Were the early Christians "Trinitarians"?

Faith & Science Conversation
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I wrote a chapter about this once… quite a few years ago. Tertullian coined the word trinitas, so before him (155-240) it’s not quite right to say anyone was a Trinitarian.

But I think @LM77’s comments are right that functionally people were Trinitarian. And I think this is one of the best examples of how practice shaped or informed theory in the lives of the first generations of believers. They didn’t have the concepts for explaining their experience, but they couldn’t deny that experience of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The earliest formulations of doctrine include these, even though they don’t explain them. It took a few centuries (and the invention of some more terms) for Christian theology to explain what was experienced.

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It would probably be fair to say that a lot of them were at least somewhat confused or muddled in their thinking. Most understood that Jesus was a human like themselves, yet that that God has somehow became flesh, visited us, and reconciled us to Himself through Jesus. Many were probably not sure how to reconcile these two propositions, but were probably also content to simply abide with the mystery.

They were thus equally unclear how there could be just one God, and yet Jesus spoke of Himself and the Father as both one and distinct - and then talked about this “Holy Spirit” or “Comforter” as well. Again, most were content just to abide with the mystery.

Given that we are talking here about things that really are beyond our capacity to fully understand, I am not at all sure that we can fault them for being content to abide with the mystery. This apparently worked for most of them just fine.

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The end of Matthew’s gospel has Jesus telling the disciples to baptise in the name of F,. S and HS, and Paul sometimes makes reference to God is a way that. could support a Trinitarian formulation. It left the church with puzzles how to fit it all together that led to the later definitions.
Paul Tillich, very liberal, in his Systematic Theology, defended the Trinity on the grounds that the formulations were necessary to safeguard the doctrine that the presence of the divine and the New Being to be given to us had come into the world.

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One of my reasons for belief, came from existentialism. For I was definitely a fan, particularly of Camus. It might seem strange given all his scathing criticisms of Christianity but from the ashes of Camus’ criticism of Christianity and theism, I found a better understanding of theism which could rise like a phoenix from them. After all, what I had from childhood was nearly always criticism of Christianity rather seeing anything of value in it.

The link to this topic is in my search for an understanding of God which best serves that purpose of a faith that life is worth living. This is enhanced by a God who can interact with us more completely and thus a personal God with at least the same capacities for relationship that we have ourselves – to be starkly contrasted with a cold universe of mathematical laws which cares nothing about us. In the doctrine of the Trinity we have a God with an excess of personhood rather than any lack of it as we see in many other notions of God. This is perhaps one reason why Paul Tillich’s notion of the God as the “ground of being” doesn’t appeal to me very much – far more philosophical and conceptual than personal.

At the same time, the skepticism and criticism many have had for the idea of a personal God (a group including many I have admired like Albert Einstein) is also answered by the doctrine of the Trinity. To many our notions of a personal God seemed like we were anthropomorphizing the universe and projecting an image of ourselves upon it. But the God of the Trinitarian doctrine is not a God made in our own image at all – nor like anything else in our experience either – so strange and contrary to our common sense expectations of the way things should be, that it reminds me of quantum physics. And that is one of the things infuses a sense of reality into it – yeah because reality IS very much like that, contrary to what we expect and what seems sensible and plausible. It stretches our rationality rather than just reaffirming the limits of our usual complacent use of reason.

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Actually there was some hint of that — Tertullian etc —and the Judaism of the periods around the time of Christ also had some binary sense of God.

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I like your point #2 (the first section) above…

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If Jesus had not made Himself equal to God, He would not have been crucified. Those were the charges.

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Jesus did not make himself equal to God. For gave his son all of his power and authority , and the son eventually gives it back.

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There are hints of polytheism among the early Christians including the New Testament passages.

1 John 3:9 No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God.

Greek “seed” is the word for sperm. This is saying that people born of God have Gods seed implying divine nature.

1 Peter 1: 23 For you have been born again, not of perishable seed , but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.

Same concept.

2 Peter 1: 4 Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature , having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

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No this is false.Stop spreading false facts.This is not polytheism.Its the doctrine of Theosis in the Eastern Orthodox church.Also this is not a historical approach rather than the thoughts of the writter.

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What’s the difference between polytheism and theosis? We are talking many Gods existing in both instances, are we not? Or are we just expanding the Trinity in which case why call it Trinity?

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Explain to me what theosis is.Or you know stop spreading lies.Also maybe read a thing or two about the doctrine.They werent that naive to have polytheistic ideas in their one God religion.Its irational to even say that

Also finding articles spread over the internet are not any different than YEC facts.So actuall studies and historical facts could be helpfull instead of random pastor beliefs
Maybe if that was a uni page i would be interested.After i read that i realized not only the limited knowledge he had of the doctrine but also the lack of evidence or historical ones have

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https://orthodoxwiki.org/Theosis

Here.Maybe ask whats about that doctrine of the church who has it first rather than hearing others definitions of it.Cheers

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Polytheism QMany Gods

Theosis:Become like what God intended .Free of sin,but no God.Anyone saying he can become God is anathema and should be carefull of spreading fake words.

Theosis (“deification,” “divinization”) is the process of a worshiper becoming free of hamartía (“missing the mark”), being united with God, beginning in this life and later consummated in bodily resurrection. For Orthodox Christians, Théōsis (see 2 Pet. 1:4) is salvation. Théōsis assumes that humans from the beginning are made to share in the Life or Nature of the all-Holy Trinity. Therefore, an infant or an adult worshiper is saved from the state of unholiness ( hamartía — which is not to be confused with hamártēma “sin”) for participation in the Life ( zōé , not simply bíos ) of the Trinity — which is everlasting.

This is not to be confused with the heretical (apothéōsis) - " Deification in God’s Essence ", which is imparticipable.

Alternative spellings: Theiosis, Theopoiesis

I think you are confused with Theosis and apotheosis

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Ok but this is what Athanasius said from my link above:

First, we’ll start with these quotes from Athanasius who was the Bishop of Alexandria and lived between 296 and 373 A.D.

“The Word was made flesh in order that we might be made gods. … Just as the Lord, putting on the body, became a man, so also we men are both deified through his flesh, and henceforth inherit everlasting life.”

“For the Son of God became man so that we might become God .”

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I suggest it might be a translation issue and God was meant with a small g. Maybe

@bluebird1 or @Vinnie can help i think since they putted great answers above

If so i really dont have another explanation.What i do know is from historical facts that he didnt believed he could become a god.Only Mormons hold that belief and only gnostics had a similar one.Pagans didnt .At least in my Ancient Greek religion which im very fluent ive never encountered such a doctrine

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Re-read the text, Skov

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I read it. It’s not a claim Jesus made, it was a claim the Pharisees made. They also said he was the prince of demons. Does not make that true either.

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Well…this is an interesting blog trail…Though polytheism amongst early Christianity — incl NT passages – is not well supported. It’s just an interesting point for discussion based, most likely, on our own misunderstanding of those times.

As Nickolaos suggested, there is at least an assertion out there in cyberspace that there was a mistranslation. See this from catholic.com

“For the son of God became man so that we might become God,” the official Latin text reads, Ipse siquidem homo factus est, ut nos dii efficeremur . Literal translation: “For the Son of God became man so that we might be made gods.”

As for some of the ideas or verse translations being cited, I am not so sure…

I do not find any suggestion that “Greek ‘seed’ is the word for sperm.”–thus saying “that people born of God have Gods seed implying divine nature,” as SuperBig asserts for 1 John 3 etc…

The Word Biblical Commentary on 1 John 3:9 translates, “No one who has been born of God commits sin, for his very nature remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God.” The New Oxford Annotated Bible (NRSV) translates the verse " Those who have been born of do not sin because God’s seed abides in them they cannot sin because they have been born of God" —with the footnote that that “God’s seed” represents the Holy Spirit–with the idea being that “mutual love …distinguishes God’s children.”

The New International Version says “No one who is born of God will continue to sin, b ecause God’s seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning because he has been born of God.”. No commentary on the verse here.

I looked up the Keith Giles name. He is described elsewhere as a pastor with a church who left that church and started a house church which donated all its funds to charitable endeavors. Has a church, left it, started a church…There is a story there. You cannot say that human existence is without drama.

But if Giles asserts that the early church and the NT contain hints (or assertions) of polytheism or an expectation of being made gods, then he is not joined by many others in that thinking. The New Westminster Dictionary of Church History has an entry on Athanasius of Alexandria that does not analyze Athanasius in quite this way. Nor do the writings of a number of modern-day theologians – both Jewish and Christian— on what people of that era would have expected of a messianic figure, as Jesus was believed to be. “Ignatius…wove within his understanding of the relationship between the Father and the Son the simple and unequivocal proclamation that Jesus Christ is God” (see Thomas Weinandy, The Apostolic Christology of Ignatius of Antioch: The Road to Chalcedon," in Trajectory through the New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers (pub 2005), p. 76…which gives 14 references to various remarks by Ignatius.

That would be Jesus as God…not you or me.

It is possible that any idea of a sort of 'man becoming divine" idea comes from a mixing of the philosophies of the gentile world of that era and the theology of the Jewish world. But that mixture would have entailed some misunderstanding of what a messianic being— such as that for which Judaism waited — would have been. “Devotion to Jesus as divine erupted suddenly and quickly, not gradually and late,” as both Ehrman and Hurtado (quoted here) have asserted.

This would be Jesus as divine ----humans becoming divine as part of it? That was not part of what was understood by those who looked for a messiah. Israel Knohl, in his The Messiah Before Jesus, does a good job of tracing the belief in a messianic figure back to the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53, noting that this belief existed in Jesus’ time and was held by some in the Qumran community. And, as the New Catholic Encyclopedia noted (p. 63) “no Jew would ever have understand ‘Son of God’ in the loose Hellenistic sense of ‘semi-divine human’…the title … conveys full divine status.”

So I do not understand Giles’ perspective and am not confident that he should be taken as more than an interesting thought.

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Skov…read my response to the other blogger —“Amid the diversity of earliest Christianity, belief in Jesus’ divine status was amazingly common…,” see Hurtado, p 650.

Galatians 4:4 ----the Son of God was pre-existent

The Rabbinic Commentary on the New Testament noted that Jesus’ remarks in Mark 14:61-62----he was asked “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?’ --and ‘blessed’ was " a substitute for the name of God,” per the commentator, S. Lachs. The subsequent use of the word “power” also was a substitute for the name of God, Lachs noted — “and the high priest understood it” and reacted …note also the Son of God scroll (4Q246) and consider also the remarks Jesus made to a young man —“Before Abraham was, I am”—referring to Abraham in the past tense and to himself by the name of God— the Great I Am

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