Cross Reference
New member
I insisted nothing.
ECT Our triune God
- Thread starter Lon
- Start date
I insisted nothing.
He was referring to himself in the third person since the Holy Spirit is not flesh as he was at the time.
I guess I just feel like venting. As a Christian woman and a pastor's wife for 14 years and the mother of 3 grown children, the oldest himself a pastor, I have had zero interest in things having to do with stuff like the Trinity, or who Jesus Christ really is, because those discussions had no practical application in my life. But here's what I have realized in these last few weeks reading TFT, the God I've known to this point has always pretty much hidden behind the back of Jesus. Jesus I could sort of relate to but "God" was this distant being that I couldn't really understand let alone feel like I knew. I just really hoped that Jesus would do his job because this "God-guy" seemed to be angry most of the time. And a relationship between God and Jesus ? that didn't really even register to me. What Jesus did to make his Father happy was to obey his laws perfectly so that God wouldn't be mad at me. My, how all of this has changed. I just really want to go back to his understanding of holiness when I first saw TFT post on this. it gave me hope and it made me happy that their heart really was for me! Love was not a lost category somewhere in his abstract "being" but God by this definition really is LOVE and "grace" is his language to me when the cashier at the check out line is plucking my last nerve. I take care of a 65 yr old man who is dying of brain cancer and is often very needy and demanding, sometimes rudely so, this used to drive me crazy. My feelings often hurt but now that I understand that if out of his love, Christ would go to the cross for me I ought to bear my cross for him. Here finally a practical application of Trinity that makes sense to me.
musterion
Well-known member
Cross Reference
New member
Yes to all that except this: John 17:3 KJV.
Lon
Well-known member
Er, pure assertions. If all you want to do it posture and assert yourself, you aren't going to gain any ground, other than having a nice pow wow with other arians and unitarians on TOL. A lot of the rest of us will just put you on ignore. Frankly, if you'd done better in English in school, you'd not be a unit-arian. Unitarian is for the ign'rant kids in the remedial class. I think God can save you but don't be arrogant that you are at the top of the remedial class. You shouldn't be ignorant that many of the rest of us are exponentially better at language than you.
Sorry to be blunt, but you are incredibly 'arrogant' with your 'ignorance.' Such, imo, becomes necessary.
where did i assert myself...??? does it look like if I am looking to gain grounds...I post the word of God if you don't like it put me on ignore...
I am nothing I seek to be nothing more than what Christ wants me to be...that is obedient....what does this mean in english???
1 John 2:22
Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son.
you who deny Father and Son ...what does your exponentially better at language tell you??? does Father and Son mean father son and spirit???...does Father and Son mean trinity???....this is where I assert myself.....based on the word of God......the word of God says ...you are antichrist...not me....you have denied Father and Son....and accepted trinity....
Lon
Well-known member
It seems that you are emphasizing the tri- part as to humanity and relationship whereas PPS emphasizes the -une part as to Spirit and indivisibility. There is a must to bring these two together in this discussion between scriptures:
And
The Arians/Unitarians on TOL will never understand this part of the conversation, that we are both tri- and -une because it is logically elusive, yet John 1:1 and other scriptures presented in thread, express this inescapable truth. That they cannot apprehend it? More than evident, either due to hardness of heart or deficiency of intellect. The former is a salvific concern, the latter a hindrance in their relationship with Him, this side of glory: the former tragic, the latter sad.
Cross Reference
New member
'cause he would rather ride the bus instead of eating bananas.
At the time Jesus was not the Holy Spirit. Do you understand the term "parakletos"?
And I will pray the Father and he shall give you another Comforter that he may abide with you forever, even the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it seeth him not neither knoweth him, but ye know him for he dwelleth with you and shall be in you. (John 14:16-17)
But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. (Romans 8:9)
But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. (Romans 8:9)
Lon
Well-known member
Er, context vs out of context. If we post out of context, it is a perversion of God's Word, rather than a presentation of it.
In English, it means you are failing.
Yes, but you incorrectly misapplied it to Trinitarians.
The scripture goes on to clarify beyond your contrivance:
These liars are denying the existence of Father and Son of God.
