Has The Faith Of Jews Lessened...

[abercius24]

[quote name='Apotheoun' post='1588798' date='Jul 1 2008, 11:43 PM']Now you are confusing possibilities with truth. Truth is objective, while a man's failure to apprehend truth is a subjective state of knowledge within his own personal being. You are also confusing "facts" with truth. It is a fact that a man can subjectively fall into error, but that does not make his subjective action in doing so "true"; instead, it is simply a fact, i.e., an actually existing state or condition, that he has embraced error.[/quote]

My point is that your position makes the subjective assumption -- that all have explicitly rejected Christ. This I disagree with.

(And I remain frothing at the mouth for those citations from the Church Fathers!)

Edited July 2, 2008 by abercius24

[Apotheoun]

[quote name='abercius24' post='1588793' date='Jul 1 2008, 09:40 PM']Very interesting, and a rather shocking statement on the part of the Church Fathers. Do you mind if I ask you for some citations? I'd like to look it up myself for my own personal study.[/quote]
St. Athanasios speaks of this in [i]De Synodis[/i], when he explains the statements in scripture made in connection with man's creation recounted in the book of Genesis. St. Gregory of Nyssa's treatise [i]The Life of Moses[/i] is another text that you can read on this subject, because Moses – as St. Gregory emphasized – received the very vision of God, and in doing so he conversed with the Logos in the power of the Holy Spirit, and that is why Moses is an exemplar of Christian mystical experience. Now of course these are just a couple of examples, but almost any commentary on the books of the Old Testament by the Fathers of the Church will emphasize the fact that the Logos and the Holy Spirit were known by the Patriarchs and Prophets in the Old Testament. Moreover, how could Isaiah not know that God is a Trinity of persons, when by mystical vision he saw into heaven itself, while hearing the Trisagion sung by the angelic hosts? In fact, the modern idea of "progressive" revelation that is popular in the West today has no foundation in the patristic literature of the first millennium, nor has it been accepted by any of the Eastern Churches (Orthodox or Catholic) in the second millennium.

Finally, in addition to the patristic view of the unity of the faith of the two Testaments, the Eastern Churches (both Orthodox and Catholic) hold to the decisions taken at the Palamite Councils that met in the mid 1300s, and the Fathers at those councils emphasized the fact that the vision of God in the Old Testament is always and primarily a vision of the Logos, who was seen and worshipped by the Patriarchs and the Prophets. Now how could it be possible, as the Hagioretic Tome asked, for the Prophets and Patriarchs to have conversed with the Logos and yet not know Him? The dogmatic Tome itself responded to this question by saying that, the Prophets of old proclaimed "the Logos and the Spirit of God to be pre-eternal and co-eternal with God [i.e., with the Father]."

Thus, I do not see how you and I can come to an agreement on this issue, because the liturgical and doctrinal tradition of my own [i]sui juris[/i] Church is bound up with this idea, i.e., that the faith of the Old Testament and the New Testament is one and the same, and this position is founded ultimately upon the teaching of St. Paul, who said that there is only "One faith" (cf. Ephesians 4:5).

Edited July 2, 2008 by Apotheoun

[Apotheoun]

I forgot to mention it, but another patristic treatise that is helpful when dealing with this topic is St. Irenaeus' [i]Adversus Haereses[/i], because for St. Irenaeus all of the theophanies the Old Testament are visions of the Logos, and not the Father. For St. Irenaeus the Father is utterly transcendent, while the Son and the Spirit, as the “hands of the Father” are the agents of creation, and they come down to us and manifest the divine life within created world (cf. [i]Adversus Haereses[/i], Book V, Chapter 6:1).

Also, another good source of information on this subject is Dr. Kari Kloos' dissertation entitled, [u]Preparing for the Vision of God: Augustine’s Interpretation of the Biblical Theophany Narratives[/u], because she collects citations from various Fathers in order to show how St. Augustine misinterpreted prior patristic tradition in his own writings by turning the theophanies of the Old Testament (and even the New Testament) into created realities, rather than real visions of the eternal and uncreated Logos.

Edited July 2, 2008 by Apotheoun

[Apotheoun]

Abercius (Steve),

Your first post in this thread is really confusing, because of the way that the quotations came out.

Todd

[Apotheoun]

[quote name='abercius24' post='1588761' date='Jul 1 2008, 09:14 PM']The Jewish faith never had efficacy in the first place. It was merely a shadow (of what was to come) from which one's personal devotion to God opened them to the coming of Christ and His redemptive work. That was basically the idea behind John's baptism, as well. Remember what the Prophet Jeremiah taught (which St. Paul later reiterated), it is a circumcision of the heart that made a Jew, not the ceremonies themselves. And if that circumcision of heart still remains with Jews today, then there are still practicing Jews to be found.[/quote]
The faith created by the Rabbis after the time of Christ has no efficacy, but the faith of Abraham, and of the other Patriarchs, and the faith of the Prophets, certainly has efficacy, because it is the same faith as that proclaimed today by the Church.

[abercius24]

I believe I am at least beginning to understand where you are coming from. I am more from a camp that believes the Trinity was not revealed until the New Testament. I can understand how you would find a lessed tie between the Catholic Church and the Rabbinic Jews if a continuity of Trinitarian belief started with the Hebrews and was passed on to the Catholic Church, and subsequently abandoned by the Rabbis. I do believe my position(which is very much a position of the Western Church) remains to some degree (even if it is a lesser degree) amidst the Eastern view. But as always, my friend, you have given me a lot more to think about and study up on.

Question: Jesus appeared to be surrounded by non-Trinitarian Jews in His time. From the Eastern view, did the abandonement of Trinitarian belief start much ealier than that? If so, was there a major catalyst to bring about the prevalent disbelief in Christ's day?

Question: Were the Church Fathers you quote in any way influenced by the Jewish Kabbalah with regards to their understanding of Hebrew Trinitarian belief? I have seen teachings from the Kabbalah that could be understood as Trinitarian, but the Kabbalah has also been mixed with ideas of the Shekinah Glory Cloud (the Spirit of God, aka the Holy Spirit) as having a feminine nature, which is contrary to Christian Trinitarian belief.

Edited July 2, 2008 by abercius24

[reyb]

[indent]Excuse me...But...
Before we go on to our subject discussion, I would like to post some studies which we will use as our reference so that we will not let any speculation or assumption and thus fall into wrong judgments.
---------------------
The Trinity is a Christian doctrine, stating that God is one being who exists, simultaneously and eternally, as a mutual indwelling of three persons:[1] the Father, the Son (incarnate as Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit. Since the beginning of the third century[2] the doctrine of the Trinity has been stated as "that the one God exists in three Persons and one substance, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit".
…….
The first recorded use of the word "Trinity" in Christian theology was in about AD 180 by Theophilus of Antioch who used the corresponding word in Greek (Τριάς) to refer to "the Trinity, of God, and His Word, and His wisdom", of which he considered the first three days of creation to be types.[8][9] He did not apply the word to the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
………
Tertullian, a Latin theologian who wrote in the early third century, is credited with using the words "Trinity",[10] "person" and "substance"[11] to explain that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit were "one in essence – not one in Person".
………
About a century later, the First Council of Nicaea (325) established the doctrine of the Trinity as orthodoxy and adopted the Nicene Creed that described Christ as "God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance (homoousios) with the Father".
………………
The basis for the doctrine of the Trinity is found in New Testament passages that associate the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.[25] Two such passages[25] are Matthew's Great Commission: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Matthew 28:19) and St Paul's: "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all" (2 Corinthians 13:14).
See [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_trinity#The_Origin_of_the_Formula"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_trinity#..._of_the_Formula[/url]
------------------------
So there you are. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity was established in 325 in the First Council of Nicaea with one very important idea – that the son of God, the second person in the Holy Trinity is the historical Jesus.


Now , it was quoted by abercius from Apotheoun in the beginning of this post that Patriarchs and Holy Prophets believe in the Holy Trinity.

[color="#4169E1"]quote name='Apotheoun' date='Jun 30 2008, 10:22 PM' post='1587535'
The Eastern Church Fathers held that the Patriarchs believed in the Holy Trinity, and that it was the rabbis during and after the time of Christ who fell away from the true faith. Thus, in a sense Rabbinic Judaism can be called the first major heresy (cf. the letters of St. Ignatios of Antioch), because those who accepted it broke with the undefiled Triadological faith of the Patriarchs of the Old Covenant.

quote name='Apotheoun' date='Jun 30 2008, 10:53 PM' post='1587605'
I deny absolutely that the state of the faith was "radically changed," because the faith is immutable. The Old Testament patriarchs and prophets believed in Christ (i.e., in the pre-incarnate Logos), and they worshipped the Holy Trinity.
/quote[/color]
---------------
I want to know in what way that these early church fathers believed that Patriarchs and Holy Prophets were Trinitarians. Do the Holy Prophets said it or it is just an assumption by these early church fathers?[/indent]

Edited July 2, 2008 by reyb

[Apotheoun]

Reyb,

The linguistic formulation of a doctrine does not indicate the doctrines date of origin. Anyone who reads the Church Fathers can see that they all believed that the Father, the Son (or Logos), and the Holy Spirit, were one and the same God, even before the word "trinity" or "triad" was used. That is why the use of the word "trinity" or "triad" is not all that important to me as an Eastern Christian. Moreover, the New Testament itself speaks of the three persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), who are one in nature, will, and action, and the Gospel of John in particular is replete with this theological viewpoint. So do not fall into the modernist trap of confusing the date that a particular word comes into use, with the belief that it is meant to convey.

