Robert
2024-10-13 00:40:41 UTC
Reply
Permalinkphilosophers and the RCC is what I discovered on my own, via the Lords help,
over 3 decades ago. This document includes other things as well that I was
not aware of, and no doubt adds depth to the subject. I posted much the same
info on the Usenet many times in the first decade of learning this As I
shared it many times publicly and no doubt I still have some hard drives on
which the historical research was done.
Nothing here diminishes The Heavenly Father, nor His First Begotten Son,
Jeusus/Yeshua. It does not take away any part of the Gospel message. Nor
should it destroy any portion of it.
Jhn 14:1 Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in
me.
Jhn 14:2 In my Father's house are many mansions: if it werenot so,I would
have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
Jhn 14:3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and
receive you unto myself; that where I am, thereye may be also.
Jhn 14:4 And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know.
Jhn 14:5 Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how
can we know the way?
Jhn 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man
cometh unto the Father, but by me.
On to the Document.
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To briefly summarize what was pertinent, we start with mention of the famous
Greek philosopher Plato (ca. 429-347 B.C.). He believed in a divine triad of
"God, the ideas, [and] the World-Spirit," though he "nowhere explained or
harmonized this triad" (Charles Bigg, Christian Platonists of Alexandria,
1886, p. 249).
Later Greek thinkers refined Plato's concepts into what they referred to as
three "substances"—the supreme God or "the One," from which came "mind" or
"thought” and a "spirit" or "soul." In their thinking, all were different
divine "substances" or aspects of the same God. Another way of expressing
this was as "good," the personification of that good, and the agent by which
that good is carried out. Again, these were different divine aspects of that
same supreme good—distinct and yet unified as one.
Such metaphysical thinking was common among the intelligentsia of the Greek
world and carried over into the thinking of the Roman world of the New
Testament period and succeeding centuries. As the last of the apostles began
to die off, some of this metaphysical thinking began to affect and infiltrate
the early Church—primarily through those who had already begun to
compromise with paganism.
As Bible scholars John McClintock and James Strong explain: "Towards the end
of the 1st century, and during the 2d, many learned men came over both from
Judaism and paganism to Christianity. These brought with them into the
Christian schools of theology their Platonic ideas and phraseology"
(Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, 1891,
Vol. 10, "Trinity," p. 553).
The true Church largely resisted such infiltration and held firm to the
teaching of the apostles, drawing their doctrine from the writings of the
apostles and "the Holy Scriptures [the books of the Old Testament] which are
able to make you wise for salvation" (2 Timothy 3:15).
Two distinct threads of Christianity split and developed separately—one
true to the plain and simple teachings of the Bible and the other
increasingly compromised with pagan thought and practices adopted from the
Greco-Roman world.
Thus, as debate swelled over the nature of God in the fourth century leading
to the Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople, it was no longer a debate
between biblical truth and error. Both sides in the debate had been seriously
compromised by their acceptance of unbiblical philosophical ideas.
Many of the church leaders who formulated the doctrine of the Trinity were
steeped in Greek and Platonic philosophy, and this influenced their religious
views and teaching. The language they used in describing and defining the
Trinity is, in fact, taken directly from Platonic and Greek philosophy. The
wordtrinity itself is neither biblical nor Christian. Rather, the Platonic
term trias, from the word for three, was Latinized as trinitas—the latter
giving us the English word trinity.
"The Alexandria catechetical school, which revered Clement of Alexandria and
Origen, the greatest theologian of the Greek Church, as its heads, applied
the allegorical method to the explanation of Scripture. Its thought was
influenced by Plato: its strong point was [pagan] theological speculations.
Athanasius and the three Cappadocians [the men whose Trinitarian views were
adopted by the Catholic Church at the Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople]
had been included among its members" (Hubert Jedin, Ecumenical Councils of
the Catholic Church: an Historical Outline, 1960, p. 28) . "The doctrines of
the Logos [i.e., the "Word," a designation for Christ in John 1] and the
Trinity received their shape from Greek Fathers, who ... were much
influenced, directly or indirectly, by the Platonic philosophy ...That errors
and corruptions crept into the Church from this source can not be denied"
(The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Samuel Macauley
Jackson, editor, 1911, Vol. 9, p. 91).
The preface to historian Edward Gibbons' History of Christianity sums up the
Greek influence on the adoption of the Trinity doctrine by stating: "If
Paganism was conquered by Christianity, it is equally true that Christianity
was corrupted by Paganism. The pure Deism [basic religion, in this context]
of the first Christians . . . was changed, by the Church of Rome, into the
incomprehensible dogma of the trinity. Many of the pagan tenets, invented by
the Egyptians and idealized by Plato, were retained as being worthy of
belief" (1883, p. xvi). (See "How Ancient Trinitarian Gods Influenced
Adoption of the Trinity
(https://www.ucg.org/bible-study-tools/booklets/is-god-a-trinity/how-ancient-
trinitarian-gods-influenced-adoption-of-the-trinity)”.)
The link between Plato's teachings and the Trinity as adopted by the Catholic
Church centuries later is so strong that Edward Gibbon, in his masterwork The
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, referred to Plato as
"the Athenian sage, who had thus marvelously anticipated one of the most
surprising discoveries of the Christian revelation"—the Trinity (1890, Vol.
1, p. 574).
Thus we see that the doctrine of the Trinity owes far less to the Bible than
it does to the metaphysical speculations of Plato and other pagan Greek
philosophers. No wonder the apostle Paul warns us in Colossians 2:8 (New
International Version) to beware of "hollow and deceptive philosophy, which
depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than
on Christ"!
https://www.ucg.org/bible-study-tools/booklets/is-god-a-trinity/greek-
philosophys-influence-on-the-trinity-doctrine
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Don’t believe it? Check out the truth for yourself.
I personally asked God for the understanding of the topic and He showed me
the very same things. And how it entered the RCC which I have mentioned
recently several times.
I have had friends who were RC and their declarations are that if you do not
accept and believe the doctrine of the trinity you cannot enter heaven. the
Bible says nothing on that topic, and those that cannot describe what their
definitions are specifically, and are not qualified to teach on that topic,
nor other topics that are not found in the scriptures for the very same
reasons.
Their intentions may seem good, but so are those who kill abortion doctors,
etc. It is just flat out not of God, nor Godly.