I don't even think Arians or Unitarians necessarily deny the Father or Son. Some do. I simply think a lot of you are confused and stubborn and often arrogant in ignorance. It has a lot to do with school grades, imho. You don't have to get A's in English to go to heaven but you should probably sit down when others are talking about the clear meaning of scriptures. That those who didn't do well in school don't get it? Yes, that is evident and understood. I just don't think a lot of you should be presumptuous upon that point of fact. It is like a 3rd grader trying to teach Algebra. If that kid is arrogant and he thinks he now knows all there is to know about math, he is going to assert that using letters in mathematics is wrong. He 'thinks' he's right, but he's incredibly wrong and needs to be told to sit down.
Yes, you certainly do.
On the contrary, all you. It again, is like that 3rd grader. He needs to sit down and go back to learner-mode. He's in no way fit for teaching. Rather audacious really, and plainly so. A good many TOL Arians and Unitarians are about this audacious. If you didn't get A's and B's in English and if you didn't take German, French, Spanish, etc. with respectable grades, you shouldn't be trying to teach those of us who did. The triune view is apprehended by a firm understanding of God's conveyance to us through language. If you aren't good with language, you'll have a hard time in theology discussion on this important matter.
I accepted John 1 at face value because it grammatically demands this conclusion. You could do a bit of back-reading in this thread and see other scriptural reasons why a Tri- -une view is a scriptural given.
PneumaPsucheSoma
TOL Subscriber
Quite the opposite. The English term "person" is the greatest blight on the Christian faith in its entire history; and there aren't three of them.
To get rid of the Greek terms and definitions is to first reject the historical doctrine, and second to prevent it being corrected as it dilutes further and further into conceptualization as functional Tritheism.
English is merely the latest and nearly lowest-context language produced from the confusion at Babel. To insist on an English foundation for terms and definitions is the greatest fallacy possible on the issue.
PneumaPsucheSoma
TOL Subscriber
Wow. I have to wonder if you've ever actually heard the Gospel (good news) and believed it for salvation instead of being under law methodology like the majority of Sectarians.
God's love is that He embodied His divine substance in flesh as the Son to be YOUR redemption from YOUR sin that gives you entitlement, and despair to accompany it. Greater love hath no man than this.
if you don't know who God is and what he wants how can you obey Him???? How does a trinity make any sense to you when God's word says if you deny Father and Son you are antichrist???? trinity denies Father and Son in favour of father son and spirit...
1 John 2:22
Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son.
why does scripture say ...Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ?....
Romans 1:19-21King James Version (KJV)
19 Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.
20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
PneumaPsucheSoma
TOL Subscriber
musterion
Well-known member
And He is now?
So He was going to "turn into" the Holy Spirit and send Himself back to earth?
Modalist, eh? Big cosmic puppetshow with God the Father (or is it Jesus Only) "manifesting" Himself differently for our benefit?
TFTn5280
New member
That's a fair enough conclusion from my side of your observation. Here is why. When I read Jesus, he is quite emphatic that no one comes to the Father except through the Son. Should this not include our apprehension of him as well? He is emphatic that he and his Father are one, and this of course, is one by way of their relationship, one with the other. And when I read Jesus, he is most emphatic that no one will draw near to him unless called by his Father. Should this not also include our awareness of him? In fact, he states that know one knows the Father except for him, the Son, our knowledge coming only through a relationship with him. There is much emphasis there in the NT, I contend, about relationship as that which defines God to humanity: the relationship between the Father and the Son, in and through the Holy Spirit. With Hebrews 1.2, I conclude that in these last days God the Father has brought clarity and definition to "God" by way of Revelation in relation to his Son. And so, yes, I emphasize the three-ness of God by and through the Holy Spirit to us, to gain definition of him, over against a cardinal "one" starting point about "God" originating primarily from OT terminology, and this a misunderstanding, I contend, of many of those OT passages. For example, both the Hebrew word for God, "Elohim," and the Hebrew substitution for his name, Adonai, are plural constructs. Imagine that! That said, I don't have a problem with one "being" as relates to God, if that being is defined by the inseparable union which is the Triune relationship ~ they not being Tri-theistic precisely because of the internal, eternal union of their of their existence as God. But set that relationship aside in your assertions of the one being-ness of God in abstraction to the Three-ness of that relationship and that's where you get the funny math, Trinity stuff that makes some of us one form of unitarianism or another, and many among us just plain unable to make sense of it at all.
