Talk:Trinitarianism in the Church Fathers

Contest speedy deletion

Gosh! I'm just trying to fix this page and the Trinity page to fulfill the criteria for acceptable articles. This deletion attack is coming too fast!! Said: Rursus ☻ 14:00, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

This just seems like a collection of quotations. Hardly encyclopedic. WWGB 14:09, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

This is about the historical development of the concept of Trinity, which is regarded as central for many Christians (or often a defining feature of being Christian), and the main source of criticisms against Christianity from Islam and Judaeism. The speedy deletion would better be replaced with a heavy rewrite request to meet wikipedia standards, since that was my intention when moving the data from the Trinity article. Said: Rursus ☻ 14:16, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

The speedy deletion note says:

It is an article about a person, group of people, band, club, company, or web content that does not assert the importance or significance of the subject.' (CSD A7) Speedy concern: It is an article about a person, group of people, band, club, company, or web content that does not assert the importance or significance of the subject. (CSD A7)

I say: it isn't. It's about a central christian principle/symbol set. Said: Rursus ☻ 14:16, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

And I'm working on it. Said: Rursus ☻ 14:25, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

OK, fair enough. I will withdraw 'speedy deletion' tag and apply 'quotefarm' instead. WWGB 14:29, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank you very much. You, know the original criticism against Trinity was about this quote farming, and if the article doesn't improve fast enough, I won't object against deletion, but first we'll see if it's possible to salvage it's content by adding some describing comments about the development of the term. Said: Rursus ☻ 14:32, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Hopefully, this can be fleshed out. As it is, I'd prefer that this quotefarm be found on the main article, where it actually had some use.--C.Logan 21:09, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

I find the quotes useful. I don't think they should be removed. --Observer99 (talk) 00:02, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Trinity against Arianism

I'm not sure Arianism was around in the Third Century, certainly not under that name. Tertullian was writing against Monarchians and Patripassians in Ad. Prax. Arius wasn't around until about Nicaea in the forth century. Therefore the heading is wrong, I think. Perhaps better would be "Third Century: Trinity against Monarchianism/Modalism and Pagan Polytheism". John H Percival (talk) 12:30, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Quotefarm indeed!

I just, to my surprise, discovered that I once upon a time created this page as a way to cleanup Trinity, but the article is still a quotefarm. Since there is some interest in keeping these citations, the final fate of the article would be some description on the evolution of the trinity concept containing these citations, but the article still needs the text describing how trinity evolved. Does anyone know of any authors describing the trinity concept? There should be such (>1980 years of debate!). ... said: Rursus (bork²) 12:28, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Problem with the article title

The article title, Trinity of the Church Fathers doesn't work very well for me, and I see the authors have not managed to work in into the text of the lede. On those bases, I contend that a different title might work better - Basis of the concept of a Holy Trinity, for instance. Or something better than that, but something which conveys the subject matter better than the current title does. --Tagishsimon (talk) 18:01, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Recognising that Trinitarianism was formalise in the fourth century and, before that, there were different views about the "godhead", perhaps "Concepts of God in the Church Fathers" would be a more accurate title. --Woofboy (talk) 14:15, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

There are two good reasons for not changing the title of this article. First, it was created in September 2007 as a "sub-article" of the main one on the Trinity in accordance with wiki guidelines to keep very detailed materials out of an "overview article" when they began to produce an imbalance in the parent article and to extend its length unduly. The present title reflects this purpose. Secondly, the suggested title is far more wide-ranging and would require a great deal of additional material to cover the ground adequately.Jpacobb (talk) 14:14, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Format clean up

1. The article page uses {{cquote}} for long quotations which goes against the recommended use
2. The references are also floating loose rather than attached to the quotes.
3. There are also links in section titles which goes against recommended linking procedures.

Jpacobb (talk) 22:48, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Nonexisten

FYI 2 Kor 13:14 was deleted from my Bible by my national Bible commission (www.bibeln.se), who claimed it was inauthentic. Rursus dixit. (^mbork³!) 15:40, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

There is a discrepancy in the numbering of the verses at the end of 2 Corinthians. In the Vulgate and catholic translations which follow its numbering the words "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ ... you all" constitute the 13th verse with "All the saints salute you" being tagged on to verse 12. The TR makes "All the saints salute you." verse 13 and what follows verse 14. In many traditional translations, this was followed by a note which varied greatly in detail but in substance said "The end of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians (written from ....)(by ......)". More details of this subscription can be found in Metzger's A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (United Bible Societies: 1971). I can find no evidence for the omission of the words "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ ... you all" from any modern version and suggest that the Bible commission's findings refer to the subscription or alternatively t the omission of the word "amen" which some manuscripts add after "you all" (again, see Metzger). Jpacobb (talk) 17:00, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Inadequate lead section

As it stands the lead section fails to meet the requirements of WP:MOSINTRO: "The lead section should briefly summarize the most important points covered in an article in such a way that it can stand on its own as a concise version of the article." Jpacobb (talk) 14:25, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

I've had a go. --Woofboy (talk) 10:15, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Requested move 31 May 2016

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Not moved. No consensus supporting the move. (closed by a page mover) (non-admin closure). Anarchyte (work | talk) 08:22, 9 June 2016 (UTC)

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Trinitarianism in the Church Fathers → Trinitarianism and the Church Fathers – While I am not opposed to use of the name of the author or category of authors to refer to their works (I have read this kind of language many times in Ehrman), I worry most of our readers would see this title as confusingly referring to the Church Fathers themselves, as though implying they had Trinitarianism somehow inside of them.. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:35, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Question: Why "...and the..."? Chicbyaccident (talk) 21:48, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

@Chicbyaccident: Do you mean why not "and the"? If so, no particular reason except that "among the" sounds slightly more like the title of an encyclopedia article and slightly less like thhat of a book. If I wanted to psychoanalyze myself a bit too much I might speculate that "X and the Ys" was famously used in an area quite close to this one as the title of a very popular but very fringe book, and I was thus turned off of that title at some subconscious level. But the former is the better reason. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:31, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

Yes, that's it. As per here just below. Thanks for correcting me. Chicbyaccident (talk) 09:56, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose. I'm OK with "and" (per Numerology and the Church Fathers), but "among" is an unusual phrasing. StAnselm (talk) 09:32, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

@StAnselm: OK. As outlined (somewhat tongue-in-cheekly) above, I don't really care which, so if you're cool with "and" then so am I. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:18, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

Oppose. The use of "in" is normal academic practice for this type of subject matter and is presumably a contraction of "Trinitarianism in the thought/life/writings of the Church Fathers". "And" suggests to me two more or less equal components: eg "Arius and Athanasius: Two Contrasting Theologies" (a fictitious title!). — Jpacobb (talk) 23:28, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

About the "unitarians"

Two questions: 1) The article (fallaciously) automatically seeks to dismiss the Trinitarian interpretation in the Church Fathers and automatically assumes that these "in fact" were "unitarians". But which one of the hundreds of unitarian sects were they?

2) Why all the pretentious unitarian replies are from Dale Tuggy. The article seems a propaganda to this person. --190.43.26.35 (talk) 10:51, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

I know I’m responding to you three years later, but I totally agree. The article doesn’t delve deep enough into the explicit Trinitarian statements of the ante-Nicene Church Fathers (only presenting what could be considered the more “contentious” passages), and contrarian citations Of Dale Tuggy and others in this article are just bovine. Walter71861 (talk) 03:30, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

I agree. As far as I can tell Tuggy's work is well-researched but in its current form the counter-arguments in this article read almost like a one-man crusade against trinitarianism. If this is actually a heavily debated issue among experts it shouldn't be difficult to find other authors expressing the same views. Going by this entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, that at least appears to be the case, but it also says that according to most literature "from the beginning Christians were implicitly trinitarian; that is, they held views which imply that God is a Trinity, but typically did not realize this or have adequate language to express it. By at least the late 300s, they had gained enough new language and/or concepts to express what they had been committed to all along." That would mean this article is filled with undue weight.

More generally, I think it also suffers from the various implicit and conflicting definitions of unitarianism and trinitarianism being used throughout. Proponents of the unitarian view apparently consider anything that is not exactly the Nicene Creed to be evidence that the writer was nontrinitarian/unitarian, and vice versa. Maybe that's just a reflection of academic debate on the issue, but I feel this issue at least deserves a mention somewhere. Swaggernagger (talk) 20:19, 29 July 2022 (UTC)