Interpretation the Trinity is polytheistic

[mikewhitney]

Three strikes. You're out.
Jesus kept on speaking of himself as the Son of God. He was about to be stoned for saying this. The Father-Son relationship is obvious in the Godhead. I'm not sure where you find controversy here.

The three as fully God of course is a bit confusing. This is what made the discussion important. You are just bringing up an element of the discussion, not a continuing point of confusion. We only know what God is like based on His revelation of Himself. God is what He is. We are not the ones to define His essence. For there to be a contradiction, you would have to know the whole metaphysical realm of God. I'm not sure how you will attain that knowledge --- or even attain any knowledge of God's realm apart from revelation through scripture.

This was not a political compromise. The meeting was called by Constantine but we have no indication that he forced the choice. Arianism faded away awhile after that because it did not sufficiently match the scriptural concepts. Additionally, we have had 1700 years to reconsider the results -- and we still find the Trinitarian concept as valid. You have to have some miraculous knowledge to counter what is known about the Trinity. If there is a better conception of the Godhead than has been presented so far, I could envision people accepting that.

Arianism was not just of the Son, as subordinate to the Father. Arianism was apparently about Christ Jesus being a creature of the Father rather than the Son existing eternally with the Father. The advice that I give to JWs who visit me is that they need to present a good argument against the Trinity if they think their perception of God is somehow better. It is not reasonable for them to just claim Christ is a creature rather than Deity, i.e. Arianism.

If you wish to prove something contrary to the Trinitarian understanding of the Godhead, you have to find a convincing weakness. (I know... it is a pretty heady undertaking.) This cannot be a supposed weakness built from your opinion about the metaphysical realm of God. You have to find a weakness in the scriptures or find a more acceptable conception of God when reconciling the various verses about the Father, the Son and the Spirit.

If you are trying to prove Christianity is wrong based on the Trinity doctrine, the weakness of your approach is that evaluate the Godhead within the extent of the metaphysical context that you can scrounge up. If you have no basis for verifying the accuracy of your metaphysical concepts, how can you even try to build any argument about the Trinity?

[37818]

Well which is it, was Jesus god, or was he just with god? Could he go off on his own to inhabit a human body while the Father is elsewhere?

JimL, you have a hearing problem: It is not which is it? The Word was both with the God and was God. John 1:1-2, ". . . the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . ." It is what the text says.

[siam]

JimL, you have a hearing problem: It is not which is it? The Word was both with the God and was God. John 1:1-2, ". . . the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . ." It is what the text says.

The text actually says----

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

All things = God? Is the universe God?...are the plants and animals God? Are all human beings God?

Just as Jesus was created with the "word" so too were all things......

[Tassman]

Jesus kept on speaking of himself as the Son of God. The Father-Son relationship is obvious in the Godhead. I'm not sure where you find controversy here.

Yes, it was assumed in the first century that Jesus was God. But there was no attempt to understand the deity of Jesus in relation to the deity of the father. This only became an issue in the later centuries when competing arguments arose as to how Jesus could be God in a monotheistic religion.

The three as fully God of course is a bit confusing. This is what made the discussion important.

We only know what God is like based on His revelation of Himself.

God is what He is. We are not the ones to define His essence. For there to be a contradiction, you would have to know the whole metaphysical realm of God.

One doesn't "have to know the whole metaphysical realm of God". A knowledge of formal logic is all that's required to understand logical contradictions.

This was not a political compromise. The meeting was called by Constantine but we have no indication that he forced the choice.

Arianism faded away awhile after that because it did not sufficiently match the scriptural concepts.

The Trinity Doctrine was finally adopted as a result of political pressure not persuasive scriptural argument. Even then Arian Christianity lasted well into the 7th Century as a dominant force in many areas.

Additionally, we have had 1700 years to reconsider the results -- and we still find the Trinitarian concept as valid.

[siam]

[siam]

at some point in Christian history, the third person of the Trinity was "Holy Ghost"?

What was this concept about and what happened to it?

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

at some point in Christian history, the third person of the Trinity was "Holy Ghost"?

What was this concept about and what happened to it?

homoousion deity remains the fundamental problem within Christianity, namely, the attempt to reconcile the monotheism of Judaism with its ineffable and invisible deity, and the Hellenised concepts of anthropomorphic deities.

For subordinationists who saw Jesus as a divinity but one subordinate to God the Father, the concept of a Trinity presented no problems. Various pre Nicene Church Fathers had been subordinationists of various hues and furthermore the subordinationists had a wealth of biblical texts from both the Septuagint and their own Christian writings that appeared to support their view. Arius had written that "their individual realities do not mix with each other and they possess glories of different levels" and that while each had his own function, the Father is "infinitely more splendid in his glories and is distinct from the Son because He has no beginning".

The pre-Nicene traditional formulations of Christ as logos therefore perceived him as something less than the Godhead and as there was no precedent for an incarnated logos, the Gospel depictions of Jesus could be taken as they were. However, the Nicene Creed that incorporated Jesus fully into the Godhead created a new Christological controversy. Once that formulation was put forward, which contended that Jesus had always been fully God and had existed eternally alongside God the Father and that the Son and the Father shared the same substance [homoousios] and that Jesus had always been part of the Godhead, even during his sojourn on earth, it served to raise new questions as to how Jesus could also be human at the same time, and more to the point, just exactly how human was he?

The tendency for speculation produced an entire plethora of different solutions. Hence there were various theories ranging from the Adoptionists, through to Doceticism, stopping off along the way at the views of bishop Apollinarius who postulated that Jesus had a human body but his soul and mind remained divine; and those of bishop Theodore who argued that Jesus had been conceived twice, once in a divine form, and once in a human form, the so-called Two Sons formula.

Each of these attempted resolutions only served to raise ever more issues. If Jesus was fully man when he suffered was he still man when he performed his miracles? Or was he then acting in his divine capacity? Furthermore, what sort of humanity did he take? Was he Man, prior to the Fall? Man as he is now, lost to sin? Or Man as he would be when redeemed? If he was created as a perfect man as some ECFs suggested, then how was Luke 2:52 to be explained? Luke tells us, Jesus increased in stature and wisdom, that verse implied that, at some point Jesus was a less developed human being. Yet if he was created as perfect man how was this possible?

Prior to his incarnation it was assumed that he was not a man in any way but what happened after his resurrection? Did he revert to just being God? Or did he retain some of his humanity and if so, how much?
As to the Holy Spirit, the views held among some today were not arrived at until the late 300s and even then they were not completely accepted by all ecclesiastics. The Nicene Creed had asserted "I believe in the Holy Spirit" but nothing had been said of the Spirit having any divine status or being related to either Father or Son in any way.

It was St Basil of Caesarea [c.329/330-379 CE] and his fellow Cappadocians who incorporated the Holy Spirit as part of the Godhead but with its own distinct personality [hypostasisbegottenproceededFathersubstancethe unwritten tradition of the fathersreasonhypostasisa perfect copycreatedhypostasis from God the Father was the fact that he hadbegettingcreatingbegettingeternalbegettingAside: If at this point your head is spinning just imagine all this being thrashed out in the highly inflected language of Greek with all its subtleties, shades of meaning, and nuance!]

Then again, if the Spirit proceeded from the Father only, did that not assume some pre-eminence of the Father that the Son did not share with him? If so, could they then still be alleged to be equal parts of the Godhead? In due course this problem was to lead Augustine to suggest that the Holy Spirit must process from both Father and Son, the so-called double procession, although this idea never travelled to the east.

[see Freeman, C. The Closing of the Western Mind; The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason]

[Tassman]

Then again, if the Spirit proceeded from the Father only, did that not assume some pre-eminence of the Father that the Son did not share with him? If so, could they then still be alleged to be equal parts of the Godhead? In due course this problem was to lead Augustine to suggest that the Holy Spirit must process from both Father and Son, the so-called double procession, although this idea never traveled to the east.

Father and the Son (i.e. the of the Holy spirit), whereas the Eastern Church proclaims that the Holy Spirit processes from the Father - leaving the way open to an Arian-style subordination of the Son to the Father. In short, a continuation of the same Trinitarian Christology problem that has bedeviled Christian theology ever since the Filioque clause was added to the original Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, and which has been the subject of great controversy between Eastern and Western Christianity ever since.

[siam]

[...If at this point your head is spinning just imagine all this being thrashed out in the highly inflected language of Greek with all its subtleties, shades of meaning, and nuance!]

Maybe...its not the Trinity concept that is the problem for the Greeks but the "One God" concept? Why are these people trying so desperately to smash a polytheistic concept onto a monothesitic framework? What makes it necessary?
Why was Marcion rejected?

[JimL]

[...If at this point your head is spinning just imagine all this being thrashed out in the highly inflected language of Greek with all its subtleties, shades of meaning, and nuance!]

Maybe...its not the Trinity concept that is the problem for the Greeks but the "One God" concept? Why are these people trying so desperately to smash a polytheistic concept onto a monothesitic framework? What makes it necessary?
Why was Marcion rejected?

They had to find a way to make of Jesus a god, so gods word, his creative function, became his son. The Holy Spirit on the other hand, being a 3rd person, I don't get at all. Was the holy spirit gods second begotten son, if not why not?

[Christian3]

at some point in Christian history, the third person of the Trinity was "Holy Ghost"?

What was this concept about and what happened to it?

You will find your answer here:

https://www.gotquestions.org/Holy-Spirit-Ghost.html

[37818]

They had to find a way to make of Jesus a god, so gods word, his creative function, became his son. The Holy Spirit on the other hand, being a 3rd person, I don't get at all. Was the holy spirit gods second begotten son, if not why not?

JimL, One God, John 4:24. Christians know God, by whom Christians have eternal life, John 17:3. 1 John 5:12. John 14:6. Romans 8:9, 16.
1 John 5:9-11.

[mikewhitney]

They had to find a way to make of Jesus a god, so gods word, his creative function, became his son. The Holy Spirit on the other hand, being a 3rd person, I don't get at all. Was the holy spirit gods second begotten son, if not why not?

You have pointed out the weak point of the conspiracy theories. It is the mention of the Holy Spirit in the Trinity that messes up the conspiracy theory about people making up the idea of Jesus' Deity. Like mentioned elsewhere, the addition of the Holy Spirit would not be done by people wanting Jesus to make up an imaginary elevated deity status. The only option is to acknowledge Jesus as Lord and Savior.

[Esther]

Right, so what you believe is that the 3 persons making up the 1 god are not necessarily a unified and indivisable whole, but 1 of the persons, the son, can seperate from the supposedly indivisable triperson god and do his own thing here on earth separate and apart from the other 2 persons?

Yes Jim. They are 3 distinct and separate members. Jesus was on earth praying to his father in heaven for example.

[JimL]

You have pointed out the weak point of the conspiracy theories. It is the mention of the Holy Spirit in the Trinity that messes up the conspiracy theory about people making up the idea of Jesus' Deity. Like mentioned elsewhere, the addition of the Holy Spirit would not be done by people wanting Jesus to make up an imaginary elevated deity status. The only option is to acknowledge Jesus as Lord and Savior.

So if jesus is the only begotten son of god, what is the 3rd person of the trinity, the only begotten daughter maybe, or what?