Talk:Subordinationism

Unsigned Comment of Complaint
The messages casting doubt on the credibility of using Christian historical sources of eye witnesses talking about these things in the time that they happened. And explaining the Church views of what heresies are. And asking for secondary sources to critically analyse - or reinterpret and dismiss? - the actual first hand sources. Is dumb! The issue is about truth of faith doctrines of Christianity (the page is relating to a heresy against the Christian doctrine of the trinity). And about what are a heresy in conflict with the faith doctrine. It is the Church who decides what is a heresy, because the faith doctrine we are talking about is the faith doctrines of the Catholic Christian Church founded and given authority by Jesus, to teach and propagate the faith to all the world, and to live out the faith! And those dumb messages to dismiss the credibility of the Christian sources and the page, are saying Christian sources from the time of the heresy are not good enough to tell us this history. And Wikipedia only wants critical non Christian sources (so sources that are in conflict with the Christian sources, and sources that are from outside Christianity).

Is it possible to continue making wikipedia and modernism (the idea that modern and change is always better than older), more Anti Christian and biased in their tyranny of control of information? - Even of information about Christianity which was known only by the Christian sources who were there and experiencing it, and had the authority to know the true doctrine and to correct heresies attempted to be put in place of it!

It is sad Wikipedia is enforced by a mindset of lying to turn people into Anti Christianity and not truth. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.23.72.250 (talk) 13:56, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Subordinationism existed before Arianism
[Please feel free to remove this comment after reading. The article needs to address a Christian doctrine called "The Eternal Subordination of the Son", which is distinct from "Subordinationism", which is denounced as heresy. Unfortunately, I'm not qualified to do it.] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.184.23.23 (talk) 05:02, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

The two sentences at the beginning of the article appear in striking contradiction:

"Subordinationism is a doctrine which holds that Jesus is subordinate to God rather than being fully God. This is also termed Arianism after the priest of Alexandria, Arius."

and

"The term "Arianism," though extremely common, is not an appropriate term for the subordinationist theology, because it existed prior to the time of Arius."

Miguel de Servet 15:07, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

This whole article is incredibly one-sided and doesn't accurately represent the issues. Its author or authors were clearly evangelical feminists. It needs radical revision to be balanced.

Phil Gons 8:51 PM PST, 15 January 2008

An article that ends by placing the NWT alongside the ASV, RSV, NRSV, NASB, ESV seems to invite suspicion.--J.A. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.165.31.35 (talk) 03:28, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Erased wrong information regarding Roman Catholicism - Athanasian Creed wrongly tagged as dropped
Quoting a third party, no bias source:

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/40585/Athanasian-Creed

Athanasian Creed is an authoritative text on the Trinity. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.1.58.30 (talk) 03:47, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

And also from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

192 Through the centuries many professions or symbols of faith have been articulated in response to the needs of the different eras: the creeds of the different apostolic and ancient Churches,8 e.g., the Quicumque, also called the Athanasian Creed;9 the professions of faith of certain Councils, such as Toledo, Lateran, Lyons, Trent;10 or the symbols of certain popes, e.g., the Fides Damasi11 or the Credo of the People of God of Paul VI.12

193 None of the creeds from the different stages in the Church's life can be considered superseded or irrelevant. They help us today to attain and deepen the faith of all times by means of the different summaries made of it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.1.58.30 (talk) 03:53, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

What's with the Greek Orthodox section?
The phrase: "Modern theologians of the eastern tradition mostly disagree as to whether their belief in a unique "monarchy of the Father" can fully classify them as Subordinationist." seems imply a bias, whether or not it was intentional. I have to wonder if it is solely based off the someone's own personal interpretation of the quotes he/she presented. Whoever wrote that section took two quotes (from unknown author's) and tried to make them contradict each other on a theological level. The Orthodox would uniformly agree that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father THROUGH the the Son, but not from the Father and FROM the Son. The only contradiction is what the authors of the quotes think Roman Catholics mean by saying "from the the Son." This is not a theological disagreement within Eastern Orthodoxy, it is merely a disagreement of Orthodox interpretation of Roman Catholic theology.

As a side note, this whole section is devoted to the Philioque, which I don't think fully represents or even says much on the Orthodox view of Subordinationism. When I get the time I might edit this myself. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.153.129.156 (talk) 23:12, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Lots of POV issues here
This article seems to be have been written from some extra-ecclesial viewpoint which seems to be getting in the way of assessing how the various churches relate to the issue. It's not helped all by a decided lack of citations for a lot of very controversial statements. For example, the citation from the Catholic Catechism does not justify the claim of relational subordination: I would guess that virtually any Catholic theologian would sign up for the states of the Athanasian Creed, even assuning that it is not asserted dogmatically. It's not clear that the rejection of that creed by the Methodists matters here. The upshot is that it seems to me that very little of this article is trustworthy. Mangoe (talk) 17:10, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Added heading
I have a feeling this article was written by a biased anti-Trinitarian. Just because the ante-Nicene Fathers viewed the Son and Holy Spirit as subject to the Father's will does not mean they believed that the Son and Spirit were lesser in being or essence than the Father. None of the Patristic quotes provided demonstrate that these Fathers denied the doctrine of the Trinity as propounded and elaborated upon at the councils of Nicaea (325 A.D.) and Constantinople (381 A.D.). In fact, I could provide quotes from many of the ante-Nicene Fathers to prove that they did believe in the equality of the three persons of the Trinity. November 4, 2012

I get the impression that this was written from a biased pro-trinitarian POV. For example "... the mid 4th century, when the Arian controversy was finally settled, after many decades of debates, with the formulation of the doctrine of Trinity." First, the controversy was continuing, and was cut short by Imperial interference in the late 4th century. Second, trinitarianism was an ongoing development, some elements earlier, and some later, although the view of the Spirit as a distinct person was on the rise in the 4th century. Third, naming the controversy after one participant often implies taking an opposite side. 173.66.211.129 (talk) 20:31, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

If you wanted a direct refutation of any non unipersonal definition of God, then this is about as definitive as it gets. I'd add this quote from Chapter IX in Book 3 of "On the Detection and Overthrow of the So-Called Gnosis" by Irenaeus

"This, therefore, having been clearly demonstrated here (and it shall yet be so still more clearly), that neither the prophets, nor the apostles, nor the Lord Christ in His own person, did acknowledge any other Lord or God, but the God and Lord supreme: the prophets and the apostles confessing the Father and the Son; but naming no other as God, and confessing no other as Lord: and the Lord Himself handing down to His disciples, that He, the Father, is the only God and Lord, who alone is God and ruler of all;" --2001:4898:80E8:3:3876:57B2:74ED:9A61 (talk) 01:04, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

"Pre-Nicene" Portion Desperately Needs Alteration
The portion of the article titled "Pre-Nicene", while not unnecessary, is incredibly misleading. While it's certainly appropriate to document statements from the Pre-Nicene figures as being interpreted as Subordinationism, it's simply dishonest to present the article in a way that allows the reader to believe this is what they actually taught. I've been studying the Pre-Nicene figure's works for the last year and a half, and have personally read all of the available work up to Tertullian's era. Most of these writers (barring the epistle to Barnabas, and perhaps Pope Dionysius whom I have yet to read) explicitly say that Jesus was God, and those who aren't explicit are glaringly implicit. Without proper context, this portion of the article is essentially trash. I appreciate that it can be debated whether or not these men were either Trinitarian or Monarchist, but attributing Subordinationism to them is more than a little absurd. If we need a section on interpretation, that's fine; but a very stern disclaimer which respects the historical facts should definitely be made.

Worse yet, all of these quotes aren't even purely Subordinationist (as in, none of them contain an explicit or even practically implicit statement that Jesus or the Holy Spirit were not God), and a few of them aren't even Subordinationist in even a loose sense. Examples of the latter include: the quotes from Polycarp, To Diognetus, Shepherd of Hermas, Irenaeus, along with the second citation of Tertullian's work. As a matter of fact, the quote from To Diognetus literally says Jesus was sent as God. "As a king sends a son who is also a king, so he sent him; as God he sent him". That, and anyone who knows practically anything about Tertullian, the first Latin writer to use the term Trinity, will see just how obvious the propaganda on this page is.

Since this page seems particularly low in traffic I'm going to at least take the initiative to delete the statements that can't even loosely be considered Subordinationist, but for the sake of fairness I'll keep the rest. I'm totally open to alternative points of view, but revisionist history like this is purely unacceptable. If anyone has any objection to my action worth raising, please don't hesitate to make a case. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Christian Pickhardt (talk • contribs) 21:50, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

"Pre-Nicene" Portion was maliciously defaced
Christian Pickhard claimed to delete statements which can't even loosely be considered subordinationist, and then proceeded to delete the following quote from Irenaeus.

"...the Father himself is alone called God...the Scriptures acknowledge him alone as God; and yet again...the Lord confesses him alone as his own Father, and knows no other." " . . this is sure and steadfast, that no other God or Lord was announced by the Spirit, except him who, as God, rules over all, together with his Word, and those who receive the spirit of adoption, that is, those who believe in the one and true God, and in Jesus Christ the Son of God; and likewise that the apostles did of themselves term no one else God, or name no other as Lord; and, what is much more important, since it is true that our Lord acted likewise, who did also command us to confess no one as Father, except he who is in the heavens, who is the one God and the one Father." Irenaeus also refers to John "...proclaiming one God, the Almighty, and one Jesus Christ, the only-begotten, by whom all things were made." Also he taught that Jesus was inferior to the Father in divine knowledge

That's not only loosely considered subordinationism, that's about as much of a confirmation of it as you could possibly ask for. This is intellectually dishonest to delete at best, and intentional censorship of clearly relevant information at worst. I've reverted part of this edit, and added to Irenaeus's portion.

Substantial rewrite
I am planning to undertake a substantial rewrite of this article, from scratch, because it a confusing hotch-potch at present. Eagleswings (talk) 07:59, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

This Article claims Constans supported the Arians in direct contradiction to Constans own page.
And everything I've read on the subject of Constans I.--JaredMithrandir (talk) 09:56, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

Large amount of quotes deleted on the 24 of Jan of this year
I would like to know why they were all deleted beyond this arbitrary and unspecific reason of "original research" that gave.Considering how much was deleted a little more in the "reason for" blurb would be appreciated. 2A02:8071:22CA:F500:C9E0:846C:E71F:65E0 (talk) 07:35, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
 * See No original research. Editor2020 (talk) 01:47, 10 February 2022 (UTC)