Alex is right, Mark, you have been playing this worn-out tune for several years. I have personally responded to them at least four times if not more. You have been repeatedly proven wrong about this specific topic yet here you are, again, saying what you have always said. Do you not care what Scripture says about the nature of our Almighty God? Do you only worship the god in your mirror?
Alex is wrong and so are you. Nothing in Matthew, Mark or Luke proves the Trinitarian formula. Nothing. The baptismal formula which is a much later addition to Matthew does not prove the Trinity, much less outline what it is.
Likewise, Mark and Luke don't. They write of a subordinational Jesus - don't you realize that Nicea was such a pivotal point in Church history? Origen was excommunicated over the decisions there, and he was dead.
The council of Nicea did not fabricate the doctrine of the Trinity but they spelled out what was always believed by the church and compiled it into an easily recitable "creed".
You must mean what the bishops of the Church decided fit the best with what they understood of Christianity. I never said that they fabricated it. You may be on the verge of understanding here.
The doctrine is expressed in many, many places within the Bible, I as well as others have listed them for you numerous times.
Or not. The point is that if one begins with the Trinitarian formula, then one can pick verses which can be understood to fit the formula. If one approaches the NT with the mindset of a strictly subordinational theologian, then there is no way that it is possible to convince them of Trinitarian theology. My point is that there was a body of extraScriptural work that the Church kept which influenced their theology and their decisions as to things like the Creed and the Canon of Scripture.
(2) I agree that one cannot prove the Trinity in all its Nicene glory from Scripture.
(3)But, one cannot "prove" Newton's Three Laws. What we mean when we say they are "true" is that if we use them as tools to examine what we see, we find we can construct elegant explanations which also help us predict future phenomena. Newton is saying, essentially,"If you ASSUME these three laws to be true then you can understand a lot of things, and ultimately derive the law of gravity from the assumption of these laws and observations of the planets."
I think Ephesus, Chalcedon, Nicea, and others serve this function. We have here the Scriptures. We have the experience of the Saints. We have the expositions of thoughtful Christians.
IF WE ADOPT the schemata of these early conciliar formulations, we find a meaningful way of understanding our Lord when he sometimes describes himself as less than the Father and other times says they are One, AND a host of other stuff as well.
So, I think, JUST AS we do not "prove" Newton by observation and deduction, but rather we find him to be true because his principles order our deductions elegantly and to make predictions of future observations, SO ALSO the conciliar schema are not proved by researching Scripture, etc, but one might almost say they are induced to be true from their clarifying so much Scripture, thought, and religious experience.
Anyway that's how I think of it. If I try to assume Arianism is right, it leads me to a watered down gospel, which is exactly what I find the Jehovah's Witnesses to have. I have never thought enough of my moral capacity to think that Adoptionism could be right, but I seem to find a brittle Pelagianism among those who think Jesus was rewarded with Divine status and essence because he was especially good.
And exactly what would that "extra-Scriptural" work be? I contend that it was the teachings of Jesus as well as the disciples to whom he both taught and later, through the indwelling Holy Spirit, brought to their memories and further revealed to them. That revelation is contained within the Scriptures and I do not think one bit of truth was omitted from them. We have today what God intended for us to know and have. Every basic tenet of the Christian faith is authorized by Scripture. Any doctrine contrived outside of the authority of Scripture is not and should not be binding upon a believer.