had become polytheistic. Islam was intended to establish monotheism in that part of the world. Christianity could not do the job precisely because it had become polytheistic.
If Christianity had not become polytheistic, Islam may not have been necessary. As it is, Judaism and Islam remain the primary monotheistic religions in the world. When true Christianity is restored, which will require the rejection of the doctrine of the Trinity of Persons, it will join them as a monotheistic religion.
I even submitted a comment on his post, linking to one of your blog posts.
What would the Muslim think of me linking to your blog post “Is the doctrine of the Trinity polytheistic” or “What is the Biblical basis for disbelief in the doctrine of the Trinity?” You’ve said in other comments “You will not convince him.”
Hi World Questioner,
That was in reference to Nicene Christians who believe in the Trinity. Muslims don’t believe in the Trinity, so they would have a different reaction to those articles. However, they still couldn’t accept that Jesus is God, as those articles say, since the Qur’an specifically denies this.
Let’s compare this to Star Wars:
Mainstream Christians, including Protestants and the Fundamentalists, are like the Jedi, the far-left people and Islam are like Palpatine and the Sith, and Swedenborg is, maybe more like Qui-Gon Jinn. Actually, could I have a role in this? I could be compared to a mix of Qui-Gon Jinn and Anakin Skywalker the Chosen One. Qui-Gon follows the will of the Force rather than what the Jedi teach. Likewise, I strive to follow the will of Elohim/God/Gods, not what any Church teaches. The Hebrew Elohim is plural, not singular. Is God/Gods/Elohim a singulare tantum or plurale tantum? Unlike Qui-Gon Jinn who is whole-hearted in following the will of the Force, I’m half-hearted and struggling in following the will of Elohim or the Holy Spirit.
Also, in Star Wars, it was the will of the Force for Palpatine and the Empire to rise and wipe out the Jedi. The Great Jedi Purge was the will of the Force, since the Jedi are filled with failure, hypocrisy, and hubris as Luke said in the Last Jedi.
Likewise, it is the will of Elohim/God/Gods for communism, liberal democrats, and Islam to rise and take down “today’s Christianity” as you say, because the mainstream Protestants, fundamental Baptists, and other mainstream Christians teach and believe in false doctrines and are arrogant and proud.
But it was also the will of the Force for Palpatine to eventually be defeated and for a new order to rise.
Likewise, it’s the will of Elohim/God(s) for True Christianity to have a victory over far-left democrats, communism, and Islam.
Hi World Questioner,
I’m more of a Star Trek guy. 🙂
But more seriously, the will of God is not to destroy anyone, but to lift everyone up to heaven. It is human will that wants to destroy, and that resists God’s will to lift both individuals and groups up to heaven. God is not against far-left people and Muslims. God loves them just as much as God loves far-right people and fundamentalist Christians, not to mention everyone else. We’re the ones who pit ourselves against one another.
What do you mean by “tantum”?
Check out https://infogalactic.com/info/Plurale_tantum
Hi World Questioner,
Ah. Then no, the Hebrew word אֱלֹהִים (‘ĕlōhîm) is not a plurale tantum. It has a singular: אֱלוֹהַּ (‘ĕlôha), but the singular is rarely used.
Also, the plural form almost always takes a singular verb, and singular pronouns. It is almost always treated as if it were a singular even though it is a plural form.
What if Muhammad had been killed in Mecca and never fled to Medina? Then Islam would never have arose. How would history have been changed? What if someone traveled back in time to the 7th or 8th century and shot down Muhammad and created an alternate reality timeline?
Hi World Questioner,
This is why I don’t think time travel into the past is possible. If it were, all sorts of future crackpots would travel into the past and create all sorts of mayhem. The result would be that history would become completely unstable.