narkissos,
To me, that's church history à la Eusebius, i.e., history as told by the prevailing 4th-century church leaders. Of course they will claim that what they now believe was always believed among "true Christians," reading their doctrine back into the previous generations of Church Fathers as much as they can, and dismissing the rest as "heresiarchs" instead of "Church Fathers".
I have to disagree. I am not looking at Church history from the viewpoint of Eusebius, but rather my own readings of most of the Ante-Nicene Church Fathers over the last 18 months. My observation is that they fought all sorts of heresies, but never did they fight a heresey that was in any way promoting anything similar to trinitarism. The Trinity is the result of all those years of fighting every other heresy.
Most (even confessional) church historians would rather admit that the earlier debates (with Gnosticism, modalism, etc.) were instrumental in gradually defining the 4th-century Trinity doctrine, and that this doctrine cannot be simply read back into earlier works, including the NT.
True, except in my case I am not reading back into earlier works. I am observing something quite contrary to Watchtower theology, which would have us believe that fiathful little early Bible students were fighting against the Trinity until they were overwhelmed by evil apostates, and that Arius was the last of the faithful little flock. Instead, there is nothing remotely supporting anti-trinitarism or anything resembling Watchtower theology. Further, the early Church fathers fought ideas that later could be called anti-trinitarian.
Well, you know that the correspondence between Ignatius and Mary is a very late fabrication, don't you?
http://www.ewtn.com/library/MARY/IGNATIUS.htm
I read the entire article, and nothing in it suggest any such fabrication. It instead strongly supports Catholic theology. Given that I have read all of Ignatius' autheniticated letters, I have found in them enough reference to support his views of Mary. And to date, nothing has been found which questions the credibility of Mary's letter back to Ignatius. Greendawn,
There is certainly no support in the Pauline letters or theology for the Trinitarian formulation of Athanasius and judging from those same letters there is no way that the early Christians believed in a Christ as an absolute equal of God unless we are to twist the meaning of verses like: "man is the head of woman and God is the head of Christ", and on many occasions Paul uses the expression: "the God of our Lord Jesus". Who is the God of Jesus? Obviously his Father. Yet Jesus is never called the God of the Father.
The early Christians did not really have a Bible for over two centuries. They had ocassional access to some of the letters of early Church Fathers, and some of the Apostles, the Old Testament, and other works. The Bible, as we know it was compiled by Trinitarians called Catholics (Roman and Orthodox). They decided what was inspired and what was not inspired. The relevance is that if the Trinity were an evil apostate doctrine, then why would God use Trinitarians to compile his inspired works. Rather, would he not prefer to have someone in Brooklyn decide what is inspired and part of the Bible canon? Jesus Christ, as a man on earth, was fully man, and as such he subordinated himself to the Father in every sense. So, in this way, Paul could speak of Jesus in a human view. St. Ignatius, a disciple of the Apostle John, an admirer of the Apostle Paul, groomed by the Apostle Peter to become Bishop of Antioch, called Jesus the
"True God" in one of his letters to the Apostle John, his teacher. How do we think that St. Ignatius would read the Apostle Paul's words? The problem we as ex-JWs have is that we have been so twisted by the Watchtower brainwashing machine, that we are unable to get past their rudementary junk.
And even John in Revelation has Jesus calling His Father "my God". Now surely Jesus is the Supreme Lord of mankind and indeed a very powerful God, much more so than satan the god of this world, but he is still subordinate to the Father, his head.
What verse in Revelation is that? Jesus, as taught in Trinitarian thought, willingly subordinates himself to the Father, just as the Holy Spirit subordinates himself to the Father. Jesus is unique in that he has both a Divine and Human level of subordination. He does not have to do so. The initial purpose of this post was not to defend the Trinity, but to see what ex-JWs who are Christian, but not Trinitarian, they think about the Holy Spirit. So far, there have been just few takers. It is obvious to me that a good number of ex-JWs do not know what they believe. I felt this way for a long time after I left the JWs. I was neutral toward the Trinity. Today, I do not necessarily support any definition, but I do understand that several of the early Church Fathers saw Jesus as both human and as the True God. They likewise treated the Holy Spirit as a person, though they did not formulate the exact definition of the Trinity until Nicea in 325 and Constantinople in 381, they nonetheless had those sentiments. They as much assured this by the creation of what became known as the Apostles Creed, which dates back to the early Chruch Fathers, and is the basis on which the Nicene Creed was constucted. Jim Whitney
