Posted on 08/30/2015 10:04:00 AM PDT by CHRISTIAN DIARIST
“Who do men say I am?” Jesus posed the question to his disciples as they went out to the towns of Caesarea Philippi. John the Baptist, Elijah or other of the prophets, they answered.
“But who do you say that I am?” Jesus asked them. And while 11 of the 12 disciples were uncertain, Peter responded, “You are the Christ.”
This account, taken from the Gospel According to Mark, appears in slightly different form in Matthew and Luke, the other two synoptic gospels. What is noteworthy is that in none of the accounts does Jesus say He is other than the Son of God.
He does not say He is, at once, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
It is because of that ambiguity that in 325 AD the Roman emperor Constantine the Great – who reputedly converted to Christianity 13 years earlier – summoned some 300 bishops of the post-Apostolic church – including Philocalus of Caesarea Philippi – to the lakeside city of Nicaea to decide who the church believed Jesus to be.
And 1,690 years ago this past week, the so-called First Council of Nicaea concluded two months of ecumenical debate with the decision that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one and the same.
That bestowed the church’s official imprimatur upon the disputed doctrine of trinitarianism, leaving a mark on Christendom that endures to this very day.
Indeed, those who refused to accept the conclusions at Nicaea were condemned as heretics – like Arius, the Alexandrian presbyter who accepted the divinity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but who challenged the idea of a triune “godhead” made up of three coequal, coeternal supreme beings.
Arius believed God the Alpha and the Omega; the beginning and the ending; the One Who was, Who is, and is to come; the Almighty.
He believed Jesus to be, “the first born of all creation,” the “only begotten Son of God.” He held that Jesus and God were of like essence, but not the same essence. He also taught that Jesus was perfect and unchanging; that He was in all things subject and obedient to the Father; that He was sent to earth to take away the sin of the world.
As to the Holy Spirit, Arius did not think it an actual being, but the illuminating and sanctifying power of God, which was indeed divine, but unequal to either the Father or the Son.
In today’s Christian church, be it Roman Catholic or Protestant, those who bend towards the Arian view, who question the “mystery” of the Trinity – that “the Lord is one,” yet He manifests Himself as three distinct beings – are perceived as having theological views that border on the blasphemous.
But the Trinitarian doctrine is extremely problematic. It requires those who read the Word of God to convince themselves that it doesn’t really mean what it plainly says with respect to the relationship between God and the Son of God.
Indeed, if Jesus is God, and God Jesus, as most Christian churches espouse today, why did Jesus say, in the Gospel According to John, “I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I.”?
Why did Jesus advise his disciples, in the Gospel According to Mark, all would one day see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory, but that of that day and hour no one knows, “not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the father.”
Then there’s the passion of Christ, from the Garden of Gethsemane to the cross at Golgotha.
As the Lord prayed in the garden, He cried out, according to Mark’s gospel, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for You. Take this cup away from Me; nevertheless, not what I will, but what You will.”
Then on the cross, the Gospel of Matthew tells us that, about the ninth hour Jesus cried out, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
If Jesus and God were one and the same being, then the Lord need not have asked the Father to spare Him the ordeal that awaited. He could have decided so Himself. And he needn’t have asked God why He had forsaken Him. Because He would have been asking Himself why He had forsaken Himself.
Because the Trinitarian doctrine has been accepted wisdom in Christendom since the First Council of Nicaea nearly 1,700 years ago, we accept it today as gospel truth. But it is abundantly clear, not from church traditions, but from the words of Christ Himself, that the doctrine is wrong.
Am I to understand, in light of this post, you are Roman Catholic? I like to know to whom, or what, I am conversing with.
Yes, but the Athanasian Creed dates from the 7th Century, so if I were Greek Orthodox I would be making the same post. Must say the Greek speaks in less legalistic terms, so you might want to consult the Cappadocian Fathers to see how they talk about the Trinity.
