”It is a simple and undeniable historical fact that several major doctrines that now seem central to the Christian faith - such as the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of the deity of Christ - were not present in a full and well-defined, generally accepted form until the fourth or fifth centuries. If they are essential today - as all of the orthodox creeds and confessions assert - it must be because they are true. If they are true, then they must always have been true; they cannot have become true in the fourth and fifth centuries. But if they are both true and essential, how can it be that the early church took centuries to formulate them?”
(Harold O.J. Brown, Heresies: Heresy And Orthodoxy In The History Of The Church, p. 20)
Bold is mine.
The reasoning is circular.
The history is verifiable. It is well-preserved in Church history.
It’s the circular reasoning, not the Church history, that I have an issue with.
Dr. Brown begins with the premise that what was decided at Nicaea and Chalcedon is both essential and true. What if it isn’t? What if the premise is false? Without it, what do we have? Jewish unitary monotheism. (And other non-trinitarian faith traditions.)
We have @theefaith’s Catholic theologians / the Catholic Church to thank for formulating what is asserted to be the “true and essential” doctrines of the Trinity and the deity of Christ, for making what was previously unknown and untaught as Christian doctrine, known and taught as Christian doctrine.
Jesus himself is a Jewish monotheist, not a trinitarian. The earliest Christians were Jewish monotheists, not trinitarians, who believed that a fellow Jewish man - one of their contemporaries - is the Messiah promised, raised up and sent into the world by his and their God (the Father alone.)
The early Church began within Judaism, as a sect of Judaism. The early Church soon separated from Judaism, and the Church gradually formulated doctrines which were not formulated by, were not known to it, prior to the separation from Judaism.
The composition of the Church gradually changed from nearly exclusively Jewish membership to nearly exclusively Gentile membership after the early Church took the gospel to the Gentiles.
The doctrine of God was modified by Gentile theologians as they sought to explain and honor the God of Israel. The Jewish unitary monotheism of Jesus and the earliest Christians - of Judaism - was gradually replaced with the trinitarian monotheism of the Catholic Church (and most Protestant denominations.)
My response to Dr. Brown’s premise is that it’s false. I don’t buy in to his circular reasoning. It’s short-circuited by Judaism, by the New Testament Church, and by Church history.
