Constantinopolis wrote:For the record, I honestly have no idea what stance Tarsonis is actually arguing for, here.
Polytheism is correct, but also monotheism is correct, and Judaism is correct, and of course Christianity is correct, so it's heresy to deny the Holy Trinity, unless you're reading Genesis properly, in which case it's heresy to affirm the Holy Trinity...? Am I getting this right?
No. I'm not denying the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity, I'm countering arguments that Bede is attempting to pass off.
Bede claims that in Genesis 1 when God says "let us" that God had to be talking to Christ and the Spirit, and nobody else, and all other interpretations are post-Christian inventions of Jews. This is simply not true for the reasons I pointed out. The Hebrews who passed this story down, were politheistic. They remained so, in all reality until the late helenistic period, or arguably during thing the Deuteronomistic reforms under Josiah. Monotheism, that is the belief in one single God, came pretty late in the game, and the Jews
never believed in a trinity. This isn't secular Scholarship, it's biblical fact. The condemnations of Israel come from the fact that they are constantly incorporating "foreign Gods" in their worship practices. In the passage of the Genesis 1, YHWH says "Let us" and all the evidence states that there are multiple ways that this passage has been understood, to a pantheon that was discarded late in Jewish development, to the heavenly host we see present in Job 1, to possibly a reference to his Triune self via Christian teaching. If he wants to say that the Jews, in all their iterations are mistaken, and didn't fully grasp the complexity of God until it was revealed to Christians, that's a legitimate argument. But if he wants to say that 'Let Us' was always understood as a reference to a Triune God, and the Jews changed it to counter Christian influence, well that's simply false.
Next he claims, that "Genesis 18 overtly depicts God as Triune."
This is again, simply false and is an extremely forced interpretation that ignores the biblical text itself. The text clearly states, that the three "men" Abram and Sarah witness, are El-Shaddai (God Almighty), and two angels. The Lord, stays with Abraham, while the two angels go on to Sodom, and meet with Lot. The Lord and Abraham haggle over the fate of Sodom and then the Lord too goes on his way, but he never personally goes to Sodom. And then in the most pitiful display of desperation, the most Bede could appeal to was that he thinks its odd the angels took until nightfall to get to Sodom.
There's something to be said for finding evidence to support the trinity in the scripture, but not when you have to create blatantly false assertions to get the text to say what you want to say. Again my argument was not a renunciation of the Holy Trinity, just of Bede's nonsensical assertion.
Now lastly, as for Proverbs 8 and 9, Bede and I have multiple times clashed over this issue. If Bede wants to assert that the Character Wisdom is Christ, that's his prerogative. But I'm not gonna let him declare it uncontestedly, when the scriptural evidence, undermines that assertion. These passages are biblical poetry. If he want's to say that the passages are reflective of Christ, like how Solomon's poem to the Bride is reflective of Christ's love of the Church, that's all well and good. That's pretty much the beauty of poetry. But to claim that the Character Wisdom is a real person as understood by the author, and the Isaelites is not true. Proverbs is wisdom literature, it's meant to convey wisdom, good knowledge to the reader. These poems personify wisdom as a literary character but they're not scripture that refers to an actual physical/spiritual conscious person/deity/Godman named Wisdom.
Again this isn't even what I would call "secular study." It's just simple literary analysis.
But to top off the source of my frustration:
Venerable Bede wrote: Scripture is meant to be read in the Church's context, which is witnessed by what the Saints teach, not your personal reading or what secular teachers say.
I may come close to flaming here, but there's no other way to say it. Bede is an anti-intellectual. He rejects all contrary evidence as false, simply because its contrary evidence. He admittedly dismisses all scholarship, because it's scholarship. His beliefs are true, because he has true beliefs. He's right, because he's right. When any contrary evidence or argument shows up, he doesn't engage in an intellectual debate, he simply shuts down with tautologies and dogmatic statements. Worse he considers this willful ignorance, and anti-intellectualism as virtuous, and is so engrossed in this belief, that he not only professes demonstrably false non-doctrinal ideas (Like all current Jewish doctrine was developed to specifically oppose Christians), he then defends them with the same dogmatic certitude and style. He epitomizes the belief that "All non-orthodox teaching is wrong, and it's wrong because it's not orthodox." That's not a position conducive to debate, which is why I said he shouldn't be on a thread such as this, he should find an echochamber somewhere.