So what actually defines a Christian?

indopanda said:

Again, why is the Creed not just quotations from the Bible? You know, the actual WORD OF GOD?

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That was actually considered. The problem is that the Arians had interpretations of the words that the folks at Nicea thought were wrong. The whole point of Nicea was to deal with that. So they couldn't just quote John, they had to clarify what they thought the meaning was.

indopanda said:

That's the issue for me though. 1700 years ago, the "leaders" of the church got together and decided upon the "correct" interpretation of John based on majority opinion.

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A fairly large majority: everybody except Secundas and Theonas.

indopanda said:

If I agree that the Gospel of John is the Word of God but differ with you regarding what John is saying about the relationship between Jesus and the Father, does that mean I do not meet the definition of a Christian since I don't agree with the majority opinion instituted 1700 years ago?

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That is exactly correct. To be a Christian you have to believe what Christians believe.

Do you really think John 1 is referring to the Logos as a separate creature, inferior to God? Arianism seems like one of the less likely systems even for a non-Trinitarian.

That was the interpretation they were trying to avoid by clarification.

indopanda said:

I think the Logos is separate from YHWH, and I think you do too. To say YHWH and Logos are not separate would be to support some sort of Modalism, but to say they are separate would indicate that the Logos is not YHWH.
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So Trinitarians hold that the Logos is both separated from YHWH yet simultaneously also YHWH. It avoids taking a stance one way or the other by holding to both simultaneously.

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First, I'm not going to comment on what I believe. I hold typical mainline Christology. That doesn't use the kind of ontological analysis that both sides at Nicea used.

John's "Word" was ultimately based on Jewish speculative thought involving Wisdom. Jewish language spoke of Wisdom (and I think some other qualities of God) as distinct from God. But if you pushed people to be literal about what I think wasn't entirely literal, I think they were "part of" God. So no, I don't think John meant that the Logos was separate from God. It's more likely that he was modalist than Arian.

God's Wisdom is not a separate entity. Yet John pretty obviously saw some kind of distinction, and I don't think it's just in how God revealed himself (which is what most people here think modalism is). He was God's partner in creation, which is before there was anyone to reveal to, and creation was kind of a basic act defining who God is.

It's this distinction within one God that later Trinitarian thought tried to describe, though one can argue whether the way they did it was ideal.

indopanda said:

To say YHWH and Logos are not separate would be to support some sort of Modalism, but to say they are separate would indicate that the Logos is not YHWH. Since both of these options were considered problematic for people within the Church, the Trinitarian position was adopted.

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John 1:1 says that Jesus [if you believe "the Word" is synonymous with Jesus, as I do] is "with" God. I don't believe "separate" is appropriate here. The verb, in its most literal sense, means "move away", implying distance. "With" suggests "distinct", but also "together". I certainly agree that to say they are not "distinct" would imply modalism.

Of the Kingdom said:

I don't believe "separate" is appropriate here. The verb, in its most literal sense, means "move away", implying distance.

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In John 1:1 (Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος = In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God), the preposition πρὸς literally means "towards." That's usually translated "with," but the sense of closeness has also often been translated "face-to-face with."

Quite the opposite of "separate," as you say. However, a clear distinction is also being made, which (as you point out) rules out modalism.

Indopanda,

You do know that one of the primary defenders of the Nicene Creed (in some traditions, including that preserved in my own Church, one of the primary authors of it), Athanasius of Alexandria, also left us the earliest extant list of the standard 27-book NT canon, right? And that he was exiled five times under four different Roman emperors for a total of over 17 years of his time as the twentieth Pope of Alexandria, all for his defense of the faith against the Arians, who constantly sought to unseat him and have him replaced with people favorable to their position?

The first point speaks to the folly of your request that the Creed somehow be sidelined in favor of something "just based on the Bible", as there would be no "the Bible" as you or I or anyone else knows it if it were not for Athanasius (subsequent synods, such as those held in Roman North Africa at in Carthage, all came to independently accept the canon as found in Athansius' 39th festal letter of 367 AD), and the second point speaks to your fanciful view of history where there was supposedly all this pressure from some all-powerful Church to force or coerce anyone who didn't want to do so to accept the Nicene Creed, when in reality the pressure was on the defenders of the Creed of Nicaea for several centuries afterwards. Neither Nicaea nor the Creed produced there did away with Arianism or the Arians, as the Visigothic Kingdom in what is now Spain, for instance, shows. The Spanish Visigoths didn't convert from Arianism to Nicene Christianity until the 580s, and actually they had converted to Arianism significantly after Nicaea in the first place, in 376. In truth, Arianism in its 'classical' sense would linger on in various forms in Europe and North Africa until the 8th century or so, only to make a comeback with modifications in some of the more radical forms of theology that grew following the Protestant Reformation.

indopanda said:

I would be careful about claiming what a word "literally" means when it was used by someone 2000 years ago.

