1gr8bldr
Senior Member
You claimed Trinitarian doctrine originated with Valentinus, I claimed foul that no historical evidence exists to support your claim. You have still failed to support your claim.
Apparently the Trinitarian despute was settled early on and the "One in essence, three in persons" theology held.
Well, there is no belief system that I am associated with. My trinitarian upbringing in a baptist church was very hard to deprogram myself from. I studied the early church to see what it was they believed, to ponder over the rebuttals to see what the opposition was etc. Interesting was how writers tried to force their beliefs back into academia as if to validate their current belief. Polycarp for example, was said to have said as he was dying his belief of God as who, yet he was in the middle of an arena of thousands of screaming people so we know that this writer was lying to try to validate his own belief. It however does not mean that Polycarp did not believe this, only that he, not Polycarp, was trying to force a doctrine into academia. And I concede that Marcellus or other falsely quoting Marcellous may have been trying to manipulate church history. But since I can't go back into history to investigate, I take it at face value, with a question mark beside itI don't follow any single person, I believe that the church opperates best as a body lead by the Holy Spirit. The last time this happened was with the 7th ecumenical council, everything else is just a Hodge podge of individual ideas.
I believe there is evidence of early church teaching that needed no definition until centuries later, especially once heresies started anew. An example of this is infant baptism. There was not much discussion until some time in the 4th century when Tertullian claims infants should not be baptised. From that we know that infants were being baptised and Tertullian did not like it. The church continued to baptize infants.
Language had to be developed to describe beliefs and teachings.
Hypostais vs. ousia for example.
In short, I yield to the decisions of the 7 ecuminical council's.
How about you? Where do you stand?