What, the path of actual evidence?
OK .. I have time on my hands
I haven't got the money to buy books though.
Is that what you are relying on, rather than engage in full discussion?
The Trinity: Genesis of a doctrine
- Thread starter Thomas
- Start date
OK .. I have time on my hands
I haven't got the money to buy books though.
Is that what you are relying on, rather than engage in full discussion?
Sorry I do not mean to interfere in your personal conversation and with respect I assume @Thomas is asking for the references for the wiki passages quoted, in order to be able to check the authenticity and reliability of the sources of those passages? In the sense there's a ton of stuff on the internet and so the source of it needs to be referenced for it to be considered evidence?OK .. I have time on my hands
I haven't got the money to buy books though.
Is that what you are relying on, rather than engage in full discussion?
Don't need to. Documents of the dispute are online here.OK .. I have time on my hands
Roger Pearse posted this on his blog:
"The Da Vinci Code has spawned a host of people who believe that the First Council of Nicaea voted on whether Jesus was God. I tend to correct such people by pointing out that Arius himself calls the Son, "fully God", in his letter to Eusebius of Nicomedia (321AD)."
The Roger Pearse blog
Extract from the letter:
... But what we say and think we both have taught and continue to teach; that the Son is not unbegotten, nor part of the unbegotten in any way, nor is he derived from any substance; but that by his own will and counsel he existed before times and ages fully God, only-begotten, unchangeable."
And RP's comments:
And there it is: πλήρης θεός – pleres theos, fully God. Pleres indeed can mean complete as well as full, as we see in LSJ. But the idea is pretty clear.
I did wonder if there was a variant. After all, everybody knows that Arius did not think that the Son was God in the same way as the Father. I fully expected to see someone "correct" the text to fix what it said, to bring it into accordance with the known views of Arius. But the GCS does not list one.
But Theodoret is not our only source for the letter of Arius. It is also transmitted by Epiphanius in the Panarion, 69.6.
All the same, we have to work with what Theodoret and Epiphanius and the Latin witnesses record, and what Arius wrote. The old heretic definitely wrote "fully God". What he actually meant by this, of course, was the subject of the Arian disputes. But he did not believe that the Son was not God. (emphasis mine)
"The Da Vinci Code has spawned a host of people who believe that the First Council of Nicaea voted on whether Jesus was God. I tend to correct such people by pointing out that Arius himself calls the Son, "fully God", in his letter to Eusebius of Nicomedia (321AD)."
The Roger Pearse blog
Extract from the letter:
... But what we say and think we both have taught and continue to teach; that the Son is not unbegotten, nor part of the unbegotten in any way, nor is he derived from any substance; but that by his own will and counsel he existed before times and ages fully God, only-begotten, unchangeable."
And RP's comments:
And there it is: πλήρης θεός – pleres theos, fully God. Pleres indeed can mean complete as well as full, as we see in LSJ. But the idea is pretty clear.
I did wonder if there was a variant. After all, everybody knows that Arius did not think that the Son was God in the same way as the Father. I fully expected to see someone "correct" the text to fix what it said, to bring it into accordance with the known views of Arius. But the GCS does not list one.
But Theodoret is not our only source for the letter of Arius. It is also transmitted by Epiphanius in the Panarion, 69.6.
All the same, we have to work with what Theodoret and Epiphanius and the Latin witnesses record, and what Arius wrote. The old heretic definitely wrote "fully God". What he actually meant by this, of course, was the subject of the Arian disputes. But he did not believe that the Son was not God. (emphasis mine)
- The_American_Cyclopædia_(1879) -
OK .. what is "Sabellianism"?
---> the belief that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three different modes or aspects of God, as opposed to a Trinitarian view of three distinct persons within the Godhead.
How strange!
Great .. some documents weren't burnt.
It shows that the Arians were morons who can't have been right.
To you, evidently.How strange!
OK. this is futile, you're being ridiculous, and this is a waste of my time.
Ah! Really? Thanks for that nugget
I'm sure that the Sadducees said the same thing to Jesus..
I find it sad that we back away from discussion when we don't have an answer to a question.
I'm not picking on anybody in this discussion .. I'm just asking what I see as reasonable questions.
I said:
..because I can't see it. I see that it is totally illogical to believe in a godhead that comprises one eternal person and one non-eternal person, and still believe in "One God".
Can the "One God" be the godhead in such a configuration?
No .. the One God has to be the Father .. and then the Son is NOT God, but can still be divine.
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But the Father and the Son are not people? It is Spirit/nature symbiosis, far outside ordinary human understanding? The infinite mystery of Christ. You can want to reduce it to 'Jesus son of Mary' of the Quran-- that is quite irrelevant for Catholics what limitations you decide upon the Christ
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Indeed it IS "strange" to me..
Why would Arius accuse him of believing in three different modes or aspects of God?
Wouldn't it appear that he didn't believe in a trinity from such an accusation?
Thomas Jefferson (1743 – 1826)
Ideologically, Jefferson stressed "equal and exact justice to all men", minority rights, and freedom of speech, religion, and press.
Jefferson was firmly anticlerical, writing in "every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty ... they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon."
He believed in a creator god, an afterlife, and the sum of religion as loving God and neighbors. But he also controversially renounced the conventional Christian Trinity, denying Jesus' divinity as the Son of God.
Federalists attacked him as an atheist.
He was a statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father of USA.
NB. I was previously quoting the American_Cyclopædia (1879)
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If that is the case, then both Alexander and Arius were talking rubbish
If they both believed that, then what authority do they have to argue about what God is?
It seems bizarre to me, that we have 2 sects of Christians, who both purportedly believe that
God is beyond human understanding, killing each other over what God is.
No .. more likely that politics comes into it somewhere.
Let's see .. who was "laying down the law"?
[ you must believe this or else! ]
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Of course God is beyond human understanding. That's the whole issue: why should others have to share your own limited view?
There are a lot of people today killing each other over what God is, but they do not seem to be trinitarian Christians?
That is beside the point. We are currently discussing whether Arians were trinitarians or not.
@Thomas seems to be suggesting that partisan evidence is all that matters.
Clearly, Thomas Jefferson, [who was a US President & lawyer], didn't think that "the evidence" was very reliable..
..neither do I
There is always 2 sides to a story. Magistrates need to hear both sides, and employ reason to decide
who is more likely to be telling the truth.
Oh well. That decides it then, lol.
Hang on: Donald Trump was also an American President who didn't think that "the evidence" was very reliable so ... ummm ... it's getting quite confusing
Magistrates also need to look at the evidence objectively. They do not decide the case before hearing it, and then throw out any evidence that does not support their foregone decision?
..Hang on: Donald Trump was also an American President who didn't think that "the evidence" was very reliable so ... ummm ... it's getting quite confusing
Well, you know what these "federalists" are like
Who cares what "the old heretic" is said to have wrote?
You clearly do. I'm more interested in THE CONCEPT.
What does it really mean in any case .. "fully God"?
Can the Son be "partially God"?
I can see that. The point is, they could. One has to look at it from their perspective ... but Greek philosophy is not everyone's cup of tea, I understand that.
Yes, according to their way of thinking.
Well I could have agreed with you at the outset and made everyone's life easier – but that would be a disservice to Arius.
Your thesis makes it a much simpler case against Arius. A denial of the divinity of Jesus would have put him inarguably outside the Christian pale, a heretic beyond dispute.
I am actually defending what little reputation Arius has left.
To be frank, I rather think he might have been a better theologian than his bishop, Alexander, and that wouldn't be the first time. In fact, that puts him in the same league as some of the greatest names of Christianity! If there's anything that saints and sinners have in common, is that they have both suffered unfairly at the hands of
their bishop!That someone might be 'wrong' does not make them 'bad'. Arius' mistake was a too-great a dependence on Greek philosophy, and in that he was not the first, nor the last. The same accusation was laid on Origen, and he certainly towered head and shoulders above Arius!
I know, but when interrogating Antiquity, we have to try and understand what they saw as reasonable answers. If we fail in that, we're guilty of anachronism, or worse, revisionism.