The Trinity
- Thread starter Bright Raven
- Start date
csuguy
Well-known member
Many of them contradict the Trinity, and none of them teach it.
For instance:
1 Cor 15:20-28 But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. 21 For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. 22 For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. 23 But each in turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. 24 Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. 25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death. 27 For he “has put everything under his feet.”[c] Now when it says that “everything” has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ. 28 When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all.
This verse both distinguishes the Son from God (not simply "Father", but "God") and establishes a clear hierarchy between the two after his earthly life (so none of that "he was only temporarily made less than God" unbiblical non-sense will work here)
Selaphiel
Well-known member
I think that it is problematic that you separate scriptures from the church that canonized them, assuming they make any sense apart from the confessions of the church. They do not really. Apart from the confession of the church, her reading of the entirety of the Old testament is simply nonsense. Once you separate the scriptures from the church, the unity of scriptural interpretation is broken and all you are left with are shards that frankly make no sense. The scriptures does not teach the trinity as the church finally formulated it explicitly, but it requires it unless you want the Christian faith to collapse into pagan idolatry and superstition.
In the same letter Paul very clearly includes Christ in the shema: One God, the Father and one Lord, Jesus Christ. Are the Lord and God two entities in the shema? Either Paul engages in wild idolatry or he considers Christ as equal with God in some sense. If Christ is some demigod, then Christianity is pagan nonsense. Creatures of lesser divinity is a pagan concept. The Greeks had a gradient of mediating divinities, the Jews did not. In Jewish though, there is a binary distinction, creator and creature, only the creator is God. The clear worship of Christ in the New testament is then nothing but idolatry and polytheism if the Son of God is not indeed God himself in some sense. There are doxologies for Christ that according to Jewish tradition can only rightly belong to God himself, not some created being.
How this is the case is not clear in the New testament. We even see the bending of grammar itself to try to accomodate it in some of the scriptures. Examples being Rev 11:15 when the verb "to rule" refers to two subjects (The Lord and the Christ) and yet it is singular form. The same is the case in Rev 22:3-4 where the two subjects "God" and "The Lamb" are referred to with a singular pronoun "His servants shall serve him". This is consistent with John of Patmos in general, that book makes grammatical adjustments to make points (a feature that has mistakenly been understood to be a case of poor Greek from the author, when in fact that book is generally written in excellent Greek and is quite the literary masterpiece).
The church then worked out how this was the case, just as she worked out what scriptures to canonize. Christ and the Spirit are indeed made subject to the Father. The Father is the arche of divinity. That is who the Father is, The Father eternally begets the Son and the Spirit, but does so eternally. The Son is the eternal self-identification and self-understanding of the Father and the Spirit is the eternal love and freedom between them. This dynamism is God, nothing more and nothing less.
The irony is that these developments gets written off as hellenizations of Christianity. In fact, it is Arianism that is the ultimate hellenization of Christianity. The concerns of Arius where Greek concept of the absolute one, who would not in any way be mediated completely, so we require lesser divinities as intermediates.
Last edited:
Apple7
New member
None contradict The Trinity.
The Trinity comprehends ALL scripture.
An unfortunate NIV translation.
Theos is not in the Greek of verse 27, to begin with.
Nope.
Apple7
New member
God is a sacrifice for humanity.
csuguy
Well-known member
The church proper existed several hundreds before the Trinity doctrine was established, and cannot be reduced to Catholicism/Trinitarianism. So did the writings of Church Fathers, the scriptures themselves, and attempts at canonizing the scriptures. Constantine set the church down a path of reconciling all of its competing theologies and practices, but this was an error. It's good to discuss theology and to try to come to a consensus - not to force consensus down people's throats. And they did - to the point that those who refused to accept the Trinity were put to death.
And Christian Theology most certainly does contain some Greek Philosophy. Many of the Church Fathers whose writings exists today were converts who had originally studied Plato, Aristotle, etc. That was education back then.
keypurr
Well-known member
Went right over your head, didn't it?
If Jesus is God as you say, then God was the sacrifice to God.
Silly trinity doctrine.
keypurr
Well-known member
Think about that.
CherubRam
New member
Deuteronomy 32:39
“See now that I myself am he! There is no god besides me. I put to death and I bring to life, I have wounded and I will heal, and no one can deliver out of my hand.
Isaiah 44:8
Do not tremble, do not be afraid. Did I not proclaim this and foretell it long ago? You are my witnesses. Is there any God besides me? No, there is no other Rock; I know not one.”
Isaiah 45:6
so that from the rising of the sun to the place of its setting people may know there is none besides me. I am the Lord, and there is no other.
If God was a trinity, wouldn't He speak of another; but what does He say, He says he knows of no other.
“See now that I myself am he! There is no god besides me. I put to death and I bring to life, I have wounded and I will heal, and no one can deliver out of my hand.
Isaiah 44:8
Do not tremble, do not be afraid. Did I not proclaim this and foretell it long ago? You are my witnesses. Is there any God besides me? No, there is no other Rock; I know not one.”
Isaiah 45:6
so that from the rising of the sun to the place of its setting people may know there is none besides me. I am the Lord, and there is no other.
If God was a trinity, wouldn't He speak of another; but what does He say, He says he knows of no other.
csuguy
Well-known member
Thanks keypurr, I like your posts on here as well :thumb:
genuineoriginal
New member
He is.
True, Jesus is the Son of God, not an angel.
_____
non sequitur
a conclusion or statement that does not logically follow from the previous argument or statement.
_____
non sequitur
a conclusion or statement that does not logically follow from the previous argument or statement.
_____
genuineoriginal
New member
Yes, there are many verses in the Bible that contradict the Trinity doctrine, and there are no verses in the Bible that teach the Trinity doctrine.
Selaphiel
Well-known member
Of course the church existed prior to the establishment of the trinitarian orthodoxy, where did I say that it didn't? I pretty explicitly said that it did. The church existed for a good while without a canonized New testament as well. That is not the point. The point is that a proper doctrine of church requires a church that is guided by the Spirit. Once the ecumenical church reached a conclusion it was binding, just as it was when she canonized the scriptures to not include for example the gospel of Thomas or Peter's apocalypse. If you start claiming that the church started making doctrinal errors, then you have more or less demolished the church and it seems like Hades brought it down after all.
That heretics were put to death was unjust, but it does not change the fact that the teaching was necessary. Not only was it necessary, it is done, the ecumenical church decided. The arguments of the Capadoccians aren't invalidated because some misguided souls condemned the heretics with physical persecution.
I think a minimal requirement of Christianity today is to accept the doctrines of the seven ecumenical councils.
The alternatives to the trinitarian doctrine are all unsatisfactory. They are either polytheistic and idolatrous in that they worship a creature (which is pretty much the textbook definition of idolatry). Or even worse they reduce Christ to mere human, in which he really just becomes another human prophet that was raised from the dead for some reason. The entire soteriological dimension of the faith crumbles, and the prayers and doxologies directed to Christ in the early church and now are an even more ridiculous form of idolatry than the Arian worship of a demigod.
Yes. But when read, you see that they dramatically transform that thought with the gospel. As the theologian Robert W. Jenson says, it is more accurate to say that in the fathers Greek thought was evangelized than to say that the gospel was hellenized.
Nothing wrong with Greek thought either. The error is when non-trinitarian thinkers today claim that the trinity was due to a hellenization of the church. It is an error, because dissenters like Arius were more hellenistic in his thought than for example the Capadoccians. His arguments against the full divinity of Christ rested on Neoplatonist principles, not scriptural ones. His concern was that Christ was a mediating divinity, medaiting the One, using a conceptual scheme of gradual degrees of divinity. The other side recognized the Jewish and scriptural distinction of creator and created, and realized that if you place Christ on the side of creature, then Christian worship and liturgy as the church knew it was nothing but pagan polytheism and gross idolatry. They were right about that.
The non-trinitarians that appeal to scripture only is not much better. Failing to realize that the scriptures are every bit as much a result of the ecumenical church as the doctrine of the trinity, canonized by her for her purposes and intentions.
It is an absolute perversion of sola scriptura into solo scriptura, thinking that the principle is about an American form of individualism in the form of "Me and my Bible" instead of it being the principle of the scripture being the norm of norms of theology, which is nevertheless guided by norms such as the creedal confessions and doctrinal agreements of the ecumenical councils.
Yes it is taught. You just do not want to see it.
genuineoriginal
New member
Your claims that it is taught are not backed up by any scripture that actually teaches the Trinity doctrine.
This is proven by the failure of Trinitarians to come up with any scriptures that actually teach the doctrine of the Trinity, as opposed to finding verses that can be used to support the doctrine of the Trinity.
You do not believe in the Trinity, therefore, it is doubtful that you believe even if shown. So why waste the time.
Christians believe in the Trinity, non-Christians don't. You must believe in the nature of god and who He is. Who are you to tell Him that as a single essence that He can't exist is three persons. What does that tell you?
genuineoriginal
New member
Some do, some don't.
It is not for you to judge whether a person is a Christian because he believes the clear testimony of scripture or if he believes the doctrine of the Trinity instead.
No, that is only taught by Trinitarians.
Nowhere in the Bible does it say you must believe God is a Trinity.
I don't tell God that, but Trinitarians are always telling God that He must exist as three individuals conjoined in a single essence.
That Trinitarians are more arrogant than non-Trinitarians?
The Trinity is a doctrine of the Christian Church. Definition from dictionary.com A doctrine of Christianity that there is one God and three divine persons in the one God: the Father, the Son ( Jesus ), and the Holy Spirit.
You are not to smart if you don't understand the nature of the one you worship as God.
Not so. The word tell us what His nature is and that He is Triune.
No, that Trinitarians are more knowledgable than Non-trinitarians. We can think outside of the box.
genuineoriginal
New member
There are many questionable doctrines in the Christian Church.
That is why we have the Bible so we can check it whenever a doctrine is questionable.
The Bible states that God created the heaven and the earth.
Science claims that the universe is many billions of light years across and is composed of nothing but vibrations at the quantum level.
What makes you think you are smart enough to understand the nature of a God that can create a universe like that?
This one verse is about as close as the Bible comes to telling us what God's nature is:
John 4:24 24 God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. |
Nowhere does the Bible state that we are to think God is Triune.
Being able to think outside the scriptures does not make your doctrine Biblical.