You Confirm The Nicene Creed By the Scripture

[Wgw]

Shortly after Nicea a powerful Anti-Nicene group developed which for years refused to accept the homoousion as the test of orthodoxy. Against these Anti-Nicene a smaller group, headed by Athanasius, battled tenaciously for the Nicene homoousion and put forth a sound Trinitarian doctrine. But this doctrine left unsolved many questions about the divine persons, their definition and distinction and relation to one another and to the godhead.
The Council of Nicea had merely declared, 'And we believe in the Holy Spirit.' Augustine's theology left many questions unanswered: What is the nature of the two processions? How do they differ? Why are there only two processions and only three persons?
What, how many years after the death of Christ did it take to fool people in the belief of a polythestic God intead on the one Paul taught?
Between Augustine in the 5th century and Anselm in the 12th, two men stood out for their Trinitarian contributions, Boethius (d. 524) and Eriugena (d. 877 c.). In the 13th century Dominicans and Franciscans .
There were three great Trinitarian councils in the 13th and 15th centuries. In the 17th century Protestant theologians .
Kant, by his Critiques, put an end to the Enlightenment; he rejected both orthodox and rationalist views of religion, regarded the doctrine of the Trinity as of no practical value, and opened the way to the modern theological mood.
We do not intend to seek in the Old Testament and in the New Testament what is not there, a formal statement of Trinitarian doctrine. More recent scholars find no evidence in the Old Testament that any sacred writer believed in or suspected the existence of a divine paternity and filiation within the Godhead itself.
The word of Yahweh effects what it signifies : 'so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose' (Is 55.11).1 The word of Yahweh is a creative agent, and it is fulfilled in the visible creation that results from it (Genesis ch. 1). Nature as well as history is a word that reveals Yahweh who speaks it, but the word of Yahweh is also the written law.
Nowhere in the Old Testament is there any solid evidence that a sacred writer viewed the word of Yahweh as a personal being distinct from Yahweh, and thus had intimations of plurality within the Godhead. The word of Yahweh is only Yahweh acting, or the means by which He revealed His will to men. It has been much discussed down the centuries. Jewish speculation saw in it the affirmation of the pre-existence of the Law, which was easily identified with the wisdom of God. The Arians found in it a strong argument to show that Christ was but a creature.' The people of the Old Testament, however, did not see wisdom as a person to be addressed. Today scholars agree with them and see in wisdom only God's own activity, or an attribute of God, or just a personification, or an extension of the divine personality.
But to the people of the Old Testament the wisdom of God was never a person to be addressed but only a personification of an attribute or activity of Yahweh. PART ONE The Biblical Witness to God

 

[Wgw]

Augustine is an unimportant figure in Orthodox trinitarian theology, and furthermore was hardly the most important Trinitarian theologist since St. Athanasius.

The expanded Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381, composed at the Second Ecumenical Council (probably by mating the old Nicene Creed with an Orthodox baptismal creed from Judea, which had additional clauses to ferret out the semi-Arians, Apollinarians and Pnuematomachians/Macedonians) was largely the product of the allies of St. Athanasius, the Cappadocians: Ss. Basil the Great, his brother Gregory of Nyassa, and Gregory the Theologian who personally inaugurated the Second Ecumenical Council.

Flash forward to the fifth century. Nestorius attempted to argue in defense of his view that Mary was not the Theotokos, that the human Jesus and the divine Logos were two different hypostases or prosopa, faces, in a union of will, two persons, basically. St. Cyril defeated him. St. Augustine along with St. John Cassian on the other hand was primarily involved in combatting Pelagianism, the heresy that humans arent fundamentally evil and are reaponisble for their own salvation.

