toldailytopic: Is belief in the trinity necessary for salvation?
- Thread starter Nathon Detroit
- Start date
Nang
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Drake Shelton
New member
You are just ignoring what I just said. By essence or substance do you mean numeric or generic.
So lets flesh it out. If the substance is numeric then there could only be one person because substance= subject. One subject, one person. That is the meaning of numeric substance.
This creed was not written by Athanasius was it?
Drake Shelton
New member
The thing that you and most Western Christians do not understand is the Father's Monarchy/personal property.
What led me back to the original explanation of the Trinity was reading the Gordon Clark-Van Til Controversy. What shocks me is that Clark never connected the dots that his generic unity espoused in his book on the Trinity was a radical departure from Western Theology proper and Filioque. Vincent Cheung is a real sharp guy and he never saw this either. Since I have introduced this issue to Scripturalists every one of them have come around to the original Greek view. For crying out loud, Augustine even titled his 9th Chapter of De Trinitate, "All are Sometimes Understood in One Person". Van Til was just saying what Augustine said.
Augustine taught a view of God that was different from the original Nicene Creed and though Augustine was correct in his refutation of Pelagius, the West has taken that and run with both the baby and the bathwater.
What led me back to the original explanation of the Trinity was reading the Gordon Clark-Van Til Controversy. What shocks me is that Clark never connected the dots that his generic unity espoused in his book on the Trinity was a radical departure from Western Theology proper and Filioque. Vincent Cheung is a real sharp guy and he never saw this either. Since I have introduced this issue to Scripturalists every one of them have come around to the original Greek view. For crying out loud, Augustine even titled his 9th Chapter of De Trinitate, "All are Sometimes Understood in One Person". Van Til was just saying what Augustine said.
Augustine taught a view of God that was different from the original Nicene Creed and though Augustine was correct in his refutation of Pelagius, the West has taken that and run with both the baby and the bathwater.
Lon
Well-known member
Okay, I'm off of nyquil at the moment. ▲This still could have been written better, though I get it. The issues have been addressed often enough. The main point that I would underscore is this:
The triune view is the least developed. It simply takes into account scriptures we have been given and stops there believing them.
Every single other position on the matter is deductive, which means that it is necessarily 'man making sense of what he sees,' and most importantly, 'beyond what is clearly given.'
That needs a repeat: Every non-triune potion goes beyond the texts of God-given scripture without God's permission.
Consider: Jesus receives worship as God and scripture uses His name and God's interchangeably (Colossians 1 Genesis 1 ; Isaiah 9 and 53; etc.)
The Spirit of God is called God and is also involved in creation (Genesis 1:1-2).
And yet, we know there is only one God. We know that Son talks to Father, and that the Spirit is described as a person.
The triune view is simply this: We just believe all of the above because they are all scriptures from God. "How does all this work?" None of my (or your) business until/unless God makes it my business. Until such a time, let's keep our big noses out of His business (and mine as I try to stay out of it as well, that's the triune stance after all).
Lon
Well-known member
Krsto
Well-known member
Though Tertullian provided the language of trinitarianism, he himself was a modalist. To him God was not three persons, but was one person who manifest himself in 3 "prosopon", or actor's masks.
It's not arbitrary to expect to see evidence for trinitarian theology in the writings of the church fathers who wrote immediately after the death of the apostles if your premise is true that the Council of Nicaea codified what the church had always taught. You can't assert the church had always taught it if no one actually taught it until later.
Am I making too much sense for you?
The short answer is "no." But the quick answer is more complicated. Salvation, which is being with God after the end, is a matter of being friends with God, not some mechanical process where we check off certain beliefs. The trinity is a little complicated, so God isn't going to be as strict with everyone on that topic depending on what they know and where their heart is.
Drake Shelton
New member
Krsto
I never said that the one God was the three persons. I said that father is the One God and the other two persons extend from the One God's nature and are therefore consubstantial with the one God.
I never said that did I?
I never said that the one God was the three persons. I said that father is the One God and the other two persons extend from the One God's nature and are therefore consubstantial with the one God.
I never said that did I?
eameece
New member
OK then, define those.
You are leading off track. You defined humans as rational.
If you are such a rationalist, how do you end up believing such irrational things as the trinity and other dogmas? No, humans have faculties, and one among many is reason. Humans are not their faculties.
I could use that line to respond to you.
I don't think it's a matter of proof, since it's not a matter of reason. Reason/rationality is a very small part of who we are, and is not equal to "mind." You know you are unfathomable and of the same substance as the "Father" simply by looking within yourself. No need for logical steps like the A is B therefore C stuff.
Krsto
Well-known member
You referenced Tertullian as being a trinitarian. He didn't teach what you just said and neither did anyone else prior to him.
eameece
New member
Can you imagine St. Peter at the Pearly Gates, administering a test, both essay and multiple choice, and giving out grades which determine which level you go to, between hell, purgatory and the 7 heavens. With pencil sharpeners and desks for each penitent to sit at while completing the test. Rather anthropomorphic, you might say! But then, such considerations don't trouble the "true believers."
Tert was more triune than alternate views. The early church experienced the triune God even if they did not articulate later formalizations of the doctrine in response to heretical attacks on the gist of the truths. The history of dogma is not nice and neat (the Spirit led into full understanding over time with ups and downs due to our fallibility).
Krsto
Well-known member
Tert was a modalist. The early church experienced God as he really was, one, not three. If it was the Spirit that led the church into trinitarianism then it was the Spirit that led the church into Catholicism.
Gill White
New member
Hi Drake,
Are you looking at this BEFORE the First Adam sinned or are you looking at this AFTER the First Adam sinned:
I will point to you what God said: Bearing in mind this was said ''BEFORE Adam sinned''
I am saying ''BEFORE'' because I see this as important to note:
Gen 1:27 GW
(27) So God created humans in his image. In the image of God he created them. He created them male and female.
Gen 1:31 GW
(31) And God saw everything that he had made and that it was very good. There was evening, then morning-the sixth day.
I see that humanity ONLY inherited the sin nature, AFTER Adam sinned NOT BEFORE; because God saw everything that He had done and made was very good:
It was only through the first Adams disobedience that we inherited this sin nature, and humanity got worse and worse.
Rom 5:19 Clearly, through one person's disobedience humanity became sinful, and through one person's obedience humanity will receive God's approval.
Unitarians, Arians, Sabellians have a revisionist view of Church history due to selective quoting and misunderstanding. Conflicting Church Fathers are not the issue anyway. THE issue is what does Scripture teach? The triune view is the biblical, historical, orthodox view.
http://www.earlychurchtexts.com/public/tertullian_on_the_trinity.htm
Tertullian on the Trinity.... (the oneness of God/monotheism is the first foundational truth of the trinity view; it is not exclusive to Unitarian views).
Drake Shelton
New member
It is not simply being conscious. Animals are conscious. Thinking is the mental activity of making judgments according to logical principles.
You have misrepresented what I have said here more than once so you will have to give me a definition of what you mean by "trinity" and then let me examine it to see if that is my definition. Then you can show why its irrational instead of simply asserting your opinion arbitrarily.
I never contradicted that.
Are you referring to reason in the abstract or in the concrete? If the former I agree, if the latter I deny.
Are you referring to humans in the abstract as in human nature, or are you referring to a concreteted particular instance of a human?
Drake Shelton
New member
Paul did. Jesus did. The Old testament did.
Drake Shelton
New member
Gill White
Drake Shelton
New member
When have I said that God is three? Second, the original Nicene Creed is not Roman Catholic, it is Greek Orthodox to put things into a post Filioque context.