Refutation of Mormons objection the the Trinity

[Stephen168]

I will surely try to answer.

If I realized the Catholic Church was the true Church of Christ, I do not know what would come first testimony (Spiritual confirmation) or reason.
The truth is I try to read the BEST books and follow arguments here.
I also once prayed specifically to know if God was calling me back to Catholicism, but I no longer do this. I still generically pray to be shown God’s will and that I might have the courage to follow.

…

Now, I can only guess how your question is analogous to my questions to you.

I will try to make my questions more explicit and then you can explain to me.

So you were asking me to pretend like you proved it. I’m not good at pretend. Yes, direct and pithy is best

 

[adamhovey1988]

So you were asking me to pretend like you proved it. I’m not good at pretend. Yes, direct and pithy is best

This is reminding me of a mid 90s rock song called “In Circles”. Stephen, God bless, you have way more patience than I.

 

[TOmNossor]

Stephen168,
From post #100, questions bolded:

I claim that the co-equal formulation of the Trinity present in the writings of Athanasius, Augustine, Aquinas, and modern Catholic writers is absent in its “co-equal” formulation before the 4th century. I further claim that the UNITY of the Trinity includes greater distinctions in the pre-4th century church than exist in Athanasius, Aquinas, and modern Catholics. ThePhilospher6 has claimed that the doctrine of the Trinity did not DEVELOP. By this I think he means that only different words were brought into service, but there was no REFINING or NARROWING or DEFINING of the concepts.
Would you frame this topic as I have (without the rejection of the word “DEVELOP” for your side I presume)?

Here I am not asking if you agree with me. I am asking if you agree that I have framed the question of this thread sufficiently.
I claim to show that there is both subordination and distinction DIFFERENCES. The Catholic claims there are no CHANGES.
Is this a proper question to be evaluating?

Finally, we can offer the assessment of scholars who have surveyed the data and come to conclusions. One problem with this course is that LDS scholars are more likely to publish LDS conclusions and Catholic/Protestant scholars are more likely to publish Catholic/Protestant conclusions (for a variety of reasons).

Now, in acknowledgement of this problem, I have offered the thoughts of a few scholars who claim the Trinity developed and this is good/divine/true. I thus agree with the first part of the scholar’s conclusions that the Trinity was not believed in the same way in the Early Church and only disagree with the second part. And truth be told, I am not presently arguing for or against the second part.

As a guess as to what you are saying, let me ask a different question here.
Have you read the quotes I offered from 3-4 different scholars discussion the pre-Nicene view of the Trinity?
Do you disagree with the scholars?
Do you have another concern?

If you agree with the scholars, do you call this a development that is NOT A CHANGE?

From post #108, questions bolded:

Stephen168;14020497:

You jump to the assumption that ‘develop’ means ‘change’ which is not what development means to Cardinal Newman. It could mean that 1) a philosophical explanation of an ancient belief developed, 2) the geography of an ancient belief expanded, 3) it started small and expanded in itself, or 4) a combination. I can understand how a person could see #3 as a change, but I would not agree.

Stephen,
…
I have attempted to suggest that the subordination of Christ to the Father AND the distinction this subordination evidences is present within the writings of the ECF before the 4th century. That “co-equal” language is absent before the 4th century AND that the only folks to say thing like (and exactly like) that God the Father and God the Son were homoousian were condemned as heritics before the 4th century.
First, if I have proved this, what form of development is it 1, 2, 3, or some combination and why/how?
Second, do you accept that I have shown that most scholars see this and it is the overarching sweep of the ECF data?

I am hoping you can respond to the question. It might help me to understand if you respond rather directly to them as I have so far been unable to link your response to my questions.
Charity, TOm

 

[TOmNossor]

So you were asking me to pretend like you proved it. I’m not good at pretend. Yes, direct and pithy is best

No, I have seen no response to a group of scholars who I say support my position.
Instead I got discussion on how DEVELOPMENT is not CHANGE. So I assumed that the position I was advocating somehow was in the DEVELOPMENT is not CHANGE category.

