No*s
Captain Obvious
chris9178 said:To put it simply:
I can believe in the Trinity, but I don't believe that they are all on the same level. I believe the Father is greater than the Son. I don't know where the Holy Spirit lies. Now is this contradictory? Possibly. Still thinking about that. But I am convinced that the Father is greater.
Now is this heretical? No. I still believe Christ is God, and that the Father is God. It's Theology. It's my way of explaining what I don't think is explained adequately by other Theology - namely the theology behind the traditional view of the trinity, and isn't very much explained in the scripture.
Does it take three seperate entities for this to be true? Well, it seems like it, but I suppose that it doesn't necessarily need to be so. That's where it gets iffy.
The problem here is that you are asserting something different than what the Trinity teaches. When you deny the equality, that they are the same God with one nature, you deny the Trinity. The word doesn't expand that far.
What constitutes heresy? I don't like to use this word often. "Heresy" is from a Greek word with a similar meaning. So, anything that deviated from that which was received in the Early Church was a heresy, anything that broke away was in schism, and this definition continued. So, we have a received definition of the Trinity, and when one breaks off from it, one goes into what the rest of Christianity would frown on quite heavily.
You cannot claim to accept the Trinity, and at the same time redefine it into something else. The technical classification for the belief you outlined is Subordinationism. I'm trying to think of a resonse, though.