Is there an official Trinity doctrine?

[David T]

I have experienced this myself. Only recently have I realised that most of my interpretation of the bible was based on preconceived notions from the start. Plus I was arrogant to think that I could know the truth based on so little knowledge of the history of the text, the church, the various interpretations etc.

Yes. My suggestion lots of nature hiles breathing. Dont let sciemce kill the beauty of the landscape its a mystery aalways. And dont let religion dictate the heart. Get the heart and landscape together and you have some mafic happening. Burn the bible. If ya get all straightened up you will see it in nature no book needed. Then you will realize the view of nature they are writing from. Its a nature book hidden in the open. It all depends on you how you see it.

 

[Samael_Khan]

In a world of antiquity there was no direct posiility of expressing the 'relationality' of the triadic form of revelation together with constituents of the biblical messge. In the last analysis, the early Councils are stages in the elaboration of a regula loquendi (rule of speech) in which these scriptural contents could b e expressed. The early heresies are the resistance of human language and thought to those same contents. Our situation is defined in part by the fact that this movement of dogmatic construction has already taken place. Yet at the same time we are not exonerated from all further effort. Language has broadened its compass in the countinous explicative endeavours of the human spirit. Because of this, the presuppositions for the understanding of dogma are different now. And so we are obliged to penetrate anew, in language and concept, what the patristic dogmas truly signify.

The separating out of the two planes of eusia and hypostasis and the counterposing of persona to esssenthia enabled what had hitherto been inaccessible to thought in the divine revelation to become both attainable and capable of expression. The particular manner in which this feat was executed was in itself fortuitous. Had the main missionary drive of the Church been to the Indian sub-continent, rather than the Greco-Roman world, the articulation of the tri-parsonal nature of God would have happened quite differently. Yet it is only because the process of articulation has been conserved in the patristic dogmas that out own permanent task of comprehending anew is possible. excerpts Ratzinger's development of dogma.

The goal of all creation is to participate in the trinitarian mystery of love. Wherever the human heart is healed, justice is done, peace holds sway, liberation breaks through, the earth flourishes—wherever sin abounding is embraced by grace superabounding—there the human and earth community already reflect, in fragments, the visage of the trinitarian God.
The entire doctrine of the Trinity is an enormous gloss on that phrase in the First Letter of John that God is self-gift. From that metaphor spins out the whole of Trinitarian theology.

I agree with you (even though some of your words are higher grade). It is a struggle with language. All the disagreements have to do with the meaning words, phrases and and grammar. What makes it even worse is translation and lack of understanding the culture. So people try and interpret the Bible using the English of today, but what the phrases mean in English is not what they mean in their original languages. So if an ignorant person, especially a person who isn't good at reading, gets a hold of a Bible, then they can grossly misinterpret it.

So we do have to find new ways of explaining these concepts, but it will be a mission.

Ignorance abounds and breeds misunderstanding.

 

[Samael_Khan]

I thought it is the Eastern Orthodox position is that of subordination and the Western of equality among the 'Persons'.

I also thought that there was a relational difference between the two concepts of the Trinity.

 

[Samael_Khan]

Yes. My suggestion lots of nature hiles breathing. Dont let sciemce kill the beauty of the landscape its a mystery aalways. And dont let religion dictate the heart. Get the heart and landscape together and you have some mafic happening. Burn the bible. If ya get all straightened up you will see it in nature no book needed. Then you will realize the view of nature they are writing from. Its a nature book hidden in the open. It all depends on you how you see it.

OK

 

[David T]

OK

Forgot to mention walk with john muir. Read some quotes. He has the hosannas of the heart firmly in reality. Thats what it truely means to be a man of god right there. Clear eyed on fire. He sees.

 

[Samael_Khan]

Forgot to mention walk with john muir. Read some quotes. He has the hosannas of the heart firmly in reality. Thats what it truely means to be a man of god right there. Clear eyed on fire. He sees.

So it is faith in action, walking with God, rather than reading a book? Like Abrahams relationship with God?

Anyway, have you come across anything relating to my OP? It seems like a steep rabbit hole. The good stuff.

 

[David T]

So it is faith in action, walking with God, rather than reading a book? Like Abrahams relationship with God?

Anyway, have you come across anything relating to my OP? It seems like a steep rabbit hole. The good stuff.