Later Trinitarian theologians of note include St. Gregory Diologos, St. Maximus the Confessor, St. John Damascene, all 6th through 8th century, and of course St. Photius the Defender of Orthodoxy against the Filioque, in the 9th century. Then, much work was done by St. Symeon the New Theologian and St. Gregory Palamas in terms of integrating Trinitarian theology with the mystical experience of Heaycahsm and the essence/energies distinction. Since that time I would say among the Orthodox Trinitarian scholarship has focused on explaining the heavenly love that is the central idea of the Triune deity in new cultural contexts and in the face of new challenges, such as Soccinianism/Unitarianism and the internal Sophian heresy popular among some Russian emigres in Paris, followers of the hieromartyr (who otherwise would be remembered as a heresiarch had the Soviets not killed him) Pavel Florensky, and his friend and the coauthor of that doctrine, Archpriest Pavel Florensky, who led one of the Russian cathedrals in Paris.

 

[MoreCoffee]

Saint Augustine lived from 354 AD to 430 AD and saint Athanasius lived from 296 AD to 373 AD so they were not far apart in years. So I was curious how saint Augustine was not the most significant early church father writing on the Blessed Trinity since saint Athanasius?

 

[Wgw]

For two reasons: active in between the death of St. Athanasius and St. Augustine's conversion from Manichaism, were four saints considered more important than St. Augustine in the Eastern tradition: the ally and contemporary of St. Athanasius, St. Basil the Great, his best friend St. Gregory of Nazianzus, who we in the Orthodox Church enumerate as one of three Theologians who obtained mystical knowledge of God and wrote it down, the other two being St. John of Patmos, the Beloved Disciple, Apostle, Evangelist and Theologian, and St. Symeon the New Theologian, instrumental in the Hesychast tradition for his work "On Three Methods of Prayer," which is included in the Phillokalia. Both of these two Theologians are more important by far to the Orthodox than St. Augustine and made far more substantial contributions to defending the Trinity than any since Athanasius; they, togther with St. Basil's younger brother St. Gregory Nyassa, who died in 395, are considered the Cappadocian Fathers and the architects of the theological refinements introduced to stamp out semi Arianism and Pneumatomachianism. Then you have the greatest preacher of all time, St. John Chrysostom, who taught the theology of the Second Council and much else about Christian faith to the world.

Ss. Basil, Gregory Nazianzen the Theologian, and St. John Chrysostom are enumerated by us as the Three Holy Hierarchs; St. Athanasius the Great is regarded by the Coptic Church of my communiom as Apostolic, and the four are regarded as the Eastern Doctors by your Roman Catholic Church.

Two of the four Western Doctors of whom St. Augustine is a member were active between St. Athanasius and his own prime: Ss. Jerome and Ambrose, both of whom are regarded as more important than Augustine by the Orthodox. Other saints of that era who we refard as being weightier than Augustine include Jerome's ally St. Epiphanius of Salamis, and the architect of the shared Paschal liturgy of the apostolic churches, St.Cyril of Jerusalem.

I would also state that when it comes to the Fathers who opposed the deranged Pelagius, the Orthodox prefer St. John Cassian, who was also instrumental in introducing Eastern monasticism into the Western Church, the foremost Western monastic until Ss. Benedict, Scholastica and Columba. In fact, to my knowledge, the Oriental Orthodox are indifferent to St. Augustine; he is acknwoledged a saint but I know of no cultus surrounding him.

In the Eastern Orthodox Church Augustine has admirers, especially in the Russian tradition, like Fr. Seraphim Rose, who wrote a balanced book on his place in Eastern theology, but the Greek Orthodox scholar Chrisots Yannaras and John C. Romanides regard him as being the initiator of the process by which Western theology became corrupt, leading to the great schism; Yannaras is particularly harsh. Augustine is not universally venerated or regarded as a saint, some call him "blessed" but unlike the Roman Catholic church, in the Eastern Church there is no intermediate step between not being a saint, amd being glorified (canonized).

Our main problem with Augustine is that in reacting to the monergism of Pelagius, which states that man must save himself, Augustine promoted a counter monergism, in which only God can save man, and the Sixth Ecumenical Council although referring to Augustine as a "blessed teacher of the faith" condemned monergism with monoenergism and monothelitism, by implication. The Orthodox believe a divine synergy between God and man is required for salvation. But surely the Romans do to a lesser degree; its really Luther and Calvin who went overboard with Augustinian soteriology

Also many Orthodox regard the view of St. Augustine that unbaptized infants are damned to Hell to be horrific. Given the strong Roman Catholic stance against abortion, indeed, the commendable horror especially among the Traditional Latin Mass communities at abortion, which we Orthodox salute, I suspect and hope means that the RCs now dismiss this teaching and the doctrine of limbo as a special soteriological destination for the unbaptized infants; I love to see Grottos of Our Lady of Lourdes as the Protector of Aborted Children.

