The Nicene Creed

[historia]

Here is the Creed that was affirmed at the Council of Nicaea, broken down into separate lines:

1. We believe in one God,
2. the Father almighty,
3. maker of all things visible and invisible;
4. And in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
5. the Son of God,
6. begotten from the Father uniquely --
7. that is, from the essence of the Father,
8. God from God,
9. Light from Light,
10. true God from true God,
11. begotten, not made,
12. of the same essence as the Father --
13. through whom all things came to be,
14. both the things in heaven and the things on earth,
15. who for us human beings and for our salvation
16. came down,
17. and was made flesh,
18. and became human,
19. and suffered,
20. and rose on the third day,
21. and ascended into the heavens,
22. and is coming to judge the living and the dead;
23. And in the Holy Spirit.

Question for debate:

Which lines, if any -- you can just refer to them by number -- do you disagree with? And why?

[NeutralZone]

I gave the weblink to an independent source that has no affiliation with Jehovah's Witnesses so that anyone who is sincerely searching for religious truths can go to that website and read the information.

You gave us a link to an article on a website written by an author who clearly has no expertise in history. He cited no primary sources or scholarship to support any of his assertions. Needless to say, this is not a reliable source of information.

I know a lot about the history of the Council of Nicaea and the development of the doctrine of the Trinity. I've read the primary sources, as well as several books and peer-reviewed journal articles.

Some of us are more discerning than to believe everything we read on some random website.

Who are you to talk about expertise while arguing that the power-hungry Catholic Bishops who invented Christendom's Trinity--get this--300 years AFTER the Bible was written--were experts. You need to do your homework. Look up the formation of Christendom's Trinity at any reasonably credible website and you will get the same information that I provided you at the other website that, according to you, shows the author "has no expertise in history."

The Trinity dogma was invented beginning in 325 CE. Not only that, the 325 CE formula didn't even have the holy spirit in play. At that point, the argument among the Catholic Bishops was that Jesus the son and Jehovah the Father were of the same nature. Pagan Roman Emperor Constantine realized his empire was falling apart because of this religious bickering, and so he put his two cents in and got the Bishops (those who showed up for the meeting, that is) to agree that Jesus the son is equal to Jehovah the Father. No mention was made of Jehovah's holy spirit during the 325 debates, and so Christendom's "trinity" was simply a duality of gods at that point in time. It was not until 381 CE at The Council of Constantinople, when a second Roman Emperor (Theodosius I) butted in and got the Catholic Bishops to agree that Jehovah's holy spirit was the third person of what became Christendom's Trinity, that we wind up with the Trinity formula of today. Below are just a few websites that will confirm what the previous website already stated. Notice the words that I bolded in red and in blue.

"1. Introduction
This supplementary document discusses the history of Trinity theories. Although early Christian theologians speculated in many ways on the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, no one clearly and fully asserted the doctrine of the Trinity as explained at the top of the main entry until around the end of the so-called “Arian” controversy. (See 3.2 below and section 3.1 of the supplementary document on unitarianism.) Nonetheless, proponents of such theories always claim them to be in some sense founded on, or at least illustrated by, biblical texts."
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/trin ... story.html



Quoted from paragraph 2 at Encyclopedia Britannica's website: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Trinity-Christianity
"Neither the word “Trinity” nor the explicit doctrine appears in the New Testament, nor did Jesus and his followers intend to contradict the Shema in the Hebrew Scriptures: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord” (Deuteronomy 6:4).

Quoted from paragraph 3 at Encyclopedia Britannica's website:
"The doctrine developed gradually over several centuries and through many controversies. Initially, both the requirements of monotheism inherited from the Hebrew Scriptures and the implications of the need to interpret the biblical teaching to Greco-Roman religions seemed to demand that the divine in Christ as the Word, or Logos, be interpreted as subordinate to the Supreme Being.