Yes. 40 years or 40 dahs and 40 nights in the WILD-erness does wonders for ones vision. Indontnthinknit says Moses read a book as he was leading a Israel.
The great beauty of how that was written was moses died in the WiIDerness not settling in the city. There is a wild man in moses to be sure. Out there muir found him and he wore the mask of john the baptist, spending many a day and night in the wilder. You dont need to use their language just the spirit of is all. Its on the winds.

In regards to your question on the trinity often times we see questions as resonable but stepping back we understand it wasnt reasonable but a symtom of not a statment anything.example
We have 3 loves father, son, holy spirit.please quantify it correctly?!

Oh i might say first one might think about that first! Lots of confusion. Do people genreally do that? Oh no thats normal. You may not acrually be normal. And if true its not healthy for ya! Youbactually might be a wierdo! They call them prophets. But really they are wierdos. Artists art of the deepest of order. They put on the mask to speak.

 

[Shiranui117]

From what I understand, the Orthodox church and the Western Holy Roman Empire split because the east didn't agree with the idea of having a Pope? Then they had a patriarch instead?

Historically, there were five Patriarchates in the Church--Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. These five are named by the Second Ecumenical Council. Rome had the primacy in honor, and they also had a few extra prerogatives; anybody could appeal a disciplinary decision of a regional synod and have Rome weigh in. Rome had the authority to decide if a retrial was necessary, but it wasn't in Rome's authority to decide how the retrial should be decided. All churchwide decisions were decided in councils representing all the regional churches. It was never the case that Rome unilaterally settled anything that affected the universal church; Rome simply never had that authority. Rome had jurisdictional authority over the Western Roman Empire, but that was it.

However, over time Rome began to see itself as being superior to all other churches and demanded that the other Patriarchates submit themselves to Roman leadership, in contradiction to the synodical nature of how the Church had always operated from Acts 15 onward. The Papacy as we know it slowly started coming into being around the late 800's and early 900's in response to political instability in the former territories of the Western Roman Empire; the Roman Church needed to be a strong centralized force in order to try and stabilize the extremely volatile political climate in Western Europe, and it eventually thought of itself as not only the Patriarchate of the West, but as the Universal Patriarch. Fun fact, Pope St. Gregory the Great in the 600's said that anyone who dared to call themselves the "universal bishop" was the forerunner to the Antichrist.

The Eastern Churches, however, continued to operate synodically as they always had, and rejected Rome's attempts to seize power over the whole of the Church, and so the Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox parted ways. Eventually Rome declared it a dogma in 1870 that the Pope of Rome was supreme and had jurisdiction over the whole Universal Church, and enjoyed infallibility on matters of faith and morals. According to the Dictatus Papae, the Pope's authority is greater than even that of an Ecumenical Council. Now, to declare something a dogma is to declare that something has always been held by the Church from the beginning. If one studies Church history, then one will see that it is clearly not the case that the Pope of Rome was ever a supreme and infallible hierarch over the whole Universal Church

I have also read that the Orthodox church disagrees with the Western Holy Roman Empires view of the Trinity because apparently they disagree with the relationships of the three slightly. I always understood that the Protestants had the same Trinity as the Western Catholics. Is there any truth in this?

Yes. The differences primarily boil down to the fact that the Western Church predominantly relies on the theology of St. Augustine, practically to the exclusion of other Fathers. St. Augustine was a very intelligent man, but he was never formally taught the theology of the Church the way that many of the Greek Fathers were. St. Augustine instead relied on classical Latin philosophy and what he could learn from St. Ambrose of Milan, from whom he did learn a great deal. He didn't know Greek all that well and had little contact with the Greek-speaking East where many of the Church's greatest theologians were, such as St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Athanasius of Alexandria and the Cappadocian Fathers. Due to this, St. Augustine kind of had to reinvent the wheel on some things. It was either St. Augustine (late 300's) or Thomas Aquinas during the Scholastic Period (from about 1000 to 1400 or so) who laid the groundwork for how Western Christianity conceives of the Trinity today.

So we discussed how Orthodoxy sees the origin of the Trinity in the Father, and it is from the Father that the Son is begotten and the Spirit proceeds, and it is from the Father that both of these two Persons receive the Divine Essence. But Catholicism and Trinitarian denominations of Protestantism start from a different point. Rather than starting with the Person of the Father, they start with the Divine Essence itself. From this Divine Essence comes the Father, the Father begets the Son, and according to Western Christianity, the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son (this last bit is heretical in Orthodoxy, as it represents a change to the faith as laid out in the Nicene Creed). Some Catholics say that the love of the Father and the Son for each other gives rise to the Holy Spirit (this is SUPER heretical to us Orthodox). Protestantism by and large inherited their Trinitarian theology from the Catholics, and have the same alterations to the Nicene Creed.

