The Trinity and all of its supporting doctrines are all circular in reasoning

[Runningman]

Thomas received a revelation that Jesus was His Lord and God , same way peter, Paul, John all of them had in fact received that understanding

"This is how it is because I said so" is hardly a valid argument against Scripture. Why do you think that?

 

[Peterlag]

Right, those verses refute their argument that Thomas was not fully believing who Jesus is already. So Thomas had no reason to be a doubter about Jesus, therefore he wasn't stating a new realization who Jesus is.

Since Thomas already correctly believed in Jesus before, then he didn't suddenly get the belief that Jesus is God in John 20:28. Means that believing in Jesus without thinking he is God is the Biblical example. Thomas and the disciples had salvation without believing Jesus is God.

People all through these years say that old Thomas was a doubter and he did not believe. He may have been a sharp dude who knew his Bible that did not say the Messiah would be a man who could not be killed. Even the devils did not know.

 

[amazing grace]

Where does Exodus 3 say anything about the Father? It doesn't. It says God.

Have we not all one Father? Has not one God created us? Why then are we faithless to one another, profaning the covenant of our fathers? (Malachi 2:10) Yahweh (the LORD), the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, etc.
Do we all have one Father? Is that Father God? Is Yahweh God? put it all together, if you can ----

Now if Jesus is claiming to be the I AM at Exodus 3 then he is claiming to be the Father.

Yes, as a man, Jesus did have those human needs. But then, He had already emptied Himself of His glory, and the independent use of His power, and His knowledge in order to be a human. He didn't cease to be God, but He took on all the weaknesses and frailties of humanity.
Yes, He had subordinated Himself to the Father when He emptied Himself. And I didn't say He was two people. He was one person with a body, soul, and spirit (just as you are, and just as God Himself is).

"AS A MAN" What exactly does that mean? How is someone AS a man? Was Jesus sometimes a man and sometimes God??? And if he is then he is nothing like me at all nor am I like him in any sense of the word!
Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. (Hebrews 2:17)
Jesus is a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God ..... Is Jesus in service to himself or in service to God - someone other than himself?

God does not have a body, soul, spirit. God is Spirit (John 4:24), meaning He is not composed of matter, substance, or distinct parts. In scripture references to God’s eyes, hands, or feet are generally understood as anthropomorphisms—figurative language used to describe God’s actions, attributes, and presence in human terms.

You have adopted the JW argument for why Jesus was not really before Abraham. But as you have already agreed, ego eimi (I AM) means "I exist". Jesus existed, not just as a thought or plan or idea, but as a living being before Abraham, and even before Creation.

I have a thought or a plan to build a house...... that thought or plan or idea becomes a REALITY when the house is built. Jesus did not live before Abraham or before Creation.
Genesis 3:15 - I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.” At this point in Genesis 3:15 is a thought, a plan ----- it became a REALITY when Mary conceived and gave birth to the Son of God --- 'her offspring'.

This promise to Abraham - I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. ....... and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice. (Genesis 22) This promise, especially at this point is a plan which was not a REALITY until Christ.

This promise to Moses and the people of Israel : "The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen—.......I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him (Deut. 18:15, 18) This was a promise, a plan before it became a REALITY in the ministry of Jesus Christ......... Jesus did not live before Abraham or before Creation.

Your argument is for a difference without distinction. If the Word (Jesus) was deity, had all the qualities and nature of deity, and was with deity, then He was God. As is stated in Isa 42:8, God does not share His glory. Yet the Logos (Jesus) had the glory of God before Creation, and was also deity with God before Creation. There then is NO DIFFERENCE between being God ruminatively and qualitatively and in actuality.

God was with God? Okay.

I am the Lord; that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols. (Isaiah 42:8)
My glory nor my praise will I give to carved idols.
Even IF John 17:5 is claiming preexistence --- it does not say that Jesus had the 'glory of God' nor that he had God's glory ----

The Father is the only true God, as opposed to the false gods that the Greeks and Romans worshiped in their mythologies. But not as opposed to Jesus Himself. Because while He was indeed a human at the time, and so not acting as God, He was still divine.

Jesus was praying to his Father acknowledging his Father as the only true God and that knowing his Father as the only true God and knowing Jesus Christ whom God had sent --- IS eternal life!

Who is speaking in Isaiah 44? God. Jesus is God. Why can't it be Jesus speaking in Isaiah 44? It doesn't say that the Father is speaking. In Gen 1:1 it says that God created all things. In John 1:1 it says that the Logos created all things (and Jesus is the Logos). So that means that it was the Logos in Gen 1:1 that was doing all the creating. And the in Gen 1:6, the Logos (or the Father) is talking to the Father (or the Logos), and says, "Let US make man in OUR image." There is no conflict here between Scripture passages.

Yahweh is speaking in Isaiah 44. Jesus is the Son of God, the Messiah. Jesus isn't alive in the OT -- Jesus came into existence through conception and birth as any other human being. As we have seen previously Yahweh is the Father. And I think we have been over the us, our, (used 4 times in scripture) God is talking to the other created beings there with him - the angels.

John 1:3 says 'all things were made THROUGH him (the logos being personified)' What does Genesis 1:1 about how creation came into existence? And God said..... through God's speech, through God's word.....what does logos mean: a word, uttered by a living voice, embodies a conception or idea; what someone has said; the act of speaking, speech; doctrine, teaching; reason, the mental faculty of thinking, meditating, reasoning, calculating, etc. The Hebrew equivalent being dabar and that is how the Jewish people would have related with the logos. There is conflict when you have Jesus existing before his conception and birth. There is conflict when he is consistently

When the Spirit of God puts on flesh and becomes a man, how is that offensive? Why, if God chose to become a man, to live among us, and experience our life with us, and then do it perfectly so that He can be our kinsman redeemer, is that offensive to you? We didn't force Him to do it (as if we could). We didn't even ask Him to do it.

You are turning the Almighty God, the Most High into a created being, a human being and you can ask HOW IS THAT OFFENSIVE?
God can experience our lives with us because he KNOWS us. He didn't have to become a human being to KNOW us.
Did God sin against himself? Did God owe himself a debt for our sins?

Romans 1 comes to mind: For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.........
That is exactly what happened at the Councils........ The Greek Christians who had no problem with god-man in their mythology of gods mixed with Christianity in turning God into a man and Jesus into a God.

Literally, John 1:1c says, "and God was the Logos". The Logos is absolutely described and defined as being deity. There is NO DIFFERENCE between being qualitatively God and being actually God. Since the Logos has all the qualities and nature as deity, then the Logos IS deity.

I disagree as I have stated.

No, you do not cease to be you, or cease to exist, if you do not have one of the body, spirit, and soul parts of yourself. If that were so, then when you go to Heaven (or Hell) without your physical body (as we all will when we die) we would not be ourselves. Yet Scripture describes people as being identifiable only by their spirit and/or soul when met in Heaven.

If I do not have a body --- I DON'T EXIST. If I no longer have (soul life) BREATH, I cease to exist. If I no longer have my emotions, my feelings, that which animates me (spirit), I don't exist. The spirit is the deepest part of man, the soul is the seat of emotions and personality, and the body interacts with the physical world. .... I need all three to not be a vegetable on a hospital bed or not be dead.

As Daniel 12:2 says: And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And Jesus says in John 5 - Do not marvel at this for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment. The dead are dead and in the grave unto Christ returns and there will be bodily resurrection at that time.

Jesus had the full nature of God, but He emptied Himself, so He did not exhibit the qualities of God while He was a man. Primarily, He exhibited only His human nature, except that He did not sin, and so never had the nature of fallen man.

What makes Jesus the perfect sacrifice for the sins of humanity is that he was/is a REAL human being, a mortal, who humbled himself by becoming obedient, i.e. without sin, to the point of death on a cross .... God could not do that because God is an immortal being.

Can God not empty Himself and reduce Himself down to the level of a man, so that He can share in all the experiences, frailties, passions, etc. of a man? Do you think so little of God that you don't think He could do that?

Whatever a God-man might be, he is not a human being as we are, he is simply not one of us.

 

[Peterlag]

Luke 6:12
And it came to pass in those days, that he went out into a mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God.

 

[Runningman]

Luke 6:12
And it came to pass in those days, that he went out into a mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God.

Yep. It has got to be difficult being a trinitarian and reading about Jesus praying to God. The Greek grammar of this verse doesn't allow Jesus to be speaking to himself. Jesus is speaking to Someone Else entirely different than himself. Wow Jesus was praying to God the same way other humans pray to God.

 

[Peterlag]

Yep. It has got to be difficult being a trinitarian and reading about Jesus praying to God. The Greek grammar of this verse doesn't allow Jesus to be speaking to himself. Jesus is speaking to Someone Else entirely different than himself. Wow Jesus was praying to God the same way other humans pray to God.

Jesus prayed to God “not my will, but yours, be done” because Jesus and God have separate wills (Luke 22:42; John 5:30). They would have one will if Jesus and the Father are the same “one God.” Trinitarian doctrine claims that Luke is referring to the human will of Jesus, and not his divine will, but that is problematic because the Bible never says anything like that or even hints that Jesus had two wills in conflict with each other inside him allowing one to be human and the other to be divine.

 

[Peterlag]

 

[Peterlag]

If you think cars or trees or words are living creatures.

Then there's something wrong with your Bible if it says those things are living. If the word of the Lord means something different from the way words are used referring to the word of men? Then God set up different boundaries for me to function in that are different from the way He communicates to me. Thus, English is no longer a useful tool for communication.

The word "logos" (Word) denotes (I) "the expression of thought" as embodying a conception or idea. λόγος "logos" is something said (including the thought). So, the word "logos" means an expression of thought. It makes perfect sense if we use this understanding everywhere the word "logos" is used. So, in John 1:1 the Word is not Jesus, but rather it became flesh, which is God's expression of thought or plan that became flesh with the coming of Jesus Christ.