Posted on 08/15/2008 1:47:27 PM PDT by greyfoxx39
LOL
(Coco chanelling Elsie’s Mormon dude)
A Bible? A Bible? you say! Yeah, defend yourself ejonsie22...
Our prophet Joseph said this, and HE is a true Prophet of God!, prove it’s not true:
Joseph Smith said there were many Gods
“Hence, the doctrine of a plurality of Gods is as prominent in the Bible as any other doctrine. It is all over the face of the Bible . . . Paul says there are Gods many and Lords many . . . but to us there is but one God–that is pertaining to us; and he is in all and through all”
Wow! Yet another attempt at diversion, amazing. CC, show me anywhere in my post where I mentioned Joseph Smith or made my statements based on what he had said. My statements were mine & referenced strictly from the Bible. I never asked Ej to prove Joseph Smith wasn’t a prophet. Try & stay focused CC. I wish you the best today CC.
p.s. - I am "sister" not "brother" ... :)
“Try & stay focused CC. I wish you the best today CC.” So you insult, but add a ‘best wishes’ to confuse the fact that your condescension just has to come out. Bwahahaaha, how’s your sandbox, Mormon?
You’re making progress. At least now you acknowledge “Presbyterianism isn’t true.” Your only oversight is failing to realize that Presbyterianism was a dead tree in 1820 whose death is simply more evident with every passing year.
Hey, don’t pay attention to the trinity man behind the curtain. We need to talk about polygamy—you know that practice of God’s prophets, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Bait and switch.
Signed
Orthodox Christian Dude
Am I to surmise that defense of one's beliefs is only a one way street in your eyes? As a Christian, I would think you would want to defend those beliefs, rather than just divert to another question. Again, not trying to pound you unnecessarily, just giving food for thought. Your snide remarks about our beliefs has left you somewhat open to charges of hypocrisy.
Nothing "snide" about that remark.
You & the rest of the cabal constantly ask us to defend our beliefs, & we do, largely b/c we believe in these things.
As a Christian, I can remind you that we have defended our beliefs many times.This subject was discussed at length in the thread "Why so many LDS threads" and in particular in this post:
Godzilla is unable to post today, so I am furnishing an excerpt from his well-researched post for him.
:
This is specifically not true. Arius became the champion, but the philosophy can "belief in a physical God and and separate physical Christ can be traced back much farther, all the way to Genesis, here we already quoted this scripture here Genesis 3: 4-5 First, that is not recognized by historical accounts – even your favorite wiki. Second, Arius never taught that God had a literal, physical body- period. As far as Gen 3 goes, that was shown not to support mormon polytheism and definitely not Arianism. It is well supported that Arius obtained his philosophy from Plato – and other Hellenistic influences.
God knows you will be as the Gods? What gibberish, ….
Yep you are speaking gibberish. Come up with something coherent next time.
LOL! So in order for us to conflict which of us has to be older? (This argument is nonsense) Trinitarianism as a doctrine of the church started in AD 325, elements of the belief existed long before that but it was not the doctrine of the church.
As I listed, trinitarism was present and taught from Christ on. It was spoken of by name by at least 180. Considering that Arius was a new comer in 325, it is correct to say that Arius was the challenger.
On my Page, there is a section on Hippolytus. Hippolytus was according to Esubious, Constantine's Scribe, the foremost theologian in the church. Hippolytus is supposed to be the great grandson of John the Beloved, and he wrote several works for the Church, one of which is a ten volume set called a refutation of all heresies. Book 4 ( Against one Noetus) is a refutation of the Doctrine of Odalisques that had been popular, The logic and scriptures used by Hippolytus would have destroyed Trinitarinism, had it existed, here let me quote:
Sure, lets take a look at it. (again)
This person was greatly puffed up and inflated with pride, being inspired by the conceit of a strange spirit. He alleged that Christ was the Father Himself, and that the Father Himself was born, and suffered, and died. You see what pride of heart and what a strange inflated spirit had insinuated themselves into him. Froth his other actions, then, the proof is already given us that he spoke not with a pure spirit; for he who blasphemes against the Holy Ghost is cast out from the holy inheritance.
So, God the father is not Jesus Christ, they are not the same person, substance, whatever.
Ummmm, DU, Hippolytus was summarizing the teachings of Odalisques, not presenting the doctrine of the trinity. Contexturally challenged by the passage I see. Here let me help you out to see that a singular God with three Persons was expressed
"Against the Heresy of One Noetus", Section 14:
And the blessed John, in the testimony of his Gospel, gives us an account of this economy (disposition) and acknowledges this Word as God, when he says, "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
If, then, the Word was with God, and was also God, who follows? Would one say that he speaks of two Gods? I shall not indeed speak of two Gods, but of one; of two Persons however, and of a third economy (disposition), viz., the grace of the Holy Ghost.
…for it is through the Trinity that the Father is glorified. For the Father willed, the Son did, the Spirit manifested. The whole Scriptures, then, proclaim this truth.
Doesn’t really sound like Hippolytus knocks the doctrine of the Trinity out of the ball park so far.
Then there is the summation of Book X (yes I read all that I could find in the Catholic Encyclopedia on line of Hippolytus' works) Book X I like to quote this because as a summation, it contains most of the plan of salvation as taught by the LDS church, including the deification of man.
"Such is the true doctrine in regard of the divine nature, O you men, Greeks and Barbarians, Chaldeans and Assyrians, Egyptians and Libyans, Indians and Ethiopians, Celts, and you Latins, who lead armies, and all you that inhabit Europe, and Asia, and Libya. And to you I am become an adviser, inasmuch as I am a disciple of the benevolent Logos, and hence humane, in order that you may hasten and by us may be taught who the true God is, and what is His well-ordered creation. Do not devote your attention to the fallacies of artificial discourses, nor the vain promises of plagiarizing heretics, but to the venerable simplicity of unassuming truth. And by means of this knowledge you shall escape the approaching threat of the fire of judgment, and the rayless scenery of gloomy Tartarus, where never shines a beam from the irradiating voice of the Word!
