Trinity.

[jriccitelli]

JR, I am confused here, Is a "person" an "individual"? If so, are there not three individuals in the God-head? (Brenden)

They have always believed in God as a single, divine Individual, beside which there is no other (Paidion)
I quoted Paidion’s quote, which used the term individual. It was not my intention to use the term individual. So no, I don’t believe there is any reason to think Jesus can be divided or separated from the Father. Rather, it is true that God cannot be divided, and God is thus an individual. But some people are reading mans nature (as in a person) into the nature of what God is (and into individual rather than the meaning: indivisible). This is not reasonable or logical: God is not a man, God is God.

This really is the big rub, isn't it? (Brenden)

Sure it is, for you. God is not divided. God is One, and Jesus and the Father are actually One. If you believe Jesus and the Father are actually One, then Jesus is God.

And the trinity is not a "way" to explain how there can still be "one God". You could do that with a Binatarian concept’ (Brenden)

True, the Trinity explains the Trinity, and Binatarian explains Bi-unity. I said somewhere to you in a thread I was happy you could embrace believing a Binatarian view of God. I try to never use the word trinity except when it must be used. For me it confuses the issue, because the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit is really a separate issue. If One can see that Jesus and God are One, then for the same reason, the verses where the Spirit is 'spoken of' and 'speaks' also can be accounted for with the same reasoning, to be a person within and one with God.

Like I said, if it were not for the pronouns, conversations between them, and Jesus speaking of the Father as a separate person, if it were not for that I would reason that Jesus was simply God incarnate and nothing more. And why not? God had walked and spoke with Adam, and Enoch. God had appeared in a form to Abraham and Moses. There are appearances of one like the Son of man to Daniel, and Ezekiel and others see God in forms that defy definitions. So why can’t God indwell something if He so chooses? Scripture certainly allows for this. But we are confronted with the problem of Jesus talking to The Father. So it is not so simple, they are One, as Jesus says. We either believe Him or we don't, everything else is excusing this blasphemy. Calling yourself equal with God is ultimate blasphemy, and un-biblical, yet Jesus argues for His relationship with the Father and never excuses this behavior, other than continuing to incriminate Himself further and further. He is a Jew, under the Law, claiming Prophet status, yet speaking the unthinkable. That is unless, could it be, that He is telling the truth? Are Jesus and the Father really One?

Scripture, the Law, Judaism, have no allowance for anything other than worship and the existence of One and Only One God, who alone made the heavens and Earth and rules over all His works, forever:
‘All nations whom You have made shall come and worship before You, O Lord, And they shall glorify Your name. 10 For You are great and do wondrous deeds; You alone are God' (Psalm 86:10)

Unless Jesus truly is this same Lord, then he is not Lord.
Be a Binatarian, I am too, although I can ‘also’ be a believer that the Holy Spirit is God and that He speaks (Trinitarian). The Holy Spirit only speaks of the others, so if you want to believe Jesus is God, and yet consider the Holy Spirit another or whatever, that is fine. There are only a few verses that speak of The Spirit ‘being a person’ who can speak of and for God, yet for all we know The Spirit is God. So those verses, although completely intertwined, may be a different topic from those concerning Jesus Divinity.

[Homer]

I had read somewhere that the word "person" in regard to a trinity of persons did not mean the same thing in early church history as it does today. And yesterday I came across another statement regarding this:

This God is never called a person. The word person was never applied to God in the Middle ages. The reason for this is that the three members of the trinity were called personae (faces or countenances): The Father is persona, the Son is persona, and the Spirit is persona. Persona here means a special characteristic of the divine ground, expressing itself in an independent hypostasis.

"Thus, we can say that it was the nineteenth century which made God into a person, with the result that the greatness of the classical idea of God was destroyed by this way of speaking... but to speak of God as a person would have been heretical for the Middle Ages; it would have been to them a Unitarian heresy, because it would have conflicted with the statement that God has three personae, three expressions of his being. (Tillich, Paul, A History of Christian Thought, p. 190)

Given that God is spirit, invisible, omnipresent, perhaps the "Angel of the Lord" in the Old Testament and Son of God in the New Testament is the way in which this one God manifests himself locally.

[jriccitelli]

I said earlier that explaining what spirit is, and what it consists of, is almost impossible (Me)

I also said somewhere else how can we understand this if it is hard to understand how God can indwell our heart and mind, and also reach throughout the whole Universe with His Spirit? How can God know what is going on in all places at once, and how does God know our thoughts? How can the body of Christ be made of many people? How can a man and woman be one? I posted this earlier;

Any of the three can speak of themselves, and anyone of them can speak as God Himself. Or ‘they’ can 'all' speak as One. Who says they cannot? Apparently, since scripture affirms it, a person can live in another person and even speak thru ‘another person'. Just as the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit can indwell us, live in us, and can speak thru us. Persons are invisible and spirit, so we have to let God define what a person can and cannot be. We can't necessarily know what God as a 'person' can or cannot be, other than what He has told us.

Yet all of this is true, we believe it not because we understand it, but that it is possible and it is agreeable that God came to us in the form of a servant as He foretold, for God this is all possible because He is God and God is Spirit.

‘All we have to go on are figures of speech, analogies, metaphors, etc. Jesus is said to be at God's right hand. What does that mean? Does God who is invisible and omni-present have a hand? (Homer)

True, and not to confuse the figures of speech, analogies, metaphors, etc. with the definitive statements. And there are plenty of definitive statements. As an electrician you and I know we can figure out the unknown from the knowns (as in most arithmetic), as in using the triangle formula: if the Voltage and resistance are known, we can establish the current.

Scripture gives us the knowns:
‘There is Only One God’
‘There is no other God’
‘God has no equal’
‘All others who assume this are false’
‘Jesus claims equality with The Father and God’
‘Scripture affirms Jesus is telling the truth’
There can only be one answer that is correct.

Even the Son did not come in Glory, being the Son of God, he came as a poor carpenter, and obviously this was for a reason. God said to Abraham (Gen 22:1) and Israel (Ex 20:20) I have come to test you. He tested Adam and Eve, and Job, and many others. Did they believe, did they hold to the things He formally told them? Did they know the WHO I AM when He spoke? Do you not know me, Jesus asks the Disciples. It is a not much different than the show where the CEO of the company goes undercover to visit and check on his employees, only Jesus is testing their obedience to scripture, His Word, and to their relationship with the true God. If they ‘truly’ knew God and believed God, they would recognize Him: ‘Jesus said to him, "Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, 'Show us the Father '? (John 14:10)

Maybe it is a test of faith? After all, a faith and knowledge that can't stand the test, is neither faith or knowledge.

[TheEditor]

Hi JR,

You begin nobly enough by agreeing in spirit with my assersion that language is insufficeint to convey the dynamic of who and what God the Father is, especially as it relates to His relationship to His Son and Spirit. We know this precisely because we know that "Son" is a word that in human terms would require a man and a woman in sexual union to accomplish. We do not take this to be the case. The Socinians do; they believe God put Jesus life force into Mary and it was then that the Son was "begotten" in both the literal and metaphoric senses.

However, as is inevitable with this doctrine, all discussion degenerates into dogmatism:

Scripture gives us the knowns:
‘There is Only One God’
‘There is no other God’
‘God has no equal’
‘All others who assume this are false’
‘Jesus claims equality with The Father and God’
‘Scripture affirms Jesus is telling the truth’
There can only be one answer that is correct.

Are you so certain that the answer you have, which can only be conveyed through a fault-ridden medium known as "language", is the only way to understand it? I contend that the "truth" of the matter would require the "tongues of angels" for us to comprehend. Therefore, off by an inch off by a mile.

Do you not know me, Jesus asks the Disciples. It is a not much different than the show where the CEO of the company goes undercover to visit and check on his employees, only Jesus is testing their obedience to scripture, His Word, and to their relationship with the true God. If they ‘truly’ knew God and believed God, they would recognize Him: ‘Jesus said to him, "Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, 'Show us the Father '? (John 14:10)

Curiously, though this is a favorite verse of trinitarians, Jesus did not respond to the request "Show us God." He responded to the request "Show us the Father". This would prove Modalism far more than trinitarianism. So when Jesus gave the answer he did, he was affirming what the writer of Hebrews would pen decades later, that Jesus is "the reflection of [his] glory and the exact representation of his very being." (Hebrews 1:3).

It would seem to me that if this doctrine were central to one bearing fruit and being in a proper standing towards God, that it would have been stated precisely this way by Jesus himself; or at the very least by the Apostles, who convened it seems over matters that to our minds are of less importance. Why didn't Paul say, or at least identify this teaching more clearly when he wrote, "there is actually to us one God the Father, out of whom all things are, and we for him; and there is one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things are, and we through him." ? (1 Corinthians 8:6) It would seem to me at least that Paul should have said rather, "To us there is one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father; and in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified." Or at least something like this?