There are, however, some denominations in Protestantism which have gone full-blown Sabellian or Arian, because Protestantism as a rule rejects Tradition in favor of the Bible alone. The problem many Protestant denominations run into is that they have no external measure to determine what the Bible actually says, since they have abandoned the Apostolic Tradition--the tradition of teaching and authority that passed from Christ to the Apostles, from the Apostles to their students, from the students of the Apostles to the following generation, and so on, in an unbroken line of succession down to the present day. So since many Protestant churches don't put any stock in seriously studying the history of Christianity and the theology of the early Church, they end up accidentally recreating old heresies that were done away with back in the first few centuries of Christianity.

I have had to deal with the conspiracies a lot when chatting to sunni muslims specifically. Many don't only believe that Constantine invented the Trinity, they also believe that the Bible was compiled by the council of Nicaea. It is frustrating.

Right. And if you read through all the documents we have from the Council of Nicaea which I linked above, you will see that this is definitively not the case. The standardization of the Biblical canon is a lot more complicated and has a longer history than just that.

The reason why Arianism is rising (I actually don't think JW's are Arians. I looked it up and they have quite a few differences.) is because Trinitarians actually struggle to explain their viewpoint as a whole (obviously not you. you are explaining it exceptionally).

Yeah. Sadly, many laymen aren't well-versed in theology and this stuff isn't talked about in great detail all that much. I've had to piece the finer details together over the last couple years and it wasn't until recently that it all finally clicked in place. The fact that Western Christians aren't dealing with the Trinity as taught by the Church Fathers and the Ecumenical Councils makes things more difficult; Western Christian Trinitarian theology by default is closer to Sabellianism than Orthodoxy is. So when dealing with Sabellians and Arians, Western Christians have a harder time of it because they start with the Essence first and work outwards to the Persons, which on the face of it makes it seem more Sabellian. The Sabellians would have been happy to start with the Divine Essence and work outwards to God's "finger-puppets" as I like to describe it. Orthodoxy starts with the Persons first and explains how they're all one God and one in Essence. I find that starting with the Persons makes it far easier to explain why we're not Sabellians, and then working our way to proving the unity of the Persons in Nature and authority and power makes it easier to explain why we're not Arians.

I have experienced this myself. Only recently have I realised that most of my interpretation of the bible was based on preconceived notions from the start. Plus I was arrogant to think that I could know the truth based on so little knowledge of the history of the text, the church, the various interpretations etc.

Good on you for coming to that realization. It was a super long road for me as well; I was baptized Lutheran but grew up unchurched. I went through non-denominationalism and Catholicism, and I researched and considered many different Christian denominations before finally coming to the Eastern Orthodox Church.

 

[Shiranui117]

I thought it is the Eastern Orthodox position is that of subordination and the Western of equality among the 'Persons'.

I don't know if I would say that one is Eastern and one is Western; both have always maintained a hierarchy of relationship among the Persons to my understanding. Orthodoxy definitely does emphasize the Persons of the Trinity moreso than the West, this is true. But if you pay attention at least to the Mass, Catholics also have this hierarchy of Persons. It's just not taught and reinforced to the same extent as it is in the East.

 

[pearl]

(even though some of your words are higher grade).

Not all my words, just trying to convey some of the 'official' language of the Church dogma. More importantly is the development in the understanding of the Trinity which is the central doctrine of the Church, all other doctrine derives from it. Yet the word 'Trinity' is not mentioned in the Creed. But, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are.

So people try and interpret the Bible using the English of today, but what the phrases mean in English is not what they mean in their original languages.

True. Not only the translation of language but the original meaning presents a problem.

 

[pearl]

We can all agree the Trinity is not 2 men and a bird.

 

[Neutral Name]

I have been having discussions recently involving the Trinity. Many people have various views regarding the details of it.

I have said that the Trinity is a specific set of ideas. So saying that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is God does not mean that one is a Trinitarian.

The reason why I say this is because James White says that the Trinity is a specific set of beliefs and the various councils came to official conclusions from what I have read.

The question I would like Trinitarians and those who know church doctrine and history to answer is this:

In order for one to be a Trinitarian, must they have specific beliefs about the relationship between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit apart from them being God?

