you'll have to do better than that AQ to convince me... need more evidence? I have loads more where that came from.. you seem to be doing the old dictator tactic atm, repeat the same things over and over until it sinks into other peoples heads... too bad for you the original scrolls still exist huh..
Even your appeal to psalms 89:27 does not work - for one big reason: David was still a king! part of the group he was "Firstborn" of
The Firstborn of the kings of the earth or in other words the "highest"!
So no my examples are not "irrelevant" as though David does have pre-eminence over the kings of the earth - he is still a king!
"The appeal to “firstborn of death” or “firstborn of the poor” in the LXX is contextually irrelevant, as these are idioms and poetic expressions, not technical terms for ontology." - don't need to be technical terms for ontology - Just proves my point that ALL called "Firstborn" are part of the group they are firstborn of.
"Justin’s description of souls or the cosmos as “begotten” borrows the Platonic idiom of generated realities but carefully distinguishes the Logos as the one through whom those generated realities come to be."
- however Justin uses "begotten" in the sense of coming into existence.. something you deny had that meaning at that time... really, you sure about that.
" yet he is equally clear that the Son is begotten “before every aeon” and is therefore eternal" - eternity works two ways AQ, which direction did he mean?
"if Scripture had wished to call the Son “first-created,” it possessed the unambiguous adjective πρωτόκτιστος but instead chooses πρωτότοκος, a title of primacy and inheritance. " - if they had wished to call the Son "God" explicitly they could have done this also.. unambiguously..
If they wished to define 3 persons in God, they could have done this also.. Paul does similar with "members" of the "body" - it wasnt out of Pauls linguistical range & Paul was well smart enough to describe God in this way if he wanted too..
& Clement does explicitly call Wisdom (Who he identifies as Christ) "First-created"
+ the distinction between "Firstborn" and "First-created" did not exist in the time of the apostles and came about later.. So why would they honor a distinction later invented to support the trinity? that they had no knowledge of. Better question: How could they honor a distinction they had no knowledge of?
When the earliest recorded usage of "First-created" was in the time of Clement.. after the apostle died out..
If no such distinction exists between 2 words, one will always become more dominantly used... that is a harsh fact, we have many parallels in the English language.
Gay & Happy is just one example - Gay took on a new meaning yes, but even when Gay was used for such a meaning it had priority over happy to a large extent.
[from memory: older books from when I was a kid almost exclusively use it as such, along with other terms that are not "happy".]
limiting the scopes of evidence to the NT and Nicea is a self-serving purpose, please cite one other credible source that does this.. your methods are not scientific or for open & honest research, they are to fulfil a fantasy of yours