I agree that the early church fathers writtings were not as scholarly as we have in some of the latter writtings, but don't you think they had an amazing devotional grasp on God? It seems to me that they had a handle on Who God was and saw Him in simplier terms than we often do.
_________________D.Miller
alan,Praise God! I will pray that the Holy Spirit is able to move me like that. I'm often too quick with words. I ought to change my nickname to 'letuspray.' My daughter told me this one day (she was three).Her: Stop running!Me: Who said stop?Her: Jesus said 'stop running!'Me: Why does Jesus want me to stop running?Her: Because He wants to go with you.
_________________Hal Bachman
"your sons and your daughters shall prophesy..." :-P(Acts 2:17)
I do believe Ron is probably on par with most college profs, ;-)
Letsgetbusy ~ Thanks for sharing that about what your daughter told you. Amazing.dohzman ~ what bible college did you attend ?Have a great day :-)
The purpose of this analogy is to assert that the ancients did not always use our modern 'boxes' for their thinking about key subjects. The nature of God was one of the things that it was always going to be difficult to fit into a 'box'. The relationship of the Father, Son and Spirit was, in some ways, more important that precise labels. It was only later when 'error' was being taught that the Christians were forced to say 'well, if x is not true, how would you explain it.' The consequent development of trinitarian theology is mostly 'reactive'; that is to say it was usually in reaction to some extreme statement that a counter claim was made, and often these counter claims corrected one error only to create another.
The Bible revelation is not primarily theological but pragmatic. God revealed aspects of Himself not satisfy mental curiosity but to bring to bear His moral right to speak and be obeyed. The Bible, for example, never tries to prove the existence of God. It begins with that presumption. We might say the same about the nature of Christ and the Spirit. The words of Christ and of the Spirit carry all the authority of divinity; they are not viewed as agents, but as authorities within themselves, '...but I say unto you...' Consequently we ought not to expect to find 'trinitarian formulae' in the New Testament. Biblical theology is first extractions, then analysis, then assimilation, and finally desemination in acceptable forms. This is not how the Bible was written and in one sense we are working opposite to its 'wholeness' when we begin the process of 'theology'.
That's enough for a start. Shall we go on?
_________________Mike Balog