Posted on 04/16/2013 8:20:04 PM PDT by DouglasKC
Many historians and religious scholars, some quoted in this publication, attest to the influence of Greek or Platonic philosophy in the development and acceptance of the Trinity doctrine in the fourth century. But what did such philosophy entail, and how did it come to affect the doctrine of the Trinity?
To briefly summarize what was pertinent, we start with mention of the famous Greek philosopher Plato (ca. 429-347 B.C.). He believed in a divine triad of "God, the ideas, [and] the World-Spirit," though he "nowhere explained or harmonized this triad" (Charles Bigg, Christian Platonists of Alexandria, 1886, p. 249). Later Greek thinkers refined Plato's concepts into what they referred to as three "substances"—the supreme God or "the One," from which came "mind" or "thought" and a "spirit" or "soul." In their thinking, all were different divine "substances" or aspects of the same God. Another way of expressing this was as "good," the personification of that good, and the agent by which that good is carried out. Again, these were different divine aspects of that same supreme good—distinct and yet unified as one.
Such metaphysical thinking was common among the intelligentsia of the Greek world and carried over into the thinking of the Roman world of the New Testament period and succeeding centuries. As the last of the apostles began to die off, some of this metaphysical thinking began to affect and infiltrate the early Church—primarily through those who had already begun to compromise with paganism.
As Bible scholars John McClintock and James Strong explain: "Towards the end of the 1st century, and during the 2d, many learned men came over both from Judaism and paganism to Christianity. These brought with them into the Christian schools of theology their Platonic ideas and phraseology" ( Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, 1891, Vol. 10, "Trinity," p. 553).
The true Church largely resisted such infiltration and held firm to the teaching of the apostles, drawing their doctrine from the writings of the apostles and "the Holy Scriptures [the books of the Old Testament] which are able to make you wise for salvation" (2 Timothy 3:15 ).
Two distinct threads of Christianity split and developed separately—one true to the plain and simple teachings of the Bible and the other increasingly compromised with pagan thought and practices adopted from the Greco-Roman world.
Thus, as debate swelled over the nature of God in the fourth century leading to the Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople, it was no longer a debate between biblical truth and error. Both sides in the debate had been seriously compromised by their acceptance of unbiblical philosophical ideas.
Many of the church leaders who formulated the doctrine of the Trinity were steeped in Greek and Platonic philosophy, and this influenced their religious views and teaching. The language they used in describing and defining the Trinity is, in fact, taken directly from Platonic and Greek philosophy. The word trinity itself is neither biblical nor Christian. Rather, the Platonic term trias, from the word for three, was Latinized as trinitas— the latter giving us the English word trinity.
"The Alexandria catechetical school, which revered Clement of Alexandria and Origen, the greatest theologian of the Greek Church, as its heads, applied the allegorical method to the explanation of Scripture. Its thought was influenced by Plato: its strong point was [pagan] theological speculations. Athanasius and the three Cappadocians [the men whose Trinitarian views were adopted by the Catholic Church at the Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople] had been included among its members" (Hubert Jedin, Ecumenical Councils of the Catholic Church: an Historical Outline, 1960, p. 28).
"The doctrines of the Logos [i.e., the "Word," a designation for Christ in John 1] and the Trinity received their shape from Greek Fathers, who . . . were much influenced, directly or indirectly, by the Platonic philosophy . . . That errors and corruptions crept into the Church from this source can not be denied" ( The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Samuel Macauley Jackson, editor, 1911, Vol. 9, p. 91).
The preface to historian Edward Gibbons' History of Christianity sums up the Greek influence on the adoption of the Trinity doctrine by stating: "If Paganism was conquered by Christianity, it is equally true that Christianity was corrupted by Paganism. The pure Deism [basic religion, in this context] of the first Christians . . . was changed, by the Church of Rome, into the incomprehensible dogma of the trinity. Many of the pagan tenets, invented by the Egyptians and idealized by Plato, were retained as being worthy of belief" (1883, p. xvi). (See "How Ancient Trinitarian Gods Influenced Adoption of the Trinity," beginning on page 18.)
