Peterlag
Active Member
A major red flag is a doctrine not built upon the Old Testament...
We see a consistent pattern among the Apostles throughout the New Testament as they build doctrine by drawing from the Old Testament. They cite the Old Testament to validate their teachings, showing continuity and divine consistency on every major theological topic such as Salvation, Christology, and Eschatology. Their ideas aren’t novel because they’re rooted in the Hebrew Scriptures. That Apostolic pattern is missing when it comes to the doctrine of the Trinity because not a single Apostle appeals to the Old Testament to formulate or defend a triune concept of God. Instead, what we see emerge centuries later is a very different approach where 4th-century theologians cherry-pick verses from various parts of the New Testament and combine them to form a new idea independent of Apostolic precedent.
That’s a serious red flag. This same “verse compilation” methodology is what groups like the Jehovah’s Witnesses use to claim Jesus is Michael the Archangel, or what various sects use to justify their distinct doctrines. Once this method is accepted, there's no logical stopping point of assembling disconnected verses to form a system the Apostles themselves never articulated. Any doctrine can be built that way and this is why methodology matters. Once you allow doctrines to be constructed independently of the Apostolic and Old Testament foundation, the process snowballs, and suddenly every group’s interpretation can claim legitimacy. The real question isn't just what we believe, but how we arrived there.
We see a consistent pattern among the Apostles throughout the New Testament as they build doctrine by drawing from the Old Testament. They cite the Old Testament to validate their teachings, showing continuity and divine consistency on every major theological topic such as Salvation, Christology, and Eschatology. Their ideas aren’t novel because they’re rooted in the Hebrew Scriptures. That Apostolic pattern is missing when it comes to the doctrine of the Trinity because not a single Apostle appeals to the Old Testament to formulate or defend a triune concept of God. Instead, what we see emerge centuries later is a very different approach where 4th-century theologians cherry-pick verses from various parts of the New Testament and combine them to form a new idea independent of Apostolic precedent.
That’s a serious red flag. This same “verse compilation” methodology is what groups like the Jehovah’s Witnesses use to claim Jesus is Michael the Archangel, or what various sects use to justify their distinct doctrines. Once this method is accepted, there's no logical stopping point of assembling disconnected verses to form a system the Apostles themselves never articulated. Any doctrine can be built that way and this is why methodology matters. Once you allow doctrines to be constructed independently of the Apostolic and Old Testament foundation, the process snowballs, and suddenly every group’s interpretation can claim legitimacy. The real question isn't just what we believe, but how we arrived there.
