On Wed, 5 Jan 2005, Carrol Cox wrote:
> 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.
>