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Source: (consider it) Thread: Purgatory: How much of Western Christianity is Unitarian?
ken
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quote:
Originally posted by andreas1984:
And much of Western Christianity is unitarian.

Me:
quote:

Er, no it isn't. Hardly any is. A tiny fraction.

quote:
andreas1984:
Unitarian not as "universal salvation", but as opposed to "trinitarian". By the way, I have checked about that with a few converts from Western denominations like Anglicanism to Orthodoxy... They said that this was the case with the vast majority of Western Christians...

I know what "unitarian" means!

Universalism, the idea that God will in the end triumph completely over sin and death and hell, has a long and honourable history as a minority opinion in the Churches. East as well as West.

Unitarianism, anti-trinitarianism, is much much rarer and is not at all a common teaching among Western churches.

If your converts from Anglicanism think it is Unitarian they aren't really "from" Anglicanism because they never really knew it. Or was it just something "like" Anglicanism? I wonder which that could be?

[ 10. August 2007, 00:08: Message edited by: Duo Seraphim ]

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Ken

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El Greco
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Both from Anglicanism and other denominations. But that's not the issue here.

Let me pose the question concerning the Triad this way:

Do you (pl.) accept along with the Saints of the second ecumenical council that God is not one numerically speaking? Or do you believe that God is one numerically speaking?

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Jason™

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Ken, they were homoiousians -- of a similar substance as Anglicans.

I couldn't resist, and now I regret it.

[ 27. November 2006, 22:46: Message edited by: Professor Kirke ]

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El Greco
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Lol. They couldn't have been because all humans are co-essential and homoousians. [Razz]

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saysay

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My Unitarian Universalist parents would, I'm sure, like to know whether they are a teeny tiny little denomination dying because of liberal theology, a great big massive threat to ECUSA and, by extension, the Anglican communion, or a cult that has succeeded in taking control of the national media in order to promote their godless liberal social values.

If someone could figure that out and get back to me, I'd appreciate it.

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FCB

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quote:
Originally posted by andreas1984:
Do you (pl.) accept along with the Saints of the second ecumenical council that God is not one numerically speaking? Or do you believe that God is one numerically speaking?

Could we have a quote from the second ecumenical council denying that God is "numerically one"?

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ken
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Start with a brief rundown of the main groups of Western Christians.

There certainly are Unitarian churches who call themselves Unitarian. They are minuscule in number in Britain. I believe they are more influential in the USA, and most particularly in central Europe - Hungary is probably the country with the largest proportion of them but they exist in Russia, Poland and the Balkans. But in tiny numbers compared with the mainstream churches. A few hundred thosuand members worldwide I suspect.

About half, maybe rather more, of churchgoing Christians are Roman Catholics. Who of course are Trinitarian, holding to the Creeds.

About a third of the rest are in the mainstream connexional Protestant denominations - the Lutherans, the Reformed/Presbyterian tradition, the Moravians, the Anglicans, the Methodists, a few newer and smaller offshoots. All of them hold to the trinitarian Creeds. Although there have been individual unitarians and the odd unitarian congregation among them (especially the Presbyterians in the 19th century) they have never been near to taking over those denominations. There are also theologians in those churches who are so liberal and non-realist that questions of the trinity simply go awy, because they hardly believe in a separate god at all. But they are - even in ECUSA! - a minority of a minority, and less influential than a generation ago.

The rest include all sorts of independent churches - various kinds of Baptists, Independents, Pentecostals and so on. Most of these don't use creeds but are in practice Trinitarian. Most of the Baptists (a higher proportion of them now than two hundred years ago) and (in Britain if not elsewhere) most of the independent evangelical churches and "New" churches are in the Reformed/Calvinist tradition and most are explicitly Trinitarian.

There are some Independent churches, especially a few breakaways from the Presbyterians, who are explicitly unitarian. But they are a minority of a minority. I would be surprised if they were as many as one percent of churchgoers here in Britain.