You shall escape the boiling flood of hell's eternal lake of fire and the eye ever fixed in menacing glare of fallen angels chained in Tartarus as punishment for their sins; and you shall escape the worm that ceaselessly coils for food around the body whose scum has bred it. Now such (torments) as these shall you avoid by being instructed in a knowledge of the true God. And you shall possess an immortal body, even one placed beyond the possibility of corruption, just like the soul. And you shall receive the kingdom of heaven, you who, while you sojourned in this life, knew the Celestial King. And you shall be a companion of the Deity, and a co-heir with Christ, no longer enslaved by lusts or passions, and never again wasted by disease. For you have become God: for whatever sufferings you underwent while being a man, these He gave to you, because you were of mortal mould, but whatever it is consistent with God to impart, these God has promised to bestow upon you, because you have been deified, and begotten unto immortality. This constitutes the import of the proverb, "Know yourself" i.e., discover God within yourself, for He has formed you after His own image. For with the knowledge of self is conjoined the being an object of God's knowledge, for you are called by the Deity Himself. Be not therefore inflamed, O you men, with enmity one towards another, nor hesitate to retrace with all speed your steps. For Christ is the God above all, and He has arranged to wash away sin from human beings, rendering regenerate the old man. And God called man His likeness from the beginning, and has evinced in a figure His love towards you. And provided you obey is solemn injunctions, and becomest a faithful follower of Him who is good, you shall resemble Him, inasmuch as you shall have honour conferred upon you by Him. For the Deity, (by condescension,) does not diminish anything of the divinity of His divine perfection; having made you even God unto His glory!"
I retained the whole passage because these couple of paragraphs are found at the end of Book X, indicating that there is a vast amount of material DU expects you not to read (in addition to other writings) which sheds light on DU’s triumph (in his mind) as proof of the mormon doctrine of deification of man. But before we go there, earlier in the same book, Hippolytus makes another Trinitarian statement :
The Logos alone of this God is from God himself; wherefore also the Logos is God, being the substance of God.
Regarding the inference that man may become gods – there is a general principle that the text should stand on its own with the intent of the author intact and not to superimpose meanings the author never intended to be used. This is what DU is doing on this isolated section of Book X. Here is a component understood by the Eastern Orthodox Church (and to a lesser degree the rest of Christianity) as theosis. This doctrine must not be thought of in a "Mormon" way, as if men become little gods with their own planets, but must be understood as a true deification of man and as an intimate communion of man with God in Christ. It must never be reduced to a mere metaphor, because by his incorporation into Christ, man is really made a partaker of the divine nature. [cf., 2nd Peter 1:4] This does not involve a change in man's essence, but entails an indwelling of God's Spirit within the human person, enlivening both body and soul to everlasting life. ….. The Fathers of the Church are insistent that deified man's participation in the divine nature does not mean that he participates in either the divine essence (ousia), which is and remains wholly incommunicable and incomprehensible, nor in the personal (hypostatic) reality of any one of the three divine persons, because personality is not something that can be communicated or imparted from one person to another. The divine essence, and the personal subsistent (hypostatic) reality of the three divine persons, are utterly transcendent and incommunicable properties of God. So man is not absorbed by an essential participation in the divine nature, nor are human persons added to the Trinity; instead, through the process of deification (theosis) man participates in the uncreated divine energies (energia) which flow out from the divine essence as a gift to man from the three divine persons. In other words, by a completely unmerited gift of grace, man is elevated to a participation in the divine nature through the uncreated divine energies (energia), and this involves no essential change, nor personal (hypostatic) addition, to either God or man; instead, it entails an abiding communion (koinonia) of life and love between the Trinity and humanity. (http://www.geocities.com/apotheoun/theosis)
So between the time that Hippolytus died in 236 and the Council at Nicea in 325 AD the view of the church swung from three entities acting as one God to one God made up of three manifestations. This is really not a HUGE change when you think about it, but it has many important ramifications.
Well, considering that the first citation was not Hippolytus’ doctrinal statement, but that of the heritic Odalisques, one leg of DU’s tripod is broken. In Against the Heresy of One Noetus the word Trinity is used in common Trinitarian manner. The Trinitarian presentation is also present in Book X with the mention of theosis. Not very big ramifications, only poorly read documents.
Since Hippolytus was speaking here as the voice of the church, and the doctrine he is writing here is definitely not "Trinitarian", the Doctrine of the Trinity came later to the Church.
It is worth repeating here Against the Heresy of One Noetus …for it is through the Trinity that the Father is glorified. For the Father willed, the Son did, the Spirit manifested. The whole Scriptures, then, proclaim this truth.
This reflects the fact that the whole Scriptures support this. Since you don’t believe the bible, and believe the lie that Trinity wasn’t taught until 4th century. I will expose that lie. In addition to Hipplytus -
70 AD: The Didache
"After the foregoing instructions, baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, in living [running] water…. If you have neither, pour water three times on the head, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." (Didache 7:1 [A.D. 70]).
Ignatius of Antioch (c 107) writes the following:
There is then one God and Father, and not two or three; One who is; and there is no other besides Him, the only true [God[. For the "Lord thy God," saith [the Scripture], "is one Lord." And again, "Hath not one God created us? Have we not all one Father?" And the is also one Son, God the Word.
….
There are not then either three Fathers, or three Sons, or three Paracletes, but one Father, and one Son, and one Paraclete. Wherefore also the Lord, when He sent forth the apostles to make disciples of all nations, commanded them to "baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost," not unto one [person] having three names, nor into three [persons] who became incarnate, but into three posessed of equal honor.
