No it was born into a Jewish world and those men spoke Aramaic.
You know, it's kind of hard to get too excited about reading the rest of your very long post when the very first sentence shows that you don't understand what I wrote. The ethnic Syrians were Aramaic speakers not any less than the Jews were (who do you think the Jews adopted it from?), and obviously seeing as the Apostles themselves quoted most often directly from the LXX (and preached to the Greeks directly as St. Paul did, and to the Greeks and Hellenized Egyptians at Alexandria as St. Mark did), and translated Christ's Aramaic sayings from the cross, we can say with a fair bit of certainty that they were Hellenized Aramaic-speaking Jews. (That's the whole reason why there's an Aramaic-primacy argument to be made for the NT, as far as I understand it; those people believe that the NT, or at least the Gospels, would've been written originally in Aramaic and then translated into Greek, as opposed to the opinion that they were originally written in Greek.)
So what you have written here does not contradict what I wrote.
When Nathanael first spoke to Jesus he said 'Rabbi, thou art the Son of El; thou art the King of Israel.' Now when John got around to writing it down it was written in Greek. They did speak their own style of Greek mixed with Aramaic something like Old English compared to a southern draw.
What? Aramaic and Greek are comparable to Old English and Modern Southern American English? No. Aramaic is a Semitic language, and Greek its own branch of the Indo-European family of languages. So that's not the case at all
The first layer of apologetic writing is the New Testament itself;
Luke 1
1 Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us,
2 Even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word;
3 It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus,
4 That thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed.
In all their writings their is no hint of an immaterial substance.
What does this have to do with the introduction to Luke?
The homoousian reality of the Holy Trinity is all over the Bible, both Old and New Testaments. It doesn't matter if it's not in any particular passage you might choose, as the Bible concerns itself with more than just this point. And yet that this in there is not really disputed by anyone but the self-interested, such as those of your religion and other non-Christian religions, so if these type of people cannot see "And the Word was with God, and the Word was God" as being an explicit affirmation of the fact that God the Word is of the same substance as the Father from Whom He is sent, then there really isn't anything to say. The fact that you don't like what you dismiss as a corrupting Greek philosophical concept is of no relevance at all. It's still there, regardless of anyone's reaction to it.
I'm trying to not be blunt so as to hopefully make my words more easy to receive, but really, if you're going to be throwing verses around in an attempt to prove this or that, then you ought to remember that the same Gospel of St. Luke which you are picking from testifies that Christ is the Son of God (1:35), and Lord (1:43), and God (4:12, which is from the mouth of Jesus Christ our God Himself).
It is clear enough that from the beginning people have made this association between Jesus and the Father, as Jesus Himself did. So to be anti-Trinitarian is a struggle against the scriptures and the witness of the Church from even well before the canonization of the scriptures.
I'm taking this next part from a book called How Creek Philosophy Corrupted the Christian Concept of God, by Hopkins. I'm just giving the general ideas with a few short quotes sprinkled in.
I've never heard of that book, but since we're talking about our reading lists, I'm reading a book called the Holy Bible, written by the Church; I'm reading a book called
That Christ is One, written by the Church; I'm reading a book called
On the Incarnation of the Word, written by the Church; I'm reading a book called
On the Trinity, written by the Church; I'm reading a book called
Against Heresies, written by the Church; I'm reading a book called
Against the Arians, written by the Church.
All of 'my' books, which make up just a tiny sliver of the inheritance of all Christians everywhere, testify to the reality of what the Church actually believes, and has always believed. A random person's interpretation of that same history and writings is at best mildly interesting, but it does not overturn in any way what is established.
Even in the first generation writings there is no concept of a 'substance' and God the Father is separate from the Son. Polycrap writing between 107 and before 150 completely separates them; "....Who shall believe in our Lord Jesus Christ, and in His Father, who raised Him from the dead"
What? I'm sorry, but do you think Trinitarians do not preserve the distinction between the Father and the Son as Persons? That's the only way I can imagine that you could possibly think that St. Polycarp is in any way disproving or writing against the belief of the Church, which would be weird for him to do, seeing as how he is a recognized saint in every communion. Of course we believe in our Lord Jesus Christ, and in His Father who raised Him from the dead.
Besides, the same St. Polycarp of Smyrna wrote in the very same letter that Jesus Christ is "our Lord and God" (
see 12:2), so it's really weird to see his pure words twisted in this fashion, as though he is making the opposite point when he clearly is not.
There is another writing by an unknown author but written around 130 ad, he claims he was a disciple of the apostle. He writes "As a King sends his son, who is also king, so sent He Him; as God" (Epistle to Diognetus).
I quoted that epistle last month,
even highlighting that very phrase, so I am not unaware of it.
