The Doctrine of the Trinity: Opponents Past and Present
Systematic Theology I
Research Proposal
Seminary
JoJo the Indian Circus Boy
September, 2010
TABLE OF CONTENTS
THESIS STATEMENT 2
INTRODUCTION 2
THEOLOGY OF THE TRINITY 3
BIBLICAL EVIDENCE SUPPORTING THE TRINITY
Old Testament Support of the Trinity 4 New Testament Support of the Trinity 5
HISTORY OF THE TRINITY 7
Critics of the Trinity-Present 8
Judaism..............................................................................................................9
Gnosticism.......................................................................................................10
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As a result, fellowship, prayer, Bible study, worship, and most importantly salvation in its purest form can be discerned and acted upon correctly. In addition, a further understanding can be thus gained regarding the person of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Finally, heresies and heretical groups or beliefs can lead God’s followers astray from the truth and create an improper understanding, and thus relationship with God. Positions past and present have, and are, attempting to mislead Christians about the Trinity. A skewed view of the Trinity can result in a view of God as either divinely apart from creation or simply a better version of all the best attributes of humans. Some positions even take away from the Divinity of Jesus Christ. All of these views severely diminish who God is and alters a proper and true relationship and worship. It is a necessity that these errant views be exposed as a hindrance to God in order not to mislead God’s followers. Likewise a Biblically sound explanation of the Trinity is needed. As a result, a true and pure knowledge of the concept of the Trinity is crucially needed to understand God and be obedient to the Bible.
Theology of the Trinity
Judaism as well as its offshoot and formation into the Christian religion both place great emphasis on the notion of their monotheistic God as revealed in the early scriptures. To them God has revealed Himself as the one Lord of all. Evident in the first Commandment that was
The belief in one God is the central belief of Judaism. The attributes to this belief includes that God is one, God is eternal, God is Omnipresent, God is Omnipotent and God is Pure Spirit. The main attribute is God is one meaning that God is unique and indivisible .This attribute is represented in the Shema “Hear, O Israel, God is our God, God the one and only” (Deuteronomy 6:4) one of the most significant prayers of Judaism, confirms God's oneness which also endorses that Judaism is a monotheistic religion and Jews believe that there is only one God. The rest of
Hey Mary. You did an excellent laying out the foundation of the Trinity within your post. During my childhood, my church also taught the analogy of the three-leaf clover. I enthusiastically agree that although such an illustration is aimed at helping, a human analogy cannot or will never accurately define the Trinity. As I read your post, I thoroughly enjoyed the way in which you informed your reader of basics interworking’s of the Trinity. However, reading on, I felt as though you did not delve into why the Trinity is truth. The book, Richard of Saint Victor, On the Trinity: English Translation and Commentary, provides an excellent starting position for one’s explanation of the Trinity of being truth. Richard of Saint Victor argues that in
The image of God which is the mind is the last and highest thing among creatures in seeking God. The previously chapters have already tried to investigate the trinity of God both by faith in the scripture and by understanding some evidence of reason.
At the center of the Christian faith is a mystery. This mystery has everything to do with the identity of God, the nature of Christian community, the salvation history and our understanding of Christology. This is the mystery of the Trinity – how is the Godhead fully three persons, and yet one nature? Theophilus was the first to name the ‘triad’ nature of God in his letter To Autolycus in 170 A.D. Tertullian was the first to offer terminology to describe this mystery in Against Praxeas claiming “the Trinity” involved three ‘persons’ of one substance. This theology emerged from the Biblical witness, even though scripture offers no doctrine of the Trinity itself. Even more so, the development of the doctrine of the Trinity grew from the early church’s worship, witness and corporate experience. When faced with a mystery, heresies can’t help but emerge. Docetism and Arianism, Adoptionism and Monarchianism, Nestorianism and Monophysitism are just a few of the heresies that emerged in attempts to explain away the mystery. And yet, theologians from the second century to the twenty-first century are faced with the challenge of witnessing to this mystery in both the theologia and the oikonomia of the Trinity. The church experiences the economic Trinity as new believers are drawn into Trinitarian community through an ongoing
It is important to note the defined goals of the Trinity. One being that God sent His Son, Jesus did not send God. Jesus tells us in John 6, that He came to do the will of His Father. Jesus was not doing His own selfish will but everything He did was for His Father. Jesus and God sent the Holy Spirit according to Jesus’ words in John 14:26, “But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you”. It is necessary to recognize the distinctions of the roles of the Trinity as if the roles were not distinctive there would be no Trinity.
