LionHeart777:
Dan,
I’m sorry but in the quotes of the above 2 ECF’s by your source, whom I might add appears to be a hostile witness to both Arians (including JW’s) and Trinitarians, don’t indicate that paganism and Jewish monotheism were the “source” for the doctrine of the Trinity. A quote from your source above;
“‘The Jewish dogma is destroyed by the acceptance of the Word and by the belief in the Spirit, while the polytheistic error of the Greek school is made to vanish by the unity of the nature abrogating this imagination of plurality.’ [15 Oratio Catechetica 3 (PG 45 17 D-2O A)]”
There is nothing in here about either being the source; rather it seems to me that he is saying that the true components of each were “accepted.” Do you think “accepted” means, let’s make up our own god, or that those before Gregory did this? Or do you think that components of each were “accepted” because they lined up with Scripture and Tradition?
It almost seems like you’re trying to make mud w/ the writings of the ECF’s (in this specific case via some author) and then trying to sling it on the Doctrine of the Trinity.
Do you feel you are being objective?
Dan:
Wolfson gives **two **quotes and he says the are saying the same thing, but in slightly different ways. I commented on a couple of the phrases from John of Damascus. The first was “remains” and the Greek word is PARAMENEI. The other is a prepositional phrase with EK. BDAG says of EK: ***3. marker denoting origin, cause, motive, reason, from, of c. to denote derivation ***
The quote to which you refer with the word “accept” is the Greek PARADOXHS - a receiving from another: also that which has been received, a hereditary custom, Eur. II. acceptance, approval, Polyb. [LSJ] It is said to be from PARADEXOMAI = To receive from another
That word is used in Mark 4:20:
NJB Mark 4:20 And there are those who have been sown in rich soil; they hear the word and **accept **it and yield a harvest, thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.’
It is also used by John of Damascus:
Thus because of the unity in nature, the error of the Greeks in holding that God is many, is utterly destroyed: and again by our
acceptance = PARADOXHS of the Spirit, the dogma of the Jews is overthrown: and there remains of each party only what is profitable. On the one hand of the Jewish idea we have the unity of God’s nature, and on the other, of the Greek, we have the distinction in subsistences (hypostases) and that only. (
ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf209.iii.iv.i.vii.html)
While it might be possible to interpret “accept” in a way other than the normative “receiving from another” it is not possible to misconstrue the use of the word “remains” and “from the Greeks” from John of Damascus.
Wolfson is an expert in this field and he makes the point I am making after digging into the original Greek text. I beleive I am being very objective. If I were not I could just take Wolfson’s word for it, but I have not.
John of Damascus clearly teaches that the source of the Trinity is the combination of parts of Jewish teaching and parts of Greek teaching, the result which is a transformation into something new that retains parts of the original.
