Data on John 1:1
- Thread starter Peterlag
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Peterlag
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It seems it would have been clearly stated in the Bible and in the earliest Christian creeds if the doctrine of the Trinity was genuine and central to Christian belief and especially if belief in it was necessary for salvation as many Trinitarians teach. God gave the Scriptures to the Jewish people, and the Jewish religion and worship that comes from that revelation does not contain any reference to or teachings about a triune God. Surely the Jewish people were qualified to read and understand it, but they never saw the doctrine of the Trinity, but rather just the opposite as all throughout their history they fiercely defended the fact that there was only one God. Jesus himself tied the greatest commandment in the Law together with there being only one God when an expert in Old Testament law asked him which of the commandments was the most important. Jesus said to him “The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God….” (Mark 12:29-30).
The Theophanies of the OT clearly showed the presence of the PreIncarnate Christ as Deity. If you want to stay as blind as the Pharisees were then be my guest.
Peterlag
Well-known member
There's no teaching on the trinity anywhere in the Bible. No whole paragraph or chapter teaching that we should believe or confess that Jesus is God.The Theophanies of the OT clearly showed the presence of the PreIncarnate Christ as Deity. If you want to stay as blind as the Pharisees were then be my guest.
Your love, admiration, and reverence of the Pharisees is making you toss away any acknowledgement of the multiple OT Deity Appearances (Theophanies) of the Preincarnate Jesus. Carry on with your love for the Judaizing Pharisees.
Peterlag
Well-known member
And then there's the problem with the Holy Spirit. There are many descriptions, titles, and names for God in the Bible and I would like to add God’s proper name is “Yahweh” which occurs more than 6,000 times in the Hebrew Old Testament and is generally translated as “LORD.” But God is also referred to as Elohim, Adonai, El Shaddai, the Ancient of Days, the Holy One of Israel, Father, Shield, and by many more designations. Furthermore, God is holy (Leviticus 11:44), which is why He was called “the Holy One” (the Hebrew text uses the singular adjective “holy” to designate “the Holy One." He is also spirit (John 4:24). It makes perfect sense since God is holy and God is spirit that “Holy”and “Spirit” are sometimes combined and used as one of the many designations for God.Your love, admiration, and reverence of the Pharisees is making you toss away any acknowledgement of the multiple OT Deity Appearances (Theophanies) of the Preincarnate Jesus. Carry on with your love for the Judaizing Pharisees.
None of the dozens of descriptions, titles, or names of God are believed to be a separate, co-equal “Person”in a triune God except for the “HOLY SPIRIT” and there is no solid biblical reason to make the "Holy Spirit” into a separate “Person.” In other contexts the “HOLY SPIRIT” refers to the gift of God’s nature that He placed on people and the new birth to the Christian, and in those contexts it should be translated as the “holy spirit." God placed a form of His nature which is “holy spirit” upon people when He wanted to spiritually empower them because our natural fleshly human bodies do not have spirit power of their own. This holy spirit nature of God was a gift from God to humankind and we see this in the case of Acts 2:38 when the spirit is specifically called a "gift" when given to the Christian.
brightfame52
Well-known member
Yes it is biblical language which unfortunately you cant see.
This keeps sounding so ignorant. Peterlag keeps repeating that Jews recognize there is only one God. It makes it seem that Peterlag is trying to confront a system of belief that says there are other gods. What bigger strawman could Peterlag create as the focus of his objections? No mystery lies with where his confusion lies. He also is confronting the Trinity as Catholic origin, like the Jehovah Witnesses do. Why does he promote this anachronistic designation? Maybe someone can answer this if Peterlag cannot explain that JW alignment.
Peterlag
Well-known member
I promote what I do which is info on the trinity because there are many who believe that Jesus is God. The Bible teaches there is one God, the Father, and one Messiah and Lord, Jesus Christ, who is the divinely conceived Son of God. Jesus Christ is the fully human “Son of God” and not “God the Son.” For clarity’s sake, it's helpful to understand what the Trinity is. The orthodox doctrine of the Trinity is that the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and the three of them are co-equal, co-eternal, and share the same essence and together those three individual “Persons” are one triune God. The doctrine of the Trinity that Jesus is both 100% God and 100% man and that both the divine nature and his human nature live together in his flesh body may be widely believed, but is never stated in the Bible.
Something that is openly admitted by theologians that is not known by many Christians is that the doctrine of the Trinity is not stated in the Bible, but is actually “built” by piecing together statements that are said to support it. Since most Christians believe the Trinity is a mystery and not to be understood is a huge reason why doctrinal discussions about it are often avoided or brushed aside and ignored. Worse, the teaching that the Trinity is a “mystery” has been used as a club to beat down doubters and dissenters, and those people are often branded as “heretics” and their role in Christianity minimized.
Like I said. you make these anachronistic and strawman attacks but never defend your use of those tactics. Sure you have other interpretations to fit your view but this eisegetical approach is rather destructive. If you actually had found arguments against the Trinity, people might side with you. If it did not sound so Jehovah Witnessy, you would have done a tad better.
Just because you deny the evidence and put a requirement on God how he should have shown the Triune nature in scripture, that is not sufficient reason to deny God's essence. Nor has your discussion been denied here. Your argument just has been shown insufficient to deny God's Triune nature.
You then take the concept of God's Spirit in us and make it into some new spiritualism religion. So you apparently claim some sort of Christianity practice that denies Christian doctrine. Of course this website is designated for such discussion. Congratulations on finding this site.
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Peterlag
Well-known member
Peterlag
Well-known member
There is nothing straw-man about the Bible saying in many verses that there is only one God and “God” does not have a God. We read in Isaiah 44:6 “…there is no God besides me” and Ephesians 4:6 says there is “one God and Father of all, who is over all.” Jesus has a God in contrast to “God” who alone is God and does not have a God. Jesus spoke about his God after the resurrection to Mary Magdalene, saying “…I ascend to my Father and your Father, and my God and your God” (John 20:17). Jesus still called God “my God” after his ascension into heaven when he was standing at the right hand of God.
There are also verses in the New Testament that clearly speak of “God” being the “God” of Jesus Christ. Romans 15:6 says “...you can, with one mouth, glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” 2 Corinthians 1:3, Ephesians 1:3, and 1 Peter 1:3 all say “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” So the “one God and Father” (Ephesians 4:6) is the God of Jesus Christ. The “one God” of the Bible never says He has a God because He is God, the Father, the Creator, “the Most High God” and He has no equals. Jesus is not “God” because he's a man, the last Adam, the created Son of God, and the God of Jesus is God the Father.
