spiritual ethnography note. i have noticed, many times, that having a premise of “larger christendom is corrupted, we’re going to return to the scripture and the origins to the maximum possible extent” often comes with, at the tail ends of the bell curve, abandoning the trinity.
of course there are people are groups that do this that do not abandon the trinity. obviously. but i have seen many times that on the tail end of the distribution in there, becoming some type of non trinitarian is a motif that comes up over and over, in isolated separate groups.
im totally open to the possibility that there is even nothing inherently pathological in that premise, maybe. you could be fair and say any spiritual vector taken to an extreme produces certain results. of course.
what i think after seeing it many times is that certain elements of such groups (trying really hard to phrase this neutrally) look at what they see as corrupted elements in other churches, see that those things are not scriptural, and want to only do what is explicitly scriptural
so inevitably in such an environment you get someone or a subgroup who comes to the conclusion that, just like infant baptism and many other things, “the trinity” just isnt in there (not saying i think this), and they take on some form of “one-ness” theism or change Christs role
i think it actually does stand to reason, [in that worldview], that if youre 100% saying, “tradition” isnt what we want, we just want scripture, that inevitably as you peel back those layers, the ecumenical councils (which clarified a lot of doctrine) are technically “tradition”
as i was going deeper into all this i did wonder if that type of protestant (no tradition just the text) would appeal to ecumenical councils when defending certain things, as imo that would start to unravel their worldview, but they dont, in my experience. [...]
sounds like im starting from the premise that theyre wrong, which im not, i enjoy poking thru everything in this way. anyway, their normal “case” as far as ive seen is that the trinity actually is in scripture, so they dont need to appeal to any tradition. well, its consistent.
if true, interesting, because another class of fringe that pops up along the way every now and then is people reasoning, “well, we dont need tradition, if we have the Holy Spirit, do we even need scripture?” but everyone is like, woah buddy, way too far, and it doesnt take off.
https://twitter.com/stellamarisopn/status/1389557475385479171
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