The link between Plato's teachings and the Trinity as adopted by the Catholic Church centuries later is so strong that Edward Gibbon, in his masterwork The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, referred to Plato as "the Athenian sage, who had thus marvelously anticipated one of the most surprising discoveries of the Christian revelation" —the Trinity (1890, Vol. 1, p. 574).
Thus we see that the doctrine of the Trinity owes far less to the Bible than it does to the metaphysical speculations of Plato and other pagan Greek philosophers. No wonder the apostle Paul warns us in Colossians 2:8 (New International Version) to beware of "hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ"!
I honestly don't understand the point of your post. Why do you think I disagree with this or think any different?
Of course Jesus and the father are one. I put that very same scripture down as proof text of a binity. But note that Christ did NOT say "I, the father, AND the holy spirit are ONE"....why?
19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, (Jesus, Matthew 28:20)
What? Are you accusing Jesus here of being unnecessarily redundant? (Or Paul in 2 Cor. 13?)
Since I saw you make a big deal in another post about a reference to Jesus as "the firstborn," are you claiming that Jesus had a beginning? And if you're going to take that word literally as is, who was his Mom he was born to? (Are you going to pull a "Mormon mom" on us? ... somewhere hidden in the wings?)
And if you think the Spirit is an impersonal force who is no personality other than the extension of God in this world, AND if you think Jesus had a beginning, you are no better off than the Muslim who embraces a bare naked monotheism...with no love to exchange pre-creation of angels (or humans).
The Trinity was a self-existent, self-contained component unity well before any other being was created. He is a social unity -- a community-within-Himself!!!!
Ummmm...I made a "big deal" out of it??? I quoted a scripture... :-)
Rom_8:29 For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.
And no, I'm not claiming that Jesus had a beginning. John chapter 1 is very clear that this is not the case.
And if you think the Spirit is an impersonal force who is no personality other than the extension of God in this world, AND if you think Jesus had a beginning, you are no better off than the Muslim who embraces a bare naked monotheism...with no love to exchange pre-creation of angels (or humans).
Well there's the problem right there! You're imagining things that aren't so and then turning me into a bogeyman!:-)
The Trinity was a self-existent, self-contained component unity well before any other being was created. He is a social unity -- a community-within-Himself!!!!
The trinity is an evolved doctrine that took over 300 years to formulate fully and wasn't understood until it became part of Catholic tradition. When Protestants split from the Catholic church they retained this tradition.
I wasn’t aware of “greater” or “less” than language in the Nicene Creed. To avoid the charge of subordinate divine beings (the Son and Holy Spirit), realizing you can’t have one member of the Trinity less than the other - which would disqualify him as God, no such thing as a subordinate God - later councils had to come up with “coequal” language. Which they did.
When I spoke of understanding Father, Son, Holy Spirit, in the vertical sense, think generation, think of a genalogical chart with a father at the top, his son listed under him, his sons under him.
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ...having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ unto himself,” Eph. 1:3-5.
God, back in eternity, alone and by himself, Isa. 44:24, desired to have children, He desired to have a family, He predestined children “unto himself.”
He predestined Jesus Christ the firstborn of his family. The first son, the firstborn of many brethren. As I mentioned, Christ’s “brethren” are “adopted” (having predestined us unto the ADOPTION of children by Jesus Christ unto himself). Distinct from the latter sons, Christ had no earthly father, he was not an adopted son.
From the United Church of God (cult) Web site: We see, then, that the Father and Jesus Christ are also one in the same sense that Jesus prayed for the Church to be one—not one single being, but multiple beings who are one in purpose, belief, direction, faith, spirit and attitude. (http://www.ucg.org/booklet/god-trinity/how-god-one/)
So...per your Cult HQ, God the Father and God the Son are "only" unified in purpose, belief, direction, faith, spirit, and attitude???
Did you know that thru the centuries, there's been thousands of couples who are unified in purpose, belief, direction, faith, spirit, and attitude?
And you're announcing to us that God the Father & God the Son are no more unified than these thousands of "creature" couples???
Really?
Here is some more from the late Bishop Sheen that you might think to be helpful...
In the Divine Essence, the Father not only contemplates His Son, Who is His Eternal Image. As a result of the mutual love for one another, there is also a spiration, or an act of mutual love, which is called the Holy Spirit. Just as to speak means to pronounce a word, and to flower means to produce blossoms, so to love is to breathe love, or sigh, or spirate. As we know that a rosebush is in flower by its blossoms, so the Father gives intellectual expression to all knowledge by His Word. Now we know that the Father and Son are in love, both for themselves and even for us, through their Holy Spirit of Love. This mutual love of Father for Son and of Son for Father is not a fleeting love like ours, but so eternal and so rooted in the Divine essence as to be personal. For that reason, the Holy Spirit is called a Person. The love of friend for friend is sometimes said to make them one soul; but in no sense does it breathe forth a new person. In the family, however, the analogy is better, for the mutual love of husband and wife does “breathe,” not wholly in the order of the spirit but in the order of spirit and matter, a new person, who is the bond of their love. But all this is imperfect, for regardless of how much love there is among humans, the good which is loved remains separated and external.
A kiss is a sign of love; but it is a giving of one’s breath, or spirit, which is inseparable from life itself. The purpose of all love is to take the beloved into oneself to possess it, to become identified with it. A mother pressing a child to her breast is seeking to make that child one with her in love. “I bear you in my heart” is a romantic expression of the same craving for unity through love— for love, as we shall see, by its nature is unitive.
Divine Life is an endless rhythm of three in oneness: Three Persons in one Nature. If God had no Son, He would not be a Father; if He were an individual Unity, He could not love until He had made something less than Himself. No one is good unless He gives. If He did not give to the highest way by generation, He would not be Good, and if He were not Good, He would be Terror. Before the world began, God was Good in Himself, because He eternally begot a Son. There is no act in God which is not God Himself. Thus, God is the eternal vortex of love, which is ever in blissful activity because He is Three, and yet One because proceeding from one Nature which is God. Here is the White Source of all love whence comes to us all its straggling rays. Here alone is the Source, the Stream, and the Sea of all love. All fatherhood, motherhood, sonship, espousals, friendship, wedded love, patriotism, instinct, attraction, all interaction, and generation, is in some faint measure a picture of God. Father and mother in their unity constitute a complete principle of generation, and the child born of this principle is attached to the parents by a spirit: the spirit of the family. This spirit does not proceed uniquely from the love of parents for their children, but from the reciprocity of their affection. The spirit of love in parents is at once desire, pity, tenderness, bearing all things, suffering all things for the children. In the children, it is an offering such as the birds make to the branches in the springtime. The spirit of the family is as necessary to the family in generation, as the Holy Spirit is to the love in Father and Son.
Three in One, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; Three Persons in One God; One in essence with distinction of Persons—such is the Mystery of the Trinity, such is the Inner Life of God. Just as I am, I know, and I love, and yet I am one nature; just as the three angles of a triangle do not make three triangles, but one; just as the power, light, and heat of the sun do not make three suns, but one; as water, air, and steam are all manifestations of the one substance, H[2]O; as the form, color, and perfume of the rose do not make three roses, but one; as our life, our intellect, and our will do not make three substances, but one; as 1 x 1 x 1 does not equal 3, but 1; so, too, in some much more mysterious way, there are Three Persons in God yet only one God. William Drummond sang:
But despite this desire to be one with the beloved, there must still be distinctness. If the other person were destroyed, there would be no love. Unity must not mean absorption or annihilation or destruction, but the fullness of one in the other. To be one without ceasing to be distinct, that is the paradox of love! This ideal we cannot achieve in this life because we have bodies as well as souls. What is material cannot interpenetrate! After a union in the flesh, one is thrown back on one’s own individual self. In Holy Communion there is the closest approximation there can be on earth to this, but even that is a reflection of a higher love. We can never completely give ourselves to others, nor can others entirely become our own. All earthly love suffers from this inability of two lovers to be one, and yet distinct. Love’s greatest sufferings come from the exteriority and separateness of the beloved! But in God, the love uniting Father and Son is a living flame, or the Eternal Kiss of the Father, and the Son.
