Solitary Man

You automatically assume that I would know what doctrine it would change. I don't.

Not sure this follows.

Perhaps.

No, interpolation is guaranteed.

Actually, I was misremembering something else. But yes, it became incorporated into John. However, the doctrine of the trinity, from what I've heard from Christians, is sound even without the passage. For one, it can also be found in Matthew (28.19) and I've heard Christians make the argument that it can be found elsewhere (perhaps not explicitly, but really, is that important?).

Meaning it makes a huge impact.

Toto

Yes, I thought SM was thinking of the pericope on the adultress rather than the Johannine comma. Both are considered interpolations, but the first is considered (by Ehrman and others) to be an old tradition.

But it is hard to imagine that SM is not aware of the importance of the doctrine of the Trinity in Christian history. He even participated in this thread.

Toto

And note this on the comma: early Christian heretic

Solitary Man

I didn't say the doctrine of the trinity was important. I merely said that without the Johannine Comma it doesn't go away.

Nor could I see any of Solitary Man's post there.

Toto

Sorry, I misread. But the doctrine of the Trinity is contentious, and the Johannine comma is generally considered to be its clearest support in the NT, would you not agree? No one expects you to actually explain the doctrine, much less believe it, to recgonized that it is a substantive issue.

Solitary Man

Yes, but if it goes away, the idea of the Trinity isn't killed. The Greek speaking world did just fine without it for hundreds of years. Now, if we find the oldest papyrus where the beginning of Mark actually says, Αρχη του εὐαγγελιου Σιμωνος Μαγου, then that is substantive.

Roger Pearse

I don't think it is, you know. It's a given as soon as it appears with Tertullian. Who do we know that disputes it? The First Council of Nicaea is about the homoousion, not the Trinity, and so onwards.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

andrewcriddle

I think the issue about the Johannine Comma is that it not only declares that there are three in heaven (which is explicitly taught in other NT passages, and was not contentious in the Early Church), but also and these three are one (et hi tres unum sunt. )

Although I would regard the fundamental unity of the Trinity as implicit in the NT, the Johannine comma is explicit on the point, a point that genuinely was contentious in the Early Church.

judge

Christians to the East (and this is a large number of people) speaking Aramaic/Syriac certainly had a different concept of the godhead.

If Nestorius had not been taught from this perspective he would not it seems have resisted the idea that mary was the mother of god as he did.

IOW the council at Ephesus with its focus on this, would not have arisen unless those to the East had this different conception.

That god would be three persons has always been disputed there.

Added in Edit:

Note too that by 533AD anyone who did not condemn Nestorius had no salvation (apparently .)

THE ANATHEMAS OF THE SECOND COUNCIL OF CONSTANTINOPLE

Added in 2nd edit:

I just noticed one had to anathamatise Origen as well........is that right?

Roger Pearse

Um, the dispute over the theotokos is not about the Trinity, you know. Both Cyril and Nestorius were Trinitarian. The 5th century christological disputes are about the nature of Christ, how many persona or whatever.

No, this is to confuse here the trinity and the question of whether christ had two natures or not, or two prosopons, etc. Pardon me if I'm a little vague, but the details of that theology always bore me.

It's all correct. The text of the council decree is not quite certain; it would be a very odd thing doctrinally to condemn 3 centuries later a person who had died in the peace of the church, as opposed to condemning his views, so possibly the text is corrupt.

That particular synod was run by the Emperor Justinian, and was a tidying up exercise to sweep up the left-overs from antiquity and get ready for the middle ages.

All of this stuff is merely Byzantine church politics. The Eastern Roman Empire tolerated no political dissent at all. But it did tolerate a certain amount of religious dissent, at least until a council had issued a ruling. Likewise every person in authority had to be appointed by the emperor; but a popular voice could be heard in the appointments of bishops. No-one could vote on things; except at church councils.

Naturally, the consequence of this was to divert all the Greek genius for politics and democracy into this bastardised form, ecclesiastical politics. If you didn't like someone, you tried to make their name a heresy (Macedonius->Macedonianism, Nestorius->Nestorianism, etc) and quote-mine their works to prove they advanced some idea or other. That way you could demonise them and stifle any expression of their views. The same process today is why people keep inventing new politically correct 'sins' such as homophobia, islamophobia, etc today.

There is rather a good story about one failed attempt to get rid of the Patriarch Macedonius of Constantinople, which truly parallels our times.

Nestorius was not actually a heretic, not even by Cyril's definition, as far as I can tell. The whole thing was a piece of politics, part of the ongoing struggle between Alexandria and Constantinople for dominance in the empire. Isidore of Pelusium (who agreed with Cyril doctrinally) nevertheless wrote to him after the Council of Ephesus to say that a lot of people reckoned that he (Cyril) had behaved like a self-serving jerk. Cyril prevailed, not least by widespread bribery; letter 96 of his collected letters is a list of bribes handed out in Constantinople after the council. Likewise the condemnations are merely a bastard form of the ostracisms that Greeks practised in earlier times. The whole thing was an intrigue.

This sort of thing is the reason why most Christians outside the Greek Orthodox and RCC tend to consider that the church became corrupt some time in late antiquity, and sometimes just a vehicle for the ambition of particular men.

All the best,

Roger Pearse