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To: dread78645
dread78645,

There was no need for a "point-by-point refutation." You quoted or perhaps paraphrased some unnamed source that doesn't provide any references to actual historical documents, your only reference being "history books." The analysis was simplistic and flawed to anyone who's actually read a real history book on the subject; for instance, how can one simply toss off the reference to Antioch (~270), as you or your source did, ignoring the entire context of the dispute in that case?

Let's sample the 'Red pill': The triune godhead is referenced in three places of the New Testament:

In this case, analysis of the NT is irrelevant. We are dealing with a matter of third-century history. But briefly:

The baptismal formula in St. Matthew - Your statement "The two earliest manuscripts extant (Sinaiticus and Vaticanus) don't have it. Instead they read" is not verified. My Greek NT, which has quite a bit of textual apparatus, doesn't note any such variant, and a quick web search, even of critics of this text, doesn't find any such claim, indeed, just the opposite: "The exclusive survival of (3) in all MSS., both Greek and Latin, need not cause surprise. In the only codices which would be even likely to preserve an older reading, namely the Sinaitic Syriac and the oldest Latin MS., the pages are gone which contained the end of Matthew." Please provide a reference to a published work or withdraw this statement. As regards Eusebius, he quotes both versions of the text; please see his letter to his Diocese after the Council of Nicaea.

1 John 5:7 - Irrelevant for the time period of third-fourth century. None of the Fathers of the age quote the spurious addition.

John 1:14 - the statement that the Gospel of John is a Gnostic testament is, indeed, absurd. Yet more absurd is the statement that "Hippolytus, Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus, Origen ... & Raymond Brown" would agree. Gnosticism was a heresy rejected by those four Fathers, but they accepted the Gospel of John as canonical scripture.

The ascription of the doctrine of the Trinity to Augustine and Neoplatonism is absurd. No one with any real historical knowledge of the period would say such a thing. Augustine's comparison of Neoplatonic and Christian doctrine, from the perspective of a Neoplatonic believer reverting to Catholicism, far postdates explicit writing about the Trinity, including the very word, in both the Eastern and Western Fathers, e.g., Origen, Dionysius of Rome, Athanasius, Basil, Cyril of Jerusalem, to name some off the top of my head.

Christian believers of hetro-ousia included most of Ethiopia, half of Egypt, and a strong minority of Palestine

Of course no source is cited to back up these figures, despite your claim to be supported by "history books."

Eusebius of Nicomedia was one of the very few episcopal supporters of Arius' doctrine. Canonical Matthew 18:19 is quoted in writings (Ignatius' authentic epistles) predating Nicaea by 200 years. The length of the Arian controversy is easy to account for without believing the DVC fictions about a close debate at Nicaea over the divinity of Christ that you've spouted here: it's telling that your "history book" account completely ignores the role of the Semiarians and the homoiousion in the post-Nicene period.

230 posted on 05/22/2006 8:34:36 PM PDT by gbcdoj (vita ipsa qua fruimur brevis est)
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To: gbcdoj
Oh, I made an editing mistake in this post. Following: "Yet more absurd is the statement that "Hippolytus, Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus, Origen ... & Raymond Brown" would agree" there should be a quotation from Brown. Here's a suitable one:
Another group of scholars has stressed the relationship of John to (incipient) gnosticism. The Johannine picture of a savior who came from an alien world above ... could be fitted into the gnostic world picture ... Hitherto, very few actual gnostic works were known ... Now, however, with the discovery at Chenoboskion (Nag Hammadi) in Egypt ... we have gnostic works in Coptic ... overall these new documents are very different from a narrative Gospel like John; and most doubt that John borrowed from such gnosticism. (Introduction to the New Testament (1997), 372)

231 posted on 05/22/2006 8:45:31 PM PDT by gbcdoj (vita ipsa qua fruimur brevis est)
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