“trinitarians”… Fer it… or agin’ it?
Following up on the previous post - the word “trinitarian” may be an adjective or a noun. The Oxford English Dictionary lists four adjective meanings: (here’s my editing of relevant parts of their entry, emphasis added)
2. Theol. Relating to the Trinity; holding the doctrine of the Trinity (opp. to Unitarian). [...]
Who’s up for a little trinitarian comedy?
Thanks to reader Mike K. for this hilarious link. They beat me to the punch - I’ve been sitting on a post for some time on this exact theme. (Stay tuned.)
I posted a comment asking about this bit:
It’s interesting to note that the English term “Trinitarian” was first used, [...]
Your average theologian’s response to recent Rational Reinterpretations.
Let me take four recent books off my shelf by current theologians. Now I’ll search through them to see if they have any reference at all to some of the more important Rational Reconstructions in the last 25 years or so, namely:
Tom Morris’s (1986, 1989) or Richard Swinburne’s [...]
Don’t you dare do what dastardly Donald does.
Our friend Alan Rhoda, the mighty Alanyzer, has some interesting thoughts on what he calls the “Theologian’s Fallacy”, or “Trumping”.
I see his point, though I don’t like the names
Mmmm… baby soup - the delicious end to any traditional baptism.
“Father, Son, Holy Spirit”? Or “Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier”? The editors of the flagship magazine of American evangelicalism weigh in here: Blessed Be the Name of the Lord | Christianity Today
While I share the editors’ irritation with politically correct revision of liturgical and theological language, I [...]
Hi Everybody?
Trinity? Suuuure - I know all about those things!
I’ve always been interested in not only what intellectuals think about the Trinity, but also about what ordinary Christians think. Thus, this is an interesting find - five helpful wikites step in to wiki-answer the following important questions:
WikiAnswers - What is the trinity and could you [...]
Can’t make this stuff up: The Brick Testament: Holy Trinity
Natch, a Trinity of comments:
The Father looks kind of mad.
The Holy Ghost seems to have been designed by someone who was a little too literal-minded! Reminds me of one of Charlie Brown’s friends, out trick-or-treating.
$30 + $3 shipping = total ripoff
Technorati Tags: Trinity art, lego [...]
Who’s next? Anyone? Anyone? (sound of crickets chirping)
So far, the Survey of Trinitarian Belief (background) has been a failure. We simply have not been able to get enough people to take it.
We chose as a target population seminarians, hoping that enough theology profs would want to participate with their classes in the survey (profs get [...]
“I thank thee, O Lord, that Thou hast given me the ability
to quickly read this copy of The Message, and easily discern
what it really means, unlike that jerk Flanders.”
Some interesting and disturbing comments from R.P.C. Hanson, on Bible interpretation in the era of the 4th century “Arian” controversy. This comes near the end of this [...]
Umm… is there any other way out?
A wise comment from the late great patristics scholar R.P.C. Hanson, in this book.
Eusebius of Emesa in one of his discourses has quite a long passage about allegorizing. He allows that it cannot altogether be rejected but he is very cautious about its use. It tends to read meanings [...]
Poetry, anyone?
Karen Armstrong is a famous ex-nun who has written, among other things, a puffing biography of the prophet Muhammad. She frequently appears on TV confidently gassing about various religious matters. But I was really taken a back by this, which I ran across in a podcast:
Ms. Armstrong: Well, you see, I think theology is [...]
H.O.G. - is that you up there? I’m getting my B.B. gun.
MMM indeed! Henry of Ghent doesn’t spare the medieval lingo, and as Scott points out, it seems he never met a trinitarian theory he didn’t like - emanation, psychology, relations - it’s all good! Thanks to its being Thanksgiving break - and let me [...]
I’m giggling so hard, I can’t see straight to make a comment. Just skip to about 1:20 for the Trinity stuff. Enjoy.
My favorite comment from the Youtube page: “Somehow you make modalism rock… it’s still wrong, but you made it rock.”
His band’s page is here.
Props to the first commenter who can stop laughing, get beyond [...]
A simple being containing multiple distinct “persons” - D’oh!
Theologian Lewis Ayres is the author of this worthy book. In it, he hammers the point that the Latin vs. Social trinitarian categories aren’t helpful in understanding post-Constantinople trinitarian theology. I think he’s right about that, though I persist in using the terminology because it is [...]
I’ve seen this passage quoted by at least three of my favorite Christian philosophers. Unfortunately, they’ve misattributed it to the famous English antitrinitarian John Biddle (also spelled Bidle) (1615-62).
Found at here at Ian’s Philosophical Orthodoxy. Thus saith Marilyn McCord Adams:
Renouncing society’s right to say who we are and what we mean, frees us for full communion with Our Creator, with that gay men’s chorus, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. (emphasis added)
Uhh… hmm. [speechless]
Looking at the rest of this speech, [...]
According to the Arizona Daily Star, ‘Lord’ is fading at some churches, because they think it smacks of patriarchy.
When ideology has taken over to the point that you think it’s inappropriate to describe God almighty in terms that connote power (horrors!)… wow.
And then, what about Jesus?
The problem I noted last time is well-known by philosophers who work in the history of philosophy (I’m not sure that mainstream philosophers who stick almost entirely to recent stuff are so aware of it). Nor do I exempt myself from this lamentable tendency.
I’ll give a real example, with other peoples’ names omitted out of [...]
Back in 1983, the excellent scholar of early modern philosophy Sarah Hutton published an interesting little piece called “The Neoplatonic Roots of Arianism: Ralph Cudworth and Theophilus Gale” (in Lech Szczucki, ed. Socinianism and its Role in the Culture of the XVI-th to XVIII-th Centuries (Warsaw: Polish Academy of Sciences, 139-45). Professor Hutton informs me [...]
I was reading an article on the Trinity by Phillip Cary, and was struck by this passage, at the start of his paper.
When I was growing up in the faith, I heard a lot about the doctrine of the Trinity, but never learned what the doctrine was. In high school and college I worshiped at [...]
