My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

[The Grand Nudger]

What;s really amazing..is that even the group that agrees with each other on that item still have massive disparities in christology.  It;s almost like they;re covered in different kinds of shit, from wrestling different pigs.  

This was, ofc, common knowledge up until living memory..when american christians began to realize that they were at risk of losing purchase on the social fabric as a fractious group of babbling rabble. Before this, the notion of "christians" as a monolithic block was ludicrous to both the religious and the irreligious. Catholics were pagans, protestants apostates......and then there were the nutballs.........

[Crossless2.0]

61% of statistics are made up!

. . . according to 53% of statisticians, as reported in a study that has come under fire from 39% of statisticians who point out the original number was derived from an insufficient, and possibly biased, sample.

In other news, it really is turtles all the way down.

[SteveII]

Enough for me.  Steve placed non trinitarians at less than 1%..which can;t be the case even if we imagine that every member of a trinitarian church believes exactly what they;re supposed to...and we know they don;t.  

The idea of a godman just isn;t aging well.

Mormons are not Christians. There have to be at least some basic requirements to adhere to the NT and they don't come close to the basics. 

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/201...-away.html

[The Grand Nudger]

LOL.   Really phoning it in now, huh?

[Minimalist]

Trinitarianism was declared correct by a vote of corrupt catholick bishops at 4th century church councils.  Has fuckall to do with your silly scriptures and even less to do with your imaginary godboy, Stevie.

Politics, man.  Churches love politics.  Congratulations for being an ignorant follower of catholick inspired horseshit!

[SteveII]

I'm shocked.  Including Catholic, Protestant, and Eastern Orthodox, more than 99%. Kind of undercuts the whole "they don't even know what they believe" stupid comments.

Seven out of ten respondents in LifeWay’s survey affirmed the doctrine of the Trinity—that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three Persons but one God, and six in ten agreed that Jesus is both human and divine. Their orthodoxy—and consistency—ended there. More than half went on to indicate that Jesus is “the first and greatest being created by God,” a heresy known as Arianism, which the Council of Nicaea condemned in 325 A.D.

Of course, most of these accidental blasphemers aren’t preparing to revise the resulting Nicene Creed and preach a creaturely Christ. Rather, bizarre contradictions like this illustrate how many Americans don’t understand or even care what the Trinity means (although they say they believe in it, likely out of habits learned growing up in church).

Survey Finds Most American Christians Are Actually Heretics

That brings up the question that if you do not believe that Jesus is God, then can you be a Christian. There are way too many key doctrines linked to that. I don't think the case can be made. 

Also, this does not help the argument that people have looked at the NT and arrived at different conclusions. It seems that a large number of people can't articulate the belief or understand how it fits into systematic theology--a.k.a. ignorance.

[The Grand Nudger]

I suppose if you;re willing to excommunicate all non trinitarians, and then the remainder who don;t believe exactly as you do from within the group you putatively consider to be true christians....then you can make the numbers work. Im nearly certain that if you can ignore all of the christians who don;t believe in the trinity..then the number of christians who believe in the trinity is geater than 99%.

I find it amusing that you;ve attached divine importance to an issue of alexandrian grain export and the exile games of the 4th century. One wonders how you would have argued within the context of that conflict..since arianism was, at the time, co-equally orthodox.

[Angrboda]

Enough for me.  Steve placed non trinitarians at less than 1%..which can;t be the case even if we imagine that every member of a trinitarian church believes exactly what they;re supposed to...and we know they don;t.  

The idea of a godman just isn;t aging well.

Mormons are not Christians. There have to be at least some basic requirements to adhere to the NT and they don't come close to the basics. 

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/201...-away.html

"Christians, it is needless to say, utterly detest each other. They slander each other constantly with the vilest forms of abuse and cannot come to any sort of agreement in their teachings. Each sect brands its own, fills the head of its own with deceitful nonsense, and makes perfect little pigs of those it wins over to its side." -- Celsus (2nd century C.E.)

As I said before, Christianity is simply whatever it is that Christians believe. Your absurd notion that there is some "correct" party line dividing Christians from pretenders to Christianity is just some partisan bullshit that you believe. It doesn't have an ounce of logical weight.

[SteveII]

That's a very bad argument. Of course the doctrine of the Trinity is baked into Christian belief. ALL the support for it comes from the NT. Here's the test: would anyone trying to work up a systematic theology from the NT words of Jesus and overall events come to a different conclusion if they did not know anything about traditional theology? The answer is no--because it would have happened by now. The NT is the most carefully studied group of documents ever. The doctrine of the trinity is practically universal.

I said "necessarily baked into Christian belief" and stand by that. Of course the Trinity is derived from the NT (specifically out of a need to square John's high-Christology with those gospels that don't embrace it) but it's simply historically false to suggest that this was the only possible outcome of that effort. There were several previous theological positions meant to answer the same problem. I suspect a big reason you don't see people today widely and spontaneously embracing Docetism, to take but one example, is that this view was proscribed centuries ago and subsequent generations of priests, ministers, and laypeople have simply inherited the view that "obviously" the Trinity is the only sensible answer left standing. But councils of priests settling on one answer in a dispute that amounts to little more than imaginative literary criticism (the polite version) or mental masturbation (the less polite version) and declaring alternative viewpoints to be heresies doesn't fill me with much confidence.

You believe it. That's nice for you. But your belief is, itself, historically contingent. Left to your own devices and a NT, I rather doubt you alone would have stumbled across this particular solution.

Sure there were questions and competing thoughts. Your premise rests on the theory that there are other interpretations that can be derived from the same information. They hashed it out, proved a couple of of competing Christologies had flaws or entailed irreconcilable concepts to the rest of the NT (including Docetism). The trinitarian concept is mentioned in several early second century writings so to imply it was a result of some late council is plainly wrong. If there were other ways to look at the information, we would see examples today since we have pretty close to the original NT. You just can't work it out any other way. You seem to think that codifying the concept of the trinity somehow affects the truthfulness/logic/support for it. 

A way to prove your point that there were other possible outcomes, then that should be easy to show. What are some divergent views that is not contradicted by a multitude of NT doctrines/discussions/teachings?

[Minimalist]

That brings up the question that if you do not believe that Jesus is God, then can you be a Christian.

Any asshole who thinks a dead jew came back to life for their sins is a xtian in my book and are welcome to such a dishonorable title.