In human love, there is nothing deep enough to make the love for one another personal, but in God, the Spirit of Love uniting both is so personal that it is called the Holy Spirit. It is a fact of nature that every being loves its own perfection. The perfection of the eye is color, and it loves the beauty of the setting sun. The perfection of the ear is sound, and it loves the harmony of an overture by Beethoven or a sonata by Chopin. Love has two terms: he who loves and he who is loved. In love the two are reciprocal: I love and I am loved. Between me and the one I love there is a bond. It is not my love; it is not his love; it is our love: the mysterious resultant of two affections, a bond which enchains, and an embrace wherein two hearts leap with but a single joy. The Father loves the Son, the Image of His Perfection; and the Son loves the Father, Who generated Him. Love is not only in the Father. Love is not only in the Son. The Father loves the Son, Whom He engenders. The Son loves the Father, Who engendered Him. They contemplate each other; love each other; unite in a love so powerful, so strong, and so perfect that it forms between them a living bond. They give themselves in a love so infinite that, like the truth which expresses itself only in the giving of a whole personality, their love can express itself in nothing less than a Person, Who is Love. Love at such a stage does not speak, does not cry, does not express itself by words, nor by canticles; it expresses itself as we do in some ineffable moments by that which indicates the very exhaustion of our giving, namely, a sigh or a breath, and that is why the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity is called the Holy Spirit, something that lies too deep for words.
As the Son is God eternally expressed to Himself (that is, the Eternal consciousness of whole being), so God the Spirit is God in the act of loving (that is, giving Himself without reservation). The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Father, as He is the Spirit of the Son, but the Holy Spirit personifies that which the Father and Son have in common. Love is not a quality in God as it is in us, for there are moments when we do not love! Because the Holy Spirit is the Bond of Love of Father and Son, it follows that it will also be the bond of love between men! That is why Our Lord, the night of the Last Supper, said that as He and the Father were one in the Holy Spirit, so men would be one in His Mystical Body, for He would send His Spirit to make them one.
The Holy Spirit is necessary to the nature of God as its harmony through love! With a feeble reflection men have always recognized love as the unitive, cohesive force of human society, as they saw in hate the occasion of its disintegration and chaos. As God in creating the world put into it a gravitational pull which affects all matter, so He has put into hearts another law of gravitation, which is the law of love by which all hearts are attracted back again to the center and source of Love, which is God. St. Augustine said: “My love is my weight,” which means that every soul has a longing desire to return to its Original Source, its Divine Heart or Center. Desire is everything in nature and, with some appositeness, Heaven has been described as “Nature filled with Divine Life attracted by Desire.” Love is the soul’s last habitation.
I see the problem again! You're taking one quote out of context from an entire document and then "spinning" it to be something dastardly!
Rather than respond to these rather silly tactics I'll just let whoever desires actually read the entire thing...
Out of curiousity how do you imagine the father and son are one..exactly? Are they like in one big body? A non-distinct blob lumped together? Serious question friend...
Ya also wanna 'xplain to all how you are able to arrive at...
God as ONE GOD all throughout the Bible...
Yet you believe in
"MULTIPLE divine beings"???
And don't be dragging the Mormons into this fight...I'm perfectly capable of being called a monster all by myself!
Our very NATURAL world is diversity within unity...everywhere we look. Marriage is also diversity within unity. All reflections of God, Himself...diverse personalities within One God.
One nature. One divine essence. One substance (but NOT a "material" substance). Unified as one from eternity past.
(If no "diversity," no love/fellowship to exchange from eternity past; if no "unity" beyond what ANY human couple could do, then no divinity present...just a glorified anthropology like the Mormons do!!!)
And in ALL of this, the unity trumps the diversity...In the secular world, diversity trumps unity.
And in the cults, the diversity ALSO trumps the unity (the Mormons, the JWs, United Church of God)
And what's "ironic" is that you & the Mormons & the JWs will PRIMARILY define monogamy as "one" (Matthew 19:4-6; Gen 2)...well, except for 19th century Mormons & 20th-21st century Mormons re: "eternal celestial" marriage... yet you will PRIMARILY define monotheism as TWO!!!
