{"id":408,"date":"2008-08-08T12:08:00","date_gmt":"2008-08-08T16:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/?p=408"},"modified":"2017-03-09T16:07:49","modified_gmt":"2017-03-09T21:07:49","slug":"heretical-trinitarians-evolution-of-a-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/heretical-trinitarians-evolution-of-a-word\/","title":{"rendered":"Heretical “trinitarians” – evolution of a word"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\"\"<\/small>Following up on the previous post<\/a> – the word “trinitarian”<\/strong> may be an adjective or a noun. The Oxford English Dictionary lists four adjective meanings<\/strong>: (here’s my editing of relevant parts of their entry, emphasis added)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

2. Theol<\/em>. Relating to the Trinity; holding the doctrine of the Trinity (opp. to Unitarian<\/em>). In early use, Trinitarian heretic<\/em>, one holding heretical views as to the Trinity:<\/p>\n

1656 BLOUNT Glossogr., Trinitarian hereticks<\/strong><\/em>, otherwise New Arians are those that deny the blessed Trinity, and all distinction of the Divine persons.<\/p>\n

3. Forming a trinity; consisting of or involving three in one; triple, threefold.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Part of the usage we’re complaining about<\/strong> is 3,\u00a0where “trinitarian” just means something or some group of things which is somehow triple or threefold. But it’s worse than that – theologians by “trinitarian” often mean just something that is somehow related to<\/em> something which is three-fold. And worse yet, self-described “trinitarians” mean several different things by “the Trinity”, many of which we’ve looked into here.<\/p>\n

So far, we haven’t found what I was looking for<\/strong> – a usage of “trinitarian” for a heresy or heretical party. In the 1656 example above, “trinitarian” heretics are heretical with respect to the Trinity – they aren’t described as “trinitarian” full stop.<\/p>\n

We turn then to the noun meanings<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

2. Theol<\/em>. One who holds the doctrine of the Trinity of the Godhead; a believer in the Trinity.<\/p>\n

1706 PHILLIPS (ed. Kersey) s.v., The Orthodox that believe the Trinity are also call’d Trinitarians by the Socinians.<\/p>\n

In earlier use, \u2018applied particularly to certain sectaries whose opinion as to the Trinity was not orthodox\u2019 (Littr\u00e9) = Trinitarian heretic<\/em> in A. 2; including Antitrinitarians or Unitarians.<\/p>\n

1565 HARDING Confut. Apol. 133 There are many other sectes..to witte, Osiandrines, Adiaphoristes, Antinomians, Newe Maniches,..Trinitarians<\/strong>.
\n1658 PHILLIPS, Trinitarians, a sort of Hereticks that deny the Mystery of the Trinity<\/strong> [1706 (ed. Kersey) adds] and all distinction of the Divine Persons.
\n<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, there we have it; apparently as late as the mid 17th century, a “trinitarian” could be someone against “the” doctrine of the Trinity.<\/strong> This is odd… what would they call believers in “the” doctrine (i.e. partisans of the standard creedal formulas)? I guess… “orthodox”. Or maybe: “Christians” or “catholics”.<\/p>\n

In any case, when they invented the word “unitarian” in (I’ve been told) 1673, it seems that “trinitarian” evolved to its current use.<\/p>\n

One last thing: the OED also mentions this linguistic turd:<\/p>\n

Trinitarianize<\/strong> v. trans.<\/em> to make Trinitarian.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Will this be the next fad<\/strong> among academic theologians? Only time will tell. If so, we’ll be here to complain about it! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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). In early use, Trinitarian… Read More »Heretical “trinitarians” – evolution of a word<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":409,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,4,14,7,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-complaints","category-heresy-orthodoxy","category-history","category-quotes","category-theologians"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38623,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408\/revisions\/38623"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}