Part Two
The Bible teaches that God is immaterial and incorporeal. Pagan philosophers maintain that God is material and corporeal. Trinitarians decided to go with the pagan philosophers instead of God on this count.
The first step in the Trinity was that they redefined God in terms of substance. God had always defined Himself in terms of attitudes and actions, never in terms of “substance.” When God called Himself “I am that I am” He was describing Himself in non-material terms. He was saying He is what He does. It is the same with the word Yahweh, which literally means “the Self Existent One”. It means “Self Existent” but the grammatical number is always singular, therefore, in English, it would be a “sin of omission” to deny the fact that God names Himself as emphatically singular in number.
But this wasn’t acceptable to Trinitarians. They can’t conceive of an immaterial God. In fact, Tertullian, the “father of the Latin Church”, admitted that he couldn’t “divide” God into persons if He wasn’t a substance.
“He (the word) became also the Son of God, and was begotten when he proceeded forth from Him.
Do you then, (you ask,) grant that the Word is a certain substance, constructed by the Spirit and the communication of Wisdom? Certainly I do. But you will not allow Him to be really a substantive being, by having a substance of His own; in such a way
that he may be regarded as an objective thing and a person, and so be able (as being constituted second to God the Father,) to make two, the Father and the Son, God and the Word. For you will say, what is a word, but a voice and sound of the mouth, and (as the grammarians teach) air when struck against, intelligible to the ear, but for the rest a sort of void, empty, and incorporeal thing.
I, on the contrary, contend that nothing empty and void could have come forth from God, seeing that it is not put forth from that which is empty and void; nor could that possibly be devoid of substance which has proceeded from so great a substance, and has produced such mighty substances: for all things which were made through Him, He Himself (personally) made. How could it be, that he Himself is nothing, without whom nothing was made? How could he who is empty have made things which are solid, and he who is void have made things which are full, and he who is incorporeal have made things which have body?” Tertullian, Against Praxeas, Chapter 7
Tertullian was right about one thing: it is impossible to divide the “persons” of the “Trinity” into “persons” without first defining God in pagan terms of “substance”.According to Justin Martyr, Plato described God as “a fiery substance.” This notion is different than saying, “our God is a consuming fire” (Deuteronomy 4:24), which refers figuratively to the action rather than the substance.
“For Plato…says that the most high God exists in a fiery substance. But Aristotle…overthrows the opinion of Plato, saying that God does not exist in a fiery substance: but inventing, as a fifth substance, some kind of aetherial and unchangeable body, says that God exists in it. Thus, at least, he wrote: ‘Not, as some of those who have erred regarding the Deity say, that God exists in a fiery substance.’” Justin’s Hortatory Address to the Greeks, Chapter 5, 31 & 36
“Rather than presenting at this point some formulations from the Fathers, I will first
go back to the fountainhead of substance metaphysics, Aristotle, from whom the Fathers inherited the concepts in terms of which they set out their substantialist formulations.” William P. Alston, “Substance and the Trinity,” in The Trinity: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Trinity, 180.
Here we see that Trinitarians do admit that the “Fathers” of the Trinity did inherit concepts (not just words)
from the substance metaphysics of the pagan philosopher Aristotle. This is a contemporary admission that the actual source of the Trinity is pagan philosophy.
And here are the folks who originally gave them the idea for the three persons in the one “substance” of their Trinity, it was the antichristian Gnostics:
“The
Gnostic terminologies within the Æon speculations were partly reproduced among the Catholic theologians of the third century; most important is it that the Gnostics have already made use of the concept ‘homoousios’; see Iren., I. 5. I,… I.5.4,… I.5.5…In all these cases
the word means ‘of one substance.’ …Other terms also which have acquired great significance in the Church since the days of Origen (e.g., agénnetos) are found among the Gnostics…Bigg. (1. c. p. 58, note 3) calls attention to the appearance of
trias in Excerpt. ex. Theodotus § 80, perhaps the earliest passage.” Adolf von Harnack, History of Dogma, I, 259: “The Attempts Of The Gnostics To Create An Apostolic Dogmatic, And A Christian Theology; Or, The Acute Secularising Of Christianity,” § 3, footnote 357.
“
The word homoousios, usually translated ‘consubstantial’ or ‘coessential,’ appears to have been
introduced by Gnostic Christians of the second century …It originally meant, ‘
having the same substance,’ ousia; and in the majority of cases at least, the notion of
ousia that is implied is either material or conceived in physical terms. It thus means roughly, ‘made of the same…kind of stuff.’” Christopher Stead, Divine Substance, 190.
“…the second century…
pagan writing…the Poimandres …could conceivably be
the earliest text which contains the word homoousios. The writer describes a revelation given to him by the god Poimandres, which explains the origin of the universe and of man; he draws freely on the book of Genesis,
but boldly reinterprets its theology so as to present a fairly complex hierarchy of heavenly beings resembling those of the Gnostics. At the head of the hierarchy stands the supreme God whose name is Mind, Nous, and who is also characterized as ‘life and light’; next to him comes the Logos, who is described as ‘Son of God’…the Logos…was united with the Demiurge Mind,
for he was of the same substance (homoousios) …” Christopher Stead, Divine Substance, 201-202.
