The Trinity: Genesis of a doctrine

muhammad_isa said:
Mmm .. so it is.
Wouldn't it be nice if Jesus was amongst us now, and we didn't have to consider anybody's views except his?
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Your knowledge of what Catholics believe is thin, to say the least, and what you as a Muslim want Catholics to think and believe is really not of great importance to Catholics -- who are not interesting in telling you what to believe, especially here on an interfaith website.

I have tried to be polite, and others have tried to explain the complexity, but you continue wishing to impose your own religious beliefs -- based purely upon what you assume to be the divine authority of your own scripture -- upon the believers of another religion, on an interfaith website, in a persistent and dogmatic way that comes close to trolling, imo
 
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Thomas said:
..OK, if that's the way you choose to see it.
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Theologians use various forms of analysis and argument (experiential, philosophical, ethnographic, historical, and others) to help understand, explain, test, critique, defend or promote any myriad of religious topics.
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..so theology includes philosophy?
I would say so. We need to be careful in differentiating between philosophical opinions
and the more obvious .. such as the Father MUST be God.
The relationship of the Father to the Son and the Holy Ghost is clearly not so straightforward.

"Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject of the study."
"Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about reason, existence, knowledge, values, mind, and language."
 
RJM Corbet said:
..what you as a Muslim want Catholics to think and believe is really not of great importance to Catholics..
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I would have thought that "on an interfaith website", we need to respect each other and work towards peace.
There is a CoC to ensure that we do not abuse each other.

My intentions are not one of abuse, although I'm only human as is everybody else, and make mistakes.
We can of course "drop the subject" and move on .. if that is what those responsible for the site deems best.
 
muhammad_isa said:
we need to respect each other
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And the beliefs of others
muhammad_isa said:
There is a CoC to ensure that we do not abuse each other.
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Or the beliefs of others
muhammad_isa said:
My intentions are not one of abuse
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Nor hopefully of others' beliefs
muhammad_isa said:
I'm only human as is everybody else, and make mistakes.
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Me too. Moderating this Interfaith website is not simple. I would quite happily let someone else do it. But in the end I get to carry the can for the standards. So if a follower of one faith wants to troll another one, imo this is not the place
 
RJM Corbet said:
So if a follower of one faith wants to troll another one, imo this is not the place
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If you are referring to me, I would have thought that a bit unfair..
We know how the topic began..
Thomas: "No, not at all. For the Arians, Jesus was God, but a created God."

and subsequently @Thomas wanted to explain how the doctrine of the trinity developed.

..so it seems that we were talking at cross-purposes.
I insisted that Arians do not claim Jesus to be God.

Maybe it all depends on what we mean by "God" :D

In traditional Christian theology, the divinity in the Bible is considered the Godhead itself..

I do not see how Arians could claim Jesus was "a created God" and have any credibility whatsoever. They believed Jesus was divine .. yes. That is entirely different.
That's what the argument was all about .. defining the divinity of Jesus.
i.e. the substantial relationship between God the Father and God the Son.
  • Divine force or power - powers or forces that are universal, or transcend human capacities
  • Divinity applied to mortals - qualities of individuals who are considered to have some special access or relationship to the divine.
 
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muhammad_isa said:
I insisted that Arians do not claim Jesus to be God.
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But by your own argument, as you won't allow the documented history to speak, you cannot know what Arius believed.

muhammad_isa said:
I do not see how Arians could claim Jesus was "a created God" and have any credibility whatsoever.
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Perhaps if you acquainted yourself with the philosophical and theological currents of those times, with Philo of Alexandria (Hebrew), or Plotinus (Hellene), you would see the claim as credible and contextually logical.
 
Thomas said:
But by your own argument, as you won't allow the documented history to speak, you cannot know what Arius believed.
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Forget about "the Thalia" etc. for a moment..
Do you understand that the controversy was about the divinity of Jesus?
 
Thomas said:
Perhaps if you acquainted yourself with the philosophical and theological currents of those times, with Philo of Alexandria (Hebrew), or Plotinus (Hellene), you would see the claim as credible and contextually logical.
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No .. the Arians stated that "We all believe in One God, the Father Almighty..". If they then claimed that Jesus is
"a non-eternal created God", then there is 2 gods :(

The correct concept is that of definition of divinity. What does it mean when we say Jesus is divine? How is he divine?

