snit snat wrote:
>
>
> alas, recently, on another list, it became clear that someone from a
> catholic background, and someone with theological (protestant) training,
> took this HG thing really seriously re: the Nicene Creed that it freaked me
> out. To her (and him) there are a few things that make a christian a
> christian and one of themost important was acceptance of the Nicene Creed
> and acceptance of the HG.
This is sloppy, and not expressed in the terms any theologian would use, but it points roughly to the kind of things involved. In an argument some years ago among Milton scholars over whether or no Milton accepted the Trinity, a scholar who thought that Milton did accept it in PL, said that in DC (rough prose notes for himself) Milton had very nearly become a polytheist. That is involved.
Suppose you believe that Jesus was the Son of God and thus a God himself. Hah! Two Gods. This won't do. There must be only one God, but both Jesus and Jehovah must be Gods. Solution: A duality for various reasons won't do, besides I think there are a couple scriptural passages which vaguely refer to the spirit of god, etc. Hence the only way to have Jesus a divinity but _not_ have xtianity turn into a polytheistic religion is to say that there are three in one. The difference originally revolved around a single vowel in a long greek word: different metaphysics if you have the vowel or don't have the vowel. So the Holy Spirit unites the two gods into a single god. Monotheism _and_ the divinity of jesus both saved. It's been about 50 years since I read stuff on Peter Abelard, but perhaps if you looked up some articles on him you would find out why the holy ghost can be a ticklish matter: one can (and Abelard did) emphasize it/him/her too much and fall into some kind of heresy.
There is also history. The Trinity is at the source of most of the bloodshed over doctrine in xtian history. So xtians who know their history (and sophisticated theologians would) either have to cling to it or admit that xtians (including their biggest guns) have always been a pack of bloody fools. Either the Nicene Creed is the divine word or the major Saints were really apprentice Adolph Hitlers.
Carrol