Quite a lot of Pentecostalists (and some of the Charismatic evangelicals) might be a little dodgy on trinitrianism, but its not so much that they are unitarian as that they simply don't bother to ask those questions very often. They have little or no repeated liturgy beyond hymns and choruses and a few Biblical prayers, and they don't use creeds, so they don't so much reject the Trinity as not think about it a lot.

The largest non-trinitarian denomination worldwide is probably the Jehovah's witnesses, who are in effect Arian. I suspect they have more numbers than all the capital-U Unitarians put together.

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Ken

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ken
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quote:
Originally posted by Professor Kirke:
of a similar substance as Anglicans.

[Killing me] [Killing me] [Killing me] [Killing me]

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Ken

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IngoB

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quote:
Originally posted by FCB:
quote:
Originally posted by andreas1984:
Do you (pl.) accept along with the Saints of the second ecumenical council that God is not one numerically speaking? Or do you believe that God is one numerically speaking?

Could we have a quote from the second ecumenical council denying that God is "numerically one"?
Indeed, the council seems to be rather for a "numerically one" God. I assume we are talking about the
quote:
First Council of Constantinople - 381:

<...> No copy of the council's doctrinal decisions, entitled tomos kai anathematismos engraphos (record of the tome and anathemas), has survived. So what is presented here is the synodical letter of the synod of Constantinople held in 382, which expounded these doctrinal decisions, as the fathers witness, in summary form: namely, along the lines defined by the council of Nicaea, the consubstantiality and coeternity of the three divine persons against the Sabellians, Anomoeans, Arians and Pneumatomachi, who thought that the divinity was divided into several natures; and the enanthropesis (taking of humanity) of the Word, against those who supposed that the Word had in no way taken a human soul. All these matters were in close agreement with the tome that Pope Damasus and a Roman council, held probably in 378, had sent to the East. <...>

A letter of the bishops gathered in Constantinople [Namely the synod of Constantinople in 382]

<...> It tells us how to believe in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the holy Spirit: believing also, of course, that the Father, the Son and the holy Spirit have a single Godhead and power and substance, a dignity deserving the same honour and a co-eternal sovereignty, in three most perfect hypostases, or three perfect persons. <...>

<Canon> 5
Regarding the Tome [this tome has not survived; it probably defended Paul of Antioch] of the Westerns: we have also recognised those in Antioch who confess a single Godhead of Father and Son and holy Spirit.



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CorgiGreta
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In the U.S., at least, even the most wild and wooly liberals in the mainline churches give lip service to the Trinity. Bishop Spong, for example, is a self-described Trinitarian. It may be Mother, Redeemer, and Sanctifier or some other peculiar variation, but it is still always three.

Greta

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Timothy the Obscure

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Since the Nicene Creed begins:

quote:
We believe in one God...
I'm a little puzzled by your claim that unitarianism means believing that God is numerically one.

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Zach82
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Suffice to say Anglicans are fully trinitarian and that the Nicene Creed is recited at every mass in the Episcopal Church USA.

Your friends that told your we're unitarians were wrong, Andreas.

Zach

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CorgiGreta
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Off the top of my head, I would guess that the Holy Trinity is invoked at least six times in the course of Mass in TEC/The ECUSA. The number would become even greater if Trinitarian references in hymns and other service music are included (not to mention sermons).

Greta

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Chapelhead

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Our services usually start "Grace, mercy and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ be with you". I suspect that this proves that Anglicans are di-theists.

And so was Saint Paul.

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CorgiGreta
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Not that this necessarily proves anything, but it is interesting to note that the first verse of the first hymn during the investiture of the new Presiding Bishop (an historic event with wide media coverage) ends in an affirmation of the Trinity.

Greta

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Phos Hilaron
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[Roll Eyes] Andreas, you're beginning to sound like the Muslim apologists I encountered at University. Next you'll be asking us if 1 + 1 + 1 = 3 or 1.

However, from perusing Wikipedia (usual disclaimers apply) it appears that a chunk of Pentecostalism is Unitarian or Sabellian after a fashion.

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Matt Black

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Oneness Pentecostals and card-carrying Unitarians aside, I think the rest of Western Christendom is Trinitarian; those Anglicans who've been subsumed within The Plot™ and then claimed that Anglicanism is Unitarian have obviously been reciting the Nicene Creed with their fingers crossed behind their backs.

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Father Gregory

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Well, although this is anecdotal, I think that most if not all of my tutors at Salisbury and Wells Theological college in the early 80's were either closet or explicit Unitarians, (even the more Catholic examples were neo-Nestorian I suspect). They (and that generation) were past masters at "mouthing the Creed" and effectively denying it in public.

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GreyFace
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quote:
Originally posted by Father Gregory:
I think that most if not all of my tutors at Salisbury and Wells Theological college in the early 80's were either closet or explicit Unitarians

In what sense? There's the "only the Father is God" Arian version and there's the modalist version, but I've also come across the "don't scare the horses" version that some priests and/or ministers come out with when (for want of a better term) nominal Christians are present. I wouldn't say that's Unitarianism, but it's certainly openly to a variety of interpretations [Biased]
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leo
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quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
Suffice to say Anglicans are fully trinitarian and that the Nicene Creed is recited at every mass in the Episcopal Church USA.

Your friends that told your we're unitarians were wrong, Andreas.

Zach

The Anglican Communion is Trinitarian but that does not mean that every Anglican who recites the Creed actually believes it.

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Phos Hilaron
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Actually, I must confess that modalism crops up in Evo circles from time to time. I've been guilty of it myself [Hot and Hormonal] . I think this is more due to theological sloppiness than out-and-out heresy.

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Father Gregory

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Dear Greyface

No, I mean the "only the Father is God" version ... and even "Father" is a switchable metaphor.

Another old favourite was that only the death of Christ had any faith significance.

My New Testament tutor (in a genuine attempt to be more orthodox) once said that the doctrine of the Trinity became necessary as a way of saving the Church from the tritheistic possibilities of its own early experience .... in other words, it was a re-assertion of monotheism. Arguably on that score, I suppose, when the experience has gone the Trinity isn't necessary for the defence of monotheism either ... which is, I think what we see in many departments of post-critical Protestant scholasticism ... Barth and his admirers notwithstanding.

[ 28. November 2006, 10:15: Message edited by: Father Gregory ]

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El Greco
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The question here is whether God is a unity or a union. The Orthodox voted for the latter, condemning the former.

quote:
Originally posted by Timothy the Obscure:
Since the Nicene Creed begins:

quote:
We believe in one God...
I'm a little puzzled by your claim that unitarianism means believing that God is numerically one.
...in one God the Father! The "one" in that place of the Creed is about the person of the Father alone, and not about the entire trinity.

1+1+1=3

re IngoB:

In your quotes from the council's take it is said that the Godhead is one... Well, human nature is one also. One human nature, but not one human numerically speaking. (1)

re FCB:

I can't find the exact quote right now... The closest I found online is this from Gregory the Theologian: "I do not want to propose that the Divinity is a spring which never ceases (this is in distinction to Plotinus), because this comparison involves a numerical unity."


(1) Gregory from Nyssa, for example, writes:

quote:
yet their [humans'] nature is one, at union in itself, and an absolutely indivisible unit, not capable of increase by addition or of diminution by subtraction, but in its essence being and continually remaining one, inseparable even though it appear in plurality, continuous, complete, and not divided with the individuals who participate in it.


[ 28. November 2006, 10:31: Message edited by: andreas1984 ]

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ken
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quote:
Originally posted by leo:
The Anglican Communion is Trinitarian but that does not mean that every Anglican who recites the Creed actually believes it.

Nor every Greek or Russian.

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Ken

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ken
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quote:
Originally posted by Father Gregory:
My New Testament tutor (in a genuine attempt to be more orthodox) once said that the doctrine of the Trinity became necessary as a way of saving the Church from the tritheistic possibilities of its own early experience .... in other words, it was a re-assertion of monotheism.

That might well be the case. So what? The historical emergence of the doctrine of the Trinity is hardly the same thing as the Trinity itself.

The earliest Christians "sang hyms to Jesus as to a god" yet also as Jews asserted along with Jesus that there was one God, the Father, creator of Heaven and Earth. Within a few generations they were praying to the Father and also Christ "who reigns with thee and thy Holy Spirit".

Far be it for me as a mere Protestant to say this, but in this case it does look as if the lirurgy came first. It was a hundred years befoe there was any explicit doctrine of the Trinity (formulated against gnostics and Sabellians and suchlike). "Honest guv, we are monotheists really". And another three hundred to get from there to Chalcedon.

Assuming its all true, then the Fathers must have beem led over time into a fuller understanding of the Trinity by the Holy Spirit working in the Church, slowly persuaded of the truth by their historical and liturgical experiences, as well as by argument, prayer, and study. (Either that or they made it all up).

The orthodoxy or otherwise of your NT tutor doesn't depend on whether he imagines that St. Luke or St. Jude had an explicitly Trinitarian faith.

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Ken

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El Greco
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Even the Prophets worshiped the trinity, but the first Christians grew into understanding? The fullness of our faith is revealed in theofanies, it is not a matter of the intellect to decide.

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FCB

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quote:
Originally posted by andreas1984:
I can't find the exact quote right now... The closest I found online is this from Gregory the Theologian: "I do not want to propose that the Divinity is a spring which never ceases (this is in distinction to Plotinus), because this comparison involves a numerical unity."

Clearly Gregory is distinguishing Christian monotheism from Plotinian talk of "the One," not from the belief that the divine nature is one.

Gregory himself gets into a bit of trouble in this regard when he implies that Father, Son and Spirit could be thought of as being three members of a common genus, which would be polytheism. I don't think Gregory explicitly avowed this, but I do think he hadn't thought through the implications of all his examples.

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El Greco
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FCB, the divine nature being one does not mean that God is one numerically speaking! Human nature is one, but humankind is not one numerically speaking.

Do you see the three divine persons as a unity or a union?

By the way, Gregory was not unique on that. All the fathers of the first and the second council argued in lines similar to his... Didn't they say that we reject the Jewish teaching along with the heathen teaching? If God is a unity, then the Jewish teaching wasn't to be rejected!

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ken
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quote:
Originally posted by andreas1984:
Even the Prophets worshiped the trinity, but the first Christians grew into understanding?

Well yes. Do you really disagree with that? Why?

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Ken

L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.

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El Greco
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Because you cannot go past Pentecost. The fullness of the faith comes at each one of us' personal Pentecost. The wholeness of our faith is nothing more and nothing less than theofany. We can only repeat Pentecost in our lives, not go past that... Of course, the words we use to describe that transcendent experience differ, but the experience itself is one and the same from Moses to Abraham, to Isaiah, to James during Christ's Transformation, to the 12 in the Pentecost, to Paul on Damascus, to Stephen right before his death, etc etc...

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Spawn
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quote:
Originally posted by andreas1984:
FCB, the divine nature being one does not mean that God is one numerically speaking! Human nature is one, but humankind is not one numerically speaking.

Do you see the three divine persons as a unity or a union?

By the way, Gregory was not unique on that. All the fathers of the first and the second council argued in lines similar to his... Didn't they say that we reject the Jewish teaching along with the heathen teaching? If God is a unity, then the Jewish teaching wasn't to be rejected!

Wow, I don't even understand the Trinity. I believe in it but to me it's a total mystery. Its reassuring to know that the Orthodox have got it all wrapped up into such a neat package.
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El Greco
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Playing with words, aren't we? I didn't say anything about understanding the trinity. I did say about understanding what "one divine nature in three persons" means.

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Spawn
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quote:
Originally posted by andreas1984:
Playing with words, aren't we? I didn't say anything about understanding the trinity. I did say about understanding what "one divine nature in three persons" means.

No, I think you are playing with words. I don't think it's possible to understand what 'one divine nature in three persons' means or to explain it adequately. And then to suggest that it's a distinction between 'unity' or 'union' that tips a person into unitarianism is way too simplistic for my liking.
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El Greco
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I find it impossible to understand what the trinity is. I find it, however, ignorant to claim that what the phrase "one nature in N persons" means is impossible to understand. I also find acceptance of statements that are not understood quite questionable. How can you accept what you do not understand?

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Ξέρω εγώ κάτι που μπορούσε, Καίσαρ, να σας σώσει.

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I_am_not_Job
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Sorry Andreas, you really sound like you're slipping into polytheism. 3 in 1 AND 1 in 3.

I think a lot of nominal Anglicans are simply deists (Christian by geography and culture), but to imply the West is not trinitarian by your definition is a bit of a sweeping statement and, TBH, offensive.

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El Greco
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Well, you say I sound like slipping into polytheism... Why can't I say (some of) you (pl.) sound like slipping into unitarianism?

[ 28. November 2006, 12:38: Message edited by: andreas1984 ]

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Ξέρω εγώ κάτι που μπορούσε, Καίσαρ, να σας σώσει.

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anteater

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Originally I just thought Andreas was speaking through his hat, but suddenly I may see what he means.
So the question that would settle it is: Is Orthodoxy the same, albeit probably more philosophically exppressed, as Herbert W Armstrong's Radio Church of God which teaches that there are three spearate persons of the Father Son and Holy Spirit who are distinct persons just as in our normal usage. The unity is what HWA calls the "God Family" and what he means is that there is a single divine nature possessed by those three persons.
Since HWA has normally been considered heretical, as a tri-theis in the (small) orthodox West, it may explain Andreas' viewpoint. Of course we wouldn't label the Orthodox as heretical tri-theists, because you only do that sort of thing to upstart Americal religions, not Hallowed Traditions. But they look pretty similar to me.

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Father Gregory

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Ken

The difference is that you will not survive as a teacher in the Orthodox Church (ordained or not) if you do not both believe and teach the faith as received. Sadly, many Anglicans and others manage that with impunity and without sanction ... but I do not now expect that to be any different.

Anteater

You haven't studied enough patristics to make a comment like that I fear.

[ 28. November 2006, 12:41: Message edited by: Father Gregory ]

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hatless

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quote:
Originally posted by Father Gregory:

Anteater

You haven't studied enough patristics to make a comment like that I fear.

Brill!

(Actually, he just has made that comment.)

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My crazy theology in novel form

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Laura
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quote:
Originally posted by andreas1984:
Well, you say I sound like slipping into polytheism... Why can't I say (some of) you (pl.) sound like slipping into unitarianism?

You can say that, if you like of course. The point is, some of us are saying (as I would with Spawn) I don't understand the trinity, nor do I expect to, but as am adherent of a trinitarian faith tradition, I accept it and ponder it, as a mystery. It was Fr. Gregory and Josephine who told me long ago that the Orthodox teach that such things are mysteries to be contemplated rather than facts to be understood. I trust that contemplating rather than understanding does not make me a Unitarian. Or else say say can tell his parents that, indeed, the Unitarians are the greatest threat to Christendom since the Moors, and we should all run and hide.

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Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence. - Erich Fromm

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FCB

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quote:
Originally posted by andreas1984:
Human nature is one, but humankind is not one numerically speaking.

Andreas,

This is polytheism. If Father, Son and Holy Spirit are only one because they are members of the genus "divine beings", then the Christian God is one only in the sense that the Greek pantheon is one. Gregory was simply using a potentially misleading analogy when he compared the persons of the Trinity to Adam, Eve and Seth (Fifth Theological Oration, para. 11), as he seems to realize (Ibid., para. 15).

