Relda.
Your wrote; “The Trinity, for example, is hardly supported by anything more than hypothesis and doubtful logic. From a purely scriptural view, greater minds than mine with accompanying Christian belief (e.g. Isaac Newton) reach this supposition. Trinitarian logic declares, If Jesus is (literally) God, and that if we will become just like him and bear his image when we are raised (literally) from the dead, then we will also (literally) be "God" - clearly a fallacious concept to the dramatis personae of the New Testament, as previously mentioned.”
I was surprised at this since you have been coming across as someone who is theologically educated. To say that the doctrine of the Trinity has so little support is to denigrate the key concept of Christianity. The Trinity is the single concept that functions as an interpretive framework for the whole of Christian theology, without it we have paganism. The whole of the NT screams Trinitarianism, it is much more than a hypothesis resting on doubtful logic.
Your reference to Newton is unfortunate. His antitrinitarianism came from a rationalized and superficial reading of Scripture and was supported by an unchristian understanding of God as an agent in the universe responsible for the force of Gravity. Under his scheme the Son and the Spirit were subordinate divine beings. The Son became the exemplar of godly living and this ushered in a new kind of Pelagianism. Because Jesus was not God he could not die for the sins of the whole world, thus abolishing any idea of atonement.
This issue is especially close for me since Newton’s antitrinitarianism is the subject of my doctoral thesis.
There is also a strain in theology that does say that man is deified in Christ, that by him we become gods. I would have to do some research to find the source of this idea but it is certainly present and respected.

Peter

Sells
"The Trinity is the single concept that functions as an interpretive framework for the whole of Christian theology, without it we have paganism."

It is true that the Trinity works as an interpretive framework as you say. It is not, however, exclusive and you are quite wrong to dismiss non-Trinitarians as pagan. That is just plain offensive!
Liberalism may have its faults but in making an idol of a human doctrine you show yourself to be no more 'perfect' than any liberal.

The formulation of the doctrine of Trinity was a masterpiece of political compromise. Everyone was able to agree on the words while maintaining their own personal opinions as to what the words actually meant, let alone consideration all those Christians who were excluded from the discussion. Today, what Anglicans dismiss as heresy, Unitarians may hold as Gospel and both can be 'right'.

Sells obviously has a very narrow definition of Christian if it is limited to those who conform to his Anglo-Catholic form of doctrine. Personally, Im not convinced that Jesus was a fan of rigid doctrinal formulations. The arrogance of the Anglican Church with its privilege and propensity to judge rather than discern is hardly consistent with the Jesus of John 8:1-11.

In Constantinian Rome diversity was perceived as problem. Today we are able to embrace it as part of the richness of human experience and believe in a God who is big enough to encompass it all.

"There is also a strain in theology that does say that man is deified in Christ, that by him we become gods." -Sells

Peter,

FYI:

"Deus deum te vult facere, non natura sed... adoptione. ... Sic totus homo deificatus", i.e, "Not by nature but by adoption … the whole man is deified." St Augustine, Serm. 166, 4

"…you may become partakers of the divine nature" 2 Peter 1:4

“…no term less than ‘deification’ is adequate to describe the condition of the human being who has been taken by grace into the supernatural realm.” Mascall, 1958

(1) These theists seem to saying that the "deification" of Man is the promotion of Man from the natural to the divine realm. Man does actually become God. Man partakes of God's realm.

The division between the realms is significant for theists. As I have posted before, this division is why the Vatican scientists would not look through Galileo's telescope, as space was held literally to be the heavens.

(2) The Trinitarian propisition doesn’t sit well with the OT godhead and is contrary to Jewish monotheism.

Oliver

Sells wrote:

"The Trinity is the single concept that functions as an interpretive framework for the whole of Christian theology, without it we have paganism."

Dear Sells,

Do you really see Jews and Muslims as pagans

Sells,

David f is correct, Jews and Muslims are not pagans. In Roman times, persons, whom performed the act of a cult, but did not believe it, were pagani, civilians whom did not believe. Jews and Muslims believe in their rites, as might a Catholic Christian in substantiation. On this call, presumably you are a Pagan. But the pope is not.

Hollywood aside, Romans didn't require Christians to "believe", but only to act out their prayers for the safety of the Emperor. The deed sufficed. The Romans, however, were more likely, to link not acting the rite, whihin the context of "religio," meaning the the "observance of Roman ceremonies". Acta Cypriani I.I. in Fox 1986
Based on the Roman measure Christianity was not a religion, before Constantine.

If civilian Jesus acted as an orthodox Jew, while not believing in Judaic Law, say, over the Sabbath, he would have been a pagan. (Although, the word didn't exist in the first century)

Sells,
Although raised within Christian Orthodoxy, with certain Lutheran flavour, I’ve grown to see religion more an expression of reality through the symbolic. Hence, to some degree at least, I’ve a theological understanding - as you suggest. I don’t, however, tie myself exclusively to its genre. The creative works of Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr gave me some fascination and served as a springboard to explore my roots beyond the ‘outer’. Carl Jung (interestingly, another of Lutheran extraction) ‘seduced’ my thinking further.

The Trinity doctrine served to unify an ancient and medieval institution. Today, despite the fact of their orthodox confession of the Trinity, Christians are, in their practical life, almost mere 'monotheists'. The diversity of spirit emanating from the simple Nazarene, a Jew, created a wide diversity beyond mere dogma – this is certainly a qualified freedom.

Pufendorf's Of the Nature and Qualification of Religion (1687) claimed that the genius of the Christian religion was nonviolence ( not that I’d classify Jesus merely a pacifist, as david f would note), people's thoughts were not punishable, and that the civil authorities should control religion (i.e. a separation of Church and State where religion cannot ‘rule’).

Perhaps I identify a little with Pierre Bayle (1647–1706) - a Huguenot and refugee in the Netherlands. He was a self-pronounced Protestant and also a skeptic in theological matters. He developed the most sophisticated and most tolerant theory of the century. Bayle said, “In matters of religion it is very easy to deceive a man, and very hard to undeceive him..” Also, "It is only common prejudice that induces us to believe that atheism is a fearful state" - a rather counter intuitive statement for a medieval Christian, but Enlightenment thinker.