Charity, TOm

 

[TOmNossor]

Here are a few assessments from respected non-Mormon scholars:

‘Subordinationism’, it is true, was pre-Nicean orthodoxy. {Henry Bettenson, editor and translator, The Early Christian Fathers:A Selection from the Writings of the Fathers from St. Clement of Rome to St. Athanasius, (Oxford University Press: 1969), 239}

Here are two sources conflated into a single quote. I was looking for Hansen and found both of these:

“Writers who are usually reckoned orthodox but who lived a century or two centuries before the outbreak of the Arian Controversy, such as Irenaeus and Tertullian and Novatian and Justin Martyr, held some views which would later, in the fourth century, have been branded heretical…Irenaeus and Tertullian both believed that God had not always been a Trinity but had at some point put forth the Son and the Spirit so as to be distinct from him. Tertullian, borrowing from Stoicism, believed that God was material (though only of a very refined material, a kind of thinking gas), so that his statement that Father, Son and Spirit were ‘of one substance’, beautifully orthodox though it sounds, was of a corporeality which would have profoundly shocked Origen, Athanasius and the Cappadocian theologians, had they known of it” { RPC Hansen, “The Achievement of Orthodoxy in the Fourth Century AD”, in Rowan Williams, editor, The Making of Orthodoxy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 151–152}

“It [subordinationism] is a characteristic tendency in much Christian teaching of the first three centuries, and is a marked feature of such otherwise orthodox Fathers as St. Justin and Origen…Where the doctrine [of the Trinity] was elaborated, as e.g. in the writing of the Apologists, the language remained on the whole indefinite, and, from a later standpoint, was even partly unorthodox. Sometimes it was not free from a certain subordinationism.” {FL Cross and EA Livingston, editors, The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 2nd edition, (London: Oxford University Press, 1974), 1319, 1394.}

And three more, two more from RPC Hanson and one from Catholic Cardinal John Henry Newman:

“Indeed, until Athanasius began writing, every single theologian, East and West, had postulated some form of Subordinationism. It could, about the year 300, have been described as a fixed part of catholic theology.”{RPC Hanson, “The Achievement of Orthodoxy in the Fourth Century AD” in Rowan Williams, ed., The Making of Orthodoxy (New York, NY: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989) p. 153.}

With the exception of Athanasius virtually every theologian, East and West, accepted some form of subordinationism at least up to the year 355
{RPC Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1988, p. xix.}

If we limit our view of the teaching of the Fathers by what they expressly state, St. Ignatius may be considered Patripassian, St. Justin arianizes, and St. Hippolytus is a Photinian…Tertullian is heterodox on the Lord’s divinity…Origen is, at the very least suspected, and must be defended and explained rather than cited as a witness of orthodoxy; and Eusebius was a Semi-Arian.{John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, (6th edition 1989) p. 17.}

This is why I think I have demonstrated that Subordination was pre-Nicene orthodoxy. (well and because you started talking about DEVELOPMENT is unequal to CHANGE).
Charity, TOm

 

[Stephen168]

Here I am not asking if you agree with me. I am asking if you agree that I have framed the question of this thread sufficiently.
I claim to show that there is both subordination and distinction DIFFERENCES. The Catholic claims there are no CHANGES.
Is this a proper question to be evaluating?

When you come to CAF you instantly set up a kind of false dilemma.
I firmly believe that the Mormon cliché, “It is either the Mormon Church or the Catholic Church” is at work. You can’t prove the Mormon Church right but proving the Catholic Church wrong is the same thing.
Catholic Church claims ‘A’
Mormon Church claims ‘B’
The OP said the Mormon Church claims ‘B’ and you can’t prove ‘B’ so you argue not ‘A’
You argue for relational subordinationism. Is that the teaching for the Mormon Church?

The OP proved the ancient Church is not the Mormon Church as claimed by the author of the provided link. God was never human as Mormons believe.

 

[Stephen168]

As a guess as to what you are saying, let me ask a different question here.
Have you read the quotes I offered from 3-4 different scholars discussion the pre-Nicene view of the Trinity?
Do you disagree with the scholars?
Do you have another concern?

I don’t know if I agree with the scholars or not. As with Father Sullivan not claiming what you said he did, I don’t trust your evaluation of a scholar or early church father. Post #44 is another example. Tertullian in Against Praxeas is clearly making a case for the trinity in his 31 Chapter work. He says what he believes in the trinity in Chapter 2, yet you quote chapter 8 when he is talking about modalism.
I know after reading the church fathers that God was never said to have been human. And there are great amounts supporting the doctrine of the trinity.

 

[TOmNossor]

When you come to CAF you instantly set up a kind of false dilemma.
I firmly believe that the Mormon cliché, “It is either the Mormon Church or the Catholic Church” is at work. You can’t prove the Mormon Church right but proving the Catholic Church wrong is the same thing.
Catholic Church claims ‘A’
Mormon Church claims ‘B’
The OP said the Mormon Church claims ‘B’ and you can’t prove ‘B’ so you argue not ‘A’
You argue for relational subordinationism. Is that the teaching for the Mormon Church?

Stephen,
We have not agreed what the OP is about, so perhaps we should start there.
False dilemma or not, prove or not prove vs. offer evidence, those are not trivial things, but ThePhilospher6 started this thread with certain ideas.

I think the OP purported to prove that the Catholic Church has ALWAYS believed in the Trinity such that there is no truth the LDS claim that the Early Church believed something different than what the MODERN Catholic church believes today.

If you pick something like “God the Father had a Father,” and claim that for the CoJCoLDS to be true, I must prove that the earliest of the ECF believed it, I will acknowledge that I cannot do this. I will reject the premise that I must, but I can acknowledge that I cannot.

The OP claimed that a LDS article saying that the early church believed differently than the MODERN church does, was wrong. It then offered “cherry picked” ECF quotes to defend the concept of the Trinity.

I claimed that Subordination of Christ to the Father AND distinction among the persons of the Trinity was GREATER before Nicea than it is today. That very directly responds to the OP.

Do you disagree that if I SHOW that Subordination of Christ to the Father and distinction among the persons was greater that there was some change?

How have I misunderstood the OP?

Again, I am sure I read every past exchange into our dialogues too, but I am hoping that this can be resisted.

Charity, TOm

 

[TOmNossor]

I don’t know if I agree with the scholars or not. As with Father Sullivan not claiming what you said he did, I don’t trust your evaluation of a scholar or early church father. Post #44 is another example. Tertullian in Against Praxeas is clearly making a case for the trinity in his 31 Chapter work. He says what he believes in the trinity in Chapter 2, yet you quote chapter 8 when he is talking about modalism.
I know after reading the church fathers that God was never said to have been human. And there are great amounts supporting the doctrine of the trinity.

If it is important to you, I will look more closely at what you claimed I did with Tertulllian, but I was not claiming he was a modalist. I said I used him because he called God two. Newman says that Tertullian is heterodox on the divinity of the Son.
We disagree about what Father Sullivan did or even would claim to have done, but perhaps you have me confused with Gazelem. If you can produce a quote where he claims he PROVED apostolic succession, I will reconsider. I would consider a claim like that to be out of character for him. But this has to do with doctrinal CHANGE or STABILITY so I think we should stay there.

Finally, I do not see how “trusting my evaluation” is at issue with quotes like this:

“Writers who are usually reckoned orthodox but who lived a century or two centuries before the outbreak of the Arian Controversy, such as Irenaeus and Tertullian and Novatian and Justin Martyr, held some views which would later, in the fourth century, have been branded heretical…Irenaeus and Tertullian both believed that God had not always been a Trinity but had at some point put forth the Son and the Spirit so as to be distinct from him. Tertullian, borrowing from Stoicism, believed that God was material (though only of a very refined material, a kind of thinking gas), so that his statement that Father, Son and Spirit were ‘of one substance’, beautifully orthodox though it sounds, was of a corporeality which would have profoundly shocked Origen, Athanasius and the Cappadocian theologians, had they known of it” { RPC Hansen, “The Achievement of Orthodoxy in the Fourth Century AD”, in Rowan Williams, editor, The Making of Orthodoxy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 151–152}

“Indeed, until Athanasius began writing, every single theologian, East and West, had postulated some form of Subordinationism. It could, about the year 300, have been described as a fixed part of catholic theology.”{RPC Hanson, “The Achievement of Orthodoxy in the Fourth Century AD” in Rowan Williams, ed., The Making of Orthodoxy (New York, NY: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989) p. 153.}

With the exception of Athanasius virtually every theologian, East and West, accepted some form of subordinationism at least up to the year 355
{RPC Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1988, p. xix.}

If we limit our view of the teaching of the Fathers by what they expressly state, St. Ignatius may be considered Patripassian, St. Justin arianizes, and St. Hippolytus is a Photinian…Tertullian is heterodox on the Lord’s divinity…Origen is, at the very least suspected, and must be defended and explained rather than cited as a witness of orthodoxy; and Eusebius was a Semi-Arian.{
John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, (6th edition 1989) p. 17.}

If you feel it is warranted to sweep away such things by a generic distrust of my evaluation, then we truly have no place to go.
Charity, TOm

 

[Stephen168]

"Mormon Claim:

Early Christian views of God were more personal, more anthropomorphic, and less abstract…

(lds.org/topics/god-the-father?lang=eng)
This is a common Mormon objection to the Trinity. The funny thing is is that nowhere in these two paragraphs is any credible information or sources given.

