(August 28, 2013 at 11:41 pm)Godschild Wrote: Go read the Bible, Jesus is the creator, the Holy Spirit was active in creation, the creation was spoken into existence by the Father, God as the Trinity has always existed.
Horseshit. The trinity was the concoction of the 3d century propagandist, Tertullian. From Bart Ehrman's "Lost Christianities." (You should read it, G-C. You'd come across as less of a fool.)
Quote:Neither Tertullian nor Hippolytus approached the questions of the nature of Christ as God and man and of the relationship of the divine members of the Godhead with the erudition, nuance, and acumen of Origen. But in some ways, their less daring approaches became more useful to orthodox thinkers of later times. Their opposition to patripassianist understandings (the belief that “the
Father suffered”) forced them to think in trinitarian terms, of God being distinctively three in expression though one in essence. As Hippolytus puts it, “With respect to the power, God is one; but with respect to the economy [i.e., to how this power expresses itself], the manifestation is triple” (Refutation 8:2). In Tertullian’s formulation, God is three in degree, not condition; in form, not substance; in aspect, not power (Against Praxeas, 2). Tertullian was the first Latin theologian to use the term Trinity.
Within the broad contours of proto-orthodoxy, then, one can see development and variety. As time progressed, theologians became more entranced with the mystery of the Trinity and developed a more highly refined vocabulary for dealing with it. But that was long after the major issues had been resolved, of whether Christ was man but not God (Ebionites; Theodotians), God but not man (Marcionites, some Gnostics), or two beings, one man and one God (most Gnostics). The proto-orthodox opted for none of the above. Christ was God
and man, yet he was one being, not two.
Once that was acknowledged, the details still had to be worked out. And they were worked out for centuries. If it were easy, it would not be a mystery. Theologians began to be obsessed with the question of how and in what way Christ could be both human and divine, completely both. Did he have a human soul but a divine spirit? Did he have a divine soul instead of a human soul? Was his body really like everyone else’s body? How could God have a body? Was he subordinate to the Father, as in Origen? If he was not subordinate to the Father, why was he the one sent, rather than the other way around? And so on, almost ad infinitum.
In this earlier period, however, the debates were both more basic and more fundamental. As a result, the alternatives within the proto-orthodox tradition—as opposed to the alternatives that separated the proto-orthodox from everyone else—were less clear and less obvious. All that was to change when the protoorthodox found themselves to be the last ones standing and were forced then to move forward into the orthodox forms of Christianity of the fourth and fifth centuries.
There was a long doctrinal battle between various xtian groups and the bunch that ultimately got Constantine's ear and became the church was as Ehrman calls them, the "proto-orthodox.". The docetists, who asserted that jesus was a spirit who "seemed" to be human (but was not) had to be opposed in order for the story to maintain its power...(does them no good if jesus is off on the side laughing as they crucify him...there is no "sacrifice" in that.) But, on the other side, the patripassianists insisted that god himself suffered on the cross and this was classifed as heresy because it denied the different "persons" of the trinity. Then there was Marcionism which thought yahweh some loser piece of shit god and that "jesus" was sent by the real god...but obviously no trinity there. That's okay though because Marcion was mid-2d century and long before the trinity bullshit was created. Then there were Montanists, Ebionites, Sabellians, Adoptionists, Arians and a shitload of gnostic groups which scholars are now beginning to realize far pre-date any idea of "jesus."
The proto-orthodox put out lots of bullshit against all these groups (and many others too numerous to name) and ended up with the hodge-podge of bullshit which is xtian doctrine. The proto-orthodox were not "holier" than the others. They were simply more ruthless much as the Bosheviks came to dominate the Russian Revolution because they were better organized and regimented than their opponents. As a result of that - which had to appeal to a murdering thug like Constantine - the west was saddled with 1500 of xtian doom and gloom.
How much better the world would have been if Maxentius had won the Battle of the Milvian Bridge.
