[Serious] The Trinity

[The Grand Nudger]

Those are all reasons that a much later proto-orthodoxy would refer to when they arrived at trinitarian beliefs - but they're not representative of proto-christian belief as we understand it, and we understand it largely from the works of the proto-orthodox against the various heresies rife in the proto-christian community.

Even imagining jesus to be "divine in some sense" is not trinitarian belief. We assume so because of our place in history and familiarity with them - but even a cursory glance would disabuse us of this notion. There were many ideas of how jesus was divine in some way that the proto orthodoxy wfound cause to declare as heresy.

John is a particularly bad example as it's notable for it's fundamental difference from the rest of the gospels. The shape of a later proto orthodoxy being the main reason for it's inclusion. Had another proto-christian sect come out on top in the fight for orthodoxy, john would be apocryphal - as so many other proto (and now contemporary) christian claims to jesus divinity are. I'll let iraneus explain, around 170ad.

The heretics boast that they have many more gospels than there really are. But really they don't have any gospels that aren't full of blasphemy. There actually are only four authentic gospels. And this is obviously true because there are four corners of the universe and there are four principal winds, and therefore there can be only four gospels that are authentic. These, besides, are written by Jesus' true followers.

So, that's what we're dealing with. As mentioned in the beginning - it's not a logical puzzle to be solved and resolved to sense..and it's maintained by the doctrine itself to be impossible for man to do so at any rate. I'll repeat and restress this. All of my musings about the history of the idea and the institution which leveraged it are irrelevant if the sense that we're looking for is a rational sense in the doctrine. It makes sense in the context of a social movement - but it is maintained by the doctrine itself to be true that there is no way for man to rationally arrive at this mystery of the faith.

It doesn't and literally can't make sense™ to us, but it is true, and that's yet another demonstration of god's mighty power. A useful rhetorical device, but it has the effect of reducing any attempt to rationalize the concept to a contrary assertion with respect to items declared true by faith. If man could rationally arrive at the doctrine, then the doctrine would be false, you see? It's not non-sense so much as it's explicitly (and intentionally) anti-sense. Today, we hear something like this and come off thinking that the impossible is probably not accurate (which might explain the non trinitarian context of contemporary christian belief) - but back in the day, doing the impossible was a demonstration that something (in this case a god) could evade what we think of as the rules of the universe. A compelling assertion of power and authority.

If you ask a historian, an anthropologist, or a sociologist, they'll explain that christian orthodoxy selected those beliefs it held from the smorgasboard available for their utility to the institution or it's people. Apologists - because it's twue, it's twue, it's twue - for reasons exactly as obvious as Iraneus' reasons above.