You’re trying to draw an inference from the Nicene creed here, which is fine, but you then need to accept the drawing of inferences from the NT. So what exactly is meant by “equal”?
Three distinct persons sharing the same substance. Nicaean trinitarianism. A view found nowhere in the NT.
The gospel of John actually contains differing christologies, perhaps reflecting source textual difficulties. The Logos seems to be an emanation of God which assumes an independent existence.
The gospel of Matthew has an incarnational christology but there’s no evidence Jesus existed prior to his birth.
Eusebius supported Arius. You knew that, right?
@Stephen
Eusebius defended Arius before the council against a charge of heresy (probably motivated by a desire to keep a united church), but he wasn’t a supporter of Arius’s against Alexander. He claimed Arius held the same views as Alexander and it was wrong to accuse him of heresy. But Eusebius confessed the Nicene creed.
When you say “three distinct persons sharing the same substance” is a view found nowhere in the NT how do you understand “substance”. The greek word is just derived from “to be”, and would translate directly as something close to “being”. If all things are from the Father and through the Son, or if the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father, or if no-one knows the Father but the Son and no-one knows the Son but the Father, mustn’t they be in some sense sharing the same “being”.
Eusebius offered his own creed at Nicaea which in many ways goes further than what was accepted. Speaking of the three his creed would have been “believing each of these to be and to exist, the Father truly Father, and the Son truly Son, and the Holy Ghost truly Holy Ghost, as also our Lord, sending forth His disciples for the preaching, said, Go teach all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost”. ie the Name of god, which expresses his underlying essence as “being” itself is shared by all three.
Of the Son his creed would have said “One Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God, God from God, Light from Light, Life from Life, Son Only-begotten, first-born of every creature, before all the ages”.
How would describe Eusebius’s proposed creed? Arianism or an early form of Christianity or neither?
Re John – the “Logos” is the word of God through which he made all things. God speaking “let there be light” is the Logos creating the cosmos. They are not two independent things – they are the same “being”. For Eusebius when Moses says God creates man in his own image, it is in the image of “word of God” that is meant.
For Matthew, god had a beloved son that he sent into the world as a result of the failure of previous prophets. This “son” is the Lord of the cosmos that John the baptist is preparing the way for, and it is this “son” who reveals the father to the world. For matthew no one would ever know the father if the son had not chosen to let them know.
How do evangelicals and Southern Baptists get comfortable accepting the doctrine of the trinity and original sin that so obviously developed over time within the orthodox church with significant contributors as Aquinas and Augustine while simultaneously condemning other doctrines stemming from the orthodox church? Did not Augustine see baptism as necessary to overcome original sin? If so, how do protestant faiths resolve their acceptance of original sin but not accept the cure and requirement of baptism? And how does the doctrine of cessation fit with the development of the doctrine of the trinity?
Eusebius defended Arius before the council against a charge of heresy (probably motivated by a desire to keep a united church), but he wasn’t a supporter of Arius’s against Alexander. He claimed Arius held the same views as Alexander and it was wrong to accuse him of heresy. But Eusebius confessed the Nicene creed.
Well there’s no doubt Eusebius was a wily old politician who knew on which side of the bread the Imperial Butter was spread. But you’re wrong in saying that his support for Arian was pure expedience. He had a long history with Arius. They had the same teacher, Lucian of Antioch. He continued to defend Arius after the Council, even to the point of briefly falling out of Constantine’s favor. Eusebius sponsered a synod at Bithynia which nullified Arius’ excommunication. And he was responsible for Athanasius being deposed and exiled. If anything was expedient it was his support for the Nicene Creed.
When you say “three distinct persons sharing the same substance” is a view found nowhere in the NT how do you understand “substance”.
In 25 words or less, right?
Hoo boy this here is a bottomless pit. I will take this opportunity to defer to the fine folks who maintain the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The site is written by professional academic philosophers.
** you do not have permission to see this link **
Feel free to read the entire article of course but at least the sections leading up to and including the views of Aristotle. I make no claims as to how familiar the early church Fathers might have been with Aristotle’s actual writings but it will provide some idea of the conceptual world they lived in and drew from.
** you do not have permission to see this link **
The SEP also has a nice looong entry on the Trinity.
How would describe Eusebius’s proposed creed? Arianism or an early form of Christianity or neither?
Eusebius and other non-Nicene thinkers would have still considered the Son and the HS as sharing the same substance as the Father but they susbscribed to what is called Monarchicalism. The Son and the Spirit shared the same substance but were hiearchically inferior to the Father. They were Subordinationists.
