Where Did the Trinity Teaching Come From?

[King_Charles]

From Bart Ehrman's Lost Christianities: (p 151-152)

referring to “our God Jesus Christ, [who] is in the Father” (Ign. Rom. 8:3), or as “God come in the flesh” (Ign. Eph. 7:2), or of “the blood of God,” by which he means the blood of Christ (Ign. Eph. 1:1). But he was equally and passionately committed to Christ being human, as is evident in two of his letters, one sent to the Christians of Tralles and the other to those of Smyrna. He knew that in both cities there was opposition to the proto-orthodox view that Jesus was somehow both divine and human; the opponents were docetists, who maintained that Jesus was divine and not at all human.

And so in his letter to the Trallians, Ignatius warns against those who claim that Jesus “only appeared to suffer” (10:1) and insists, in response, that Jesus “was truly born, both ate and drank; was truly persecuted at the time of Pontius Pilate, was truly crucified and died . . . and was also truly raised from the dead” (9:1–2). So, too, in the letter to the Smyrneans, Ignatius attacks those who claimed that Jesus’ passion was a sham, that he was not an actual flesh-and-blood human being who really suffered (2:1). Ignatius again denies that such persons are “believers” (2:1) and warns his readers not even to meet and talk with them (4:1). In opposition to their views, he insists that Jesus was “actually born” (1:1) and was “actually crucified . . . in the flesh” (1:2), and he “genuinely suffered” and “genuinely raised himself” (2:1). Even after his resurrection he was “in the flesh” (3:1), as evidenced by the fact that his disciples touched him and observed him eating and drinking (3:2–3).

Now if ( and it is a BIG IF ) Ignatius was genuine and writing at the beginning of the first century this would bring the discussion of whether or not Jesus was man or god to well before Tertullian. Of course, if Ignatius is just another fictional character...much like jesus himself...invented to deal with these issues by later writers it means very little. But xtians, such as presumably Alter is, are stuck with the whole shooting match of bullshit put out by the church...so here you go.

Yeah, though the OP is correct in saying it was not until the council of Nicea that the trinity was made formal and even then the next six councils of the Church were still arguing over it, mostly in relation to how-the-fuck-does-it-work-that-Christ-is-fully-God-and-fully-man right up to the Third Council of Constantinople in 680 A.D.

Also, you don't get a clear definition of the trinity in print until Tertullian's Adversus Praxean in the 3rd Century A.D. The quote above simply refers to the doctrine of the incarnation without reference to the holy spirit, and the quote in the second post of this thread is not really a definition of the trinity as is now understood.

OP: you need to distinguish between the concepts of the trinity and the incarnation, then we might get a little further. It's a headache when people conflate the two, although they are very much entwined.

Oh and thanks for trying your hand at Catholic apologetics mini-moo.

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Also: Alter2Ego. It's actually somehwat gratifying to see Christians questioning things like the trinity and the incarnation. So many trinitarians just accept it as empty Dogma and don't reflet on just hown profound and scandalous the doctrine of the incarnation is in the history of Monotheism.

I alway liked C.S.Lewis's conversion story, he was like you, believing in God, but didn't beleive that God actually became may. Then he re-read Euripidies' play Hippolytus, the story made him realise just what a profound gift to mankinda the incarnation was, as it allowed God to partake of the human experience of suffering and death, but through his faith conquor these things and open the door to our salvation. How can a God who cannot suffer, and even doubt, as Christ did possibly understand humanity? How can a God who cannot understand humanity help us?