hatsoff

I'm not sure how all that relates to your point.

Roger Pearse

There is terrible confusion here between the idea of the Trinity and the Homoousion. Athanasius was the defender of the latter. The former was a matter of unquestioned agreement by both Arius and Alexander.

The idea that Athanasius derived his principles not from the church but from pagan religion is one that would require some actual passages from his works in which he asserts something of the kind, and at the very least suggests that ideas can be adopted from paganism. These do not exist.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

spin

Examples would be good here.

I've found that all the so-called trinitarian passages beside the obvious intrusion of marginal comments like that in 1 Jn 5, are simply misunderstandings. Further, there are so many passages that separate Jesus from god or from the holy spirit, which get overlooked because of the dominant trinitarian straightjacketing of the text. Does anyone worry about Jesus talking to god? even saying "not my will, but yours"? These are downright separate entities.

Jesus, on the merit of being a mediator, must be separate from god, as a mediator has a distinct position between two other entities.


spin

mountainman

Newton wrote extensively about Athanasius, and didn't have
much good to say. He provides voluminous reasons for his dark
picture of Athanasius.

See Paradoxical Questions concerning the morals & actions of Athanasius & his followers



Pete Brown

Malachi151

It is, of course, speculation. When you start talking about influences things get nearly impossibly, if not impossible, to prove.

Take for example Darwin's theory of evolution.

Darwin's book, The Origin of Species, was published in 1858, and very few people today have actually read any part of it, much less all of it, yet pretty much everyone in Western Civilization and elsewhere around the world is aware of the basic ideas contained within in some fashion or another.

Since 1858 we have seen influences of "Darwin's thinking" in many areas, across many disciplines, among many people, even people who have never read any writings by Darwin, and who don't "believe in" evolution.

The term "survival of the fittest" (thought not originally used by Darwin) has become common in our society, and is used by people much the same way that "God damnit" is, i..e atheists use "God damnit", and creationists use the term "survival of the fittest", sometimes when talking about sports, when talking about business, or when talking about pretty much any competition.

So, since 1858, we can document an increase in the universal use of certain ideas that are related to evolution. For example, if you go to the Gutenberg Project and do a search for the term "survival of the fittest", you will see that starting about the 1860s you get lots of documents using this phrase, from all kinds of writers, with all kinds of views, using the term in all kinds of ways. Many of these people probably never read one word of Darwin's, its just an example of how an idea becomes ubiquitous in a society.

robto

It's true that there is no doctrine of the trinity in the NT. Early Christians spoke about not only the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but the Power of God, the Wisdom of God, the Logos (Word) of God, etc. Even the Church, considered as a pre-existent being, shows up as part of the Godhead (in both orthodox and gnostic sources!).

My impression is that the three-fold baptism (as in Matthew) was in place long before anything like a doctrine of the Trinity had developed. Then theology had to play catch-up with established practice: how do we justify baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?

The OP asked for a good discussion of this, which noone seems to have answered yet. I'd like to know what a good reference is, too (preferably in print rather than online).