Look you’ve got to understand. Nicaea didn’t invent the idea of the Trinity or substance. Nicene Trinitarianism is one version of it as Arianism was another. The issue was the hierarchical status of the Son. Subordinationists believed the Son was inferior to and dependent on the Father. Nicene thnkers thought the Son was co-equal, eternally begotten. It’s all imaginary but over such trivial distinctions the history of the world depends.
**Well there’s no doubt Eusebius was a wily old politician who knew on which side of the bread the Imperial Butter was spread. But you’re wrong in saying that his support for Arian was pure expedience. He had a long history with Arius. They had the same teacher, Lucian of Antioch. He continued to defend Arius after the Council, even to the point of briefly falling out of Constantine’s favor. Eusebius sponsered a synod at Bithynia which nullified Arius’ excommunication. And he was responsible for Athanasius being deposed and exiled. If anything was expedient it was his support for the Nicene Creed.**
I think you mean Eusebius of Nicomedia. I was quoting Eusebius of Caesarea.
**Feel free to read the entire article of course but at least the sections leading up to and including the views of Aristotle. I make no claims as to how familiar the early church Fathers might have been with Aristotle’s actual writings but it will provide some idea of the conceptual world they lived in and drew from.**
But your claim is that they added greek philosophical concepts to the teachings of the NT. If there were concepts of Aristotle they weren’t aware of then these concepts aren’t relevant to the discussion. All that’s relevant is what the confessors of the Nicene creed understood by the term “one-substance” and if this understanding can be found in the NT.
**The Son and the Spirit shared the same substance but were hiearchically inferior to the Father. They were Subordinationists**
The Nicene creed itself can be described as “subordinationist”. The son is begotten of the father, not the other way round. The son was made man and suffered. Arianism had a different kind of “subordinationism” – the son was made by the father. There was a time when the father existed without the existence of the son. The son was made out of nothing. In one he is a subordinate ‘person’ in the other a subordinate ‘deity’. The problem with having a subordinate deity however is that that’s polytheism. They all believed the father and son were divine but how did they solve the problem of there only being one god?
**Look you’ve got to understand. Nicaea didn’t invent the idea of the Trinity**
Well exactly. The question is who did? When was the first time someone claimed the father son and holy spirit were all divine and that there was only one god?
Do you suppose Eusebius will ever again become a popular boys’ name?
Whether or not the early church Fathers were familar with Aristotle’s actual texts is irrelevant. The ideas and philosophical conceptions were current.
When was the first time someone claimed the father son and holy spirit were all divine and that there was only one god?
You’re still confusing two different concepts. All the writers of the NT thought Jesus was divine. All of them only believed in one God.
None of them had the Nicene view. I don’t know of a written expression of the Nicene view before Athanasius himself.
It’s related to Sebastian, so still lingers on there.
**All the writers of the NT thought Jesus was divine. All of them only believed in one God. None of them had the Nicene view.**
Why what part of Nicene were the missing?
Surely the only part that could reasonably be argued that they were missing is “of one-substance”.
But if we understand this as Eusebius did
“consubstantial with the Father then simply implies, that the Son of God has no resemblance to created things, but is in every respect like the Father only who begat him; and that he is of no other substance or essence but of the Father”
surely even that can’t be argued to not be found in the NT.
Why what part of Nicene were the missing?
We’re going around in circles Brenmcg. The part where The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three distinct co-eternal persons with one substance. The “highest” view in the NT is that The Son was a created emanation of The Father that assumed a separate existence. Paul doesn’t even go that far, thinking as he does that Christ was a pre-existent but created divine being who was exalted because of his sacrifice. Mark was an Adoptionist, what appears to be the earliest Christology. Jesus was a human being, born in the normal biological manner, who was made the Son of God because of his righteousness.
I’m sure I can get an argument from somebody but I don’t really see any passage in the NT where the Holy Spirit is considered a distinct person at all. In the NT the HS is still an aspect of the Father active in the life of the believing community.
Well.. that’s where I came in. Sooo…
Okay, let me play the devil’s advocate here:
I don’t really see any passage in the NT where the Holy Spirit is considered a distinct person at all. In the NT the HS is still an aspect of the Father active in the life of the believing community
How about the baptismal formula in Mt 28:19? The HS is juxtaposed with both the Father and Son in a way that makes little sense if the HS is just an aspect of the Father active in the life of the community. One finds similar Trinitarian formulae in the epistles, e.g. 2 Cor. 13:14.
Now you could go the Sabellian route and say the three names are synonyms that share a single referent, but that only works if you have adopted a pretty high Christology that makes Jesus identical to the Father. If you want to say Jesus is a creature–maybe a divine creature–distinct from the Father, you need to say the same thing about the Holy Spirit.
**We’re going around in circles Brenmcg. The part where The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three distinct co-eternal persons with one substance.**
But the previous counterargument was that “co-eternal” is not mentioned in the Nicene creed either. You can say it’s implied in the creed but then you’d have to allow for it to be implied in the NT (which it is).
**The “highest” view in the NT is that The Son was a created emanation of The Father that assumed a separate existence. Paul doesn’t even go that far, thinking as he does that Christ was a pre-existent but created divine being who was exalted because of his sacrifice.*
This is Paul’s conception of God – Romans 11:36 “For from him and through him and for him are all things.”
And this is the highest view of christ in the NT, 1 Cor 8 “for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things and in whom we are and there is but one Lord Jesus Christ through whom all things and through whom we are..”
ie God is the creator and sustainer of all things, and the father and christ both participate in that divine creation/sustaining. There is nothing higher in the Nicene creed nor since Nicaea.
**Mark was an Adoptionist, what appears to be the earliest Christology. Jesus was a human being, born in the normal biological manner, who was made the Son of God because of his righteousness.**
That just doesn’t correspond to the actual gospel of Mark. The actual gospel of Mark is about the son of God and Lord of cosmos who comes to earth to give his life as a ransom for many.
**I’m sure I can get an argument from somebody but I don’t really see any passage in the NT where the Holy Spirit is considered a distinct person at all. In the NT the HS is still an aspect of the Father active in the life of the believing community.**
In 1 John 2:1 Jesus is described as a paraclete/advocate for us with the father. In the gospel of John there is ‘another’ paraclete/advocate – the Holy Spirit. How else to describe this as anything other than separate personhood from the father and son?
The Holy Spirit is a “testifier”, an “intercessor”, it “knows the mind of God” and “searches all things even the depths of God”.
These are things which essentially define personhood. How could a non-person do these things? The NT never says Jesus or the father have personhood, it’s just the things they do that define them that way.
The best-known story of the baptism of Jesus is found in Matthew 3:13-17. However, a very interesting pericope appears in Mark:15-16, in which the resurrected Jesus says to his eleven apostles, “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whosoever does not believe will be condemned.” This wording seems to say that in order to be saved, one must first “believe” and [only] then be baptized. In trying to unpack this, one must bear in mind that Mark’s gospel was written about 40 years after the death of Jesus, and Matthew’s gospel was likely written about ten years after Mark’s. So, what happened before and after the death of Jesus and the baptism narratives in the New testament?
The Rite of Initiation in Judaism
Since Jesus was an observant Jew, how was baptism observed in Jewish life? The simple answer is that it was not observed at all. The word “baptism” comes from the Greek word baptismos, which means “ceremonial washing,” and is not mentioned in the Hebrew bible. However, there were purification rites in Jewish law that appear to be linguistically related to baptism. For example, the tvilah is an act of immersion in naturally sourced water and includes include immersion in water to establish ritual purity. However, baptism per se – as we understand the term – was not a Jewish ritual.
Perhaps a more important Jewish ritual was the bris milah found in the Torah where God commands Abraham that, “This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your seed after you; every man child among you shall be circumcised.” The circumcision was thus a physical token of the God’s covenant with the Jews, in which all males were to be circumcised eight days after their birth (Genesis:17:8-12). This was (and is) a ritual which continues to be observed to this day. Circumcision of the male was established as a rite of initiation. It is the expression of Jewish identity, and it is the point at which the boy is given his Jewish and secular names.
The Gradual Emergence of Christianity
Christianity, as both a community of faith and religion, did not exist during Jesus’ life. It emerged slowly and unevenly after his death. It began first as a community of faith in which the immediate followers of Jesus sought to understand the meaning of his death. As time went on, a community coalesced based the commentaries of those who knew him in life and who wanted to show others “the way,” as it was then called. Christianity as a religion was most likely established by Paul, who oddly enough, never personally knew Jesus while he was alive.
