RE: The Trinity
January 22, 2021 at 9:56 am
(This post was last modified: January 22, 2021 at 10:06 am by The Grand Nudger.)
You've got it backwards. The orthodoxy didn't use that belief to control. Conceivably, they might have preferred a less mysterious belief that could be rationally articulated - that's what we see all over christendom now as well.
They themselves were controlled by the disparate threads of proto-christian belief that they were wrangling together into a unitary church. That's what catholic means. That's what they were trying to do. Christinity, as a whole, had come to believe a list of things to be true. As religious proclamations - those things cannot be untrue. They simply have to be accepted alongside in each other as concurrent if unintuitively true. If you reject the truth of a significant community you utterly prevent that community from being considered as part of your unified moral whole, your religion.
Obviously, the hitch here is that a persons social status or political capital can very much be transferred to their beliefs with a seat at the negotiating table. So that's how we end up* with the items for consideration as truths like those above. Trinitarian belief is a particularly strong example of that kind of collaborative process.
*or, if we prefer, at least a prominent part of - leaving room for things like revealed theology or a more nebulous sense of guidance by the holy spirit, etc etc etc.
They themselves were controlled by the disparate threads of proto-christian belief that they were wrangling together into a unitary church. That's what catholic means. That's what they were trying to do. Christinity, as a whole, had come to believe a list of things to be true. As religious proclamations - those things cannot be untrue. They simply have to be accepted alongside in each other as concurrent if unintuitively true. If you reject the truth of a significant community you utterly prevent that community from being considered as part of your unified moral whole, your religion.
Obviously, the hitch here is that a persons social status or political capital can very much be transferred to their beliefs with a seat at the negotiating table. So that's how we end up* with the items for consideration as truths like those above. Trinitarian belief is a particularly strong example of that kind of collaborative process.
*or, if we prefer, at least a prominent part of - leaving room for things like revealed theology or a more nebulous sense of guidance by the holy spirit, etc etc etc.
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