Sometimes I wonder about the Trinitarian view.

reply to post by Akragon


You must have stopped reading after the first paragraph in your link, otherwise you would have noticed this:

He also made it clear that the image of the Aten only represented the god, but that the god transcended creation and so could not be fully understood or represented. This aspect of his faith bears a notable resemblance to the religion of Moses

reply to post by AllGloryIsGods

. . . I wonder what God thinks about this. Whether its completely silly to debate it. Or would worshiping Yeshua be considered worshiping a false idol?

You should be more concerned about the opposite, if 'worshipping' Yahweh would be worshipping a false idol.
It kind of depends, on if you are Jewish or if you are Christian.
The first thing is easily dismissed because there is no true Yahweh worship today, since that would require a temple on Mount Zion in Jerusalem, where you were sacrificing animals, in order to carry out the worship.
If we are talking about Christians, then I think this question that you were wondering about is the most important question you could have, if you have not yet fully resolved it in your mind.
The New Testament in my opinion gives no support to the idea that the Father of Jesus was somehow the character that the writers of the Old Testament called Yahweh.
The fact that you are even using that term, Yahweh, for God, tells me that you have been influenced by others in your thinking, and not a positive influence, to my mind.
The other thing that is a bad indication to me is your use of the term Yeshua, for Jesus. This is pushed by people who would want you to think that somehow the Greek language is 'evil', and that the Syrian language (also sometimes called Aramaic) is somehow 'holy'.
I would be suspicious of the motives of the agenda which would push such things, and could easily imagine that the next step would be to have you reject the New Testament altogether, since it is written in a 'pagan' language.
As far as I am concerned, the New Testament distances itself as far as possible from Yahweh, without making the fact that Jesus was Jewish completely irrelevant.

Interesting comparisons...

I might just have to look into this issue a little more...

Good stuff!

reply to post by Akragon


You must have somehow skipped over it because it's right after the section you quoted.

The king was the living god kind of like how Jesus was the living god, right? I like how your link compares Moses and Akhenaten. What a coincidence.

reply to post by windword

The Essenes were more than an invention of Josephus!

You are using fantasy to back up your claim.
You see what you want to see and quote people with the same desire.
There are no Essene writings that anyone (who has a reputation to start with) would stake their reputations on.
Can you quote an actual highly placed professor (in the appropriate relevant field) of a major university who agrees with this sort of daydreaming?

reply to post by jmdewey60


Really? She clearly proved you wrong, man up to it. It's okay to be wrong every once in a while.

reply to post by Praetorius

If you're a believer, then just follow the perfect example. Christ worshipped the Father, and taught us to do so as well, pretty explicitly. I'll call that a safe bet either way.

Jesus did not identify his Father as being the same person who is identified as Yahweh by the Old Testament writers.
So just assuming that they are the same person is not "safe".
Jesus told the Jews that their father was a murderer from the beginning.
He told the leaders of the temple priests in Jerusalem that they did not know God.
Jesus said that he knew God because he came from God, and that no man has ever seen Him. It should be obvious that the Jews did not know the same god that Jesus knew.
God did not just all of a sudden appear out of nowhere so He must have always been around, but the stories in the OT as far as Jesus was concerned, were just stories, and the real truth about God was one that Jesus said that up 'till then was not known.

reply to post by 3NL1GHT3N3D1

Really? She clearly proved you wrong, man up to it. It's okay to be wrong every once in a while.

Yes, really.
I read what I consider reputable scholars and I know they do not agree with the fantasy version of who the Essenes were or that they left any writings.
Just because you can quote a web site that agrees with you, it does not 'prove' you are right.

reply to post by AllGloryIsGods


I'm sure I don't know for sure, but I think the Holy Spirit is God's conscious. His conscious' self image is Father, and his conscious' thoughtforms (Word) are embodied as Son. He has given the embodiment of his thoughtforms (Son), lordship over his thoughtforms, but not Lordship over his conscious.

reply to post by 3NL1GHT3N3D1

What I find weird is that most Christians believe that Jesus was the Father yet also believe in the Trinity. The Trinity states that the Father and Son are not the same entity. Contradiction much?

"Most" Christians do not believe that Jesus was the Father. It might seem like it if you gauged it by the representation on internet forums because most normal Christians stay off the religion forums while the cults apparently encourage their members to push their propaganda any way that they can.
The Oneness people believe in a weird trinity where god can morph from one thing to another, not the orthodox version where the three persons are really distinct personalities.

reply to post by AQuestion

. . . it was impossible to have a virgin birth. Today we have many of them, we call them artificial insemination are even test tube babies. Would you deny that people can have babies even if they have not had sex? For thousand of years people made a big deal about the virgin birth, turns out it was not that complicated after all.

