Beyond all temporary circumstances that may permit, explain and favour some Christians’ denial of\u00a0the Holy Trinity, the real\u00a0roots of it can be found in the paradox, as it seems to be, of a God who is simultaneously\u00a0One and Three. Common sense can not understand this, nor can it understand why\u00a0the members of the deity\u00a0should be only\u00a0three and not\u00a0four or five, or two, etc.<\/p>\n
The whole problem is caused when we\u00a0are not in an existential search for God, but in a rational attempt to comprehend\/invent a theory. How do I know that? Because, if a person is in a real search for Him, God is obliged to help this person and to reveal Himself in this person. The same happens in the secondary dimension, in cultural traditions.<\/p>\n
It is not a coincidence that the New Testament<\/a> is written in Greek, Christianity was adopted by Greeks, and the Church of the first centuries has a clearly Greek identity (Cf. Greek Orthodoxy – From Apostolic Times to the Present Day<\/a>). After the ancient Greeks’ unbelievable attempt to get close to Him, God was obliged to respond. Christianity is this response. The same happens in the primary, properly personal, level, i.e. with each person.<\/p>\n So-called “pure monotheists”, whether they belong to the Judaic, the Muslim, or any tradition of such a kind, they are in reality not monotheists but atheists. Abolish the Trinity, and you also abolish Oneness<\/strong>. After such an abolishment, the One that is worshipped is not the God, but the idea of a creature.<\/p>\n Only a creature can be one in the sense of the Judaic or the Muslim oneness – God is One only in the Trinity. But all of these things are closed in a darkness, away from impious people. Therefore, no matter how many essays are written, how many wise and holy men speak to us as they have, the Fathers of Christianity<\/a>, no matter how many and how\u00a0greatly they speak, we must not expect that “pure monotheists” will be persuaded, because this is essentially not a matter of arguments and persuasion.<\/p>\n Labarum post<\/strong>; excerpts selected by Ellopos Blog:<\/p>\n There have been numerous attempts to recreate a revisionist history of the Church (e.g., \u201cBaptist Successionism\u201d) revolving around some sort of conspiracy of the Church of history to suppress the church that exists only in their imagination. Since Jesus was a Jew, they suppose that Christianity must have been very much like Judaism as we know it and thus they believe that by restoring some supposed Jewish roots, they will finally have the trump card on Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans and other Christians who trace their roots further back than the American frontier.<\/p>\n Even a cursory websearch among websites labeling themselves as Messianic or \u201cHebrew Roots\u201d (essentially fundamentalists using faux Jewishness to lend themselves an air of legitimacy) will quickly come across troubling doctrinal developments. These range from the revival of ancient heresies to well-intentioned attempts to reflect a Jewish presentation of Christian doctrines that do not reflect the fullness of the doctrine and unintentionally lapse into error.<\/p>\n One of the more prominent of these is an assault on the doctrine of the Trinity using the same sorts of arguments associated with various pseudo-Christian sects. A lesser but still serious aberration is an attempt to redefine the Trinity by keeping its essence but presenting it in a new form that the backers believe presents better the \u201cHebrew Roots\u201d of the doctrine. Unfortunately, such restructuring is often done without consulting the original writings at the time of the Ecumenical Councils and thus it goes forward without a complete understanding of the issues and the implications of altering the original definitions.<\/p>\n It also never occurs to these folks that God in His sovereign will chose a time when the Mediterranean world was under the rule of one state (the Roman Empire) whose engineering feats had made quick travel over long distances possible through its vast network of roads, the highly expressive Greek language was the common tongue for learning, and Hellenistic culture had greatly influenced much of the known world since Alexander the Great<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Greek language<\/a> is highly suited for philosophical endeavors whereas Biblical Hebrew was relatively simple by comparison. I do not believe it was a coincidence that God chose a time when the infrastructure, language, and culture of an empire allowed an easy expansion of the faith, the widespread use of a language that allowed its forceful defense, and a rich culture that allowed it to be placed in the context of the fulfillment of all that is good within mankind.<\/p>\n Restricting the faith to some alleged \u201cHebrew Roots\u201d that define a faith other than what ever existed removes two of the great strengths of the Christian faith – its universality and its historicity. However sincere its protagonists may be, they are describing an unrealized faith that they must assume Christ has never been able to fully realize until they came along.<\/p>\n Cf. On the future of Christianity in Europe – a discussion<\/a>, Greek Orthodoxy – From Apostolic Times to the Present Day<\/a>, The Ancient Greeks<\/a> (text in Greek only)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Beyond all temporary circumstances that may permit, explain and favour some Christians’ denial of\u00a0the Holy Trinity, the real\u00a0roots of it can be found in the paradox, as it seems to be, of a God who is simultaneously\u00a0One and Three. Common sense can not understand this, nor can it understand why\u00a0the members of the deity\u00a0should be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_disable_autopaging":false},"categories":[9,13,14],"tags":[539,1722,1724,1666,1720,1719,1718,1725,1373,1717,1450,1721,1723,1671],"class_list":["post-380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-greek-history","category-islam","tag-alexander","tag-atheists","tag-common-sense","tag-deity","tag-future-of-christianity","tag-history-of-the-church","tag-holy-trinity","tag-judaism","tag-judaism-and-christianity","tag-monotheists","tag-muslim","tag-oneness","tag-persuasion","tag-trinity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}