“… it’s own conception of the Trinity was looked upon by the Fathers themselves as a combination of Jewish monotheism and pagan polytheism, except that to them this combination was a good combination; in fact, it was to them an ideal combination of what is best in Jewish monotheism and of what is best in pagan polytheism, and consequently they gloried in it and pointed to it as evidence of the truth of their belief. We have on this the testimony of Gregory of Nyssa - one of the great figures in the history of the philosophic formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity - and his words are repeated by John of Damascus - the last of the Church Fathers.
The Christian conception of God, argues Gregory of Nyssa, is neither the polytheism of the Greeks nor the monotheism of the Jews and consequently it must be true, for ’the truth passes in the mean between these two conceptions, destroying each heresy, and yet, accepting what is useful to it from each. The Jewish dogma is destroyed by the acceptance of the Word and by the belief in the Spirit, while the polytheistic error of the Greek school is made to vanish by the unity of the nature abrogating this imagination of plurality.’”
(Henry Austryn Wolfson,
The Philosophy of the Church Fathers, Vol. I, pp. 362-363, Second Edition, Revised)
@RedFan do you agree with Gregory of Nyssa?
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The conception, the heresy of, polytheism, indeed.
The conception, the heresy of, Jewish monotheism, wowzer!
Trinitarianism isn’t the original Christian conception of God.
Jewish monotheism is the original Christian conception of God.
