"From the middle of the second century a change began to take place in the outward circumstances of Christianity. Should the church take the decisive step into the world? Or ought she, on the other hand to remain as she had been at first, a society of religious devotees, separated and shut out from the world by a rigorous discipline?
"It was natural that warning voices should then be raised in the church against secular tendencies, that the well-known counsels about the imitations of Christ should be held up in their literal strictness before worldly Christians, that demands should be made for a restoration of the old discipline and severity, and for a return to apostolic simplicity and purity.
"The church as a whole, however, decided otherwise. She marched through the open door into the Roman state. With the aid of its philosophy she created her new Christian theology."
How this doctrine of the Trinity was developed during this period is frankly explained by a trinitarian writer in the Encyclopedia Britannica, 9th edition, Volume 23, page 240, article "Theism" -
"The propositions constitutive of the dogma of the Trinity - the propositions in the symbols of Nice, Constantinople and Toledo relative to the immanent distinctions and relations in the Godhead - were not drawn directly from the New Testament, and could not be expressed in New Testament terms. They were the products of reason speculating on a revelation to faith.
"They were only formed through centuries of effort, only elaborated by the aid of the conceptions and formulated in the terms of Greek and Roman metaphysics.
"The evolution of the doctrine of the Trinity was far the most important fact in the doctrinal history of the church during the first five centuries of its post- apostolic existence."
This is a trinitarian's description of conditions in the Catholic Church during the time the doctrine of the Trinity was being formulated and imposed.
In the same chapter, Section 5, Mosheim says:
"The doctors who were distinguished for their learning explained the sacred doctrines after the manner of Origen (see notes below on Origen) on whom they fixed their eye - in accordance with the principles of that philosophy which they learned in their youth at school, namely, the Platonic philosophy as corrected by Origen.
"Those who wish to get a full insight into this subject may examine Gregory Nazianzen among the Greeks and Augustine among the Latins who were regarded in the subsequent ages as the only patterns worthy of imitation, and may be fitly styled, next to Origen, the parents and supporters of philosophic or scholastic theology. They were both admirers of Plato."
Originally posted by galveston75 http://www.cogwriter.com/trinity.htm
Yes, it is true that we can not fully explain God. God and Christ both are a mystery, but the church has done the best job they could. So it is up to us to either believe it or not. But since the Trinity Doctrine of God is a central doctrine of the Church, it seems to me that one is not truly a Christian, if He denies it and spreads false rumors about it. Remember that Christ did delegate some of His authority to be exercised here on earth to His church.
Originally posted by galveston75 Not one thing said there is untrue. If you think so lets see your side of the story with historical evidence...
I'll be waiting.
Trinity explained
28 Jun '13 00:16
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