He understand the principle of a King and His Prince and allows for the Son to be called God without violating the authority of the Father.
Again, I'm not sure where this is coming from. Who is "violating the authority of the Father"? Your ideas about what Trinitarianism apparently entails are not what it actually entails.
About 160ad those in Rome began calling the Christians atheist and it seems as if the apologist began trying to defend Christianity by framing it within the Hellenistic or metaphysical terminology
Do you have any evidence for this claim, or is this a claim that the guy you are summarizing is making himself, based on...something?
Nobody
needs "Hellenistic or metaphorical terminology" to defend anything, so that sounds pretty ridiculous on its face. Not only are there entire traditions of Christianity that are very consciously non-Hellenized (the Church of the East; in a certain way, the Coptic Orthodox Church following the example of men like St. Shenouda the Archimandrite, and the rest of the OO communion which did not follow the imperial way of being Christian after the Council of Chalcedon; etc.), but it bears repeating, writ large, that Christ is not
metaphorically the Son of God, our God -- He is
actually the Son of God, light from light, true God from true God.
It is Justin who first starts using words which are unbiblical he calls the Father "unbegotten", no where in the Bible is the word used.
Is this a real objection? It strikes me as very silly, as though the Bible is not
already full of uses of the term "begotten", such that adding the negative prefix makes it something strange and un-Biblical. Why would that be the case?
Besides, it is not right to criticize St. Justin for calling the Father unbegotten. It is a true statement. The Father
is unbegotten, and anyone who believes otherwise is wrong and needs some remedial theology courses, stat.
How about this: If the Father is begotten, as you'd apparently have it, then why don't you show where the Bible
specifically says that He is, since that is apparently your standard? (By virtue of calling the absence of the word unbegotten un-Biblical, as though this is a synonym for
incorrect.)
I don't believe that you will find such a passage.
Tatian presence a Hellenize view of God, "God is spirit, not pervading matter...".
Well, then...I guess we know what sort of thing got him into St. Irenaeus'
Against Heresies, then!
Seriously, so what. If you have some kind of argument to make, then make it. It has already been shown to you above how your presuppositions regarding St. Polycarp, who is even earlier than Tatian, were wrong, so why should your understanding of Tatian be assumed to be faultless because you're basing it on what some guy said in a book you are reading? Have you read his full address to the Greeks from which the quoted clause comes? I have, but it's beside the point if you're unwilling to deal with the sources as they are.
Melito writing in 172 ad really starts using Greek wording and metaphysical terms. "There 'is' that which really exists and is called God....He changeth not, while everything else changes .... no eye can see him nor thought apprehend Him, nor language describe Him....", However he still separates the Father and Son; "...This is He who made the heaven and the earth and in the beginning together with the Father, fashioned man..."
Lord save me from lashing in anger at seeing this repeated...
For the second and hopefully last time,
every Trinitarian Christian distinguishes between the Father and the Son. The Father and the Son are
not the same Person/hypostasis. They
are of the same essence/homoousios, but they are not the same Person.
I honestly do not understand why you keep writing as though things are otherwise, but I really wish you'd stop.
In 177 ad Athenagoras goes all out and fully express God as any good platonistic Greek mind would;
But unto us, who distinguish God from matter and teach that matter is one thing and God another..."
Yes, God is not matter...
It would probably help in the future if you would cite your sources. I found the reference myself (it is from his
Plea for the Christians), this way anyone who wants to read it can do so in context. In context, he is making the point that unlike those who truly say that there is no God (actual atheists), we only say that there is but ONE God, which is not atheism. Could he have done so without recourse to Platonism? I suppose so, but that appears to have been in his background, and moreover the background of those to whom he was primarily addressing his plea ("To the Emperors Marcus Aurelius Antoninus and Lucius Aurelius Commodus, conquerors of Armenia and Sarmatia, and more than all, philosophers"). So it makes sense that it would be there.
I mean, really now...when St. Paul says that to the Greeks, he became a Greek, I will presume you have no problem with it, because that's in the Biblical text itself (so it in no way can be called "un-Biblical"). But then an actual Greek, who was a philosopher and apparently still styled himself as one even after his conversion, writes a plea for the Christians that includes philosophical ideas you don't like (for reasons you don't explain, other than that they are Greek), and that's supposed to mean that Christianity is 'corrupted'? Why? Can you please explain why?
He goes on from there incorporating more and more of Plato's metaphysical ideas. After that it's all down hill and the true Biblical God is lost in Greek Philosophy.
Does it really? Athenagoras' plea does that all by itself because he incorporates Platonism? How does it do that? And why should I care when there are plenty of early witnesses to rely on? I don't even know if Athenagoras is a recognized saint in my Church or not (it wouldn't surprise me to find that he is, but then it likewise wouldn't surprise me to find that he isn't; there are I'm sure many saints I don't know about just because I have yet to come across them in our literature), but regardless, that kind of talk is not very common in my own tradition. We are at best semi-Hellenized, and that's by virtue of the long presence of the Greeks in Egypt, not by any kind of 'corruption' of the Church by Hellenism. (Read: there were Hellenized Egyptians for hundreds of years before the advent of Christianity in Egypt in the first century.) The majority of Egyptian Christians there have ever been were converted from Egyptian paganism, which of course shares similarities with Greek paganism (I think some of the gods were the same, but with different names), but was itself ultimately a distinct form of religion.
I think you need to stop reading this guy's book until you are willing to deal with the sources themselves, because you're getting a view that is tailor-made to prove his thesis, rather than reading the primary sources and coming to your own conclusions about them, perhaps with this guy's book as one of many sources to consult for a critical appraisal of the saint or the piece of writing.
So when you start quoting someone from 300 ad I'm not impressed, he's just building upon non Biblical ideas getting further and further away the true God of the Bible.
It's not about what impresses you or I, as though the one who has the most impressive philosophy or whatever therefore has the truth. It's just a matter of fact from the preserved tradition of the Church from the beginning (and keep in mind, I really do mean the beginning: the range of dates in which St. Mark, our apostle, is said to have come to Egypt is around 42 to 51 AD -- so, long before any of the people you or I have brought up), there has been one faith that has not changed. So I'm unmoved, not because the case cannot be made that Greek philosophical ideas came into Christianity (I would
positively affirm that they did, so long as they may be
aides to understanding revelation within their proper sphere, not mistaken for revelation themselves; see
this thread for some discussion of the difference), but because just showing examples of how or where that happened isn't itself an argument for why it's bad or corrupting that they appear in this or that piece of writing.
This is not something to be impressed by as in philosophical matters, but to submit to, because this is the faith of the Church, and always has been, and always will be. I myself am less inclined to philosophical talk, because the prayers of the Church are what matter. They are its faith, the faith that its people live. And I suppose (or I have been told, anyway) that my own Church's tradition is somewhat lacking in philosophical complexity. I'm not sure I buy it, but that's what some say (primarily Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, in my experience, though I guess they're right if they mean that we have less to affirm than they do, as we only accept as binding 3 ecumenical councils, while they accept 7).
To that end, here is the faith of the Church, as taken from the Agpeya (Coptic book of hourly prayers for every day use):
One is God the Father of everyone.
One is His Son, Jesus Christ the Word, Who took flesh and died; and rose from the dead on the third day, and raised us with Him.
One is the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, one in His Hypostasis, proceeding from the Father, purifying the whole creation, and teaching us to worship the Holy Trinity, one in divinity and one in essence. We praise Him and bless Him forever. Amen.
+++
Is this "Greek philosophy" in action? I don't think so. Yes, we received some of these
technical terms from Greek, as some of our fathers wrote in Greek (e.g., HH St. Athanasius the Apostolic, HH St. Cyril, etc.), as Egypt was a semi-Hellenized country, and Alexandria a Hellenic city. So what? The truth is there, even if we did not have this word "essence" (we could just as easily use substance, as the Latins do, but we are not Latins; it means the same thing).
So I'm having trouble seeing how this is not ultimately a linguistic argument. Though it seems that you mean the philosophical traditions themselves, it's essentially impossible to separate them from the words they use, no matter what language we're looking at.
In that case, you should be a Syriac Christian, not a Mormon, as this is the closest to the (semi-)Hellenized cultural background of the first century Jewish world in which our Lord and His apostles lived, supposedly free from the 'corruption' of Greek philosophy. Something tells me that you will not do that, so I have to wonder if this is not really about 'Greek philosophy' at all, but about something else...
These people are Syriac Christians (Orthodox), worshiping in Syriac (a language form developed from Aramaic that was spoken around Edessa, the capital of Osroene, which legend tells us was the first Christian kingdom following the conversion of King Abgar V; there is also a bit of Arabic for the first ~20 seconds or so, since this is in Jerusalem), according to the Liturgy of St. James, the brother of the Lord, which is the earliest extant Christian liturgy, dating back in its core form to the first century Church of Jerusalem. If anyone can be said to be free of 'Greek philosophy', it would probably be these people, as the Syriac tradition was at least partially removed from the Byzantine Empire (as were some of the Armenians, both within the Persian Empire; there were also Syriac Christians in India since 52 AD). And yet they affirm the same basic faith as any other group of Christians, because that's just what Christianity
is, whether it's in this language or that language, or following this philosophical tradition or not (e.g., Alexandria, Edessa, Antioch, Rome, etc.).