I'm willing to grant that the divine nature is not "numerically one" if by this one means that it is countable -- as if there could conceivably be two divine natures.

quote:
Do you see the three divine persons as a unity or a union?
This strikes me more as a slogan than a genuine question. You would have to define the terms for me. To me a "union" implies independent entities that join together to form a whole that is accidental to its members. Obviously the Trinity is not this sort of "union." So I guess, given that it's the only other choice offered, I would have to go with door number 1, though I myself have no great stake in the term unity.

quote:
Didn't they say that we reject the Jewish teaching along with the heathen teaching? If God is a unity, then the Jewish teaching wasn't to be rejected!
So far as I know, Christian have never rejected Jewish teaching on divine unity, but only the Jewish denial of the Trinity of persons.

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ken
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quote:
Originally posted by andreas1984:

  • (1) I didn't say anything about understanding the trinity.
  • (2) I did say about understanding what "one divine nature in three persons" means.
  • (3) I find it impossible to understand what the trinity is.
  • (4) I find it ... ignorant to claim that what the phrase "one nature in N persons" means is impossible to understand.
  • (5) I ... find acceptance of statements that are not understood quite questionable. How can you accept what you do not understand?


This does not compute, Captain.

[ 28. November 2006, 13:13: Message edited by: ken ]

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Ken

L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.

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FCB

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Just to add grist to the mill, here's a quotation from an Orthodox theologian:
quote:
This issue [of the relation of persons to essence] has become painfully perplexing in recent decades on account of the misguided willingness of many modern theologians to accept, and employ, the distinction that Theodore de Regnon so modestly, but so influentially, claimed to have discovered between Western and Eastern styles of trinitarian theology: the tendency, that is, of Latin thought to proceed from general nature to concrete person (the latter as a mode of the former), so as to accord priority to divine unity, and of Greek thought to proceed from person to nature (the latter as the content of the former), so placing the emphasis first on the plurality of divine persons. There is some minimal truth to this distinction perhaps, at least as regards the wery early difference of Alexandrian subordinationism from Roman modalism, but it is more myth than reality, and has served little purpose in recent years but to feed Eastern polemic and Western insecurity, and to distort the tradition both share.

David Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite, 169-170



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Gwai
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I don't think you can ever figure how much of Christianity is unitarian becaue many of us don't have a clue what we believe or what you'd call it. I'd say there's one God and humans understand (or rather don't understand) three aspects of him. I think someone told me I was heretical last time I said that. Whatever.

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A master of men was the Goodly Fere,
A mate of the wind and sea.
If they think they ha’ slain our Goodly Fere
They are fools eternally.


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El Greco
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No, I do not think that the "one nature" is all there is to Orthodox monotheism...

One nature plus the union makes the fullness of Orthodox monotheism.

John, in his gospel, writes that Christ and the Father are one, and that He prays so that we can also be one like He and the Father are one. In this text, the term "one" refers to a union, and not to a unity. It is this union, this alleloperichorisis (fr. Gregory, what is the English term for that?) that makes Orthodoxy monotheist.

Alleloperichorisis along with one nature...

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Ξέρω εγώ κάτι που μπορούσε, Καίσαρ, να σας σώσει.

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Father Gregory

Orthodoxy
# 310

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Circumincession.

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Fr. Gregory
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ken
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# 2460

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Is this is a new meaning of the word "English" of which I was previously unaware?

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Ken

L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.

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Matt Black

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Speak English, boys!

More seriously, "Three Persons in One Divine Nature" works for me and pretty much always has done.

[Bah! CP with Ken during a post-signing session at work]

[ 28. November 2006, 15:11: Message edited by: Matt Black ]

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"Protestant and Reformed, according to the Tradition of the ancient Catholic Church" - + John Cosin (1594-1672)

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Father Gregory

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No, it's here.

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anteater

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# 11435

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quote:
You haven't studied enough patristics to make a comment like that I fear.
Is there a reference for the spiritual gift of arrogant condescension? I though I was asking for a clarification, not making a statement, and was trying to further the debate.

If the question is felt not to deserve a response, then I'll go away.

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Schnuffle schnuffle.

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