The Gospels called Joseph Jesus' father, and Mary and Joseph his parents.
The whole thing about being "son of David" was through his father's lineage.
So, Jesus had Joseph's DNA, not God's.

reply to post by Akragon

I AM is the essence of God... which is within Jesus...

A phrase is not the essence, but only describes it. I think too many people get caught up in 'secret meanings' and things that are just weird and to me an attempt at magic.

The entity that spoke in the burning bush was an "angel" not God... though it was turned into God a few verses later... Moses' mistake...

The angel began talking in the first person as if he was talking for God. He did not 'become' God. Moses did the exact same thing but never became God.

Personally I believe that angel wasn't from the true God... likely a fallen one, if such things exist

Or the OT writers just got it wrong.

reply to post by Akragon

Moses had a few revelations... there is prophecy about Jesus within the OT... I won't deny that...

The Gospels have Jesus claiming that Moses "spoke of him", making Jesus the fulfilment of Moses' prophecy.
Moses carried a lot of weight with the Jews as being the authority on God's law, so Jesus would have used that prophecy as a way to legitimise himself, without worrying about the possibility that he could have been actually legitimising Moses.

reply to post by AQuestion

In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. What was that word? Does the pronunciation matter or the meaning of the word?

I worked that out a few days ago on another thread.
Logos is the word John was using, which was the key philosophical term of the day when the Gospel of John was written.
My interpretation of what John was doing was that he was explaining the spirit of prophecy to gentiles who could not care less what Malachi said since they would not recognize the relevancy of being included in the Jewish canon as a 'minor' prophet.
So John was saying, not that John the Baptist was preaching because a prophet prophesied that he would, but that it was the work of the Logos.

reply to post by AQuestion


Thank you for the reply. The answer is yes, if I was wrong about the trinity I would still love God with all my heart mind body and soul. He has given me everything I cannot imagine a better friend or father.

However I have visited several churches recently and this is all they teach "look at Jesus" "pray to Jesus". Absolutely nothing about the rest of the Bible. It disturbs me. The rest of the Bible is there for a reason. Anyhow that is another subject and as I said I did not set this thread up to debate I am only curious as to what others think God thinks about us debating it or whether he cares.

reply to post by AllGloryIsGods

. . . this is all they teach "look at Jesus" "pray to Jesus".

I would agree with your feeling.
That sort of thing bothered me thirty years ago to the point of forcing me to reevaluate the whole trinity thing.
I don't think it is idolatry as much as missing the point that Jesus was making, or what Paul was making, that Jesus was to draw us to God.

an excerpt from the Athanasian creed

That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; Neither confounding the Persons; nor dividing the Essence. For there is one Person of the Father; another of the Son; and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one; the Glory equal, the Majesty coeternal. Such as the Father is; such is the Son; and such is the Holy Ghost. The Father uncreated; the Son uncreated; and the Holy Ghost uncreated. The Father unlimited; the Son unlimited; and the Holy Ghost unlimited. The Father eternal; the Son eternal; and the Holy Ghost eternal. And yet they are not three eternals; but one eternal. As also there are not three uncreated; nor three infinites, but one uncreated; and one infinite. So likewise the Father is Almighty; the Son Almighty; and the Holy Ghost Almighty. And yet they are not three Almighties; but one Almighty. So the Father is God; the Son is God; and the Holy Ghost is God. And yet they are not three Gods; but one God. So likewise the Father is Lord; the Son Lord; and the Holy Ghost Lord. And yet not three Lords; but one Lord.

As finite humans we cannot conceptualize this, we can only agree with how the Bible describes it.

A paper I completed this last semester... Hope it helps your understanding.

The Tridentine Notion of God

The struggle for understanding undertaken by the Fathers of the Church asks questions of understanding expressed in works which could have caused the collapse of the Church, had the Patristic Fathers not intervened at Nicaea in 325 and Constantinople in 381. What then is the significance of the Trinitarian nature of God they uncovered? What were the other major questions involved, and what contribution have they added to the meaning of the notion of Trinity? What influences did the Church Fathers have over the understanding of the Trinity then, and how are these interpreted today? Finally, were the results of the arguments expressed at the Council of Nicea based on theological doctrine, or were they based on the political needs of the Empire? Based on the answers to the questions asked above, how can my own understanding of the tridentate nature of God be marked by these different forms of theological argumentation.

The significance of the Trinitarian Theology

When the Church Fathers developed the doctrine of the Trinitarian God what they really sought was the means by which they might understand and express their convictions of God’s revelation to us through His Son. They were in essence trying to answer the question that had been posed some three hundred years earlier to the disciples when Jesus asked “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” (Matt 16:13-20). The Fathers had identified a need to put into words the threefold reality of the nature of God as Father, Son and Spirit. This need to answer Jesus’ question, entails the finding of a common vocabulary. This new language was required in order to sweep away confusion, and to give it a faith based and theological meaning. The rhetorical and logical languages of the time which took into account the philosophical traditions of the Greek (Hellenistic) and the Political situation in the Roman Empire, gave the Fathers of the Church an impetus to define a Christian language of salvation. They needed to find a way to articulate Jesus’ life as “the true revelation of God” in a way that would not negate His ‘human reality’, nor demean the claim that He was “God’s eternal Son” . They needed to express the mystery of God’s self-sacrificing Love as witnessed in the faith of the church.

These theologians wanted to make certain that Jesus Christ was not perceived in a Docetistic manner that held his divinity above his humanity, and to maintain the salvitic nature of his actions. They wanted to be able to call out to Him in prayer, “Maranatha, our Lord, Come!” (1Cor 16:22). To express their faith the early apologetic philosophers and theologians addressed Christ within the oneness of God to the Jewish people that witnessed the accomplishment of God’s promise. Here, the dogmatic and theological expressions of the church were finally able to encompass the multiplicity of the nature of God through the Scriptures as well as the ‘communion’ of Christian thought at Nicaea and Constantinople. The vocabulary itself would change to reflect the common understanding of who God, the Son and Spirit are. Just as Justin Martyr defined the ‘Logos’ as the expression of God in Israel’s history, it also exposed Jesus as the ‘Word’ of God incarnate in the Son. Irenaeus of Lyons would clarify the ‘economy of his Divinity’ by implying a ‘trinity’ of sorts as the Son and Spirit were the hands of God at work. The need then expanded to define God beyond the dogmatic belief in ‘One God’ as three different manifestations of the single entity that had paved the way for adoptionist, baptismal (Synoptic) and derivative aspects of the relationship of Christ with God. Here was born the Modalism that mitigated these trains of thought and asserted the oneness of God and Son. The progression allowed the Fathers of the Church to eventually define the singular nature of God in three persons. By doing so they ensured the economy of revelation in a manner where the three distinct ‘hypostases’ are expressed in one divine substance.
This consubstantial relationship was described as “the Son and Spirit proceeding from Him, as true God from true God”. It is this understanding that encompassed the very nature of the Churches Christology. Without the perfect divinity of Christ expressed in this manner the ‘raison d’être’ of Christianity vaporises along with the hope that Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross could give us our freedom.


What were the major questions and issues involved?

We must therefore expose Christianity to the serious questions that troubled the early Church Fathers, and elaborate how the arguments shaped our ultimate understanding of this man/God named ‘Jesus’. The questions and issues of the day were in fact so divisive that several councils were called in order to ‘finalize’ the question of his nature. Most people would start their quest for the answer at the Council of Nicaea. We know however, that the arguments for and....

...against the divine nature of Jesus as Son of God had its roots in Origenism, who spoke of the Son and the Holy Spirit as the Wisdom of the Father. His theology of subordination placed God as the Father, the Son as an emanation and as participant of the first. Jesus, the Word, is therefore “an inferior God” . This language negates the possibility of the ousia of the only-begotten Son of God, Jesus Christ being the hypostasis (aspect) of the Logos (word). This basic understanding was to influence a horde of Trinitarian detractors. The early theologians, Sabellius, Alexander, Lucian, and Eusebius, fought against the idea of one God in three persons. The various understandings of this concept range from Jesus as an image of God, to one co-eternal with the Father but not of the same substance. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are merely different aspects of one God, rather than three distinct persons within the Godhead.

