The error is yours, colonial. From your own link to Wikipedia:
These books are not in the Catholic canon, which was the assertion of rat avatar that you denied.
Well I would argue that at that time 1 in 1,000 didn’t understand even the basic parts of their religion, heck, most didn’t speak Latin.
But I guess if you exclude Mormons, Christian Scientists and The Witnesses as “Christians” for not believing in the trinity that is fine. But my understanding is that the Eastern church does not view it as a literal 3 as 1 situation as the Catholics or Anglican church do.
I think you would need to make an argument that not having a mufti-faceted “single” god concept invalidated the main tenants of the rest of the religion to get non-Christians to exclude those groups from being “Christian” and then they would still consider themselves to be “Christian”.
Nice of you to stick up for this rat guy, who must be tired of getting chewed up
and spat out.
I was responding to rat guy’s post #142, beginning with the words “What NT?”,
the New Testament having been the focus of that part of our conversation
for several exchanges. Then he brings up several NT books in connection with Luther.
Therefore there was any error would be his for not making it clear he was suddenly
changing the subject.
So outside of the ad hominem attacks are you going to just ignore that your own cite proved your claim wrong.
Was Martin Luther not a Christian in your eyes?
Last chance to behave yourself. You have already gotten two notices that your inflammatory language is not appropriate. From now on, you will be Warned for that behavior.
[ /Moderating ]
What about the Ethiopian Orthodox Church? Are they not considered Christian owing to the number of books in their canon?
You would have to also exclude the Unitarian sects, such as Quakers. The very word Unitarian is intended to set themselves apart from Trinitarians.
Hell, you don’t have to believe in a divine being of any sort to be a Unitarian. (This isn’t exactly news, I hope.) You can be a Christian and be a Unitarian, but the Unitarians are not a Christian denomination per se, nor do they claim to be.
You’re talking about Unitarian Universalists. They are a branch of the Unitarian sects. They decided you don’t have to be Christian to be one of them, but the other Unitarian sects are all still Christian. Note I gave Quakers as an example. They aren’t UU, but they are Unitarian. And avowedly Christian.
Although I can’t imagine a useful definition of Christianity that didn’t include Mormons, Christian Scientists, and JWs, I understand Orthodoxy very much to hold that the trinity consists of three distinct persons in one. The thrust of the difference between Eastern and Roman Catholicism seems to involve methodology — with the RCC holding that the trinity is something rational that can be argued for (although not fully understood).
I’d welcome anyone with more knowledge chiming in, though.
In any event: I wonder if trinitarian vs. nontrinitarian beliefs would best be understood as separate clades within one species? It doesn’t make sense to me for Mormons not to be Christians; but intuitively it doesn’t seem to belong in the same grouping as others.
OK then, let me revise that:
Hell, you don’t have to believe in a divine being of any sort to be a Unitarian. (This isn’t exactly news, I hope.) You can be a Christian and be a Unitarian, but the denomination known as the Unitarians***** are not a Christian denomination per se, nor do they claim to be.
[Grammarian nitpick: one of the primary uses of capitalizing the first letter of a word in the middle of a sentence is to indicate its use as a proper noun, i.e. a name.]
*AFAIK, there’s only one denomination of significance with ‘Unitarian’ in the name, and that’s the Unitarian Universalists. Which actually resulted from the merger of the denomination known as the Unitarians with the denomination known as the Universalists.
This is a link to a Wikipedia article about the differences in how the Trinity is regarded, between Eastern and Western Christianity.
Still not an adequate revision. Wiki on Unitarianism.
When you obviously have not the vaguest idea of what you’re talking about, we have not the vaguest need to take what you say seriously. Get back to me when you actually recongnize what “Unitarian” means, OK?
The ironic thing is that up until recently, Mormons proclaimed no unity with other Christians. Through the 70s, Mormons were, by their own definition, a separate people which finds more in common with the Jews than with any other Christian church. As Mormonism considered itself the restoration of the truth which was lost by unrighteous Christianity; polluted by the Great Whore, the Catholic Church; and whose ministers are paid pawns of Satan.