No, instead, we are left to dope out this all important teaching using our finite minds all the while being fed a stream of language in the Scriptures that would, with the exception of a very few verses, lead the average person reading them to a default position of Socinianism. It doesn't make a shred of sense to me for a truth like this to be so obfuscated. The Nicene Creed is at least clear (though bizarre).

But of course, the "ace in the hole" as it were is always this:

Maybe it is a test of faith? After all, a faith and knowledge that can't stand the test, is neither faith or knowledge.

Heard that before. About alot of things.

Regards, Brenden.

[jriccitelli]

Adam was given one specific command, and he failed.
I think the point was to believe God when God gave His Word, and God says we can believe His Word stands forever:

'Remember his covenant forever, the word that he commanded, for a thousand generations' '... and You, O LORD, became their God. 23 "Now, O LORD, let the word that You have spoken concerning Your servant and concerning his house be established forever, and do as You have spoken. 24 "Let Your name be established and magnified forever, saying, 'The LORD of hosts is the God of Israel' (1 Chron 16:15, 17:23) The Psalmist says: The sum of Your word is truth, And every one of Your righteous ordinances is everlasting' and 'the word of God Forever, O LORD, Your word is settled in heaven' 'Your word, LORD, is eternal; it stands firm in the heavens' 'Long ago I learned from your statutes that you established them to last forever' Isaiah says: 'The grass withers, the flower fades, But the word of our God stands forever' (Isaiah 40) And in the dead sea scrolls the verse in Isaiah reads exactly the same.

Maybe you have trouble with the other doctrines, but don't you believe:

‘There is Only One God’ ?
‘There is no other God’ ?
‘God has no equal’ ?

Speaking of Isaiah 40,
Behold, the Lord GOD will come with might, With His arm ruling for Him. Behold, His reward is with Him. And His recompense before Him.11 Like a shepherd He will tend His flock, In His arm He will gather the lambs. And carry them in His bosom; He will gently lead the nursing ewes. 12 Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, And marked off the heavens by the span, And calculated the dust of the earth by the measure, And weighed the mountains in a balance And the hills in a pair of scales? 13 Who has directed the Spirit of the LORD, Or as His counselor has informed Him? 14 With whom did He consult and who gave Him understanding? And who taught Him in the path of justice and taught Him knowledge and informed Him of the way of understanding? 15 Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, And are regarded as a speck of dust on the scales; Behold, He lifts up the islands like fine dust. 16 Even Lebanon is not enough to burn, Nor its beasts enough for a burnt offering. 17 All the nations are as nothing before Him, They are regarded by Him as less than nothing and meaningless. 18 To whom then will you liken God? Or what likeness will you compare with Him?

‘Do you not know? Have you not heard? Has it not been declared to you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? 22 It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain And spreads them out like a tent to dwell in. 23 He it is who reduces rulers to nothing, Who makes the judges of the earth meaningless. Scarcely have they been planted, Scarcely have they been sown, Scarcely has their stock taken root in the earth, But He merely blows on them, and they wither, And the storm carries them away like stubble. 25 "To whom then will you liken Me That I would be his equal?" says the Holy One’ (Isaiah 40)

Who?

[dizerner]

No, instead, we are left to dope out this all important teaching using our finite minds all the while being fed a stream of language in the Scriptures that would, with the exception of a very few verses, lead the average person reading them to a default position of Socinianism.

Kind of a charged statement; I know we are all tempted to say "what the average person would read," not to say that's even necessarily a good thing , as you can study things at different levels, but I get your drift. To say that, take default person, read default Bible, come up with default position of Socinianism, well, color me a little skeptical. I will say I've been seriously meditating on some form of Monophysitism, as perhaps fitting the Biblical data better. I tend to get the feeling Christ's nature was fundamentally changed in incarnation, and stayed fundamentally changed thenceforth (you are my son (already), then this day I beget you). I say this partly because people close others off to some arguments simply by virtue of the arguer seeming to want more to preach than to understand. I don't want to come off "preachy" but as a guy who looks at the text and makes a fair point, and I hope I made a few.

[TheEditor]

JR and Dizerner,

JR wrote:

Maybe you have trouble with the other doctrines, but don't you believe:

‘There is Only One God’ ?
‘There is no other God’ ?
‘God has no equal’ ?