Quoted from paragraph 4 at Encyclopedia Britannica's website:
The Council of Nicaea in 325 stated the crucial formula for that doctrine in its confession that the Son is “of the same substance [homoousios] as the Father,” even though it said very little about the Holy Spirit. Over the next half century, St. Athanasius defended and refined the Nicene formula, and, by the end of the 4th century, under the leadership of St. Basil of Caesarea, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Gregory of Nazianzus (the Cappadocian Fathers), the doctrine of the Trinity took substantially the form it has maintained ever since. It is accepted in all of the historic confessions of Christianity, even though the impact of the Enlightenment decreased its importance in some traditions.




"Definition
The Christian doctrine of the Trinity (from the Latin trinus, meaning "threefold") professes that there is one God, but three eternal and consubstantial persons (aspects): the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Father is the God of Israel (the creator God of Genesis), the Son is the historical Jesus of Nazareth, and the Holy Spirit is the presence or spirit of God that binds them together. The word 'trinity' appears nowhere in the Bible; the concept was finalized at the First Council of Nicaea in 325 CE after years of debate. It was an attempt to articulate Christianity’s belief in the oneness of God with their claims about Jesus and their experiences of the spirit.

More about: Trinity
Timeline
325 CE

Roman Emperor Constantine I calls the Council of Nicaea.
381 CE
The First Council of Constantinople adds to Nicene Creed."
https://www.worldhistory.org/timeline/Trinity/


"The Council of Constantinople (AD 381):
We have now explained why the second ecumenical council in Constantinople (381) was necessary. Although the first ecumenical council in Nicea (325) had condemned Arianism (which denied that Christ is God), that heresy continued to hold influence and semi-Arianism (which said that Christ is similar to God, although not God) had developed. Some who opposed Arianism developed other wrong views of Christ. In addition, the question arose how the Holy Spirit related to the Father and Son. To address these matters, Emperor Theodosius I called the Council of Constantinople.
https://sb.rfpa.org/the-council-of-cons ... e-meeting/





NeutralZone


________________
". . . be swift about hearing, slow about speaking, slow about wrath. . . . " (James 1:19-20)

[historia]

Here is a summary of the early church's criteria for choosing the books to include in the Bible, @historia:

The early church used specific criteria to determine which books were included in the Bible.

Apostolic Connection
Books needed to be linked to the apostles or their close associates, ensuring authenticity and authority in teachings.

Universal Acceptance
The writings had to be widely accepted and used in churches across different regions, indicating their significance and relevance to the Christian community.

Doctrinal Consistency
The teachings within the books had to align with established Christian doctrine, particularly regarding the nature and teachings of Jesus Christ

Antiquity
The age of the writings was considered, with preference given to earlier texts that were closer in time to the events they described.

You're welcome, @historia. Your article says in answer to your question,

"The Catholic Church provided a conciliar definition of its biblical canon in 382 at the (local) Council of Rome (based upon the Decretum Gelasianum, of uncertain authorship) as well as at the Council of Trent of 1545, reaffirming the Canons of Florence of 1442 and North African Councils (Hippo and Carthage) of 393–419.

Very good. So, when we say the "Early Church" determined which books are part of the Bible and which ones aren't, what we really mean is that the orthodox churches of the late-4th and early-5th Century made that determination.

And that came after the Council of Nicaea.

Why do you ask?

Occasionally on this form I run into this argument that you see NeutralZone making: On the one hand, they want to say that the Trinity is false and that the Nicene Creed was written by "pagans masquerading as Christians," or what have you. But, at the same time, they accept (without any deviation whatsoever) the 27 book New Testament canon that was ultimately decided by those same so-called "pagans masquerading as Christians."

It's an incoherent position. They want to quote the Bible at me, claiming it alone is authoritative. But they can't articulate in any coherent way how they even know which Jewish and Christian texts are part of the Bible and which are not. And if you challenge them on that point, they often short-circuit. So I needed you to complete the circuit for us. Thanks again!

[historia]

So even though the word 'eternal' isn't in the creed - these lines are supposed to mean 'eternally begotten'.

Yes, and this isn't a terribly controversial point, I think. You see it throughout the Early Church Fathers.

Irenaus writing in the 2nd Century, for example, already can say in Against Heresies:

But there is only one God, the Creator . . . He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ . . . But the Son, eternally co-existing with the Father, from of old, yeah, from the beginning, always reveals the Father to angels, archangels, powers, virtues, and all to whom he wills that God should be revealed.

Or, consider Origen, writing in the early 3rd Century, in De Principiis:

[W]hat belongs to the nature of deity is common to the Father and the Son.

As the Father is eternal, so is the Son.

And then - what does that mean? How can one be "eternally begotten" (in the 'begotten, not made' sense)?

Think about the analogy of the Sun I mentioned above. The rays emit from the orb, so are 'begotten' from it. If the Sun was eternal -- if it always existed -- then both the orb and its rays would be eternal as well, the latter being eternally 'begotten' from the orb.

Also, as I mentioned above, the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, in addition to the added lines on the Holy Spirit, made some other changes to the Creed of Nicaea. Line 6 was changed to ton ek tou Patros gennethenta pro panton ton aionon, "begotten of the Father before all ages," which makes that a bit more explicit.

So even this seems vague. Would 'before all ages' mean that something or someone had no beginning?

It just means that, if you go back to the first moment of time (before all the subsequent ages of the cosmos), the Son is there, already existing. Or, to put that another way, in the beginning was the Word.

[historia]

Look up the formation of Christendom's Trinity at any reasonably credible website and you will get the same information that I provided you at the other website that, according to you, shows the author "has no expertise in history."

Notice that none of the sources you just cited say anything about the supposed "pagan roots" of the Trinity, or that somehow Constantine imposed "pagan" beliefs on the bishops at the council of Nicaea, as both you and the that earlier website claimed.

That's because there is no historical evidence to support those absurd assertions, and no scholar or serious historian would affirm that. So, in citing these other sources, you have proved my point for me: The website you quoted before is unreliable, and contains misinformation. Some of us are more discerning than to believe everything we read on some random website.

"Although early Christian theologians speculated in many ways on the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, no one clearly and fully asserted the doctrine of the Trinity as explained at the top of the main entry until around the end of the so-called 'Arian' controversy."

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/trin ... story.html

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Trinity-Christianity
https://www.worldhistory.org/timeline/Trinity/
https://sb.rfpa.org/the-council-of-cons ... e-meeting/

Right, so what all of these articles are saying is that it took time for the Early Church to articulate the doctrine of the Trinity in the precise terms and ideas that you find in the Cappadocian Fathers or the works of Augustine, writing at the end of the Arian controversy in the late-4th and early-5th Centuries. As I said before, I'm already familiar with the history of the development of the doctrine of the Trinity.

Using that same type of historical analysis, we would have to conclude that the Bible also doesn't explicitly say that Jesus was the Archangel Michael or that the Holy Spirit is just God's "active force." It wasn't until 1,800 years after the Bible was written that Russell and other members of your particular Adventist sect articulated those ideas in those precise terms as well.

So, if it's somehow "bad" for it to take time to clarify doctrine, then your position is significantly worse, as it took six times longer to develop!

The sources you just cited also say this:

Thus, the New Testament established the basis for the doctrine of the Trinity.

and this:

As against earlier theories that it developed only slowly and because of Gentile influence, recent work has shown that Jesus was worshipped alongside God in the earliest known Christianity (Hurtado 2003, 2005).

Since you quoted these sources as authoritative, can we all agree that the New Testament established the basis for the doctrine of the Trinity, and that Christians worshipped Jesus alongside God from the very beginning?

[BruceLeiter]

[Replying to historia in post #92]

You're very welcome, @historia. May the 3-in-1 God bless you abundantly!

[historia]

Notice that none of the sources you just cited say anything about the supposed "pagan roots" of the Trinity

Let me amend this comment slightly to note that, in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on the history of the Trinity, Tuggy does touch on this point, but only to refute it: he notes that popular antitrinitarian literature (like the website quoted earlier) often make these kinds of claims, but such assertions are simply unconvincing.

[NeutralZone]

[Replying to NeutralZone in post #76]

Bible lexicons define words based on their usages within the Bible, @NeutralZone, whereas secular dictionaries define words based on secular culture's and theologians' usages. Because God inspired the Bible, I prefer the former approach basing definitions on the ways God's Word uses them. That's exactly what a word study does; it looks at all the contexts of a word and draws a conclusion that honors God's involvement in showing the writers what to write.

That's the fallacious claim that Trinitarians make, BruceLeiter. A "Bible" Lexicon is not written by inspiration of Jehovah God. It is nothing more than a group of words that someone else strung together to express THEIR personal philosophy. Notice below the difference between a lexicon and a dictionary.

"A dictionary is a list of words and phrases that are (or were) in common usage, together with their definitions - so a dictionary is different from a lexicon because a lexicon is a simple list and doesn't define the words."
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/34968/difference-between-lexicon-and-dictionary


NeutralZone


________________
". . . be swift about hearing, slow about speaking, slow about wrath. . . . " (James 1:19-20)

[BruceLeiter]

[Replying to NeutralZone in post #97]

A lexicon is a fancy term for a dictionary, @NeutralZone. A Bible lexicon bases its meanings on how God's Word defines its own words in all of their contexts and usages, not on the human culture, the way secular dictionaries do.

[NeutralZone]

[Replying to NeutralZone in post #97]

A lexicon is a fancy term for a dictionary, @NeutralZone. A Bible lexicon bases its meanings on how God's Word defines its own words in all of their contexts and usages, not on the human culture, the way secular dictionaries do.

No, it is not, BruceLeiter. Although some websites make that false claim, the reality is that a lexicon is nothing more than a collection of words that are specific to a language or to a field of study. Whereas a dictionary provides meanings, a lexicon does not provide word meanings; therefore, a lexicon does not qualify as a dictionary.

I gave you the definition in my previous post where it says, in no uncertain terms, that a Lexicon is nothing more than a list of words. I even gave you the weblink to the independent source where I found the definition. There, it says: "a lexicon is a simple list and doesn't define the words." Below is the weblink again.

https://english.stackexchange.com/quest ... dictionary


Below are weblinks to two other websites that also make it clear that a lexicon does not provide definitions (unlike a dictionary that provides definitions); it only provides a list of words that are specific to a particular language or a field of study.

"Dictionary vs. Lexicon — What's the Difference?
A dictionary provides definitions, spellings, and pronunciations of words in a language, whereas a lexicon is a collection of words and phrases in a language, often for specific fields."
https://www.askdifference.com/dictionary-vs-lexicon/


Notice sentence #3 at the following website: https://www.byarcadia.org/post/the-lexi ... -is-a-word
​"Linguists describe the lexicon as an abstract object; it is a set of all the basic forms of the words in a language, stored in the minds of the speakers "


So when you rely on a "Bible" lexicon to define what's found in Jehovah's inspired word, the Bible, you are basically relying on the opinions of the person(s) who authored the lexicon. Those persons are telling you what they believe.


NeutralZone


________________
". . . be swift about hearing, slow about speaking, slow about wrath. . . . " (James 1:19-20)

[OneJack]

[Replying to NeutralZone in post #99]

So when you rely on a "Bible" lexicon to define what's found in Jehovah's inspired word, the Bible, you are basically relying on the opinions of the person(s) who authored the lexicon. Those persons are telling you what they believe.

How then could we rely on the Forever Living God alone? What must we do?