Why I Am a Trinitarian: Part One

[RedFan]

I didn’t say that. I said I wonder how.

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

 

[RedFan]

“… 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?

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 commend it logically.

NO, I do not agree with Wolfson that we must attribute such an illogical position to Gregory. Gregory locates his truth in the "mean" between monotheism and polytheism but he must be read a bit more broadly before we can accuse him of holding that there IS a "mean" between monotheism and polytheism -- which facially at least is an "either-or" dichotomy. Gregory certainly bought into the notion that the First and Second Persons of the Trinity were distinct existences (hypostases) with one substance or essence (homoousios), and while the distinct hypostases may be a nod to the Hellenist and the single ousia may be a nod to the Jew, he is simply borrowing from both rather than attempting a middle ground -- in an effort to use each against the other. That is a far cry from what Wolfson calls adopting "an ideal combination of what is best in Jewish monotheism and of what is best in pagan polytheism," and I am far from agreeing with Wolfson that Gregory "gloried in it and pointed to it as evidence of the truth of [his] belief."

 

[Mr E]

Wonderful topic. Sorry I'm so late to the dance, but as long as the band is still playing I'll try to find a beat.

To those who are still reading, here is my thesis: Trinitarianism is the outgrowth of the early Church’s effort to understand and explain its own experience of the risen Christ in philosophical terms.

And it grew and grew until the outgrowth outgrew logic and defensibility (in my opinion) - I'm happy to see someone approach it from this perspective that might attempt to reclaim and separate some sense from so much nonsense that many still embrace without any examination. Bravo!

The march of Christianity outward from Palestine into the Greek world inevitably resulted in a cultural and philosophical disconnect, as tales told and texts written from a Jewish/messianic perspective were being interpreted by men imbued in a Greek philosophical tradition. Those few scattered passages in the emerging New Testament canon that could arguably be deemed binitarian or (far less frequently) trinitarian yielded no coherent picture of the Son’s participation in the Godhead, and two centuries of patristic thinking were occupied by the effort to weave that idea into a doctrine that was consistent with Scripture. It was thus natural that Greek philosophy, which had long sought to locate an ontological bridge between the One and the Many, between the realm of soul/spirit and the material world, would provide the looms for this tapestry. Particularly in Alexandria, Christianity was discovering its affinity with middle Platonism and using it as a lens through which to view Christian concepts, furnishing the early church fathers with a template for reworking Jewish monotheism into a trinitarianism that could successfully resist devolving into tritheism.

-This march outward is a key element. Start just a few degrees off course and continue marching outward for centuries and now millennia and one will find themselves far from the mark on the map they thought they were marching toward. Even in your preamble you note the possibility of misinterpretation and misunderstanding of original meaning, -a kind of perhaps unintentional bias coloring early perspectives that influence and often diminish the message or divert from a proper understanding of it. If "Greek philosophical influences" could so quickly spoil the Trinitarian soup within the first two or three centuries, would you expect our understanding to have improved over time as more and more influences are added to the pot?

 

[Matthias]

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 commend it logically.

NO, I do not agree with Wolfson that we must attribute such an illogical position to Gregory. Gregory locates his truth in the "mean" between monotheism and polytheism but he must be read a bit more broadly before we can accuse him of holding that there IS a "mean" between monotheism and polytheism -- which facially at least is an "either-or" dichotomy. Gregory certainly bought into the notion that the First and Second Persons of the Trinity were distinct existences (hypostases) with one substance or essence (homoousios), and while the distinct hypostases may be a nod to the Hellenist and the single ousia may be a nod to the Jew, he is simply borrowing from both rather than attempting a middle ground -- in an effort to use each against the other. That is a far cry from what Wolfson calls adopting "an ideal combination of what is best in Jewish monotheism and of what is best in pagan polytheism," and I am far from agreeing with Wolfson that Gregory "gloried in it and pointed to it as evidence of the truth of [his] belief."

Thanks. Wolfson is quoting Gregory of Nyssa from Oratio Catechetica 3 (PG 45, 17 D-20 A).

Wolfson goes on to quote John of Damascus,

“As restated by John of Damascus, this ideal combination in Christianity of what is best in Judaism and paganism reads as follows: ‘On the one hand, of the Jewish idea we have the unity of God’s nature, and on the other, of the Greek, we have the distinction of hypostases, and that only.’”

