Development of the doctrine of the Trinity, part 1
In wierwille’s book JESUS CHRIST IS NOT GOD, the title for chapter one is THE ORIGIN OF THE THREE-IN-ONE GOD . In excerpts from pages 11&ff wierwille states:
Long before the founding of Christianity the idea of a triune god or god-in-three persons was a common belief in ancient religions. Although many of these religions had many minor deities, they distinctly acknowledged that there was one supreme God who consisted of three persons or essences. The Babylonians used an equilateral triangle to represent this three-in-one god, now the symbol of the modern three-in-one believers…
…Although other religions for thousands of years before Christ was born worshipped a triune god, the trinity was not a part of Christian dogma and formal documents of the first three centuries after Christ. Certainly, during this time, Church leaders spoke of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but they never referred to them as co-equal or of one numerical essence or as three in one…
…Even such a conservative source as The New Catholic Encyclopedia states that trinitarianism became a part of Christ doctrine in the fourth, not the first, century:
“It is difficult, in the second half of the 20th century, to offer a clear, objective and straightforward account of the revelation, doctrinal evolution, and theological elaboration of the mystery of the Trinity….
There is …recognition on the part of historians of dogma and systematic theologians that when one does speak of an unqualified Trinitarianism, one has moved from the period of Christian origins to, say, the last quadrant of the 4th century. It was only then that what might be called the definitive Trinitarian dogma “one God in three Persons’ became thoroughly assimilated into Christian life and thought.
…The dogmatic formula “one God in three Persons” …was the product of 3 centuries of doctrinal development.”
There are, however, evidences of trinitarian concepts being introduced by Christians converted from paganism possibly as early as the last part of the first century. The gradual incorporation of pagan ideologies into Christian doctrine and practice came about by the interaction of four historical components:
1.The early apostles…had died…
2.The anticipation of the “speedy” return of Christ subsided…
3.Many pagans who were converted to Christianity still adhered to some of their previous beliefs and practices…
4.Due to the above three elements many people began anticipating a new revival or a new administration…
…Clearly, historians of Church dogma and systematic theologians agree that the idea of a Christian trinity was not a part of the first century Church. The twelve apostles never subscribed to it or received revelation about it. So how did a trinitarian doctrine come about? It gradually evolved and gained momentum in late first, second and third centuries as pagans, who had converted to Christianity, brought to Christianity some of their pagan beliefs and practices. Trinitarianism then was confirmed at Nicaea in 325 by Church bishops out of political expediency. Its reaffirmation as thereafter needed and received at Constantinople in 381. Since that time the “God-in-three-persons” doctrine has been adhered to as though it were divine revelation…
End of excerpts
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While wierwille’s four elements are noteworthy, I think to a very limited degree those things were bound to happen in the early stages of Christianity. But I would question his assumption that the Trinity was a pagan idea assimilated into Christian doctrine.
I think we should give the early church leaders some credit - not only for their historical proximity to the birth of Christianity – but for their efforts to reflect on Hebrew theology, familiarity with the words and works of Jesus and how it all relates to this new religious movement something I will get into in part 2)…
…and just thinking out loud here – there’s probably a lot of factors that contributed to the spiritual, intellectual, social, and doctrinal growth of the church. As in any endeavor there had to be a learning curve…a process where people developed skills by learning from their mistakes…That’s not to exclude personal illumination of the Spirit…and epistles from church leaders …and there was also thoughtful discussions among faithful believers, new converts and even potential converts:Acts 6:1-7Acts 15:2-7Acts 17:17Acts 19:8,9Galatians 2:11-21.Perhaps it’s difficult to set aside our affinity for the comfort and convenience of modern organized religions – and remind ourselves that Christianity did not start out as a fully conceived business model with a detailed doctrine of how to organize, inform, serve, and govern in any political, social, economic, or cultural setting.
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I am familiar with wierwille’s penchant for plagiarism as well as his flagrant disregard for intellectual standards – so I find it hard to trust his philosophical, historical, and biblical examination of the Scriptures…his analysis and speculation about themes and concepts involved in the development of the doctrine of the Trinity are highly suspect.
wierwille’s simplistic, biased, and biblically illiterate rationalization leads me to think he has an ax to grind. It’s hard to say what motivated a harmful and controlling cult-leader. Perhaps his poaching the intellectual property of others was more than just laziness and incompetence.
Was there a strong desire to be admired by others?
Reflecting on his manner of grandstanding in the PFAL class and the Advanced Class - he often drew upon controversial and even speculative or conspiratorial theories of others. It seemed to me that was his way of distinguishing himself as a cut above other Christian leaders and mainstream Christianity. It’s probable he may have thought his shallow and iconoclastic book JCING would boost his distinctiveness even further among devoted followers.
Before I go much further in disputing wierwille’s book JCING, I must say it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. The most difficult task is getting devoted followers of wierwille to see through his duplicity. After all, love is blind. There are several deceptive and manipulative long-standing practices of wierwille that one should be aware of:
1.claiming to hear from God audibly that God would teach him “The Word”
2.obtaining the title of “doctor” from a degree mill
3.insisting that followers always address him as Doctorwierwille
4.plagiarizing the works of others – and claiming he had God’s guidance to improve the accuracy and Scriptural coherency of it all
5.in open meetings I’ve heard wierwille state one must be devil-possessed to truly believe in the Trinity
6.in the Advanced Class wierwille has often stated those born of the seed of the serpent are the top leaders in denominations that promote the Trinity
7.to suit his agenda wierwille often portrayed an alternate view of history – like emphatically denying the Holocaust and falsely characterizing the controversy over Trinity doctrine following the Apostolic Age as political intrigue
8.unbeknownst to most TWI-followers wierwille was a big follower of the far-right groupJohn Birch Societyand would often express their paranoid and conspiratorial views as if God revealed it to him personally. wierwille’s fearmongering and conspiratorial tropes came into play big time during his Anti-Trinitarian rants.
Imagine showing those practices to any scholar or any serious Bible student (who is NOT enamored with wierwille’s man-of-God persona) – or for that matter, show the list to any street-smart person having the experience and knowledge necessary to deal with the potential difficulties or dangers of scam artists. Now imagine asking them “would you trust this guy?” I would be very surprised if anyone said they would.
In part 2I will get into a more honest portrayal of the development of the doctrine of the Trinity.
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That’s all for now, folks. Ta-ta, Grease Spotters
Edited by T-Bone My editor believes that some secret, but influential organization is responsible for my typos
Every religion has a history of doctrine that is more than a replication of the deposit of faith. Doctrine, as a mode of pedagogy, is conservative of its tradition; as a mode of inquiry, it may be innovative, generating new insights that alter the rhetoric of conventional teaching and, sometimes, its substance as well. There are, of course, wide variations. The persistent continuities between ancient Zoroastrianism and its modern form, Parsiism, or in Jainism, are clearer than those between primitive Hinduism and modern Vedanta (a Hindu philosophical system). All forms and sects of Buddhism appeal jointly to the Three Jewels (the Buddha; the dharma, or law; and the sangha, or monastic order) but are irreconcilable in their differences of interpretation and practice. In each case, the question as to what constitutes legitimate development (e.g., the rival claims of Theravada, or “Way of the Elders,” and Mahayana, or “Greater Vehicle,” in Buddhism) is left undetermined.
All Jews profess devotion to Torah, even in their disagreements over its authentic observance. Christians profess a common loyalty to the Bible and a common acceptance of the twin dogmas of the Trinity (that the one God is three Persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) and the God-Manhood of Jesus (that Christ is both divine and human) but then divide in their doctrinal systems as they have developed historically. Later dogmas (e.g., transubstantiation, the teaching that the substance of the bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper is changed into the substance of the body and blood of Christ, with the properties of the bread and wine remaining unchanged) were defined by the Latin Church without concurrence from Eastern Orthodoxy; the modern dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church (i.e., the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary, the bodily assumption into heaven of the Virgin Mary, and papal infallibility) were defined in separation from both the Eastern and the Protestant consensus. Protestantism has continued an emphasis on its distinctive dogmas of “grace alone” (sola gratia), “faith alone” (sola fide), and “scripture alone” (sola scriptura) but has nevertheless undergone immense change and proliferation…
…The process of doctrinal development has been explained variously as a process of logical unfolding or of organic growth, or else as a process of purgations of error and restorations of the original deposit. The notion of a logical unfolding assumes that all that has developed in a religious tradition over the course of its history was already implicit in its original foundation and subsequently had only to become more fully understood. In the case of the doctrine of the Trinity in Christianity, for example, it is argued that the abundant references in the New Testament and the earliest liturgies to God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit required the development of a dogma that would make explicit the essential Christian trinitarian conviction. Similarly, the dogma on the nature of Christ is understood as the logical outcome of sustained reflection on the testimony about Jesus as the Christ in the Bible and in the apostolic tradition. In the notion of logical unfolding, even in its continual development, truth remains forever unchanged…
…Theories of organic development stress the fact that the history of doctrine includes more than explicit formulation of implicit revelation. Such theories take into account the ways in which religious thought is affected by “contemporary” science, philosophy, and historical crises (e.g., the “Copernican revolution” in astronomy, the Renaissance, and other such events). The holders of this view are convinced, however, that all such historical supplementations have been integrated into the original deposit and thus exhibit the power of the religious organization (e.g., the church) to grow and change without substantial alteration of its identity. Thus, the 19th-century Roman Catholic cardinal John Henry Newman, in his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845), argued that the highest and most wonderful truths, though communicated to the world once for all by inspired teachers could not be comprehended all at once by the recipients, but,…have required only the longer time and deeper thought for their full elucidation. Newman also believed that this process was safeguarded by the authority of the teaching that would even allow for revisions and occasional corrections of antecedent…
…Protestants, by and large, have been more impressed by the lapses and deviations they see in church history and doctrine and thus have tended to construe authentic “development” in terms of a perennial recourse to scripture and apostolic tradition. Such a view takes historical flux for granted and is less sensitive to the problem of historical continuity…
…In all traditions, the course of doctrinal development is crucially affected by the occasional emergence of profound and powerful thinkers who have gathered up scattered elements in their various traditions in freshly relevant syntheses, altering thereby the subsequent history of that tradition. This can be seen, for example, in the North African theologian Augustine’s contributions to the making of Latin Christianity and in the matching services of St. John of Damascus in Eastern Orthodoxy. Such also was the role and contribution of Moses Maimonides in medieval Judaism (e.g., the Thirteen Articles of Faith in his commentary on the Mishna) and of St. Thomas Aquinas in medieval Christianity (e.g., Summa theologiae). The 16th-century reformers Martin Luther and John Calvin gave Protestantism its classical form, to be followed by yet other and different system builders (e.g., Friedrich Schleiermacher in the 19th century and Karl Barth in the 20th century)…
…Each theory of development has had its own distinctive prescription for doctrinal stability and doctrinal change. In Christianity, Eastern Orthodoxy locates its authority in “Holy Tradition,” which is fixed and guided by the dogmas proclaimed by the ecumenical councils. Roman Catholicism relies on the magisterium (teaching authority) of the church, which is directed by the bishops as a “college” (collegium episcoporum) and supremely by the bishop of Rome as their collegial head. Protestantism has sought to bind both tradition and the church to the authority of holy scripture, with the resulting problem of specifying what is to be regarded as truly authoritative interpretations of scripture…
The relation of faith, reason, and religious insight to doctrine and dogma
Insofar as doctrines and dogmas represent conceptualizations of the human encounter with the divine mystery, they are bound to reflect the interplay of faith and reason in religious experience and to imply some notion of levels and stages in the progress of believers as they move from the threshold of faith toward its fulfillment. Doctrine is concerned with communication and consensus, with the exposure of the religious vision to rational probes and queries. There is, therefore, a tension in all religions between mystical intuition and logical articulation, between insight and dialogue. Most traditions agree that perfect understanding is a goal that lies beyond a “simple faith” and the routine observance of rites and duties. Most of them also agree that the utmost pinnacle of religious insight is ineffable. One mode of differentiation between doctrinal traditions, therefore, is their relative openness or resistance to the auxiliary services of philosophy and science of faith’s fulfillment…
…In Christianity, the dialectic between faith and reason has ranged from the fideism (emphasis on faith) of the 2nd-century North African theologian Tertullian to the intellectualism of Thomas Aquinas. An ancient distinction between faith as bare assent to orthodox doctrine (fides informis) and faith as existential trust in God’s grace (fides formata) gave rise to the further distinction between faith as a set of doctrines to be believed (fides quae creditur) and faith as personal involvement (fides qua creditur). Philipp Melanchthon, a 16th-century Lutheran reformer, stressed the point that even the devils are “orthodox” (having “dead faith”) but to no avail, since only those who have embraced God’s reconciling love (fiducia) receive the benefits of salvation (“living faith”). In general, this distinction has become standard in Protestantism…
Changing conceptions
In all the great religious traditions, and between them, the clash of doctrines and dogmas has, more often than not, been polemical. The odium theologorum (“bitterness of the theologians”) of which Melanchthon once complained so plaintively has been notorious. Within the several traditions, doctrinal disputes have sometimes led to division or else have accompanied divisions caused otherwise. In relationships between the great world religions, dogmas and doctrines have usually been regarded as mutually exclusive. There are, however, significant signs of change in this attitude. The rise and spread of the ecumenical movement in the 20th century and notable advances in the comparative study of world religions reflect an enlarged commitment to the widest possible community of mutual religious interests. The “Decree on Ecumenism” and its “Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions” of the Roman Catholic Second Vatican Council (1962–65) are signal instances of this disposition.
And here’s a nifty visual aid on timeline of Christianity- which you can click on in case the gif below doesn’t work…a handy overview of issues and key events at a glance
that's all for now...Ta-ta
...more to come in part 3
Edited by T-Bone Fixing typos one mistake at a time for almost a sixteenth of a century
While wierwille’s four elements are noteworthy, I think to a very limited degree those things were bound to happen in the early stages of Christianity. But I would question his assumption that the Trinity was a pagan idea assimilated into Christian doctrine.
But that’s not to say some philosophical Christians did not synthesize concepts from outside sources. When dealing with the abstract…metaphysical ideas and theories it’s helpful to usemental constructs. Many branches of science depend on such cerebral activity. A construct derives its name from the fact that it is a mental construction, derived from scientific process: observing natural phenomena, inferring the common features of those observations, and constructing a label for the commonality or the underlying cause. A construct derives its scientific value from the shared meaning it represents for different people. If a construct is clearly articulated and the phenomena it encompasses are clearly defined, it becomes a useful conceptual tool that facilitates communication.From Wikipedia: construct in psychology
Part 3 development of the doctrine of the Trinity
We find something of this nature when Paul was preaching at the Areopagus - northwest of the city of Athens, Greece…it’s a small hill covered in stone seats. This area was once used as a forum for the rulers of Athens to hold trials, debate, and discuss important matters.(seeGot Questions Org: Areopagus) …note Paul makes good use of being familiar with popular culture – finding common ground that his audience can relate to:
16 While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. 17 So he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. 18 A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to debate with him. Some of them asked, “What is this babbler trying to say?” Others remarked, “He seems to be advocating foreign gods.” They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. 19 Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we would like to know what they mean.” 21 (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)
22 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.
24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
29 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”
32 When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.” 33 At that, Paul left the Council. 34 Some of the people became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others.Acts 17:16-34
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Historians, archaeologists, mainline and liberal theologians generally believe that the authors of books in the Bible simply accepted the contemporary Pagan beliefs taught in neighboring countries about the shape of the earth, and the layout of the universe. That involved a flat Earth with the Sun, Moon and Stars revolving around the Earth…
…Many conservative Christians believe that God inspired the authors of the Bible to write inerrant, text. That is, writings that are totally free of error. Interpreting those biblical passages which discuss cosmology causes a problem, When the passages are interpreted literally, they conflict with scientific beliefs that have been in place for centuries. The latter describe an earth that is approximates a sphere in shape, around which the Moon revolves, with the Earth and Moon revolving around the Sun. The Sun, in turn, is located in one of the arms of a spiral galaxy composed of 100 to 400 billion stars. The Earth is very definitely not the center of the Solar System, the Milky Way, or the universe.from: Religious Tolerance Org: The Bible and Cosmology
John H. Waltona professor of The Old Testament at Wheaton College said the Bible delivers its meaning less like an encyclopedia – a repository of facts – and more like a conversation – and proposes that the Bible was written FOR us, but not TO us. The people to whom it was written meaningfully are the ancient peoples who spoke the Hebrew and Greek languages in which the documents were written and who were immersed in the culture that provides the context that gives the words of those languages meaning. The cosmological remarks in Genesis 1 are merely common references – not scientific affirmations. It was information that the ancient audience ALREADY KNEW as accepted cosmology.
The literary intent of the Genesis 1 cosmic hymn is to depict the world as having been originally established as a place of order. In our culture, our concept of existence usually involves physical material – something tangible – it has mass – takes up space or experiences – like love, the passage of time…living from hand to mouth defines a meager existence. By contrast, in the ancient world something existed when it had a function – a role to play. In the ancient world people were much more inclined to think of creation not so much as to produce the physical cosmos but to establish order and making it functional. The cosmos was not seen as complicated machinery or systems but more like an assortment of kingdoms - realms regarded as being under the control of a particular being. Therefore, it was important to know who governed a particular domain.
The way my pea brain understands it – it’s like explaining to someone that all the big businesses in town that they thought were independent are actually run by one parent company.
Concerning the development of religion, I think sometimes there might be a tension between the tendency to syncretism and the purist’s insistence on absolute adherence to traditional rules or structures…well…enough on a promo for keeping an open mind…let’s look at several sources for the development of the doctrine of the Trinity.
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While the developed doctrine of the Trinity is not explicit in the books that constitute the New Testament, the New Testament possesses a triadic understanding of God and contains a number of Trinitarian formulas. The doctrine of the Trinity was first formulated among the early Christians and fathers of the Church as they attempted to understand the relationship between Jesus and God in their scriptural documents and prior traditions.
Though the Trinity is mainly a Christian concept, Judaism has had paralleling views, especially among writings from the kabballah tradition…
…While the developed doctrine of the Trinity is not explicit in the books that constitute the New Testament, the New Testament contains a number of Trinitarian formulas, including Matthew 28:19, 2 Corinthians 13:14, 1 Corinthians 12:4–5, Ephesians 4:4–6, 1 Peter 1:2, and Revelation 1:4–5. Reflection by early Christians on passages such as the Great Commission: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" and Paul the Apostle's blessing: "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all", leading theologians across history in attempting to articulate the relationship between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Eventually, the diverse references to God, Jesus, and the Spirit found in the New Testament were brought together to form the doctrine of the Trinity—one Godhead subsisting in three persons and one substance. The doctrine of the Trinity was used to oppose alternative views of how the three are related and to defend the church against charges of worshiping two or three gods…
…In the Pauline epistles, the public, collective devotional patterns towards Jesus in the early Christian community are reflective of Paul's perspective on the divine status of Jesus in what scholars have termed a "binitarian" pattern or shape of devotional practice (worship) in the New Testament, in which "God" and Jesus are thematized and invoked.[ Jesus receives prayer (1 Corinthians 1:2; 2 Corinthians 12:8–9), the presence of Jesus is confessionally invoked by believers (1 Corinthians 16:22; Romans 10:9-13; Philippians 2:10-11), people are baptized in Jesus' name (1 Corinthians 6:11; Romans 6:3), Jesus is the reference in Christian fellowship for a religious ritual meal (the Lord's Supper; 1 Corinthians 11:17-34). Jesus is described as "existing in the very form of God" (Philippians 2:6), and having the "fullness of the Deity [living] in bodily form" (Colossians 2:9). Jesus is also in some verses directly called God (Rom 9:5,Titus 2:13, 2 Peter 1:1)…
…Jesus also receives προσκύνησις (proskynesis) in the aftermath of the resurrection, a Greek term that either expresses the contemporary social gesture of bowing to a superior, either on one's knees or in full prostration (in Matthew 18:26 a slave performs προσκύνησις to his master so that he would not be sold after being unable to pay his debts). The term can also refer to the religious act of devotion towards a deity. While Jesus receives προσκύνησις a number of times in the synoptic Gospels, only a few can be said to refer to divine worship. This includes Matthew 28:16–20, an account of the resurrected Jesus receiving worship from his disciples after proclaiming he has been given authority over the cosmos and his ever-continuing presence with the disciples (forming an inclusio with the beginning of the Gospel, where Jesus is given the name Emmanuel/"God with us", a name that alludes to the God of Israel's continuing presence with his followers throughout the Old Testament (Genesis 28:15; Deuteronomy 20:1) and used in reference to Jesus in the resurrection account). Whereas some have argued that Matthew 28:19 was an interpolation on account of its absence from the first few centuries of early Christian quotations, scholars largely accept the passage as authentic due to its supporting manuscript evidence and that it does appear to be either quoted in the Didache (7:1–3)or at least reflected in the Didache as part of a common tradition from which both Matthew and the Didache emerged.
Jesus receiving divine worship in the post-resurrection accounts is further mirrored in Luke 24:52.[37][38][37] Acts depicts the early Christian movement as a public cult centered around Jesus in several passages. In Acts, it is common for individual Christians to "call" upon the name of Jesus (9:14, 21; 22:16), an idea precedented in the Old Testament descriptions of calling on the name of YHWH as a form of prayer. The story of Stephen depicts Stephen invoking and crying out to Jesus in the final moments of his life to receive his spirit (7:59–60). Acts further describes a common ritual practice inducting new members into the early Jesus sect by baptizing them in Jesus' name (2:38; 8:16; 10:48; 19:5). According to Dale Allison, Acts depicts the appearances of Jesus to Paul as a divine theophany, styled on and identified with the God responsible for the theophany of Ezekiel in the Old Testament…
…Some have suggested that John presents a hierarchy[45][46] when he quotes Jesus as saying, "The Father is greater than I", a statement which was appealed to by nontrinitarian groups such as Arianism.However, Church Fathers such as Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas argued this statement was to be understood as Jesus speaking about his human nature…
Holy Spirit in the New Testament
Prior Jewish theology held that the Spirit is merely the divine presence of God himself,[50] whereas orthodox Christian theology holds that the Holy Spirit is a distinct person of God himself. This development begins early in the New Testament, as the Spirit of God receives much more emphasis and description comparably than it had in earlier Jewish writing. Whereas there are 75 references to the Spirit within the Old Testament and 35 identified in the non-biblical Dead Sea Scrolls, the New Testament, despite its significantly shorter length, mentions the Spirit 275 times. In addition to its larger emphasis and importance placed on the Spirit in the New Testament, the Spirit is also described in much more personalized and individualized terms than earlier.[51] Larry Hurtado writes;
Moreover, the New Testament references often portray actions that seem to give the Spirit an intensely personal quality, probably more so than in Old Testament or ancient Jewish texts. So, for example, the Spirit "drove" Jesus into the wilderness (Mk 1:12; compare "led" in Mt. 4:1/Lk 4:1), and Paul refers to the Spirit interceding for believers (Rom 8:26–27) and witnessing to believers about their filial status with God (Rom 8:14–16). To cite other examples of this, in Acts the Spirit alerts Peter to the arrival of visitors from Cornelius (10:19), directs the church in Antioch to send forth Barnabas and Saul (13:2–4), guides the Jerusalem council to a decision about Gentile converts (15:28), at one point forbids Paul to missionize in Asia (16:6), and at another point warns Paul (via prophetic oracles) of trouble ahead in Jerusalem (21:11).
The Holy Spirit is described as God in the book of the Acts of the Apostles
But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land? 4 While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to man but to God.” Acts 5:3-4 …Peter first says Annias is lying to the Holy Spirit, he then says he is lying to God.
In the New Testament, the Spirit is not portrayed as the recipient of cultic devotion, which instead, is typically offered to God the Father and to the risen/glorified Jesus. Although what became mainstream Christianity subsequently affirmed the propriety of including the Spirit as the recipient of worship as reflected in the developed form of the Nicene Creed, perhaps the closest to this in the New Testament is in Matthew 28:19 and 2 Corinthians 13:14 which describe the Spirit as the subject of religious ritual.
Holy Spirit in later Christian theology
As the Arian controversy was dissipating, the debate moved from the deity of Jesus Christ to the equality of the Holy Spirit with the Father and Son. On one hand, the Pneumatomachi sect declared that the Holy Spirit was an inferior person to the Father and Son. On the other hand, the Cappadocian Fathers argued that the Holy Spirit was equal to the Father and Son in nature or substance.
Although the main text used in defense of the deity of the Holy Spirit was Matthew 28:19, Cappadocian Fathers such as Basil the Great argued from other verses such as "But Peter said, 'Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God.'" (Acts 5:3–4).
Before the Council of Nicaea
Detail of the earliest known artwork of the Trinity, the Dogmatic or Trinity Sarcophagus, c. 350 (Vatican Museums): Three similar figures, representing the Trinity, are involved in the creation of Eve, whose much smaller figure is cut off at lower right; to her right, Adam lies on the ground
While the developed doctrine of the Trinity is not explicit in the books that constitute the New Testament, it was first formulated as early Christians attempted to understand the relationship between Jesus and God in their scriptural documents and prior traditions.
An early reference to the three “persons” of later Trinitarian doctrines appears towards the end of the first century, where Clement of Rome rhetorically asks in his epistle as to why corruption exists among some in the Christian community; "Do we not have one God, and one Christ, and one gracious Spirit that has been poured out upon us, and one calling in Christ?" (1 Clement 46:6). A similar example is found in the first century Didache, which directs Christians to "baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit". Ignatius of Antioch similarly refers to all three persons around AD 110, exhorting obedience to "Christ, and to the Father, and to the Spirit".[60] Though all of these early sources do reference the three persons of the Trinity, none articulate full divinity, equal status, or shared being as elaborated by Trinitarians in later centuries.
The pseudonymous Ascension of Isaiah, written sometime between the end of the first century and the beginning of the third century, possesses a "proto-trinitarian" view, such as in its narrative of how the inhabitants of the sixth heaven sing praises to "the primal Father and his Beloved Christ, and the Holy Spirit".
Justin Martyr (AD 100 – c. 165) also writes, "in the name of God, the Father and Lord of the universe, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit". Justin Martyr is the first to use much of the terminology that would later become widespread in codified Trinitarian theology. For example, he describes that the Son and Father are the same "being" (ousia) and yet are also distinct faces (prosopa), anticipating the three persons (hypostases) that come with Tertullian and later authors. Justin describes how Jesus, the Son, is distinguishable from the Father but also derives from the Father, using the analogy of a fire (representing the Son) that is lit from its source, a torch (representing the Father).[63] At another point, Justin Martyr wrote that "we worship him [Jesus Christ] with reason, since we have learned that he is the Son of the living God himself, and believe him to be in second place and the prophetic Spirit in the third" (1 Apology 13, cf. ch. 60).
The Adoration of the Trinity by Albrecht Dürer (1511): from top to bottom: Holy Spirit (dove), God the Father and the crucified Christ
The first of the early Church Fathers to be recorded using the word "Trinity" was Theophilus of Antioch writing in the late 2nd century. He defines the Trinity as God, his Word (Logos) and his Wisdom (Sophia)[64] in the context of a discussion of the first three days of creation, following the early Christian practice of identifying the Holy Spirit as the Wisdom of God.
The first defense of the doctrine of the Trinity was by Tertullian, who was born around 150–160 AD, explicitly "defined" the Trinity as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and defended his theology against Praxeas, although he noted that the majority of the believers in his day found issue with his doctrine.
The "Heavenly Trinity" joined to the "Earthly Trinity" through the Incarnation of the Son – The Heavenly and Earthly Trinities by Murillo (c. 1677).
St. Justin and Clement of Alexandria referenced all three persons of the Trinity in their doxologies and St. Basil likewise, in the evening lighting of lamps.
Origen of Alexandria (AD 185 – c. 253) has often been interpreted as Subordinationist — believing in shared divinity of the three persons but not in co-equality. (Some modern researchers have argued that Origen might have actually been anti-Subordinationist and that his own Trinitarian theology inspired the Trinitarian theology of the later Cappadocian Fathers.)
