Check out this post by Dan Wallace over at Parchment and Pen. I teach religious studies, and regularly encounter this one:
Myth 1: The Bible has been translated so many times we can’t possibly get back to the original.
Wallace’s answer is absolutely right.
#2 is also an important point. Wallace might have added that quotation marks are never in the Greek manuscripts; they didn’t exist in ancient times. In a sense, they are part of the translation – and at times, a product of translators’ interpretation.
I agree with the substance of Wallace’s comments #3 and #4 as well. But on #5, it is wholly unclear what he means by the “deity of Christ.” Evangelicals love that phrase, I think in part because of its ambiguity.
It is true, though, that Constantine is not any kind of major player in the development of catholic doctrine. That’s just Dan Brown nonsense – the bane of anyone who loves the intellectual enterprise of history.
Update: 15 more. Some of this stuff is embarrassing; but Wallace is doing God’s work, because many of these are in wide circulation.
Gosh! These “analytic philosophers” are truly exasperating, beside not having a clue about the historical genesis of ideas: in this respect they are just as bad as the philosophers of Illuminism.
Oh, BTW, talking about (real) fallacies, how about …
[Dale #1] “God in the OT is plainly revealed as a self (not as at least one self).”
(viz. God, is definitely NOT a trinity)
[Dale #2] “IF God is a Trinity, then it is not completely crazy to think this is SOMEHOW reflected in his creation, and is discoverable, at least in broad outline, by reason.”
(viz. God MAY be a trinity)
… something even more serious: contradiction?
MdS
P.S. Or would Dale rather suggest that the conflict MAY be between Scripture and reason?
P.P.S. If someone cannot discriminate between the irrelevance of the genesis from Kekulé’s dream of Kekulé’s theory of the ring structure of the benzene molecule for its scientific truth, vs the full relevance of the heathen-philosophical origin of Philo’s deuteros theos, of the Hermetic Egyptian homoousios and of the treis hypostases, especially when one claims that the “trinity” is not found in the Scripture, then someone ain’t got a clue …
… at least from an epistemological point of view …
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/genefall.html
@ Dale [March 22, 2013 at 9:31 am]
[a] Does it mean to say that IF (as is more than evident from the papers by Beatrice and Logan that I cited and linked – and others) the “christian trinity” (whether subordinationist or “equalitarian”) was, to a large extent, filched from Egyptian Hermetism (and/or other heathen sources, and, perhaps, with more than a dash of Jewish esoteric doctrines), you would be perfectly satisfied (in spite of your rejection of the trinity and affirmation of some “humanitarian unitarianism”), because “[p]agan philosophers … are … made in God’s image, and have reason”? That would be …
inconsistenter … interesting …[b] You are being merely argumentative, because you are the first to affirm (when it otherwise suits your argument …) that the “trinity” is not only un-scriptural, but even anti-scriptural. This is what you recently wrote:
“God in the OT is plainly revealed as a self (not as at least one self).” (Dale, HERE)
[c] “Guaranteed to lose”? Why? I wonder if you have even bordered to read Beatrice’s and Logan’s papers, after you asked for the references that I provided …
[d] This is a rather peculiar attitude: you reject the (“christian”, or more properly Cappadocian) trinity both on logical-philosophical grounds and on scriptural grounds, yet (purely for the sake of argument) you make allowances for heathen-philosophical sources to have had the “right inspiration” about it. And you simply refuse to examine seriously any “genetic link” between those “influences” and the full-fledged “christian trinity”. For instance the role of the Catechetical School of Alexandria (see also Esoteric Christianity > Ancient roots).
MdS
I’m not sure, MdS, why you (and others) are so concerned to find some non-Christian source for the Trinity idea, or some key component of it. Truth is what matters, not who first came up with the idea. Pagan philosophers and whatnot are, like Christians, made in God’s image, and have reason. So, sometimes they make important discoveries.
IF God is a Trinty, then it is not completely crazy to think this is SOMEHOW reflected in his creation, and is discoverable, at least in broad outline, by reason.
If you point out to a trinitarian, then, that some non-Christian had a similar idea, they will quite correctly point out that it does not follow that the Trinity is false, or that it is unscriptural, or that it is all things considered unreasonable.
Again, the causal links between “the pagan Trinity” and the late 4th c. doctrine are always lengthy and hard to establish. Debunking trinitarianism by pointing out an alleged pre-Christian source seems like a game that is guaranteed to lose.
Mind you: I’m not saying there was no such influence on the development of “the” doctrine. I think Philo was such an influence. And I think triads were in the air from various Platonist quarters. I’m open to any evidence about such influences. But I don’t think they are very relevant to questions of truth and justification.
” there was neither Scriptural nor Patristic precedent of the use of the word homoousios, but only Gnostic and then also Sabellian, and that is the reason why, until Nicea, it had always been looked at with suspicion, not only by Arius who flatly rejected it, but also by the “orthodox party”. It took an external intervention, that of Constantine, to force the Council Fathers to adopt it, and, somehow, to “baptize” it. But the word homoousios remained for Christians a “foreign body”, so much so that, after Nicea and until the “revamped” Creed of Constantinople (381 AD) it was hardly used at all, if not to contest it, even by advocates of the original Nicene Creed like Ossius and Marcellus, who openly replaced it, at the Council of Sardica (343 AD?) with mia hypostasis. ”
Yes – well said. And this is well established by historians now.
About being “under probation” – that automatically kicks in if you change any of your information – I think even by one character. But I always clear that within about a day.
Apparently I am again “under probation”, and my comment at the latest thread, “Credo House Ministries’ Inaccuracies about the Trinity and the Council of Nicea” is “awaiting moderation” …
MdS
Dale,
at thread “Moses Stuart on Nicea” I had cited another paper, complementary to the one by Beatrice, in support of my claim that the “trinity” is an abomination because, with the “trinity”, it is (Valentinian) Gnosticism that creeps into Christianity, and Hermeticism. Here is, once again, the reference, with link: Marcellus of Ancyra (Pseudo-Anthimus), ‘On The Holy Church’: Text, Translation and Commentary (see link @ jts.oxfordjournals.org), by ABH Logan, 2000).
Enjoy
MdS
P.S. Looking for a suitable image of Cerberus made me realize that you had already used the same one I linked to in the first post/part of your 9-part series on Moreland’s and Craig’s “Trinity Monotheism”. Browsing through your whole series, all the way to post/part 9, I finally found all that is wrong with your criticism of Moreland’s and Craig’s “Trinity Monotheism”, whereas the only thing wrong with it is that it thoroughly lacks scriptural support, while the “generation of the Son” and the “procession of the Holy Spirit”, which, somehow, DO have a scriptural foundation (although NOT “co-eternal, co-equal, tri-personal”) are simply ditched by the two. I believe this glossing over “generation” and “procession” was also the approach of John Calvin, who, BTW, never subscribed to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, mainly because he was afraid that that “generation”, that “procession” would jeopardize the perfect “co-equality” of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
MdS
Dale,
as you will see from the paper, there was neither Scriptural nor Patristic precedent of the use of the word homoousios, but only Gnostic and then also Sabellian, and that is the reason why, until Nicea, it had always been looked at with suspicion, not only by Arius who flatly rejected it, but also by the “orthodox party”. It took an external intervention, that of Constantine, to force the Council Fathers to adopt it, and, somehow, to “baptize” it. But the word homoousios remained for Christians a “foreign body”, so much so that, after Nicea and until the “revamped” Creed of Constantinople (381 AD) it was hardly used at all, if not to contest it, even by advocates of the original Nicene Creed like Ossius and Marcellus, who openly replaced it, at the Council of Sardica (343 AD?) with mia hypostasis.
What is disconcerting, in the texts that Beatrice produces in support of his thesis, is how they sound eerily trinitarian, “orthodox” trinitarian.
My strong opinion is that, as the “original sin” of the Philonian Logos as deuteros theos proved impossible to expel, and conditioned the entire development of Christian doctrine all the way to the “self inflicted wound” of the “co-eternal, co-equal tri-personal” Cerberus, the Cerberus itself (see IMAGE) is, through the Alexandrian school, heathen Hermetic.
MdS
Hi MdS,
Thanks for that reference – I will read that.
I’m not sure it matters where the word came from. What matters is what the council members meant by it. Also, isn’t the claim that Constantine suggested the word based on just one report? I seem to remember that…
I agree that the sight of an unbaptized Roman Emperor presiding over a doctrinal meeting is disturbing. Think of the recent spat among evangelicals about whether the Son is “eternally subordinate” to the Father. Now imagine a meeting to settlle the issue – called and presided over by Bill Clinton!
Dale,
perhaps Constantine was not a “major player”, but he certainly had a critical role, and at a critical juncture. Not only did he personally convene the Council of Nicea (325 AD), but it was he who provided the critical word, homoousios that, although probably misunderstood, was instrumental in putting Arius in “off side”, so to speak.
At thread “Moses Stuart on Nicea” I have commented that the Fathers of Nicea, tried to oppose (what they saw as the) the novelty introduced by Arius (his breaking of the “Emanationist bond” between the Father and the Son, by boldly affirming that “there was [a time] when he was not”, and therefore, that the Son was NOT generated BUT created) resorting to the (unscriptural) homoousios, which, as well known, was proposed, or rather imposed by Emperor Constantine. Here is what Pier Franco Beatrice writes, in his paper:
“The main thesis of this paper is that homoousios came straight from Constantine’s Hermetic background. As can be clearly seen in the Poimandres, and even more clearly in an inscription mentioned exclusively in the Theosophia, in the theological language of Egyptian paganism the word homoousios meant that the Nous-Father and the Logos-Son, who are two distinct beings, share the same perfection of the divine nature. ” — The Word “Homoousios” from Hellenism to Christianity (see link @ journals.cambridge.org ), by Pier Franco Beatrice, 2002.
Enjoy the rest … 🙂
MdS
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