As far as the Patriarchs and Prophets are concerned, they speak of God as Father, but they also speak of Him as Word (Logos), and as Spirit (Ruah).

Todd

Edited July 2, 2008 by Apotheoun

[Apotheoun]

[quote name='reyb' post='1588955' date='Jul 2 2008, 04:24 AM']So there you are. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity was established in 325 in the First Council of Nicaea with one very important idea – that the son of God, the second person in the Holy Trinity is the historical Jesus.[/quote]
The Council of Nicaea did not "establish" or "create" the doctrine of the Trinity; instead, it merely gave linguistic expression to that pre-existing dogma. Thus, Eastern Christians, unlike modern Western Christians, reject the notion of doctrinal development. Doctrines do not grow or develop over time, and so the decrees of the ecumenical councils do not create new doctrines; instead, they simply give linguistic expression to the faith once for all given to the Church (cf. Jude 1:3), which is an immutable experience of God in prayer and worship, and as scripture itself attests all Christian worship is directed to the Father, through the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit.

[Apotheoun]

[quote name='abercius24' post='1588934' date='Jul 2 2008, 01:51 AM']Question: Jesus appeared to be surrounded by non-Trinitarian Jews in His time. From the Eastern view, did the abandonement of Trinitarian belief start much ealier than that? If so, was there a major catalyst to bring about the prevalent disbelief in Christ's day?[/quote]
If you will notice, the Byzantine Fathers and theologians speak of the Patriarchs and Prophets being privy to the mystery of God's inner life, but whether or not every Jew understood this at an intellectual level is not all that relevant, because their worship of God was always made through His Word and in the power of His Spirit. The Eastern Fathers never looked upon doctrine as a series of epinoetic concepts, but as a living experience of God in worship and prayer. The rule of prayer is the rule of faith.

[quote name='abercius24' post='1588934' date='Jul 2 2008, 01:51 AM']Question: Were the Church Fathers you quote in any way influenced by the Jewish Kabbalah with regards to their understanding of Hebrew Trinitarian belief? I have seen teachings from the Kabbalah that could be understood as Trinitarian, but the Kabbalah has also been mixed with ideas of the Shekinah Glory Cloud (the Spirit of God, aka the Holy Spirit) as having a feminine nature, which is contrary to Christian Trinitarian belief.[/quote]
The Kabbalah is of medieval origin (although some strands of thought within that system antedate the writing of the Zohar), so it had no direct influence on the Church Fathers. Nevertheless, some of the mystical strands of Kabbalistic thought have affinities with the Eastern Church's doctrine of the divine energies, but this doctrine can even be found in the writings of Philo of Alexandria who lived in the first century of the Christian era (see my paper [url="http://www.geocities.com/apotheoun/paper08b"][u]Augustine of Hippo and the Theophanies of the Logos[/u][/url]). Finally, as far as the shekinah glory is concerned, it is not the Holy Spirit; instead, it is the divine energy common to all three persons of the Holy Trinity, but the divine energy is not identified with femininity in Eastern theology because it is an active power, and so it not receptive or passive. In fact, the feminine principle in Byzantine theology is the Church (and by extension the second person of the Trinity), because it is the Church that is receptive to God's energy and power, and so it is she who receives her life from Him, and not the other way around.

Edited July 2, 2008 by Apotheoun

[reyb]

[quote name='Apotheoun' post='1589008' date='Jul 2 2008, 10:04 AM']Reyb,

The linguistic formulation of a doctrine does not indicate the doctrines date of origin. Anyone who reads the Church Fathers can see that they all believed that the Father, the Son (or Logos), and the Holy Spirit, were one and the same God, even before the word "trinity" or "triad" was used. That is why the use of the word "trinity" or "triad" is not all that important to me as an Eastern Christian. Moreover, the New Testament itself speaks of the three persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), who are one in nature, will, and action, and the Gospel of John in particular is replete with this theological viewpoint. So do not fall into the modernist trap of confusing the date that a particular word comes into use, with the belief that it is meant to convey.

As far as the Patriarchs and Prophets are concerned, they speak of God as Father, but they also speak of Him as Word (Logos), and as Spirit (Ruah).