 

[he-man]

People who think god is a TRITHEISM also avoid the scripture that says: Mar 13:32 "But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

But to the people of the Old Testament the wisdom of God was never a person to be addressed but only a personification of an attribute or activity of Yahweh. PART ONE The Biblical Witness to God.
Matthew does not agree with you for he says you hast not lied unto men, but unto God.
Mat 12:32 And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.
Eph 5:24 Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.
1Co 11:3 But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.
1Co 15:27 For "God has put all things in subjection under his feet." But when it says, "all things are put in subjection," it is plain that He is excepted who put all things in subjection under Him.
28 When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to Him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.

 

[Wgw]

He-man, the Orthodox church is not Tritheistic.

"We believe in One God..." is how the Creed begins. We do not regard the three persons of the Trinity as having any independent existence; the Trinity is all holy, individible, and God is in His divine essence ultimately incomprehensible.

It stands to reason that one attribute of an omnipotent God must be the abiloty to subsist in a multiplicity of persons. But these persons are not individuals.

 

[he-man]

He-man, the Orthodox church is not Tritheistic.

Matthew 10:32 “Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven.
Mt 12:32 And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.
Eph 5:24 Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.
1Co 11:3 But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.
1Co 15:27 For "God has put all things in subjection under his feet." But when it says, "all things are put in subjection," it is plain that He is excepted who put all things in subjection under Him.
28 When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to Him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.

Who introduced the theory of a trinity?Was it God or man? It was in extreme tension at the time of Arius, and under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit it started at Nicea to formulate the doctrine of the Trinity.
The Council of Nicea had merely declared, 'And we believe in the Holy Spirit.' Lateran IV in 1215 was the first ecumenical council to define that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son, and in its Trinitarian declarations it went well beyond Nicea I and Constantinople I
Which is rejected by true believers like Mt 12:32 And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.

In the 15th century Florence, another ecumenical and reunion council, amplified the declarations of Lateran N and Lyons II by declaring that the patristic doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father through the Son is substantially equivalent to the Filioque; by defining that the Filioque had been lawfully added to the Creed.
This last point is extremely important for it represented the explicational climax of a long patristic and theological reflection on the root of distinction in the one simple God.
We do not intend to seek in the Old Testament and in the New Testament what is not there, a formal statement of Trinitarian doctrine. [
PART ONE The Biblical Witness to God

The Council of Nicea was over, but many years would pass before the Nicene Creed would be fully established and accepted. Arianism, although driven underground, was far from dead. CHAPTER FIVE
Athanasius, met intense opposition from the Arians and was banished from his see five times.
. His Letter concerning the Decrees of the Council of Nicea (hereafter De decret.) described the proceedings at Nicea and defended the Council's use of non-Biblical terms. The Post-Nicene Phase

 

[he-man]

Matthew 10:32 “Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven.
Mt 12:32 And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.
Eph 5:24 Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.
1Co 11:3 But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.
1Co 15:27 For "God has put all things in subjection under his feet." But when it says, "all things are put in subjection," it is plain that He is excepted who put all things in subjection under Him.
28 When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to Him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.

Who introduced the theory of a trinity?Was it God or man? It was in extreme tension at the time of Arius, and under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit it started at Nicea to formulate the doctrine of the Trinity.
The Council of Nicea had merely declared, 'And we believe in the Holy Spirit.' Lateran IV in 1215 was the first ecumenical council to define that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son, and in its Trinitarian declarations it went well beyond Nicea I and Constantinople I
Which is rejected by true believers like Mt 12:32 And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.