For instance Modalists belief that all three persons are God, yet they aren't Trinitarian. Also I believe there is a difference between the Catholic view and the Greek Orthodox view?

There is no official doctrine. It is not in the Bible. What is in the Bible is the fact that there is Father, Son and Holy Spirit which means that there is a trinity but is not named so. Either the Nicene Creed or the Apostle's Creed are recited in most churches. That is the official doctrine. This link shows both: https://www.aflc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Creeds.pdf . But if you search the Bible, you will never find the trinity or, as it is sometimes called, the triune written.

 

[blü 2]

In order for one to be a Trinitarian, must they have specific beliefs about the relationship between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit apart from them being God?

My Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church gives the Trinity doctrine as:

The One God exists in Three Persons and One Substance.
​

The Catholic Encyclopedia says

in the unity of the Godhead there are Three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, these Three Persons being truly distinct one from another. Thus, in the words of the Athanasian Creed : "the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and yet there are not three Gods but one God."​

Wikipedia (the highest spiritual authority, as you know) says

God is one God, but three coeternal consubstantial persons or hypostases—the Father, the Son (Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit—as "one God in three Divine Persons". The three Persons are distinct, yet are one "substance, essence or nature" (homoousios).
​

The formulation was devised in the 4th century CE, to solve a longstanding problem in the politics of the early church, namely how to raise Jesus to god status but at the same time avoid the charge of polytheism, which was associated with paganism.

Therefore a number of earlier ideas are excluded by the formulation eg

that the one God has three manifestations, as the Father, as the Son, and as the Ghost

that the Father + the Son + the Ghost = God as with, for example, ⅓+⅓+⅓=1

that the Father is a god, the Son is a god, and the Ghost is a god (and there are no other gods)
​

nor is God a corporation with a board of three,

nor a partnership of three partners

and so on.

Instead, as the Catholic Encyclopedia entry above expressly states, "the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and yet there are not three Gods but one God.". That is, the Father is 100% of God, the Son is 100% of God, and the Ghost is 100% of God. Yet 100%+100%+100% = 300% = 3 Gods, and in insisting that 100%+100%+100%=100% (and only 100%, one god) the doctrine is incoherent.

The churches do not deny this. Instead they say that the Trinity doctrine is "a mystery in the strict sense", and that means it "can neither be known by unaided human reason apart from revelation, nor cogently demonstrated by reason once it has been revealed" ─ their words, not mine. But if you unpack that wording, the only meaning is that the doctrine is incoherent, is in plain words a nonsense.

(It also leads to nonsensical consequences. In the NT Jesus never once claims to be God, and through Paul and in all four gospels expressly denies that he's God, being instead God's envoy and, implicitly, and in John expressly, having only such powers as God allows him. So if the doctrine is correct and Jesus is God, then Jesus is at all times a self-conscious and deliberate deceiver. Moreover, all versions of Jesus must be taken to be talking to themselves on each occasion when Jesus prays to God; Mark's and Matthew's Jesuses on the cross must be understood to have cried out, Me, me, why have I forsaken me? And since Matthew's and Luke's Jesuses are the genetic offspring of God, and have his Y-chromosome, and since under the doctrine Jesus is 100% of God, and the Ghost is 100% of God, each has as good a claim to the title the Father as the Father has. And so on.)

 

[Samael_Khan]

Not all my words, just trying to convey some of the 'official' language of the Church dogma. More importantly is the development in the understanding of the Trinity which is the central doctrine of the Church, all other doctrine derives from it. Yet the word 'Trinity' is not mentioned in the Creed. But, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are.

The language they used is very difficult to comprehend today. Such as" Hypo stasis' and "Homousian "(If I spelt any of those correctly at all). I think for people to understand these things they have to actually engage in the same arguments the people who came up with those definitions did.

True. Not only the translation of language but the original meaning presents a problem.

very true.

 

[Samael_Khan]

There is no official doctrine. It is not in the Bible. What is in the Bible is the fact that there is Father, Son and Holy Spirit which means that there is a trinity but is not named so. Either the Nicene Creed or the Apostle's Creed are recited in most churches. That is the official doctrine. This link shows both: https://www.aflc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Creeds.pdf . But if you search the Bible, you will never find the trinity or, as it is sometimes called, the triune written.

Which is why there was a gradual development in defining what it is. It is a definition of a concept.

Thanks for the link.

 

[Samael_Khan]

My Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church gives the Trinity doctrine as:

The One God exists in Three Persons and One Substance.
​

The Catholic Encyclopedia says

in the unity of the Godhead there are Three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, these Three Persons being truly distinct one from another. Thus, in the words of the Athanasian Creed : "the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and yet there are not three Gods but one God."​

Wikipedia (the highest spiritual authority, as you know) says

God is one God, but three coeternal consubstantial persons or hypostases—the Father, the Son (Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit—as "one God in three Divine Persons". The three Persons are distinct, yet are one "substance, essence or nature" (homoousios).
​

The formulation was devised in the 4th century CE, to solve a longstanding problem in the politics of the early church, namely how to raise Jesus to god status but at the same time avoid the charge of polytheism, which was associated with paganism.

Therefore a number of earlier ideas are excluded by the formulation eg

that the one God has three manifestations, as the Father, as the Son, and as the Ghost

that the Father + the Son + and the Ghost = God as with, for example, ⅓+⅓+⅓=1

that the Father is a god, the Son is a god, and the Ghost is a god (and there are no other gods)
​

nor is God a corporation with a board of three,

nor a partnership of three partners

and so on.

Instead, as the Catholic Encyclopedia entry above expressly states, "the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and yet there are not three Gods but one God.". That is, the Father is 100% of God, the Son is 100% of God, and the Ghost is 100% of God. Yet 100%+100%+100% = 300% = 3 Gods, and in insisting that 100%+100%+100%=100% (and only 100%, one god) the doctrine is incoherent.

The churches do not deny this. Instead they say that the Trinity doctrine is "a mystery in the strict sense", and that means it "can neither be known by unaided human reason apart from revelation, nor cogently demonstrated by reason once it has been revealed" ─ their words, not mine. But if you unpack that wording, the only meaning is that the doctrine is incoherent, is in plain words a nonsense.

(It also leads to nonsensical consequences. In the NT Jesus never once claims to be God, and through Paul and in all four gospels expressly denies that he's God, being instead God's envoy and, implicitly, and in John expressly, having only such powers as God allows him. So if the doctrine is correct and Jesus is God, then Jesus is at all times a self-conscious and deliberate deceiver. Moreover, all versions of Jesus must be taken to be talking to themselves on each occasion when Jesus prays to God; Mark's and Matthew's Jesuses on the cross must be understood to have cried out, Me, me, why have I forsaken me? And since Matthew's and Luke's Jesuses are the genetic offspring of God, and have his Y-chromosome, and since under the doctrine Jesus is 100% of God, and the Ghost is 100% of God, each has as good a claim to the title the Father as the Father has. And so on.)

Thanks for this. Those exclusions from the formulation are extremely useful.

When they say the Trinity is a mystery, then there is no reason to accept that their formula is correct because they are actually admitting that they don't know, so I don't know how they logically came up with the formula.

I suspect that this is the difference between the Catholic view and Orthodox view. It seems that the conflict between the eastern and western Christian church is that the east says that the Holy Spirit and the Son proceed from the Father, whereas the Western church says that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son. Also, apparently the Western Christians added words or changed words of the Nicene Creed, so they don't strictly follow it.:

Filioque - Wikipedia

So i think the Eastern Orthodox Trinity is very different to the Catholic one. I do not know if the east has that problem because they say that both the Holy Spirit and Son are subordinate to the Father. The Father would be the source of them.

I think the biggest problem with the idea of Jesus from the scriptures themselves is what is meant by everything being created by God and through Jesus. How did God do it and why did he need Jesus to create? Or did he even need him? If Jesus is the word then could that be the creative word? It is the explanation of Jesus preexistence in the bible that are the strongest points for the idea that he was more than a mere man, if not God.

 

[Samael_Khan]

Historically, there were five Patriarchates in the Church--Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. These five are named by the Second Ecumenical Council. Rome had the primacy in honor, and they also had a few extra prerogatives; anybody could appeal a disciplinary decision of a regional synod and have Rome weigh in. Rome had the authority to decide if a retrial was necessary, but it wasn't in Rome's authority to decide how the retrial should be decided. All churchwide decisions were decided in councils representing all the regional churches. It was never the case that Rome unilaterally settled anything that affected the universal church; Rome simply never had that authority. Rome had jurisdictional authority over the Western Roman Empire, but that was it.

However, over time Rome began to see itself as being superior to all other churches and demanded that the other Patriarchates submit themselves to Roman leadership, in contradiction to the synodical nature of how the Church had always operated from Acts 15 onward. The Papacy as we know it slowly started coming into being around the late 800's and early 900's in response to political instability in the former territories of the Western Roman Empire; the Roman Church needed to be a strong centralized force in order to try and stabilize the extremely volatile political climate in Western Europe, and it eventually thought of itself as not only the Patriarchate of the West, but as the Universal Patriarch. Fun fact, Pope St. Gregory the Great in the 600's said that anyone who dared to call themselves the "universal bishop" was the forerunner to the Antichrist.

That is fascinating. The catholics are completely wrong on their view of a Pope. Acts disproves it. It seems like the goal was to attain power. I view catholicism as a cult because cult leaders usually place themselves in the role of God or Jesus, thus making them anti Christ. Being a leader is one thing. But making oneself the access point to God is another. I am even sure a Pope once declared himself as God at one point.

The Eastern Churches, however, continued to operate synodically as they always had, and rejected Rome's attempts to seize power over the whole of the Church, and so the Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox parted ways. Eventually Rome declared it a dogma in 1870 that the Pope of Rome was supreme and had jurisdiction over the whole Universal Church, and enjoyed infallibility on matters of faith and morals. According to the Dictatus Papae, the Pope's authority is greater than even that of an Ecumenical Council. Now, to declare something a dogma is to declare that something has always been held by the Church from the beginning. If one studies Church history, then one will see that it is clearly not the case that the Pope of Rome was ever a supreme and infallible hierarch over the whole Universal Church

That at least I know. What is strange to me that when people talk about church history, they only know about the Western church and not the Eastern Orthodox church, even though the Eastern Orthodox have a longer history. For instance, some sunni muslims will say that the Dark Ages were caused by Christianity. Yet that was only in the Western Church. The Eastern Church was fine and Islam learnt a lot of information from translations of Greek texts that places like Constantinople have. Same now with the discussion of the Trinity.

Yes. The differences primarily boil down to the fact that the Western Church predominantly relies on the theology of St. Augustine, practically to the exclusion of other Fathers. St. Augustine was a very intelligent man, but he was never formally taught the theology of the Church the way that many of the Greek Fathers were. St. Augustine instead relied on classical Latin philosophy and what he could learn from St. Ambrose of Milan, from whom he did learn a great deal. He didn't know Greek all that well and had little contact with the Greek-speaking East where many of the Church's greatest theologians were, such as St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Athanasius of Alexandria and the Cappadocian Fathers. Due to this, St. Augustine kind of had to reinvent the wheel on some things. It was either St. Augustine (late 300's) or Thomas Aquinas during the Scholastic Period (from about 1000 to 1400 or so) who laid the groundwork for how Western Christianity conceives of the Trinity today.

So we discussed how Orthodoxy sees the origin of the Trinity in the Father, and it is from the Father that the Son is begotten and the Spirit proceeds, and it is from the Father that both of these two Persons receive the Divine Essence. But Catholicism and Trinitarian denominations of Protestantism start from a different point. Rather than starting with the Person of the Father, they start with the Divine Essence itself. From this Divine Essence comes the Father, the Father begets the Son, and according to Western Christianity, the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son (this last bit is heretical in Orthodoxy, as it represents a change to the faith as laid out in the Nicene Creed). Some Catholics say that the love of the Father and the Son for each other gives rise to the Holy Spirit (this is SUPER heretical to us Orthodox). Protestantism by and large inherited their Trinitarian theology from the Catholics, and have the same alterations to the Nicene Creed.

So then, would you say that those heretical ideas mean that those who believe them are a) not Trinitarian or b) not Christian?

There are, however, some denominations in Protestantism which have gone full-blown Sabellian or Arian, because Protestantism as a rule rejects Tradition in favor of the Bible alone. The problem many Protestant denominations run into is that they have no external measure to determine what the Bible actually says, since they have abandoned the Apostolic Tradition--the tradition of teaching and authority that passed from Christ to the Apostles, from the Apostles to their students, from the students of the Apostles to the following generation, and so on, in an unbroken line of succession down to the present day. So since many Protestant churches don't put any stock in seriously studying the history of Christianity and the theology of the early Church, they end up accidentally recreating old heresies that were done away with back in the first few centuries of Christianity.

I was listening to a Dan Carlin podcast called Prophets of Doom which explains the consequences of Protestantism well. Firstly, it seems like it was that gradual development of the Catholic Churches Pope and need to control as you mentioned, as well as the printing of the Bible in the laymen tongue,that laid the ground works for the revolution. With the rejection of traditional authority, foundational beliefs could be rejected, allowing anybody to interpret the Bible as they wish without any knowledge of context, culture, history etc. It gave rise to an anabaptist cult in Germany led by cult leaders who claimed to speak to God, Jan Matthys and afterwards Jan van Lyden, with the latter making his followers do horrendous things (much like dangerous cults today. In fact this lays the ground work for modern Christian cults.). This all led to the siege of Munster. The various viewpoints of Christianity and the rise of Christian cults seem to result from the rejection of tradition.

Right. And if you read through all the documents we have from the Council of Nicaea which I linked above, you will see that this is definitively not the case. The standardization of the Biblical canon is a lot more complicated and has a longer history than just that.

Much more complicated. Conspiracy theorists make it seem simple.

Yeah. Sadly, many laymen aren't well-versed in theology and this stuff isn't talked about in great detail all that much. I've had to piece the finer details together over the last couple years and it wasn't until recently that it all finally clicked in place. The fact that Western Christians aren't dealing with the Trinity as taught by the Church Fathers and the Ecumenical Councils makes things more difficult; Western Christian Trinitarian theology by default is closer to Sabellianism than Orthodoxy is. So when dealing with Sabellians and Arians, Western Christians have a harder time of it because they start with the Essence first and work outwards to the Persons, which on the face of it makes it seem more Sabellian. The Sabellians would have been happy to start with the Divine Essence and work outwards to God's "finger-puppets" as I like to describe it. Orthodoxy starts with the Persons first and explains how they're all one God and one in Essence. I find that starting with the Persons makes it far easier to explain why we're not Sabellians, and then working our way to proving the unity of the Persons in Nature and authority and power makes it easier to explain why we're not Arians.

I find that nobody ever discusses the Eastern Orthodox view. As I mentioned earlier, your guys views are ignored for some reason.

Good on you for coming to that realization. It was a super long road for me as well; I was baptized Lutheran but grew up unchurched. I went through non-denominationalism and Catholicism, and I researched and considered many different Christian denominations before finally coming to the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Thanks. Good on you too. Thorough research leads one to make better decisions.

 

[blü 2]

`

Thanks for this. Those exclusions from the formulation are extremely useful.

They have in common that they make sense ─ unlike the winner.

When they say the Trinity is a mystery, then there is no reason to accept that their formula is correct because they are actually admitting that they don't know, so I don't know how they logically came up with the formula.

Instead of useful admissions, we meet such notions as that 'the mystery is above reason but not contrary to it' ─ to which the only reasonable reply is, 'Really? What objective test will tell us whether any particular incoherence is above reason but not contrary to it or not?' Or perhaps, 'Don't be silly' cuts to the chase.

I suspect that this is the difference between the Catholic view and Orthodox view. It seems that the conflict between the eastern and western Christian church is that the east says that the Holy Spirit and the Son proceed from the Father, whereas the Western church says that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son. Also, apparently the Western Christians added words or changed words of the Nicene Creed, so they don't strictly follow it.

I don't know whether the Eastern version involves the idea that each of the persons is 100% of God. But if (as I'd more or less expect) it does, then it has the same problems as the Western version ─ the basic incoherence doesn't go away whether the Ghost proceeds from the Father alone, or from the Father and the Son. If the persons aren't each 100% of God then God has to be collegiate in some way, and I'd be interested to know how that's expressed.

 

[Shiranui117]

That is fascinating. The catholics are completely wrong on their view of a Pope. Acts disproves it. It seems like the goal was to attain power. I view catholicism as a cult because cult leaders usually place themselves in the role of God or Jesus, thus making them anti Christ. Being a leader is one thing. But making oneself the access point to God is another. I am even sure a Pope once declared himself as God at one point.

Having formerly been Catholic myself, I wouldn't call Catholicism a cult. They're genuinely convinced that they are the unchanged Church established by Christ and the Apostles, and many of them are genuine, faithful Christians who taught me a lot. The Pope calls himself the Vicar of Christ on earth (which is a whole other topic we can maybe get into some other time), but that's as far as it goes. If any Pope were to claim to be God, they would be kindly and swiftly thrown out of the Vatican in short order.