Yes to all three. The problem that I see JR is that you are using verses that have nothing to do with how God has arranged things so as to reconcile humanity to Himself, but are using passages in which God is positioning Himself as opposed to false idols. "Kiss the Son lest God be angry". This is His arrangement. I am not going to use the old "semantics shuffle" to buttonhole God into not sharing His glory with the Son. Besides this, you probably already know that the Targums render the "glory" in those Isaiah passages as "the people". God would not give His "people" to another, or, similarly, God would not share His glory as revealed to Israel with another people that worshipped idols. God already has given or shared His "glory" with another and further:

"Also, I have given them the glory that you have given me, in order that they may be one just as we are one. I in union with them and you in union with me, in order that they may be perfected into one, that the world may have the knowledge that you sent me forth and that you loved them just as you loved me." (John 17:22-23)

"And all of us, while we with unveiled faces reflect like mirrors the glory of the Lord are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, exactly as done by the Lord [the] Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:18)

"For I could wish that I myself were separated as the cursed one from the Christ in behalf of my brothers, my relatives according to the flesh, who, as such, are Israelites, to whom belong the adoption as sons and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the Law and the sacred service and the promises." (Romans 9:3-4)

You are wresting the verses from their contexts and using them as legalistic "gotcha" verses that tells the Father that He cannot share His glory with another.


Dizerner wrote,

TheEditor wrote:No, instead, we are left to dope out this all important teaching using our finite minds all the while being fed a stream of language in the Scriptures that would, with the exception of a very few verses, lead the average person reading them to a default position of Socinianism.

Kind of a charged statement; I know we are all tempted to say "what the average person would read," not to say that's even necessarily a good thing , as you can study things at different levels, but I get your drift. To say that, take default person, read default Bible, come up with default position of Socinianism, well, color me a little skeptical.

Hi Dizerner,

It was meant to be a charged statement. I figure that in the heirarchy of Christology, Socinianism probably bugs trinitarians more than Arianism. I am not Socinian, but I can see how some people are. In fact, were it not for the first chapter of John's Gospel, I would say that Arianism would be somewhat of a slam-dunk, but I don't want to go that route in this reply.

My point in using "default position" is borrowing a little from Steve's statement on Arminianism, that it is the "default" reading of Scripture--what one would probably arrive at if it weren't for Calvinists pointing their fingers at certain verses and sacrificing all else to those passages.

Over and over again our minds are exposed in Scripture to the concept of Father/Son relationship. We read of "God" doing thus and so for "the Son"; eg. The Son calls the Father the "only true God" and he says that this "only true God" sent the Son forth. The Scriptrures tell us that the one sending is greater than the one being sent. I could mound up Scripture after Scripture after Scripture that gives one the distinct impression that Jesus is not only a different divine person from the Father, but is in fact a servant of the Father, subordinate to the Father and views the Father as his own God. What would the normal reasoning person walk away with if it weren't for trinitarians pointing at a few verses and then sacrificing all else to those verses? In all likelihood they would never see trinitarianism on it's own merits.

As a JW I was taught that the trinity was a "God-dishonoring doctrine". When I left them, and sought out a few other non-trinitarian groups, they also tended to think that the trinity was a "God-dishonoring doctrine". When I checked out Evangelical Churches I was told that my (at that time) loosely-held Arian views were a "God-dishonoring doctrine". So, what's a boy to do? Well, I thought to myself, "What is so "God-dishonoring" about either proposition?"

If someone held to a correct view of my personal physical attributes, but had an entirely skewed notion of my personality, would I say that they "knew me"? On the other hand, if they knew nothing of my physical nature, thought that I had a peg-leg and a German accent, but had all the right thinking on who I was as a person, my personality, my character traits, then I dare say that person "knows me" far more then the one that had a photo, but knew nothing of my character.

So, to my way of thinking is Jesus, or the Father more likely to say "I never knew you" to; the fellow that believed God predestined certain men to fry for eternity; who is unforgiving in his dealing with with his fellow man; who does not reflect the love of the Christ, but by-golly, he's got that trinity thing clear in his head; or, the believer that could never quite come to terms with that teaching, but knew that he needed to reflect the love of Christ in his life; that he needed to forgive, just as he is forgiven; and knows that the Judge of all the earth judges righteously and mercifully. To me the answer is obvious. If Christianity is a list of "bullet points", pardon the French but I'm screwed.

I will say I've been seriously meditating on some form of Monophysitism

Heretic!

I don't want to come off "preachy" but as a guy who looks at the text and makes a fair point, and I hope I made a few.

Hopefully I don't come off as "preachy". I haven't knocked on a door in 20 years.

Regards, Brenden.

[Singalphile]

If someone held to a correct view of my personal physical attributes, but had an entirely skewed notion of my personality, would I say that they "knew me"? On the other hand, if they knew nothing of my physical nature, thought that I had a peg-leg and a German accent, but had all the right thinking on who I was as a person, my personality, my character traits, then I dare say that person "knows me" far more then the one that had a photo, but knew nothing of my character.