In the 15th century Florence, another ecumenical and reunion council, amplified the declarations of Lateran N and Lyons II by declaring that the patristic doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father through the Son is substantially equivalent to the Filioque; by defining that the Filioque had been lawfully added to the Creed.
This last point is extremely important for it represented the explicational climax of a long patristic and theological reflection on the root of distinction in the one simple God.
We do not intend to seek in the Old Testament and in the New Testament what is not there, a formal statement of Trinitarian doctrine. [
PART ONE The Biblical Witness to God

The Council of Nicea was over, but many years would pass before the Nicene Creed would be fully established and accepted. Arianism, although driven underground, was far from dead. CHAPTER FIVE
Athanasius, met intense opposition from the Arians and was banished from his see five times.
. His Letter concerning the Decrees of the Council of Nicea (hereafter De decret.) described the proceedings at Nicea and defended the Council's use of non-Biblical terms. The Post-Nicene Phase

 

[Wgw]

Actually the word Trinitas was coined by Tertullian, around AD 200, to describe the doctrine of three persons in one Godhead.

The Council of Constantinople in 381 made it expressly clear that it was not sanctioning Tritheism.

 

[timewerx]

The problem is you're lookimg at this through the aprotestant lens of sola Scriptura, reading different Biblical texts in opposition to each other and drawing your own conclusions. Which I daresay is a presumptuous way to do theology. Why would St. Athanasius include the Pauline Epistles and the Gospel of John in his Biblical canon if they contradicted each other? The answer is that of course, they do not.

What is more most of the social teachings of Jesus you say Paul deprecated are in the Synoptics, which you admit are more closely connected with Paul. Which is logical because Paul casually mentions his relationships with Ss. Mark and Luke, the two most gifted scribes of the early church according to tradition, in his epistles. St. John is much more otherworldly,,which prompted a liberal Christian to attack his Gospel and trumpet "the tragic Gospel" of St. Mark (with the Shorter Ending, of course), as the social gospel par excellence, dealing chiefly with the marginalized here and now. To which I say yawn. Not because I don't care about the poor and marginalized; at present to my chagrin I fall into that category, but rather because there is so much more of a pressing concern of life everlasting.

I maintain if one really wants to throw out poor St. Paul, one can't do it coherently in the framework of the Canonical Gospels. One must follow Elaine Pagels, Marcis Borg and Dominic Crossan into the moth eaten realm of the Gnostic gospels, which have emerged from the sands of Egypt like some accursed mummified pharaoh. That said, they make fun reading.

Speaking of which, your last quote of St. Paul actually describes how the Orthodox and Catholic Churches historically did evangelism to different peoples. We call it acculturation. That's why the Oriental Orthodox boast five distinct liturgical rites,,why Russian Orthodox four part harmony is distinct from Byzantine Chant, and why Roman Catholic missionaries have sought where possible to "baptize" indigenous customs.

I'm fully aware of the relation of the "Synoptic Gospels" to Apostle Paul which is why I practice caution when reading the Synoptic Gospels.

I do not fully dismiss the teachings of Paul.

I have a bigger problem with how many Christians treat the teachings of Paul....

....For instance Paul was VERY SPECIFIC of his target audiences. He admitted he adapted his teaching according to the culture he faced.

Yet, we treat his writings like "one size fits all"!!

This is all for a good reason.

And one reason is that none of this was intended to create a religion. Because religion is condition of stagnation and corruption a false belief that the truth has been found.

 

[Wgw]

But there is also,a,decided relationship between the Paul, the Synoptics, and the Johannine Corpus. Firstly, and most importantly, St. John was the last Disciple to die, and I believe the only one who wasnt martyred,,although he did endure an exile on Patmos, which before the building of the great monastery there, had a low population, and was until the 20Th century quite barren and desolate, until the current abbot decided to make all farmers coming to him for confession plant trees as a penance. His view was that no one who truly loved God would not also love trees. As a result, Patmos is now lush and verdant, but the elderly St. John, in his 80s or 90s when exiled to Patmos, could well have died, but our Lord preserved him so he could write the Apocalypse.