“Surprising though it may seem,
there is total agreement among scholars on at least one point. Adolf von Harnack, Ignacio Ortiz de Urbina, Luis M. Mendizábal, George Leonard Prestige, Peter Gerlitz, Éphrem Boularand, John Norman D. Kelly, Frauke Dinsen, Christopher Stead—
all without exception agree in claiming that the Gnostics were the first theologians to use the word homoousios …The late Aloys Grillmeir wrote: ‘The early history of the Nicene homoousios shows us that the theologians of the church were probably
made aware of this concept, and thus of the doctrine of emanation, by the Gnostics .’” Pier Franco Beatrice, “The Word ‘Homoousios’ from Hellenism to Christianity,” 248.
“Now with the heresy of the Ariomaniacs {i.e. “Arians”}, which has corrupted the Church of God...
These then teach three hypostases, just as Valentinus the heresiarch first invented in the book entitled by him 'On the Three Natures'. For he was the first to invent three hypostases and three persons of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and he is discovered to have filched this from Hermes and Plato” (Source: Logan A. Marcellus of Ancyra (Pseudo-Anthimus), 'On the Holy Church': Text, Translation and Commentary. Verses 8-9. Journal of Theological Studies, NS, Volume 51, Pt. 1, April 2000, p.95).
“
In order to articulate the dogma of the Trinity, the Church had to develop its own terminology with the help of certain notions of philosophical origin: " substance," " person," or " hypostasis," "relation" and so on” (Catechism of the Catholic Church. Imprimatur Potest +Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. Doubleday, NY 1995, p. 74).
“It must be admitted by everyone who has the rudiments of an historical sense that the doctrine of the Trinity formed no part of the original message. St. Paul did not know it, and would have been unable to understand the meaning of the terms used in the theological formula on which the Church ultimately agreed” (God in Christian Experience, p. 180).
“The evolution of the Trinity:
No responsible NT scholar would claim that the doctrine of the Trinity was taught by Jesus or preached by the earliest Christians or consciously held by any writer of the NT. It was in fact slowly worked out in the course of the first few centuries in an attempt to give an intelligible doctrine of God” (The Image of the Invisible God, SCM Press, 1982, Dr. A. T Hanson, Professor of Theology University of Hull)
https://wwwrealdiscoveriesorg-simon.blogspot.com/2016/12/did-catholic-church-create-doctrine-of.html“The Church Fathers’ conception of
the Trinity was a combination of Jewish monotheism and pagan polytheism, except that to them this combination was a good combination.. In fact, it was to them an ideal combination of what is best in Jewish monotheism and of what is best in pagan polytheism[/b], and consequently they gloried in it and pointed to it as evidence of their belief.
We have on this the testimony of Gregory of Nyssa, one of the great figures in the history of the philosophic formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity.
His words are repeated by John of Damascus —the last of the Church Fathers.
The Christian conception of God, argues Gregory of Nyssa, is neither the polytheism of the Greeks nor the monotheism of the Jews, and consequently it must be true. “For the Truth passes in the mean between these two conceptions, destroying each heresy, and yet, accepting what is useful to it from each. The Jewish dogma is destroyed by the acceptance of the Word and by belief in the Spirit, while the polytheistic error of the Greek school is made to vanish by the unity of the nature abrogating this imagination of plurality” (Oration Catechetica, 3) Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Church Fathers, pp 361-363
“The formula ‘one ousia in three hypostaseis’
was crafted on the workbench of theologians; and even for them, it is more of a convenient abbreviation than the last word that might be uttered…In standard Greek, and in Christian theological usage for much of the fourth century, the words ousia and hypostasis were synonyms. The history of the formula is the history of the growth of a distinction in meaning between them, and the fact that the Cappadocians had to struggle to explain the distinction shows that it was anything but obvious.” Joseph T. Lienhard, “Ousia and Hypostasis: The Cappadocian Settlement and the Theology of ‘One Hypostasis’,” in The Trinity: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Trinity, 103.
This is just another Trinitarian confession. The doctrine of the Trinity was “
crafted on the workbench of theologians.” This is a confession that says, in simpler words,
they made it. They created it. They formulated it. They invented it. These are all verbs that mean basically the same thing: something crafted on a workbench. They went to their workshop and—with a hammer and chisel—they hammered out their god. They took the raw material of conflicting biblical and pagan thoughts and then carved and chiseled, and glued and nailed, taking away something here, adding something else there, until they could somehow join them into one. They hoped they could mold ideas in the Bible into something more in line with their pre-conceptions. That is precisely how they formulated unbiblical definitions of another God and another Christ from the ones spelled out in the Bible. Having made this new “golden calf,” they determined to worship it, and they named it “the Trinity doctrine.”
Continued in Part Three