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No, I'm pretty sure that I know what the word πρὸς literally means.

indopanda said:

Firstly, I would counter that there would be no "the Bible" without God

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This is not precluded by my point. We all believe that the Bible came from God, in one sense or another.

as I firmly believe that God intervened to ensure that the appropriate inspired texts have carried through to us today.

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Sure.

Perhaps you disagree, but if God had not used Athanasius to "codify" the New Testament, I am sure he would have used someone else. Just because God uses someone to bring about his will, that does not automatically make their doctrine sound.

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This is not the point. The point is not "Look at how great Athanasius is; what a guy!", but rather how strange it is that people (not just you or other unitarians, but lots of other people who claim to be 'Biblically-based') would accept the canon established by him as authoritative and God-given while completely discounting the idea that he might have something worthwhile to say about the content of the faith itself. It's not about if someone else would have done it if he hadn't, because (1) that's not how things actually worked out in history, and we are to respect God's prerogatives as God; (2) the canonization of the NT actually postdates the formulation of the Creed (367 vs. 325), making the Bible in that sense 'younger' than it (yes, the books were around, but they were not codified); and (3), the Creed did not establish orthodox Christian theology (that is to say, orthodox Trinitarianism), so much as codify it, meaning that what you say about the canonization of the scriptures ("someone else would have done it, because God wanted it done") can be equally applied to the establishment of proper Christian theology in the place of heretics, as nothing was made out of nothing at any of the councils, and the ante-Nicene fathers such as Ignatius of Antioch (late 1st-early 2nd century), Gregory Thaumaturgus (mid-late 3rd century), Ephrem the Syrian (mid-late 4th century), and others all testify to the preexisting belief in the Holy Trinity, with all that is missing from many of them being the language characteristic of Nicene Christianity itself, since they for the most part lived and died before the Council. (Even though that statement does not apply to him so much, I include St. Ephrem here as transitional figure of sorts, seeing as how he was born long enough before the council, in 306, to be cognizant of its aftermath and hence stand up to it and join any one of the many other sects then claiming to be the Church if it was so atrocious, and yet he did not do so, but instead defended its theology until his death in 373, particularly against the alternative of the Bardaisanites who were among the more popular heretical sects in the area of his native Nisibis, as their founder had written many hymns in their shared Syriac language.)

I am aware of the pressure that came afterwards against the Creed. This was certainly a controversial issue in the early church and I believe the non-trinitarian non-modalist position has persisted in the face of opposition because there will always be people within and outside of the "church" who see why it makes sense from the Bible.

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Fine. I am only saying that this is a very inconsistent position to take, as you are using the scriptures bequeathed to you specifically by orthodox, Nicene Trinitarians to argue against the Nicene Trinitarian position.

I believe there has been fierce pressure within the church to force people to accept the creed and trinitarianism and I am positive history backs me up.

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Not the history immediately following Nicaea and for several centuries afterwards, as I've already shown. It is perhaps good to remember in this context that Emperor Consantine, who usually gets the lion's share of the blame for 'inventing' this or that via the Council according to people who prefer to live in an ahistorical fantasy world, was himself baptized on his deathbed by an Arian -- not Nicene Trinitarian -- bishop, Eusebius of Nicomedia. His son and successor, Constantine II, was himself a semi-Arian (i.e., believing that Jesus was of a "similar", but not the same, substance as the Father; homoiousian, rather than the orthodox, Nicene homoousian position). The forced conversion of Arians to Nicene Christianity is only attested to once the actual kings of people who had previously been Arian (e.g., the Franks, the Visigoths, etc.) themselves converted to Nicene Christianity, which only began in 486 AD with the conversion of Clovis I, the King of the Franks (Riccared of the Visigoths would come later, but much later, in 589; this is how Arianism was able to hold on so long in what is now Spain). Since the King himself was not "within the Church" until he chose of his own will to put himself there, even that can be argued to not come from "within the Church" in the sense of again some all-powerful Church hierarchy forcing people to do this or that, since the Germanic peoples like the Franks and the Goths had been long acquainted with Arianism by that point (Wulfilas, the "missionary to the Goths" who was responsible for the translation of the Bible into the Gothic language, was an Arian, and he had passed away by 383, only a few decades after the Council, and still well within this period of doctrinal flux among the peoples of Europe), and no doubt many held onto it for quite some time after King Clovis I (hence the whole Arianism not dying out until the 8th century thing I mentioned in my other post). It was just more often than not the case in the ancient world, in Europe and beyond, that the religion of the king and his court became by default the religion of his kingdom, and some kings took that as reason or excuse to forcibly convert their subjects (not all; see, e.g., the much later King Armah of Axum who in 615-616 gave shelter in his kingdom to the nascent Muslim community). That doesn't really have anything to do with Nicaea or Nicene Christianity in particular unless you also want to accept that the same tendency was present in all of the places where Arianism or otherwise non-Nicene, non-Trinitarian Christianity predominated (e.g., the aforementioned Visigothic Kingdom between 376 and 589), and even in some places where it didn't thanks to the manipulations of the Arians after the council (e.g., Egypt, where Athanasius was frequently exiled from on account of them and their ability to persuade various emperors to their cause).