Yes, Joseph Smith goes beyond anthropomorphic and claims God was human. This belief cannot be found in the early church.

 

[gazelam]

Well, not necessarily. Paul certainly warns us against false Philosophies (Colossians 2:8) but the apostle were never against the use of Philosophy. Indeed, Paul uses Philosophy to convince the Athenians that they worship God.

*“For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship–and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.” - Acts 17:23
*
Furthermore, Paul quotes Greek Philosophers and Poets including in the chapter I just quoted. (Acts 17:28, 1 Corinthians 15:33, Titus 1:12)

Which of Paul’s Bible verses do you believe were specifically were derived from Greek philosophy, and not just paraphrazing a wholesome thought of a philosopher or poet? Acts 17:23 that you use as an example seems like Paul just plainly pointing out to the Greeks what they don’t know. When Christ told the Samaritan woman at the well “You people worship what you do not understand; we worship what we understand, because salvation is from the Jews.” (John 4:22) it would be hard to argue He was using Greek philosophy. Thanks in advance.

 

[Stephen168]

If it is important to you, I will look more closely at what you claimed I did with Tertulllian, but I was not claiming he was a modalist. I said I used him because he called God two. Newman says that Tertullian is heterodox on the divinity of the Son.

No, he said he was orthodox on the doctrine of the Trinity and heterodox on his eternal generation.

Another bad evolution of an author.

 

[TOmNossor]

Stephen,
The full quote from Newman is:

Tertullian is heterodox on the doctrine of our Lord’s divinity and, indeed, ultimately fell altogether into heresy or schism.

This quote is in paragraph 11 of the introduction in the online Newman Reader copy:
newmanreader.org/works/development/introduction.html

You have of course mistaken my quote for another quote from Newman:

For instance, as to the second head of the positive evidence noted by Dr. Burton, Tertullian is the most formal and elaborate of these Fathers in his statements of the Catholic doctrine. “It would hardly be possible,” says Dr. Burton, after quoting a passage, “for Athanasius himself, or the compiler of the Athanasian Creed, to have delivered the doctrine of the Trinity in stronger terms than these.” Yet Tertullian must be considered heterodox on the doctrine of our Lord’s eternal generation

This quote is in paragraph 14 of the introduction in the online Newman Reader copy.

Stephen, in your zeal to find a reason to ignore LDS evidence when quotes about subordination are quite clear, you have conflated two different Newman quotes. One where Newman was quoting Dr. Burton (yours) and one where Newman was expressing his thoughts.

I am certain I have made mistakes, but you are wrong to suggest that anything a LDS says can be dismissed.

Charity, TOm

 

[Stephen168]

I don’t trust your evaluation of a scholar or early church father. Post #44 is another example. Tertullian in Against Praxeas is clearly making a case for the trinity in his 31 Chapter work. He says what he believes in the trinity in Chapter 2, yet you quote chapter 8 when he is talking about modalism.

Newman says that Tertullian is heterodox on the divinity of the Son.

Cardinal Newman quoting Dr. Burton:

For instance, as to the second head of the positive evidence noted by Dr. Burton, Tertullian is the most formal and elaborate of these Fathers in his statements of the Catholic doctrine. “It would hardly be possible,” says Dr. Burton, after quoting a passage, “for Athanasius himself, or the compiler of the Athanasian Creed, to have delivered the doctrine of the Trinity in stronger terms than these.” Yet Tertullian must be considered heterodox on the doctrine of our Lord’s eternal generation

John Henry Newman:

Of course the doctrine of our Lord’s divinity itself partly implies and partly recommends the doctrine of the Trinity; but implication and suggestion belong to another class of arguments which has not yet come into consideration. Moreover the statements of a particular father or doctor may certainly be of a most important character; but one divine is not equal to a Catena. We must have a whole doctrine stated by a whole Church. The Catholic Truth in question is made up of a number of separate propositions, each of which, if maintained to the exclusion of the rest, is a heresy. In order then to prove that all the Ante-nicene writers taught the dogma of the Holy Trinity, it is not enough to prove that each still has gone far enough to be only a {15} heretic—not enough to prove that one has held that the Son is God, (for so did the Sabellian, so did the Macedonian), and another that the Father is not the Son, (for so did the Arian), and another that the Son is equal to the Father, (for so did the Tritheist), and another that there is but One God, (for so did the Unitarian),—not enough that many attached in some sense a Threefold Power to the idea of the Almighty, (for so did almost all the heresies that ever existed, and could not but do so, if they accepted the New Testament at all); but we must show that all these statements at once, and others too, are laid down by as many separate testimonies as may fairly be taken to constitute a "consensus of doctors.”

John Henry Newman joined the Catholic Church.

 

[Stephen168]

You can’t comprehend that giving something a name or referring to it by a name doesn’t tell us much about it.

Where am I talking about names? What specifically are you talking about?

The following would be an example.

If it is important to you, I will look more closely at what you claimed I did with Tertulllian, but I was not claiming he was a modalist. ** I said I used him because he called God two.**

 

[Stephen168]

Mormons cannot prove that the early Church every believed that God was once a man as claimed by Joseph Smith.

 

[TOmNossor]

John Henry Newman joined the Catholic Church.

Stephen168,
You claimed I misquoted Newman, I did not. That is clear. You can admit it or spin as you wish.
I assume your point is not that Tertullian is heterodox on the doctrine of the divinity of the Son AND also heterodox on the eternal generation of the Son, making me wrong for only properly quoting one place in Newman’s essay where Tertullian is called heterodox. Whatever Newman’s purpose for sharing Dr. Burton’s assessment, it could not be to remove Newman’s own previous assessment that Tertullian was heterodox on the doctrine of the divinity of the Son. That is not your point is it?

Here is post #133 for clarity.

Stephen168;14024303:

TOmNossor;14024057:

If it is important to you, I will look more closely at what you claimed I did with Tertulllian, but I was not claiming he was a modalist. I said I used him because he called God two. Newman says that Tertullian is heterodox on the divinity of the Son.

No, he said he was orthodox on the doctrine of the Trinity and heterodox on his eternal generation.

Another bad evolution of an author.
Stephen,
The full quote from Newman is:

Tertullian is heterodox on the doctrine of our Lord’s divinity and, indeed, ultimately fell altogether into heresy or schism.

This quote is in paragraph 11 of the introduction in the online Newman Reader copy:
newmanreader.org/works/development/introduction.html

You have of course mistaken my quote for another quote from Newman:

For instance, as to the second head of the positive evidence noted by Dr. Burton, Tertullian is the most formal and elaborate of these Fathers in his statements of the Catholic doctrine. “It would hardly be possible,” says Dr. Burton, after quoting a passage, “for Athanasius himself, or the compiler of the Athanasian Creed, to have delivered the doctrine of the Trinity in stronger terms than these.” Yet Tertullian must be considered heterodox on the doctrine of our Lord’s eternal generation

This quote is in paragraph 14 of the introduction in the online Newman Reader copy.

Stephen, in your zeal to find a reason to ignore LDS evidence when quotes about subordination are quite clear, you have conflated two different Newman quotes. One where Newman was quoting Dr. Burton (yours) and one where Newman was expressing his thoughts.

I am certain I have made mistakes, but you are wrong to suggest that anything a LDS says can be dismissed.

Charity, TOm

I do expect to get a little more give/take, but I am not sure I give/take so perhaps I should not expect such.
I do however think the scholarly consensus is demonstrated concerning pre-Nicene orthodoxy. There will be those who believe that “there is nothing to see here,” but maybe not everyone will be so blinded.

I do not know what more I can say.

Charity, TOm

 

[Stephen168]

The Mormon Church claims the Catholic Church changed the belief on the nature of God, which is just another sign that the Catholic Church lost apostolic authority.

The Mormon Church:

Scholars have long acknowledged that the view of God held by the earliest Christians changed dramatically over the course of centuries. Early Christian views of God were more personal, more anthropomorphic, and less abstract than those that emerged later during Christianity’s creedal stage. The key ideological shift that began in the second century, after the loss of apostolic authority, resulted from a conceptual merger of Christian doctrine with Greek philosophy.

Latter-day Saints believe the melding of early Christian theology with Greek philosophy was a grave error. Chief among the doctrines lost in this process was the nature of the Godhead. Latter-day Saints hold that God the Father is an embodied being with the attributes ascribed by the earliest Christians. That belief is consistent with the early Christian views of God, yet it differs from the later creeds.

Joseph Smith:

God himself. was Once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! That is the great secret. If the veil were rent today, and the great God who holds this world in its orbit, and who upholds all worlds and all things by His power, was to make himself visible,—I say, if you were to see him today, you would see him like a man in form like yourselves in all the person, image, and very form as a man;…

Lorenzo Snow:

As man now is, God once was; as God is now man may be.

When investigating the beliefs of the early church, Cardinal John Henry Newman points out in his book:
1 All the early church fathers (ECF) were not orthodox on every Catholic belief at every moment of Christian history. But looking at the group in total they were Catholic.
2 Anti-Catholics liked to quote the ECF to try and ‘prove’ the early church was not Catholic but that is not a good idea because while you could question Catholic teaching, you will never find unique non-Catholic teachings using the same standard.
3 Sometimes while quoting the ECF you are not quoting what they believe, but you are quoting them describing what the heretic, they are defending orthodoxy from, believes.
After his investigation, the Anglican priest, John Newman became Catholic, not Mormon.

When investigating apostolic authority Father Sullivan believes it was never lost. His book is a controversial walk through history to show where is was, but it was never lost.

TomNossor likes to invoke Cardinal Newman and Father Sullivan in the way Cardinal Newman described in point 2; as anti-Catholic poking the Catholic Church, but they would never support the Mormon claims.

God was never a human and the Mormon Church does not have apostolic authority. As the OP suggested, the Mormon Church can never provide any proof of their claims.

Richard Lyman Bushman, a Mormon historian, said, a Mormon’s “testimony” is their empirical evidence.
Basically Mormons just believe without proof.

I do not know what more I can say.

Prove the Mormon claims. Give some quotes from the ECF to show they believed God was once a man.

 

[truthseeker32]

Truthseeker32,
I would say that both Athanasius and Arius brought philosophical concepts into Nicea.
A good example of this would be the concept of “divine immutability” largely absent in the Biblical data, but accepted by both Arians and Athanasians (and most ECF).

I think it is problematic to argue against such views from the silence of the Bible, given that the aim of the text is not to provide a systematic treatment on God’s attributes, and that the Bible is just one perennial source that shaped early Christianity. Furthermore, because the Bible is a collection of books, one book’s description of God might be radically different from another. There are several verses in both the Old and New Testament wherein God declares that He does not change, rather generally or in his core attributes, such as love or intellect. Once again, divine immutability’s incorporation into the Christian faith isn’t the grafting of a foreign concept onto the Christian tree, but using Greek philosophical terminology to describe ideas and views that had already been familiar to Jews for at least half a millennium.

Do you not believe that this concept and a handful of others have much stronger Greek philosophical roots than Biblical roots?

No, and I think the “Greek philosophy vs. Bible” dichotomy is misleading and unhelpful due to both the genres in the Bible not being intended for philosophical exposition and the fact that there was a diversity of Greek philosophies that could be claimed to influence just about every view of God. Almost any philosophical worldview can be considered “Greek” or Greek-influenced because such ideas were present in ancient Hellenic culture. Greece had nihilists, nominalists, Platonists, materialists and so on. Some Greeks had anthropomorphic views of God, and some didn’t. One interesting thing to note is that the Jews had accepted and promoted an immaterial view of God long before the First Council of Nicea, and it is that same view that they still hold today.

The key question isn’t whether or not early Christian and Jewish theology had elements similar to Greek philosophical concepts; of course they did, as do most worldviews. The question is whether or not these concepts adequately explain God, as far as He can be known by humans.

 

[TOmNossor]

Prove the Mormon claims. Give some quotes from the ECF to show they believed God was once a man.

Stephen168,
I cannot give quotes from the ECF to show they believed God {the FATHER} was once a man. I know of no such quotes.
How was that for a very direct answer? Perhaps you might like trying that.
Charity, TOm