Paul Did Not Believe In The Trinity

[rhinomelon]

off-topic. Rhino - how's school? Were you able to find a good living location / arrangement? In DC?

off-topic response: Fantastic! My wife and I found a house to rent in College Park, MD, about four blocks from the Metro stop. It was kind of a friend of a friend deal, so we got this amazing house for a ridiculously low price. As soon as this deal went through I finally believed that God wanted me out here. School is great, Intensive Latin is kicking my butt, and I'm meeting some great people. Just had dinner with some monks last night, in fact! The only thing missing is my wife, who is still in India at the moment. I won't be seeing her until October 4th.

But all in all, I really can't complain. Now if I can just figure out how to pay for school without going too far into debt, I'll be all set...

Thanks for checking up on me! How are things in your neck of the woods?

[Gervin]

off-topic response: Fantastic! My wife and I found a house to rent in College Park, MD, about four blocks from the Metro stop. It was kind of a friend of a friend deal, so we got this amazing house for a ridiculously low price. As soon as this deal went through I finally believed that God wanted me out here. School is great, Intensive Latin is kicking my butt, and I'm meeting some great people. Just had dinner with some monks last night, in fact! The only thing missing is my wife, who is still in India at the moment. I won't be seeing her until October 4th.

But all in all, I really can't complain. Now if I can just figure out how to pay for school without going too far into debt, I'll be all set...

Thanks for checking up on me! How are things in your neck of the woods?

Great news about the living arrangement and though I don't know College Park that well, I imagine you'll benefit from some U of MD eclecticism. Being able to use Metro is a real benefit, too. Meanwhile, down in VA things are good. Come mid-Oct I'll check back in to see if you're interested in making a foray to the foothills of the Blue Ridge (about 90 minutes from College Park). I won't even ask you to help my son (h.s. junior) with his first year Latin homework.

[BCSpace]

The whole Arian controversy that led to the official formulation of the Trinity was precisely a debate over Scripture, and not about philosophy!

A nonsequitur as Greek philosophy had already become embedded before such a debate took place and you still have no answer for the wholesale change in doctrine from anthropomorphic God to the abstract one. The line upon line is no where to be found.

[rhinomelon]

A nonsequitur as Greek philosophy had already become embedded before such a debate took place and you still have no answer for the wholesale change in doctrine from anthropomorphic God to the abstract one. The line upon line is no where to be found.

So you're saying Scripture didn't play a part in the formulation of the Trinity? Also, I'm unsure where you're getting this idea of a doctrine of an anthropomorphic God. It may have been one view among the early Christians, but that neither makes it doctrine nor automatically true.

So again, your opinion at work here.

Come mid-Oct I'll check back in to see if you're interested in making a foray to the foothills of the Blue Ridge (about 90 minutes from College Park). I won't even ask you to help my son (h.s. junior) with his first year Latin homework.

Sounds good to me! Are you more out in the country then? By the way, my parents are actually moving to VA; my dad just got a promotion with the US Forest Service in DC. So if you know of any houses for sale within good commuting distance a DC-bound train or Metro, let me know...

Your son is studying Latin in high school?! That's great! Does he tutor?

Take care, everyone

[USU78]

Using the Shekinah in this fashion is highly dubious at best, especially considering the initial physical nature of it (sexual).

I'm hardly an expert in such matters, but this statement concerns me. As I read it, the Shekinah as consort of haShem and as lover (??) of the initiate is to greatest extent metaphor, perhaps of a kind with (if not equivalent of) John 17 "in-ness." This idea is imposed upon the Song of Songs by the KJV editors (and their intellectual descendents), with "The Church" replacing the Shekinah as G-d's consort. There it doesn't much work, as JSJr surely intuited.

[USU78]

There may actually be a logical LDS response to this -- and that is, that Saul of Taursus was a Herodian, and was thus not allowed into the "House of the Lord" in the Jerusalem Temple.

Saul is pictured as being in the High Priest's employ and evidently having some close connection to the Temple guard or other armed men associated with the High Priest.

But if Saul was an Edomite on his mother's side, he may not have been considered "Jewish" enough to pass beyond the Court of the Gentiles in the Jerusalem Temple.

If Mormons maintain that work for the dead, endowments, etc. were going on in the Jerusalem Temple at that time, I suppose they would not have been done out for public view in the Court of the Gentiles.

Right?

But later on Saul/Paul attempts to enter the inner Temple grounds with a companion, and causes a riot. Was 100% of the riot due to his companion, or was Saul himself still barred from that area?

These matters are [perhaps blessedly?] obscured by time, idiom and maybe even meddling by well-intentioned redaction. Certainly Saul/Paul is awfully chummy with the wannabe elites in the Levant. Certainly he is connected with at least two bloody episodes in the Temple precincts. Certainly he is unapologetic in his disdain for Jewry. It is plausible that part of his motivation is his distaffness . . . and in them there days being distaff must have been equivalent to being not of pure blood [or at least properly initiated into the Abrahamic Covenant by priests of the proper bloodline and ideology]. How he must have boiled at the thought that people he disdained held the key to the executive washroom!

We'll probably never know for sure, but it's hard not to give Eisenman's speculations about Saul/Paul [consistent as they are with what appears to be the prevailing Jewish view of the Tarsusian] some credence, even though he spins a lot out of not so very much straw.

USU "That's Tarsus, not Tarshish" 78

[jwhitlock]

By the way, my parents are actually moving to VA; my dad just got a promotion with the US Forest Service in DC. So if you know of any houses for sale within good commuting distance a DC-bound train or Metro, let me know...

Rhino:

There are always houses for sale; it just depends on what price he wants to pay. Especially for anything that is connected with a train/metro stop.

Although things have leveled out in the DC area, and declined a little, the jump they took over the last 5 years was way too high for many people to absorb who wanted to move in.

This is not meant to be negative, but houses are expensive still in the DC area. There can be some good deals available, but you really have to search for them.

[rhinomelon]

There are always houses for sale; it just depends on what price he wants to pay. Especially for anything that is connected with a train/metro stop.

Although things have leveled out in the DC area, and declined a little, the jump they took over the last 5 years was way too high for many people to absorb who wanted to move in.

This is not meant to be negative, but houses are expensive still in the DC area. There can be some good deals available, but you really have to search for them.

Yeah, that's what they're finding as well. Coming from small towns in the west, even selling the nicest homes there don't get you enough to get a halfway decent place out here (unless you're moving from California, in which case the prices are probably more comparable). They'll figure out something, but hopefully something that will keep my dad's daily commute under three hours. Yeck.

Thanks for the heads up though. Take care

[jwhitlock]

Yeah, that's what they're finding as well. Coming from small towns in the west, even selling the nicest homes there don't get you enough to get a halfway decent place out here (unless you're moving from California, in which case the prices are probably more comparable). They'll figure out something, but hopefully something that will keep my dad's daily commute under three hours. Yeck.

Thanks for the heads up though. Take care

Where's he going to be working, specifically? If you want to send me a PM, I might be able to give some general directions to look in, both in VA and MD.

[Uncle Dale]

... it's hard not to give Eisenman's speculations about Saul/Paul [consistent as they are with

what appears to be the prevailing Jewish view of the Tarsusian] some credence,

even though he spins a lot out of not so very much straw.

Well, James was not the Qumranim's "Teacher of Righteousness" and Saul was not their spewer of

lies. But as "types" they fit the mould fairly well. They probably each knew (or knew of) their

supposed earlier namesakes.

As for Saul being a Herodian who honored Abraham and despised Moses, I'm about 3/4ths convinced

that was about right. I think Eisenman's speculation about Saul being at a stoning of James is interesting.

There's some artificial about the stoning of Stephen event -- at least as we have the story before us.

Mormons ought to embrace James as a MelechZadekian lineage High Priest in the final days of the

Jerusalem Temple (just as the Maccabees resorted to that alternative, non Zadokite line in their day),

but I suppose they won't.

It's always easier to just follow the wagon-wheel ruts of those who have gone on before you, I guess.

Uncle "Next year in Independence" Dale

[Tanyan]

htttp://www.wkonline.com/a/The_Doctrine_of_the_Trinity_1573093092.htm

[Tanyan]

Whoops ---- http://www.wkonline.com/a/The_Doctrine_of_..._1573093092.htm

[consiglieri]

Because that wasn't their mission. Their mission was witnessing to the gospel, to the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. They passed on what they had seen and heard, and the next generations carried the torch, all the while digging deeper into the gospel and the life of Christ. As they kept studying and reciting and interacting with the ideas presented in the apostolic witness, questions arose ("We believe there is only one God, but we also believe Christ to be God 'in the flesh'. How do we explain that?"). The Trinity was the best response to these kinds of questions.

The same evolution happens in LDS circles, or regarding LDS doctrine. LDS scholars are still picking over the revelations of LDS prophets and apostles, coming up with new ways of understanding, filling in supposed "gaps" in the biblical witness, etc. As far as gaps go, if having the correct organizational structure is essential to being the true church, why did none of the NT authors clearly line it out? If one must be married in order to enjoy the highest level of celestial glory, why not make that clear? Or what about temple worship, or temple ordinances in Christian temples? The apostles didn't mention any of that either.

And the evidence that most LDS point to in order to validate their modern claims regarding church organization and temple worship are found in NT books that are not primarily theological in content, but historical (Acts, or the Gospels). This is exactly what I mean. The apostles didn't hand down a book of theological tenets to be memorized, but a (true!) story to be believed, lived and handed down. As more people came into that story, they began to dig deeper and to search out the deeper things implied and assumed in the story. So later on, the church was asking questions that hadn't been much of a factor in the apostle's thinking and teaching. The Trinity was developed to account for the various streams of thought in the gospel story, streams that became more apparent as more people studied the issues over time.

And thank you to Uncle Dale for pointing out some of the most important "building blocks" for the Trinity. One may not agree with the trinitarian conclusion, but to pretend it was simply made up out of the vacuum apart from any serious reflection on the biblical text is plain ignorance. Any cursory examination of the early church fathers will demonstrate otherwise.

Take care, everyone

Hi, Rhino.

First, I think you are right in your version of how the Trinity developed. The "NT books . . . are not primarily theological in content, but historical." "The apostles didn't hand down a book of theological tenets to be memorized but a (true!) story to be believed, lived and handed down."

Now, with our agreement on that point, if, as you say, "The apostles didn't hand down a book of theological tenets to be memorized but a story to be believed," how is it that men who lived 300-years later who were not apostles and who claimed no divine revelation fashioned from those same writings exactly the opposite; i.e., a creed of "theological tenets that had to be believed upon penalty of damnation?

This is food for thought.

Your observations about a similarity in the development of LDS theology may have some truth to it, but at heart is seems a weak response in that you accuse the LDS of doing something (wrong) that the creators of the Christian creeds did (wrong).

There is a Latin name for that logical fallacy, but I forget what it is. I think it means, "You, too!"

All the Best!

--Consiglieri