{"id":42413,"date":"2020-05-15T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-05-15T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/?p=42413"},"modified":"2020-05-13T22:20:18","modified_gmt":"2020-05-14T03:20:18","slug":"sophronius-the-one-god-is-a-trinity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/sophronius-the-one-god-is-a-trinity\/","title":{"rendered":"Sophronius: &#8220;the one God is a Trinity&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignright size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/readem-and-weep-boys.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-42414\" width=\"458\" height=\"306\" srcset=\"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/readem-and-weep-boys.jpg 500w, https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/readem-and-weep-boys-450x301.jpg 450w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 458px) 100vw, 458px\" \/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At his excellent blog <a href=\"https:\/\/contramodalism.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Contra Modalism<\/a>, my friend Andrew Davis posts on yet another problem for the <strong>revisionary historical narrative<\/strong> offered by recent Orthodox scholars like Behr and Branson: a fairly early Eastern writer who clearly believes in a triune God &#8211; something the revisers regard as a mostly Western mistake, in large part deriving from Augustine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In his post &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/contramodalism.com\/2020\/04\/18\/another-source-showing-the-concept-of-a-triune-god-in-official-eastern-orthodox-dogma\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>Another Source Showing the Concept of a \u2018Triune God\u2019 in Official Eastern Orthodox\u00a0Dogma<\/strong><\/a>&#8221; Davis writes,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>There was an Eastern bishop active in the late sixth and early seventh century named <strong>Sophronius, the Patriarch of Jerusalem<\/strong>, who wrote an encyclical letter detailing, among other things, what he regards as the orthodox understanding of the Trinity. In it, he speaks clearly of the one God as the entire Trinity- that is, a triune or tri-personal God:<\/p><p>\u201cNor as <strong>the one God is a Trinity<\/strong> and is recognized and proclaimed as three hypostases and worshipped as three persons, Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit, is he said to be contracted or compounded or confused, that is, by coalescing himself into one hypostasis and combining [himself] into one person that cannot be numbered.\u201d (<em><a href=\"http:\/\/93.174.95.29\/main\/3BA0004A0ED1C0A4914EB963AECB6474?fbclid=IwAR25VSYfmpLNiS_ppkcDNQQO136ar2zHscdAqEFEEE1skgUVscHkX471Vck\">Sophronius of Jerusalem and Seventh-Century Heresy<\/a><\/em>, p. 77)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/contramodalism.com\/2020\/04\/18\/another-source-showing-the-concept-of-a-triune-god-in-official-eastern-orthodox-dogma\/\" target=\"_blank\">Check out Davis&#8217;s whole post here<\/a> to see how this relates to the sixth ecumenical council!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is another couple of pieces of evidence that fit well with the case I make in <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/when-and-how-in-the-history-of-theology-did-the-triune-god-replace-the-father-as-the-only-true-god\/\" target=\"_blank\">my recent published paper<\/a>, contra the Orthodox revisionists. I would have included these if I knew about them when I wrote it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Check out my <strong>interviews with Andrew Davis <a href=\"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/podcast-266-andrew-davis-on-church-history-the-trinity-and-modalism-part-1\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">here<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/podcast-267-andrew-davis-on-church-history-the-trinity-and-modalism-part-2\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">here<\/a><\/strong> to see why he calls his blog Contra Modalism. His is an interesting, study-based theological journey.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s a bummer when one&#8217;s narrative about theological development runs into inconvenient facts. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42414,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"off","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":[6,14,8,43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-complaints","category-history","category-linkage","category-unitarianism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42413","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=42413"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42416,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42413\/revisions\/42416"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}