The concept of the Trinity can be seen as developing significantly during the first four centuries by the Church Fathers in reaction to theological interpretations known as Adoptionism, Sabellianism, and Arianism. Adoptionism was the belief that Jesus was an ordinary man, born of Joseph and Mary, who became the Christ and Son of God at his baptism. In 269, the Synods of Antioch condemned Paul of Samosata for his Adoptionist theology, and also condemned the term homoousios (ὁμοούσιος, "of the same being") in the modalist sense in which he used it.
Among the nontrinitarian beliefs, the Sabellianism taught that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are essentially one and the same, the difference being simply verbal, describing different aspects or roles of a single being. For this view Sabellius was excommunicated for heresy in Rome c. 220…
…Some Kabbalist writings have a kind of a Trinitarian view of God, speaking of "stages of God's being, aspects of the divine personality", Zohar in 1286 B.C. additionally says that "God is they, and they are it". Another kabbalistic writing speaks of God being "three hidden lights, which constitute one essence and one root". Some Jewish philosophers additionally saw God as a "thinker, thinking and thought", taking from some Augustinian Trinitarian analogies.
Philo the Jew recognized a threefold character of God, but had many differences from the Christian view of the Trinity. John William Colenso argued that the Book of Enoch implies a kind of a trinitarian view of God, seeing the "Lord of the spirits", the "Elected one" and the "Divine power" each partaking of the name of God.
Judaism traditionally maintains a tradition of monotheism that excludes the possibility of a Trinity. In Judaism, God is understood to be the absolute one, indivisible, and incomparable being who is the ultimate cause of all existence….
The Trinity is Christianity’s most unique, defining, incomprehensible, and awesome mystery. It is the revelation of who our Almighty Creator actually is—not just a god, but an infinite Being existing in eternity as three co-equal, infinite Persons, consubstantial yet distinct. The origin of the doctrine of the Trinity is the Bible, although the word Trinity is not used in the Bible.
As all orthodox Christians agree, the doctrine of the Trinity holds that God is one essence but three Persons; God has one nature, but three centers of consciousness; God is only one What, but three Whos. Some unbelievers mistakenly call this a contradiction. Rather, the doctrine of the Trinity is a mystery revealed by God in His Word. A contradiction would be to claim that God has only one nature but also three natures, or that He is only one Person but also three Persons.
From the very beginning of the church, Christians have understood the mystery of the Trinity, even before they began using the term Trinity.
For example, the first Christians knew the Son was the Creator (John 1:1–2), the “I Am” of the Old Testament (Exodus 3:14; John 8:58), equal to the Father (John 14:9), and the Judge of all the earth (Genesis 18:25; John 5:22), who is to be worshiped as only God is allowed to be (Deuteronomy 6:13; Luke 4:8; Matthew 14:33).
The first Christians knew the Holy Spirit was a separate Person with His own thoughts and will (John 16:13), who intercedes for us with God (Romans 8:27), proving He is a distinct Person from God the Father—since intercession requires at least two parties (no one intercedes with himself). Furthermore, a human can be forgiven for blaspheming God the Son, but not for blaspheming God the Holy Spirit (Matthew 12:32).
New Testament writers mention all three Persons of the Trinity together numerous times (e.g., Romans 1:4; 15:30; 2 Corinthians 13:14; Ephesians 1:13–14; 1 Thessalonians 1:3–6). The early believers knew that the Father and the Son sent the third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit—“another counselor”—to live in our hearts (John 14:16–17, 26; 16:7). These mysteries were accepted fully by the early church as revealed truth, yet without the label of “the Holy Trinity.”
The Old Testament gave glimpses of the Trinity, and no passage of Scripture contradicts the doctrine. For example, in Genesis 1:26 God says in the plural, “Let us make mankind in our image.” God declares that He was completely alone when He created everything, stretching out the heavens and spreading out the earth “by myself” (Isaiah 44:24). Yet Jesus was the instrument of God’s creation (John 1:1–3; Colossians 1:16), in the company of the Holy Spirit who was hovering over the primordial waters (Genesis 1:2). Only the doctrine of the Trinity can explain it all.
The Torah hinted at the idea of God existing in multiple Persons and predicted His coming in the flesh. The Old Testament is filled with references to a coming world ruler (Genesis 49:10) to be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2), who was not only God’s Son (Isaiah 9:6) but a Messiah who would be God in the flesh (Isaiah 7:14; Zechariah 2:8–11). But the Jews were looking for—and, under Roman occupation, desperately hoping for—a triumphant, conquering Messiah, not a lowly, suffering Servant (Isaiah 53). Israel failed to recognize the Son of God due to His ordinariness (Isaiah 53:2; Matthew 13:54–58; John 10:33), and they killed Him (Zechariah 12:10; Acts 2:36).
In the years after the death of the last apostle, John, there were many attempts by Christian theologians to define and explain God to the church. Explanations of spiritual reality to earthly beings will always fall short; some teachers’ explanations were a bit off, while others sank into heresy. The errors put forward in post-apostolic times ranged from Jesus being all God and only appearing to be human (Docetism), to His being created rather than eternal (Adoptionism, Arianism, and others), to there being three separate gods in the same family (Tritheism), to the one God playing three different roles at different times (Modalism, Monarchianism).
As no religion can exist without knowing who or what its followers worship, there was a great need to define God in a way that all followers of Christianity would agree upon as “official” or orthodox doctrine. And, if Jesus were not God, all Christians were heretics for worshiping a created being.
It seems that the church father Tertullian (AD 160–225) was the first to apply the term Trinity to God. Tertullian uses the term in Against Praxeus, written in 213 to explain and defend the Trinity against the teaching of his contemporary Praxeus, who espoused the Monarchian heresy. From there, we can jump forward over a century of church discussion, schisms, and debate to the Council of Nicea in 325, when the Trinity was finally confirmed as official church doctrine.
A final observation. Theology is the attempt by flawed humans to understand the words of the Bible, just as science is the attempt by flawed humans to understand the facts of nature. All the facts of nature are true, just as all the original words of the Bible are true. But humans are limited and make lots of mistakes, as history continually shows. So, where there is error or disagreement in science or theology, both disciplines have methods of correction. The history of the early church reveals that many sincere Christian believers “got it wrong” when it came to defining God’s nature (a great lesson on the need for humility). But, through a careful study of God’s Word, the church was finally able to articulate what the Bible clearly teaches and what they knew to be true—God exists as an eternal Trinity.
This supplementary document discusses the history of Trinity theories. Although early Christian theologians speculated in many ways on the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, no one clearly and fully asserted the doctrine of the Trinity as explained at the top of the main entry until around the end of the so-called Arian Controversy. (See 3.2 below and section 3.1 of the supplementary document on unitarianism.) Nonetheless, proponents of such theories always claim them to be in some sense founded on, or at least illustrated by, biblical texts.
Sometimes popular antitrinitarian literature paints “the” doctrine as strongly influenced by, or even illicitly poached from some non-Christian religious or philosophical tradition. Divine threesomes abound in the religious writings and art of ancient Europe, Egypt, the near east, and Asia. These include various threesomes of male deities, of female deities, of Father-Mother-Son groups, or of one body with three heads, or three faces on one head (Griffiths 1996). However, similarity alone doesn’t prove Christian copying or even indirect influence, and many of these examples are, because of their time and place, unlikely to have influenced the development of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.
A direct influence on second century Christian theology is the Jewish philosopher and theologian Philo of Alexandria (a.k.a. Philo Judaeus) (ca. 20 BCE–ca. 50 CE), the product of Alexandrian Middle Platonism (with elements of Stoicism and Pythagoreanism). Inspired by the Timaeus of Plato, Philo read the Jewish Bible as teaching that God created the cosmos by his Word (logos), the first-born son of God. Alternately, or via further emanation from this Word, God creates by means of his creative power and his royal power, conceived of both as his powers, and yet as agents distinct from him, giving him, as it were, metaphysical distance from the material world (Philo Works; Dillon 1996, 139–83; Morgan 1853, 63–148; Norton 1859, 332–74; Wolfson 1973, 60–97).
Another influence may have been the Neopythagorean Middle Platonist Numenius (fl. 150), who posited a triad of gods, calling them, alternately, “Father, creator and creature; fore-father, offspring and descendant; and Father, maker and made” (Guthrie 1917, 125), or on one ancient report, Grandfather, Father, and Son (Dillon 1996, 367). Moderatus taught a similar triad somewhat earlier (Stead 1985, 583).
Justin Martyr (d. ca. 165) describes the origin of the logos (= the pre-human Jesus) from God using three metaphors (light from the sun, fire from fire, speaker and his speech), each of which is found in either Philo or Numenius (Gaston 2007, 53). Accepting the Philonic thesis that Plato and other Greek philosophers received their wisdom from Moses, he holds that Plato in his dialogue Timaeus discussed the Son (logos), as, Justin says, “the power next to the first God”. And in Plato’s second letter, Justin finds a mention of a third, the Holy Spirit (Justin, First Apology, 60). As with the Middle Platonists, Justin’s triad is hierarchical or ordered. And Justin’s scheme is not, properly, trinitarian. The one God is not the three, but rather one of them and the primary one, the ultimate source of the second and third…
The Arian Controversy
It was only in response to the controversy sparked by the Alexandrian presbyter Arius (ca. 256–336) that a critical mass of bishops rallied around what eventually became standard language about the Trinity. This controversy was complex, and has been much illuminated by recent historians (Ayres 2004; Freeman 2008; Hanson 1988; Pelikan 1971; Rubenstein 1999; Williams 2001). It can be briefly summarized as follows. Arius taught, in accordance with an earlier subordinationist theological tradition, that the Son of God was a creature, made by God from nothing a finite time ago. Some time around 318–21 a controversy broke out, with Arius’ teaching opposed initially by his bishop Alexander of Alexandria (d. 326). Alexander examined and excommunicated Arius. Numerous churchmen, adhering to subordinationist traditions about the Son rallied to Arius’ side, while others, favoring theologies holding to the eternal existence of the Son and his (in some sense) ontological equality with the Father, joined his opponents. The dispute threatened to split the church, and a series of councils ensued, variously excommunicating and vindicating Arius and his defenders, or their opponents. Each side successively tried to win the favor of the then-current emperor, trying to manipulate imperial power to crush its opposition.
From the standpoint of later catholic orthodoxy, a key episode in this series occurred in 325, when a council of bishops convened by the Emperor Constantine (ca. 280–337) decreed that the Father and Son were homoousios (same substance or essence). Arius and his party were excommunicated. The intended meaning of ousia here was far from clear, given the term’s complex history and use, and the failure of the council to disambiguate it (Stead 1994, 160–72). They most likely settled on the term because it was disagreeable to the party siding with Arius. This new and ambiguous formula fanned the flames of controversy, as subordinationists and anti-subordinationists understood the phrase differently when signing on to it, and later argued for conflicting interpretations of it.
By the time of the council of Constantinople (381 CE), an anti-subordinationist reading, vigorously championed by Alexandrian bishop Athanasius (d. 373) had the upper hand; homoousios was understood as asserting the Father and Son to not merely be similar beings, but in some sense one being. While it stopped short of saying that the Holy Spirit was homoousios with the Father and Son, the council did say that the Holy Spirit “is worshiped and glorified together with the Father and the Son”, and added in a letter accompanying their creed that the three share “a single Godhead and power and substance” (Leith 1982, 33; Tanner 1990, 24, 28). Over the ensuing period the same sorts of arguments used to promote the divinity of the Son, were reapplied to the Holy Spirit, and eventually inhibitions to applying homoousios to the Holy Spirit evaporated.
Athanasius and others in the prevailing party argued that the salvation of humans requires the Son and Holy Spirit to be equally divine with the Father. This kind of argument depends on various controversial models of salvation, such as the one on which salvation involves the “deification” or “divinization” of humans, which can only be accomplished by one who is himself divine (Rusch 1980, 22–23). Despite shifting convictions about what salvation is and how God accomplishes it, this basic sort of argument remains popular—that if Christ and/or the Holy Spirit were not in some sense “fully divine”, then humanity couldn’t be saved by their actions. (For an influential medieval argument, see Anselm Cur.) Perhaps the most currently popular such argument is that our forgiveness by God, an infinitely valuable being, requires an atoning sacrifice of infinite value. Hence, Christ has to be fully divine, as only a fully divine being has infinite value…
The central Christian affirmations about God are condensed and focused in the classic doctrine of the Trinity, which has its ultimate foundation in the special religious experience of the Christians in the first communities. This basis of experience is older than the doctrine of the Trinity. It consisted of the fact that God came to meet Christians in a threefold figure: (1) as Creator, Lord of the history of salvation, Father, and Judge, as revealed in the Old Testament; (2) as the Lord who, in the figure of Jesus Christ, lived among human beings and was present in their midst as the “Resurrected One”; and (3) as the Holy Spirit, whom they experienced as the power of the new life, the miraculous potency of the kingdom of God. The question as to how to reconcile the encounter with God in this threefold figure with faith in the oneness of God, which was the Jews’ and Christians’ characteristic mark of distinction from paganism, agitated the piety of ancient Christendom in the deepest way. In the course of history, it also provided the strongest impetus for a speculative theology, which inspired Western metaphysics for many centuries. In the first two centuries of the Christian Era, however, a series of different answers to this question developed.
The diversity in interpretation of the Trinity was conditioned especially through the understanding of the figure of Jesus Christ. According to the theology of the Gospel According to John, the divinity of Jesus Christ constituted the departure point for understanding his person and efficacy. The Gospel According to Mark, however, did not proceed from a theology of incarnation but instead understood the baptism of Jesus Christ as the adoption of the man Jesus Christ into the Sonship of God, accomplished through the descent of the Holy Spirit. The situation became further aggravated by the conceptions of the special personal character of the manifestation of God developed by way of the historical figure of Jesus Christ; the Holy Spirit was viewed not as a personal figure but rather as a power and appeared graphically only in the form of the dove and thus receded, to a large extent, in the Trinitarian speculation.
Introduction of Neoplatonic themes
The Johannine literature in the Bible provides the first traces of the concept of Christ as the Logos, the “word” or “principle” that issues from eternity. Under the influence of subsequent Neoplatonic philosophy, this tradition became central in speculative theology. There was interest in the relationship of the “oneness” of God to the “triplicity” of divine manifestations. This question was answered through the Neoplatonic metaphysics of being. The transcendent God, who is beyond all being, all rationality, and all conceptuality, is divested of divine transcendence. In a first act of becoming self-conscious the Logos recognizes itself as the divine mind (Greek: nous), or divine world reason, which was characterized by the Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus as the “Son” who goes forth from the Father. The next step by which the transcendent God becomes self-conscious consists in the appearance in the divine nous of the divine world, the idea of the world in its individual forms as the content of the divine consciousness. In Neoplatonic philosophy both the nous and the idea of the world are designated the hypostases of the transcendent God. Christian theology took the Neoplatonic metaphysics of substance as well as its doctrine of hypostases as the departure point for interpreting the relationship of the “Father” to the “Son.” This process stands in direct relationship with a speculative interpretation of Christology in connection with Neoplatonic Logos speculation.
In transferring the Neoplatonic hypostases doctrine to the Christian interpretation of the Trinity there existed the danger that the different manifestations of God—as known by the Christian experience of faith: Father, Son, Holy Spirit—would be transformed into a hierarchy of gods graduated among themselves and thus into a polytheism. Though this danger was consciously avoided and, proceeding from a Logos Christology, the complete sameness of essence of the three manifestations of God was emphasized, there arose the danger of a relapse into a triplicity of equally ranked gods, which would displace the idea of the oneness of God.
Attempts to define the Trinity
By the 3rd century it was already apparent that all attempts to systematize the mystery of the divine Trinity with the theories of Neoplatonic hypostases metaphysics were unsatisfying and led to a series of new conflicts. The high point of these conflicts was the so-called Arian controversy. In his interpretation of the idea of God, Arius sought to maintain a formal understanding of the oneness of God. In defense of that oneness, he was obliged to dispute the sameness of essence of the Son and the Holy Spirit with God the Father, as stressed by other theologians of his day. From the outset, the controversy between both parties took place upon the common basis of the Neoplatonic concept of substance, which was foreign to the New Testament itself. It is no wonder that the continuation of the dispute on the basis of the metaphysics of substance likewise led to concepts that have no foundation in the New Testament—such as the question of the sameness of essence (homoousia) or similarity of essence (homoiousia) of the divine persons.
The basic concern of Arius was and remained disputing the oneness of essence of the Son and the Holy Spirit with God the Father, in order to preserve the oneness of God. The Son, thus, became a “second God, under God the Father”—i.e., he is a divine figure begotten by God. The Son is not himself God, a creature that was willed by God, made like God by divine grace, and sent as a mediator between God and humankind. Arius’s teaching was intended to defend the idea of the oneness of the Christian concept of God against all reproaches that Christianity introduces a new, more sublime form of polytheism.
This attempt to save the oneness of God led, however, to an awkward consequence. For Jesus Christ, as the divine Logos become human, moves thereby to the side of the creatures—i.e., to the side of the created world that needs redemption. How, then, should such a Christ, himself a part of the creation, be able to achieve the redemption of the world? On the whole, the Christian church rejected, as an unhappy attack upon the reality of redemption, such a formal attempt at saving the oneness of God as was undertaken by Arius.
Arius’s main rival was St. Athanasius of Alexandria, for whom the point of departure was not a philosophical-speculative principle but rather the reality of redemption, the certainty of salvation. The redemption of humanity from sin and death is only then guaranteed if Christ is total God and total human being, if the complete essence of God penetrates human nature right into the deepest layer of its carnal corporeality. Only if God in the full meaning of divine essence became human in Jesus Christ is deification of man in terms of overcoming sin and death guaranteed as the resurrection of the flesh. The Athanasian view was accepted at the Council of Nicaea (325) and became orthodox Christian doctrine.
St. Augustine, of decisive importance for the development of the Trinitarian doctrine in Western theology and metaphysics, coupled the doctrine of the Trinity with anthropology. Proceeding from the idea that humans are created by God according to the divine image, he attempted to explain the mystery of the Trinity by uncovering traces of the Trinity in the human personality. He went from analysis of the Trinitarian structure of the simple act of cognition to ascertainment of the Trinitarian structure both of human self-consciousness and of the act of religious contemplation in which people recognize themselves as the image of God.
A second model of Trinitarian doctrine—suspected of heresy from the outset—which had effects not only in theology but also in the social metaphysics of the West as well, emanated from Joachim of Fiore. He understood the course of the history of salvation as the successive realization of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in three consecutive periods. This interpretation of the Trinity became effective as a “theology of revolution,” inasmuch as it was regarded as the theological justification of the endeavour to accelerate the arrival of the third state of the Holy Spirit through revolutionary initiative.
The final dogmatic formulation of the Trinitarian doctrine in the so-called Athanasian Creed (c. 500), una substantia—tres personae (“one substance—three persons”), reached back to the formulation of Tertullian. In practical terms it meant a compromise in that it held fast to both basic ideas of Christian revelation—the oneness of God and divine self-revelation in the figures of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—without rationalizing the mystery itself. In the final analysis the point of view thereby remained definitive that the fundamental assumptions of the reality of salvation and redemption are to be retained and not sacrificed to the concern of a rational monotheism.
Characteristically, in all periods of the later history of Christianity, anti-Trinitarian currents emerged when a rationalistic philosophy questioned the role of the Trinity in the history of salvation. The ideas of Arius were revived by many critics, including the so-called anti-Trinitarians of the Italian Renaissance and the humanists of the 16th century. Researchers into the life of Jesus in the 18th century, such as Hermann Reimarus and Carl Bahrdt, who portrayed Jesus as the agent of a secret enlightenment order that had set itself the goal of spreading the religion of reason in the world, were at the same time anti-Trinitarians and pioneers of the radical rationalistic criticism of dogma. The Kantian critique of the proofs of God contributed further to a devaluation of Trinitarian doctrine. In German idealism, Hegel, in the framework of his attempt to raise Christian dogma into the sphere of the conceptual, took the Trinitarian doctrine as the basis for his system of philosophy and, above all, for his interpretation of history as the absolute spirit’s becoming self-conscious. In subsequent theological work, at least in the accusations of some of its critics, the school of dialectical theology in Europe and the United States tended to reduce the doctrine of the Trinity and supplant it with a monochristism—the teaching that the figure of the Son in the life of faith will overshadow the figure of the Father and thus cause it to disappear and that the figure of the Creator and Sustainer of the world will recede behind the figure of the Redeemer.
In a brief but well-publicized episode in the mid-1960s in the United States, a number of celebrated Protestant theologians engaged in cultural criticism observed or announced “the death of God.” The theology of the death of God downplayed any notion of divine transcendence and invested its whole claim to be Christian in its accent on Jesus of Nazareth. Christian dogma was reinterpreted and reduced to norms of human sociality and freedom. Before long, however, the majority of theologians confronted this small school with the demands of classic Christian dogma, which insisted on confronting divine transcendence in any assertions about Jesus Christ.
The transcendence of God has been rediscovered by science and sociology; theology in the closing decades of the 20th century endeavoured to overcome the purely anthropological interpretation of religion and once more to discover anew its transcendent ground. Theology has consequently been confronted with the problem of Trinity in a new form, which, in view of the Christian experience of God as an experience of the presence of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, cannot be eliminated.
Since that time the (PFAL) doctrine has been adhered to as though it were divine revelation…
All Christian theological doctrine and dogma is developed over time. Early Christianity was as doctrinally diverse as it is today. Converts were trying to make scientifically exact and mathematically precise systematic theological sense of the unquantifiable, the ineffable, since the very beginning. Some won, some lost. Yet, remnants of all early so-called orthodoxy and so-called heresy persist today.
Why is religious theology, as developed over time, so maligned by a religious man who contrived his own theology over time? This pretense about getting back to the first century hopes everyone ignores the fact that hyper-dispensationalism is a religious doctrinal dogmatic man-made tradition developed in the 19th century, not the first century, and "adhered to as though it were divine revelation."
All Christian theological doctrine and dogma is developed over time. Early Christianity was as doctrinally diverse as it is today. Converts were trying to make scientifically exact and mathematically precise systematic theological sense of the unquantifiable, the ineffable, since the very beginning. Some won, some lost. Yet, remnants of all early so-called orthodoxy and so-called heresy persist today.
Why is religious theology, as developed over time, so maligned by a religious man who contrived his own theology over time? This pretense about getting back to the first century hopes everyone ignores the fact that hyper-dispensationalism is a religious doctrinal dogmatic man-made tradition developed in the 19th century, not the first century, and "adhered to as though it were divine revelation."
Nathan, that’s a great observation! And I like your insertion of PFAL in that wierwille quote…
...yeah …let’s look at that quote again – after which I’ll quote from The Way: Living in Love book...
...just going by his fantastic claims one can safely deduce wierwille expected his followers to adhere to his PFAL ideology as though it were divine revelation – because he led everyone to believe it was…so what if it was all plagiarized stuff…through the miracle of malignant narcissism he probably felt entitled because his imaginary god (grandiosity) told him so. It’s the great unprincipled ego: the inflated-self fears rejection and failure and becomes manifested in the senses realm as he acts to undermine and dehumanize others…and for 12 years of my life I believed all of wierwille’s bull$hit.
Since that time the “God-in-three-persons” doctrine has been adhered to as though it were divine revelation – wierwille’s concluding statement at the end of chapter 1 THE ORIGIN OF THE THREE-IN-ONE GODin JCING.
on page 178 of “The Way Living in Love” wierwille stated “I was praying. And I told Father outright that He could have the whole thing, unless there were real genuine answers that I wouldn't ever have to back up on. And that's when He spoke to me audibly, just like I'm talking to you now. He said He would teach me the Word as it had not been known since the first century if I would teach it to others. Well, I nearly flew off my chair. I couldn't believe that God would talk to me.”
On page 209 of Whiteside’s book wierwille comments on the content of what he teaches: “Lots of the stuff I teach is not original. Putting it all together so that it fit – that was the original work. I learned wherever I could, and then worked that with the Scriptures. What was right on with the Scriptures, I kept; but what wasn’t, I dropped.”
on page 178 of “The Way Living in Love” wierwille stated “I was praying. And I told Father outright that He could have the whole thing, unless there were real genuine answers that I wouldn't ever have to back up on. And that's when He spoke to me audibly, just like I'm talking to you now. He said He would teach me the Word as it had not been known since the first century if I would teach it to others. Well, I nearly flew off my chair. I couldn't believe that God would talk to me.”
On page 209 of Whiteside’s book wierwille comments on the content of what he teaches: “Lots of the stuff I teach is not original. Putting it all together so that it fit – that was the original work. I learned wherever I could, and then worked that with the Scriptures. What was right on with the Scriptures, I kept; but what wasn’t, I dropped.”
I really like where you've taken this thread, T, and I don't want to derail it. Maybe I'll start another thread, or maybe one already exists that addresses this bullsh¡t.
I've thought about these quotes for years. They've always bothered me. TWLIL p178 quote sounds like vic is threatening or blackmailing his god. And his god will talk to someone who threatens him with an ultimatum, even one who CANNOT BELEEEEVE. So.... huh? Belief is not required to hear from his god? Apparently, even SIT is not required to get audible revelation from his god.
And then on p209: He learned wherever he could? What? He didn't learn from his god who promised to teach him for fear of having to take the whole thing? So, he worked it by his five senses? His easily manipulated god didn't do the work of teaching it?
Which is it? His god taught him or he worked it? Why does his god need a little charlatan to MAKE it fit? And why is his god reacting to threats from such a shriveled hireling?
Edited by Nathan_Jr The 1942 promise: asset or liability?
The following is a link that explains the history of the trinity from the Stanford University web site. I like Stanford University and this is one of the top five rated universities in the USA.
Early Christianity was theologically diverse, although as time went on a “catholic” movement, a bishop-led, developing organization which, at least from the late second century, claimed to be the true successors of Jesus’ apostles, became increasingly dominant, out-competing many gnostic and quasi-Jewish groups. Still, confining our attention to what scholars now call this “catholic” or “proto-orthodox” Christianity, it contained divergent views about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. No theologian in the first three Christian centuries was a trinitarian in the sense of a believing that the one God is tripersonal, containing equally divine “persons”, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The terms we translate as “Trinity” (Latin:trinitas, Greek:trias) seem to have come into use only in the last two decades of the second century; but such usage doesn’t reflect trinitarian belief. These late second and third century authors use such terms not to refer to the one God, but rather to refer to the plurality of the one God, together with his Son (on Word) and his Spirit. They profess a “trinity”, triad or threesome, but not a triune or tripersonal God. Nor did they consider these to be equally divine. A common strategy for defending monotheism in this period is to emphasize the unique divinity of the Father. Thus Origen (ca. 186–255),
The following is a link that explains the history of the trinity from the Stanford University web site. I like Stanford University and this is one of the top five rated universities in the USA.
Thanks, Mark. What a neat, succinct excerpt! I think it was Theophilus of Antioch who is first credited with using the term Trinity c.170CE. He didn't mean three in one, but a plurality, as this article suggests. His Trinity was the Mind (nous), the Word (logos), and the Wisdom (sophia) - citing a verse in Psalms for the divine Sophia. (Gosh, I could be mis-retemorizing all of this!)
I think Paula Fredrickson once was affiliated with Stanford. She's one of my favorite historians. Yeah, real scholarship, real research. They don't begin with conclusions there.
I really like where you've taken this thread, T, and I don't want to derail it. Maybe I'll start another thread, or maybe one already exists that addresses this bullsh¡t.
Thanks…instead of remaining combative over the initial mention of the Trinity and the book of Revelation – I thought I’d be a little more openminded and explore the topics using resources other than the typical PFAL / TWI-mindset.
I think it would be cool if you start a thread on wierwille’s bull$hit-it’s a target rich environment – and always useful for newcomers …and helps old-timers review…I’m thinking if it’s mostly about exposing wierwille’s nonsense then it probably belongs in About the Way forum…if it’s more corrective – offering options to counteract his logical fallacies and Scripture twisting than you might want to start it in Doctrinal…in either forum it should be fun for all since you have a knack for getting folks to focus on the core issues.
The following is a link that explains the history of the trinity from the Stanford University web site. I like Stanford University and this is one of the top five rated universities in the USA.
When we ask about whether something is practical, we must always ask what we mean by practical and for whom it is practical. In the 1960s it was popular to dismiss issues and viewpoints as “irrelevant,” without asking, “irrelevant for whom?” I used to employ as an example, the expression “irrelevant as the anatomy of a penguin,” until a biologist pointed out to me that the anatomy of a penguin is very relevant to a penguin. Thus, hidden within unqualified statements about relevance or irrelevance or practicality or impracticality are frequently tacitly assumed one’s own viewpoint or perspective. The statement, “That’s not practical,” may mean nothing more nor less than, “That does not fit my tastes or preferences.”
The statement “that is practical,” or “that works,” is therefore a relative statement…
…Typically, Christian beliefs and practices are evaluated by whether and the degree to which they enable believers to fulfill Christian values, those revealed by God…
…many persons, some even non-Christians, quote Romans 8:28: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” They then, however, are angry and resentful when unpleasant and even seemingly disastrous things happen to them – illness, loss of a job, loss of a loved one, or the like. Note, however that they are setting their own standards of the good, namely, what is pleasant and comfortable for them, and evaluating what God does by the extent to which it contributes to the realization of such goals in their lives. Yet, examined in context, we can ask what “the good” is. That is seen in verse 29: “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son.” This, then, is the criterion of practicality: whether it contributes to the realization of this goal, the conforming of believers to the likeness of Christ, rather than whether it contributes to the success, happiness, comfort, or whatever, of such persons.
This thread title asked: the Trinity: asset, or liability?
That’s another way of asking if it has any practical value or not. It seems to me that folks who are steeped in wierwille’s Anti-Trinitarian rhetoric succumb to the egotistical idea that they are absolutely right, and Trinitarians are totally wrong. In that regard “Trinity-talk” seems like more of a polemical tool to divide and conquer…I find that’s extremely weird…unsettling since that attitude goes against what Christ said about the feelings we should have toward each other:
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”John 13:34,35
Besides exploring the history of the development of the doctrine of the Trinity again – this time around I tried to think more about what the application would look like…to be honest – for me personally – the doctrine of the Trinity is neither here nor there. And I think when I had those wierwille-colored-glasses on back in my TWI-daze, I was blind to many passages having a part of the Triadic formula that held promise.
For instance, backtracking to another verse in Romans 8, we find a passage that not only wierwille, but a lot of charismatic groups interpret as being a reference to speaking in tongues:
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.Romans 8:26 NIVRomans 8:26 NIV
Be my guest and click on the above hyperlink for Rom. 8:26 and you’ll see parallel versions – but overall the same idea is conveyed – the Holy Spirit negotiates on our behalf WITHOUT THE USE OF LANGUAGE…there is nothing in that passage to even suggest it’s about speaking in tongues – in fact – it negates the idea by stating the Holy Spirit DOES NOT USE WORDS!
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There’s a significant Triadic reference that is very familiar to PFAL grads:
4 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. 5 And there are varieties of ministries, and the same Lord. 6 There are varieties of effects, but the same God who works all things in all persons. 7 But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. 8 For to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, and to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit; 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, and to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, 10 and to another the effecting of miracles, and to another prophecy, and to another the distinguishing of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, and to another the interpretation of tongues. 11 But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually just as He wills.I Corinthians 12:4-11 NASB
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Quoting again from Millard’s book, on page 185 he makes these remarks of I Cor. 12:
…This is part of the letter in which one of the major themes is the unity of the church, which is threatened by a party within the church. Paul reminds his readers of the oneness that the Spirit brings about, not conflict or separation. Then he relates this step by step to each member of the Godhead: “There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men.” There seems to be a definite parallelism here. As is customary in Hebrew poetry, with which Paul was familiar, gifts, service, and working are very similar if not synonymous. Then it must appear here as if “Spirit,” “Lord,” and “God” are virtually synonymous as well. In any event, there is a closeness and an intimacy of connection among these three persons that is worthy of note.
End of excerpts
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I try not to get hung up in a mental construct of “the Trinity” – I think it’s a human estimation of a divine reality that defies articulation – and as such “the Trinity” is only a concept and not real. There are numerous Triadic formulas in the New Testament, and if words have any meaning, then there is some relationship being communicated when we find references to “God”, “Jesus Christ” and “Spirit” in close proximity in a certain passage.
For most of my working career I’ve been a technician – and circuits, security systems, audio/video components, convergence and system integration are my specialty. One of my earliest memories of learning about circuits was a mentor telling me how electrical circuits are analogous to water circuits – in other words electrical power running through a wire is like water flowing through a pipe or hose. Similar but not the same. You accidentally cut into a garden hose - you’ve got a watery mess - but no great harm done to yourself. You unknowingly cut into a live electrical line, and you might be injured or killed. To me, the doctrine of the Trinity is trying to explain something indefinable through words and concepts.
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That’s all for now, Grease Spotters
Edited by T-Bone If your door hinges squeak, creak, or shriek then you need 3-in-1 Oil
wierwille’s most vehement attacks on the Trinity, were inflammatory and galvanizing remarks made at open meetings - and were never committed to written works .
One memorable diatribe of his used a mathematical argument - saying if you moved the decimal point in a fraction, you change the numerical value of the fraction. To the best of my recollection his position seemed to go along the lines of comparing the attributes of Jesus Christ to God’s - there’s obviously some differences - and like moving the decimal point - Jesus Christ can’t be God.
wierwille’s other more familiar mathematical argument against the Trinity was using addition : 1 + 1 + 1 = 3 …but I say - why limit oneself to addition? 1 X 1 X 1 = 1 so take that, Mathletes of the Spirit!
…well… anyway…according to wierwille’s numerology-theology-demonology-psychology of nonsense when it comes to worshipping the one true God and idolatry he surmised that no matter how close something resembled the one true God it was still idolatry.
On the other hand, if one cares to consult a reputable source that holds to logic and intellectual standards - one might find there’s other ways of thinking of the inseparable oneness of the Trinity - such as in the article below. Take note near the end of the article - I think wierwille’s
excessive adherence to the literal interpretation of the Bible would qualify as bibliolatry….anyway check out this article:
idolatry, in Judaism and Christianity, the worship of someone or something other than God as though it were God. The first of the biblical Ten Commandments prohibits idolatry: “You shall have no other gods before me.”
Several forms of idolatry have been distinguished. Gross, or overt, idolatry consists of explicit acts of reverence addressed to a person or an object—the sun, the king, an animal, a statue. This may exist alongside the acknowledgment of a supreme being; e.g., Israel worshiped the golden calf at the foot of Mount Sinai, where it had encamped to receive the Law and the covenant of the one true God.
A person becomes guilty of a more subtle idolatry, however, when, although overt acts of adoration are avoided, he attaches to a creature the confidence, loyalty, and devotion that properly belong only to the Creator. Thus, the nation is a good creature of God, but it is to be loved and served with an affection appropriate to it, not with the ultimate devotion that must be reserved for the Lord of all nations. Even true doctrine (e.g., true doctrine about idolatry) may become an idol if it fails to point beyond itself to God alone.
the same time, Christian thought has insisted upon the principle of mediation and has rejected the charge that attachment to a mediating agency is automatically idolatrous. The Christian scriptures are called “the Holy Bible” not because they have an intrinsic holiness or are themselves the source of such holiness but because the God who alone is holy is mediated and disclosed to humans through the words of the Bible. Christians are not in agreement about the agents of mediation—e.g., about the role of the Virgin Mary and of the other saints. But where such mediation is acknowledged to be present, it is also acknowledged that reverence shown toward it applies not to the agent of mediation in and of himself but to the one for whom the agent stands. A special instance is the human nature of Jesus Christ (which is worthy of divine worship because of its inseparable union with the Second Person of the Holy Trinity) and the consecrated Host in the Eucharist (which may properly be adored because it has been changed into the very body of Christ). Although the accusation of idolatry is thus a part of the polemic of Christian against Christian, so that Protestants are accused of bibliolatry and Roman Catholics of Mariolatry, the fundamental meaning of the term is the direct moral corollary of the Jewish-Christian avowal of the oneness of God: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord.”
Controversies in Christian Theology over the Trinity
Controversy makes things more interesting to talk about. It would be boring if everyone had the same opinion...debate keeps the discussion stimulating.
I’ve been browsing through certain books and online sources noting the various Christian controversies. As you probably know there’s been a wide range of doctrinal disputes ever since the church began…but in keeping with the theme of this thread I found one online source that encapsulated the various theological issues – and so here below I copied and pasted portions pertinent to this discussion.
Also note, if you’re like me and enjoy theological and philosophical wrangling you might enjoy reading the whole article (hyperlink is posted below) because it briefly mentions some other doctrinal issues in the church’s history…anyway excerpts below mostly deal with the Trinity…enjoy:
The Christological controversies
As in the area of the doctrine of the Trinity, the general development of Christology has been characterized by a plurality of views and formulations. Solutions intermediate between the positions of Antioch and Alexandria were constantly proposed. Two particular solutions became so controversial as to be deemed heretical. During the 5th century the position subsequently referred to by the mainstream of Christianity as Nestorianism, associated with Nestorius and placing strong emphasis upon the human aspects of Jesus Christ at the expense of his divine aspects, arose from the Antiochene school.
The position known as monophysitism, associated with the monk Eutyches (and, according to some detractors, with Cyril of Alexandria) and placing strong emphasis upon the divine nature of Christ at the apparent expense of his humanity, emerged from the Alexandrian school. After the reign of Constantine, the Roman emperor who effectively made Christianity the religion of the empire, the great ecumenical synods occupied themselves essentially with the task of creating uniform formulations binding upon the entire imperial church. The Council of Chalcedon (451) finally settled the dispute between Antioch and Alexandria by drawing from each, declaring:
We all unanimously teach…one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, perfect in deity and perfect in humanity…in two natures, without being mixed, transmuted, divided, or separated. The distinction between the natures is by no means done away with through the union, but rather the identity of each nature is preserved and concurs into one person and being.
The Christological statement composed at Chalcedon did not resolve the dispute to everyone’s satisfaction, as certain eastern, “non-Chalcedonian,” churches felt that the council’s statement about the “identity of each nature” had strayed too close to the purported dyophysitism of Nestorius and therefore too far from what they perceived to have been the miaphysite Christology of Cyril.
Even the Christological formulas, however, do not claim to offer a rational conceptual clarification. Instead, they emphasize clearly three contentions in the mystery of the sonship of God. First, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is completely God, that in reality “the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” in him (Colossians 2:9). Second, Jesus Christ is completely human. Third, those two “natures” do not exist beside one another in an unconnected way but, rather, are joined in him in a personal unity. Once again, the Neoplatonic metaphysics of substance offered the categories so as to settle conceptually those various theological concerns.
Thus, the idea of the unity of substance (homoousia) of the divine Logos with God the Father assured the complete divinity of Jesus Christ, and the mystery of the person of Jesus Christ could be grasped in a complex but decisive formula: two natures in one person. The concept of person, taken from Roman law, served to join the fully divine and fully human natures of Christ into an individual unity.
Christology, however, is not the product of abstract logical operations but instead originates in the liturgical and charismatic sphere wherein Christians engage in prayer, meditation, and asceticism. Not being derived primarily from abstract teaching, it rather changes within the liturgy in new forms and in countless hymns of worship—as in the words of the Easter liturgy:
The king of the heavens appeared on earth out of kindness to man and it was with men that he associated. For he took his flesh from a pure virgin and he came forth from her, in that he accepted it. One is the Son, two-fold in essence, but not in person. Therefore in announcing him as in truth perfect God and perfect man, we confess Christ our God…
Contradictory aspects of the Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit is one of the most elusive and difficult themes in Christian theology, because it refers to one of the three persons in the Godhead but does not evoke concrete images the way “Father” or “Creator” and “Son” or “Redeemer” do. A characteristic view of the Holy Spirit is sketched in the Gospel According to John: the outpouring of the Holy Spirit takes place only after the Ascension of Christ; it is the beginning of a new time of salvation, in which the Holy Spirit is sent as the Paraclete (Counsellor) to the church remaining behind in this world. The phenomena described in John, which are celebrated in the church at Pentecost, are understood as the fulfillment of this promise. With this event (Pentecost), the church entered into the period of the Holy Spirit.
The essence of the expression of the Holy Spirit is free spontaneity. The Spirit blows like the wind, “where it wills,” but where it blows it establishes a firm norm by virtue of its divine authority. The spirit of prophecy and the spirit of knowledge (gnōsis) are not subject to the will of the prophet; revelation of the Spirit in the prophetic word or in the word of knowledge becomes Holy Scripture, which as “divinely breathed” “cannot be broken” and lays claim to a lasting validity for the church.
The Spirit, which is expressed in the various officeholders of the church, likewise founds the authority of ecclesiastical offices. The laying on of hands, as a sign of the transference of the Holy Spirit from one person to another, is a characteristic ritual that visibly represents and guarantees the continuity of the working of the Spirit in the officeholders chosen by the Apostles.
It is, in other words, the sacramental sign of the succession of the full power of spiritual authority of bishops and priests. The Holy Spirit also creates the sacraments and guarantees the constancy of their action in the church. All the expressions of church life—doctrine, office, polity, sacraments, power to loosen and to bind, and prayer—are understood as endowed by the Spirit.
The Holy Spirit, however, is also the revolutionizing, freshly creating principle in church history. All the reformational movements in church history, which broke with old institutions, have appealed to the authority of the Holy Spirit. Opposition to the church—through appeal to the Holy Spirit—became noticeable for the first time in Montanism, in the mid-2nd century. Montanus, a Phrygian prophet and charismatic leader, understood himself and the prophetic movement sustained by him as the fulfillment of the promise of the coming of the Paraclete.
In the 13th century a spiritualistic countermovement against the institutional church gained attention anew in Joachim of Fiore, who understood the history of salvation in terms of a continuing self-realization of the divine Trinity in the three times of salvation: (1) the time of the Father, (2) the time of the Son, and (3) the time of the Holy Spirit. He promised the speedy beginning of the period of the Holy Spirit, in which the institutional papal church, with its sacraments and its revelation hardened in the letter of scripture, would be replaced by a community of charismatic figures, filled with the Spirit, and by the time of “spiritual knowledge.”
This promise became the spiritual stimulus of a series of revolutionary movements within the medieval church—e.g., the reform movement of the radical Franciscan spirituals. Their effects extended to the Hussite reform movement led by Jan Hus in 15th-century Bohemia and to the 16th-century radical reformer, Thomas Müntzer, who substantiated his revolution against the princes and clerical hierarchs with a new outpouring of the Spirit.
Quakerism represents the most radical mode of rejection—carried out in the name of the freedom of the Holy Spirit—of all institutional forms, which are regarded as shackles and prisons of the Holy Spirit. In the 20th century a revival of charismatic forms of Christianity, called Pentecostalism and the charismatic movement, centred on the recovery of the experience of the Holy Spirit and necessitated some fresh theological inquiry about the subject…
…The emergence of Trinitarian speculations in early church theology led to great difficulties in the article about the “person” of the Holy Spirit. In the New Testament the Holy Spirit appeared more as power than as person, though there was distinctive personal representation in the form of the dove at Jesus’ baptism. But it was difficult to incorporate this graphic or symbolic representation into dogmatic theology.
Nevertheless, the idea of the complete essence (homoousia) of the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son was achieved through the writings of Athanasius. This was in opposition to all earlier attempts to subordinate the Holy Spirit to the Son and to the Father and to interpret the Spirit—similarly to anti-Trinitarian Christology—as a prince of the angels. According to Athanasius, the Holy Spirit alone guarantees the complete redemption of humanity: “through participation in the Holy Spirit we partake of the divine nature.”
In his work De Trinitate (“On the Trinity”), Augustine undertook to render the essence of the Trinity understandable in terms of the Trinitarian structure of the human person: the Holy Spirit appears as the Spirit of love, which joins Father and Son and draws people into this communion of love. In Eastern Orthodox thought, however, the Holy Spirit and the Son both proceed from the Father. In the West, the divine Trinity is determined more by the idea of the inner Trinitarian life in God; thus, the notion was carried through that the Holy Spirit goes forth from the Father and from the Son. Despite all the efforts of speculative theology, a graphic conception of the person of the Holy Spirit was not developed even later in the consciousness of the church…
…The central Christian affirmations about God are condensed and focused in the classic doctrine of the Trinity, which has its ultimate foundation in the special religious experience of the Christians in the first communities. This basis of experience is older than the doctrine of the Trinity. It consisted of the fact that God came to meet Christians in a threefold figure: (1) as Creator, Lord of the history of salvation, Father, and Judge, as revealed in the Old Testament; (2) as the Lord who, in the figure of Jesus Christ, lived among human beings and was present in their midst as the “Resurrected One”; and (3) as the Holy Spirit, whom they experienced as the power of the new life, the miraculous potency of the kingdom of God.
The question as to how to reconcile the encounter with God in this threefold figure with faith in the oneness of God, which was the Jews’ and Christians’ characteristic mark of distinction from paganism, agitated the piety of ancient Christendom in the deepest way. In the course of history, it also provided the strongest impetus for a speculative theology, which inspired Western metaphysics for many centuries. In the first two centuries of the Christian Era, however, a series of different answers to this question developed.
The diversity in interpretation of the Trinity was conditioned especially through the understanding of the figure of Jesus Christ. According to the theology of the Gospel According to John, the divinity of Jesus Christ constituted the departure point for understanding his person and efficacy. The Gospel According to Mark, however, did not proceed from a theology of incarnation but instead understood the baptism of Jesus Christ as the adoption of the man Jesus Christ into the Sonship of God, accomplished through the descent of the Holy Spirit.
The situation became further aggravated by the conceptions of the special personal character of the manifestation of God developed by way of the historical figure of Jesus Christ; the Holy Spirit was viewed not as a personal figure but rather as a power and appeared graphically only in the form of the dove and thus receded, to a large extent, in the Trinitarian speculation…
…The Johannine literature in the Bible provides the first traces of the concept of Christ as the Logos, the “word” or “principle” that issues from eternity. Under the influence of subsequent Neoplatonic philosophy, this tradition became central in speculative theology. There was interest in the relationship of the “oneness” of God to the “triplicity” of divine manifestations. This question was answered through the Neoplatonic metaphysics of being. The transcendent God, who is beyond all being, all rationality, and all conceptuality, is divested of divine transcendence. In a first act of becoming self-conscious the Logos recognizes itself as the divine mind (Greek: nous), or divine world reason, which was characterized by the Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus as the “Son” who goes forth from the Father.
The next step by which the transcendent God becomes self-conscious consists in the appearance in the divine nous of the divine world, the idea of the world in its individual forms as the content of the divine consciousness. In Neoplatonic philosophy both the nous and the idea of the world are designated the hypostases of the transcendent God. Christian theology took the Neoplatonic metaphysics of substance as well as its doctrine of hypostases as the departure point for interpreting the relationship of the “Father” to the “Son.” This process stands in direct relationship with a speculative interpretation of Christology in connection with Neoplatonic Logos speculation.
In transferring the Neoplatonic hypostases doctrine to the Christian interpretation of the Trinity there existed the danger that the different manifestations of God—as known by the Christian experience of faith: Father, Son, Holy Spirit—would be transformed into a hierarchy of gods graduated among themselves and thus into a polytheism. Though this danger was consciously avoided and, proceeding from a Logos Christology, the complete sameness of essence of the three manifestations of God was emphasized, there arose the danger of a relapse into a triplicity of equally ranked gods, which would displace the idea of the oneness of God.
…By the 3rd century it was already apparent that all attempts to systematize the mystery of the divine Trinity with the theories of Neoplatonic hypostases metaphysics were unsatisfying and led to a series of new conflicts. The high point of these conflicts was the so-called Arian controversy. In his interpretation of the idea of God, Arius sought to maintain a formal understanding of the oneness of God. In defense of that oneness, he was obliged to dispute the sameness of essence of the Son and the Holy Spirit with God the Father, as stressed by other theologians of his day.
From the outset, the controversy between both parties took place upon the common basis of the Neoplatonic concept of substance, which was foreign to the New Testament itself. It is no wonder that the continuation of the dispute on the basis of the metaphysics of substance likewise led to concepts that have no foundation in the New Testament—such as the question of the sameness of essence (homoousia) or similarity of essence (homoiousia) of the divine persons.
The basic concern of Arius was and remained disputing the oneness of essence of the Son and the Holy Spirit with God the Father, in order to preserve the oneness of God. The Son, thus, became a “second God, under God the Father”—i.e., he is a divine figure begotten by God. The Son is not himself God, a creature that was willed by God, made like God by divine grace, and sent as a mediator between God and humankind. Arius’s teaching was intended to defend the idea of the oneness of the Christian concept of God against all reproaches that Christianity introduces a new, more sublime form of polytheism.
This attempt to save the oneness of God led, however, to an awkward consequence. For Jesus Christ, as the divine Logos become human, moves thereby to the side of the creatures—i.e., to the side of the created world that needs redemption. How, then, should such a Christ, himself a part of the creation, be able to achieve the redemption of the world? On the whole, the Christian church rejected, as an unhappy attack upon the reality of redemption, such a formal attempt at saving the oneness of God as was undertaken by Arius.
Arius’s main rival was St. Athanasius of Alexandria, for whom the point of departure was not a philosophical-speculative principle but rather the reality of redemption, the certainty of salvation. The redemption of humanity from sin and death is only then guaranteed if Christ is total God and total human being, if the complete essence of God penetrates human nature right into the deepest layer of its carnal corporeality. Only if God in the full meaning of divine essence became human in Jesus Christ is deification of man in terms of overcoming sin and death guaranteed as the resurrection of the flesh. The Athanasian view was accepted at the Council of Nicaea (325) and became orthodox Christian doctrine.
St. Augustine, of decisive importance for the development of the Trinitarian doctrine in Western theology and metaphysics, coupled the doctrine of the Trinity with anthropology. Proceeding from the idea that humans are created by God according to the divine image, he attempted to explain the mystery of the Trinity by uncovering traces of the Trinity in the human personality. He went from analysis of the Trinitarian structure of the simple act of cognition to ascertainment of the Trinitarian structure both of human self-consciousness and of the act of religious contemplation in which people recognize themselves as the image of God.
A second model of Trinitarian doctrine—suspected of heresy from the outset—which had effects not only in theology but also in the social metaphysics of the West as well, emanated from Joachim of Fiore. He understood the course of the history of salvation as the successive realization of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in three consecutive periods. This interpretation of the Trinity became effective as a “theology of revolution,” inasmuch as it was regarded as the theological justification of the endeavour to accelerate the arrival of the third state of the Holy Spirit through revolutionary initiative.
The final dogmatic formulation of the Trinitarian doctrine in the so-called Athanasian Creed (c. 500), una substantia—tres personae (“one substance—three persons”), reached back to the formulation of Tertullian. In practical terms it meant a compromise in that it held fast to both basic ideas of Christian revelation—the oneness of God and divine self-revelation in the figures of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—without rationalizing the mystery itself. In the final analysis the point of view thereby remained definitive that the fundamental assumptions of the reality of salvation and redemption are to be retained and not sacrificed to the concern of a rational monotheism.
Characteristically, in all periods of the later history of Christianity, anti-Trinitarian currents emerged when a rationalistic philosophy questioned the role of the Trinity in the history of salvation. The ideas of Arius were revived by many critics, including the so-called anti-Trinitarians of the Italian Renaissance and the humanists of the 16th century. Researchers into the life of Jesus in the 18th century, such as Hermann Reimarus and Carl Bahrdt, who portrayed Jesus as the agent of a secret enlightenment order that had set itself the goal of spreading the religion of reason in the world, were at the same time anti-Trinitarians and pioneers of the radical rationalistic criticism of dogma.
The Kantian critique of the proofs of God contributed further to a devaluation of Trinitarian doctrine. In German idealism, Hegel, in the framework of his attempt to raise Christian dogma into the sphere of the conceptual, took the Trinitarian doctrine as the basis for his system of philosophy and, above all, for his interpretation of history as the absolute spirit’s becoming self-conscious. In subsequent theological work, at least in the accusations of some of its critics, the school of dialectical theology in Europe and the United States tended to reduce the doctrine of the Trinity and supplant it with a monochristism—the teaching that the figure of the Son in the life of faith will overshadow the figure of the Father and thus cause it to disappear and that the figure of the Creator and Sustainer of the world will recede behind the figure of the Redeemer…
…The transcendence of God has been rediscovered by science and sociology; theology in the closing decades of the 20th century endeavoured to overcome the purely anthropological interpretation of religion and once more to discover anew its transcendent ground. Theology has consequently been confronted with the problem of Trinity in a new form, which, in view of the Christian experience of God as an experience of the presence of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, cannot be eliminated.
Yikes! You are STILL misreading or overlooking what I actually write.
The KJV is NOT the Word of God, not in every passage and verse. But with PFAL we are given keys that unlock this delima. Before PFAL the Word was buried in the debris of the Temple, in Western theology baloney. After working PFAL into my Cambridge and mind and loving walk, I have the Word. I build on that word daily, and now 50 years later I am teaching you the Word of God.
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The part you overlooked is how I responded to T-Bone above. He had the same accusation of ignorance and not able to go beyond one man's perspective that you had. Looks like you overlooked his challenge, not knowing I'd answer the same again, thusly:
T-Bone had written:
"I think you may have fell for wierwille's bull$hit line "you can't go beyond what you're taught" says who?!?! wierwille that's who. ... Besides cognitive skills, I think understanding from God the Father / Jesus Christ / The Holy Spirit is something wierwille did not have a clue about..."
Then I answered with:
Actually, I spent a lot of time working the KJV on the trinity, BEFORE JCNG came out. I had in my research found a few more points of proof beyond what was in that book. He also had some points that I missed.
One of my scoops over JCNG regards the Holy Spirit, and I find it very powerful in discussing the trinity and Jesus being God to those in that prison.
I simply ask them "Who fathered Jesus?"
Do you know who fathered Jesus?
Nathan-Jr, do you have any idea who fathered Jesus, accorting to God's Word... AND the KJV? This means you have to THINK, instead of playing word salad with my posts. It requires you to go beyond what your GreaseSpot teachers have taught you. Are you ready.
Who fathered Jesus?
Hint: It wasn't Joseph.
Try using a Concordance, or a simple word search in a text file of the KJV.
in an effort to keep all Grease Spotters in the loop concerning subjects of concerns, interests and needs I do hereby bump this thread thereby fulfilling my promise to a certain Grease Spotter
7 minutes ago, T-Bone said:
Before anyone gets so self-absorbed that they can’t see the light at the end of Uranus – I’d like to point out another insurrection attempt on this thread. Guess the old has-the-idiom-of-permission-been discussed -on-Grease-Spot ploy didn’t work that well…if at first you don’t derail, try and try again.
Now…that being said, I would like to offer an invite to another thread in doctrinal – where theological musings on the Trinity and wierwille’s book JCING would be most appropriate…Here’s the threadThe Trinity - asset or liability?
I’ll dispense with the formalities and skip right to the I triple-dog-dare youMIKE to participate in the Trinity – asset or liability?thread discussion in doctrinal so you can expound on the details of “I had in my research found a few more points of proof beyond what was in that book. He also had some points that I missed.”
I’m looking forward to that!
You probably should catch up on the approximately 66 posts I did on that thread - most of which I must confess have a lot of substance, logic, references to Scripture and legitimate scholarly works …at least a lot more than what the thread starter had – and that includes his reference to the Omen films
You’ll probably want to review the whole thread – but to show you where I just started to get warmed up, you can look here.
Hey, for good measure – I’ll do a cross reference invite – so you’ll see me quoting your post from here on that doctrinal thread.
reposting part of what I shared on Absent Christ thread recently (see post > here
...The reason I’m posting them here on this thread is because I got to reflect on something that occurred to me today while watching David Jeremiah preach on TV.
And he wasn’t teaching on anything about the Trinity – I just happened to take note of him “changing” his reference when transitioning from talking about Jesus Christ on the day of the ascension and then later when God comes back to gather us for the rapture. What immediately popped up in my mind was that part in PFAL when wierwille gets all enthused about Christ’s return in book of Rev and sayswhen He comes back as Lord of lords, and King of kings…as God Almighty He’s going to knock some ear-balls together.