Psst...I hate to tell you but I think we think the very same way about the unity of the Godhead..except you throw an extra guy in the mix that scripture doesn't. But hey, if it makes you happier to IMAGINE what I think feel free...but can you write in BIGGER letters then you already are. I can barely see them. :-)
Sheen was a remarkable evangelist and catechist. I think that an even simpler explanation is that unique claim of Christianity that God is love. A Jew or a non-Catholic might claim that God loves, but they stop short of saying that God is love. We too say that God loves, but love is not just something that God does, it is the essence of who He is.
Drawing on what Sheen said and sprinkling in some Chesterton, that dogma of Christianity is absolutely the basis for the existence of the Trinity because if you say that if God is love you are acknowledging that within the very being of God is a Lover (God the Father) a Beloved (God the Son) and the Love between them (God the Holy Spirit). The closest parallel is that of a marriage. In a marriage there is a husband, there is a wife and there is the love between them all three embodied within one an indissoluble creation of the marriage.
Peace be with you
In connection to the adoption thing:
We humans can not make a thing so by saying so. But the word of God does not return to him empty but prospers in that for which he sent it. When HE says, "You are my child," it's a whole new ballgame.
Thank you for being on top of this. DouglasKC is promoting heresy, which deflates true faith in Christ. Please continue to refute this FReeper’s Satan-inspired doctrines.
“... you throw an extra guy in the mix ...”
Thank you for making it so clear that you have little esteem for the Holy Spirit.
Friend, you promote anti-Christ heresy. Please come to your senses, for Christ’s sake.
“It depends on whether you think that the doctrine of the Trinity is something upon which people of good faith can disagree, or not.
If the latter, then I do agree with Ingersoll.”
It is not, as the doctrine of the Trinity obviously has its origins in the scripture, and not anywhere else. It’s just a red-herring that avoids the real challenge, just like the Douglas guy has avoided coming to terms with the polytheism of his religion and defending it.
“Let’s start with what Jesus taught:”
We can be safely sure that Jesus is a monotheist, as He never claimed to be the “second and second to last, the almighty” or the “I ALSO Am” in the following scriptures:
God Speaking in the Old Testament:
Isa_41:4 Who hath wrought and done it, calling the generations from the beginning? I the LORD, the first, and with the last; I am he.
Isa_44:6 Thus saith the LORD the King of Israel, and his redeemer the LORD of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God.
Jesus Christ speaking in the new, calling Himself by the same name. Not two different gods who are made “one” by being in the same family, but One God:
Rev_1:17 ... Fear not; I am the first and the last:
Rev_22:13 I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.
Rev_1:8 I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.
Joh 8:57-59 Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? (58) Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am. (59) Then took they up stones to cast at him: but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by.
Exo_3:14 And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.
You can’t really have two different gods claiming to be the first and the last, or the Almighty, insomuch that you can’t be FIRST if someone was before you, and you can’t be Almighty if you aren’t all powerful over the other All-powerful guy.
When it comes down to it, your argument lives and dies on Monotheism, which is the one thing you’ve avoided like the plague so far. You have yet to show us how the very clear scriptures that say there is only one God, and no God beside Him, nor any God formed before or after Him, are compatible with your polytheism. In fact, you have yet to even acknowledge the teachings of the UCG on the matter, only dodging about it, hoping to tire the reader out out with long-winded replies that avoid the issue. If you cannot demonstrate how polytheism is true in the Bible, and how the Jews and Christians for thousands of years have been all wrong, then your argument is made on a sandy foundation. It simply has no proof or credibility without a logical position to launch an attack from.
True. As Bishop Sheen correctly stated.. Nuptials are very important in understanding covenants in Scripture.. God calls Israel His Spouse etc.. and as Bishop Sheen says... "How did old humanity begin? Nuptials. How did the new humanity begin? Nuptials. Jesus, the new Adam, looked down from the Cross at the new Eve. The Church was born from His side.
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