Mormonism of the 1860s and 70s could be clearly argued to not be Christian, with neither side disagreeing. Not that Mormonism had rejected Christ, but that the doctrine had so clearly evolved beyond anything reconcilable. From its roots as what can only be described as a cult founded by a confidence man, to its open practice of polygamy and adherence to self-proclaimed prophets, it had made enough of a break from its Protestant roots that it was in a separate category by itself. Blood oaths, polygamy, polytheism including the doctrine of God = Adam, to name a few of the doctrines on the extreme side which could justify other Christian denominations from wanting to completely disassociate with Mormons. Mormons of this era clearly saw themselves as the inheritors of original Church and believed that that other Christians were deceived at best and evil at worst.
Brother Brigham was the perfect man for holding the church together after Smith’s death, and while he also inherited Smith’s direction of theology, he lacked Smith’s charisma and failed to persuade his fellow leaders who rejected his more radical teachings, including the aforementioned Adam is God doctrine. Had that school of continued, there is no doubt that there would have been a complete break. However, once the rule of bureaucrats took over, along with the loss of the hearing the world of God spoken in the first person, the desire to be liked by the outside world eventually won out.
By the time the 1990s rolled around, the trend to appear mainstream had completely taken over. Under the leadership of Gordon B. “I’m not sure we still teach that” Hickley, it accelerated faster including such things as the now-aborted “we’re not Mormons” phase or the even less known attempt to address its Godhood to be more similar to mainstream Christianity. As the great divide between “us” and “them” is still clearly “Mormons” vs. “everyone else” and non-Mormon Christians fare no better in the hereafter than Muslims, Buddhists or atheists, and as these principles haven’t changed, there is no indication that this movement is anything more than a calculated PR move.
People make the mistake of looking to the Book of Mormon to see differences. When Smith wrote or helped write that book, he was still very classic Protestant. It wasn’t until five or six years later when he wrote the Book of Abraham that his theology had evolved into polytheism, which further expanded into “we-can-be-gods-too”theism of the 1840s.
As the Mormon church as not yet officially disavowed any of the advanced theology, other than Young’s Adam is God adventure, I think there is enough on the books to make an argument that Mormonism has moved beyond its roots sufficiently to be in new territory. However, as the church seems to be unwilling to maintain its extreme positions, and as scholarship is rabidly demonstrating the human authorship of what had been accepted as divine origin, I see Mormonism headed further back into mainstream Christianity.
Look, you’re the guy saying Unitarians are Christians, when your own cite says they’re not.
A1: Every Unitarian Universalist is a Unitarian.
A2: At least one Unitarian Universalist is not a theist.
L1: At least one Unitarian is not a theist.
A3: If someone under category C does not have property P, then property P is not necessary for category C.
C: Theistic belief is not necessary to be a Unitarian. (“You don’t have to believe in a divine being of any sort to be a Unitarian.”)
I’m not big on formal logic but doesn’t this (erroneously) assume that Unitarian Universalism is a logical subset of Unitarianism?
Regarding A3 I’m not entirely certain you can ascribe the properties of Unitarian Universalism to Unitarianism as Unitarian Universalism extends/alters/generalizes Unitarianism. It seems clear to me that Unitarianism implies belief in a singular God while Unitarian Universalism doesn’t really imply anything at all.
Yes, I assume that Unitarianism (U) and Unitarian Universalism (UU) share a genus/species relationship, but that seems implicit in the assumptions provided by Cheshire Human: “they are a branch of the Unitarian sects.” If U requires theism but UU does not, then to be UU does not imply being U without further assumptions.
Well, under that scenario I can only conclude that Unitarian Universalists are not Unitarians (properly speaking).
Don’t forget the Universalists! There are still some in the UU congregations who never really fully got with the Unitarian side of things, despite the merger of the two denominations.
You can be a Unitarian Universalist without being a Universalist, so you can also be a Unitarian Universalist without being a Unitarian.
And since UU is non-credo, you can be a Unitarian Universalist without being a Unitarian or a Universalist.
Once you get your mind around that, undestanding the Trinity isn’t so hard, either. 