lmbarre

I do not think the early church councils were able to define away the basic obervation that the Trinity is a polytheistic formulation. Three divine persons is, by definition, three divine beings and so polytheistic before Christian apologetics gets in there and denies and obscures this basic perception.

Toto

Would you like to connect this to Biblical Criticism?

Here's a few previous threads that might be related:

The Invention of the Trinity

Trinity error and John 10:30

Pauline theology that's awkward for Christians

Roger Pearse

Um, don't you need to do this argument in Greek, with definitions of 'person/hypostasis/substance/ousia' etc, making sure we understand how they are being used?

I don't know the details myself, but if we consider that almost the entire world of philosophers spent a century and a half noodling over it -- to the point where even Saint Gregory of Nyssa complained that he couldn't go and get a haircut without the barber talking at him about how the Son was 'unlike' (technical term) the Father -- it is pretty unlikely that we've stated the issue correctly above.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

mountainman

This is all quite correct, since the records of these councils essentially reveal the public opinion about at the time of the council, against which these councils invariously pronounced anathemas. For example, according to Hilary of Poitiers De Synodis, we have interesting anathemas against saying the following things c.350 CE (25 years after Nicaea) ...

Saying "that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are three Gods". (22) or,

saying "The Father and the Son are two Gods." (02)

In other words, they were trying to stabilise public opinion by refining what was to be considered authodox, and what was to be considered seditious again the authodox -- which they defined as "heretical".

These very basic statements however, are perhaps best explained as anti-christian polemic, purposefully raised to question fundamental issues related to the newly appeared state cult.


Best wishes


Pete Brown