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From: hedrick@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU (Charles Hedrick)
Newsgroups: net.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Trinity: the fine line
Message-ID: <3280@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Wed, 14-Aug-85 17:18:37 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.3280
Posted: Wed Aug 14 17:18:37 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 18-Aug-85 21:58:22 EDT
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Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
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This is a response to a couple of issues that Frank Silbermann
raised a few days ago. 

He asks how Modalism came to be considered a heresy.  If you are
interested in the Trinity, it is worth at least a glance at the early
doctrinal debates.  Otherwise you are liable to fall into known
pitfalls.  (It's obviously much more fun to avoid the known pitfalls
and find new ones to fall into.)  From the 2nd to 4th Century,
Christian ideas about God moved slowly from wording that more or less
recapitulated Biblical language to the first true Trinitarian
formulations.  The folks who did this work thought they were just
clarifying their language and making explicit ideas that were already
there in the NT.  Along about the 3rd Century, a number of people saw
where this was headed and decided that there had to be a better way.
In particular, they were concerned that the discussions were moving
towards tritheism.  So these folks attempted to formulate a Christian
theology based on a single, simple God.  There were several different
attempts to work out these ideas, generally referred to as
"Monarchianism".  The problem is that based on a simple model of God,
it is hard to come up with an explanation of Christ's relation to God
that does justice to Christian experience and the NT message.  One
group of Monarchians ended up saying that he was just a man, inspired
by the Holy Spirit.  Another went the other way, and ended up with
Jesus as a sort of puppet.  The latter group was known as
"patripassian" because they said that the Father himself suffered on
the cross.  Both of these contradict the Biblical accounts, as well as
the experience of the Church.  As far as I know, nobody ever held an
official church council to outlaw these ideas.  However they were
generally pounced on, by various bishops, and such major theologians
as Tertullian and Origen.  I'm not an expert in Church history, but
the impression I get is that this approach was generally discredited
and people went on to other things.  Certainly by the 16th Century,
Reformed creeds were referring to the Monarchians (not by that term:
normally they listed representative theologians by name) as if it was
well known that they were heretical.  There was another major attempt
to develop an alternative to the Trinity in the early 4th Century.
This is referred to as Arianism.  Unfortunately, Arius ended up with a
Christ who was a semi-divine creature, not quite God but more than
man.  This manages to combine the disadvantages of both Monarchianism
and tritheism.  However this attempt turned out to be much harder to
stop.  Various councils were called, and things got tied up in
Imperial politics.  Arius' views were anathematized formally at
several of these councils.  The final result of this is the confession
that is now known as the Nicean Creed (though in fact it seems to have
come out of the Council of Constantinople in 381).  It speaks of God
as being a single essense (ousia), but having three persons
(hypostases).  Many people found this formulation somewhat painful,
but every attempt to avoid it seemed to result in something worse.  I
think the final test of the various alternatives was how they dealt
with Christ, and only the Trinity allowed for a Christ who was fully
human, but also a full revelation of God.

As for tritheism, as far as I know, no Christian theologian ever
seriously considered this.  It was always something that one accused
others of believing.  Christians believe that Christ revealed the
Father.  Making him a separate god doesn't help explain how he
revealed the Father.

You ask what I would think of a Roman who says that all of those
gods are just aspects of a single God.  Would I concede that he
is a monotheist?  If I say yes, you say I have drained monotheism
of all content.  But saying yes is absurd precisely because there
are things about Roman mythology that makes it impossible to think
of the Roman gods as being aspects of one God.  They fight each
other, among other things.

You say that many of the ideas that I mention are also present in the
OT prophets.  Of course.  I don't claim that Christians say things
that contradict the OT.  However in the OT there is a sense in which
God is a mathematical point.  We know what he wants us to do because
he sent a prophet to say "Thus says the Lord".  We know he loves us
because he revealed that fact to us.  But in Christ we believe we see
God.  So we are no longer dependent upon messages about him.  However
that doesn't mean that what we see is different from what had been
revealed before.  I don't doubt that the patriarchs of the OT knew
God.  I don't even doubt that there are Jews now who do.  I think they
would have a lot to gain if they came to know Christ, but I'm not
interested in disproving other people's religions or their
relationships to God.  I'm sorry if I implied that it is impossible
to believe in God's love without believing in the Trinity.