Paul first sought to articulate his understanding of Jesus in synagogues but was resoundingly rejected because his teachings were not orthodox. He then turned to non-Jews, where his arguments didn’t conflict with social custom at the time. Since the idea of many gods was widely accepted, his proto-Christianity didn’t offended non-Jewish sensibilities. However, there was a fundamental problem. Since Jesus was a Jew, it was essential that the movement in his name had to emerge from Judaism. In a nutshell, nascent Christianity had to overlap with orthodox Judaism and draw on its historical roots to give it both legitimacy and a vehicle for prophecy.
Christianity evolved through a process known as the routinization of charisma. This happens when the followers of a charismatic leader alter traditional boundaries by introducing a new (and usually challenging) paradigm. It is most effective after the death of the charismatic personality, because that person is no longer in a position to either speak for himself or to challenge novel ideas and beliefs developed in his name by his followers.
Covenants and Documentation
Jesus was clearly a charismatic leader, and his preaching was quite radical for his time. His teachings were embraced by his followers, who shaped them into an acceptable understanding of who he was and what his life and death meant. In order for “the way” became a religion, it needed its own systematic theology. To accomplish this, it needed beliefs that answered questions and set a new direction for the future. Most of all, it needed a new covenant. This new testament incorporated Paul’s letters and the church history provided by what are now the synoptic gospels. Interestingly, the names of those authors are eponymous and we really know very little about them.
A New Rite of Initiation
All social institutions are defined both by who is in them and who is not. Emerging from orthodox Judaism, a new rite of initiation had to be developed. That rite combined the existing Jewish rites of ritual purity and initiation: mikvah merged with bris to form baptism.
Sin and Redemption
From an institutional perspective, baptism by itself came to be seen as necessary but not sufficient: drawing on the Genesis story in the Torah, baptism had to include redemption from original sin combined with absolution by a new emerging Christian priestly class. Central to this process was affirmation: the initiate had to believe in Jesus as a savior (hence the wording in Mark:15-16.
To give it gravitas, Jesus himself had to be baptized, although in life no such ceremony existed, and according to the proto definition of Jesus, he was free of original sin. This is why Jesus is baptized by John the Baptiser in Matthew 3:13-17, and why it is presented at the outset of the new testament (covenant). Later Christology taught that baptism is a plenary indulgence for the remission of sin and a necessity for the ultimate entry into the Kingdom of God. It also gave the church control over its members, because its clergy were given the “keys to the kingdom.”
Josephus mentions John the Baptist and how his message of baptism was accepted by Jews contemporary to Jesus.
“John, that was called the Baptist: for Herod slew him, who was a good man, and commanded the Jews to exercise virtue, both as to righteousness towards one another, and piety towards God, and so to come to baptism; for that the washing [with water] would be acceptable to him, if they made use of it, not in order to the putting away [or the remission] of some sins [only], but for the purification of the body; supposing still that the soul was thoroughly purified beforehand by righteousness. Now when [many] others came in crowds about him, for they were very greatly moved [or pleased] by hearing his words, Herod, who feared lest the great influence John had over the people might put it into his power and inclination to raise a rebellion.”
So the soul is purified before the body in John’s baptism.
Paul already by the early 50s is talking about baptism of the spirit for christian’s “Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body”.
Why would you think baptism was not a part of christianity from the very earliest stages?
Ahhh…always happy to discuss the neglected and Mysterious Third Person of the Trinity. As Ehrman and others have pointed out, Trinitarian speculation was driven by Christology. Even at Nicaea the HS was mostly just tacked on. In the original Creed of 325 –
…And in the Holy Spirit.
It was only at Constantinople in 381 that the mention was (slightly) expanded to read-
And [we believe] in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life,
Who proceeds from the Father; who with the Father and the Son
together is worshipped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets.
Porphyry wrote
Okay, let me play the devil’s advocate here…
Matthew 28:19, part of the so-called “Great Commission” does seem to be a pretty straightforward Trinitarian statement.
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…
While it is lacking in none of our surviving manuscripts and so cannot simply be dismissed as a later interpolation, many scholars have thought so because it seems to contradict other statements in the gospel that would seem to more nearly reflect the views of the historical Jesus.
Matthew 10:5-6
These twelve Jesus sent out, charging them, “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
This would seem to preclude a world wide ministry, including of course a Pauline ministry to the Gentiles! (Rather worth hoping for an afterlife just to be present at that first interview between Paul and whoever wrote Matthew.)
Matthew 10:23
When they persecute you in this town, flee to the next, for truly I tell you, you will not have finished going through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.
