Now getting from that to the Holy Trinity required revelation. The Christian revelation brought us knowledge that God is three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That knowledge did not come from Greek philosophy. The knowledge that the divine is One, a single essence and the ground of being, also did not come only from Greek philosophy (Christians have always believed this), but the fact that Aristotle proved that the divine being must necessarily be like Aristotle described Him meant that Aquinas could use Aristotle to elucidate the statements on the Trinity found in the Creeds.
The Nicene Council enshrined what had always been taught and what had been preserved in Holy Tradition, represented by the majority view at the council. Arianism was the minority view and was rightly defeated by the council. The trinitarian view was not invented at the Council. The majority did not emerge during the council, but existed before the council. Mormons and Protestants like to imagine that Constantine scared the bishops into going along with the trinitarian view, but such a view ignores the facts of history. The council was organized shortly after the Edict of Milan and many participants still bore the scars of tortures endured at the hands of Roman persecutors during the last of the anti-Christian campaigns perpetrated by the Empire. Bishops in attendance who were in that position during the persecutions were those who survived those who never renounced their Christian faith. It’s hard to believe that Constantine would have scared these men. No. The reality is that the trinitarian doctrine did not originate at the Council and was indeed held by the majority of bishops in attendance, as the eyewitness accounts from Athanasius and Eusebius attest.
With all that said, my original question is still (mostly) unanswered. Dallin H. Oaks and other church leaders have asserted that greek philosophy corrupted the gospel. The Apostasy (if we say it occured for argument’s sake) could have occured no later than the end of the 1st Century. It’s known that Aristotle didn’t influence Catholic thought until Aquinas. The Churches of Rome and Antioch were clearly Catholic, hierarchical and liturgical by the time Clement (a Roman), Ignatius (a Syrian), and Justin Martyr (born in Palestine) wrote their letters. If there was a corrupting influence of Greek philosophy on the church that led to the Apostasy, it must have done its work during the 1st Century and it must have been someone other than Aristotle - whose writings didn’t make it to the West until after Islamic mathematicians brought them there during the muslim invasions. In your opinion, which Greek philosophies were the culprit? Which Greek writings were used by Christians during the 1st Century and who did the corrupting? In an earlier post, you mentioned doctrines that crept into the Church asserting that matter was evil and only spirit was pure. These are gnostic teachings, not necessarily Greek (they are also found in Jewish writings) and definitely not part of the body teachings in the mainstream of Greek philosophy, deriving from the line of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. But as another poster indicated, it is not true that the gnostic teaching that the flesh is evil every infiltrated the church. To the contrary, gnosticism was countered early on and was fought vigorously (by Iranaeus in his “Against Heresies”, to cite one example). The Catholic Church, from the very beginning, has taught that matter is the creation of God and is therefore good. So, if not the gnostics or Aristotle, which Greek philosophies corrupted the Church in the 1st Century, creating an obviously very Catholic Church in both Rome and Antioch by the end of the 1st Century?
Sorry for the long post. I am looking forward to your answer.
NS
The Lord revealed “stuff” to you about Mormonism “by his grace”? :bowdown: