Posted on 04/16/2013 8:20:04 PM PDT by DouglasKC
Many historians and religious scholars, some quoted in this publication, attest to the influence of Greek or Platonic philosophy in the development and acceptance of the Trinity doctrine in the fourth century. But what did such philosophy entail, and how did it come to affect the doctrine of the Trinity?
To briefly summarize what was pertinent, we start with mention of the famous Greek philosopher Plato (ca. 429-347 B.C.). He believed in a divine triad of "God, the ideas, [and] the World-Spirit," though he "nowhere explained or harmonized this triad" (Charles Bigg, Christian Platonists of Alexandria, 1886, p. 249). Later Greek thinkers refined Plato's concepts into what they referred to as three "substances"—the supreme God or "the One," from which came "mind" or "thought" and a "spirit" or "soul." In their thinking, all were different divine "substances" or aspects of the same God. Another way of expressing this was as "good," the personification of that good, and the agent by which that good is carried out. Again, these were different divine aspects of that same supreme good—distinct and yet unified as one.
Such metaphysical thinking was common among the intelligentsia of the Greek world and carried over into the thinking of the Roman world of the New Testament period and succeeding centuries. As the last of the apostles began to die off, some of this metaphysical thinking began to affect and infiltrate the early Church—primarily through those who had already begun to compromise with paganism.
As Bible scholars John McClintock and James Strong explain: "Towards the end of the 1st century, and during the 2d, many learned men came over both from Judaism and paganism to Christianity. These brought with them into the Christian schools of theology their Platonic ideas and phraseology" ( Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, 1891, Vol. 10, "Trinity," p. 553).
The true Church largely resisted such infiltration and held firm to the teaching of the apostles, drawing their doctrine from the writings of the apostles and "the Holy Scriptures [the books of the Old Testament] which are able to make you wise for salvation" (2 Timothy 3:15 ).
Two distinct threads of Christianity split and developed separately—one true to the plain and simple teachings of the Bible and the other increasingly compromised with pagan thought and practices adopted from the Greco-Roman world.
Thus, as debate swelled over the nature of God in the fourth century leading to the Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople, it was no longer a debate between biblical truth and error. Both sides in the debate had been seriously compromised by their acceptance of unbiblical philosophical ideas.
Many of the church leaders who formulated the doctrine of the Trinity were steeped in Greek and Platonic philosophy, and this influenced their religious views and teaching. The language they used in describing and defining the Trinity is, in fact, taken directly from Platonic and Greek philosophy. The word trinity itself is neither biblical nor Christian. Rather, the Platonic term trias, from the word for three, was Latinized as trinitas— the latter giving us the English word trinity.
"The Alexandria catechetical school, which revered Clement of Alexandria and Origen, the greatest theologian of the Greek Church, as its heads, applied the allegorical method to the explanation of Scripture. Its thought was influenced by Plato: its strong point was [pagan] theological speculations. Athanasius and the three Cappadocians [the men whose Trinitarian views were adopted by the Catholic Church at the Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople] had been included among its members" (Hubert Jedin, Ecumenical Councils of the Catholic Church: an Historical Outline, 1960, p. 28).
"The doctrines of the Logos [i.e., the "Word," a designation for Christ in John 1] and the Trinity received their shape from Greek Fathers, who . . . were much influenced, directly or indirectly, by the Platonic philosophy . . . That errors and corruptions crept into the Church from this source can not be denied" ( The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Samuel Macauley Jackson, editor, 1911, Vol. 9, p. 91).
The preface to historian Edward Gibbons' History of Christianity sums up the Greek influence on the adoption of the Trinity doctrine by stating: "If Paganism was conquered by Christianity, it is equally true that Christianity was corrupted by Paganism. The pure Deism [basic religion, in this context] of the first Christians . . . was changed, by the Church of Rome, into the incomprehensible dogma of the trinity. Many of the pagan tenets, invented by the Egyptians and idealized by Plato, were retained as being worthy of belief" (1883, p. xvi). (See "How Ancient Trinitarian Gods Influenced Adoption of the Trinity," beginning on page 18.)
The link between Plato's teachings and the Trinity as adopted by the Catholic Church centuries later is so strong that Edward Gibbon, in his masterwork The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, referred to Plato as "the Athenian sage, who had thus marvelously anticipated one of the most surprising discoveries of the Christian revelation" —the Trinity (1890, Vol. 1, p. 574).
Thus we see that the doctrine of the Trinity owes far less to the Bible than it does to the metaphysical speculations of Plato and other pagan Greek philosophers. No wonder the apostle Paul warns us in Colossians 2:8 (New International Version) to beware of "hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ"!
Doug's UCG church basically says that there are two gods: God the Father and God the Son. Two separate gods and the holy spirit is not God or a god according to them.
Correct. Platonic philosophy was far more sophisticated...
Depends on the level of influence that one infers
There was some influence, but the level and depth is in dispute.
Please could you explain further?
A good analogy is that of perfectly married couple...there is no ego or "me" in either party. They both have well defined roles and purposes and there is never disagreement. They are one in purpose and unity. What binds them together in perfect unity is love.
Col_3:14 But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection.
Appreciate your scripture based rebuttal. Good job.
Paradisio like the rest of the Divine Comedy to me is seeped in the belief of the Trinity: the verses, etc
These do not qualify as a scholarly reference
Doug, the booklets you link to also gives only half-truths like "the Trinity was not closed until the Nicene Council"
Because the concept of the Holy Spirit not being part of the godhead fails when put to the test of scripture or history. Either way it fails.
Apostasy is breaking away from orthodox belief. Orthodox belief in Christianity is Trinitarian, hence it cannot be apostasy.
Even if you take it from the Judaic point of view, we hold to ONE God, hence not Apostasy.
however, the UCG view of Doug's church is apostasy as it holds to the idea of two gods. You could call that Apostasy
However, fabian, do you believe that Jesus is God and/or the Holy Spirit is God?
Or do you hold to the view that neither is God?
Apostasy is breaking away from orthodox belief. Orthodox belief in Christianity is Trinitarian, hence it cannot be apostasy.
Even if you take it from the Judaic point of view, we hold to ONE God, hence not Apostasy.
however, the UCG view of Doug's church is apostasy as it holds to the idea of two gods. You could call that Apostasy
However, fabian, do you believe that Jesus is God and/or the Holy Spirit is God?
Or do you hold to the view that neither is God?
Fabian also it would be interesting to know your point of why this is brainwashing and how this affects
I have no doubt of what is called the trinity... however, I do not believe that I am gifted to adequately communicate what the word 'trinity' literally and figuratively means. Modern Christianity has a forest of dead wood doctrine that by and large distracts all of us from having in our minds what to expect next. Christ said He had foretold us all things (Mark 13:23) before one jot or tittle of the so called New Testament ever got placed upon plant fibers or animal skins... I am not hearing that wealth of instruction getting fed to the sheep. I keep hearing about who is first, oldest and only representative of God and God and Mary. This is not food this is hot air.
Could you in your own words, NOT using some 'church' produced tutorial or a spam of 'church' produced dogma why the word 'trinity' is wrong?
Now to give a bit of background I was raised in your 'mother' church... way way back in my youth... while I have not attended or given money to this organization since I was 17, I have on occasion encountered people that were members or new members that joined since the big break-up back in the 70's. Now I could have written a book about the mother church, but it would have been only for cathartic purposes, I chose instead to find out for myself what the WORD actually said... you know that forbidden act of 'sola scripture' outside of the programmed methodology? See I firmly believe that too many in whatever denomination they attend actually worship the 'church' and turn themselves over to the organization rather than maintain their own personal interaction with the Creator of their very souls.
It is not my intent to come across as if I know everything, or that I am above or better than any other of God's children. I know that God is judge and He alone will decided individually the status of all His children on judgment day.
For the simple reason that Scripture never says we can ONLY use scripture.
“Greek PLatonism ruined Christianity” is nonsense and has been totally rejected by scholars over the last 50 years.
The very reason why the Church argued over the exact details of the human and divine natures in Jesus Christ for so long is
that
all
the
rejected
solutions were not faithful to the Semitic/Jewish/original Jesus data from the Scriptures.
If they had been willing to let themselves be taken over by Greek Philosophy they would have REJECTED the Trinity. Arius was Greek, Greek, Greek, Greek, Greek — the demigod/demihuman Jesus of Arius illustrates Greek simplistic philosophy. The struggle for Trinitarianism represents a dogged determination to be faithful to the Biblical data about Jesus. It would have been so much easier and so much more amenable to the surrounding Greek philosophy to settle for a half-God Jesus, half-man Jesus.
The doctrine of the Trinity DEFIES Greek philosophy, precisely the opposite of capitulatig to Greek philosophy.
Jesus himself speaks to the Father as another Person and makes clear his own equality with the Father. He then explicitly speaks about the Father (and himself) sending the Spirit who will do X and Y, in other words, another Person.
Anti-trinitarianism gets recycled every two or three centuries by some new movement that tries to reinvent the wheel.
Tired old discredited arguments.
Waste of time.
Theodosius called a council at Constantinople in 381, and this council decided that the Holy Ghost proceeded from the Father. Theodosius, the younger, assembled another council at Ephesus to ascertain who the Virgin Mary really was, and it was solemnly decided in the year 431 that she was the Mother of God.
In 451 it was decided by a council held at Chalcedon, called together by the Emperor Marcian, that Christ had two natures -- the human and divine. In 680, in another general council, held at Constantinople, convened by order of Pognatius, it was also decided that Christ had two wills, and in the year 1274 it was decided at the Council of Lyons, that the Holy Ghost proceeded not only from the Father, but from the Son as well.
Had it not been for these councils, we might have been without a Trinity even unto this day. When we take into consideration the fact that a belief in the Trinity is absolutely essential to salvation, how unfortunate it was for the world that this doctrine was not established until the year 1274. Think of the millions that dropped into hell while these questions were being discussed.
- Robert G. Ingersoll
To me this series is almost incomprehensible. I GUESS it's based on a misreading (IMHO) of what Paul says about "philosophies." What he is referring to is the bizarre "systems" of the Gnostics, who have since the beginning tried to co-opt Christianity and replace it with bad news.
It intrigues me that Plotinus, who was NOT a Christian, wrote a "tractate [essay] "Against the Gnostics", which I have read, though it was decades ago, and argued rightly that they were wrong because they thought the material world to be evil BECAUSE it was material. But a good "god" (he wouldn't use that term) wouldn't make an evil world. In some respects a good philosopher can be closer to the truth than a heretic.
Others may argue, and argue well, about the role the inspired community, the Church, plays in the interpretation of Scripture. I want to plead briefly for philosophy.
I think men philosophize, well or poorly. We wonder, we are made to wonder and to try to explain what a "thing" is, what we mean by "cause." We ask, "What do you mean by that?" We sort things out.
Informed by Scripture, for example by Thomas's calling IHS, "My Lord and my God," and by the First Commandment, we wonder how Jesus can be God and yet there is One God, whether and how we can say, "God suffered and died," How we can talk about IHS' being tempted.
And one reason we do this is so that we can evangelize. If someone accuses us of, as I have heard us accused, of polytheism, shall we just say, "Shut up and believe?"
Also, I think the article is, if not downright dishonest, at least tendentious. To quote the judgments of the highly anti-Christian Gibbon as though they were authoritative is, at best, questionable. He thought Christianity contributed greatly to the fall of Rome. And using the word "substance" without explanation will be at best confusing to readers who have no acquaintance with the term's philosophical use.
These days when people say "substance," they usually mean something like "material" or even "stuff." This understanding makes the ancients look like they were talking about some weird "ectoplasm" or "aether," when that is not what they meant at all.
And this shows that basic problem which is, as I said, that man MUST philosophize, and therefore he will do so well or poorly. These days we tend to do so poorly. We confuse what a thing IS with what it is MADE OF or even, sometimes, what it LOOK LIKE.
For example, a critical part of the pro-abortion argument was "It's just a clump of cells." The answer is, "It is MADE OF a clump of cells and it LOOKS like a little ball of cells, but it IS a human at a particular stage of physical development." That's a philosophical distinction which implies that the "What-it-IS," (or, for some, the "SUBSTANCE") is different from the appearance or the material.
I would venture that the vast majority of modern men are unwitting victims of lousy philosophy. And part of how this came to be is precisely that they rejected the philosophical aspects of Christian thought, mistakenly thinking that they could rely on Scripture alone while they used philosophical arguments in an attempt to explain that belief.
Baconian empiricism and Cartesian skepticism have infiltrated the modern mind so greatly that a very great many of those who profess Sola Scriptura in fact betray a kind of sloppy modernism in their thought.
And one outcome of this is precisely the rejection of Christian moral principles as a key element of political discourse. This sort of Christian renounces reason and uses it badly, so the non-Christian says, "You're just trying to impose your cultic values on us." And, to be consistent, the Christian has to say, "That's right, but my cult is the true one. I can't explain it; I won't explain it; you just have to believe or go to hell -- and take society with you."
So, I think the direction of this series of articles is not only wrong but anti-evangelical and anti-human, because God made us, among other things, to reason.
Did you notice the article doesn't cite a single primary source in support of its arguments (like, for example, Plato) and relies almost exclusively on fringe 100 year old secondary sources. Pretty laughable really.
And yet the UCG teaching on death follows that of the greek philosophers such as Epicureus, Lucretius, etc. With your superior knowledge of ancient philosophy I’m sure you realized you were following the pagans too ....
“it’s a fact that there are many different translations from the original...base you faith on a book and you are idol worshiping once again.”
Again, you like to throw assertions around without any basis for them. You also, apparently, like to redefine in mid-argument. Before you asserted that there were “mistranslations in the Bible.” That statement is false on its face. The Bible, Old Testament, was written in Hebrew (and some Aramaic in the later books, e.g. parts of Daniel), and the New in Greek. That is the Bible. There are no “mistranslations” in it.
The Bible has been translated - translated! - many, many times into many languages. That is why, for example, in America they are called “versions” (e.g. the King James Version). Versions are just that, some are better and more accurate than others. Have there been purposeful mistranslations? Yes. Certain of the cults especially like to do this, and also others with agendas that are pretty obvious. Have there been translations of dubious quality? Yes. There are plenty of these, always appealing to new fads, trends, and itching ears (there is money to be made after all ... sadly). Have there been non-translations sold as the “Bible?” Yes. They are called paraphrases. They are terrible, every one of them.
That said, there are a few generally reliable versions: KJV, NKJV, NASB, NIV (1984, NOT 2011, which is plainly agenda driven), ESV. And there are others whose varying reliability makes them less desirable choices.
Given all that, there is a reason that sound theological education for preachers, at least since the time of the Reformation, has included extensive training in the Biblical languages. But we in the United States live in the do-it-yourself age, an age in which too often money is the driving force. Most preachers today have little to no formal education in the Biblical languages and, sadly, many in other, older denominations are so shot through with theological liberalism/skepticism because they are trained in higher criticism (look up this term, if you do not know it already) before they are able even to evaluate what is being shoved down their throat (it’s akin to the social engineering being done in our schools today in place of real education). So, today, we have a situation where many preachers (but not all), especially of the so-called mainline Protestant variety and of the Catholic variety are so thoroughly inculcated with theological liberalism, which drove many people away from the church, that they have created a demand for what people know is missing in the church today. Unfortunately, this vacuum has too often been filled with preachers who, as said above, have little to no knowledge of the Biblical languages or history.
That, in summary, is the problem the Christian church faces today. The church needs faithful, well-trained preachers (as Paul indicates in 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus) to carry out the Lord’s command. (Matthew 28:18ff. and Mark 16:15ff.) Why people sit in church and contribute to support either theological liberalism or ignorant Bible ranting I don’t fully understand. It is a deplorable situation. But dropping out entirely or founding some new denomination or non-denomination is the least helpful thing for anyone to do.
Finally, you claim that basing one’s faith on a book is “idol worshiping.” Well, by that definition (which I do not accept) you leave two possibilities only: your “idol worshiping” or naval gazing (whether yours or someone else’s).
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