That reminds me of a passage that I recently heard from 2 or 3 different sources, and which is one of my new, recent favorites: Jermiah 9:23-24 - Thus says the Lord: "Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord."

I have mentioned before that this sort of debate (trinitarianism, etc.) feels irreverent to me, as if God is an exotic species of creature that I'm trying to taxonomize.

[dizerner]

If someone held to a correct view of my personal physical attributes, but had an entirely skewed notion of my personality, would I say that they "knew me"? On the other hand, if they knew nothing of my physical nature, thought that I had a peg-leg and a German accent, but had all the right thinking on who I was as a person, my personality, my character traits, then I dare say that person "knows me" far more then the one that had a photo, but knew nothing of my character.

That reminds me of a passage that I recently heard from 2 or 3 different sources, and which is one of my new, recent favorites: Jermiah 9:23-24 - Thus says the Lord: "Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord."

I have mentioned before that this sort of debate (trinitarianism, etc.) feels irreverent to me, as if God is an exotic species of creature that I'm trying to taxonomize.

It is said Satan has better doctrine than any of us, yet the worst heart. It's a fair point to look at the other side, and realize that the study of God's nature can be a cold formal study. But because I can give to the poor to feel better about myself, that doesn't make giving a bad thing. Doing anything with a wrong heart and intentions is bad, Scripture even says worship itself can have a wrong heart, and surely we can say that's a very important thing. God gave us his Word to know him, and studying it to understand him is something you could never convince me is an inherently bad thing. You take the example of knowing physical attributes as not knowing the real person; I agree. However if I wrote what was important to me about myself to someone, and they didn't pay attention or try to understand, how is that them valuing me as a person?

• Those who honor me I will honor, but those who despise me will be disdained.

There's always two sides to every coin. It's not like I am just speculating about things that might be, I will defend the Trinity doctrine with Scripture alone, and I will do it all day. I find that if you take Trinitarian passages at all seriously you can't just explain away the Spirit as a force or the Son as only a human: a serious student of Scripture simply cannot do that honestly.

[jriccitelli]

Yes to all three. The problem that I see JR is that you are using verses that have nothing to do with how God has arranged things so as to reconcile humanity to Himself, but are using passages in which God is positioning Himself as opposed to false idols..'

They were not just idols, all the people believed their gods were real. God is the one who said they are nothing but idols, because that is all they are. The surrounding peoples, and even some of the Israelites believed idols represented real gods above in the heavens. They did not believe the idols did anything of themselves; this was Gods mockery of their idolatry.

Man needed reconciliation 'because' they had gone after false gods, and the lie of the serpent. Man needed reconciliation because man believed the lie, and the lies the idols represented. And they still do. We think we are somewhat removed from the rest of the world and the other gods of the past just because we call this a godless society, but the god of this world is at large and they are still here. Idols and men making themselves into the image of gods are all around us, if you haven't noticed.

I didn't ask the questions above (Don’t you believe ‘There is Only One God’) as if it were related to some obscure irrelevant doctrine of the past, I asked it because you have written a hundred posts objecting to the belief that Jesus is God, but you fail to tell us who or what you think Jesus is!

Who and what God and Jesus are, everything about them and what they have commanded is not irrelevant to scripture, rather who and what God is like is central to our worship, help, salvation, security, love, relationship, trust and faith in God. Who He is, is the whole of scripture – and 'You shall have no other gods before Me' - is not an obscure theme, it is in every book and central to most every biblical event!

The passages in Isaiah say there are no other gods, or anything that can do anything like what God does, rule, act, bring to pass or accomplish, and there are many books that repeat that nothing nor anyone can do as God does. Everything and anything but God is a weak powerless incapable fallible created thing, yet men naturally go after false idols because they promise men what they want. But this is sin, and the root of deception. Thus the great warning to obey: Only The Lord. Shall a created thing rule, move, control, bring forth anything? We are told to trust nothing but God. What and who is your Jesus? We have been warned many will come in His Name, and many false Christs and false prophets will arise, Jesus Himself said so, and men continue to create their own Jesus’ and gods.

Who is the One spoken of in this passage below?
Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, And marked off the heavens by the span, And calculated the dust of the earth by the measure, And weighed the mountains in a balance And the hills in a pair of scales? 13 Who has directed the Spirit of the LORD, Or as His counselor has informed Him? 14 With whom did He consult and who gave Him understanding? And who taught Him in the path of justice and taught Him knowledge and informed Him of the way of understanding?