I also recall the many times I’ve sat through PFAL during that part (I think I stayed awake for that part -I liked watching wierwille's ears and tie go up and down when he talked excitedly ) and afterwards a newer grad might ask ,“I thought you said Jesus Christ was not God”. And sometimes – if a corps person was running the class they might intercede by saying “it was a slip of the tongue by the teacher – he gets so excited over this stuff.” Which could have been true – but also the class was filmed in 1967 – maybe wierwille hadn’t become so adamant that Jesus Christ was not God (the copyright on my copy of JCNG is 1975) – I don’t know…maybe it was a slip of the tongue…but anyway I got to thinking today of a lot of the deep topics and concepts in Christianity…
if I were God Almighty omniscient, omnipresent, sovereign, inhabiting eternity, etcetera ad infinitum – what would it be like trying to convey my thoughts to a mere mortal with limited intelligence trapped in specific spacetime coordinates…Maybe it’s because we are thus limited that God must use easy references that we can comprehend.
Imagine a secret agent movie – I’m meeting with God at an Italian restaurant in Manhattan and discussing our mission to retrieve the arc of the covenant that was stolen and is now in enemy hands – He says He knows exactly where it is because He sees it there even as we speak.
Hmmmmm...it's beyond me why God can't just raise His Holy Hands and bring it to the restaurant “booms-quick” like when Thor calls his hammer...I meanThoris just the God of Thunder ...but anyway – He says to meet Him tomorrow night at exactly 8 PM and DON’T BE LATE by the arc de triumph in France. Harrison Ford will meet us there too - he'll bring a few bullwhips with which I’ll wraparound certain small protrusions to climb to the top and retrieve the arc of the covenant...with God on our side we should be able to whip the enemy - metaphorically speaking of course
Wow we're dealing with one sneaky enemy – hiding the arc in plain sight – arc on arc…anyway…the next day I catch an international flight from JFK airport to Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport – I’m at the arc de triumph by 7:45 PM – and the whole operation goes smoothly without a hitch.
IfGod works in partnership with us, He’ll have to give us instructions that we can relate to in the spacetime continuum. Not because He’s limited – butbecause we are.
Trinity or no Trinity that is the question. Theology is the study of the nature of God and religious belief. Usually there’s simple worded topics to sum up really big themes. Likehamartiology– it comes from the Greek word hamartos meaning sin. Hamartiology, therefore, is the study of sin. From a biblical perspective, the study includes how sin was introduced into the world, how it impacts the world today, the solution to the sin problem of humanity, the judgment of sin, and the removal of sin at the end of time. The termsoteriologycomes from two Greek terms, namely, soter meaning “savior” or “deliverer” and logos meaning “word,” “matter,” or “thing.” In Christian systematic theology it is used to refer to the study of the biblical doctrine of salvation. I have several systematic theologies – some will mention the Trinity in passing when trying to explain the attributes of God or when touching on the inexpressible interrelationship of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
I got to thinking about thisabsent Christ?thread – with a similar issue of trying to comprehend that Christ is here but He’s also coming back for the Gathering Together and the book of Revelation.
There’s a lot of crazy stuff to mull over…thought I repost some of my posts on other threads that got into transcendence, immanence, and how we tend to underestimate the incomprehensible.
~ ~ ~ ~
and from another thread:
Speaking of Einstein’s general theory of relativity I read something interesting that gets into multidimensional universes in Beyond Einstein >https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Einstein-Cosmic-Theory-Universe/dp/0385477813( I think it’s not a bad thing to reevaluate one’s theology periodically – maybe take a cue from science how scientists are periodically revising what is known of the world around us - anyway ...)( Some highlights from pages 11 and 12) author Michio says in the late 1920’s Einstein’s general theory of relativity provided the best explanation of how our universe began. According to Einstein’s theory, the universe was born approximately 10 to 20 billion years ago in a gigantic explosion called the Big Bang.
However, Michio goes on to say there were many gaps in Einstein’s theory. Why did the universe explode? What happened before the Big Bang? Theologians as well as scientists for years have realized the incompleteness of the Big Bang theory, because it fails to explain the origin and nature of the Big Bang itself. Incredibly, the superstring theory predicts what happened before the Big Bang. According to superstrings, the universe originally existed in 10 dimensions, not the 4 dimensions (3 space and 1 time) of today…However, Michio states because the universe was unstable in 10 dimensions, it “cracked” into 2 pieces, with a small, 4-dimensional universe peeling off from the rest of the universe…If this theory is true Michio says then it means that our universe actually has a “sister universe” that coexists with our universe. According to Michio, the superstring theory explains the Big Bang as a by-product of a much more violent transition – the cracking of the 10-dimensional universe into two pieces…
…Maybe theology is somewhat like the work of theoretical physicists. We look at the given data – the text – scripture – and try to piece together some ideas of an invisible world. Where is heaven? What is heaven? What is a spiritual being? If there was a 10-dimensional universe and it split into 2 – is that now the natural world and supernatural world? Don’t know. It's a lot of theoryThis stuff is fascinating and fun to think about though…
…I read The Trivialization of God >https://www.amazon.com/Trivialization-God-Dangerous-Illusion-Manageable/dp/0891099093awhile back. Flipping through my copy I picked out a couple of highlighted notes that relate to this thread. On pages 16 & 17, author McCullough speaks of how the scientific revolution tended to shove aside the mysterious…flattening transcendence into measurable data. He goes on to say in place of God, we now have control and explanation…I might add with PFAL we got an extra delusional dose – we were taught the law of believing would give us actual control over reality. Yes ! a manageable reality.
The book covers a lot of ground but another page struck me as something I could relate to while in TWI. On page 141 McCullough talks about understanding holiness as ethical behavior trivializes it into moralism. When we lose sight of the religious or spiritual dimension – the sense of being separate unto God – we flatten the transcendent into a horizontal code of regulated behavior – turns the Christian life into something safe and manageable – insulated from God; the rod of legalism deflects the lightning shock of the holy God…
And I think humility should always be the flexible frame of our thoughts. I think scientists for the most part may be a bunch of very humble folks. Science is always revising what we know of the physical world, with more and more accurate testing equipment always improving on the scientific method - observation and experimentation. My personal theology focuses more on the raw biblical data - and I tend to let that inform my theology; granted there's a lot of fuzzy areas - but I'm ok with that.
Getting back to God’s foreknowledge – I think to some degree we all make adjustments in our thinking in order to make sense of certain passages. The Scriptures were written by human authors yet they are supposed to be the very words of God. There’s the matter of trying to resolve passages showing Jesus’ humanity with verses that convey his deity. Another one is the sovereignty of God versus man’s freedom of will. I am sorry to cop out on you all but I do not – I cannot - offer any words of wisdom on any of this.
I choose to accept both sides of the biblical data as true. I’m not saying the issues can’t be resolved but given the situation as I see it (trying to wrap my mind around God) it is definitely a fun pursuit but will never be accomplished. Like the story of Augustine and the Seashell: he saw a boy scooping up the shore’s water in a seashell and carrying it to a small hole in the sand – Augustine asked the boy what he was doing and he replied he was bringing the entire sea into the hole.
When the devil tempted Jesus, as recorded in both Matthew chapter 4 and in Luke chapter 4, he offered Jesus "all the kingdoms of this world and the glory of them". He further stated that those things belonged to him and that he could give them to whomever he wanted. If any of that had been false, Jesus would have called his bluff, but it was all true. If the devil never told the truth, then nobody would believe him about anything. He mixes just enough truth to feign plausibility, but, all the while, his intention is to deceive. He was however, free at this time, but that would change.
It seems you place too much confidence in wierwille’s unhealthy and presumptuous fixation with demonology – and it usually gives Satan undue attention – which also ignores the sovereignty of God and the authority of Jesus Christ. While certain passages do state that the whole world lies in Satan’s power2 Corinthians 4:4– it is because the present age has made him its god. This does not mean Satan rules with absolute autonomy. The NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible notes on II Cor. 4:4, page 2026, Jewish sources do not call Satan “the god of this age”. Jesus himself expressed Satan’s limitations John 14:30I will not say much more to you, for the prince of this world is coming. He has no hold over me. Satan, may be the prince of this world but he can be overruled by Jesus Christ.
But if I drive out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you…Luke 11:20
Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me”…Matthew 28:18
15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have supremacy. 19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross…Colossians 1
the real devious temptation in Matthew 4 wasn’t a card game and Satan was bluffing about a worshipping world he had to offer. Satan was offering Jesus a shortcut – he didn’t have to go through the suffering and death of the cross to ‘redeem’ humankind.
There are some fascinating typologies in Matthew 4 and Genesis 3. What was the reason behind giving Adam and Eve a prohibition?
The Garden of Eden narrative is universally compelling because it tells of a paradise within humanity’s potentialities. The gut-wrenching decision of the first couple, so very “human” in its impulsiveness yet so very tragic in its consequences, grieves us, infuriates us, leaves us pining for “paradise lost.”
Beneath the surface narrative, however, the story poses the crucial problem of human existence; unaided human beings cannot create paradise. Flawed and limited, they cannot oversee and ensure justice and wholeness; they cannot even tame the monster within themselves. Paradise comes at a cost. To live there, one must submit to the rule of an other, the owner of the garden. This is an essential feature of paradise; Do we choose to live in the garden and submit to the master?
Or do we choose our own reign and face expulsion? Those willing to submit find wholeness and intimacy; those who choose otherwise echo the defiant sentiment of the fallen archangel, who in John Milton’s words proclaims, “Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n.”
It’s intriguing to think of Jesus Christ as the second Adam – in a manner of speaking he’s going through the same test as Adam. Who would he choose to submit to? Just like in the Garden there were 2 options as in Matthew 4 - Satan or God.
Jesus of his own free will chose God:
7Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’d ” 8Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor.9“All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.” 10Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’e ”Matthew 4
Jesus chose God to submit to God – of his own free will he chose the way of the cross - Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be doneLuke 22:42 …I still remember one of the anti-Trinity arguments – see there’s two wills indicated here – Jesus can’t be God…yes, that’s obvious he's not God the Father ! But I call to mind the dual nature of Jesus Christ – the Word made flesh – he was both human and divine – I see the Father’s will, deeming it necessary to sacrifice His only begotten Son as the only way to fix the problem – and I see the humanity of Jesus ignoring the self-preservation instinct.
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On a side note, about the Fall and the need for humankind to be redeemed - I read an interesting question in a philosophy of religion book. Why didn't God just immediately fix the problem in Genesis 3? There is no definitive answer for that.
On 6/18/2022 at 1:01 PM, johniam said:
Now, while Jesus was still finishing the work that his Father gave him to do, he encountered people who willingly, yet unwittingly, functioned as mouth pieces for the devil. These people called him a "sinner". They called him a "deceiver". They said of him, "he is mad (crazy) and hath a devil". They said of him, "he is as one that perverteth the people". In short, the devil, at this time, wanted God's people to believe that Jesus was evil and deserving of death by crucifixion. That changed as well.
what is your point?
On 6/18/2022 at 1:01 PM, johniam said:
Now, after Jesus had finished the work that his Father gave him to do, he 1) was crucified 2) was raised from the dead 3)walked on the earth for 40 days after he was raised from the dead 4) on one occasion he was seen by 500 people after he was raised from the dead 5) he ascended into heaven and 6) he poured out God's gift of holy spirit on the day of Pentecost with the result that ABOUT 3000 PEOPLE received eternal life.
Again - what is your point?
On 6/18/2022 at 1:01 PM, johniam said:
This is ironic, because on the day that the law was given to Moses under the old covenant, ABOUT 3000 PEOPLE were put to death for worshipping a gold calf, an idol. On the day of Pentecost, at which time the new covenant became official, ABOUT 3000 PEOPLE were ordained unto eternal life. What about the devil?
He is no longer free. Prior to the day of Pentecost, he wanted God's people to believe that Jesus was evil. Since the day of Pentecost, he NOW wants God's people to believe that Jesus is God. Why would he change like that? He did a 180. He looks fickle. What's going on???
Oh, so that’syour point?
You lost me there. It’s pure speculation – you’re claiming to know the mind of Satan - and you're fabricating a pretext to suit your theory
On 6/18/2022 at 1:01 PM, johniam said:
As I said, he is no longer free. He now has what amounts to an unpardonable death sentence, and he KNOWS it. He also knows that one day in the future (still future) one of his people will rise up to great power and authority over all the earth. Most Christians call this person 'the antichrist'. Technically, the bible doesn't ever call him 'the' antichrist; the bible says there are many antichrists and this person will just be one of the many. However, the bible Does call him the "man of sin". He is also called the "son of perdition". It is said of him that he will "oppose and exalt himself above all that is called God" and he will "sit in the temple of God showing himself that HE IS GOD". AHA! The antichrist is going to be a man who SAYS he's God.
Well Jesus warned us Watch out that no one deceives you.For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and will deceive many…Matthew 24: 4 & 5 and that seems to me to go right along with what Paul said He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God's temple, proclaiming himself to be God…2 Thessalonians 2:4
Jesus correlates a false Messiah with antichrist with someone claiming to be God. So, you lose that round.
On 6/18/2022 at 1:01 PM, johniam said:
All those idiots and fools will believe him, in small part because of the 'lying signs and wonders' he will do, and in much larger part because of the trinity. Many of those people will figure that if God came as a man once, then He could do it again.
Thanks, you just made my case!
On 6/18/2022 at 1:01 PM, johniam said:
The trinity promotes the belief that God came as a man once. The trinity is the welcoming committee and the public relations machine for the antichrist. The trinity is a perpetual reminder that..."Haleluia, the antichrist is coming".
oops - you're not making any sense again.
I handled Satan's 'Trinity' in an earlier post...Class, that's your next assignment - find my post on this thread where I got into Satan's unholy trinity...and please hold all your questions until you read that entire post and this one.
oh man, PFAL-flashbacks
On 6/18/2022 at 1:01 PM, johniam said:
In the old testament (Numbers 21) serpents were biting people in Israel and many people died. God instructed Moses to make a brass serpent and lift it up on a pole, so that if any body was bitten by one of these serpents and they looked at the brass serpent on the pole, they would live and not die. Approximately 1000 years later, king Hezekiah broke in pieces the brass serpent that Moses made because some people in Israel were worshipping that brass serpent as an idol.
God instructed Moses to make the brass serpent, and it saved lives, but God NEVER intended for that serpent to be worshipped as an idol. In John 3:14 Jesus is speaking. He says, "and as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up". It is very significant that Jesus made a point of directly comparing Himself with that same brass serpent which Moses made. God sent Jesus to save us from our sins, and he has already save many lives for all eternity, but God NEVER intended for Jesus to be worshipped as an idol.
Your point is bizarre and irrelevant .
NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible on page 256 comments on Numbers 21 as follows about Moses instructing them to make a bronze snake: while this strikes many moderns as some form of ancient magic, the text is clear that it is actually the Lord’s solution and works only because of his power. By having the Israelites look at the very symbol of their judgement, the Lord is having them acknowledge, “This is the judgement that you, Lord, have justly brought upon us, and only you can deliver us from it.” Jesus uses this event to explain his death on the cross.
End of excerpt
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Wow – just wow!
How do you know what God’s intentions were?
Is that something you came up with?
Please read about the supremacy of Christ and that he is the image of the invisible God in Colossians 1 and then explain to me why it’s wrong to worship Jesus Christ…The Greek word for image is eikon– from which we get our English word “icon”. In computer science it’s a graphic symbol (usually a simple picture) that denotes a program, command or a data file or a concept in a graphical user interface – like when you click on the icon for your browser – that enables you to connect to the Internet. Christ is in effect - God's icon - because Christ represents exactly what God is like . Christ is how we connect to the Father John 14:6 . Everything we come to know about Jesus Christ brings to the mind the compassion and forgiveness of our heavenly Father John 14:9 ...Maybe find some Scripture prohibiting the worship of Jesus and then we've got something concrete for a debate.
Another interesting passage of Christ representing God is in Hebrews 1:3 “He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.” In ancient literature “exact imprint” was a specialized tool like a die that was used to cut and/or form material to a desired shape or profile, such as engraving on wood, etching in metal, branding an animal hide, stamping an image on a coin, or making an impression in clay.
I think it’s a shame the way wierwille disparaged the cross of Christ…maybe just another gimmick to distinguish himself from mainstream Christianity I guess.
Once again, the trinity is both the welcoming committee and the public relations machine for the antichrist. It is a perpetual reminder that..."haleluia, the antichrist is coming". No Christian should want anything to do with supporting something like that.
God's love is perpetual. God gave every one the same capacity to make our own choices. God will never force anyone to choose, believe, or do anything. If any still want to believe that a man is God, enjoy it while you can.
I don’t mean to be a pill about it but on another threadhere you claimed my posts lacked substance. Have you read all my posts on this thread? And by read, I mean did you look at and comprehend the meaning of what I wrote - mentally interpreting words, concepts, Scriptures, hyperlinks and books I mentioned?
In case you forgot - reading is a process undertaken to reduce uncertainty about meanings a text conveys. The process results from a negotiation of meaning between the text and you. The knowledge, expectations, and strategies you use to uncover textual meaning all play decisive roles in the way you negotiate with the text's meaning.
How can you say my posts had no substance?
Remember in PFAL wierwille said something along the lines of most people believe that they think but they really don’t think…did you bother to read or think about any of the info I posted?
come on johniam, put some effort in this thread you started. Were you expecting the doctrinal forum to be your own personal pulpit? A monolog?
I crammed a lot of substance in my posts - i.e. Scripture and the history of the theological development of the Trinity – AND MY MAIN POINTin most of my posts was to prove wierwille and his fan clubmisrepresented the doctrine of the Trinity to the point of trivializing and lampooning the nature of the Godhead.
And I have been upfront and honest in expressing my own view – - which could be screwy anyway - but that's the fun of the Socratic method - we sort stuff out - anyway ...I've mentioned this earlier on this thread too - which is that God the Father and Jesus Christ the Son are NOT identical and that there are many Scriptures that allude to the interrelationship of the Father, the So ad the Holy Spirit. And perhaps there are no passages more insistent about their threefold interaction than John 14 , John 15 , and John 16 .
Am I saying they clearly address wierwille’s myopic view of the Trinity? No. I’m saying those chapters of John indicate an interagency of all three. For me “Trinity” enumerates there’s three supernatural beings involved. From what I understand in the Bible, they have some common features but they’re not identical to each other – since even their names or titles suggest individuality in the ‘team effort’. Scripture has always indicated the Father is the source - - all flows from Him – and ultimately all will be subsumed in Him –
24Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. 25For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.26The last enemy to be destroyed is death.27For he “has put everything under his feet.”cNow when it says that “everything” has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ.28When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all…1 Corinthians 15
Edited by T-Bone It ain't over until the fat editor sings "it's over" - say can you hum a few bars?
yes - working on it now - it will take me a little while - something I promised to do on the Craig has his own offshoot thread...I intend to provide doctrinal analysis on each portion of his quote
The Kantian critique of the proofs of God contributed further to a devaluation of Trinitarian doctrine. In German idealism, Hegel, in the framework of his attempt to raise Christian dogma into the sphere of the conceptual, took the Trinitarian doctrine as the basis for his system of philosophy and, above all, for his interpretation of history as the absolute spirit’s becoming self-conscious. In subsequent theological work, at least in the accusations of some of its critics, the school of dialectical theology in Europe and the United States tended to reduce the doctrine of the Trinity and supplant it with a monochristism—the teaching that the figure of the Son in the life of faith will overshadow the figure of the Father and thus cause it to disappear and that the figure of the Creator and Sustainer of the world will recede behind the figure of the Redeemer…
Kant . . . influenced a lot . . . also Luther was German. *grabs red thread and thumb tacs*
VPW rejected a trinity of God, but made a trinity of people. Which I understand is an ancient gnostic idea.
Quite the switcharoo.
Intriguing thoughts, Bolshevik! Gnosticism and the Trinity…I did some looking - found this:
One of the common questions we receive as Gnostics is “Why do you espouse the doctrine of the Christian Trinity?” To answer this question, we have only to listen to the voices of the early Gnostics themselves. In the entire canon of Biblical scripture there are only a few vague references to a trinity in the letters of St Paul, yet the Gnostic scriptures of the Nag Hammadi collection are filled with trinitarian expressions of God.
In the Gospel of Philip, we see written, “...the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” There is no place in the mainstream canon of the Bible where we can find so clear a reference to the Christian Trinity. In this way, we can state quite emphatically that we, as Gnostics, are trinitarians, yet we encompass far more than any dogma of the Church concerning this Trinity.
Whereas the mainstream Church has spent nearly two thousand years developing a dogma of the Trinity, Gnostics have always approached the Trinity as an archetypal symbol and a mystery. As an archetype, the Trinity arises in every culture, in every place and time. Even in terms of physical processes, most every phenomenon can be described as a trinitarian expression—active, passive, and their connecting interaction; motion, inertia and rhythm; thesis, antithesis and a resolving and connecting principle.
Many religions besides Christianity include a triune deity. The Goddess of modern Wiccans includes Maid, Mother and Crone. The Hindu pantheon includes the Creator (Brahma), the Destroyer (Shiva) and the Preserver (Vishnu). Religions that have a triad of gods often develop family relationships between the members of the triad.
This is particularly the case in the Egyptian mysteries with Osiris (Father), Isis (Mother) and Horus (Son), as well as Ra (Father), Pharaoh (Son of Ra) and Ka (the connecting and transmitting Spirit). The Gnostic symbol of the Trinity incorporates these two trinitarian formulae from the Egyptian mysteries—Father, Son and Holy (Mother) Spirit. The Gospel of the Egyptians describes such an emanation of the Trinity: “Three powers came forth from him; they are the Father, the Mother, and the Son.” Here the Mother (Holy Spirit) is the second person of the Trinity, where she might also be identified with the Egyptian Ka. The Gospel of the Egyptians further describes the emanation of a triune series of ogdoads making a total of 24 powers, as described in the Book of Revelation. “And round about the throne were four and twenty seats; and upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment; and they had on their heads crowns of gold.”
In the tradition of the Pharaonic succession in ancient Egypt, the Pharaoh is a divine king, an Anointed One, a Christos, through the connecting power of the Ka (Spirit) that unites the Father and the Son and passes on to the Pharoah the power and consciousness of the Sun God, Ra. The Pharaoh is called the Son of Ra after receiving the Ka (Hereditary Spirit) of the Father. Also, in the Mass, immediately before the minor elevation, this uniting principle of the Holy Spirit, the Ka, is again invoked. “To whom with Thee, O Mighty Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, be ascribed all honor and glory, throughout the aeons of aeons.”
The mainstream Catholic tradition emphasizes the relationship between the Father and the Son, as an exclusive relationship between God and one man in history, called Jesus. Most of the controversy over the Trinity throughout the centuries has been over the relationship of the Holy Spirit to the other two persons of the Trinity and how that might influence the doctrine of both the humanity and the divinity of Jesus.
The traditional Credo provides only one minimal reference to the Holy Spirit, as “the Giver of Life, Who proceeds from the Father and the Son, Who together with the Father and the Son, is adored and glorified: Who spoke by the prophets.” The Eastern Orthodox differs in that the Father alone brings forth both the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Gospels record that Jesus would send the Holy Spirit to remain on earth to guide and care for us, yet, in Orthodox and Catholic liturgy, the Holy Spirit is never invoked alone and is not fully explained as to its relationship to all of humanity.
And drawing from my own profile notes on Gnosticism, I wanted to add that a good and concise picture of Gnosticism is offered in an article by Christopher Stead(British patristic scholar and Church of England clergyman who was the last Ely Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge. He is best known for his work on the philosophy of the Church Fathers) Gnosticism comprises a loosely associated group of teachers, teachings and sects which professed to offer ‘gnosis’ – saving knowledge or enlightenment that was expressed in various myths to explain the origin of the world, the human soul and the destiny of the soul.
Everything originated from a transcendent spiritual power. But then corruption set in, and inferior powers emerged – resulting in the creation of the material world in which the human spirit is now imprisoned. Salvation is sought by cultivating the inner life while neglecting the body and social responsibilities that had nothing to do with the cult.
The Gnostic movement emerged in the first and second centuries AD and was seen as a rival to orthodox Christianity, though in fact some Gnostic sects were more closely linked with Judaism or with Iranian religions like Zoroastrianism – and speaking of which - I’m starting to read up on Zoroastrianism – from what I understand it may have had some influence on Judaism, Christianity and Islam:
It has a dualistic cosmology of good and evil within the framework of a monotheistic ontology and an eschatology which predicts the ultimate conquest of evil by good. Zoroastrianism exalts an uncreated and benevolent deity of wisdom known as Ahura Mazda (lit. 'Lord of Wisdom') as its supreme being. Historically, the unique features of Zoroastrianism, such as its monotheism, messianism, belief in free will and judgement after death, conception of heaven, hell, angels, and demons, among other concepts, may have influenced other religious and philosophical systems, including the Abrahamic religions and Gnosticism, Northern Buddhism, and Greek philosophy. From Zoroastrianism - Wikipedia
One philosopher of the 2nd century described Gnosticism as the first notable attempt to introduce existing elements of theoretical knowledge from various cultures. It was an amalgam of tendencies that were speculative and elaborate and partly based on the philosophical creed of Greeks and Romans finding a safe haven after the gradual decline of their own religions, besides the infusion of philosophies, theosophies, and religions of the East, especially those of Persia and India.
Henry Longueville Mansel (1820 – 1871) was an English philosopher and ecclesiastic, summed up the three principal sources of Gnosticism:
1. Platonism – its philosophical form and tendencies.
2. The Dualism of the Persian religion – speculations about the origin of evil and emanations which is an idea in the cosmology - emanation is from the Latin emanare meaning "to flow from" and is the mode by which all things are derived from the first reality, or principle. All things are derived from the first reality or perfect God by steps of degradation to lesser degrees of the first reality or God, and at every step the emanating beings are less pure, less perfect, less divine.
3. Buddhism which had an antagonism between matter and spirit – and the unreality of derived existence – the germ of Docetism which in Gnosticism taught that Christ's body was not human but either a phantasm or of real but celestial substance, and that therefore his sufferings were only apparent.
~ ~ ~ ~
A hobby of mine is reading philosophy of religion stuff. Philosophy and religion deal a lot in concepts…metaphysics… abstract theory – one is not dealing with physical reality. In my opinion, moving from philosophy to religion is like a screenwriter pitching a high concept movie or TV plot – emphasizing a striking and easily communicable idea…it’s based on an interesting and attractive idea that can be explained in a simple way.
Christian fundamentalism interprets the words in the Bible in the most basic sense and pays little attention to metaphor or allegory. And thinking about what I learned in TWI in their Orientalism class – I think TWI tended to ‘sanitize’ the culturalisms to make them more palatable to the western Christian mind. In my opinion that was unfortunate – TWI ignored the vivid ancientculturalismswhich – if they had done their research– would cast many passages in a whole new light seemy Oct 2nd 2022 post on idiom of permission threadandmy Oct 4th 2022 post on idiom of permission thread…folks don’t have to settle for TWI’s rinky-dink-amateurish-but-call-it-research when there’s a wealth of legitimate scholarly resources available like NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible and other stuff- I’m currently reading Demons: What the Bible Really Says About the Powers of Darkness by Michael Heiser – in my opinion Heiser is top-notch in biblical languages and cultures – the book is grounded in what ancient people of both the Old and New Testament eras believed about evil spiritual forces and in what the Bible actually says.
~ ~ ~ ~
Just speculating here – maybe early Christians were more openminded in their conception of God. I don’t get the feeling from reading the church and pastoral epistles that they were that concerned – if at all - about walking a fine line of serving Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior but making sure it didn’t turn into idolatry…I venture to say it might be that way for a lot of folks today …even Trinitarians…what’s the big deal anyway….It’s called Christianity for a reason.
…not that I’m a good reference point but I think of growing up in the Roman Catholic Church - way before I got involved with TWI – in my prayer life or simply thinking about God and mulling over something – I don’t recallintentionally directing my attention to God the Father and putting Jesus on hold – but I think I’d flip back and forth between the two – depending on what the issue was. For behavior-issues I probably leaned more on Jesus – WWJD might be something instinctive – or maybe you read the gospels enough there’s ‘moral muscle memory’ – I dunno…But I definitely knew of a distinction between the Father and the Son – think of Michelangelo's creation of Adam – even as a child I got it – that’s God the Father …white hair and beard...Reflecting on wierwille's anti-Trinity rants, I think he made a mountain out of a molehill - or maybe an idol out of an icon ...whatever...he figured out yet another way to distinguish himself from mainstream Christianity.
Intriguing thoughts, Bolshevik! Gnosticism and the Trinity…I did some looking - found this:
One of the common questions we receive as Gnostics is “Why do you espouse the doctrine of the Christian Trinity?” To answer this question, we have only to listen to the voices of the early Gnostics themselves. In the entire canon of Biblical scripture there are only a few vague references to a trinity in the letters of St Paul, yet the Gnostic scriptures of the Nag Hammadi collection are filled with trinitarian expressions of God.
In the Gospel of Philip, we see written, “...the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” There is no place in the mainstream canon of the Bible where we can find so clear a reference to the Christian Trinity. In this way, we can state quite emphatically that we, as Gnostics, are trinitarians, yet we encompass far more than any dogma of the Church concerning this Trinity.
Whereas the mainstream Church has spent nearly two thousand years developing a dogma of the Trinity, Gnostics have always approached the Trinity as an archetypal symbol and a mystery. As an archetype, the Trinity arises in every culture, in every place and time. Even in terms of physical processes, most every phenomenon can be described as a trinitarian expression—active, passive, and their connecting interaction; motion, inertia and rhythm; thesis, antithesis and a resolving and connecting principle.
Many religions besides Christianity include a triune deity. The Goddess of modern Wiccans includes Maid, Mother and Crone. The Hindu pantheon includes the Creator (Brahma), the Destroyer (Shiva) and the Preserver (Vishnu). Religions that have a triad of gods often develop family relationships between the members of the triad.
This is particularly the case in the Egyptian mysteries with Osiris (Father), Isis (Mother) and Horus (Son), as well as Ra (Father), Pharaoh (Son of Ra) and Ka (the connecting and transmitting Spirit). The Gnostic symbol of the Trinity incorporates these two trinitarian formulae from the Egyptian mysteries—Father, Son and Holy (Mother) Spirit. The Gospel of the Egyptians describes such an emanation of the Trinity: “Three powers came forth from him; they are the Father, the Mother, and the Son.” Here the Mother (Holy Spirit) is the second person of the Trinity, where she might also be identified with the Egyptian Ka. The Gospel of the Egyptians further describes the emanation of a triune series of ogdoads making a total of 24 powers, as described in the Book of Revelation. “And round about the throne were four and twenty seats; and upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment; and they had on their heads crowns of gold.”
In the tradition of the Pharaonic succession in ancient Egypt, the Pharaoh is a divine king, an Anointed One, a Christos, through the connecting power of the Ka (Spirit) that unites the Father and the Son and passes on to the Pharoah the power and consciousness of the Sun God, Ra. The Pharaoh is called the Son of Ra after receiving the Ka (Hereditary Spirit) of the Father. Also, in the Mass, immediately before the minor elevation, this uniting principle of the Holy Spirit, the Ka, is again invoked. “To whom with Thee, O Mighty Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, be ascribed all honor and glory, throughout the aeons of aeons.”
The mainstream Catholic tradition emphasizes the relationship between the Father and the Son, as an exclusive relationship between God and one man in history, called Jesus. Most of the controversy over the Trinity throughout the centuries has been over the relationship of the Holy Spirit to the other two persons of the Trinity and how that might influence the doctrine of both the humanity and the divinity of Jesus.
The traditional Credo provides only one minimal reference to the Holy Spirit, as “the Giver of Life, Who proceeds from the Father and the Son, Who together with the Father and the Son, is adored and glorified: Who spoke by the prophets.” The Eastern Orthodox differs in that the Father alone brings forth both the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Gospels record that Jesus would send the Holy Spirit to remain on earth to guide and care for us, yet, in Orthodox and Catholic liturgy, the Holy Spirit is never invoked alone and is not fully explained as to its relationship to all of humanity.
And drawing from my own profile notes on Gnosticism, I wanted to add that a good and concise picture of Gnosticism is offered in an article by Christopher Stead(British patristic scholar and Church of England clergyman who was the last Ely Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge. He is best known for his work on the philosophy of the Church Fathers) Gnosticism comprises a loosely associated group of teachers, teachings and sects which professed to offer ‘gnosis’ – saving knowledge or enlightenment that was expressed in various myths to explain the origin of the world, the human soul and the destiny of the soul.
Everything originated from a transcendent spiritual power. But then corruption set in, and inferior powers emerged – resulting in the creation of the material world in which the human spirit is now imprisoned. Salvation is sought by cultivating the inner life while neglecting the body and social responsibilities that had nothing to do with the cult.
The Gnostic movement emerged in the first and second centuries AD and was seen as a rival to orthodox Christianity, though in fact some Gnostic sects were more closely linked with Judaism or with Iranian religions like Zoroastrianism – and speaking of which - I’m starting to read up on Zoroastrianism – from what I understand it may have had some influence on Judaism, Christianity and Islam:
It has a dualistic cosmology of good and evil within the framework of a monotheistic ontology and an eschatology which predicts the ultimate conquest of evil by good. Zoroastrianism exalts an uncreated and benevolent deity of wisdom known as Ahura Mazda (lit. 'Lord of Wisdom') as its supreme being. Historically, the unique features of Zoroastrianism, such as its monotheism, messianism, belief in free will and judgement after death, conception of heaven, hell, angels, and demons, among other concepts, may have influenced other religious and philosophical systems, including the Abrahamic religions and Gnosticism, Northern Buddhism, and Greek philosophy. From Zoroastrianism - Wikipedia
One philosopher of the 2nd century described Gnosticism as the first notable attempt to introduce existing elements of theoretical knowledge from various cultures. It was an amalgam of tendencies that were speculative and elaborate and partly based on the philosophical creed of Greeks and Romans finding a safe haven after the gradual decline of their own religions, besides the infusion of philosophies, theosophies, and religions of the East, especially those of Persia and India.
Henry Longueville Mansel (1820 – 1871) was an English philosopher and ecclesiastic, summed up the three principal sources of Gnosticism:
1. Platonism – its philosophical form and tendencies.
2. The Dualism of the Persian religion – speculations about the origin of evil and emanations which is an idea in the cosmology - emanation is from the Latin emanare meaning "to flow from" and is the mode by which all things are derived from the first reality, or principle. All things are derived from the first reality or perfect God by steps of degradation to lesser degrees of the first reality or God, and at every step the emanating beings are less pure, less perfect, less divine.
3. Buddhism which had an antagonism between matter and spirit – and the unreality of derived existence – the germ of Docetism which in Gnosticism taught that Christ's body was not human but either a phantasm or of real but celestial substance, and that therefore his sufferings were only apparent.
~ ~ ~ ~
A hobby of mine is reading philosophy of religion stuff. Philosophy and religion deal a lot in concepts…metaphysics… abstract theory – one is not dealing with physical reality. In my opinion, moving from philosophy to religion is like a screenwriter pitching a high concept movie or TV plot – emphasizing a striking and easily communicable idea…it’s based on an interesting and attractive idea that can be explained in a simple way.
Christian fundamentalism interprets the words in the Bible in the most basic sense and pays little attention to metaphor or allegory. And thinking about what I learned in TWI in their Orientalism class – I think TWI tended to ‘sanitize’ the culturalisms to make them more palatable to the western Christian mind. In my opinion that was unfortunate – TWI ignored the vivid ancientculturalismswhich – if they had done their research– would cast many passages in a whole new light seemy Oct 2nd 2022 post on idiom of permission threadandmy Oct 4th 2022 post on idiom of permission thread…folks don’t have to settle for TWI’s rinky-dink-amateurish-but-call-it-research when there’s a wealth of legitimate scholarly resources available like NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible and other stuff- I’m currently reading Demons: What the Bible Really Says About the Powers of Darkness by Michael Heiser – in my opinion Heiser is top-notch in biblical languages and cultures – the book is grounded in what ancient people of both the Old and New Testament eras believed about evil spiritual forces and in what the Bible actually says.
~ ~ ~ ~
Just speculating here – maybe early Christians were more openminded in their conception of God. I don’t get the feeling from reading the church and pastoral epistles that they were that concerned – if at all - about walking a fine line of serving Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior but making sure it didn’t turn into idolatry…I venture to say it might be that way for a lot of folks today …even Trinitarians…what’s the big deal anyway….It’s called Christianity for a reason.
…not that I’m a good reference point but I think of growing up in the Roman Catholic Church - way before I got involved with TWI – in my prayer life or simply thinking about God and mulling over something – I don’t recallintentionally directing my attention to God the Father and putting Jesus on hold – but I think I’d flip back and forth between the two – depending on what the issue was. For behavior-issues I probably leaned more on Jesus – WWJD might be something instinctive – or maybe you read the gospels enough there’s ‘moral muscle memory’ – I dunno…But I definitely knew of a distinction between the Father and the Son – think of Michelangelo's creation of Adam – even as a child I got it – that’s God the Father …white hair and beard...Reflecting on wierwille's anti-Trinity rants, I think he made a mountain out of a molehill - or maybe an idol out of an icon ...whatever...he figured out yet another way to distinguish himself from mainstream Christianity.
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johniam
When the devil tempted Jesus, as recorded in both Matthew chapter 4 and in Luke chapter 4, he offered Jesus "all the kingdoms of this world and the glory of them". He further stated that those things
T-Bone
This thread belongs in doctrinal forum. But for now, I’ll throw my 2 cents in while it’s hot off the press. note your words are in bold red 1. “Prior to the day of Penteco
Bolshevik
Hi Johniam, Maybe reread your paragraph. You say people have a choice . . . But it sounds like an ultimatum. You start off with love and end with a threat. The middle sentence feels like a li
T-Bone
Development of the doctrine of the Trinity, part 1
In wierwille’s book JESUS CHRIST IS NOT GOD, the title for chapter one is THE ORIGIN OF THE THREE-IN-ONE GOD . In excerpts from pages 11&ff wierwille states:
Long before the founding of Christianity the idea of a triune god or god-in-three persons was a common belief in ancient religions. Although many of these religions had many minor deities, they distinctly acknowledged that there was one supreme God who consisted of three persons or essences. The Babylonians used an equilateral triangle to represent this three-in-one god, now the symbol of the modern three-in-one believers…
…Although other religions for thousands of years before Christ was born worshipped a triune god, the trinity was not a part of Christian dogma and formal documents of the first three centuries after Christ. Certainly, during this time, Church leaders spoke of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but they never referred to them as co-equal or of one numerical essence or as three in one…
…Even such a conservative source as The New Catholic Encyclopedia states that trinitarianism became a part of Christ doctrine in the fourth, not the first, century:
“It is difficult, in the second half of the 20th century, to offer a clear, objective and straightforward account of the revelation, doctrinal evolution, and theological elaboration of the mystery of the Trinity….
There is …recognition on the part of historians of dogma and systematic theologians that when one does speak of an unqualified Trinitarianism, one has moved from the period of Christian origins to, say, the last quadrant of the 4th century. It was only then that what might be called the definitive Trinitarian dogma “one God in three Persons’ became thoroughly assimilated into Christian life and thought.
…The dogmatic formula “one God in three Persons” …was the product of 3 centuries of doctrinal development.”
There are, however, evidences of trinitarian concepts being introduced by Christians converted from paganism possibly as early as the last part of the first century. The gradual incorporation of pagan ideologies into Christian doctrine and practice came about by the interaction of four historical components:
1. The early apostles…had died…
2. The anticipation of the “speedy” return of Christ subsided…
3. Many pagans who were converted to Christianity still adhered to some of their previous beliefs and practices…
4. Due to the above three elements many people began anticipating a new revival or a new administration…
…Clearly, historians of Church dogma and systematic theologians agree that the idea of a Christian trinity was not a part of the first century Church. The twelve apostles never subscribed to it or received revelation about it. So how did a trinitarian doctrine come about? It gradually evolved and gained momentum in late first, second and third centuries as pagans, who had converted to Christianity, brought to Christianity some of their pagan beliefs and practices. Trinitarianism then was confirmed at Nicaea in 325 by Church bishops out of political expediency. Its reaffirmation as thereafter needed and received at Constantinople in 381. Since that time the “God-in-three-persons” doctrine has been adhered to as though it were divine revelation…
End of excerpts
~ ~ ~ ~
While wierwille’s four elements are noteworthy, I think to a very limited degree those things were bound to happen in the early stages of Christianity. But I would question his assumption that the Trinity was a pagan idea assimilated into Christian doctrine.
I think we should give the early church leaders some credit - not only for their historical proximity to the birth of Christianity – but for their efforts to reflect on Hebrew theology, familiarity with the words and works of Jesus and how it all relates to this new religious movement something I will get into in part 2)…
…and just thinking out loud here – there’s probably a lot of factors that contributed to the spiritual, intellectual, social, and doctrinal growth of the church. As in any endeavor there had to be a learning curve…a process where people developed skills by learning from their mistakes…That’s not to exclude personal illumination of the Spirit…and epistles from church leaders …and there was also thoughtful discussions among faithful believers, new converts and even potential converts: Acts 6:1-7 Acts 15:2-7 Acts 17:17 Acts 19:8,9 Galatians 2:11-21 . Perhaps it’s difficult to set aside our affinity for the comfort and convenience of modern organized religions – and remind ourselves that Christianity did not start out as a fully conceived business model with a detailed doctrine of how to organize, inform, serve, and govern in any political, social, economic, or cultural setting.
~ ~ ~ ~
I am familiar with wierwille’s penchant for plagiarism as well as his flagrant disregard for intellectual standards – so I find it hard to trust his philosophical, historical, and biblical examination of the Scriptures…his analysis and speculation about themes and concepts involved in the development of the doctrine of the Trinity are highly suspect.
wierwille’s simplistic, biased, and biblically illiterate rationalization leads me to think he has an ax to grind. It’s hard to say what motivated a harmful and controlling cult-leader. Perhaps his poaching the intellectual property of others was more than just laziness and incompetence.
Was there a strong desire to be admired by others?
Reflecting on his manner of grandstanding in the PFAL class and the Advanced Class - he often drew upon controversial and even speculative or conspiratorial theories of others. It seemed to me that was his way of distinguishing himself as a cut above other Christian leaders and mainstream Christianity. It’s probable he may have thought his shallow and iconoclastic book JCING would boost his distinctiveness even further among devoted followers.
Before I go much further in disputing wierwille’s book JCING, I must say it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. The most difficult task is getting devoted followers of wierwille to see through his duplicity. After all, love is blind. There are several deceptive and manipulative long-standing practices of wierwille that one should be aware of:
1. claiming to hear from God audibly that God would teach him “The Word”
2. obtaining the title of “doctor” from a degree mill
3. insisting that followers always address him as Doctor wierwille
4. plagiarizing the works of others – and claiming he had God’s guidance to improve the accuracy and Scriptural coherency of it all
5. in open meetings I’ve heard wierwille state one must be devil-possessed to truly believe in the Trinity
6. in the Advanced Class wierwille has often stated those born of the seed of the serpent are the top leaders in denominations that promote the Trinity
7. to suit his agenda wierwille often portrayed an alternate view of history – like emphatically denying the Holocaust and falsely characterizing the controversy over Trinity doctrine following the Apostolic Age as political intrigue
8. unbeknownst to most TWI-followers wierwille was a big follower of the far-right group John Birch Society and would often express their paranoid and conspiratorial views as if God revealed it to him personally. wierwille’s fearmongering and conspiratorial tropes came into play big time during his Anti-Trinitarian rants.
Imagine showing those practices to any scholar or any serious Bible student (who is NOT enamored with wierwille’s man-of-God persona) – or for that matter, show the list to any street-smart person having the experience and knowledge necessary to deal with the potential difficulties or dangers of scam artists. Now imagine asking them “would you trust this guy?” I would be very surprised if anyone said they would.
In part 2 I will get into a more honest portrayal of the development of the doctrine of the Trinity.
~ ~ ~ ~
That’s all for now, folks. Ta-ta, Grease Spotters
Edited by T-BoneMy editor believes that some secret, but influential organization is responsible for my typos
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T-Bone
Part 2: Development of doctrine
Every religion has a history of doctrine that is more than a replication of the deposit of faith. Doctrine, as a mode of pedagogy, is conservative of its tradition; as a mode of inquiry, it may be innovative, generating new insights that alter the rhetoric of conventional teaching and, sometimes, its substance as well. There are, of course, wide variations. The persistent continuities between ancient Zoroastrianism and its modern form, Parsiism, or in Jainism, are clearer than those between primitive Hinduism and modern Vedanta (a Hindu philosophical system). All forms and sects of Buddhism appeal jointly to the Three Jewels (the Buddha; the dharma, or law; and the sangha, or monastic order) but are irreconcilable in their differences of interpretation and practice. In each case, the question as to what constitutes legitimate development (e.g., the rival claims of Theravada, or “Way of the Elders,” and Mahayana, or “Greater Vehicle,” in Buddhism) is left undetermined.
All Jews profess devotion to Torah, even in their disagreements over its authentic observance. Christians profess a common loyalty to the Bible and a common acceptance of the twin dogmas of the Trinity (that the one God is three Persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) and the God-Manhood of Jesus (that Christ is both divine and human) but then divide in their doctrinal systems as they have developed historically. Later dogmas (e.g., transubstantiation, the teaching that the substance of the bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper is changed into the substance of the body and blood of Christ, with the properties of the bread and wine remaining unchanged) were defined by the Latin Church without concurrence from Eastern Orthodoxy; the modern dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church (i.e., the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary, the bodily assumption into heaven of the Virgin Mary, and papal infallibility) were defined in separation from both the Eastern and the Protestant consensus. Protestantism has continued an emphasis on its distinctive dogmas of “grace alone” (sola gratia), “faith alone” (sola fide), and “scripture alone” (sola scriptura) but has nevertheless undergone immense change and proliferation…
… The process of doctrinal development has been explained variously as a process of logical unfolding or of organic growth, or else as a process of purgations of error and restorations of the original deposit. The notion of a logical unfolding assumes that all that has developed in a religious tradition over the course of its history was already implicit in its original foundation and subsequently had only to become more fully understood. In the case of the doctrine of the Trinity in Christianity, for example, it is argued that the abundant references in the New Testament and the earliest liturgies to God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit required the development of a dogma that would make explicit the essential Christian trinitarian conviction. Similarly, the dogma on the nature of Christ is understood as the logical outcome of sustained reflection on the testimony about Jesus as the Christ in the Bible and in the apostolic tradition. In the notion of logical unfolding, even in its continual development, truth remains forever unchanged…
… Theories of organic development stress the fact that the history of doctrine includes more than explicit formulation of implicit revelation. Such theories take into account the ways in which religious thought is affected by “contemporary” science, philosophy, and historical crises (e.g., the “Copernican revolution” in astronomy, the Renaissance, and other such events). The holders of this view are convinced, however, that all such historical supplementations have been integrated into the original deposit and thus exhibit the power of the religious organization (e.g., the church) to grow and change without substantial alteration of its identity. Thus, the 19th-century Roman Catholic cardinal John Henry Newman, in his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845), argued that the highest and most wonderful truths, though communicated to the world once for all by inspired teachers could not be comprehended all at once by the recipients, but,…have required only the longer time and deeper thought for their full elucidation. Newman also believed that this process was safeguarded by the authority of the teaching that would even allow for revisions and occasional corrections of antecedent…
…Protestants, by and large, have been more impressed by the lapses and deviations they see in church history and doctrine and thus have tended to construe authentic “development” in terms of a perennial recourse to scripture and apostolic tradition. Such a view takes historical flux for granted and is less sensitive to the problem of historical continuity…
…In all traditions, the course of doctrinal development is crucially affected by the occasional emergence of profound and powerful thinkers who have gathered up scattered elements in their various traditions in freshly relevant syntheses, altering thereby the subsequent history of that tradition. This can be seen, for example, in the North African theologian Augustine’s contributions to the making of Latin Christianity and in the matching services of St. John of Damascus in Eastern Orthodoxy. Such also was the role and contribution of Moses Maimonides in medieval Judaism (e.g., the Thirteen Articles of Faith in his commentary on the Mishna) and of St. Thomas Aquinas in medieval Christianity (e.g., Summa theologiae). The 16th-century reformers Martin Luther and John Calvin gave Protestantism its classical form, to be followed by yet other and different system builders (e.g., Friedrich Schleiermacher in the 19th century and Karl Barth in the 20th century)…
… Each theory of development has had its own distinctive prescription for doctrinal stability and doctrinal change. In Christianity, Eastern Orthodoxy locates its authority in “Holy Tradition,” which is fixed and guided by the dogmas proclaimed by the ecumenical councils. Roman Catholicism relies on the magisterium (teaching authority) of the church, which is directed by the bishops as a “college” (collegium episcoporum) and supremely by the bishop of Rome as their collegial head. Protestantism has sought to bind both tradition and the church to the authority of holy scripture, with the resulting problem of specifying what is to be regarded as truly authoritative interpretations of scripture…
The relation of faith, reason, and religious insight to doctrine and dogma
Insofar as doctrines and dogmas represent conceptualizations of the human encounter with the divine mystery, they are bound to reflect the interplay of faith and reason in religious experience and to imply some notion of levels and stages in the progress of believers as they move from the threshold of faith toward its fulfillment. Doctrine is concerned with communication and consensus, with the exposure of the religious vision to rational probes and queries. There is, therefore, a tension in all religions between mystical intuition and logical articulation, between insight and dialogue. Most traditions agree that perfect understanding is a goal that lies beyond a “simple faith” and the routine observance of rites and duties. Most of them also agree that the utmost pinnacle of religious insight is ineffable. One mode of differentiation between doctrinal traditions, therefore, is their relative openness or resistance to the auxiliary services of philosophy and science of faith’s fulfillment…
… In Christianity, the dialectic between faith and reason has ranged from the fideism (emphasis on faith) of the 2nd-century North African theologian Tertullian to the intellectualism of Thomas Aquinas. An ancient distinction between faith as bare assent to orthodox doctrine (fides informis) and faith as existential trust in God’s grace (fides formata) gave rise to the further distinction between faith as a set of doctrines to be believed (fides quae creditur) and faith as personal involvement (fides qua creditur). Philipp Melanchthon, a 16th-century Lutheran reformer, stressed the point that even the devils are “orthodox” (having “dead faith”) but to no avail, since only those who have embraced God’s reconciling love (fiducia) receive the benefits of salvation (“living faith”). In general, this distinction has become standard in Protestantism…
Changing conceptions
In all the great religious traditions, and between them, the clash of doctrines and dogmas has, more often than not, been polemical. The odium theologorum (“bitterness of the theologians”) of which Melanchthon once complained so plaintively has been notorious. Within the several traditions, doctrinal disputes have sometimes led to division or else have accompanied divisions caused otherwise. In relationships between the great world religions, dogmas and doctrines have usually been regarded as mutually exclusive. There are, however, significant signs of change in this attitude. The rise and spread of the ecumenical movement in the 20th century and notable advances in the comparative study of world religions reflect an enlarged commitment to the widest possible community of mutual religious interests. The “Decree on Ecumenism” and its “Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions” of the Roman Catholic Second Vatican Council (1962–65) are signal instances of this disposition.
From: Britannica: doctrine development
End of excerpts
~~ ~~
And here’s a nifty visual aid on timeline of Christianity - which you can click on in case the gif below doesn’t work…a handy overview of issues and key events at a glance
that's all for now...Ta-ta
...more to come in part 3
Edited by T-BoneFixing typos one mistake at a time for almost a sixteenth of a century
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But that’s not to say some philosophical Christians did not synthesize concepts from outside sources. When dealing with the abstract…metaphysical ideas and theories it’s helpful to use mental constructs . Many branches of science depend on such cerebral activity. A construct derives its name from the fact that it is a mental construction, derived from scientific process: observing natural phenomena, inferring the common features of those observations, and constructing a label for the commonality or the underlying cause. A construct derives its scientific value from the shared meaning it represents for different people. If a construct is clearly articulated and the phenomena it encompasses are clearly defined, it becomes a useful conceptual tool that facilitates communication. From Wikipedia: construct in psychology
Part 3 development of the doctrine of the Trinity
We find something of this nature when Paul was preaching at the Areopagus - northwest of the city of Athens, Greece…it’s a small hill covered in stone seats. This area was once used as a forum for the rulers of Athens to hold trials, debate, and discuss important matters. (see Got Questions Org: Areopagus ) …note Paul makes good use of being familiar with popular culture – finding common ground that his audience can relate to:
16 While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. 17 So he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. 18 A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to debate with him. Some of them asked, “What is this babbler trying to say?” Others remarked, “He seems to be advocating foreign gods.” They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. 19 Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we would like to know what they mean.” 21 (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)
22 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.
24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
29 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”
32 When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.” 33 At that, Paul left the Council. 34 Some of the people became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others. Acts 17:16-34
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Historians, archaeologists, mainline and liberal theologians generally believe that the authors of books in the Bible simply accepted the contemporary Pagan beliefs taught in neighboring countries about the shape of the earth, and the layout of the universe. That involved a flat Earth with the Sun, Moon and Stars revolving around the Earth…
…Many conservative Christians believe that God inspired the authors of the Bible to write inerrant, text. That is, writings that are totally free of error. Interpreting those biblical passages which discuss cosmology causes a problem, When the passages are interpreted literally, they conflict with scientific beliefs that have been in place for centuries. The latter describe an earth that is approximates a sphere in shape, around which the Moon revolves, with the Earth and Moon revolving around the Sun. The Sun, in turn, is located in one of the arms of a spiral galaxy composed of 100 to 400 billion stars. The Earth is very definitely not the center of the Solar System, the Milky Way, or the universe. from: Religious Tolerance Org: The Bible and Cosmology
John H. Walton a professor of The Old Testament at Wheaton College said the Bible delivers its meaning less like an encyclopedia – a repository of facts – and more like a conversation – and proposes that the Bible was written FOR us, but not TO us. The people to whom it was written meaningfully are the ancient peoples who spoke the Hebrew and Greek languages in which the documents were written and who were immersed in the culture that provides the context that gives the words of those languages meaning. The cosmological remarks in Genesis 1 are merely common references – not scientific affirmations. It was information that the ancient audience ALREADY KNEW as accepted cosmology.
The literary intent of the Genesis 1 cosmic hymn is to depict the world as having been originally established as a place of order. In our culture, our concept of existence usually involves physical material – something tangible – it has mass – takes up space or experiences – like love, the passage of time…living from hand to mouth defines a meager existence. By contrast, in the ancient world something existed when it had a function – a role to play. In the ancient world people were much more inclined to think of creation not so much as to produce the physical cosmos but to establish order and making it functional. The cosmos was not seen as complicated machinery or systems but more like an assortment of kingdoms - realms regarded as being under the control of a particular being. Therefore, it was important to know who governed a particular domain.
The way my pea brain understands it – it’s like explaining to someone that all the big businesses in town that they thought were independent are actually run by one parent company.
Some of what I shared is from these books:
Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible by John H. Walton
Demons and Spirits in Biblical Theology: Reading the Biblical Text in Its Cultural and Literary Context by John H. Walton & J Harvey Walton
The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate (The Lost World Series, Volume 1) by John H. Walton
NIV, Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible: Bringing to Life the Ancient World of Scripture
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Concerning the development of religion, I think sometimes there might be a tension between the tendency to syncretism and the purist’s insistence on absolute adherence to traditional rules or structures…well…enough on a promo for keeping an open mind…let’s look at several sources for the development of the doctrine of the Trinity.
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While the developed doctrine of the Trinity is not explicit in the books that constitute the New Testament, the New Testament possesses a triadic understanding of God and contains a number of Trinitarian formulas. The doctrine of the Trinity was first formulated among the early Christians and fathers of the Church as they attempted to understand the relationship between Jesus and God in their scriptural documents and prior traditions.
Though the Trinity is mainly a Christian concept, Judaism has had paralleling views, especially among writings from the kabballah tradition…
…While the developed doctrine of the Trinity is not explicit in the books that constitute the New Testament, the New Testament contains a number of Trinitarian formulas, including Matthew 28:19, 2 Corinthians 13:14, 1 Corinthians 12:4–5, Ephesians 4:4–6, 1 Peter 1:2, and Revelation 1:4–5. Reflection by early Christians on passages such as the Great Commission: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" and Paul the Apostle's blessing: "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all", leading theologians across history in attempting to articulate the relationship between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Eventually, the diverse references to God, Jesus, and the Spirit found in the New Testament were brought together to form the doctrine of the Trinity—one Godhead subsisting in three persons and one substance. The doctrine of the Trinity was used to oppose alternative views of how the three are related and to defend the church against charges of worshiping two or three gods…
…In the Pauline epistles, the public, collective devotional patterns towards Jesus in the early Christian community are reflective of Paul's perspective on the divine status of Jesus in what scholars have termed a "binitarian" pattern or shape of devotional practice (worship) in the New Testament, in which "God" and Jesus are thematized and invoked.[ Jesus receives prayer (1 Corinthians 1:2; 2 Corinthians 12:8–9), the presence of Jesus is confessionally invoked by believers (1 Corinthians 16:22; Romans 10:9-13; Philippians 2:10-11), people are baptized in Jesus' name (1 Corinthians 6:11; Romans 6:3), Jesus is the reference in Christian fellowship for a religious ritual meal (the Lord's Supper; 1 Corinthians 11:17-34). Jesus is described as "existing in the very form of God" (Philippians 2:6), and having the "fullness of the Deity [living] in bodily form" (Colossians 2:9). Jesus is also in some verses directly called God (Rom 9:5,Titus 2:13, 2 Peter 1:1)…
…Jesus also receives προσκύνησις (proskynesis) in the aftermath of the resurrection, a Greek term that either expresses the contemporary social gesture of bowing to a superior, either on one's knees or in full prostration (in Matthew 18:26 a slave performs προσκύνησις to his master so that he would not be sold after being unable to pay his debts). The term can also refer to the religious act of devotion towards a deity. While Jesus receives προσκύνησις a number of times in the synoptic Gospels, only a few can be said to refer to divine worship. This includes Matthew 28:16–20, an account of the resurrected Jesus receiving worship from his disciples after proclaiming he has been given authority over the cosmos and his ever-continuing presence with the disciples (forming an inclusio with the beginning of the Gospel, where Jesus is given the name Emmanuel/"God with us", a name that alludes to the God of Israel's continuing presence with his followers throughout the Old Testament (Genesis 28:15; Deuteronomy 20:1) and used in reference to Jesus in the resurrection account). Whereas some have argued that Matthew 28:19 was an interpolation on account of its absence from the first few centuries of early Christian quotations, scholars largely accept the passage as authentic due to its supporting manuscript evidence and that it does appear to be either quoted in the Didache (7:1–3)or at least reflected in the Didache as part of a common tradition from which both Matthew and the Didache emerged.
Jesus receiving divine worship in the post-resurrection accounts is further mirrored in Luke 24:52.[37][38][37] Acts depicts the early Christian movement as a public cult centered around Jesus in several passages. In Acts, it is common for individual Christians to "call" upon the name of Jesus (9:14, 21; 22:16), an idea precedented in the Old Testament descriptions of calling on the name of YHWH as a form of prayer. The story of Stephen depicts Stephen invoking and crying out to Jesus in the final moments of his life to receive his spirit (7:59–60). Acts further describes a common ritual practice inducting new members into the early Jesus sect by baptizing them in Jesus' name (2:38; 8:16; 10:48; 19:5). According to Dale Allison, Acts depicts the appearances of Jesus to Paul as a divine theophany, styled on and identified with the God responsible for the theophany of Ezekiel in the Old Testament…
…Some have suggested that John presents a hierarchy[45][46] when he quotes Jesus as saying, "The Father is greater than I", a statement which was appealed to by nontrinitarian groups such as Arianism.However, Church Fathers such as Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas argued this statement was to be understood as Jesus speaking about his human nature…
Holy Spirit in the New Testament
Prior Jewish theology held that the Spirit is merely the divine presence of God himself,[50] whereas orthodox Christian theology holds that the Holy Spirit is a distinct person of God himself. This development begins early in the New Testament, as the Spirit of God receives much more emphasis and description comparably than it had in earlier Jewish writing. Whereas there are 75 references to the Spirit within the Old Testament and 35 identified in the non-biblical Dead Sea Scrolls, the New Testament, despite its significantly shorter length, mentions the Spirit 275 times. In addition to its larger emphasis and importance placed on the Spirit in the New Testament, the Spirit is also described in much more personalized and individualized terms than earlier.[51] Larry Hurtado writes;
Moreover, the New Testament references often portray actions that seem to give the Spirit an intensely personal quality, probably more so than in Old Testament or ancient Jewish texts. So, for example, the Spirit "drove" Jesus into the wilderness (Mk 1:12; compare "led" in Mt. 4:1/Lk 4:1), and Paul refers to the Spirit interceding for believers (Rom 8:26–27) and witnessing to believers about their filial status with God (Rom 8:14–16). To cite other examples of this, in Acts the Spirit alerts Peter to the arrival of visitors from Cornelius (10:19), directs the church in Antioch to send forth Barnabas and Saul (13:2–4), guides the Jerusalem council to a decision about Gentile converts (15:28), at one point forbids Paul to missionize in Asia (16:6), and at another point warns Paul (via prophetic oracles) of trouble ahead in Jerusalem (21:11).
The Holy Spirit is described as God in the book of the Acts of the Apostles
But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land? 4 While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to man but to God.” Acts 5:3-4 …Peter first says Annias is lying to the Holy Spirit, he then says he is lying to God.
In the New Testament, the Spirit is not portrayed as the recipient of cultic devotion, which instead, is typically offered to God the Father and to the risen/glorified Jesus. Although what became mainstream Christianity subsequently affirmed the propriety of including the Spirit as the recipient of worship as reflected in the developed form of the Nicene Creed, perhaps the closest to this in the New Testament is in Matthew 28:19 and 2 Corinthians 13:14 which describe the Spirit as the subject of religious ritual.
Holy Spirit in later Christian theology
As the Arian controversy was dissipating, the debate moved from the deity of Jesus Christ to the equality of the Holy Spirit with the Father and Son. On one hand, the Pneumatomachi sect declared that the Holy Spirit was an inferior person to the Father and Son. On the other hand, the Cappadocian Fathers argued that the Holy Spirit was equal to the Father and Son in nature or substance.
Although the main text used in defense of the deity of the Holy Spirit was Matthew 28:19, Cappadocian Fathers such as Basil the Great argued from other verses such as "But Peter said, 'Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God.'" (Acts 5:3–4).
Before the Council of Nicaea
Detail of the earliest known artwork of the Trinity, the Dogmatic or Trinity Sarcophagus, c. 350 (Vatican Museums): Three similar figures, representing the Trinity, are involved in the creation of Eve, whose much smaller figure is cut off at lower right; to her right, Adam lies on the ground
While the developed doctrine of the Trinity is not explicit in the books that constitute the New Testament, it was first formulated as early Christians attempted to understand the relationship between Jesus and God in their scriptural documents and prior traditions.
An early reference to the three “persons” of later Trinitarian doctrines appears towards the end of the first century, where Clement of Rome rhetorically asks in his epistle as to why corruption exists among some in the Christian community; "Do we not have one God, and one Christ, and one gracious Spirit that has been poured out upon us, and one calling in Christ?" (1 Clement 46:6). A similar example is found in the first century Didache, which directs Christians to "baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit". Ignatius of Antioch similarly refers to all three persons around AD 110, exhorting obedience to "Christ, and to the Father, and to the Spirit".[60] Though all of these early sources do reference the three persons of the Trinity, none articulate full divinity, equal status, or shared being as elaborated by Trinitarians in later centuries.
The pseudonymous Ascension of Isaiah, written sometime between the end of the first century and the beginning of the third century, possesses a "proto-trinitarian" view, such as in its narrative of how the inhabitants of the sixth heaven sing praises to "the primal Father and his Beloved Christ, and the Holy Spirit".
Justin Martyr (AD 100 – c. 165) also writes, "in the name of God, the Father and Lord of the universe, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit". Justin Martyr is the first to use much of the terminology that would later become widespread in codified Trinitarian theology. For example, he describes that the Son and Father are the same "being" (ousia) and yet are also distinct faces (prosopa), anticipating the three persons (hypostases) that come with Tertullian and later authors. Justin describes how Jesus, the Son, is distinguishable from the Father but also derives from the Father, using the analogy of a fire (representing the Son) that is lit from its source, a torch (representing the Father).[63] At another point, Justin Martyr wrote that "we worship him [Jesus Christ] with reason, since we have learned that he is the Son of the living God himself, and believe him to be in second place and the prophetic Spirit in the third" (1 Apology 13, cf. ch. 60).
The Adoration of the Trinity by Albrecht Dürer (1511): from top to bottom: Holy Spirit (dove), God the Father and the crucified Christ
The first of the early Church Fathers to be recorded using the word "Trinity" was Theophilus of Antioch writing in the late 2nd century. He defines the Trinity as God, his Word (Logos) and his Wisdom (Sophia)[64] in the context of a discussion of the first three days of creation, following the early Christian practice of identifying the Holy Spirit as the Wisdom of God.
The first defense of the doctrine of the Trinity was by Tertullian, who was born around 150–160 AD, explicitly "defined" the Trinity as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and defended his theology against Praxeas, although he noted that the majority of the believers in his day found issue with his doctrine.
The "Heavenly Trinity" joined to the "Earthly Trinity" through the Incarnation of the Son – The Heavenly and Earthly Trinities by Murillo (c. 1677).
St. Justin and Clement of Alexandria referenced all three persons of the Trinity in their doxologies and St. Basil likewise, in the evening lighting of lamps.
Origen of Alexandria (AD 185 – c. 253) has often been interpreted as Subordinationist — believing in shared divinity of the three persons but not in co-equality. (Some modern researchers have argued that Origen might have actually been anti-Subordinationist and that his own Trinitarian theology inspired the Trinitarian theology of the later Cappadocian Fathers.)
The concept of the Trinity can be seen as developing significantly during the first four centuries by the Church Fathers in reaction to theological interpretations known as Adoptionism, Sabellianism, and Arianism. Adoptionism was the belief that Jesus was an ordinary man, born of Joseph and Mary, who became the Christ and Son of God at his baptism. In 269, the Synods of Antioch condemned Paul of Samosata for his Adoptionist theology, and also condemned the term homoousios (ὁμοούσιος, "of the same being") in the modalist sense in which he used it.
Among the nontrinitarian beliefs, the Sabellianism taught that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are essentially one and the same, the difference being simply verbal, describing different aspects or roles of a single being. For this view Sabellius was excommunicated for heresy in Rome c. 220…
…Some Kabbalist writings have a kind of a Trinitarian view of God, speaking of "stages of God's being, aspects of the divine personality", Zohar in 1286 B.C. additionally says that "God is they, and they are it". Another kabbalistic writing speaks of God being "three hidden lights, which constitute one essence and one root". Some Jewish philosophers additionally saw God as a "thinker, thinking and thought", taking from some Augustinian Trinitarian analogies.
Philo the Jew recognized a threefold character of God, but had many differences from the Christian view of the Trinity. John William Colenso argued that the Book of Enoch implies a kind of a trinitarian view of God, seeing the "Lord of the spirits", the "Elected one" and the "Divine power" each partaking of the name of God.
Judaism traditionally maintains a tradition of monotheism that excludes the possibility of a Trinity. In Judaism, God is understood to be the absolute one, indivisible, and incomparable being who is the ultimate cause of all existence….
From: Wikipedia: The Trinity
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The Trinity is Christianity’s most unique, defining, incomprehensible, and awesome mystery. It is the revelation of who our Almighty Creator actually is—not just a god, but an infinite Being existing in eternity as three co-equal, infinite Persons, consubstantial yet distinct. The origin of the doctrine of the Trinity is the Bible, although the word Trinity is not used in the Bible.
As all orthodox Christians agree, the doctrine of the Trinity holds that God is one essence but three Persons; God has one nature, but three centers of consciousness; God is only one What, but three Whos. Some unbelievers mistakenly call this a contradiction. Rather, the doctrine of the Trinity is a mystery revealed by God in His Word. A contradiction would be to claim that God has only one nature but also three natures, or that He is only one Person but also three Persons.
From the very beginning of the church, Christians have understood the mystery of the Trinity, even before they began using the term Trinity.
For example, the first Christians knew the Son was the Creator (John 1:1–2), the “I Am” of the Old Testament (Exodus 3:14; John 8:58), equal to the Father (John 14:9), and the Judge of all the earth (Genesis 18:25; John 5:22), who is to be worshiped as only God is allowed to be (Deuteronomy 6:13; Luke 4:8; Matthew 14:33).
The first Christians knew the Holy Spirit was a separate Person with His own thoughts and will (John 16:13), who intercedes for us with God (Romans 8:27), proving He is a distinct Person from God the Father—since intercession requires at least two parties (no one intercedes with himself). Furthermore, a human can be forgiven for blaspheming God the Son, but not for blaspheming God the Holy Spirit (Matthew 12:32).
New Testament writers mention all three Persons of the Trinity together numerous times (e.g., Romans 1:4; 15:30; 2 Corinthians 13:14; Ephesians 1:13–14; 1 Thessalonians 1:3–6). The early believers knew that the Father and the Son sent the third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit—“another counselor”—to live in our hearts (John 14:16–17, 26; 16:7). These mysteries were accepted fully by the early church as revealed truth, yet without the label of “the Holy Trinity.”
The Old Testament gave glimpses of the Trinity, and no passage of Scripture contradicts the doctrine. For example, in Genesis 1:26 God says in the plural, “Let us make mankind in our image.” God declares that He was completely alone when He created everything, stretching out the heavens and spreading out the earth “by myself” (Isaiah 44:24). Yet Jesus was the instrument of God’s creation (John 1:1–3; Colossians 1:16), in the company of the Holy Spirit who was hovering over the primordial waters (Genesis 1:2). Only the doctrine of the Trinity can explain it all.
The Torah hinted at the idea of God existing in multiple Persons and predicted His coming in the flesh. The Old Testament is filled with references to a coming world ruler (Genesis 49:10) to be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2), who was not only God’s Son (Isaiah 9:6) but a Messiah who would be God in the flesh (Isaiah 7:14; Zechariah 2:8–11). But the Jews were looking for—and, under Roman occupation, desperately hoping for—a triumphant, conquering Messiah, not a lowly, suffering Servant (Isaiah 53). Israel failed to recognize the Son of God due to His ordinariness (Isaiah 53:2; Matthew 13:54–58; John 10:33), and they killed Him (Zechariah 12:10; Acts 2:36).
In the years after the death of the last apostle, John, there were many attempts by Christian theologians to define and explain God to the church. Explanations of spiritual reality to earthly beings will always fall short; some teachers’ explanations were a bit off, while others sank into heresy. The errors put forward in post-apostolic times ranged from Jesus being all God and only appearing to be human (Docetism), to His being created rather than eternal (Adoptionism, Arianism, and others), to there being three separate gods in the same family (Tritheism), to the one God playing three different roles at different times (Modalism, Monarchianism).
As no religion can exist without knowing who or what its followers worship, there was a great need to define God in a way that all followers of Christianity would agree upon as “official” or orthodox doctrine. And, if Jesus were not God, all Christians were heretics for worshiping a created being.
It seems that the church father Tertullian (AD 160–225) was the first to apply the term Trinity to God. Tertullian uses the term in Against Praxeus, written in 213 to explain and defend the Trinity against the teaching of his contemporary Praxeus, who espoused the Monarchian heresy. From there, we can jump forward over a century of church discussion, schisms, and debate to the Council of Nicea in 325, when the Trinity was finally confirmed as official church doctrine.
A final observation. Theology is the attempt by flawed humans to understand the words of the Bible, just as science is the attempt by flawed humans to understand the facts of nature. All the facts of nature are true, just as all the original words of the Bible are true. But humans are limited and make lots of mistakes, as history continually shows. So, where there is error or disagreement in science or theology, both disciplines have methods of correction. The history of the early church reveals that many sincere Christian believers “got it wrong” when it came to defining God’s nature (a great lesson on the need for humility). But, through a careful study of God’s Word, the church was finally able to articulate what the Bible clearly teaches and what they knew to be true—God exists as an eternal Trinity.
From: Got Questions Org: origin of the Trinity
end of excerpts
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This supplementary document discusses the history of Trinity theories. Although early Christian theologians speculated in many ways on the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, no one clearly and fully asserted the doctrine of the Trinity as explained at the top of the main entry until around the end of the so-called Arian Controversy. (See 3.2 below and section 3.1 of the supplementary document on unitarianism.) Nonetheless, proponents of such theories always claim them to be in some sense founded on, or at least illustrated by, biblical texts.
Sometimes popular antitrinitarian literature paints “the” doctrine as strongly influenced by, or even illicitly poached from some non-Christian religious or philosophical tradition. Divine threesomes abound in the religious writings and art of ancient Europe, Egypt, the near east, and Asia. These include various threesomes of male deities, of female deities, of Father-Mother-Son groups, or of one body with three heads, or three faces on one head (Griffiths 1996). However, similarity alone doesn’t prove Christian copying or even indirect influence, and many of these examples are, because of their time and place, unlikely to have influenced the development of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.
A direct influence on second century Christian theology is the Jewish philosopher and theologian Philo of Alexandria (a.k.a. Philo Judaeus) (ca. 20 BCE–ca. 50 CE), the product of Alexandrian Middle Platonism (with elements of Stoicism and Pythagoreanism). Inspired by the Timaeus of Plato, Philo read the Jewish Bible as teaching that God created the cosmos by his Word (logos), the first-born son of God. Alternately, or via further emanation from this Word, God creates by means of his creative power and his royal power, conceived of both as his powers, and yet as agents distinct from him, giving him, as it were, metaphysical distance from the material world (Philo Works; Dillon 1996, 139–83; Morgan 1853, 63–148; Norton 1859, 332–74; Wolfson 1973, 60–97).
Another influence may have been the Neopythagorean Middle Platonist Numenius (fl. 150), who posited a triad of gods, calling them, alternately, “Father, creator and creature; fore-father, offspring and descendant; and Father, maker and made” (Guthrie 1917, 125), or on one ancient report, Grandfather, Father, and Son (Dillon 1996, 367). Moderatus taught a similar triad somewhat earlier (Stead 1985, 583).
Justin Martyr (d. ca. 165) describes the origin of the logos (= the pre-human Jesus) from God using three metaphors (light from the sun, fire from fire, speaker and his speech), each of which is found in either Philo or Numenius (Gaston 2007, 53). Accepting the Philonic thesis that Plato and other Greek philosophers received their wisdom from Moses, he holds that Plato in his dialogue Timaeus discussed the Son (logos), as, Justin says, “the power next to the first God”. And in Plato’s second letter, Justin finds a mention of a third, the Holy Spirit (Justin, First Apology, 60). As with the Middle Platonists, Justin’s triad is hierarchical or ordered. And Justin’s scheme is not, properly, trinitarian. The one God is not the three, but rather one of them and the primary one, the ultimate source of the second and third…
The Arian Controversy
It was only in response to the controversy sparked by the Alexandrian presbyter Arius (ca. 256–336) that a critical mass of bishops rallied around what eventually became standard language about the Trinity. This controversy was complex, and has been much illuminated by recent historians (Ayres 2004; Freeman 2008; Hanson 1988; Pelikan 1971; Rubenstein 1999; Williams 2001). It can be briefly summarized as follows. Arius taught, in accordance with an earlier subordinationist theological tradition, that the Son of God was a creature, made by God from nothing a finite time ago. Some time around 318–21 a controversy broke out, with Arius’ teaching opposed initially by his bishop Alexander of Alexandria (d. 326). Alexander examined and excommunicated Arius. Numerous churchmen, adhering to subordinationist traditions about the Son rallied to Arius’ side, while others, favoring theologies holding to the eternal existence of the Son and his (in some sense) ontological equality with the Father, joined his opponents. The dispute threatened to split the church, and a series of councils ensued, variously excommunicating and vindicating Arius and his defenders, or their opponents. Each side successively tried to win the favor of the then-current emperor, trying to manipulate imperial power to crush its opposition.
From the standpoint of later catholic orthodoxy, a key episode in this series occurred in 325, when a council of bishops convened by the Emperor Constantine (ca. 280–337) decreed that the Father and Son were homoousios (same substance or essence). Arius and his party were excommunicated. The intended meaning of ousia here was far from clear, given the term’s complex history and use, and the failure of the council to disambiguate it (Stead 1994, 160–72). They most likely settled on the term because it was disagreeable to the party siding with Arius. This new and ambiguous formula fanned the flames of controversy, as subordinationists and anti-subordinationists understood the phrase differently when signing on to it, and later argued for conflicting interpretations of it.
By the time of the council of Constantinople (381 CE), an anti-subordinationist reading, vigorously championed by Alexandrian bishop Athanasius (d. 373) had the upper hand; homoousios was understood as asserting the Father and Son to not merely be similar beings, but in some sense one being. While it stopped short of saying that the Holy Spirit was homoousios with the Father and Son, the council did say that the Holy Spirit “is worshiped and glorified together with the Father and the Son”, and added in a letter accompanying their creed that the three share “a single Godhead and power and substance” (Leith 1982, 33; Tanner 1990, 24, 28). Over the ensuing period the same sorts of arguments used to promote the divinity of the Son, were reapplied to the Holy Spirit, and eventually inhibitions to applying homoousios to the Holy Spirit evaporated.
Athanasius and others in the prevailing party argued that the salvation of humans requires the Son and Holy Spirit to be equally divine with the Father. This kind of argument depends on various controversial models of salvation, such as the one on which salvation involves the “deification” or “divinization” of humans, which can only be accomplished by one who is himself divine (Rusch 1980, 22–23). Despite shifting convictions about what salvation is and how God accomplishes it, this basic sort of argument remains popular—that if Christ and/or the Holy Spirit were not in some sense “fully divine”, then humanity couldn’t be saved by their actions. (For an influential medieval argument, see Anselm Cur.) Perhaps the most currently popular such argument is that our forgiveness by God, an infinitely valuable being, requires an atoning sacrifice of infinite value. Hence, Christ has to be fully divine, as only a fully divine being has infinite value…
From: Plato Stanford Edu: history of the Trinity
End of excerpts
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The basis for the doctrine of the Trinity
The central Christian affirmations about God are condensed and focused in the classic doctrine of the Trinity, which has its ultimate foundation in the special religious experience of the Christians in the first communities. This basis of experience is older than the doctrine of the Trinity. It consisted of the fact that God came to meet Christians in a threefold figure: (1) as Creator, Lord of the history of salvation, Father, and Judge, as revealed in the Old Testament; (2) as the Lord who, in the figure of Jesus Christ, lived among human beings and was present in their midst as the “Resurrected One”; and (3) as the Holy Spirit, whom they experienced as the power of the new life, the miraculous potency of the kingdom of God. The question as to how to reconcile the encounter with God in this threefold figure with faith in the oneness of God, which was the Jews’ and Christians’ characteristic mark of distinction from paganism, agitated the piety of ancient Christendom in the deepest way. In the course of history, it also provided the strongest impetus for a speculative theology, which inspired Western metaphysics for many centuries. In the first two centuries of the Christian Era, however, a series of different answers to this question developed.
The diversity in interpretation of the Trinity was conditioned especially through the understanding of the figure of Jesus Christ. According to the theology of the Gospel According to John, the divinity of Jesus Christ constituted the departure point for understanding his person and efficacy. The Gospel According to Mark, however, did not proceed from a theology of incarnation but instead understood the baptism of Jesus Christ as the adoption of the man Jesus Christ into the Sonship of God, accomplished through the descent of the Holy Spirit. The situation became further aggravated by the conceptions of the special personal character of the manifestation of God developed by way of the historical figure of Jesus Christ; the Holy Spirit was viewed not as a personal figure but rather as a power and appeared graphically only in the form of the dove and thus receded, to a large extent, in the Trinitarian speculation.
Introduction of Neoplatonic themes
The Johannine literature in the Bible provides the first traces of the concept of Christ as the Logos, the “word” or “principle” that issues from eternity. Under the influence of subsequent Neoplatonic philosophy, this tradition became central in speculative theology. There was interest in the relationship of the “oneness” of God to the “triplicity” of divine manifestations. This question was answered through the Neoplatonic metaphysics of being. The transcendent God, who is beyond all being, all rationality, and all conceptuality, is divested of divine transcendence. In a first act of becoming self-conscious the Logos recognizes itself as the divine mind (Greek: nous), or divine world reason, which was characterized by the Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus as the “Son” who goes forth from the Father. The next step by which the transcendent God becomes self-conscious consists in the appearance in the divine nous of the divine world, the idea of the world in its individual forms as the content of the divine consciousness. In Neoplatonic philosophy both the nous and the idea of the world are designated the hypostases of the transcendent God. Christian theology took the Neoplatonic metaphysics of substance as well as its doctrine of hypostases as the departure point for interpreting the relationship of the “Father” to the “Son.” This process stands in direct relationship with a speculative interpretation of Christology in connection with Neoplatonic Logos speculation.
In transferring the Neoplatonic hypostases doctrine to the Christian interpretation of the Trinity there existed the danger that the different manifestations of God—as known by the Christian experience of faith: Father, Son, Holy Spirit—would be transformed into a hierarchy of gods graduated among themselves and thus into a polytheism. Though this danger was consciously avoided and, proceeding from a Logos Christology, the complete sameness of essence of the three manifestations of God was emphasized, there arose the danger of a relapse into a triplicity of equally ranked gods, which would displace the idea of the oneness of God.
Attempts to define the Trinity
By the 3rd century it was already apparent that all attempts to systematize the mystery of the divine Trinity with the theories of Neoplatonic hypostases metaphysics were unsatisfying and led to a series of new conflicts. The high point of these conflicts was the so-called Arian controversy. In his interpretation of the idea of God, Arius sought to maintain a formal understanding of the oneness of God. In defense of that oneness, he was obliged to dispute the sameness of essence of the Son and the Holy Spirit with God the Father, as stressed by other theologians of his day. From the outset, the controversy between both parties took place upon the common basis of the Neoplatonic concept of substance, which was foreign to the New Testament itself. It is no wonder that the continuation of the dispute on the basis of the metaphysics of substance likewise led to concepts that have no foundation in the New Testament—such as the question of the sameness of essence (homoousia) or similarity of essence (homoiousia) of the divine persons.
The basic concern of Arius was and remained disputing the oneness of essence of the Son and the Holy Spirit with God the Father, in order to preserve the oneness of God. The Son, thus, became a “second God, under God the Father”—i.e., he is a divine figure begotten by God. The Son is not himself God, a creature that was willed by God, made like God by divine grace, and sent as a mediator between God and humankind. Arius’s teaching was intended to defend the idea of the oneness of the Christian concept of God against all reproaches that Christianity introduces a new, more sublime form of polytheism.
This attempt to save the oneness of God led, however, to an awkward consequence. For Jesus Christ, as the divine Logos become human, moves thereby to the side of the creatures—i.e., to the side of the created world that needs redemption. How, then, should such a Christ, himself a part of the creation, be able to achieve the redemption of the world? On the whole, the Christian church rejected, as an unhappy attack upon the reality of redemption, such a formal attempt at saving the oneness of God as was undertaken by Arius.
Arius’s main rival was St. Athanasius of Alexandria, for whom the point of departure was not a philosophical-speculative principle but rather the reality of redemption, the certainty of salvation. The redemption of humanity from sin and death is only then guaranteed if Christ is total God and total human being, if the complete essence of God penetrates human nature right into the deepest layer of its carnal corporeality. Only if God in the full meaning of divine essence became human in Jesus Christ is deification of man in terms of overcoming sin and death guaranteed as the resurrection of the flesh. The Athanasian view was accepted at the Council of Nicaea (325) and became orthodox Christian doctrine.
