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The
Trinity - A Purely Scriptural Concept?,
No - and it never has been! |
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| Evangelion |
| Posted:
Jan 11 2003, 08:46 PM |
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Archived
Post
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- Cardinal
Newman, Roman Catholic:
It may startle those who are but acquainted
with the popular writing of this day, yet, I
believe, the most accurate consideration of
the subject will lead us to acquiesce in the
statement as a general truth, that
the
doctrines in question (viz., the Trinity and the
Incarnation) have never been learned merely from
Scripture.
Surely the sacred volume was never intended, and
is not adapted to teach us our creed; however certain
it is that we can prove our creed from it, when
it has once been taught us. . . . From the very
first, the rule has been, as a matter of fact, for
the Church to teach the truth, and then appeal to
Scripture in vindication of its own teaching.
Arians of the Fourth
Century (1833.)
__________________
- Bishop
Beverage, Anglican:
We are to consider the order of those persons
in the Trinity described in the words before
us in Matthew 28:19. First the Father and then
the Son and then the Holy Ghost; everyone one
of which is truly God. This is a mystery which
we are all bound to believe, but yet must exercise
great care in how we speak of it, it being both
easy and dangerous to err in expressing so great
a truth as this is. If we think of it, how
hard it is to imagine one numerically divine
nature in more than one and the same divine
person. Or three divine persons in no more than
one and the same divine nature. If we speak
of it, how hard it is to express it.
If I say, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost be three,
and everyone a distinct God, it is false. I may
say, God the Father is one God and the Son is one
God, and the Holy Ghost is one God, but I cannot
say that the Father is one God and the Son is another
God and the Holy Ghost is a third God. I may say
that the Father begat another who is God; yet I
cannot say that He begat another God. I may say
that from the Father and Son proceeds another who
is God; yet I cannot say that from the Father and
Son proceeds another God. For though their nature
be the same their persons are distinct; and though
their persons be distinct, yet still their nature
is the same. So that, though the Father be the first
person in the Godhead, the Son the second and the
Holy Ghost the third, yet the Father is not the
first, the Son the second and the Holy Ghost a third
God.
So hard it is to word so great a mystery aright;
or to fit so high a truth with expressions suitable
and proper to it, without going one way or another
from it.
Bishop Beverage, Private
Thoughts, Part 2, 48, 49, cited by Charles Morgridge
(1837), The True Believers Defence Against Charges
Preferred by Trinitarians for Not Believing in the
Deity of Christ. (Publisher: Boston: B. Greene.)
__________________
- J.
L. Mosheim (D.D.), Lutheran:
The subject of this fatal controversy, which
kindled such deplorable divisions throughout
the Christian world, was the doctrine of three
Persons in the Godhead, a doctrine which
in the three preceding centuries had happily
escaped the vain curiosity of human researches
,
and have been left undefined and undetermined by
any particular set of ideas.
Ecclesiastical History
(1863), from the translation by Murdock and Soames.
__________________
- Reverend
T. Mozeley, brother-in-law to Cardinal Newman:
I ask with all humbleness where the idea of
Threeness is expressed in the New Testament
with a doctrinal sense and force? Where is
the Triune God held up to be worshipped, loved,
and obeyed?
Where
is He preached and proclaimed in that threefold
character?
We read 'God is one,'
as too, 'I and the Father are one;' but
nowhere do we read that Three are one, unless it
be in a text long since known to be interpolated.
. . .
To me the whole matter is most painful and perplexing,
and I should not even speak as I now do, did I not
feel on the threshold of the grave, soon to appear
before the Throne of all truth. . . . .
Certainly not in Scripture do we find the expression
'God the Son,' or 'God the Holy Ghost.'
Whenever I pronounce
the name of God, simply, and first, I mean God the
Father, and I cannot help meaning that, if I am
meaning anything.
As quoted by H. A. Stannus
(1882), in A History of the Doctrine of the Trinity
in the Early Church.
__________________
- Rev.
James Hughes, Roman Catholic Priest:
My belief in the Trinity is based on the
authority of the Church: no other authority
is sufficient.
I will now show from reason, that the Athanasian
Creed and the Scripture are opposed to one another.
The doctrine of the Trinity is this:
-- There is one God in three persons; Father, Son,
and Holy Ghost. The Father is God, the Son is God:
and the Holy Ghost is God. Mind, the Father is one
person, the Son is another person, and the Holy
Ghost is another person. Now,
according to every principle of mathematics, arithmetic,
human wisdom, and policy, there must be three Gods;
for no one could say that there are three persons
and three Gods, and yet only one God. . . .
The Athanasian Creed gives the universal opinion
of the Church, that the Father is uncreated, the
Son uncreated: and the Holy Ghost uncreated -- that
they existed from all eternity. Now, the Son was
born of the Father; and, if
born, must have been created. The Holy
Ghost must also have
been created, as he came from the Father
and the Son. And, if so, there
must have been a time when they did not exist.
If they did not exist, they
must have been created; and therefore to assert
that they are eternal is absurd, and
bangs nonsense. Each has his distinct personality:
each has his own essence. How, then, can they be
one Eternal? How can they all be God? Absurd.
The Athanasian Creed
says, that they are three persons, and still only
one God. Absurd; extravagant! This
is rejected by Arians, Socinians, Presbyterians,
and every man following human reason. The Creed
further says, that our Lord Jesus Christ is the
Son of God and of man, 'not by conversion of
the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of the manhood
into God.' Now, I ask you, Did the Divinity
absorb the manhood? He could not be at the same
time one person and two persons. I have now proved
the Trinity opposed to human reason.
As quoted in Percy White's
The Doctrine of the Trinity (1913.)
__________________
- Catechism
of the Roman Catholic Church, Paragraph 237:
The Trinity is a mystery of faith in the strict
sense, one of the “mysteries that are hidden
in God, which can never be known unless they
are revealed by God
”
(Dei Filius
4: DS 3015). To be sure, God has left traces of
his Trinitarian being in his work of creation and
in his Revelation throughout the Old Testament.
But his inmost Being as Holy Trinity is a mystery
that is inaccessible to reason alone or even to
Israel’s faith before the Incarnation of God’s Son
and the sending of the Holy Spirit.
__________________
- F.
F. Bruce (M.A., D.D.), Evangelical Protestant:
People who adhere to sola scriptura (as
they believe) often adhere in fact to a traditional
school of interpretation of sola scriptura.
Evangelical
Protestants can be as
much servants of tradition as Roman Catholics or
Greek Orthodox Christians; only they
don't realise that it is "tradition."
From Bruce's personal
correspondence.
__________________
- Catechism
of the Roman Catholic Church, Paragraph 237:
The Trinity is a mystery of faith in the strict
sense, one of the “mysteries that are hidden
in God, which can never be known unless they
are revealed by God” (Dei Filius
4: DS 3015). To be sure, God has left traces
of his Trinitarian being in his work of creation
and in his Revelation throughout the Old Testament.
But his inmost Being as Holy Trinity is a mystery
that is inaccessible to reason alone or even
to Israel’s faith before the Incarnation of
God’s Son and the sending of the Holy Spirit.
__________________
The point of this exercise is not to say "There,
the Trinity is false because these men have
declared it false" (which they clearly have
not), nor "The Trinity is false because the
word itself does not appear in Scripture" (which
is irrelevant), but to demonstrate that nobody
can profess a belief in the Trinity on the basis
of Sola Scriptura (Scripture alone.)
Modern Protestants have yet to resolve this
epistemological dilemma. :)
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