The monotheistic belief of Judaism recognises that God is omnipotent, omnipresent and pure spirit. The concept of the oneness of God, is expressed through the Shema which is an affirmation of faith Jews proclaim, commencing with “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.”- Deuteronomy 6:4. This
Both Jews and Christians belief there is one god whose name is Jehovah, thus describing them as monotheistic religions. Furthermore, both believe in the same god. However,
Monotheism is the agreement that there is “a single God” and that he is “the creator of all things” and one of the very first religions to adopt this theism are the Hebrews, which, in turn led the way for many other religions such as Christianity and Islam to believe in one single God. Early on in the development of Judaism, the Hebrews were not always a monotheistic religion, in fact, they went from being polytheistic to monolatry and then finally decided to become monotheistic. The earlier sets of Hebrews were mainly a polytheistic group, meaning that that honored more than one God, some of these Gods ranged from Azazel, a nature spirit to “Ba’al and his wife Asherah, a fertility goddess” . In fact, some Gods were so highly praised that
In conversation with Daniel Migliore give an account of what it means to confess that God is triune. Give care to an explication of “economic and immanent trinity,” and perichoresis.
Monotheism is a style or following of religious belief that asserts the existence of only a single God. This may seem easy to understand, but different religions interpret this in different ways. Judaism, Christianity and Islam are considered to be today’s modern monotheistic religions; however they don’t explain their form of “monotheism” in the same way as the others.
Hebrew monotheism is the belief in a single, all-powerful creator-god, and the renewal of the covenant binding them to their god in exchange for divine protection. The monotheism first appeared in ancient world around 1350 B.C.E in Egypt. The pharaoh named Amenhotep IV advanced the worship of the sun god, Aten, as the country’s sole deity, which was more powerful than all of the other Egyptian gods. Later the Hebrew monotheism went away from Athen and the Hebrews perceived Yahweh. Yahweh is the one and only god according to the Hebrews and Yahweh was transcend nature and all natural phenomena.
The Trinity to Nazienzus is absolutely essential in his Five Theological Orations, and in them he defines the “Father is the Begetter and the Emitter; without passion of course, and without reference to time, and not in a corporeal manner.” This means that “though numerically distinct there is no severance of Essence.” Christ is not subordinate to the Father, and the Holy Ghost is not subordinate to the Father or the Son; the Godhead is Triune in unity and is of the same substance. Even though the Holy Spirit and the Son “are from [the Father], though not after Him,” they still share the same essence as Him in the Trinity. This is an important distinction, because any part of the Godhead that has not existed for all time would not be God by definition. Nazienzus explains this by saying that the “cause is not necessarily prior to its
According to Smith, The World's Religions Judaism chapter, Judaism is a monotheistic religion to Jewish people.
I will like to crave your indulgence to the fact that "Nicene concept of Trinity" is never stated in the Bible, and it is that early Christians as well as the scriptures clearly points out the fact that Jesus was fully divine and pre-existent. For the fact that, none of the early Christian theologians fully asserted the doctrine of the Trinity, not even a speculation about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. According to the father of the paganism description of Trinity "God can in no way be described." (Schindler 148).
The doctrine of the Trinity is the study of who God is, what God is like, how God works, and how God is to be approached (Erickson). God as Trinity was established by the dogma of the ancient Church and defends the central faith of the Bible and the Church (Grenz). The Christian doctrine of the Trinity states that there is One God who is three divine persons; the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I will describe how the early Christian church came to its understanding of God as Three-in-One.