Development of
Trinity Doctrine: 100-325 AD
Post-Biblical
development of Trinity Doctrine: 100 AD - 325 AD Nicene era
Also see outline on: Progressive revelation between the Old and
New Testaments.
Watchtower Hypocrisy: Doctrinal development of
Jehovah’s Witnesses
Jehovah’s
Witnesses, like Catholics firmly believe in the false doctrine called "doctrinal development". Both groups promote and
believe things that are not found in the Bible. Both are "salvation by
organization" religions whose leaders have exclusive direct channels to
God. Jehovah’s Witnesses have a "new light" or "brighter
light" theology where God reveals through the Watchtower new things never
before understood. But herein lay the hypocritical paradox for Jw’s in regard
to Trinity doctrine. How can Jw’s reject "doctrinal development" of
the first 3 centuries yet teach they have the doctrinal development in the 20th
century? JW’s have
shot themselves in the foot so often in the last 75 years,
their only escape from absolute ridicule is to claim Doctrinal development like
the Catholics! Why
did God only start "new light getting brighter" when Charles T
Russell proclaimed it so in the late 1800’s. In other words, Jw’s firmly
believe in doctrinal development in the 20th century, how can they deny it at
Nicea in 325 AD? We of course maintain that doctrinal development is a false
teaching and believe the Bible is all sufficient and complete! Therefore, we do
not defend the Nicene creed or the Athanasius creed,
but are content to simply prove the deity of the uncreated Christ and the
personality of the Holy Spirit. But for Jw’s the rejection of Catholic
doctrinal development, while teaching the identical thing themselves, is
typical of the wild contradictions that exist within Watchtower theology and in
the end is utterly hypocritical!
The "slight of hand" tactics of
Jehovah’s Witnesses.
This slight of hand tactic is missed by most first time
readers (and all JW’s) of their book of deceptions, it is quite obvious to the
true students of the Bible.
We must take this time to make an important observation
about the "slight of hand" tactics of Jehovah’s Witnesses as they try
to convince you trinity is not taught in the Bible.
- When
one says, "the word trinity is not
found in the Bible." They are right, but neither
are a lot of the words people use in their religion, yet they think the
concept behind the word is taught in the Bible.
- When
one says, "trinity is not EXPLICITY taught in
the New Testament", they are right and all
Trinitarians would agree! The key word is "explicit", for it
means: "trinity, as defined in the Nicene or Athanasius creeds is not
taught in the Bible.". Explicit implies "ontology". But the Biblical trinity
(uncreated deity of Christ and personality of the Holy Spirit) are taught
in the scripture.
The quoted Trinitarian sources
who will say trinity is not "explicitly" taught in the New Testament,
all clearly state that "trinity" IS TAUGHT in the New Testament.
Why Trinity Doctrine developed from 100-325 AD?
- First it is
important to note that we do not defend anything but the concept of
trinity as taught in the New Testament. We do not defend the developed
Nicene concept of the trinity.
- The
necessity to formulate the doctrine
was thrust upon the Church by forces from without, and it was, in
particular, its faith in the deity of Christ, and the necessity to defend
it, that first compelled the
Church to face the duty of formulating a full doctrine of the Trinity for
its rule of faith." (New
Bible Dictionary, J. D. Douglas & F. F. Bruce, Trinity, p 1298)
- In
the immediate post New Testament period of the Apostolic Fathers no
attempt was made to work out the God-Christ (Father-Son) relationship in
ontological terms. By the end of the fourth century,
and owing mainly to the
challenge posed by various heresies, theologians went beyond the immediate
testimony of the Bible and also beyond liturgical and creedal expressions
of trinitarian faith to the ontological trinity of coequal persons
"within" God. The
shift is from function to ontology, from the "economic trinity"
(Father, Son, and Spirit in relation to us) to the "immanent" or
"essential Trinity" (Father, Son, and Spirit in relation to each
other). It was prompted chiefly by
belief in the divinity of Christ and later in the divinity of the Holy
Spirit, but even earlier by the consistent worship of God in a trinitarian
pattern and the practice of baptism into the threefold name of God.
By the close of the fourth century the orthodox teaching was in place: God
is one nature, three persons (mia ousia, treis hupostaseis). (The
Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea Eliade, Trinity, Vol 15, p53-57)
- In
the New Testament affirmations about the Son were largely functional and
soteriological, and stressed what the Son is to us. Arians
willingly recited these affirmations but read into them their own meaning.
To preclude this Arian abuse of the Scripture affirmations Nicea
transposed these Biblical affirmations into ontological formulas, and gathered the multiplicity of scriptural affirmations,
titles, symbols, images, and predicates about the Son into a single
affirmation that the Son is not made but born of the Father, true God from
true God, and consubstantial with the Father. (The
Triune God, Edmund J. Fortman, p 66-70)
- Economic
and essential trinity:- (a) The transition from the Trinity of experience to the
Trinity of dogma is describable in other terms as the transition from the
economic or dispensational Trinity [Greek] to the essential, immanent or
ontological Trinity [Greek]. At first the Christian faith was not Trinitarian in the a
strictly ontological reference.
It
was not so in the apostolic and sub-apostolic ages, as reflected in apostolic the NT and
other early Christian writings.
Nor was it so even in the age of the Christian apologists. And even
Tertullian, who founded the nomenclature of the orthodox doctrine, knew
as little of an ontological Trinity
as did the apologists; his still the economic or relative conception of
the Johannine and Pauline theology. So Harnack
holds, and he says further that the whole history of
Christological and Trinitarian dogma from Athanasius to Augustine is the
history of the displacement of the Logos-conception by that of the Son, of
the substitution of the immanent and absolute Trinity for the economic and
relative. In any case the orthodox doctrine in
its developed form is a Trinity of essence rather than of manifestation,
as having to do in the first instance with the subjective rather than the
objective Being of God. And,
just because these two meanings of the Trinity-the theoretical and the
practical, as they might also be described-are being sharply distinguished
in modern Christian thought, it might be well if the term 'Trinity' were
employed to designate the Trinity of revelation or the doctrine of the
threefold self-manifestation of God), and the term ‘Triunity' (cf. Germ.
Dreienigkeit) Adopted as the designation of the essential Trinity (or the
doctrine of the tri-personal nature of God). (Encyclopædia
of Religion and Ethics, James Hastings, Trinity, p 461)
- Of
course the doctrine of our Lord's divinity itself partly implies and
partly recommends the doctrine of the Trinity
... First, the
Creeds of that early day make no mention
in their letter of the
Catholic doctrine at all. They make
mention indeed of a Three; but that there is any mystery in the doctrine,
that the Three are One, that They are coequal, coeternal, all increate,
all omnipotent, all incomprehensible, is not stated and never could be
gathered from them. Of
course we believe that they imply it, or rather intend it.
(Essay
on the Development of Christian Doctrine, John Henry Newman, a cardinal by
Pope Leo III in 1879, 1878, p40-42)
- "The
ideas implicit in these early catechedical and liturgical formulae, as in the New Testament writers' use of the same dyadic and
triadic patterns, represent a pre-reflective, pre-theological phase of
Christian belief. It was out of the raw material thus provided by the
preaching, worshiping Church that theologians
had to construct their more sophisticated accounts of the Christian
doctrine of the Godhead." (J.
N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, p 90.)
- First,
it is important to note that the doctrine of the Trinity does not go back
to non-Christian sources [pagan], as has sometimes been supposed in the
past. There has been no lack of attempts to find the initial form of the
doctrine of the Trinity in Plato, or in Hinduism, or in Parsiism. All such
attempts may be regarded today as having floundered. It is another
question, of course, whether or not the church, in developing the doctrine
of the Trinity, had recourse to certain thought forms already present in
the philosophical and religious environment, in order that, with the help of
these, it might give its own faith clear intellectual expression. This
question must definitely be answered in the affirmative. In particular
cases the appropriation of this concept or that can often be proved.
Unfortunately, however, it is true that particularly in reference to the
beginnings of the doctrine of the Trinity there is still much uncertainty.
In this area final clarity has not yet been achieved. As far as the New
Testament is concerned, one does not find in it an actual doctrine of the
Trinity. This
does not mean very much,
however, for generally speaking the New Testament is less intent upon
setting forth certain doctrines than it is upon proclaiming the kingdom of
God, a kingdom that dawns in and with the person of Jesus Christ. At the
same time, however, there are in the New Testament the rudiments of a concept of God that was
susceptible of further development and clarification, along doctrinal lines. ... Speaking
first of the person of Jesus Christ ... In other passages of the New
Testament the
predicate "God" is without a doubt applied to Christ (A Short History of Christian Doctrine,
Bernard Lohse, 1966, p37-39)
- Additional
Notes http://www.bible.ca/trinity/trinity-Hastings.htm
In the quote: "At first the Christian faith was not
Trinitarian in the a strictly ontological reference. It was not so
in the apostolic and sub-apostolic ages, as reflected in apostolic the NT and
other early Christian writings." you will notice that each section they
leave out states the exact opposite of what they represent Hastings actually
saying! The discussion Hastings is having is well
above the average JW's ability to understand without reading a few good books
on the Trinity. Unfortunately, because JW's are forbidden from reading
"apostate materials" or "spiritual pornography" they will
never understand what Hastings is saying! But quite simply, Hastings is saying
what any informed trinitarian would say namely: That the word trinity is used
in two senses. 1 3
1.
Economic Trinity: First in a simple sense, as we find in the
Bible, where there is an affirmation of the deity of Christ and the personality
of the Holy Spirit combined with a mono-theistic view of God, but without any
explanation as to how the whole thing fits together and works. The simple
affirmation of the "threeness of God", seen at the Baptism of Jesus
and the baptism of every Christian, is the Economic Trinity
2.
Ontological Trinity: Second, the developed trinity or as the
Watchtower leaves out the, "strictly ontological" trinity, is
the theological explanation as to how a mono-theistic view of God can have
threeness. This second definition of trinity explains how the plumbing works
and goes far beyond a simple affirmation of the threeness of the mono-theistic
God.
It is the second definition of Trinity, the Ontological trinity,
as defined above, that every informed trinitarian will
admit is not in the Bible.
Further discussion about Watchtower’s use of False Dilemmas!
In absolute deception, the Watchtower writers,
who understands the difference between economic and ontological trinity,
create a false dilemma in the mind of the reader by projecting the thought that
if the Ontological trinity is not in the Bible, that Jesus is therefore a
creature and the Holy Spirit is nothing more than electricity! (The average
Jehovah’s Witness has never even heard of the terms "economic and
ontological trinity" but the Governing body knows better and aims at
deceiving by deliberately leaving that important qualifying term out of the
quote.1 2
Trinitarians agree! Surprise!
Trinity is used in this quote to refer to the creedal definition of the trinity
of the Nicene era 325 AD. All theologians (except for Arians/Jw’s and
modernists) agree that the New Testament and the earliest Christians viewed
Jesus as God.
Although Christians correctly
says that the "Nicene concept of Trinity" is not in the Bible, they
would say that early Christians and the scriptures clearly taught that Jesus
was both pre-existent and fully divine!
The deception is in creating a
false dilemma that attempts to say: If Nicene trinity is not taught in the
Bible then that proves the Bible doesn’t teach Jesus is divine.
But we could just as easily say
this to Jw’s: "The doctrine of the prohibition against blood transfusions
did not form part of the apostles' preaching, as this is reported in the New
Testament, but developed only in the 20 century, when transfusions were
invented!"
"The doctrine the church
being governed from one world headquarters did not form part of the apostles'
preaching, as this is reported in the New Testament, but first developed in 606
AD in Rome. (1300 years before Brooklyn and 2000 years to
late to be in the Bible!) Jw’s use this quote to create a false dilemma:
They think that this quote proves trinity wrong. Actually the quote is right
and the same encyclopedia openly states that Jesus was considered God in the
Bible!
Trinitarians agree! Surprise!
We also argue that Baptism, the Lord’s supper and the
second coming of Christ was not revealed to the Jews!
But that does not mean that
there were not pieces of Trinitarian theology that could only be discovered
under the light of New Testament revelation. For example Trinitarians could
say, "It seems unquestionable that the revelation of the mystery of Jesus
Christ of Nazareth, as the Rock that followed the Jews through the wilderness,
was not made to the Jews."
They dishonestly and
irresponsibly imply that if a doctrine is not found in the Old Testament, that
it must be borrowed from the Pagans. Using their own logic, they must conclude
that the Lord’s Supper and the second coming were borrowed from the Pagans!
Also see outline on: Progressive revelation between the Old and
New Testaments.