Paidion wrote:Who are "they"? Do you mean those who hold to a different triadology than you?
Of course, yes.
Dizerner, I think you hold to classic Trinitarianism. You believe that God consists of three three individual conscious entitities.
Yes I do.
As best I can understand their position, they think that God exists as a single, conscious entity who expresses in three forms or modes: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. A major difficulty I see in this position, is that when Jesus prayed to His Father, He must have been talking to Himself! This position is commonly known as "modalism"
My argument against modalism would be to establish that a consciousness identity possesses the qualities of will, mind and emotion separate from other personalities, than show Scriptures that differentiate between the Godhead (I went into this in great detail on the Trinity thread).
The classic Trinitarian belief is that God exists as three Persons, that is as three individual conscious entitities. Yet in classic Trinitarian belief, these three comprise one compound God, since all three are of the same divine essence.
This is correct and I believe Scriptural.
What seems odd to me if the classic Trinitarian belief were true, is that most of the uses of the word "God" in the New Testament refer to the Father alone, and NONE of them refer to a Trinity.
How can you possibly substantiate the claim "NONE of them refer to a Trinity." You'd have to disprove every single use of the NT word God as in any way applying to the Holy Spirit or Christ. That, I think, you cannot possibly do. When Scripture says "worship the Lord your God," I believe that term "God" refers to the Trinity. Christ indeed described the very heart of the definition of worship and applied it directly to himself: "If anyone loves his family, friends or even his own life more than me, he's not worthy of me" as well as claiming to be "the Life," which alone applies to divinity. We could go on about Christ's claims, but it would take too long.
Now can you prove that the term God may in some instances only apply to the Father? Of course you can. But since all three are God under our definition, the term God could apply to one specifically or all three corporately, with no violence done to the doctrine. I believe there are instances when God refers only to Christ ("your throne O God") or refers only to the Spirit (Acts 5:3-4). However, as I recently said, since the Father alone fulfills the role of the office of God (the Spirit and the Son are seen to be subject voluntarily to him), most terms will be referencing him naturally, and that's no contradiction.
The apostle Paul wrote:For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”—yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.(1 Cor 8: 5,6)
So Paul clearly distinguished between the "one God, the Father" and the "one Lord, Jesus Christ." The one God, the Father created all things, and He did so THROUGH the one Lord, Jesus Christ.
I actually rather see this as a proof of Christ's divinity, since it's using a Hebraism called synonymous parallelism, where the exact same idea is expressed in two different ways. You can see examples of this:
“A foolish son brings grief to his father
and bitterness to the one who bore him.”
“But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities.”
Notice in 1 Corinthians 8, Paul is contrasting the concept of many versus the concept of
one. Paul is not contrasting many versus two, here. Paul says "for us there is
but one" then later "and
one."
one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him
one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him.
Notice again the remarkable parallel. "From whom" with "by whom" and "for Him" and "through Him." These are divine titles and functions, with slightly different roles. Two Persons. One God. Two Roles.
And if you disagree with this conclusion, I know that you know the Father is called "Lord" many times. Would you then stick to your own logic guns, and insist that means that Christ is the
one Lord and thus the Father cannot ever be? I think you'd bail on your own argument's logic at that point, so you certainly can't apply it only when it fits what you want the text to say.
And when they heard this, they lifted their voices to God with one accord and said, "O Lord, it is Thou who didst make the heaven and the earth and the sea, and all that is in them, who by the Holy Spirit, through the mouth of our father David Thy servant, didst say, 'Why did the Gentiles rage, And the peoples devise futile things? 'The kings of the earth took their stand, And the rulers were gathered together Against the Lord, and against His Christ.' (Act 4:24-26 NAS)
But for us there's only
one Lord, right?