Letter the the Philippians, Ch II
140 AD Aristides "[Christians] are they who, above every people of the Earth, have found the truth, for they acknowledge God, the creator and maker of all things, in the only-begotten Son and in the Holy Spirit" (Apology 16).
150 AD Polycarp of Smyrna "I praise you for all things, I bless you, I glorify you, along with the everlasting and heavenly Jesus Christ, your beloved Son, with whom, to you and the Holy Spirit, be glory both now and to all coming ages. Amen" (Martyrdom of Polycarp 14).
170 AD Tatian the Syrian "We are not playing the fool, you Greeks, nor do we talk nonsense, when we report that God was born in the form of a man" (Address to the Greeks 21).
Theopholis, who was Bishop of Antioch (AD168 to AD181) uses the actual word "Trinity" in "To Autolycus" (Book II, Chapt 15). "In like manner also the three days which were before the luminaries, are types of the Trinity, of God, and His Word, and His wisdom. "
177 AD Athenagoras "The Son of God is the Word of the Father in thought and actuality. By him and through him all things were made, the Father and the Son being one. Since the Son is in the Father and the Father is in the Son by the unity and power of the Spirit, the Mind and Word of the Father is the Son of God. And if, in your exceedingly great wisdom, it occurs to you to inquire what is meant by `the Son,' I will tell you briefly: He is the first- begotten of the Father, not as having been produced, for from the beginning God had the Word in himself, God being eternal mind and eternally rational, but as coming forth to be the model and energizing force of all material things" (Plea for the Christians 10:2-4).
177 AD Melito of Sardis "It is no way necessary in dealing with persons of intelligence to adduce the actions of Christ after his baptism as proof that his soul and his body, his human nature, were like ours, real and not phantasmal. The activities of Christ after his baptism, and especially his miracles, gave indication and assurance to the world of the deity hidden in his flesh. Being God and likewise perfect man, he gave positive indications of his two natures: of his deity, by the miracles during the three years following after his baptism, of his humanity, in the thirty years which came before his baptism, during which, by reason of his condition according to the flesh, he concealed the signs of his deity, although he was the true God existing before the ages" (Fragment in Anastasius of Sinai's The Guide 13).
Clement of Alexandria (150 – 216) argues that Plato had known (in a way) of the Trinity:
And the address in the 'Timeaus' calls the creator, Father, speaking this "Ye gods of gods, of whom I am Father; and the Creator of you works." So that when he says, "Around the king of all, all things are, and because of Him are all thing; and he is the cause of all good things; and around the second are the things of the second in order and around the things of the thrid, the third," I understand nothing else that the Holy Trinity to be meant; for the third is the Holy Spirit, and the Son is the second, by whom all things were made according to the will of the Father.
Clement, Stromata, Book V. Ch XIV
Here's a quote from Tertullian (155-250)
What, now (has this to do) with the Church, and your (church) indeed, Psychic? For, in accordance with the person of Peter, it is to spiritual men that this power will correspondently appertain, either to an apostle or else to a prophet. For the very Church itself is, properly and principally, the Spirit Himself [ie the Godhead], in whom is the Trinity of One Divinity - Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Tertullian, on Modesty, ch XXI
Now DU are you going to continue the lie that the Trinity was not taught until the fourth century?
The Bible itself disagrees with Trinitarian definitions in so many places, whole new interpretations of the meanings of words have been invented to try to make this inherently incompatible creed fit with a gospel it is diametrically opposed to. Now before you go and fire off another impassioned response, consider that you are the one decrying the Heart and check your emotions at the door, if you can, you will find my words here most logical.
When compared to mormon presentation of a polytheistic pantheon that is clearly rebuked by the bible, I have no need for emotions (and even standing on its own). Your ‘inventions’ are inventions themselves as Paul said in Romans 1 – you want to make god into your own image. Since you cannot refute the passages in Isaiah regarding the singularity of God, yet the bible recognizes the Father, Son and Spirit all being called God – the Trinity is a very logical and compatible doctrine. Does that mean we know all there is to know – clearly no – else we would be God. But this lack of total knowledge is not excuse for twisted and misrepresented statements of the ANF and the Bible.
He accuses me of trying to divert the thread when I was simply pointing out that he agreed with his Prophet, that there are plurality of Gods.
Mormons are funny. More quotes from the “profit.”
“In the beginning, the head of the Gods called a council of the Gods; and they came together and concocted a plan to create the world and people it.”
(Journal of Discourses, Vol. 6, p. 5).
Joseph Smith blasphemously taught the Trinity is three gods.
“I have always declared God to be a distinct personage, Jesus Christ a separate and distinct personage from God the Father, and the Holy Ghost was a distinct personage and a Spirit: and these three constitute three distinct personages and three Gods.”
(Teachings of Prophet Joseph Smith p. 370).
Joseph Smith said God was once a man.
“God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted Man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens…I say, if you were to see him to-day, you would see him like a man in form — like yourselves, in all the person, image, and very form as a man….it is necessary that we should understand the character and being of God, and how he came to be so; for I am going to tell you how God came to be God. We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity, I will refute that idea, and will take away and do away the veil, so that you may see….and that he was once a man like us; yea, that God himself the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth the same as Jesus Christ himself did.”
(Journal of Discourses, Vol. 6, p. 3).
How any Christian on FR can let these quotes be defended as Christian and in line with biblical belief - since they are completely atithetical to Christian belief is beyond me, and I challenge any Catholic or Protestent to come here and defend Mormonism as Christian. None will.
Glad to know you are reading and watching, DLV...feel free to comment any time.
I remember that discussion, it was fascinating until it got shut down. My comments were directed towards EJ who I don’t remember being part of that particular discussion. Perhaps you’ll enjoy the following:
Since the Nicene Creed was first adopted in A.D. 325, it seems clear that there were many Christians in the first centuries following the resurrection of Christ who did not use it. Those who oppose calling the Latter-day Saints “Christians” need to explain whether Peter and Paul are “Christians,” since they lived and practiced Christianity at a time when there was no Nicene Creed, and no Trinitarianism in the current sense.
Critics may try to argue that the Nicene Creed is merely a statement of Biblical principles, but Bible scholarship is very clear that the Nicene Creed was an innovation.
Was Nicean Trinitarianism always a key part of Christian belief?
There is abundant evidence that “Trinitarianism”, as now understood by the majority of Protestants and Catholics was not present in the Early Christian Church.
When we turn to the problem of the doctrine of the Trinity, we are confronted by a peculiarly contradictory situation. On the one hand, the history of Christian theology and of dogma teaches us to regard the dogma of the Trinity as the distinctive element in the Christian idea of God, that which distinguishes it from the idea of God in Judaism and in Islam, and indeed, in all forms of rational Theism. Judaism, Islam, and rational Theism are Unitarian. On the other hand, we must honestly admit that the doctrine of the Trinity did not form part of the early Christian-New Testament-message. Certainly, it cannot be denied that not only the word “Trinity”, but even the explicit idea of the Trinity is absent from the apostolic witness of the faith. The doctrine of the Trinity itself, however, is not a Biblical Doctrine...[1]
What were early Christian beliefs on the nature of God?
We do know that Christian orthodoxy before Nicaea was not the Trinitarian creeds now popular:
‘Subordinationism’, it is true, was pre-Nicean orthodoxy.[2]
‘Subordinationism’ is a doctrine which means that Jesus and/or the Holy Ghost are ‘subordinate’ or ‘subject’ to God the Father. In subordinationism, Jesus must be a separate being from the Father, because you can’t be subject to yourself! This was the orthodox position before the Nicean council. Ideas that were once orthodox were later considered unacceptable after the councils altered and added to the doctrine.
Writers who are usually reckoned orthodox but who lived a century or two centuries before the outbreak of the Arian Controversy, such as Irenaeus and Tertullian and Novatian and Justin Martyr, held some views which would later, in the fourth century, have been branded heretical...Irenaeus and Tertullian both believed that God had not always been a Trinity but had at some point put forth the Son and the Spirit so as to be distinct from him. Tertullian, borrowing from Stoicism, believed that God was material (though only of a very refined material, a kind of thinking gas), so that his statement that Father, Son and Spirit were ‘of one substance’, beautifully orthodox though it sounds, was of a corporeality which would have profoundly shocked Origen, Athanasius and the Cappadocian theologians, had they known of it.[3]
And:
It [subordinationism] is a characteristic tendency in much Christian teaching of the first three centuries, and is a marked feature of such otherwise orthodox Fathers as St. Justin and Origen…Where the doctrine [of the Trinity] was elaborated, as e.g. in the writing of the Apologists, the language remained on the whole indefinite, and, from a later standpoint, was even partly unorthodox. Sometimes it was not free from a certain subordinationism.[4]
So, Christians whose ideas were completely orthodox earlier would have been considered ‘heretics’ (i.e. going against the accepted doctrine) after the Nicean councils. This seems to be clear evidence that the doctrine was radically changed.
One also notes that Paul and the other New Testament writers would have been likewise ‘unorthodox’. Eusebius, an early Church historian, was even termed “blatantly subordinationist” by a Catholic author.[5]
Even after the Trinitarian ideas were formed, there were three ‘camps’ of believers that understood the matter in very different ways:
If such was the teaching of Athanasius and his allies [i.e. homousis as numerical unity of substance, rather than ‘the same kind of being’ in the three persons of the Godhead] , at least three types of theology found shelter at different times in the anti-Nicean camp. The first, indefinite, on occasion ambiguous on the crucial issues, but on the whole conciliatory, reflects the attitude of the great conservative ‘middle party’.... It’s positive doctrine is that there are three divine hypostases [i.e. persons], separate in rank and glory but united in harmony of will.[6]
Thus, most believers initially believed that there were three persons with a united will. It was only later that this group was “won over” to Athanasius and his group’s brand of Trinitarianism, which is the basis for today’s understanding in most of Christianity. Indeed, Athanasius and his cadre were decidedly in the minority:
The victory over Arianism achieved at the Council was really a victory snatched by the superior energy and decision of a small minority with the aid of half-hearted allies. The majority did not like the business at all, and strongly disapproved of the introduction into the Creed . . . of new and untraditional and unscriptural terms.[7]
And, there is a noted tendency for some Christian writers to assume that the way they understand the nature of God is the only way in which anyone could have understood it. An evangelical scholar notes:
The view of God worked out in the early [postapostolic] church, the “biblical-classical synthesis,” has become so commonplace that even today most conservative [Protestant and Catholic] theologians simply assume that it is the correct scriptural concept of God and thus that any other alleged biblical understanding of God . . . must be rejected. The classical view is so taken for granted that it functions as a preunderstanding that rules out certain interpretations of Scripture that do not “fit” with the conception of what is “appropriate” for God to be like, as derived from Greek metaphysics.[8]
Does the Bible contain also the necessary elements for Trinitarianism?
In order to argue successfully for the unconditionally and permanence of the ancient Trinitarian Creeds, it is necessary to make a distinction between doctrines, on the one hand, and on the terminology and conceptuality in which they were formulated on the other... Some of the crucial concepts employed by these creeds, such as “substance”, “person”, and “in two natures” are post-biblical novelties. If these particular notions are essential, the doctrines of these creeds are clearly conditional, dependent on the late Hellenistic milieu.[9]
Note that this author says that many of “the crucial concepts” are “post-biblical novelties”: that is, they are new ideas that arrived on the scene after the Bible was written. If the crucial concepts weren’t around until later, then the doctrine wasn’t around until later either. As the author notes, these ideas arose out of the “Hellenistic milieu”, that is: Greek philosophy.
