Nicene Trinitarianism was the solution to the problem that developed when the divine status of Jesus rose to the point where he was being worshiped on the same level as God the Father. Then, don’t you simply have two gods? Not an issue for a pagan polytheist but for avowed monotheists, a big problem.
What’s not sufficiently appreciated about Arius and other christological subordinationists was that this was precisely the issue for them. Why they objected to the Nicenes. They were strict monotheists. Only God the father was supreme. As exalted a divine status as Jesus must have had, nevertheless he was distinct and subordinate. How could it be otherwise? The Holy Spirit, that mysterious third, was an emanation of the Father, like Chokhmah in the OT. (Some ante-Nicene trinitarians thought that the HS had a distinct personality, some did not).
So, Nicaea was intended to preserve monotheism as well as the full divine status of Christ. Three distinct persons who share one substance. But did it also perform another function, reconciling a profoundly polytheistic culture to the new thinking about the divine? Many scholars have pointed out that there were already monotheistic tendencies in the paganism of the third and fourth centuries. It’s common to read references in pagan writers to “God” or “The God” in distinction to the pervasive cults of town and country. A philosophically sophisticated yet pious pagan intuited that Zeus wasn’t the ultimate source of all being. Is it going too far to say that Nicene Trinitarianism had both a Christian and a pagan foundation? (I suppose this is also the time to point out that both “person” and “substance” were technical terms derived from Neoplatonist philosophy.)
What I would like to offer is the possibility that rather than being an absolute rejection of polytheistic paganism, Nicene Trinitarianism functioned as a bridge over which pagan culture could mutate into Christian culture. Two problems were solved. The divine status of Christ was reconciled with monotheism and Christianity was reconciled with polytheistic paganism by absorbing key philosophical concepts and emphasizing tendencies already present.
Nicene Trinitarianism was an utterly brilliant intellectual concept. It remains so even if like me, you don’t actually believe in it.
Christianity was reconciled with polytheistic paganism by absorbing key philosophical concepts and emphasizing tendencies already present.
I’m no sure I’m seeing how it is reconciling Christianity to paganism itself. Do you mean, not so much paganism, but the monotheistic philosophy that had developed among the elite of pagan culture?
It is an interesting historical question, how philosophical monotheism of pagan culture played into Arianism: I recall the argument being made that Arianism got much of its life from the mass conversion (partly of convenience, following Constantine’s conversion) of philosophical monotheists. Arianism would–the argument went–have made far more sense to them than the inscrutable mystery imposed by Nicean orthodoxy.
I’m no sure I’m seeing how it is reconciling Christianity to paganism itself. Do you mean, not so much paganism, but the monotheistic philosophy that had developed among the elite of pagan culture?
It is an interesting historical question, how philosophical monotheism of pagan culture played into Arianism: I recall the argument being made that Arianism got much of its life from the mass conversion (partly of convenience, following Constantine’s conversion) of philosophical monotheists. Arianism would–the argument went–have made far more sense to them than the inscrutable mystery imposed by Nicean orthodoxy.
Well on a functional level Nicaean Trinitarianism served to reconcile those who saw the ultimate expression of divinity in oneness and those who saw its ultimate expression in multiplicity. The mystery is not in each but how both can be true at once.
I can see where there might be a temptation to syncretism among pagans in response to Arianism that would not be present in Nicaean thinking. The insistence by Christians that you had to choose makes more sense when the Son is of the same substance as the Father.
I haven’t studied philosophy since college (4th c BCE), but it seems to me Plato (the One) and Aristotle (Prime Unmoved Mover) were basically monotheists, ‘though I think one could also argue that Aristotle was a pantheist. Is is commonly accepted that these two fonts of Western philosophy were essentially monotheistic?
Well here my pedantic tendencies reveal themselves. Technically, theism is the belief in a personal god who exists outside of and apart from creation. In that sense I would not describe either Plato or Aristotle as monotheists. Colloquially of course theism has come to mean any belief in a god or gods. I have heard Hindus describe their religion as monotheistic even though they believe in multiple divinities because supporting it all is an ultimate impersonal nondual reality.
Personally (ha!) I am not inclined to argue too much about this. I would point out however that there does seem to be differing cultural psychologies at work between polytheism and monotheism, and between personal and impersonal conceptions of the divine.
I balked at that narrow definition, but upon looking it up, I found that is how it is generally understood, e.g., Britannica describes it as “the view that all limited or finite things are dependent in some way on one supreme or ultimate reality of which one may also speak in personal terms,” and it contrasts theism with deism (“Deism closely resembles theism, but for the deist God is not involved in the world in the same personal way”).
Likewise, Oxford, “Belief in the existence of a god or gods, especially belief in one god as creator of the universe, intervening in it and sustaining a personal relation to his creatures.”
Merriam-Webster, however, gives definitions closer to what I am used to. “belief in the existence of a god or gods
specifically : belief in the existence of one God viewed as the creative source of the human race and the world who transcends yet is immanent in the world.”
But Oxford > Webster.
I’m not contesting that this is a common definition of theism, just wondering if those ‘theists’ who insist that God cannot be defined can accept any definition of theism.
Well I would say that Christians see God as transcendent, beyond all categories, hence the need for the Incarnation. In the West defining Theism as belief in a Personal God is almost a tautology since we tend to value personality above all else. Not so the further East you go and it has not always been so here. Greek concepts of “Fate” and “Destiny” would seem to qualify as impersonal.
But I think that’s not what you’re asking.
I would say that there is a tension between a transcendent deity and a personal deity. Wouldn’t personality be one of those qualities that a transcendent deity would be transcendent of?
As a non-believer who nevertheless finds impersonal concepts of the divine compelling, let me approach it this way. God, by definition, is absolute and non-contingent. God cannot be otherwise. That which can be different than what it is, i.e., contingent, cannot be absolute. But I can conceive of a divinity without personality. So how can personality be absolute and non-contingent?
I think the Personal God is a holdover from the ancient Mythological God, a God who has wishes and desires. A God who is not absolute. Yahweh. Zeus. Odin. Shiva. I would go so far as to claim that the Absolute, non-contingent God must inevitably track towards impersonality. The Ground of Being has no wishes or desires, lacks for nothing. It does not do, it is. This is the tension one can detect between the God of the Scholastics and the traditional Christian God. A tension that Western Christian theologians have been noticeably reluctant to resolve.
What most westerners think of as Hinduism, Advaita Vedanta, exemplified (though not originated) by the philosopher Shankara, posits Brahman as the Undifferentiated Absolute. Personal Gods exist but they are not ultimate reality. They are faces for That Which Has No Face. Secondary, contingent. Each person, by contemplating the Self within stands in a relationship to Brahman in no way inferior to that of the Gods. (This also has the advantage of being able to incorporate all manner of disparate sects and cults into a larger synthesis, showing that the Easterners were also politically astute.)
Even Homer’s gods were subject to Moira.
Apophatic theology, even in it’s more conventional forms, eg, in the thought of Thomas Aquinas, denies that God can be defined. God is not a species in a genus. Anything you can conceive of as absolute, divine, or God is, by definition, not God.
Understood. This manner of reasoning brings out my inner Logical Positivist. There is a sense for me that this kind of intellectual construct is simply unintelligible. If by definition the existence of a god has no existential component then how is it to be distinguished from no god at all? A difference which makes no difference is no difference.
As a side note I point out that this god is not the Yahweh of the OT nor the god of Jesus or Paul.
As John Scotus Eriugena would say, ‘God is NoThing’.
So what is the functional difference between God is NoThing and God does not exist?
By existential component I mean that God’s existence has some impact on the world. If the existence of God has no impact on the world then there is no difference between being NoThing and being Nothing.
Depends on how you one understands the meaning of Yahweh. The author of Exodus 3,14 seems to have understood it as a designation for one who refused to be named. I will be who I will be. YHWH then roughly translates as “He who will be.” Also forbade images. That is a step toward apophatic theology. The trick for the mystic is to avoid obscurantism. Hence a very profound kind of agnosticism that avoids the irrelevant but not the rest of reality. It may start out as fun, like the ontological argument for the existence of God, but ends in the dark night of the soul.
But there is an older strand of tradition where Yahweh walks in the Garden, has lunch with Abraham, wrestles with Jacob and shows Moses his hindparts. As the conception of God expands and is exalted then we begin to see the appearance of intermediatory figures. At no point is there simply no access to the divine. Even the transcendent God of Second Isaiah acts in the world.
Near as I can tell, God only has a conscious effect on the world through the actions of those who believe in him.
Which demonstrates rather clearly that god has no existence except as a mental construct. That of course highlights the chief problem with religion. If the gods would appear I would defintely be interested in what they had to say. But they never do. All we ever see are their self-appointed ministers and lackeys claiming to speak for them. God told me you all should give me your money and do what I say! Yeah right.
No second-hand revelation! When the Lord of Hosts speaks to me out of the whirlwind then I’ll be interested in what he has to say. Hopefully though it won’t be Yahweh or Allah. Infinitely preferable would be White Tara sitting on a lotus blossom. Or perhaps the Egyptian Nut, skin the color of star-spangled midnight!
I don’t doubt that God is indeed a mental construct for most believers and atheists alike, but a mental construct is one thing that apophatic theologians insist that God cannot be! As my agnostic paternal grandfather used to say to my Catholic zealot grandmother, “How can the finite mind understand the Infinite?”
But how can apophatic theologians make any statements about God’s nature whatsoever? I cannot understand the nature of gravity but I know it exists by its effects. I can accept that a God in some sense would be by definition beyond my conception. But if this God has no effects whatsoever then how do you determine that there is anything there?
Consider the irony of a God who must first exist in order for us to say we can’t say anything about him?
(Of course a Christian would say that their very religion was God’s “effect”.)
It’s my own personal psychology perhaps but I’m much more drawn to the apophatic mystics than to the theologians. To experience God as a divine darkness or as a divine emptiness seems rather a different thing. And that experience doesn’t prevent them from writing reams of material, poetry, music, visions, etc. I’m currently reading a 13th century Dutch mystic named Hadewijch of Brabant. She wrote poetry and vision journals which sometimes read like she’s having rapturous sex with Jesus. Needless to say she was somewhat controversial although she seems to have escaped the Inquisition. Her dominant emotion though is intense desire for the divine and suffering as she’s turned away from God because the divine is beyond her ability to receive.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert