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Richard Hooker listed as his sources Scripture, Tradition, and Reason -- what in Anglicanism has come to be known as the "three-legged stool." I balance on these three as well. I look critically at each book, poem or letter of Scripture for what the writer meant and what his audience would...

I wonder if we are talking past each other, my friend. I totally agree that the triune formulation for the baptismal rite was a second century modification, not in vogue in the first century. Your quoted sources all support this (except for #3, which is irrelevant to our issue, and #5, which...

(Sigh!) It seems that I am butting heads with both sides of this debate -- but sometimes it is because I focus on the relevance of their arguments, challenging only the path someone has taken to reach a conclusion even though I end up at the same waypoint (although we may then go on to diverge...

As noted in Post #25 on this thread, I too think it is dubious that Matthew 28:19 accurately quoted the actual words of Christ. And I say that even though I think the quote was in Matthew's original. I just think Matthew (or whoever the writer was) got the quote wrong.

If your point is that a doctrine inconsistent with Scripture must be false, I tend to agree. (That's not how I read your earlier comment "nowhere to be found in Scripture and, therefore, in violation of Mark 7:13.") But unlike you, I think Scripture is equivocal on the issue -- which is why I...

I reject your proposition that if something is not found in Scripture it is therefore a false doctrine. (That proposition itself, by the way, is not found in Scripture, certainly not in Mark 7:13.)

I agree. That much is inherent in "trinity." But my point about the notes in a chord was that multiple pieces of music still yield music in combination -- and the multiple need not be three. Still, you have accurately noted (no pun intended) that the number three historically does have a...

What do you make of 1 Thessalonians 5:23?

We could go with four rather than three, and still express the concept. Would adding a high C to the C-E-G chord help?

If this is true (spoiler alert: it isn't), then God failed miserably. The imagery is subject to different interpretations, as you can see from the very first responsive post on this thread (you point to a Greek antichrist, Randy to a Roman). You say "God gave so much information" because "He...

I am not optimistic that droves of Christians will be brought back to Nicaea and Chalcedon, if only because the rubric "three persons in one God" and similar formulations are now so entrenched in Trinitarian thinking. You might get a kick out of John Behr's opening paragraph in his wonderful...

My answer is NO, but it's actually two NOs. NO, I do not agree that a middle ground between extremes, simply by virtue of being in the middle, is therefore consequently true, or even more likely to be true than either of the extremes. Such "reasoning" (if you can call it that) has nothing to...

I know. I was just being cute. (Or trying to be.) Certainly no offense taken.

Well, Wrangler, I guess that makes me uneducated and/or illiterate. All that wasted time and money on two Ivy League degrees . . . Ouch!

The "bugaboo" is the concern that that one person might need to sacrifice his singularity if viewed simultaneously as both a human person and a divine one. I am not claiming that Jesus Christ is two "persons" (although I am claiming that he has two "natures"). I am saying that we don't need...

Ah, the multiple person bugaboo! Putting the irony aside (God can be three persons, but the Son cannot be two!), we may be quibbling over nothing more than the definition of personhood here. If not -- if our issue really boils down to choosing between prosopic union and hypostatic union as our...

Eutyches lives!

I just did; thanks for sharing. And what I see is completely out of the main stream, if you ask me. We have here yet another example of what I call "casualty of the internet." This twist of orthodoxy is completely dependent on the internet to attract adherents. Forty years ago when books...

I say they are correct. Jesus -- a being who had a dual nature, one human and the other divine -- became a human person upon incarnation, and whatever deity he retained upon "emptying himself" (as Paul describes it in Philippians) did not detract from his status as a human being. And all human...

You are right that Scripture does not expressly declare it, at least not in so many words. It has long been my thesis that the Trinity is actually a philosophical development within the early church. I happen to buy into it. It's hard for me to wrap my head around how the Son "shares even as...