St. Augustine, of decisive importance for the development of the Trinitarian doctrine in Western theology and metaphysics, coupled the doctrine of the Trinity with anthropology. Proceeding from the idea that humans are created by God according to the divine image, he attempted to explain the mystery of the Trinity by uncovering traces of the Trinity in the human personality. He went from analysis of the Trinitarian structure of the simple act of cognition to ascertainment of the Trinitarian structure both of human self-consciousness and of the act of religious contemplation in which people recognize themselves as the image of God.
A second model of Trinitarian doctrine—suspected of heresy from the outset—which had effects not only in theology but also in the social metaphysics of the West as well, emanated from Joachim of Fiore. He understood the course of the history of salvation as the successive realization of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in three consecutive periods. This interpretation of the Trinity became effective as a “theology of revolution,” inasmuch as it was regarded as the theological justification of the endeavour to accelerate the arrival of the third state of the Holy Spirit through revolutionary initiative.
The final dogmatic formulation of the Trinitarian doctrine in the so-called Athanasian Creed (c. 500), una substantia—tres personae (“one substance—three persons”), reached back to the formulation of Tertullian. In practical terms it meant a compromise in that it held fast to both basic ideas of Christian revelation—the oneness of God and divine self-revelation in the figures of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—without rationalizing the mystery itself. In the final analysis the point of view thereby remained definitive that the fundamental assumptions of the reality of salvation and redemption are to be retained and not sacrificed to the concern of a rational monotheism.
Characteristically, in all periods of the later history of Christianity, anti-Trinitarian currents emerged when a rationalistic philosophy questioned the role of the Trinity in the history of salvation. The ideas of Arius were revived by many critics, including the so-called anti-Trinitarians of the Italian Renaissance and the humanists of the 16th century. Researchers into the life of Jesus in the 18th century, such as Hermann Reimarus and Carl Bahrdt, who portrayed Jesus as the agent of a secret enlightenment order that had set itself the goal of spreading the religion of reason in the world, were at the same time anti-Trinitarians and pioneers of the radical rationalistic criticism of dogma. The Kantian critique of the proofs of God contributed further to a devaluation of Trinitarian doctrine. In German idealism, Hegel, in the framework of his attempt to raise Christian dogma into the sphere of the conceptual, took the Trinitarian doctrine as the basis for his system of philosophy and, above all, for his interpretation of history as the absolute spirit’s becoming self-conscious. In subsequent theological work, at least in the accusations of some of its critics, the school of dialectical theology in Europe and the United States tended to reduce the doctrine of the Trinity and supplant it with a monochristism—the teaching that the figure of the Son in the life of faith will overshadow the figure of the Father and thus cause it to disappear and that the figure of the Creator and Sustainer of the world will recede behind the figure of the Redeemer.
In a brief but well-publicized episode in the mid-1960s in the United States, a number of celebrated Protestant theologians engaged in cultural criticism observed or announced “the death of God.” The theology of the death of God downplayed any notion of divine transcendence and invested its whole claim to be Christian in its accent on Jesus of Nazareth. Christian dogma was reinterpreted and reduced to norms of human sociality and freedom. Before long, however, the majority of theologians confronted this small school with the demands of classic Christian dogma, which insisted on confronting divine transcendence in any assertions about Jesus Christ.
The transcendence of God has been rediscovered by science and sociology; theology in the closing decades of the 20th century endeavoured to overcome the purely anthropological interpretation of religion and once more to discover anew its transcendent ground. Theology has consequently been confronted with the problem of Trinity in a new form, which, in view of the Christian experience of God as an experience of the presence of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, cannot be eliminated.
From: Britannica: The Holy Trinity
End of excerpts
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That’s all for now…
Could there be a part 4 ?
mmmmm I’m thinking about it
Edited by T-BoneFixing typos are part and parcel of part 3
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Nathan_Jr
All Christian theological doctrine and dogma is developed over time. Early Christianity was as doctrinally diverse as it is today. Converts were trying to make scientifically exact and mathematically precise systematic theological sense of the unquantifiable, the ineffable, since the very beginning. Some won, some lost. Yet, remnants of all early so-called orthodoxy and so-called heresy persist today.
Why is religious theology, as developed over time, so maligned by a religious man who contrived his own theology over time? This pretense about getting back to the first century hopes everyone ignores the fact that hyper-dispensationalism is a religious doctrinal dogmatic man-made tradition developed in the 19th century, not the first century, and "adhered to as though it were divine revelation."
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T-Bone
Nathan, that’s a great observation! And I like your insertion of PFAL in that wierwille quote…
...yeah …let’s look at that quote again – after which I’ll quote from The Way: Living in Love book...
...just going by his fantastic claims one can safely deduce wierwille expected his followers to adhere to his PFAL ideology as though it were divine revelation – because he led everyone to believe it was…so what if it was all plagiarized stuff…through the miracle of malignant narcissism he probably felt entitled because his imaginary god (grandiosity) told him so. It’s the great unprincipled ego: the inflated-self fears rejection and failure and becomes manifested in the senses realm as he acts to undermine and dehumanize others…and for 12 years of my life I believed all of wierwille’s bull$hit.
Since that time the “God-in-three-persons” doctrine has been adhered to as though it were divine revelation – wierwille’s concluding statement at the end of chapter 1 THE ORIGIN OF THE THREE-IN-ONE GOD in JCING.
on page 178 of “The Way Living in Love” wierwille stated “I was praying. And I told Father outright that He could have the whole thing, unless there were real genuine answers that I wouldn't ever have to back up on. And that's when He spoke to me audibly, just like I'm talking to you now. He said He would teach me the Word as it had not been known since the first century if I would teach it to others. Well, I nearly flew off my chair. I couldn't believe that God would talk to me.”
On page 209 of Whiteside’s book wierwille comments on the content of what he teaches: “Lots of the stuff I teach is not original. Putting it all together so that it fit – that was the original work. I learned wherever I could, and then worked that with the Scriptures. What was right on with the Scriptures, I kept; but what wasn’t, I dropped.”
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Nathan_Jr
I really like where you've taken this thread, T, and I don't want to derail it. Maybe I'll start another thread, or maybe one already exists that addresses this bullsh¡t.
I've thought about these quotes for years. They've always bothered me. TWLIL p178 quote sounds like vic is threatening or blackmailing his god. And his god will talk to someone who threatens him with an ultimatum, even one who CANNOT BELEEEEVE. So.... huh? Belief is not required to hear from his god? Apparently, even SIT is not required to get audible revelation from his god.
And then on p209: He learned wherever he could? What? He didn't learn from his god who promised to teach him for fear of having to take the whole thing? So, he worked it by his five senses? His easily manipulated god didn't do the work of teaching it?
Which is it? His god taught him or he worked it? Why does his god need a little charlatan to MAKE it fit? And why is his god reacting to threats from such a shriveled hireling?
Edited by Nathan_JrThe 1942 promise: asset or liability?
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Mark Sanguinetti
The following is a link that explains the history of the trinity from the Stanford University web site. I like Stanford University and this is one of the top five rated universities in the USA.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/trinity/trinity-history.html
Here are two paragraphs in this:
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Nathan_Jr
Thanks, Mark. What a neat, succinct excerpt! I think it was Theophilus of Antioch who is first credited with using the term Trinity c.170CE. He didn't mean three in one, but a plurality, as this article suggests. His Trinity was the Mind (nous), the Word (logos), and the Wisdom (sophia) - citing a verse in Psalms for the divine Sophia. (Gosh, I could be mis-retemorizing all of this!)
I think Paula Fredrickson once was affiliated with Stanford. She's one of my favorite historians. Yeah, real scholarship, real research. They don't begin with conclusions there.
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T-Bone
Thanks…instead of remaining combative over the initial mention of the Trinity and the book of Revelation – I thought I’d be a little more openminded and explore the topics using resources other than the typical PFAL / TWI-mindset.
I think it would be cool if you start a thread on wierwille’s bull$hit - it’s a target rich environment – and always useful for newcomers …and helps old-timers review
…I’m thinking if it’s mostly about exposing wierwille’s nonsense then it probably belongs in About the Way forum…if it’s more corrective – offering options to counteract his logical fallacies and Scripture twisting than you might want to start it in Doctrinal…in either forum it should be fun for all since you have a knack for getting folks to focus on the core issues.
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T-Bone
Fantastic excerpt, Mark!
I referenced the same link in part 3 post above
Great minds think alike
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Mark Sanguinetti
We know who our spiritual head is. His name is Jesus Christ.
WOW and amazing in that we even know where our individual physical heads are with the help of 2 hands connected to 2 arms.
I wonder was I successful in getting you to laugh at least a little bit???
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T-Bone
yes Mark you made me laugh !
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T-Bone
Part 4 the practical side of the Trinity
The Practicality of the Doctrine of the Trinity
When we ask about whether something is practical, we must always ask what we mean by practical and for whom it is practical. In the 1960s it was popular to dismiss issues and viewpoints as “irrelevant,” without asking, “irrelevant for whom?” I used to employ as an example, the expression “irrelevant as the anatomy of a penguin,” until a biologist pointed out to me that the anatomy of a penguin is very relevant to a penguin. Thus, hidden within unqualified statements about relevance or irrelevance or practicality or impracticality are frequently tacitly assumed one’s own viewpoint or perspective. The statement, “That’s not practical,” may mean nothing more nor less than, “That does not fit my tastes or preferences.”
The statement “that is practical,” or “that works,” is therefore a relative statement…
…Typically, Christian beliefs and practices are evaluated by whether and the degree to which they enable believers to fulfill Christian values, those revealed by God…
…many persons, some even non-Christians, quote Romans 8:28: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” They then, however, are angry and resentful when unpleasant and even seemingly disastrous things happen to them – illness, loss of a job, loss of a loved one, or the like. Note, however that they are setting their own standards of the good, namely, what is pleasant and comfortable for them, and evaluating what God does by the extent to which it contributes to the realization of such goals in their lives. Yet, examined in context, we can ask what “the good” is. That is seen in verse 29: “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son.” This, then, is the criterion of practicality: whether it contributes to the realization of this goal, the conforming of believers to the likeness of Christ, rather than whether it contributes to the success, happiness, comfort, or whatever, of such persons.
From pages 329&FF of God in Three Persons: A Contemporary Interpretation of the Trinity by Millard J. Erickson
End of excerpts
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This thread title asked: the Trinity: asset, or liability?
That’s another way of asking if it has any practical value or not. It seems to me that folks who are steeped in wierwille’s Anti-Trinitarian rhetoric succumb to the egotistical idea that they are absolutely right, and Trinitarians are totally wrong. In that regard “Trinity-talk” seems like more of a polemical tool to divide and conquer…I find that’s extremely weird…unsettling since that attitude goes against what Christ said about the feelings we should have toward each other:
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” John 13:34,35
Besides exploring the history of the development of the doctrine of the Trinity again – this time around I tried to think more about what the application would look like…to be honest – for me personally – the doctrine of the Trinity is neither here nor there. And I think when I had those wierwille-colored-glasses on back in my TWI-daze, I was blind to many passages having a part of the Triadic formula that held promise.
For instance, backtracking to another verse in Romans 8, we find a passage that not only wierwille, but a lot of charismatic groups interpret as being a reference to speaking in tongues:
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. Romans 8:26 NIVRomans 8:26 NIV
Be my guest and click on the above hyperlink for Rom. 8:26 and you’ll see parallel versions – but overall the same idea is conveyed – the Holy Spirit negotiates on our behalf WITHOUT THE USE OF LANGUAGE…there is nothing in that passage to even suggest it’s about speaking in tongues – in fact – it negates the idea by stating the Holy Spirit DOES NOT USE WORDS!
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There’s a significant Triadic reference that is very familiar to PFAL grads:
4 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. 5 And there are varieties of ministries, and the same Lord. 6 There are varieties of effects, but the same God who works all things in all persons. 7 But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. 8 For to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, and to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit; 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, and to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, 10 and to another the effecting of miracles, and to another prophecy, and to another the distinguishing of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, and to another the interpretation of tongues. 11 But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually just as He wills. I Corinthians 12:4-11 NASB
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Quoting again from Millard’s book, on page 185 he makes these remarks of I Cor. 12:
…This is part of the letter in which one of the major themes is the unity of the church, which is threatened by a party within the church. Paul reminds his readers of the oneness that the Spirit brings about, not conflict or separation. Then he relates this step by step to each member of the Godhead: “There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men.” There seems to be a definite parallelism here. As is customary in Hebrew poetry, with which Paul was familiar, gifts, service, and working are very similar if not synonymous. Then it must appear here as if “Spirit,” “Lord,” and “God” are virtually synonymous as well. In any event, there is a closeness and an intimacy of connection among these three persons that is worthy of note.
End of excerpts
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I try not to get hung up in a mental construct of “the Trinity” – I think it’s a human estimation of a divine reality that defies articulation – and as such “the Trinity” is only a concept and not real. There are numerous Triadic formulas in the New Testament, and if words have any meaning, then there is some relationship being communicated when we find references to “God”, “Jesus Christ” and “Spirit” in close proximity in a certain passage.
For most of my working career I’ve been a technician – and circuits, security systems, audio/video components, convergence and system integration are my specialty. One of my earliest memories of learning about circuits was a mentor telling me how electrical circuits are analogous to water circuits – in other words electrical power running through a wire is like water flowing through a pipe or hose. Similar but not the same. You accidentally cut into a garden hose - you’ve got a watery mess - but no great harm done to yourself. You unknowingly cut into a live electrical line, and you might be injured or killed. To me, the doctrine of the Trinity is trying to explain something indefinable through words and concepts.
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That’s all for now, Grease Spotters
Edited by T-BoneIf your door hinges squeak, creak, or shriek then you need 3-in-1 Oil
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T-Bone
follow up diagram for the above post; take note of the parallels of the Godhead in the verses at bottom right:
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T-Bone
Controversies in Christian Theology over the Trinity
Controversy makes things more interesting to talk about. It would be boring if everyone had the same opinion...debate keeps the discussion stimulating.
I’ve been browsing through certain books and online sources noting the various Christian controversies. As you probably know there’s been a wide range of doctrinal disputes ever since the church began…but in keeping with the theme of this thread I found one online source that encapsulated the various theological issues – and so here below I copied and pasted portions pertinent to this discussion.
Also note, if you’re like me and enjoy theological and philosophical wrangling you might enjoy reading the whole article (hyperlink is posted below) because it briefly mentions some other doctrinal issues in the church’s history…anyway excerpts below mostly deal with the Trinity…enjoy:
The Christological controversies
As in the area of the doctrine of the Trinity, the general development of Christology has been characterized by a plurality of views and formulations. Solutions intermediate between the positions of Antioch and Alexandria were constantly proposed. Two particular solutions became so controversial as to be deemed heretical. During the 5th century the position subsequently referred to by the mainstream of Christianity as Nestorianism, associated with Nestorius and placing strong emphasis upon the human aspects of Jesus Christ at the expense of his divine aspects, arose from the Antiochene school.
The position known as monophysitism, associated with the monk Eutyches (and, according to some detractors, with Cyril of Alexandria) and placing strong emphasis upon the divine nature of Christ at the apparent expense of his humanity, emerged from the Alexandrian school. After the reign of Constantine, the Roman emperor who effectively made Christianity the religion of the empire, the great ecumenical synods occupied themselves essentially with the task of creating uniform formulations binding upon the entire imperial church. The Council of Chalcedon (451) finally settled the dispute between Antioch and Alexandria by drawing from each, declaring:
We all unanimously teach…one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, perfect in deity and perfect in humanity…in two natures, without being mixed, transmuted, divided, or separated. The distinction between the natures is by no means done away with through the union, but rather the identity of each nature is preserved and concurs into one person and being.
The Christological statement composed at Chalcedon did not resolve the dispute to everyone’s satisfaction, as certain eastern, “non-Chalcedonian,” churches felt that the council’s statement about the “identity of each nature” had strayed too close to the purported dyophysitism of Nestorius and therefore too far from what they perceived to have been the miaphysite Christology of Cyril.
Even the Christological formulas, however, do not claim to offer a rational conceptual clarification. Instead, they emphasize clearly three contentions in the mystery of the sonship of God. First, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is completely God, that in reality “the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” in him (Colossians 2:9). Second, Jesus Christ is completely human. Third, those two “natures” do not exist beside one another in an unconnected way but, rather, are joined in him in a personal unity. Once again, the Neoplatonic metaphysics of substance offered the categories so as to settle conceptually those various theological concerns.
Thus, the idea of the unity of substance (homoousia) of the divine Logos with God the Father assured the complete divinity of Jesus Christ, and the mystery of the person of Jesus Christ could be grasped in a complex but decisive formula: two natures in one person. The concept of person, taken from Roman law, served to join the fully divine and fully human natures of Christ into an individual unity.
Christology, however, is not the product of abstract logical operations but instead originates in the liturgical and charismatic sphere wherein Christians engage in prayer, meditation, and asceticism. Not being derived primarily from abstract teaching, it rather changes within the liturgy in new forms and in countless hymns of worship—as in the words of the Easter liturgy:
The king of the heavens appeared on earth out of kindness to man and it was with men that he associated. For he took his flesh from a pure virgin and he came forth from her, in that he accepted it. One is the Son, two-fold in essence, but not in person. Therefore in announcing him as in truth perfect God and perfect man, we confess Christ our God…
Contradictory aspects of the Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit is one of the most elusive and difficult themes in Christian theology, because it refers to one of the three persons in the Godhead but does not evoke concrete images the way “Father” or “Creator” and “Son” or “Redeemer” do. A characteristic view of the Holy Spirit is sketched in the Gospel According to John: the outpouring of the Holy Spirit takes place only after the Ascension of Christ; it is the beginning of a new time of salvation, in which the Holy Spirit is sent as the Paraclete (Counsellor) to the church remaining behind in this world. The phenomena described in John, which are celebrated in the church at Pentecost, are understood as the fulfillment of this promise. With this event (Pentecost), the church entered into the period of the Holy Spirit.
The essence of the expression of the Holy Spirit is free spontaneity. The Spirit blows like the wind, “where it wills,” but where it blows it establishes a firm norm by virtue of its divine authority. The spirit of prophecy and the spirit of knowledge (gnōsis) are not subject to the will of the prophet; revelation of the Spirit in the prophetic word or in the word of knowledge becomes Holy Scripture, which as “divinely breathed” “cannot be broken” and lays claim to a lasting validity for the church.
The Spirit, which is expressed in the various officeholders of the church, likewise founds the authority of ecclesiastical offices. The laying on of hands, as a sign of the transference of the Holy Spirit from one person to another, is a characteristic ritual that visibly represents and guarantees the continuity of the working of the Spirit in the officeholders chosen by the Apostles.
It is, in other words, the sacramental sign of the succession of the full power of spiritual authority of bishops and priests. The Holy Spirit also creates the sacraments and guarantees the constancy of their action in the church. All the expressions of church life—doctrine, office, polity, sacraments, power to loosen and to bind, and prayer—are understood as endowed by the Spirit.
The Holy Spirit, however, is also the revolutionizing, freshly creating principle in church history. All the reformational movements in church history, which broke with old institutions, have appealed to the authority of the Holy Spirit. Opposition to the church—through appeal to the Holy Spirit—became noticeable for the first time in Montanism, in the mid-2nd century. Montanus, a Phrygian prophet and charismatic leader, understood himself and the prophetic movement sustained by him as the fulfillment of the promise of the coming of the Paraclete.
In the 13th century a spiritualistic countermovement against the institutional church gained attention anew in Joachim of Fiore, who understood the history of salvation in terms of a continuing self-realization of the divine Trinity in the three times of salvation: (1) the time of the Father, (2) the time of the Son, and (3) the time of the Holy Spirit. He promised the speedy beginning of the period of the Holy Spirit, in which the institutional papal church, with its sacraments and its revelation hardened in the letter of scripture, would be replaced by a community of charismatic figures, filled with the Spirit, and by the time of “spiritual knowledge.”
This promise became the spiritual stimulus of a series of revolutionary movements within the medieval church—e.g., the reform movement of the radical Franciscan spirituals. Their effects extended to the Hussite reform movement led by Jan Hus in 15th-century Bohemia and to the 16th-century radical reformer, Thomas Müntzer, who substantiated his revolution against the princes and clerical hierarchs with a new outpouring of the Spirit.
Quakerism represents the most radical mode of rejection—carried out in the name of the freedom of the Holy Spirit—of all institutional forms, which are regarded as shackles and prisons of the Holy Spirit. In the 20th century a revival of charismatic forms of Christianity, called Pentecostalism and the charismatic movement, centred on the recovery of the experience of the Holy Spirit and necessitated some fresh theological inquiry about the subject…
…The emergence of Trinitarian speculations in early church theology led to great difficulties in the article about the “person” of the Holy Spirit. In the New Testament the Holy Spirit appeared more as power than as person, though there was distinctive personal representation in the form of the dove at Jesus’ baptism. But it was difficult to incorporate this graphic or symbolic representation into dogmatic theology.
Nevertheless, the idea of the complete essence (homoousia) of the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son was achieved through the writings of Athanasius. This was in opposition to all earlier attempts to subordinate the Holy Spirit to the Son and to the Father and to interpret the Spirit—similarly to anti-Trinitarian Christology—as a prince of the angels. According to Athanasius, the Holy Spirit alone guarantees the complete redemption of humanity: “through participation in the Holy Spirit we partake of the divine nature.”
In his work De Trinitate (“On the Trinity”), Augustine undertook to render the essence of the Trinity understandable in terms of the Trinitarian structure of the human person: the Holy Spirit appears as the Spirit of love, which joins Father and Son and draws people into this communion of love. In Eastern Orthodox thought, however, the Holy Spirit and the Son both proceed from the Father. In the West, the divine Trinity is determined more by the idea of the inner Trinitarian life in God; thus, the notion was carried through that the Holy Spirit goes forth from the Father and from the Son. Despite all the efforts of speculative theology, a graphic conception of the person of the Holy Spirit was not developed even later in the consciousness of the church…
…The central Christian affirmations about God are condensed and focused in the classic doctrine of the Trinity, which has its ultimate foundation in the special religious experience of the Christians in the first communities. This basis of experience is older than the doctrine of the Trinity. It consisted of the fact that God came to meet Christians in a threefold figure: (1) as Creator, Lord of the history of salvation, Father, and Judge, as revealed in the Old Testament; (2) as the Lord who, in the figure of Jesus Christ, lived among human beings and was present in their midst as the “Resurrected One”; and (3) as the Holy Spirit, whom they experienced as the power of the new life, the miraculous potency of the kingdom of God.
The question as to how to reconcile the encounter with God in this threefold figure with faith in the oneness of God, which was the Jews’ and Christians’ characteristic mark of distinction from paganism, agitated the piety of ancient Christendom in the deepest way. In the course of history, it also provided the strongest impetus for a speculative theology, which inspired Western metaphysics for many centuries. In the first two centuries of the Christian Era, however, a series of different answers to this question developed.
The diversity in interpretation of the Trinity was conditioned especially through the understanding of the figure of Jesus Christ. According to the theology of the Gospel According to John, the divinity of Jesus Christ constituted the departure point for understanding his person and efficacy. The Gospel According to Mark, however, did not proceed from a theology of incarnation but instead understood the baptism of Jesus Christ as the adoption of the man Jesus Christ into the Sonship of God, accomplished through the descent of the Holy Spirit.
The situation became further aggravated by the conceptions of the special personal character of the manifestation of God developed by way of the historical figure of Jesus Christ; the Holy Spirit was viewed not as a personal figure but rather as a power and appeared graphically only in the form of the dove and thus receded, to a large extent, in the Trinitarian speculation…
…The Johannine literature in the Bible provides the first traces of the concept of Christ as the Logos, the “word” or “principle” that issues from eternity. Under the influence of subsequent Neoplatonic philosophy, this tradition became central in speculative theology. There was interest in the relationship of the “oneness” of God to the “triplicity” of divine manifestations. This question was answered through the Neoplatonic metaphysics of being. The transcendent God, who is beyond all being, all rationality, and all conceptuality, is divested of divine transcendence. In a first act of becoming self-conscious the Logos recognizes itself as the divine mind (Greek: nous), or divine world reason, which was characterized by the Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus as the “Son” who goes forth from the Father.
The next step by which the transcendent God becomes self-conscious consists in the appearance in the divine nous of the divine world, the idea of the world in its individual forms as the content of the divine consciousness. In Neoplatonic philosophy both the nous and the idea of the world are designated the hypostases of the transcendent God. Christian theology took the Neoplatonic metaphysics of substance as well as its doctrine of hypostases as the departure point for interpreting the relationship of the “Father” to the “Son.” This process stands in direct relationship with a speculative interpretation of Christology in connection with Neoplatonic Logos speculation.
In transferring the Neoplatonic hypostases doctrine to the Christian interpretation of the Trinity there existed the danger that the different manifestations of God—as known by the Christian experience of faith: Father, Son, Holy Spirit—would be transformed into a hierarchy of gods graduated among themselves and thus into a polytheism. Though this danger was consciously avoided and, proceeding from a Logos Christology, the complete sameness of essence of the three manifestations of God was emphasized, there arose the danger of a relapse into a triplicity of equally ranked gods, which would displace the idea of the oneness of God.
…By the 3rd century it was already apparent that all attempts to systematize the mystery of the divine Trinity with the theories of Neoplatonic hypostases metaphysics were unsatisfying and led to a series of new conflicts. The high point of these conflicts was the so-called Arian controversy. In his interpretation of the idea of God, Arius sought to maintain a formal understanding of the oneness of God. In defense of that oneness, he was obliged to dispute the sameness of essence of the Son and the Holy Spirit with God the Father, as stressed by other theologians of his day.
From the outset, the controversy between both parties took place upon the common basis of the Neoplatonic concept of substance, which was foreign to the New Testament itself. It is no wonder that the continuation of the dispute on the basis of the metaphysics of substance likewise led to concepts that have no foundation in the New Testament—such as the question of the sameness of essence (homoousia) or similarity of essence (homoiousia) of the divine persons.
The basic concern of Arius was and remained disputing the oneness of essence of the Son and the Holy Spirit with God the Father, in order to preserve the oneness of God. The Son, thus, became a “second God, under God the Father”—i.e., he is a divine figure begotten by God. The Son is not himself God, a creature that was willed by God, made like God by divine grace, and sent as a mediator between God and humankind. Arius’s teaching was intended to defend the idea of the oneness of the Christian concept of God against all reproaches that Christianity introduces a new, more sublime form of polytheism.
This attempt to save the oneness of God led, however, to an awkward consequence. For Jesus Christ, as the divine Logos become human, moves thereby to the side of the creatures—i.e., to the side of the created world that needs redemption. How, then, should such a Christ, himself a part of the creation, be able to achieve the redemption of the world? On the whole, the Christian church rejected, as an unhappy attack upon the reality of redemption, such a formal attempt at saving the oneness of God as was undertaken by Arius.
Arius’s main rival was St. Athanasius of Alexandria, for whom the point of departure was not a philosophical-speculative principle but rather the reality of redemption, the certainty of salvation. The redemption of humanity from sin and death is only then guaranteed if Christ is total God and total human being, if the complete essence of God penetrates human nature right into the deepest layer of its carnal corporeality. Only if God in the full meaning of divine essence became human in Jesus Christ is deification of man in terms of overcoming sin and death guaranteed as the resurrection of the flesh. The Athanasian view was accepted at the Council of Nicaea (325) and became orthodox Christian doctrine.
St. Augustine, of decisive importance for the development of the Trinitarian doctrine in Western theology and metaphysics, coupled the doctrine of the Trinity with anthropology. Proceeding from the idea that humans are created by God according to the divine image, he attempted to explain the mystery of the Trinity by uncovering traces of the Trinity in the human personality. He went from analysis of the Trinitarian structure of the simple act of cognition to ascertainment of the Trinitarian structure both of human self-consciousness and of the act of religious contemplation in which people recognize themselves as the image of God.