Sure there was push back after the Creed, since I maintain the position is not actually biblical, but the Creed ends up winning out.

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Again, the Creed ends up "winning out" after about four hundred years of dealing with the followers of Arius all over the world, and then again after various strains of anti-Trinitarianism broke out during the "Radical Reformation" (distinct from the initial Protestant reformation, which was Trinitarian), and again today after dealing with their spiritual descendants once more in various anti-Trinitarian groups of this or that flavor found in the heresies of our own time, such as Mormonism, Oneness Pentecostalism, and other aberrations pretending to be 'restorations' of the true Christian faith. And this is without saying anything about other, completely non-Christian religions such as Islam, which drinks of the same poison but usually does not claim to have anything to do with Christianity (aside from the polemic that its followers are "better Christians than the Christians, since [they] don't make a man out to be God"...pfft...yeah, maybe not as far as concerns Jesus...), but has wreaked more havoc on Christianity than probably any other non-Christian movement.

You could argue that the Creed wins out in the church because it is correct.

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Indeed.

I would argue that the Creed wins because it's proponents were more ruthless in putting down opposition.

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And yet actual history is not on your side in this until much, much later with the Reformation (which was itself long after Arianism had died out), when English anti-Trinitarian John Asheton (can't spell his last name correctly without triggering the censors, but there should be two s's in it) was forced to recant of his position before Anglican bishop Thomas Cranmer in 1548. You can call this 'ruthless' or unfair all you want, but as Asheton himself was an Anglican priest, and hence Cranmer was his bishop, it was proper that his bishop hold him to the standards of the Anglican faith, which is traditionally holding to Nicene-Constantinoplitan theology. (Would that Anglican bishops would still do this all over the world and hence completely divorce quacks like John Shelby Sprong from their association with the Anglican faith!) Also around this time we began to see the burning of heretics at Geneva under Calvin, such as the burning of Spanish anti-Trinitarian Michael Servetus in 1553.

So I'm willing to grant that you are right about this...but in places far removed in time and space from the Council of Nicaea. There were over 1,200 years between the Council of Nicaea and Calvinists burning Michael Servetus in Geneva, for instance. It is such a long time between the two that if we were to consider that same span of time relative to right now, it would be like conflating the military campaigns of Charlemagne against the then newly-settled pagan Avars in what is now Hungary in 971 AD with the actions of Nicene Christian churches right now!

And that would obviously make very little sense.

Furthermore, history is ultimately written by the victors.

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*Looks over at his bookshelf at his copies of Severus Al Ashmunein's History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria, Irish Habib El Masri's Story of the Copts, and the 13th-century Martyrdom of John of Phanijoit*

Really? This is news to me! I'm unaware of what sort of "victory" we've attained in my Church, other than the natural victory of being correct (which has certainly cost us much more than being incorrect would have), but since we haven't been able to convince the majority of the rest of the world of this in, oh, the last 1,600 years or so, I'm going to have to call baloney on this statement.

Go peddle that nonsense to someone to whom it applies, please.

It's fine though.

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It's really not, though. You're making demonstrably incorrect and nonsensical statements in service of a theology that has always been rejected by the Christian Church, and then complaining that Christians won't accept you for it. While you're of course free to do so, the idea that you are being oppressed or excluded for this silliness is a bit much to take without comment.

As I mentioned previously, I have learned from this website and this thread what defines a Christian so I will instead call myself a follower of Jesus. Or perhaps you have a definition of that which I am excluded from as well?

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Seeing as how the follower of Jesus are called Christians, that is just an attempt to abscond with the term by other means. Why not stick with "Unitarian", as you have it now in your info box? It describes your position in neutral terms, so anyone who wants to consider you a Christian can do so, so long as they do not parade it around on this Christian website, in the same way that Mormons and others are allowed to post in sections of this website, and identify themselves as Mormons or whatever it is they are that isn't Trinitiarian Christianity, but are not allowed to argue that their religion is Christian, since they do not adhere to the basic minimum of that belief.

"Christian" means something. The faith has content, and you disagree on the basics of that content, so of course you are not Christian, a.k.a. a follower of Jesus. But that's not me or anyone else excluding you from being considered as such. That's you excluding you from being considered as such, since you disagree with the basics of the faith. Nobody here or anywhere is making you do that, and I'm sure we'd all rather you didn't.

indopanda said:

So your suggestion that you know what John was saying just based on the modern literal meaning of that greek word does not impress me.

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No, I was claiming that I knew the literal meaning of that particular ancient Greek word based on my knowledge of ancient Greek.

But I don't care to debate you; your question has been answered.