Dry patch

Apologies for not much activity on the blog. I am very busy on a whole bunch of things - one of which of course is the paper I am writing on Trinitarian Interpretations. My focus there at the moment is mainly a chapter on contemporary theology, which is difficult to simplify for making the basic point of this chapter, that of those who fly the Trinitarian flag, they disagree on  every point of what Trinitarian means.

My favorite topic however is the ensuing part on second and third century believers, who did not have  Trinity yet (they did have trinity, small "t"), so I do dip into that a bit. Actually, I have a history book that begins just after this period, and I think I will include a couple of points about the fourth century as well. I am convinced as I read through the 300s and the various letters, edicts, councils, etc. that the first council of Nicaea in 325 was not a full Trinitarian text. No way.

It occurs to me that I have not yet seen any book on the Church's steps through the 300s toward full Trinity. There is a need there, for sure.

Oh wow, I just wrote a little blog post! Hurrah!

Homoousians, homoiousians and homoians

There's three ancient Greek words you do not see every day! They are, however, extremely relevant to understanding what most Christians believe today in our history, and will lead us to a rather key question regarding the belief that prevailed; I will be asking both Stephen Holmes and Bart Ehrman for their points of view on this question (maybe I'll bug Dale Tuggy again too, but I am still waiting for another answer from him, so don't want to bug him too much). But first, let's define.

Homoousian is the belief-set that Jesus is of the same substance or essence as God the father [the one and only divine].

Homoiousian is the belief-set that Jesus is of similar substance or essence as God the father.

Homoian rejects any talk of substance with "its materialistic overtones, inevitably misleading and unhelpful" (Holmes, Quest For the Trinity, p 93), but still keeps the key iota there, that Jesus is like God.

In Holmes' book, the Homoiousian and Homoian distinction is not clearly developed, with Holmes concentrating mainly on the predominant Homoian belief in the fourth century. I am not sure why that is, and Wikipedia, for instance, is able to cite many more Homoiousians than Homoians - I suspect that the distinction is fine and not exclusive. What is fascinating is that in the fourth century, when these first monumental councils and creeds were coming together, it is not the Homoousian view that initially prevailed. Furthermore, the Roman Emperor Constantine who was absolutely pivotal in the 325 Council formation, was baptised several decades later by a Homoian (or Homoiousian) bishop, just before he died! It was by no means a foregone conclusion (Ehrman) that the Homoousians were going to win out, but in the end they did.

And so we get closer to our question - why was that? When I read Holmes' couple of chapters on this key period, and remember that Holmes is a deep and devout believer himself in God's sovereignty in this process, he points to a lack of unity among the Homoians. They were also too busy trying to dismantle the opposing view, without "doing theology" themselves. In the meantime, the Homoousians were very busy doing theology. Somehow, I still do not quite get it.

I am not certain that Ehrman's orthoparadoxes idea quite answers it either - this is Ehrman's idea that what prevailed was where certain "right" (ortho) beliefs of one belief-set were maintained and others rejected from several different 2nd and 3rd century Fathers, none of which were fully orthodox (and some, like Origen, positively condemned later), in order to gain a paradoxically, but ultimately purely orthodox view.

So let's see if I get lucky with some answers...

Acts 2 and the quest for the tri-personal God

My survey is making good progress and the results continue to intrigue me. It generally makes little sense revealing them as I go along as the  whole point is to try and appraise the big picture. However, as an exception, this evening, I want to peek into Acts Chapter 2, which many believers like me have heard a lot. This is mainstream, often-visited Scripture, if you know what I mean.

Remember that my project is to identify texts that seem to pave the way for something that will culminate in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan creed of 381, where the Father, Son and Spirit are all equally God, consubstantial and co-eternal. Where I get (or others have gotten) any whiff of that possibility, the passage gets noted according to a whole bunch of different criteria. I call these texts "suggestive". On the other hand, where I come across those kinds of texts that seem very alien to those fourth century descriptions of God, I note those also; I call these "dissuasive". Acts 2 is one of the most dissuasive chapters of the New Testament I have come across thus far. Here it is with my bolding:

22‘Fellow Israelites, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. 23This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. 24But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him. ....

30But he was a prophet and knew that God had promised him on oath that he would place one of his descendants on his throne. 31Seeing what was to come, he spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, that he was not abandoned to the realm of the dead, nor did his body see decay. 32God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it. 33Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear....

36‘Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.’

This is a highly dissuasive passage. I have a feeling Acts is going to be quite a dissuasive book actually.

[FYI I am no longer working on the on-line version of my survey as it is considerably slower than using offline tools, apologies]

There is garbage out there .... but how much?

There are two points of this post:
1. There is Christian junk out there, seriously stinky.
2. We are okay with scrutinising the Bible, but not the lenses.

Sadly, I just discovered this, which is sad, but I would say almost certainly symptomatic of other unconfessed elaborations. This is definitely not shining like stars among the warped and crooked as children of God, this is simply being warped and crooked generation. (Phil 2:15)". So the boy who came back from Heaven", did not go anywhere. He made it all up, and admits it, the dying, heaven, meeting Jesus, the Devil, being raised back to life... It casts doubt, of course, on other similar stories (which may of course be true). One thing is definite, they sell loads of copies, because people are desperate for the details of what happens next.

But there is also a quote from the teenager, now 16, who has made the confession. It is very simple and reminds me of my own quest. Never thought I would quote a sixteen year-old on here, but there we go!

"I said I went to heaven because I thought it would get me attention. When I made the claims that I did, I had never read the Bible. People have profited from lies, and continue to. They should read the Bible, which is enough. The Bible is the only source of truth. Anything written by man cannot be infallible."

"The Bible ... is enough... the only source of truth". Sounds like this young guy found God, who could be redeeming for himself something here.

There are so many Christians out there who basically, although sometimes extremely loosely, hold to a Nicene form of trinitarianism (and one key feature of this blog journey has been to discover that there are multiple forms of trinitarianism - in fact I myself am finding myself adopting a non-Nicene form of it, more on that soon). My hypothesis - and this is based in part on my own experience, but also observation of others - is that the Nicene cornerstone of the Christian faith (is it the cornerstone?) is preached, but it goes pretty much unscrutinised. THE BIBLE gets more scrutiny than Nicea, it is respectfully exegeted by believers, seeking to both determine true and original meaning while simultaneously careful to ensure the interpretation does not stray from other parts of Scripture. But not Nicea. That is because Nicea - and a whole procession of creeds, canons and councils to follow, that have to follow to try to clean up the mess made - are lenses through which we read scripture. We do not read the lenses.

We look at the Bible, we look through the creeds. Since the Bible reveals who God is, I am arguing that the lenses are seriously worth checking out if we are serious about knowing the guy[s] we are looking at. My grandmother at the end of her life lost nearly all of her sight. However, as it turns out, a certain tint of yellow lens helped her see contrasts better. She needed a lens, it was not like she could see without it. But the lens makes everything yellowish, and that is key information also. She knew that she couldn't argue that the tree really is yellow because she knew about her lens, its usefulness and its limits.

The creeds hold unbelievable and unidentified influence over us Christians today. Rant over - for now!