Perhaps we should examine Philo's beliefs on "the Logos"..

Philo wrote that God created and governed the world through mediators. Logos is the chief among them, the next to God, demiurge of the world. Logos is immaterial, an adequate image of God, his shadow, his firstborn son.
...
Logos has the function of an advocate on behalf of humanity and also that of a God's envoy to the world.
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..so you are claiming that Arian Christians were following Philo?

Arius clearly argued that the Logos had a beginning and that the Son, therefore, was not eternal, the Logos being the highest of the Created Order
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If you imagine Philo's "Logos" as part of an abstract Godhead, then we apparently only have One God.
If one suggests that "the Logos" is not eternal and was created, we don't !!!

It is not likely that Christian thinkers, had there been any other considerable representative of this philosophy, would have allowed his thoughts and suggestions to escape them. Philo seems to have been the only one to transmit to the outer world, in skilled literary form, the ideas nurtured by the Synagogue and matured by him.

Hence Alexandrian Philosophy, in the strict sense of the words, seems entirely centered in Philo's name and confined to him. Nor did he found any school. Greek ideas, it is true, penetrated, after him, into Talmudic writings, but probably through other channels than Philo. The prophet had no honor in his own country; his name would have disappeared, because his philosophy led away from the pure monotheism of the Jew, had not his mental bent persisted in the development of Christian doctrine.
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https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/1174-alexandrian-philosophy
 
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Thomas said:
I said:
Forget about "the Thalia" etc. for a moment..
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LOL, of course not! :D
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Up to you .. why would you want to narrow down the evidence, I wonder? :)

I said:
the Arians stated that "We all believe in One God, the Father Almighty.."
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Do we or don't we all believe that The Father Almighty is God?
You can't say "no" to that, unless you also want to deny the Son is God :D

You are arguing from the point of view that everybody who believed in Jesus believed in Philo's godhead.
Why should they? A formula used in baptism does not explicitly imply that.

Let's say that Arius DID believe in Philo's eternal godhead. [ that all 3 were God ]
He believed that The Father was eternal [ an important understanding of what "God" is ]
He also believed that The Son was NOT eternal, but still part of the eternal godhead.

Anybody who claimed to be a bishop or priest etc. would laugh at that :D
Are we supposed to believe that Arians were morons?
 
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If only @muhammad_isa would listen to what people think, instead of telling them what they think, and then trying to argue forward from that, lol
 
Let's say that Arius DID believe in a godhead. [ that all 3 were God ]
He believed that The Father was eternal [ an important understanding of what "God" is ]
He also believed that The Son was NOT eternal, but still part of the eternal godhead.

How is that logical with reference to what Philo believed?

How about you show me where the Arians state what they believe?
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I already have, but you complain about the wiki articles .. so I am trying to
approach the issue through reason.
 
muhammad_isa said:
He believed that The Father was eternal [ an important understanding of what "God" is ]
He also believed that The Son was NOT eternal, but still part of the eternal godhead.
Anybody who claimed to be a bishop or priest etc. would laugh at that
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The branch is begotten of the (unbegotten) vine, the fruit is begotten of the branch. 'Father' is the term coined by Christ himself, to describe to human minds the relationship between himself, Christ the Son, and God the Father. But God (Spirit) is far more than simply 'Father' as Christ (Spirit/nature) is far more than simply 'Son' -- they are human words used by Christ to partly explain to human beings the infinite mystery of his incarnation

This point has been laboured several times over these threads. Never mind: just ignore it -- press the reset button and go back to factory settings
 
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Thomas said:
And on what evidence is the wiki articles based?
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I don't think we should go down that avenue .. but if you insist..
Why are you ignoring the rest of my post?
What have you got against reason?

Thomas said:
Perhaps if you acquainted yourself with the philosophical and theological currents of those times, with Philo of Alexandria..
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Perhaps not .. can you explain how the Arians believing "in a created God" becomes credible because of what Philo believed, please?
 
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