Unitarianism vs Trinitarianism

[Wrangler]

A place where someone asked the question, "What must I do to be saved? " and got an answer.

True but irrelevant to the point that Jesus is not God.

I admit that there is not total consistency in the Bible that Bible idolators hold. How do you reconcile Acts 16:30-31, believing only in the lord Jesus, with Romans 10:9 that adds believing that God - in his unitarian nature - raised our lord from the dead?

Requirements to be saved = 1 @ Acts 16:30-31
Requirements to be saved = 2 @ Romans 10:9​

 

[RLT63]

True but irrelevant to the point that Jesus is not God.

I admit that there is not total consistency in the Bible that Bible idolators hold. How do you reconcile Acts 16:30-31, believing only in the lord Jesus, with Romans 10:9 that adds believing that God - in his unitarian nature - raised our lord from the dead?

Requirements to be saved = 1 @ Acts 16:30-31
Requirements to be saved = 2 @ Romans 10:9​

I should point out that in Acts they did get baptized too for all the people that want to weigh in on that argument. The thief on the cross was also saved and didn't know anything about Jesus being raised from the dead. Anytime you say faith in Jesus and XYZ saves you, you are missing the message of the Bible. I don't think Jesus intended to make it difficult to accept him as Savior. God did raise Jesus from the dead. Trinitarians believe that too so I don't agree with your argument

 

[Wrangler]

Anytime you say faith in Jesus and XYZ saves you, you are missing the message of the Bible.

Please stop trying to make this personal. It is not me who says this but Romans 10:9.

 

[Pearl]

John 3:3 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again."

 

[RLT63]

No. Unitarians do not say this. Scripture explicitly says this.

List of Pro-Trinity/Deity of Christ Bible Passages - Berean Patriot

 

[Matthias]

List of Pro-Trinity/Deity of Christ Bible Passages - Berean Patriot

Trinitarians didn’t write any of them. Does that help or harm the trinitarian cause?

 

[Matthias]

“[The Early Apologists] did not yet think in terms of a co-equality between Father and Son.”

(J.L. Neve, A History of Christian Thought, Vol. 1, p. 107)

Yet you list them as trinitarians @RLT63.

What kind of Trinity is it that has persons who aren’t co-equal? What kind of trinitarian is it that believes the persons of the Trinity aren’t co-equal?

P.S.

Writing specifically about Tertullian, Dr. Neve (a Lutheran scholar) points out (p. 108) that “The Father is the whole substance, while the Son is only a derivation who participates in the divine substance in a lesser degree than the Father.” He goes on to say “And again, as with the Greek Apologists, the hypostatizing of the Son as the Logos did not take place until the time of the creation.”

That’s not what you believe, nor is it what trinitarianism teaches.

 

[RLT63]

Trinitarians didn’t write any of them. Does that help or harm the trinitarian cause?

So there was no bias.

 

[Matthias]

So there was no bias.

Scripture written by those of one theology were developed by those who didn’t hold that theology in the early centuries of Christianity, producing a new and different theology. The phases of that development are seen in the writings of the early Church Fathers. People like Tertullian are transition figures.

 

[Matthias]

“Abandoning the view of the Apologists and of Tertullian who conceived the Logos to be a person only from the time of creation, Origen declared the Logos to have been a person from all eternity.”

(J.L. Never, A History of Christian Thought, Vol. 1, p. 108)

What kind of trinitarian is it who believes the persons of the Trinity aren’t co-equal and aren’t co-eternal @RLT63?

 

[RLT63]

“Abandoning the view of the Apologists and of Tertullian who conceived the Logos to be a person only from the time of creation, Origen declared the Logos to have been a person from all eternity.”

(J.L. Never, A History of Christian Thought, Vol. 1, p. 108)

What kind of trinitarian is it who believes the persons of the Trinity aren’t co-equal and aren’t co-eternal @RLT63?

A dead one

 

[Matthias]

A dead one

They weren’t trinitarians.

 

[RLT63]

They weren’t trinitarians.

It is apparent that the church fathers evidenced theological growth and development as forerunners to the eventual systemization of the doctrine of the Trinity. While this progression does not necessarily follow a systematically consistent pattern, it nevertheless shows that the subject of the internal relationships amongst the Godhead was addressed with increasing intentionality. The fact that these men, among others, laid a foundation from which the council gathered at Nicaea could then be built upon is clearly evident. The forbearers’ rich tradition of theological meditation in the Word is clearly evident, highlighting the fact that theology should be continually moving us toward a deeper understanding of the great mysteries of truths revealed therein. Regardless of Origen or Nicaea’s prominence in this particular arena, it will always serve the church well to be reminded of our historical heritage through continual and consistent reflection.
Tracing the Thread of Trinitarian Thought from Ignatius to Origen | Maranatha Baptist Seminary

 

[RLT63]

It is apparent that the church fathers evidenced theological growth and development as forerunners to the eventual systemization of the doctrine of the Trinity. While this progression does not necessarily follow a systematically consistent pattern, it nevertheless shows that the subject of the internal relationships amongst the Godhead was addressed with increasing intentionality. The fact that these men, among others, laid a foundation from which the council gathered at Nicaea could then be built upon is clearly evident. The forbearers’ rich tradition of theological meditation in the Word is clearly evident, highlighting the fact that theology should be continually moving us toward a deeper understanding of the great mysteries of truths revealed therein. Regardless of Origen or Nicaea’s prominence in this particular arena, it will always serve the church well to be reminded of our historical heritage through continual and consistent reflection.
Tracing the Thread of Trinitarian Thought from Ignatius to Origen | Maranatha Baptist Seminary

It seems that in Numenius it is the contemplation of the first intellect by the second that gives rise to the forms, or Platonic ideas; Origen, as a Christian, holds that the contemplation is mutual, since “no-one knows the Son but the Father and no-one knows the Father but the Son” (Matthew 11.27). Thus he maintains, on the one hand, that the Son, as truth (John 14.6), knows all that is in the mind of the Father; the infamous proviso that the Son does not see the Father signifies only that within the Godhead vision is not mediated by our physical organs (Princ. 1.1.8). On the other hand, when we read that the Son is the wisdom and power of the Father (1 Corinthians 1.24) and that the world was created through him (Hebrews 1.2), we are to understand that he is that divine helpmate who declares at Proverbs 8.22 that the Lord created her in the beginning of his ways, and at Wisdom 7.26 that she is the mirror of his unspotted majesty. The verb “created” in this text (which Origen prefers to the alternative reading “possessed”) does not imply that the Son has a temporal beginning, but that, having no other substrate than the Father’s will, he expresses that will more perfectly than the things that are “made” from matter. It is inconceivable that the Father could ever have lacked wisdom, and equally inconceivable to Origen that this wisdom could ever have taken a different form from the one that it now possesses as the second person or hypostasis of the Trinity (Princ. 1.2.2). He is the first theologian to state unequivocally that the “three hypostases” which constitute the Trinity are eternal not only in nature, but in their hypostatic character; there was never a time when wisdom was the latent thought of the Father and had not yet come forth as speech.

Though Origen rejects it, this was in fact the prevailing thesis of most Christian writing in the second century when it undertook to explain the Fourth Evangelist’s assertion that the one who became incarnate was the Logos who had been with the Father as theos (god) if not ho theos (God) from the beginning (John 1.1). Since it was this speech or word that created the world, it was argued, there would have been no reason for it to exist before the creation as a distinct hypostasis. If he existed at all, it was as the logos endiathetos, the word within, which had not yet emerged from the mind as logos prophorikos, or verbal utterance. In this latent phase he could be identified (as Philo had already argued) with the paradigm, or world of forms, which supplies the Platonic demiurge with his pattern for the creation. Clement of Alexandria accepts this equation, albeit perhaps without denying the hypostatic eternity of the Logos (Edwards 2000). Origen, however, resists the interpretation of Logos as “speech” because there are some who take this to imply that the second person is merely a function or epiphenomenon of the first (CommJohn 1.24.151; Orbe 1991). Logos, in his view, is one of the numerous designations (epinoiai) which are conferred on the second person to define his relation, not to the Father (as “Son” and “Wisdom” do) but to his creatures (CommJohn 2.9.66 etc.): he is Logos as the paradigm and parent of all the logikai, or rational beings, who exercise reason only by participation in him. He cannot be identified with the world of forms, or Platonic ideas, because to Origen these ideas are imaginary entities which the Greeks absurdly suppose to be independent of the Creator (Princ. 2.3.6). It appears then that he endorsed the older and more literal reading of the Timaeus, according to which the Demiurge, the forms and matter are three autonomous principles of being. Before him Philo, Alcinous, and Clement of Alexandria had construed the forms as thoughts in the mind of the Demiurge, while Alexander of Aphrodisias held that they gave content to God’s eternal contemplation of himself (Armstrong 1960). Origen himself opines that all genera, all species and even the archetypes of all particular things are eternally present in the mind of God (Princ. 1.4.5), but he holds this as a Christian antidote to difficulties which arise from the temporality of the world.
Origen (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

 

[Matthias]

It’s been well said that the road from Jerusalem to Nicaea wasn’t a straight one.

Trinity minus co-equal and co-eternal persons is no Trinity at all. It’s non-trinitarian.

Trinity is read into scripture, not out of it. The question is whether it is valid or not.

 

[Matthias]

Tertullian (and other early apologists) is much closer to Arius than he is to Athanasius; closer to Arius and to Athanasius than he is to Jewish monotheism.

I’m reading Against Marcion now. Tertuallian explicitly writes against consubstantiality in this work.

For Tertullian, the Father is the Supreme God; the other persons being inferior.

Nicaea triumphs over Tertullian. He would call them heretics; they do call him a heretic.

 

[Matthias]

Origen is the more important figure to trinitarianism; more important than Tertullian (and the Greek Apologists). Later theologians will borrow from and build on both of them; retaining what is “good” and rejecting what is “not good”. But like Tertullian, Origen too has been deemed a heretic.

 

[Wrangler]

The forbearers’ rich tradition of theological meditation in the Word is clearly evident, highlighting the fact that theology should be continually moving us toward a deeper understanding of the great mysteries of truths revealed therein

A well written statement of idolatry - not just of the trinity but of the book from which it does not come from.

I truly cannot fathom this obsession with mystery. The goal is having a relationship with our Creator and being guided at all points by his divine Will for us.

And by the way, the trinity is not a mystery to be understood, it is contradictory nonsense to be identified as such. No benefit to achieving a deeper understanding of square circles or the more you're in, the more you're out.

 

[RLT63]

A well written statement of idolatry - not just of the trinity but of the book from which it does not come from.

I truly cannot fathom this obsession with mystery. The goal is having a relationship with our Creator and being guided at all points by his divine Will for us.

And by the way, the trinity is not a mystery to be understood, it is contradictory nonsense to be identified as such. No benefit to achieving a deeper understanding of square circles or the more you're in, the more you're out.

John 6:44-46

 

[Wrangler]

John 6:44-46

It is funny how you continue to think copy-and-pasting is a substitute for discussion.

To wit, Focus on What You Can Control, Leave What You Can't - Becoming Who You Are