(Ibid., citing De Fide Orth., I, 7 (PG 94, 808 A))

As trinitarianism itself asserts that it is monotheism, I refer to it as a form of monotheism, even trinitarian monotheism. Trinitarianism certainly isn’t Jewish monotheism, and I personally see more affinity of it with polytheism than I do with monotheism.

 

[Wrangler]

My response was to abandon trinitarianism, not Christianity.

I suspect untold billions over the Millenia did not come to Christ because of the trinitarianism.

In a thread a while back, I had a poll of what is more important, bring people to Christ OR get people to accept the trinity. It was a bust. Trinitarians cling to their idol over the Great Commission of bring people to Christ.

 

[Matthias]

I suspect untold billions over the Millenia did not come to Christ because of the trinitarianism.

It’s unquestionably been a stumbling block but it’s not the stumbling block scripture is referring to.

It’s sometimes difficult, but not impossible, to get trinitarians to acknowledge that. I’ve noted a definite movement on Internet forums over the last 25 years: away from insisting that “believing in the Trinity is a salvation issue” to insisting that “Jesus is God is a salvation issue.”

Trinitarianism isn’t dead yet but it’s dying. That’s why Dr. Brown wrote Heresies. He was attempting to reverse the trend and bring straying Christians back to Nicaea and Chalcedon.

 

[RedFan]

Trinitarianism isn’t dead yet but it’s dying. That’s why Dr. Brown wrote Heresies. He was attempting to reverse the trend and bring straying Christians back to Nicaea and Chalcedon.

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 little article "One God Father Almighty," Modern Theology 34:3 (July 2018):

"For example, my eldest son reported to me an intriguing, and arresting, conversation he had with his religion instructor at a Jesuit High School. The instructor came in one day and told the class: “Today we are going to explore why we say that the one God is a Trinity.” My son immediately put his hand up and said, “I don’t, sir.” Perplexed, the instructor asked, “What do you mean?” To which he replied (so he says), “Well, I don’t know about you, sir, but I follow the Nicene Creed, which says: I believe in one God the Father.” I never found out how the discussion went after that (one can only guess). We have become so used to using the word “God” in all sorts of ways – God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit, the one God who is three; the triune God, and so on – that the simple observation that the Creed does not speak like that, let alone the Scriptures, pulls us up short."

 

[Matthias]

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 little article "One God Father Almighty," Modern Theology 34:3 (July 2018):

"For example, my eldest son reported to me an intriguing, and arresting, conversation he had with his religion instructor at a Jesuit High School. The instructor came in one day and told the class: “Today we are going to explore why we say that the one God is a Trinity.” My son immediately put his hand up and said, “I don’t, sir.” Perplexed, the instructor asked, “What do you mean?” To which he replied (so he says), “Well, I don’t know about you, sir, but I follow the Nicene Creed, which says: I believe in one God the Father.” I never found out how the discussion went after that (one can only guess). We have become so used to using the word “God” in all sorts of ways – God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit, the one God who is three; the triune God, and so on – that the simple observation that the Creed does not speak like that, let alone the Scriptures, pulls us up short."

I have a similar story about my daughter. The public schools in Atlanta leave a great deal to be desired and when it came time for my daughter to enter the 8th Grade, and on the advice of several friends who were teachers in the Atlanta / Fulton County public school system, we decided that we needed to enroll her in a private school. The best one we could find that we were able to afford had a sterling record, but there was a catch - it was a Christian school which required students and at least one parent to sign s statement of belief. The statement of faith didn’t say a word about the Trinity but I didn’t feel I could sign it in good conscience. I knew the school believed in and taught the doctrine of the Trinity. My wife and daughter both felt it was vague enough that they could sign it with a clear conscience. The statement of faith was simple: “I believe in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”

We enrolled our daughter in the school and it wasn’t very long before we received a note from her Religion teacher. He was concerned from something that she had written that perhaps she didn’t believe in the Trinity. We were asked by the teacher to review what my daughter had written, discuss it with her and then reply to him in writing. We did as the teacher requested. Our note to the teacher was brief: “We have reviewed what our daughter wrote in class and discussed it with her. We’re satisfied and certain that she believes in ‘the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.’”

My daughter graduated from the school five years later as the Class Salutatorian and won most of the academic awards handed out to the Senior class, which included the award for top student in Religion. My daughter has never believed in the Trinity; she continues to believe in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.