That at least I know. What is strange to me that when people talk about church history, they only know about the Western church and not the Eastern Orthodox church, even though the Eastern Orthodox have a longer history. For instance, some sunni muslims will say that the Dark Ages were caused by Christianity. Yet that was only in the Western Church. The Eastern Church was fine and Islam learnt a lot of information from translations of Greek texts that places like Constantinople have. Same now with the discussion of the Trinity.

It's because Protestantism branched off of Roman Catholicism, so for the most part Christians in the West are only familiar with Western Christianity and have no exposure at all to Orthodoxy. This is a geographic problem that goes all the way back to the collapse of the western half of the Roman Empire.

As for the Muslims, it's easy for them to attack the Western Christians in a day and age when many Western Christian churches are on the decline. They are able to exploit people's already-present distrust of their church and their lack of knowledge of Christian history and theology. Protestants and Catholics of 400 years ago are rolling over in their graves. The Muslims don't bother with apologetics against us Orthodox because Orthodoxy in the Middle East and Asia Minor has been under the boot of various caliphates since the 600's. We're allowed to continue on in our own villages and neighborhoods until the next wave of Islamism hits.

So then, would you say that those heretical ideas mean that those who believe them are a) not Trinitarian or b) not Christian?

I do know a good number of more conservative and anti-ecumenist Orthodox who would absolutely say that Western Christians believe in a different Trinity than we do. For my part, having been on both sides of the matter, I would certainly call them both Trinitarian and Christian, but with a flawed and innovative understanding of the Trinity.

I was listening to a Dan Carlin podcast called Prophets of Doom which explains the consequences of Protestantism well. Firstly, it seems like it was that gradual development of the Catholic Churches Pope and need to control as you mentioned, as well as the printing of the Bible in the laymen tongue,that laid the ground works for the revolution. With the rejection of traditional authority, foundational beliefs could be rejected, allowing anybody to interpret the Bible as they wish without any knowledge of context, culture, history etc. It gave rise to an anabaptist cult in Germany led by cult leaders who claimed to speak to God, Jan Matthys and afterwards Jan van Lyden, with the latter making his followers do horrendous things (much like dangerous cults today. In fact this lays the ground work for modern Christian cults.). This all led to the siege of Munster. The various viewpoints of Christianity and the rise of Christian cults seem to result from the rejection of tradition.

You're exactly right. They decided they wanted to reinvent the wheel, and ended up making it pear-shaped. Close, but not quite.

I find that nobody ever discusses the Eastern Orthodox view. As I mentioned earlier, your guys views are ignored for some reason.

Probably because, historically, the Islamic caliphates cut us off from contact with the West. Add to this the fact that the Russians and other Orthodox Slavic peoples were geopolitical rivals with some of the leading Central European powers of the day, especially Hungary, Austria, Poland and Lithuania. It's only been in the past couple centuries that Orthodoxy has been able to spread to the West via Russian colonization of Alaska and immigration of Greeks, Arabs and Slavic peoples to the English-speaking nations, in particular the US and Canada. And it's only been in the last century that serious headway has been made in English-language Orthodox research and literature. Things have been picking up the pace since the 1980's when 3,000 Evangelicals (including some of the founders of Campus Crusade for Christ) all decided to join the Orthodox Church en masse.

 

[Jim]

I have been having discussions recently involving the Trinity. Many people have various views regarding the details of it.

I have said that the Trinity is a specific set of ideas. So saying that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is God does not mean that one is a Trinitarian.

The reason why I say this is because James White says that the Trinity is a specific set of beliefs and the various councils came to official conclusions from what I have read.

The question I would like Trinitarians and those who know church doctrine and history to answer is this:

In order for one to be a Trinitarian, must they have specific beliefs about the relationship between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit apart from them being God?

For instance Modalists belief that all three persons are God, yet they aren't Trinitarian. Also I believe there is a difference between the Catholic view and the Greek Orthodox view?

You just need to learn the right words to say, without trying to understand what it all means. As soon as you try to understand what it means, you will fall into one heresy or another. There is no way to explain what it means, without falling into some kind of heresy. Anyone who thinks they understand it is thinking of it in some heretical way. That’s what it means to say that it’s a mystery: It’s impossible to understand. Don’t even try. Just learn the words to say.

Also, I think that there are differences between the official version and the ones that people most often use, because the official version uses some uncommon words. The everyday version is confusing because it uses the words “is,” “distinct,” “person” and “essence” in ways that they are never used in any other context.