To those of us who have studied the historical development of the trinity, the Athanasian Creed is not new to us, we have “gotten the handle on Trinitarianism” as you call it.
The creed stands at the end of a long process of development. Not something handed down historically from the apostles, mind you, but developed by step by step by such principle men as Justin, Tertullian, and Origen.
The Athanasian Creed, were it around in these men’s days, would have condemned them, none of them believed Father, son, Holy Spirit as defined in this creed.
Justin Martyr, a former pagan Greek philosopher and apologist, used the Logos of Plato as a means to defend Christianity, on one hand, a means to convert the masses heavily influenced by Greek philosophic thought, on the other.
Tertullian, who came later, building upon Justin, is famously known as the first to use “persons” and “Trinity” writing against Praxeus’ oneness belief.
Origen, who came later, following Justin and Tertullian before him, added the concept of the “eternal Son.” The councils came later, the Cappadocian Fathers you mentioned, and Augustine, giving us the final product.
I don’t buy any of it. The apostles were of the Jewish monotheist tradition, the pagan philosophy would have been abhorrent to them. John’s Logos was not Plato’s or Justin’s. They were neither Trinitarian nor Arian. I believe they were, what people call today, “Oneness Pentecostals.”
Correction, I meant to say Justin was a former philosopher, after conversion becoming a Christian apologist. I should read what I type before posting it.
And exactly what was the “Jewish monotheist tradition”? Josephus who was very much part of the same world as the Apostles knew both Plato and Moses, insisted that Plato had read Moses. Many Jews, perhaps most Jews were Greek speakers. For many years Palestine was ruled by the Ptolomies, who were very friendly to Jerusalem, and Jews made up a quarter of Alexandria. Jesus himself very likely spoke some Greek although his “mission” was to Aramaic speaking Jews, by the testimony of the Gospels. Paul, though a Pharisee, came from the diaspora of the West, as did Apollos, an eloquent evangelist of whom Paul speaks favorably. Maybe what you call the Jewish monotheist tradition is the tradition of the rabbis who had to regroup, so to speak, after the destruction of the Temple, and create a non messianic/ non territorial Judaism for a now homeless Jewish nation.
True, you had Jews that spoke Greek, Hellenized Jews like Josephus, the Rabbis you mentioned after the fall of Jerusalem, but these belie what we see in the Bible. The monotheist tradition we see there. For example:
One of the scribes asked Jesus “Which is the greatest commandment of all?” His answer: Hear, O Israel, The Lord our God is one Lord.” The scribe’s response: Well, Master, thou hast said the truth:for there is one God; and there is none other but he.” Mark 12:28-32
Ask yourself, do the scribe or Jesus sound Hellenized on the monotheist tradition of the Jews? I think not.
We have another example in John 4:22, Jesus sets the monotheist tradition of the Jews over against that of the Samaritans. He told the Samaritan woman, “Ye worship ye know not what; we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews.” In verse 24, he described the nature of the one God (God the Father) believed by the Jews, He is Spirit -
“God is Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.”
By the way, Oneness Pentecostals have the same monotheist tradition you see described by Jesus in John 4. Jesus, the monotheist Jews of his day, and Oneness Pentecostals see the one God as: the Father (verse 23), as Spirit, as absolutely one - “they that worship HIM (not them) must worship HIM (not them) in spirit and truth.”
This is not Greek philosophy, this is not Justin, Tertullian, or Origen, this is not the creed makers, this is what the Bible says.
Which doesn’t mean much to you as a RC, I realized that, you guys take what the ECF say over what the Bible says. Just opposite with Oneness Pentecostals.
Typo, my statement should say:
Ask yourself, do the scribe or Jesus sound Hellenized or do they sound like they represent the monotheist tradition of the Jews?
Josephus was a Pharisee. IAC, the tradition of the Pharisees and the Essenes, and of the Sadducees were all different, The Sadducess recognized as Scripture only the Torah. There was no single canon of Scripture. No single tradition.
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