Now St. John was the tutor of St. Ignatius the martyr, who was fed to lions in Rome around the same time, or shortly after, St. John died peacefully. He was also the tutor of Ss. Justin Martyr, whose Apologies defending Christianity to the Emperor (which were somewhat successful; persecution became markedly less severe until the death of Marcus Aurelius, who along with Trajan and Hadrian had no burning desire to kill Christians; persecution became localized until the reign of Commodus. This did not stop Ss. Justin Martyr and Polycarp from duing at a very old age from martyrdom. Now St. Irenaeus, the author of Against Heresies, was a disciple of Polycarp. Not one of these four important Patrstic scholars pointed to any conflict or dosagreement between Ss. John and Paul, whereas the disagreements between Ss. Peter and Paul, and Paul and James the Just, with Peter as intermediary, over the reception of gentiles into the Church, were well documented. It must be stressed that if it werent for St. Paul, Christianity would have died an obscure Jewish sect, like the Essenes, following the destruction of the Temple.

There are more connections: St. Mary lived with St. John in Ephesus, where he was bishop; St. Paul wrote a letter to his church, and St. Luke the Physician according to many accounts also was a great painter, and visited Mary amd John to paint the first icon of the Theotokos.

And the theology of all four Gospels is interconnected closely. In Matthew we see the fulfillment of prophecies in the Old Testament and the name of the Trinity is revealed; in Mark, the Messianic secret and the fact that the Disciples did not realize the Lord is our God until His glorious resurrection. Luke-Acts takes us into the pneumatology of the Holy Spirit and also into Mariology, particularly in Ch. 1, and documents the nascent period of the early Church and the ministry of St. Paul, who more than anyone else opened the doors to gentiles.

John continues the pneumatology and adds in deep Christology, identifying clearly the three persons of the Trinity. His Gospel builds on the the,es introduced in the synoptics and focuses most explicitly on the identity of our Lord as the Logos, the incarnate Word of God, of one essence with the Father, like the Holy Spirit and the Father, a distinct divine Person, yet also fully Human.

I find it frustrating when people talk about Johannine or Pauline or Petrine or Lukan spirituality, as if all the Apostles were at odds with each other and did not ultimately over the course of the events described in Acts, the Epistles and the Ecclesiastical History, come to share a common understanding of what they had witnessed, which became the Apostolic kerygma, the Gospel message that is the heart of Orthodox holy tradition.

And if John was at odds with Paul, none of the Apostolic Fathers such as the disciples of John I enumerated above, or other early saints like St. Clement of Rome, noticed it. Its also amusimg how this delusional sideshow ignores the work of other Apostles, like Thomas, assisted by two members of the Seventy, Addai and Mari, who evangelized Edessa, Nineveh, Babylon, and the Indian province of Kerala, where the Kochin Jews, who spoke Aramaic, had dwelt for hundreds of years trading with the West. Vidal Sasoon was a member of their leading family; their Paredesi Synagogue is the oldest in India. But a large number along with native Keralan Indians, speakers of Malayans, converted to Christianity, and are known as the St. Thomas Christians. St. Thomas died by a spear through his back while preaching in India. So while most of the disciples pushed East into the Greek speaking regions, and St. Andrew pushed North, his exact course being lost to us, St. Thomas, and the Apostles Addai and Mari, pushed East, following a path through the Aramaic speaking regions to the south of the Persian Empire, where Jews, Assyrians and Banylonians could be evangelized, before pushing into the Aramaic speaking beachhead of India. My Church, the Syriac Orthodox Church, primarily consists of people from these regions of modern day Turkey, Syria, Iraq and India.

 

[Tellastory]

Will you do the same?

I do hope in Him that He shall continue to lead me so as He is the One actually ministering here and not me.

At times in the Synoptics this Son ship of Jesus involves some subordination of Jesus to the Father. There were things that the Son did not know: 'But of that day or that hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father' (Mk 13.32).

Since it is the Father's will to be done and not the Son's, we can see how there is harmony within the One God.

Again in Mark we hear Jesus saying: 'Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone' (10.18).

That was Jesus lifting his sight of Him a little higher after calling Jesus "Good Master", but the man did not see the hint.

1Co 15:28 And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto Him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all.

Jesus is the only way back to the Father so naturally the whole point is bringing us back to the Father of all those subjected under the Son. After the kingdom of Heaven is complete after the 3 harvests, the Son will give the Kingdom of Heaven to the Father.

Matthew 13:33 Another parable spake he unto them; The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.

And again, 1Co 11:3 But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.

Signifying once again that Jesus Christ is the only way to God the Father as we are married to Christ, the Bridegroom.

On the kenosis whereby ‘Who, being in the figure1 of God, thought it not grasping2 to lead3 to be
similar4 to God: 7 But himself, he was completely lacking5, and clinged6 to the figure of a
slave, and became in likeness of men: (Phil 2.6, 7).’ [1 * Greek μορφή figure 2 * Greek αρπαγμον grasp 3 * Greek ηγεομαι ηγούμαι to lead 4 * Greek ίσα, ίσος ίσιος be similar to 5 * Greek κενωσεν completely lacking 6 * Greek λαβη λαβων cling to]
there is only ‘One who is Good’, it becomes clear that Paul views Christ both as subordinate and only to be similar to God the Father which is fulfilled in the purpose of the visible creation that results from it (Gen 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. ) .
CHAPTER TWO
The New Testament Witness to God

I seriously doubt the translation done in that quote since it is going to take God to bring us back to God as in the Son of God as the Passover Lamb to bring us back to God the Father.

The reproof of that quoted translation may be seen with His help by how it leads to exalting the name of Jesus above every other name given under the Heaven because the name of God to call upon to be saved is Jesus Christ.

Philippians 2:5 Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: 6 Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: 7 But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: 8 And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. 9 Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: 10 That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; 11 And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

That Jesus Christ is "God" to the gory of God the Father. This is why John 5:22-23 states that the only way to honour the Father is by only honouring the Son.

This is why the Nicene creed is found lacking when overlooking the Father's will on how He wants to be honoured and glorified by in worship, and that is by the Son only. The Holy Spirit has been sent in according to His word to not speak of Himself ( John 16:13 ) but to testify of Jesus ( John 15:26 ) and to glorify the Son ( John 16:14 ) as the Holy Spirit is leading us to do in worship & praise ( John 15:27 ).

Colossians 3:16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. 17 And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him.

But christians are saying now of the scripture because of long held church traditions & their hymnals due to the Nicene creed, "Did God really say that?" when they ignore John 5:22-23 as if there is no standard of judgment declaring the exact will of the Father.

John 5:22 For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son: 23 That all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. He that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father which hath sent him.

 

[Tellastory]

The Spirit and the Lord Jesus Christ are associated with the Father in Matthew 3:16-17 KJV And Jesus, when he was baptised, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him: (17) And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. The association is connected to the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity and hence the people here in CF who produced the Creed, as it is quoted in the original post, are drawing the link between association and identification which the holy scriptures make in a number of passages not least of which is the gospel according to saint John where it is written John 1:1-3,14 KJV In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (2) The same was in the beginning with God. (3) All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. ... (14) And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. So I do not quite see the validity of the objection stated in your post.

Your reference does not really teach the "practice" of worshipping the Holy Spirit with the Father & the Son. All it does is testify to Two Divine Witnesses of God from Heaven bearing witness that Jesus is the Son of God.

Now if we are to take scripture for exactly what He has said; then explain the meaning below.

John 5:22 For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son: 23 That all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. He that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father which hath sent him.

Doesn't verse 22 declaring that God the Father has issued a warning on every believer that they will be judged by a certain standard? Doesn't verse 23 explains how?

Do note that Jesus went on to explain how one is not honouring the Father at all and that is when they stop honouring the Son.

AND since the Holy Spirit will not speak of Himself ( John 16:13 ) but glorify Jesus ( John 16:14 ) then we can see why the Holy Spirit was not listed as anpother way to honour God the Father since we are led by the Spirit of God to do the same thing He has been sent to do; to honour God the Father by honouring & glorifying the Son in worship. There is no other way.