Arius and his supporters would develop a fundamentally different premise for this affirmation. He placed the Son clearly in the realm of that which is created, albeit a “perfect creature” made by the Father. The essence of the Son’s divinity is therefore non-existent in so far as he shares in our frail humanity; his essence is reduced to demigod status and is therefore ‘God’ only in name. It is inconceivable to Arius that the Father would divide his being, therefore Jesus the created “Word must be a creature”, having had a beginning, having “no direct knowledge of, His Father” and is “liable to change and even sin” . For Arius the Trinity is only real in the hierarchal hypostatical plain of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The Arian reaction to Nicaea had several components. Their opposition while in exile was lasted till Constantine’s death in 337. The Eusebians persuasive arguments were the cause of the discrediting of Eustathius, and Marcellus who opposed Arius at Nicaea, and the reinstatement of like minded bishops in their places. It was this Eusebius, an Arian Bishop, who Baptized Constantine just prior to his death in 337. For the next 24 years the Arians reigned and succeeded in crushing the Nicaean’s doctrine of homoousion. In 361 the Arian movement was a once again at the mercy of Athanasius. The homoeousian opponents were again able to gather their forces and at the Council of Constantinople in 381 the Nicaean’s Creed was reaffirmed. .

A contribution to the significance of the notion of Trinity

The Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople would counter the Arian movement and launch the effort to unify church doctrine. As a defender of Trinitarian thought, Athanasius develops three (3) arguments against Arianism. He states that by denying the ‘Divine triad’ Arius reintroduces polytheism. He argues that if the Arians address prayers of Baptism to both the Father and to the lesser Son then their logic conflicts with their message. He argues also that Arian thought undermines the idea of ‘redemption in Christ’, as salvation can only be had through God the Father. Nicaea affirms the idea that the Son shares the whole of the Fathers divinity, the same indivisible divine nature, and therefore that the Son is fully God. This recalls Origen’s sense of “community of substance” between Father and Son. In the end, the Arians failed in their concerted effort to undermine the idea that the homoousion imperilled the concepts of the three hypostases in the one God. Their ideas that the Word could not be divine because He was a created being, falls under the weight of Athanasius’ concept of the Son’s “mysterious” generation. And since the Son is ‘increate’ and always was, then he could not be the result of God’s will. And as Christ is derived from the Father then he is at once of the same nature and of “complete likeness” as the Father, they are different only in name. Their divinity is therefore indivisible and “thus they are one”, in this same light the economy of the salvitic nature of God and of the Son are one in the same.

This vision of a “universal and immutable order” was impressed upon the faithful by Constantine. Flash forward to 381, the Council of Constantinople asserts that the dogmatic and spiritual doctrine of homoousios applies also to the Holy Spirit “who proceeds from the Father” as professed in the Nicene-Constantinople creed. The Trinity is made official, and the Church may now pray to a ‘One’ Trinitarian God.

Conclusion

The Trinitarian theology evoked as many variations of thought as there were cities on the Mediterranean. Eighteen hundred years ago the Church Fathers had accepted the enormous responsibility of deciphering the manner in which we understand God today. Their proximity in time and space to the event of Jesus Christ, and to the philosophers and theologians such as Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Irenaeus, Origen, Lucian, Eusebius, Eustathius, and Clement of Alexandria to name a few, gave them all a great advantage and a disadvantage. Their proximity to the great minds also meant that they were privy to the great arguments of the day. They were, after all, all trying to answer the same question Jesus asked the Disciples and that Matthew shared with us, “Who do people say the Son of Man is? How does God then reveal himself to us through His Son? The Trinitarian theology is so important because it allows us to make the connection between the written words of scripture and our system of belief, between what God asks and what the Church preaches. Through the constant battle between faith and reason which the Fathers of the Church had fought, to the opportunities for ecumenical dialogue we face today, the underlining oneness is the ‘Creed’ we share. This Credo can act as the base from which our faith stands where it enables the actions of the Holy Spirit within us to take the necessary step at a unified doctrine.
The major questions of the essence of God, Son and Holy Spirit only served as the base of argument which sought to define how God’s economy of being affected His capacity to give us salvation. Grillmeier assert that it was only a ‘deliberate coincidence’ that Christianity and the Roman Empire grew into each other. Whether the doctrines outlined at Nicaea and Constantinople were based on Constantine’s political or spiritual needs are purely academic questions, since through the influence of the Holy Spirit, nothing would have changed the final doctrine of Christian thought ‘eventually’. Their coexistence developed a political-theology that in the end united both Christian and the Roman Empire. In the end, the battle lines which separated the different forms of argumentation, eventually forced an end to the war of doctrinal exile which the Trinitarians and the Arians had fought.


Bibliography:

Grillmeier SJ, Aloys. Christ in Christian Tradition. Traduit par John Bowden. Vol. Volume One from The Apostolic age to Chacedon (451). Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1975.
Kelly, Anthony J. The Trinity of Love: A Theology of the Christian God. Édité par Micheal Glazier. Wilmington, Delaware, 1989.
Kelly, J.N.D. Early Christian Doctrines. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978.
Murray, John Courtney. The Problem of God. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1964.