Todd[/quote]


[quote name='Apotheoun' post='1589012' date='Jul 2 2008, 10:14 AM']The Council of Nicaea did not "establish" or "create" the doctrine of the Trinity; instead, it merely gave linguistic expression to that pre-existing dogma. Thus, Eastern Christians, unlike modern Western Christians, reject the notion of doctrinal development. Doctrines do not grow or develop over time, and so the decrees of the ecumenical councils do not create new doctrines; instead, they simply give linguistic expression to the faith once for all given to the Church (cf. Jude 1:3), which is an immutable experience of God in prayer and worship, and as scripture itself attests all Christian worship is directed to the Father, through the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit.[/quote]
[indent]Let us assume that the word ‘trinity’ is not used by the Holy Prophets although the substance of their faith was based on this doctrine. And let us say, you are correct in saying ‘The Council of Nicaea did not "establish" or "create" the doctrine of the Trinity; instead, it merely gave linguistic expression to that pre-existing dogma. Again Let us say you are correct in saying ‘The Old Testament patriarchs and prophets believed in Christ (i.e., in the pre-incarnate Logos), and they worshipped the Holy Trinity.’ And yes, it is true that the Holy Prophets speaks of God, Holy Spirit and Christ which sometimes they call the son of man, wisdom of God, Power of God, Seed of Abraham, and so on and so forth. Why then they never mentioned that the Holy Trinity is the mystery God? But rather they said ‘Christ is the mystery of God’. If you find anything in the Old testament and also in the New Testament which says ‘The Holy Trinity is the mystery of God or to this effect’, Can you please post it here? [/indent]

[Aloysius]

that is not his contention, his contention is that the patriarchs experientially knew God, and because God is in fact Trinity by nature, they would thus have known Him as a Trinity. He has very much made his case for this and convinced me... he is not saying that there is historical evidence that there was a doctrine about the trinity taught or intellectually discussed by the Hebrews; rather, he is saying that because the patriarchs encountered God they encountered Him as a Trinity. it wasn't academic to them, it was simply part of their worship.

east or west, progressive revelation or not, we are all required to believe that Rabbinic Judaism is not the true continuation of the religion of the Old Testament, that the Church is the true continuation and that Rabbinic Judaism is a religion created not by God but by those Hebrews who rejected the Messiah and His message.

[reyb]

[quote name='Aloysius' post='1589141' date='Jul 2 2008, 12:56 PM'][color="#0000FF"]that is not his contention, his contention is that the patriarchs experientially knew God, and because God is in fact Trinity by nature, they would thus have known Him as a Trinity[/color]. He has very much made his case for this and convinced me... he is not saying that there is historical evidence that there was a doctrine about the trinity taught or intellectually discussed by the Hebrews; rather, he is saying that because the patriarchs encountered God they encountered Him as a Trinity. it wasn't academic to them, it was simply part of their worship.

east or west, progressive revelation or not, we are all required to believe that Rabbinic Judaism is not the true continuation of the religion of the Old Testament, that the Church is the true continuation and that Rabbinic Judaism is a religion created not by God but by those Hebrews who rejected the Messiah and His message.[/quote]

[indent]That is exactly my point, why we will assume that God is triune in the first place? After God appeared to them (Holy Prophets) through His Power, Wisdom,…etc which is Christ, they never said or discussed that God the father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit is One and in the unity of One, it is still a mystery (in whatever presentation to this effect). Why not leave it that way when it is written in Gen 1:26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image – that ‘us’ does not necesarily mean ‘three’. Why then we need to assume it is a representation of triune God?[/indent]

[abercius24]

[quote name='Aloysius' post='1589141' date='Jul 2 2008, 12:56 PM']east or west, progressive revelation or not, we are all required to believe that Rabbinic Judaism is not the true continuation of the religion of the Old Testament, that the Church is the true continuation and that Rabbinic Judaism is a religion created not by God but by those Hebrews who rejected the Messiah and His message.[/quote]

Yes, we are required to believe that Rabbinic Judaism is not the true [u]continuation [/u]of the religion of the Old Testatment, but instead it is the Church.

But I do think it is inaccurate to state that all elements of faith and practice that exist in Rabbinic Judaism have no source in God. And though their religion may not be a completely valid [u]continuation [/u]of the Faith of the Patriarchs, I believe it is more accurate to state they exist in a fractured and stalled place in the progression of the Hebrew faith. They have lost their ability to worship in the Temple and offer sacrifice through their priesthood, and they have not progressed into the Messianic era as they should have. But their faith is otherwise the same as those who pre-date Christ. Just because you lose an arm and are left in a coma from a car accident, that doesn't mean you are no longer the person you were before the accident. The entity of Judiasm has not been substantially changed to the point that it can longer be understood as being the same entity as it was in the Old Testament.

[mortify]

Is this whole argument basically summed up this way:
i) Abericus believes Judaism is still efficacious for salvation
ii) Apotheoun believes Judaism is no longer efficacious because the Church is the true Israel

?