It is clearly impossible (if one accepts historical evidence as relevant at all) to escape the claim that the later formulations of dogma cannot be reached by a process of deductive logic from the original propositions and must contain an element of novelty...The emergence of the full trinitarian doctrine was not possible without significant modification of previously accepted ideas.[10]
Said David Noel Freedman:
So in many was the Bible remains true to its “primitive” past [by accepting the strongly anthropomorphic understanding of God/Yahweh] and is less compatible with philosophical notions of an abstract being, or ultimate reality or ground of being. Just as there is an important and unbridgeable distance between Yahweh and the gods of Canaan, or those of Mesopotamia or Egypt or Greece or Rome, so there is at least an equal or greater distance from an Aristotelian unmoved mover, or even a Platonic Idea or Ideal. The biblical God is always and uncompromisingly personal: he is above all a person, neither more nor less.[11]
New ideas and concepts were required.
The formal doctrine of the Trinity as it was defined by the great church councils of the 4th and 5th centuries is not to be found in the New Testament.[12]
A Catholic encyclopedia notes that Trinitarianism doesn’t really appear until the last 25 years of the 4th century:
Trinitarian discussion, Roman Catholic as well as others, presents a somewhat unsteady silhouette. Two things have happened. There is the recognition on the part of exegetes and Biblical theologians, including a constantly growing number of Roman Catholics, that one should not speak of Trinitarianism in the New Testament without serious qualification. There is also the closely parallel 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.[13]
A Jesuit [Catholic] scholar says this:
There is no formal doctrine of the Trinity in the New Testament writers, if this means an explicit teaching that in one God there are three co-equal divine persons. But the three are there, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and a triadic ground plan is there, and triadic formulas are there...The Biblical witness to God, as we have seen, did not contain any formal or formulated doctrine of the Trinity, any explicit teaching that in one God there are three co-equal divine persons.[14]
The idea of “three” is present: but not as ‘three co-equal divine persons’ that are one being. An idea about the nature of God (or the Godhead) is present, but it is different from that which is taught as Trinitarianism.
Two authors even assert that the Apostle Paul, the four gospels, and Acts have no Trinitarian understanding:
...there is no trinitarian doctrine in the Synoptics or Acts...nowhere do we find any trinitarian doctrine [in the New Testament] of three distinct subjects of divine life and activity in the same God head...These passages [i.e. the Pauline epistles] give no doctrine of the Trinity, but they show that Paul linked together Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They give no trinitarian formula...but they offer material for the later development of trinitarian doctrine...[Paul] has no formal Trinitarian doctrine and no clear-cut realization of a Trinitarian problem…in John there is no trinitarian formula.[15]
And:
This double series of texts manifests Paul’s lack of clarity in his conception of the relation of the Spirit to the Son. Paul shares with the Old Testament a more fluid notion of personality than the later theological refinements of nature, substance, and person. His lack of clarity should be respected for what it is and be regarded only as the starting point of the later development.[16]
So, Paul doesn’t even ‘realize’ that there is a ‘Trinitarian problem’. Could this be because for Paul there was no such problem, because the doctrine was unknown to him? It was not an issue in his era, because it was not taught by Jesus or the Apostles, and no one felt the need to reconcile divine revelation with Greek philosophy.
One author asserts that the Trinity is correct, but readily admits that:
The God whom we experience as triune is, in fact, triune. But we cannot read back into the New Testament, much less the Old Testament, the more sophisticated trinitarian theology and doctrine which slowly and often unevenly developed over the course of some fifteen centuries.[17]
Are there new ideas necessary for creedal Trinitarianism?
Robert Casey wrote long ago that “Origen’s development of Clement [of Alexandria’s] thought is characteristically thorough and systematic. He acknowledges that the doctrine of God’s immateriality is, at least formally, new, and asserts that the word asomatos [”no body” in Greek] had been unknown alike to biblical writers and to Christian theologians before his time.”[18]
Casey also wrote that
“the Christian doctrine of God was becoming inextricably involved in a trinitarian theory, the substance and form of which would have been impossible but for Clement and Origen, whose immaterialist teaching it presupposed.”[19]
Jesuit Roland Teske states that Augustine turned to Manichaeism because he thought that all Christians believed in an anthropomorphic God, which he could not accept on philosophical grounds. Teske reports that Augustine believed that in accepting the Manichee doctrine he was joining a Christian sect which rejected the “anthropomorphic interpretation of the scriptural claim that man was made in the image of God” as taught in Gen. 1:26.[20]
In a footnote to the above statement Teske writes that “prior to Augustine…the Western Church was simply without a concept of God as a spiritual substance.” Augustine apparently believed that the Catholic Church taught that God had a body similar to that of a mortal, and that belief prevented him from seeking truth within the Church.[21] Augustine tells us in another work that it was the preaching of Ambrose of Milan who helped him see that there was another way to view God, which ‘spirituals’ alone could decipher.[22]
What about John 10:30?
John 10:30 was an important scripture in the early debates discussed above.
One author wrote of it:
[John 10:30] was a key verse in the early Trinitarian controversies. On the one extreme, the onarchians (Sabellians) interpreted it to mean “one person”, although the “one” is neuter, not masculine. On the other extreme, the Arians interpreted this text, which was often used against them, in terms of moral unity of will. The Protestant commentator Engel, following Augustine, sums up the Orthodox position: “Through the word “are” Sabellius is refuted; through the word one” so is Arius..” [In the Gospel of] John... all these relationships between Father and Son are described in function of the one’s dealings with men. It would be up to the work of later theologians to take this gospel material pertaining to the mission of the Son add extra and draw from it a theology of the inner life of the Trinity.[23]
Note that “one” in this verse is neuter, not masculine. In Greek, the masculine would be used to indicate a oneness of person or being, and neuter implies a oneness of purpose. So, read literally the verse merely says that Jesus and the Father are one in purpose or will: only a belief in the Trinity at the outset would lead one to read this as a Trinitarian passage.
Note also that later theologians had to contribute ‘extra’ information to solve the problem. This extra eventually resulted in the Trinitarian formulae of today.
What about 1 John 5:7–8?
1 John 5:7-8 reads:
7 For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. 8 And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.
These verses are considered to have been added to the Bible text. Said one conservative reference work:
...the acceptance of this verse [i.e. the Johannine comma: 1 John 5:7-8] as genuine breaks almost every major canon of textual [criticism][24]
Historian Paul Johnson notes:
Altogether there are about 4,700 relevant manuscripts, and at least 100,000 quotations or allusions in the early fathers . . .Thus, the Trinitarian texts in the first Epistle of John, which make explicit what other texts merely hint at, originally read simply: ‘There are three which bear witness, the spirit and the water and the blood, and the three are one.’ This was altered in the fourth century to read: ‘There are three which bear witness on earth, the spirit and the water and the blood, and these three are one in Christ Jesus; and there are three who bear witness in heaven, the Father, the Word and the Spirit, and these three are one.’[25]
So, the early Christians never referred to these verses in their writings. The verse in the early Greek manuscripts simply says:
There are three which bear witness, the spirit and the water and the blood, and the three are one.
But, in the 4th century, the verse had words added to it to support the ‘new’ orthodox doctrine of the Trinity:
There are three which bear witness on earth, the spirit and the water and the blood, and these three are one in Christ Jesus; and there are three who bear witness in heaven, the Father, the Word and the Spirit, and these three are one.
Why is 1 John 5:7–8 still in the Bible, then?
The writer Erasmus noted the problem with these verses in the 1500s, and did not include the addition change in his Greek New Testament:
On the basis of the manuscript evidence available to him, Erasmus had eliminated the passage [1 John 5:7] from his first edition of the Greek New Testament in 1516, but had restored it in later editions, responding to a storm of protest and to further textual evidence that was produced—quite literally produced—in support of the text. Luther’s translation of the New Testament into German, being based on the 1516 edition of Erasmus, did not contain the passage. Although the weight of textual evidence against it was seemingly overwhelming, the proof it supplied for the Trinity made an attack on its authenticity seemed to be an attack on the dogma [thus orthodoxy sought to wrongly restore the Johannine Comma].[26]
This author explains that people were outraged that the verse was taken out. Erasmus replied that he would include it if they could show him a single Greek manuscript that contained it. Scholars believe that a forgery was produced, and (good to his word) Erasmus included the change in his next editions. People cared more about what their dogma, creeds, and councils had taught than what the word of God actually said. The above author continues:
The most pertinacious and conservative in various communions were still holding out for the authenticity of the “Johannine Comma” in 1 John 5:7, despite all the textual and patristic evidence [evidence from the Early Christian Fathers before Nicea] against it, but there was an all but unanimous consensus among textual critics that it represented a later interpolation.[27]
Many Bible translations today omit this part of the text, since it is not considered to be authentic:
New American Bible:So there are three that testify, the Spirit, the water, and the blood, and the three are of one accord.[28]
New American Standard Bible:For there are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement.[29]
New Revised Standard Version: There are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood, and these three agree.[30]
Why, then, was Nicean Trinitarian introduced at all?
Let us return to the second century, when it was first sensed that the formulations of the New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers were not sufficient to describe the nature of the divinity. A new way of doing this was attempted. Thus the so-called Monarchian controversy occurred... In addition to the Modalists (such as Sabellius), for whom Christ and the Holy Spirit were modes in which one Godhead appeared, there the Dynamists or Adoptionists, who conceived of Christ either as a man who was raised up by being adopted by God, or as a man filled with God’s power.[31]
Simply put, people tried a ‘new’ way of talking about God because of disputes about the nature and mission of Christ. In the LDS view, this is because the loss of revelation to the Apostles (due to the apostasy) meant that Christianity was divided about key issues. No one had a good way to resolve the questions, and so they turned to the best intellectual tools they had—they merged Christian theology with Greek philosophy.
Father Charles Curran, a Roman Catholic priest, said,
We [the Christians] went through the problem of appropriating the word in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries with the great trinitarian and Christalogical councils where we finally came to the conclusion of three persons in God and two natures in Jesus. Many people at the time said, ‘Well, you can’t say that because those words aren’t in the scriptures.’ That’s right, they aren’t in the scriptures, they are borrowed from Greek philosophy, but they are the on-going account of the believing community to understand, appropriate and live the word of God in its own circumstances.[32]
Is modern Trinitarianism all understood in the same sense?
Owen Thomas, a professor of systemic theology, noted that:
...our survey of the history of the [Trinity] doctrine in the text has indicated that there are several doctrines of the trinity: Eastern, Western, social analogy, modal, so forth. There is one doctrine in the sense of the threefold name of God of the rule of faith as found, for example, in the Apostle’s Creed. This, however, is not yet a doctrine. It is ambiguous and can be interpreted in a number of ways. There is one doctrine in the sense of the Western formula of “three persons in one substance.” However, this formula is also ambiguous if not misleading and can be interpreted in a number of ways. A doctrine of the trinity would presumably be one interpretation of this formula . . . let us assume that the phrase “doctrine of the trinity” in the question refers to any of a number of widely accepted interpretations of the threefold name of God in the role of faith.[33]
So, there is ambiguity and disagreement still. This is not characteristic of revelation, but rather of man’s imperfect intellectual efforts to define God according to philosophical criteria. Proponents of this view have even added text to the Bible and opposed the correcting of such errors when it was discovered.
As one current thinker about the Trinity writes:
The notion that in the Trinity one Person may be the font or source of being or Godhead for another lingered on to be a cause of friction and controversy between the East and the West, and still persists today. The main thesis of these lectures, I have said, is that the act of faith required for acceptance of the doctrine of the Trinity is faith that the Divine unity is a dynamic unity actively unifying in the one divine life the lives of the three divine persons. I now wish to add that in this unity there is no room for any trace of subordinationism, and that the thought of the Father as the source or fount of God-head is a relic of pre Christian theology which has not fully assimilated the Christian revelation.[34]
There is no room in his doctrine for ‘subordinationism’, but remember (already quoted above) that: “’Subordinationism’, it is true, was pre-Nicean orthodoxy.”
It is interesting that ideas that were once perfectly orthodox within early Christianity (like subordinationism) are now classed as “pre-Christian theology” which hasn’t yet “assimilated the Christian revelation”. If anything, this looks like a ‘post-Christian theology’ that has ‘altered the Christian revelation’. This observation is not intended to argue that subordinationism is correct in all particulars, but merely to point out that current creedal ideas are not what all Christians have always believed.
Conclusion
Some modern Christians wish to apply a “doctrinal exclusion” to declare who is or isn’t Christian. Such definitions are generally self-serving, and not very helpful. With the Nicene Creed, critics are ironically in the position of using a definition that would exclude all Christians for more than two centuries after Christ from the Christian fold.
Thus the New Testament itself is far from any doctrine of the Trinity or of a triune God who is three co-equal Persons of One Nature.[35]
The New Testament does not contain the developed doctrine of the Trinity.[36]
There is in them [the Apostolic Fathers], of course, no trinitarian doctrine and no awareness of a trinitarian problem.”[37]
The Church had to wait for more than three hundred years for a final synthesis, for not until the Council of Constantinople [AD 381] was the formula of one God existing in three coequal Persons formally ratified.[38]
These passages are succinct summaries. If a critic wishes to justify his or her belief in the creedal Trinity, they must rely on tradition and the creeds of the 4th century, and abandon claims of scriptural or historical support for such a belief in early Christianity, including among the apostles and those they taught.
Since the LDS believe in an apostasy from true doctrine, they see the creedal Trinitarianism—which is an admitted novelty in the centuries after Christ—as evidence of it.
Endnotes
1. Emil Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of God (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1949), 205, 236.
2. Henry Bettenson, editor and translator, The Early Christian Fathers:A Selection from the Writings of the Fathers from St. Clement of Rome to St. Athanasius, (Oxford University Press: 1969), 239. ISBN 0192830090.
3. RPC Hansen, “The Achievement of Orthodoxy in the Fourth Century AD”, in Rowan Williams, editor, The Making of Orthodoxy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 151–152.
4. FL Cross and EA Livingston, editors, The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 2nd edition, (London: Oxford University Press, 1974), 1319, 1394.
5. RL Richard, “Trinity, Holy”, in New Catholic Encyclopedia, 15 vols., (New York:McGraw-Hill, 1967) 14:298.
6. JND Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (New York: Harper, 1978), 247–248.
7. IF Bethune-Baker, An Introduction to the Early History of Christian Doctrine, 8th edition, (London: Methuen, 1949), 171. (emphasis added)
8. John Sanders; cited in Clark Pinnock, Richard Rice, John Sanders, William Hasker, and David Basinger, The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1994), 60.
9. George A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984), 92.
10. Maurice Wiles, The Making of Christian Doctrine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 4, 144.
11. David Noel Freedman, “When God Repents,” in Divine Commitment and Human Obligation: Selected Writings of David Noel Freedman, Volume One: History and Religion (William B. Eerdmans, 1997), 414.
12. P Achtemeier, editor, Harper’s Bible Dictionary (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1985), 1099.
13. RL Richard, “Trinity, Holy”, in New Catholic Encyclopedia, 15 vols. (New York:McGraw-Hill, 1967), 14:295.
14. Edmund J. Fortman, The Triune God: A Historical Study of the Doctrine of the Trinity (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1972), 32,35.
15. Edmund J. Fortman, The Triune God: A Historical Study of the Doctrine of the Trinity (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1972), 14,16, 22-23, 29.
16. J Fitzmyer, Pauline Theology: A Brief Sketch (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey): Prentice-Hall, 1967), 42.
17. Richard P. McBrian, Catholicism (Minneapolis: Winston Press, 1980), 347.
18. Robert P. Casey, “Clement of Alexandria and the Beginnings of Christian Platonism,” Harvard Theological Review 18 (1925): 39–101, at page 82, referring to Contra Celsum 7.27, and Commentary on John 13.22.
19. Ibid., 100.
20. Roland Teske, S.J., “Divine Immutability in St. Augustine,” Modern Schoolman 63 (1986): 233–249, at page 236–237.
21. Ibid., 237–238, with notes 25 and 34, citing Confessions 5.10.19 (Pusey translation, page 77).
22. Ibid., 238–239, quoting De beata vita 1.4.
23. Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John I–XII (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co. Inc.), 403, 407.
24. Norman L. Geisler and William E. Nix, A General Introduction to the Bible (Chicago, Moody Press, 1968), 370.
25. Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity (New York: Touchstone, 1976), 26–27. ISBN 684815036.
26. Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Volume 4 : Reformation of Church and Dogma (1300-1700) (University Of Chicago Press, 1985), 4:346, comments in bracket A1. ISBN 0226653773.
27. Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Volume 5 : Christian Doctrine and Modern Culture (since 1700) (University Of Chicago Press, 1991), 193. ISBN 0226653803.
28. Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, The New American Bible (World Bible Publishers, Iowa Falls, 1991), 1363.
29. New American Standard Bible (La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation), 1 John 5:7–8.
30. New Revised Standard Version (Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America, 1995), 1 John 5:7–8.
31. Kurt Aland, A History of Christianity (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1985), 1:190.
32. Charles Curran, “Creative Fidelity: Keeping the Religion a Living Tradition,” Sunstone (Issue #{{{num}}}) (July 1987): 45. off-site Cited in Robert L. Millet, “Joseph Smith and Modern Mormonism: Orthodoxy, Neoorthodoxy, Tension, and Tradition,” Brigham Young University Studies 29:3 (1989): footnote 14.
33. Owen C. Thomas, Theological Questions: Analysis and Argument (Wilton, Conn.: Morehouse-Barlow, 1983), 34.
34. Leonard Hodgson, Doctrine of the Trinity (London: Nisbet & Co. Ltd., 1944), 102.
35. William J. Hill, The Three-Personed God (Washington DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1982), 27.
36. New Testament Theology (Grand Rapids MI, Zondervan, 1967), 1:84.
37. JND Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, revised edition, (New York: Harper, 1978), 95.
38. Edmund J. Fortman, The Triune God: A Historical Study of the Doctrine of the Trinity (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1972), 44.
They opposed Him then, too.
I know Jesus.....and J. Smith is no Jesus.
Although he likened himself bigger than the Son of God. He wasn't.
And guess what....the mormon church isn't "The Standard" of Christianity either....no matter how much you want it to be so........
Be that as it may I will bite just a little. The oldest of Christian traditions, Eastern/Greek Orthodoxy, of which I am an adherent though due to geography I practice in a Methodist church, has the best answer and one shared among many others. The Trinity itself is easy to understand to a certain extent, but it has elements that like many things of God are beyond our understanding. The entire thing is based on the very simple and obvious fact there is only one God. That is an immutable point from the scriptures. There are three persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and they share one essence. Therefore that are one in the Spirit. Like the tradition we have in the Marriage ceremony, where two become one, the husband and wive are individuals but share one heart, one spirit.
See it is really not hard, and it is indicated through out the bible, but one has to answer the questions I presented so i shall do so again since they remain unanswered despite your current post.
I will simplify them even further;
Is there more than one God? yes or No
Is Jesus a Deity? yes or no
And lest I forget like I did last time, to get an answer to the “us’ comments
Who are the heavenly hosts?
They are pinin’ for the fjords..
Of course the Nicean Creed had not been written down. BUT you deceive when asserting that Peter and Paul did not have a trinitarian perspective ... that just begs to be slammed back down your throat.
Both men came from the Jewish Tradition which states (did then and still does) clearly 'Hear oh Israel the Lord our God is ONE'. The Holy Spirit and the Father Almighty are one in Jewish belief, the belief system from which Peter and Paul arose in Christ.
This brings us to John proclamation in his Gospel, John 1:1-12 ... In the beginning was The Word, and the Word was with God and WAS GOD. So, to focus more fully on your lie, these men believed God The Father Almighty and the Holy Spirit were/are ONE, and then these men met The Christ, The Word, and proclaim Him to be God among us. THAT is the functional definition of the Triune God, not gods, Triune God. Do try to keep up. And have a nice day. ;-)
You may be interested in my previous post to GF as well. Perhaps you can comment on the points there as well. Got a busy day ahead. Have a good one.
I haven't the time to go through all of the footnotes of your post, and I notice you neglected to post a link to the source of the cut and paste, however I DID check this one statement out, choosing at random:
As one current thinker about the Trinity writes: The notion that in the Trinity one Person may be the font or source of being or Godhead for another lingered on to be a cause of friction and controversy between the East and the West, and still persists today. The main thesis of these lectures, I have said, is that the act of faith required for acceptance of the doctrine of the Trinity is faith that the Divine unity is a dynamic unity actively unifying in the one divine life the lives of the three divine persons. I now wish to add that in this unity there is no room for any trace of subordinationism, and that the thought of the Father as the source or fount of God-head is a relic of pre Christian theology which has not fully assimilated the Christian revelation.[34]
Footnote No. 34 refers to "34. Leonard Hodgson, Doctrine of the Trinity (London: Nisbet & Co. Ltd., 1944), 102."
Leonard Hodgson, 1889 - 1969.....that hardly makes his comment CURRENT. Also, this was noted: "Hodgson emphasised an essential harmony between philosophy and theology. He believed that the two types of knowledge could work cooperatively to reveal the fundamental intelligibility of the universe."...hardly a Christian recommendation.
I will leave further Trinity discussion to scholars better educated than I, of which there are several on FR.
I just reconciled it. There are parts of Gods world we are in and parts beyond us. Being “one” with him does not make us Gods ourselves but his children showered by his spirit, one in the desire to spread his word. Being blessed by his spirit, the holy Ghost then resides within us and we like Jesus, go out and minister to the world
I rarely respond to you MHG b/c it’s often hard to have a reasoned discussion w/ you, but I’ll give this one a shot. You bring up John 1.... “In the beginning was The Word, and the Word was with God and WAS GOD”
As I asked EJ before, we both agree that the Word was Christ. So, who was the Word (Christ) with? God! Was He stating He was w/ Himself? Doesn’t that sound just a little silly? Why not just say, in the beginning was the Word & the Word was God? Why confuse it w/ saying & the Word was WITH God? The Lord wants us to understand, not make it so complicated that we have to guess.
As I stated previously, got a busy day ahead. I wish you the best MHG.
Can you show me that verbage & explanation in the Bible?
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