A second model of Trinitarian doctrine—suspected of heresy from the outset—which had effects not only in theology but also in the social metaphysics of the West as well, emanated from Joachim of Fiore. He understood the course of the history of salvation as the successive realization of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in three consecutive periods. This interpretation of the Trinity became effective as a “theology of revolution,” inasmuch as it was regarded as the theological justification of the endeavour to accelerate the arrival of the third state of the Holy Spirit through revolutionary initiative.
The final dogmatic formulation of the Trinitarian doctrine in the so-called Athanasian Creed (c. 500), una substantia—tres personae (“one substance—three persons”), reached back to the formulation of Tertullian. In practical terms it meant a compromise in that it held fast to both basic ideas of Christian revelation—the oneness of God and divine self-revelation in the figures of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—without rationalizing the mystery itself. In the final analysis the point of view thereby remained definitive that the fundamental assumptions of the reality of salvation and redemption are to be retained and not sacrificed to the concern of a rational monotheism.
Characteristically, in all periods of the later history of Christianity, anti-Trinitarian currents emerged when a rationalistic philosophy questioned the role of the Trinity in the history of salvation. The ideas of Arius were revived by many critics, including the so-called anti-Trinitarians of the Italian Renaissance and the humanists of the 16th century. Researchers into the life of Jesus in the 18th century, such as Hermann Reimarus and Carl Bahrdt, who portrayed Jesus as the agent of a secret enlightenment order that had set itself the goal of spreading the religion of reason in the world, were at the same time anti-Trinitarians and pioneers of the radical rationalistic criticism of dogma.
The Kantian critique of the proofs of God contributed further to a devaluation of Trinitarian doctrine. In German idealism, Hegel, in the framework of his attempt to raise Christian dogma into the sphere of the conceptual, took the Trinitarian doctrine as the basis for his system of philosophy and, above all, for his interpretation of history as the absolute spirit’s becoming self-conscious. In subsequent theological work, at least in the accusations of some of its critics, the school of dialectical theology in Europe and the United States tended to reduce the doctrine of the Trinity and supplant it with a monochristism—the teaching that the figure of the Son in the life of faith will overshadow the figure of the Father and thus cause it to disappear and that the figure of the Creator and Sustainer of the world will recede behind the figure of the Redeemer…
…The transcendence of God has been rediscovered by science and sociology; theology in the closing decades of the 20th century endeavoured to overcome the purely anthropological interpretation of religion and once more to discover anew its transcendent ground. Theology has consequently been confronted with the problem of Trinity in a new form, which, in view of the Christian experience of God as an experience of the presence of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, cannot be eliminated.
From: Britannica: The Christological controversies
End of excerpts
Edited by T-BoneWithout controversy great is the mystery of editing...how do they fix all those screw ups?
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in an effort to keep all Grease Spotters in the loop concerning subjects of concerns, interests and needs I do hereby bump this thread thereby fulfilling my promise to a certain Grease Spotter
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reposting part of what I shared on Absent Christ thread recently (see post > here
...The reason I’m posting them here on this thread is because I got to reflect on something that occurred to me today while watching David Jeremiah preach on TV.
And he wasn’t teaching on anything about the Trinity – I just happened to take note of him “changing” his reference when transitioning from talking about Jesus Christ on the day of the ascension and then later when God comes back to gather us for the rapture. What immediately popped up in my mind was that part in PFAL when wierwille gets all enthused about Christ’s return in book of Rev and says when He comes back as Lord of lords, and King of kings…as God Almighty He’s going to knock some ear-balls together.
I also recall the many times I’ve sat through PFAL during that part (I think I stayed awake for that part - I liked watching wierwille's ears and tie go up and down when he talked excitedly
) and afterwards a newer grad might ask ,“I thought you said Jesus Christ was not God”. And sometimes – if a corps person was running the class they might intercede by saying “it was a slip of the tongue by the teacher – he gets so excited over this stuff.” Which could have been true – but also the class was filmed in 1967 – maybe wierwille hadn’t become so adamant that Jesus Christ was not God ( the copyright on my copy of JCNG is 1975) – I don’t know…maybe it was a slip of the tongue…but anyway I got to thinking today of a lot of the deep topics and concepts in Christianity…
if I were God Almighty omniscient, omnipresent, sovereign, inhabiting eternity, etcetera ad infinitum
– what would it be like trying to convey my thoughts to a mere mortal with limited intelligence trapped in specific spacetime coordinates…Maybe it’s because we are thus limited that God must use easy references that we can comprehend.
Imagine a secret agent movie – I’m meeting with God at an Italian restaurant in Manhattan and discussing our mission to retrieve the arc of the covenant that was stolen and is now in enemy hands – He says He knows exactly where it is because He sees it there even as we speak.
Hmmmmm...it's beyond me why God can't just raise His Holy Hands
and bring it to the restaurant “booms-quick” like when Thor calls his hammer...I mean Thor is just the God of Thunder ...but anyway – He says to meet Him tomorrow night at exactly 8 PM and DON’T BE LATE by the arc de triumph in France. Harrison Ford will meet us there too - he'll bring a few bullwhips with which I’ll wraparound certain small protrusions to climb to the top and retrieve the arc of the covenant...with God on our side we should be able to whip the enemy - metaphorically speaking of course
Wow we're dealing with one sneaky enemy – hiding the arc in plain sight – arc on arc…anyway…the next day I catch an international flight from JFK airport to Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport – I’m at the arc de triumph by 7:45 PM – and the whole operation goes smoothly without a hitch.
If God works in partnership with us, He’ll have to give us instructions that we can relate to in the spacetime continuum. Not because He’s limited – but because we are.
Trinity or no Trinity that is the question. Theology is the study of the nature of God and religious belief. Usually there’s simple worded topics to sum up really big themes. Like hamartiology – it comes from the Greek word hamartos meaning sin. Hamartiology, therefore, is the study of sin. From a biblical perspective, the study includes how sin was introduced into the world, how it impacts the world today, the solution to the sin problem of humanity, the judgment of sin, and the removal of sin at the end of time. The term soteriology comes from two Greek terms, namely, soter meaning “savior” or “deliverer” and logos meaning “word,” “matter,” or “thing.” In Christian systematic theology it is used to refer to the study of the biblical doctrine of salvation. I have several systematic theologies – some will mention the Trinity in passing when trying to explain the attributes of God or when touching on the inexpressible interrelationship of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
I got to thinking about this absent Christ? thread – with a similar issue of trying to comprehend that Christ is here but He’s also coming back for the Gathering Together and the book of Revelation.
There’s a lot of crazy stuff to mull over…thought I repost some of my posts on other threads that got into transcendence, immanence, and how we tend to underestimate the incomprehensible.
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and from another thread:
Speaking of Einstein’s general theory of relativity I read something interesting that gets into multidimensional universes in Beyond Einstein > https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Einstein-Cosmic-Theory-Universe/dp/0385477813 ( I think it’s not a bad thing to reevaluate one’s theology periodically – maybe take a cue from science how scientists are periodically revising what is known of the world around us - anyway ...) ( Some highlights from pages 11 and 12 ) author Michio says in the late 1920’s Einstein’s general theory of relativity provided the best explanation of how our universe began. According to Einstein’s theory, the universe was born approximately 10 to 20 billion years ago in a gigantic explosion called the Big Bang.
However, Michio goes on to say there were many gaps in Einstein’s theory. Why did the universe explode? What happened before the Big Bang? Theologians as well as scientists for years have realized the incompleteness of the Big Bang theory, because it fails to explain the origin and nature of the Big Bang itself. Incredibly, the superstring theory predicts what happened before the Big Bang. According to superstrings, the universe originally existed in 10 dimensions, not the 4 dimensions (3 space and 1 time) of today…However, Michio states because the universe was unstable in 10 dimensions, it “cracked” into 2 pieces, with a small, 4-dimensional universe peeling off from the rest of the universe…If this theory is true Michio says then it means that our universe actually has a “sister universe” that coexists with our universe. According to Michio, the superstring theory explains the Big Bang as a by-product of a much more violent transition – the cracking of the 10-dimensional universe into two pieces…
…Maybe theology is somewhat like the work of theoretical physicists. We look at the given data – the text – scripture – and try to piece together some ideas of an invisible world. Where is heaven? What is heaven? What is a spiritual being? If there was a 10-dimensional universe and it split into 2 – is that now the natural world and supernatural world? Don’t know. It's a lot of theory This stuff is fascinating and fun to think about though…
…I read The Trivialization of God > https://www.amazon.com/Trivialization-God-Dangerous-Illusion-Manageable/dp/0891099093 awhile back. Flipping through my copy I picked out a couple of highlighted notes that relate to this thread. On pages 16 & 17, author McCullough speaks of how the scientific revolution tended to shove aside the mysterious…flattening transcendence into measurable data. He goes on to say in place of God, we now have control and explanation…I might add with PFAL we got an extra delusional dose – we were taught the law of believing would give us actual control over reality. Yes ! a manageable reality.
The book covers a lot of ground but another page struck me as something I could relate to while in TWI. On page 141 McCullough talks about understanding holiness as ethical behavior trivializes it into moralism. When we lose sight of the religious or spiritual dimension – the sense of being separate unto God – we flatten the transcendent into a horizontal code of regulated behavior – turns the Christian life into something safe and manageable – insulated from God; the rod of legalism deflects the lightning shock of the holy God…
From:
https://www.greasespotcafe.com/ipb/topic/23975-stfs-rev/?do=findComment&comment=578954
My post on thread STF’s REV Feb 5th 2017 11:01 PM
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from another thread:
And I think humility should always be the flexible frame of our thoughts. I think scientists for the most part may be a bunch of very humble folks. Science is always revising what we know of the physical world, with more and more accurate testing equipment always improving on the scientific method - observation and experimentation. My personal theology focuses more on the raw biblical data - and I tend to let that inform my theology; granted there's a lot of fuzzy areas - but I'm ok with that.
Getting back to God’s foreknowledge – I think to some degree we all make adjustments in our thinking in order to make sense of certain passages. The Scriptures were written by human authors yet they are supposed to be the very words of God. There’s the matter of trying to resolve passages showing Jesus’ humanity with verses that convey his deity. Another one is the sovereignty of God versus man’s freedom of will. I am sorry to cop out on you all but I do not – I cannot - offer any words of wisdom on any of this.
I choose to accept both sides of the biblical data as true. I’m not saying the issues can’t be resolved but given the situation as I see it (trying to wrap my mind around God) it is definitely a fun pursuit but will never be accomplished. Like the story of Augustine and the Seashell: he saw a boy scooping up the shore’s water in a seashell and carrying it to a small hole in the sand – Augustine asked the boy what he was doing and he replied he was bringing the entire sea into the hole.
http://www.traditioninaction.org/religious/h065rp.Shell.html
from: https://www.greasespotcafe.com/ipb/topic/23975-stfs-rev/?do=findComment&comment=579064
My post on thread STF’s REV Feb 9th 2017 2:31 PM
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Edited by T-Boneeditors - asset or liability?
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It seems you place too much confidence in wierwille’s unhealthy and presumptuous fixation with demonology – and it usually gives Satan undue attention – which also ignores the sovereignty of God and the authority of Jesus Christ. While certain passages do state that the whole world lies in Satan’s power 2 Corinthians 4:4 – it is because the present age has made him its god. This does not mean Satan rules with absolute autonomy. The NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible notes on II Cor. 4:4, page 2026, Jewish sources do not call Satan “the god of this age”. Jesus himself expressed Satan’s limitations John 14:30 I will not say much more to you, for the prince of this world is coming. He has no hold over me. Satan, may be the prince of this world but he can be overruled by Jesus Christ.
But if I drive out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you…Luke 11:20
Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me”… Matthew 28:18
15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have supremacy. 19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross…Colossians 1
the real devious temptation in Matthew 4 wasn’t a card game and Satan was bluffing about a worshipping world he had to offer. Satan was offering Jesus a shortcut – he didn’t have to go through the suffering and death of the cross to ‘redeem’ humankind.
There are some fascinating typologies in Matthew 4 and Genesis 3. What was the reason behind giving Adam and Eve a prohibition?
The Garden of Eden narrative is universally compelling because it tells of a paradise within humanity’s potentialities. The gut-wrenching decision of the first couple, so very “human” in its impulsiveness yet so very tragic in its consequences, grieves us, infuriates us, leaves us pining for “paradise lost.”
Beneath the surface narrative, however, the story poses the crucial problem of human existence; unaided human beings cannot create paradise. Flawed and limited, they cannot oversee and ensure justice and wholeness; they cannot even tame the monster within themselves. Paradise comes at a cost. To live there, one must submit to the rule of an other, the owner of the garden. This is an essential feature of paradise; Do we choose to live in the garden and submit to the master?
Or do we choose our own reign and face expulsion? Those willing to submit find wholeness and intimacy; those who choose otherwise echo the defiant sentiment of the fallen archangel, who in John Milton’s words proclaims, “Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n.”
From page 249 of Old Testament Theology: An Exegetical, Canonical, and Thematic Approach by Bruce K. Waltke & Charles Yu
It’s intriguing to think of Jesus Christ as the second Adam – in a manner of speaking he’s going through the same test as Adam. Who would he choose to submit to? Just like in the Garden there were 2 options as in Matthew 4 - Satan or God.
Jesus of his own free will chose God:
7 Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ d ” 8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. 9 “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.” 10 Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’ e ” Matthew 4
Jesus chose God to submit to God – of his own free will he chose the way of the cross - Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done Luke 22:42 …I still remember one of the anti-Trinity arguments – see there’s two wills indicated here – Jesus can’t be God…yes, that’s obvious he's not God the Father ! But I call to mind the dual nature of Jesus Christ – the Word made flesh – he was both human and divine – I see the Father’s will, deeming it necessary to sacrifice His only begotten Son as the only way to fix the problem – and I see the humanity of Jesus ignoring the self-preservation instinct.
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On a side note, about the Fall and the need for humankind to be redeemed - I read an interesting question in a philosophy of religion book. Why didn't God just immediately fix the problem in Genesis 3? There is no definitive answer for that.
what is your point?
Again - what is your point?
Oh, so that’s your point?
You lost me there. It’s pure speculation – you’re claiming to know the mind of Satan - and you're fabricating a pretext to suit your theory
Well Jesus warned us Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and will deceive many… Matthew 24: 4 & 5 and that seems to me to go right along with what Paul said He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God's temple, proclaiming himself to be God… 2 Thessalonians 2:4
Jesus correlates a false Messiah with antichrist with someone claiming to be God. So, you lose that round.
Thanks, you just made my case!
oops - you're not making any sense again.
I handled Satan's 'Trinity' in an earlier post...Class, that's your next assignment - find my post on this thread where I got into Satan's unholy trinity...and please hold all your questions until you read that entire post and this one.
oh man, PFAL-flashbacks
Your point is bizarre and irrelevant .
NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible on page 256 comments on Numbers 21 as follows about Moses instructing them to make a bronze snake: while this strikes many moderns as some form of ancient magic, the text is clear that it is actually the Lord’s solution and works only because of his power. By having the Israelites look at the very symbol of their judgement, the Lord is having them acknowledge, “This is the judgement that you, Lord, have justly brought upon us, and only you can deliver us from it.” Jesus uses this event to explain his death on the cross.
End of excerpt
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Wow – just wow!
How do you know what God’s intentions were?
Is that something you came up with?
Please read about the supremacy of Christ and that he is the image of the invisible God in Colossians 1 and then explain to me why it’s wrong to worship Jesus Christ…The Greek word for image is eikon– from which we get our English word “icon”. In computer science it’s a graphic symbol (usually a simple picture) that denotes a program, command or a data file or a concept in a graphical user interface – like when you click on the icon for your browser – that enables you to connect to the Internet. Christ is in effect - God's icon - because Christ represents exactly what God is like . Christ is how we connect to the Father John 14:6 . Everything we come to know about Jesus Christ brings to the mind the compassion and forgiveness of our heavenly Father John 14:9 ...Maybe find some Scripture prohibiting the worship of Jesus and then we've got something concrete for a debate.
Another interesting passage of Christ representing God is in Hebrews 1:3 “He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.” In ancient literature “exact imprint” was a specialized tool like a die that was used to cut and/or form material to a desired shape or profile, such as engraving on wood, etching in metal, branding an animal hide, stamping an image on a coin, or making an impression in clay.
I think it’s a shame the way wierwille disparaged the cross of Christ…maybe just another gimmick to distinguish himself from mainstream Christianity I guess.
Another interesting side note – check out Caduceus - Wikipedia
I don’t mean to be a pill about it but on another thread here you claimed my posts lacked substance. Have you read all my posts on this thread? And by read, I mean did you look at and comprehend the meaning of what I wrote - mentally interpreting words, concepts, Scriptures, hyperlinks and books I mentioned?
In case you forgot - reading is a process undertaken to reduce uncertainty about meanings a text conveys. The process results from a negotiation of meaning between the text and you. The knowledge, expectations, and strategies you use to uncover textual meaning all play decisive roles in the way you negotiate with the text's meaning.
How can you say my posts had no substance?
Remember in PFAL wierwille said something along the lines of most people believe that they think but they really don’t think…did you bother to read or think about any of the info I posted?
come on johniam, put some effort in this thread you started. Were you expecting the doctrinal forum to be your own personal pulpit? A monolog?
I crammed a lot of substance in my posts - i.e. Scripture and the history of the theological development of the Trinity – AND MY MAIN POINT in most of my posts was to prove wierwille and his fan club misrepresented the doctrine of the Trinity to the point of trivializing and lampooning the nature of the Godhead.
And I have been upfront and honest in expressing my own view – - which could be screwy anyway
- but that's the fun of the Socratic method - we sort stuff out - anyway ...I've mentioned this earlier on this thread too - which is that God the Father and Jesus Christ the Son are NOT identical and that there are many Scriptures that allude to the interrelationship of the Father, the So ad the Holy Spirit. And perhaps there are no passages more insistent about their threefold interaction than John 14 , John 15 , and John 16 .
Am I saying they clearly address wierwille’s myopic view of the Trinity? No. I’m saying those chapters of John indicate an interagency of all three. For me “Trinity” enumerates there’s three supernatural beings involved. From what I understand in the Bible, they have some common features but they’re not identical to each other – since even their names or titles suggest individuality in the ‘team effort’. Scripture has always indicated the Father is the source - - all flows from Him – and ultimately all will be subsumed in Him –
24Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. 25For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death. 27 For he “has put everything under his feet.” c Now when it says that “everything” has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ. 28 When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all…1 Corinthians 15
Edited by T-BoneIt ain't over until the fat editor sings "it's over" - say can you hum a few bars?
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Raf
You going somewhere with this?
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T-Bone
yes - working on it now - it will take me a little while - something I promised to do on the Craig has his own offshoot thread...I intend to provide doctrinal analysis on each portion of his quote
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Bolshevik
Hegel influenced Marx. Marx influenced Bolsheviks.
Kant . . . influenced a lot . . . also Luther was German. *grabs red thread and thumb tacs*
VPW rejected a trinity of God, but made a trinity of people. Which I understand is an ancient gnostic idea.
Quite the switcharoo.
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T-Bone
Intriguing thoughts, Bolshevik! Gnosticism and the Trinity…I did some looking - found this:
One of the common questions we receive as Gnostics is “Why do you espouse the doctrine of the Christian Trinity?” To answer this question, we have only to listen to the voices of the early Gnostics themselves. In the entire canon of Biblical scripture there are only a few vague references to a trinity in the letters of St Paul, yet the Gnostic scriptures of the Nag Hammadi collection are filled with trinitarian expressions of God.
In the Gospel of Philip, we see written, “...the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” There is no place in the mainstream canon of the Bible where we can find so clear a reference to the Christian Trinity. In this way, we can state quite emphatically that we, as Gnostics, are trinitarians, yet we encompass far more than any dogma of the Church concerning this Trinity.
Whereas the mainstream Church has spent nearly two thousand years developing a dogma of the Trinity, Gnostics have always approached the Trinity as an archetypal symbol and a mystery. As an archetype, the Trinity arises in every culture, in every place and time. Even in terms of physical processes, most every phenomenon can be described as a trinitarian expression—active, passive, and their connecting interaction; motion, inertia and rhythm; thesis, antithesis and a resolving and connecting principle.
Many religions besides Christianity include a triune deity. The Goddess of modern Wiccans includes Maid, Mother and Crone. The Hindu pantheon includes the Creator (Brahma), the Destroyer (Shiva) and the Preserver (Vishnu). Religions that have a triad of gods often develop family relationships between the members of the triad.
This is particularly the case in the Egyptian mysteries with Osiris (Father), Isis (Mother) and Horus (Son), as well as Ra (Father), Pharaoh (Son of Ra) and Ka (the connecting and transmitting Spirit). The Gnostic symbol of the Trinity incorporates these two trinitarian formulae from the Egyptian mysteries—Father, Son and Holy (Mother) Spirit. The Gospel of the Egyptians describes such an emanation of the Trinity: “Three powers came forth from him; they are the Father, the Mother, and the Son.” Here the Mother (Holy Spirit) is the second person of the Trinity, where she might also be identified with the Egyptian Ka. The Gospel of the Egyptians further describes the emanation of a triune series of ogdoads making a total of 24 powers, as described in the Book of Revelation. “And round about the throne were four and twenty seats; and upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment; and they had on their heads crowns of gold.”
In the tradition of the Pharaonic succession in ancient Egypt, the Pharaoh is a divine king, an Anointed One, a Christos, through the connecting power of the Ka (Spirit) that unites the Father and the Son and passes on to the Pharoah the power and consciousness of the Sun God, Ra. The Pharaoh is called the Son of Ra after receiving the Ka (Hereditary Spirit) of the Father. Also, in the Mass, immediately before the minor elevation, this uniting principle of the Holy Spirit, the Ka, is again invoked. “To whom with Thee, O Mighty Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, be ascribed all honor and glory, throughout the aeons of aeons.”
The mainstream Catholic tradition emphasizes the relationship between the Father and the Son, as an exclusive relationship between God and one man in history, called Jesus. Most of the controversy over the Trinity throughout the centuries has been over the relationship of the Holy Spirit to the other two persons of the Trinity and how that might influence the doctrine of both the humanity and the divinity of Jesus.
The traditional Credo provides only one minimal reference to the Holy Spirit, as “the Giver of Life, Who proceeds from the Father and the Son, Who together with the Father and the Son, is adored and glorified: Who spoke by the prophets.” The Eastern Orthodox differs in that the Father alone brings forth both the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Gospels record that Jesus would send the Holy Spirit to remain on earth to guide and care for us, yet, in Orthodox and Catholic liturgy, the Holy Spirit is never invoked alone and is not fully explained as to its relationship to all of humanity.
From Gnostic Society’s website: Devotion to the Triune Deity
See also:
Sophia (Gnosticism) - Wikipedia
Christian Gnostic Doctrine: The Valentinian Trinity and the origins of the Cosmos and the three Natures
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And drawing from my own profile notes on Gnosticism, I wanted to add that a good and concise picture of Gnosticism is offered in an article by Christopher Stead (British patristic scholar and Church of England clergyman who was the last Ely Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge. He is best known for his work on the philosophy of the Church Fathers) Gnosticism comprises a loosely associated group of teachers, teachings and sects which professed to offer ‘gnosis’ – saving knowledge or enlightenment that was expressed in various myths to explain the origin of the world, the human soul and the destiny of the soul.
Everything originated from a transcendent spiritual power. But then corruption set in, and inferior powers emerged – resulting in the creation of the material world in which the human spirit is now imprisoned. Salvation is sought by cultivating the inner life while neglecting the body and social responsibilities that had nothing to do with the cult.
The Gnostic movement emerged in the first and second centuries AD and was seen as a rival to orthodox Christianity, though in fact some Gnostic sects were more closely linked with Judaism or with Iranian religions like Zoroastrianism – and speaking of which - I’m starting to read up on Zoroastrianism – from what I understand it may have had some influence on Judaism, Christianity and Islam:
It has a dualistic cosmology of good and evil within the framework of a monotheistic ontology and an eschatology which predicts the ultimate conquest of evil by good. Zoroastrianism exalts an uncreated and benevolent deity of wisdom known as Ahura Mazda (lit. 'Lord of Wisdom') as its supreme being. Historically, the unique features of Zoroastrianism, such as its monotheism, messianism, belief in free will and judgement after death, conception of heaven, hell, angels, and demons, among other concepts, may have influenced other religious and philosophical systems, including the Abrahamic religions and Gnosticism, Northern Buddhism, and Greek philosophy. From Zoroastrianism - Wikipedia
One philosopher of the 2nd century described Gnosticism as the first notable attempt to introduce existing elements of theoretical knowledge from various cultures. It was an amalgam of tendencies that were speculative and elaborate and partly based on the philosophical creed of Greeks and Romans finding a safe haven after the gradual decline of their own religions, besides the infusion of philosophies, theosophies, and religions of the East, especially those of Persia and India.
Henry Longueville Mansel (1820 – 1871) was an English philosopher and ecclesiastic, summed up the three principal sources of Gnosticism:
1. Platonism – its philosophical form and tendencies.
2. The Dualism of the Persian religion – speculations about the origin of evil and emanations which is an idea in the cosmology - emanation is from the Latin emanare meaning "to flow from" and is the mode by which all things are derived from the first reality, or principle. All things are derived from the first reality or perfect God by steps of degradation to lesser degrees of the first reality or God, and at every step the emanating beings are less pure, less perfect, less divine.
3. Buddhism which had an antagonism between matter and spirit – and the unreality of derived existence – the germ of Docetism which in Gnosticism taught that Christ's body was not human but either a phantasm or of real but celestial substance, and that therefore his sufferings were only apparent.
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A hobby of mine is reading philosophy of religion stuff. Philosophy and religion deal a lot in concepts…metaphysics… abstract theory – one is not dealing with physical reality. In my opinion, moving from philosophy to religion is like a screenwriter pitching a high concept movie or TV plot – emphasizing a striking and easily communicable idea…it’s based on an interesting and attractive idea that can be explained in a simple way.
Christian fundamentalism interprets the words in the Bible in the most basic sense and pays little attention to metaphor or allegory. And thinking about what I learned in TWI in their Orientalism class – I think TWI tended to ‘sanitize’ the culturalisms to make them more palatable to the western Christian mind. In my opinion that was unfortunate – TWI ignored the vivid ancient culturalisms which – if they had done their research – would cast many passages in a whole new light see my Oct 2nd 2022 post on idiom of permission thread and my Oct 4th 2022 post on idiom of permission thread…folks don’t have to settle for TWI’s rinky-dink-amateurish-but-call-it-research when there’s a wealth of legitimate scholarly resources available like NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible and other stuff - I’m currently reading Demons: What the Bible Really Says About the Powers of Darkness by Michael Heiser – in my opinion Heiser is top-notch in biblical languages and cultures – the book is grounded in what ancient people of both the Old and New Testament eras believed about evil spiritual forces and in what the Bible actually says.
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Just speculating here – maybe early Christians were more openminded in their conception of God. I don’t get the feeling from reading the church and pastoral epistles that they were that concerned – if at all - about walking a fine line of serving Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior but making sure it didn’t turn into idolatry…I venture to say it might be that way for a lot of folks today …even Trinitarians…what’s the big deal anyway….It’s called Christianity for a reason.
…not that I’m a good reference point but I think of growing up in the Roman Catholic Church - way before I got involved with TWI – in my prayer life or simply thinking about God and mulling over something – I don’t recall intentionally directing my attention to God the Father and putting Jesus on hold – but I think I’d flip back and forth between the two – depending on what the issue was. For behavior-issues I probably leaned more on Jesus – WWJD might be something instinctive
– or maybe you read the gospels enough there’s ‘moral muscle memory’ 
– I dunno…But I definitely knew of a distinction between the Father and the Son – think of Michelangelo's creation of Adam – even as a child I got it – that’s God the Father …white hair and beard...Reflecting on wierwille's anti-Trinity rants, I think he made a mountain out of a molehill - or maybe an idol out of an icon 
...whatever...he figured out yet another way to distinguish himself from mainstream Christianity. 
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Bolshevik
T-Bone,
Your posts are very long. BUT
I always enjoy your content and point of view.
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