See my comments above. At any rate if 28:19 is a later interpolation, as seems likely, it’s very contextlessness (is that a word?) frustrates interpretation. It must have been added fairly early but there were early Trinitarians who thought that the HS was not a person and was inferior to the Father and the Son.
2 Cor 13:14
May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
Once again no one is arguing that the concept of the Trinity did not precede Nicaea. But the only real reason to think Paul refers to the HS as a distinct person here is because of the convention of capitalizing Holy Spirit as a proper noun in all English translations. That simply begs the question. The thing to do is note how Paul uses the terminology in other contexts.
Philippians 1:19
…for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my salvation.
Galatians 4:6
And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our[or, your] hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”
Now in these verses is Paul referring to the HS, the third person of the Trinity? It seems unlikely. It would seem to refer to an active spiritual principle that flows from the Son, his essence or presence. So why should Paul’s references to the spirit of God or the spirit of holiness not be read in the same way? Admittedly we cannot read Paul’s mind (or his spirit) but we are still centuries from Nicaea. As Ehrman said these passages are not about the Trinity but are the passages that were eventually used to formulate the doctrine of the Trinity.
Hold on; no moving of the goal posts, now. Your original comment, which I challenged, was “I don’t really see any passage in the NT where the Holy Spirit is considered a distinct person at all. In the NT the HS is still an aspect of the Father active in the life of the believing community.”
You admit that Mt 28:19 seems “to be a pretty straightforward Trinitarian statement”. But the only retort I can find questions the authenticity of the passage. Is your rebuttal that Mt 28:19 doesn’t count as part of the NT? Even though–as you note–it is attested in all extant MSS?
As to 2 Cor. 13:14–I don’t think my argument rested on anachronistic capitalization. It rested on the parallelism. The pattern is “the something of the someone”; and one of those someones is the HS, side by side with “Jesus Christ” and “God”. It would be weird to say, “the x of one person, the y of another person, and the z of one aspect of that second person.”
I do not think I am “moving the goal posts”. What we have the least of in the documents of the NT is context. It seems important to glean as much as we can from the text. Trinitarian formulations are quite early but without context we have no way of gauging the ontological status of the members. If you take 28:19 in isolation you can determine nothing about the personhood of the HS. I simply point out that if it is a later interpolation – by no means a radical view among scholars – then it probably reflects a later level of interpretation. But of course it is part of the NT as we have received it.
My point about Paul is derived from the same idea of context. If in other places he refers to the spirit as a manifestation of God – or Jesus – then we should take that in consideration in interpreting 13:14. Surely not a radical idea. It does make a difference whether we refer to ‘the spirit of holiness’ rather than to the ‘Holy Spirit’. I hesitate to use grammatical arguments since I’m not an expert but it’s useful to remember that in Greek the word pneuma is grammatically neuter. I simply ask – a question not a claim – whether 13:14 would even be seen as a Trinitarian formulation to begin with without the oh so helpful efforts of English translators?
I have no problem saying that the NT is incoherent–expressing here and there mutually exclusive positions. The challenge was whether there is any passage in the NT that speaks of the HS as a person, and saying Mt 28:19 is an interpolation actually makes that case *easier* (assuming you admit that it still counts as part of the NT) because if it was an interpolation, the earlier authentic Matthew (into which it was interpolated) is no longer governing as context. The original Matthew may very well never have conceived of the HS as a person, but the person who added 28:19 did–indeed he may well have added 28:19 precisely to close a lacuna and give the gospel an explicit reference to the Trinity.
If in other places he [Paul] refers to the spirit as a manifestation of God – or Jesus – then we should take that in consideration in interpreting 13:14.
The personification (literal and ontological, not merely literary) of divine attributes (e.g., wisdom) was already a thing in certain Jewish quarters by the time of Paul. Such a personification of attributes is not that different from the literal, metaphysical personification of “God’s spirit” or “Jesus’s spirit” or “the spirit of holiness.” So just saying, Paul elsewhere speaks of the HS as the Spirit of God or the Spirit of Christ doesn’t settle the question. It is entirely conceivable that he spoke of “God’s spirit” in the same way Philo spoke of God’s Wisdom. And this passage where “God’s spirit” is juxtaposed with “Jesus Christ” and “God” would at the very least make it plausible that that is precisely what he had in mind.
I simply ask – a question not a claim – whether 13:14 would even be seen as a Trinitarian formulation to begin with without the oh so helpful efforts of English translators?
I haven’t looked recently, but I’d be very surprised to learn that 13:14 wasn’t being used as a trinitarian prooftext long before English was a language.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert