Talk:Trinitarianism

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This one is going to need some work. Trinitarians of course think that their thinking goes back to Christ, and is hinted at in the Old Testament, and that Arianism was the fourth century innovation. What happened in the fourth century was just a clarification of the existing teaching in order to better highlight Arius's errors. Also, we need to figure out how to divide material between Trinity, trinitarianism, and nontrinitarianism. Wesley 16:58, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Such anticipated work and more was precisely why this article was created; have at. I propose that the Trinity article discuss the Holy Trinity main concept and theology, the Trinitarianism article discuss the people and movements that believe in that concept, along with their part of the dispute against the nontrinitarians, and the Nontrinitarian article discuss the people and movements that do not believe in that concept, along with their part of the dispute against the trinitarians. As an example, I would probably favor moving the "pagan origins" material out of the Trinity article, in favor of more theoretical concepts directly related to the Trinity; you'll see I have already included it in the nontrinitarian article. Hence, I am proposing an arrangement such that, for example, if we were to create a category of "Trinitarian-nontrinitarian controversy" (and, hey, we might actually want to do that, as this turns out to be a fairly big topic touching on several articles), the trininitarian and nontrinitarian articles would be put in this category, but not necessarily the Trinity article itself, other than as an indirect reference. --Gary D 19:23, Oct 8, 2004 (UTC)

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, it sounds like a reasonable way to structure the information, and people should be able to find what they want to know with this arrangement. On the other hand, I'm a little leary of having "pro Trinity" and "anti Trinity" POV articles. Taken together they balance out fine, but in general I think Wikipedia wants to and should aim for each article to be NPOV on its own. This might mean we need to combine the Trinitarian and Nontrinitarian articles into a Trinitarian controversy article or something similar, and have both those articles redirect there. Whether we do that or not, I agree it may be helpful to confine the Trinity article to discussing the doctrine itself and give short pointers to related articles, and have the historical development and controversy type article(s) separated. Hopefully we can get some wider input on this question. Wesley 16:33, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I, too, would hope the result would be two NPOV articles on the "pro" and "anti" positions rather than two POV cheerleading articles. Similarly I believe that WP can, and hope WP does, have two NPOV articles on Creationism and Evolution, for example. I think we have three subtopics to cover in these two articles, an entity description for each side along lines beginning with what we have suggested on the Jehovah's Witness talk page for fleshing out the nontrinitarian "flavors" description, and then a discussion of how the two positions interact and any resulting controversy. I think the entity descriptions justify two separate articles, even if the interaction and controversy needs to move to a third article. And I tell ya, you think 32KB is way too far out there to ever matter, and then =bang=, you find you're suddenly schmussed into a phone booth of remaining article space with your face pressed against the glass and the edit window screaming at you that you're about to go over the size limit. My guess is that with the plans we've made we'll fully fill two if not three articles. --Gary D 19:08, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)

Despite our various opinions and points of view on the matter, it is only responsible to show, at the very minimum, the factual history that surrounds Trinitarianism in the build up to Nicaea and subsequent history. It is also worth noting that Archeological evidence preceding 300 does not explicitly support Trinitarianism; in fact, outside of Catholic provided, and graciously edited, History, there is no support for trinitarianism (see Gospels of Thomas, discovered in 1945 and authored around 100, as an example). I think it is fair to give a recount of that evidence that is not biased. 24.176.6.165 23:40, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I don't think the Gospel of Thomas really sheds any light on the matter. All it shows is that there were those prior to the 4th century who rejection the notion of the trinity--but we knew that already. Church history is very sketchy for the first two or three centuries, but I find in unlikely the trinitarianism develeped suddenly in the fourth century and in a few years was so widely accepted among the most powerful men in the church that they began stamping out all other doctrine. It's more likely that this debate was going on for some time before Nicea. And that it was going on for exactly the same reason that is goes on amongs Christians today. Even two Christians who agree that the scriptures are accurate and from God frequently disagree over whether or not they teach trinitarianism or not. From a purely Christian theological point of view there are reasons both for and agaisnt the doctrine. I suspect that bishops and other Christian leaders had these disagreements very early on.

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The lead sentence is incorrect:

Trinitarianism is the Christian doctrine that God, although one being, exists in three distinct persons (hypostases) known collectively as the Holy Trinity.

hypostasis does not translate as person

greek->latin->english

hypostasis->substantia->hypostasis (hidden spiritual reality)

prosopa->persona->person (persona would be more correct)

Correction: substantia is Latin for Greek Ousios (English substance). I don't know how the Latins translate the Greek hypostasis, they may have just taken it directly as a technical word, which it is. Its meaning in Greek is fairly vague and subject to great debate.

Seems to me Trinitarianism can be expressed in modern English as: One God in Three People: the Father, the Son and the Spirit. There are lots of other technical terms for sure, see the history of the Roman councils, but as a summary of what is actually a fairly complex subject, I think it serves well. Technically One God in Three Personas would be more accurate but I suspect most English Trinitarians would find that awkward.

Redundant

This page shouldn't need to exist; it should redirect to Trinity, in my opinion. Anyway, it appears to be a non-trinitarian page on the doctrine of the trinity. Perhaps the material should be merged with Antitrinitarianism — Mkmcconn (Talk) 22:03, 15 July 2005 (UTC)