And so, yes, I too see a divergence between PPS and myself at this point. I think probably he does too.
I am going to follow this post with a post I shared on a different Trinity thread several weeks ago. It sets forth my understanding as best I can articulate it of the Oneness aspect of God's being as relates to the interactions of the Three. You may have seen it but I think it may still be relevant to our discussion.
Blessings.
T
TFTn5280
New member
... If you don't mind I would like to set a construct whereby to begin to understand the oneness aspect of our Triune God. It seems to me that the difficulty we have in understanding how One God could be at the same time Triune is rooted more in our concepts of oneness than it is in our identification and acknowledgement of the persons which make up the three-ness of God ~ i.e., the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You may all already know this, but if not, I ask you to consider it with me.
Our doctrines of God's oneness are rooted primarily in the verse Deuteronomy 6.4: "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one!" The difficulty we have in correctly understanding this verse comes in*via the way westerners think of the word "one" in apposition to the Simidic idea of one-ness. If when we are thinking about the One God, we are thinking in terms of something like one mark on a blackboard, we have missed the idea of oneness which emanates from the Hebrew mindset. When Moses wrote, "... the LORD is one," the word he uses for one is not a word that first conveys an idea of singularity, such as in one mark ~ but is the word echad, which is the same word that he used when he wrote, "And there was evening and there was morning, one day," and elsewhere: "For this cause a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they shall become one flesh."
The word "One" in Hebrew is relational language; it is the language of the union of a subject and an object. It means unity before it means singularity. The singularity of God comes out of the unity of the Trinity; in other words, the one-ness of God is the unity of the Father-Son-Holy-Spirit relationship. The three are one by way of relationship. That relationship is so tight, so bounded, so bonded, so substantive, that to try to distinguish the Father apart from the Son and Spirit in terms of God-stuff, is impossible. The Father can only be rightly interpreted as he exists in relationship to the Son. The Son the same in relationship to the Father, and on and on. There is singularity ~one God~ because there is unity first ~ Father-Son-Holy-Spirit, the three united.
Hence the one and the three are not ideas competing for supremacy in our thinking, as in esoteric Trinitarian formulas like, God is one being but three persons, which opens the door for guys like Thomas Jefferson to call it "Funny math." No! The one speaks to the unity of the three. God is but one being and not three separate beings, precisely because the three persons are inseparably united. Said another way, out of the complexity of the three is a union which conveys oneness ~ very much in the same way as when Moses wrote, "Behold, they (a plurality) are one people (united)." They, the Trinity, are one God.
Our doctrines of God's oneness are rooted primarily in the verse Deuteronomy 6.4: "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one!" The difficulty we have in correctly understanding this verse comes in*via the way westerners think of the word "one" in apposition to the Simidic idea of one-ness. If when we are thinking about the One God, we are thinking in terms of something like one mark on a blackboard, we have missed the idea of oneness which emanates from the Hebrew mindset. When Moses wrote, "... the LORD is one," the word he uses for one is not a word that first conveys an idea of singularity, such as in one mark ~ but is the word echad, which is the same word that he used when he wrote, "And there was evening and there was morning, one day," and elsewhere: "For this cause a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they shall become one flesh."
The word "One" in Hebrew is relational language; it is the language of the union of a subject and an object. It means unity before it means singularity. The singularity of God comes out of the unity of the Trinity; in other words, the one-ness of God is the unity of the Father-Son-Holy-Spirit relationship. The three are one by way of relationship. That relationship is so tight, so bounded, so bonded, so substantive, that to try to distinguish the Father apart from the Son and Spirit in terms of God-stuff, is impossible. The Father can only be rightly interpreted as he exists in relationship to the Son. The Son the same in relationship to the Father, and on and on. There is singularity ~one God~ because there is unity first ~ Father-Son-Holy-Spirit, the three united.
Hence the one and the three are not ideas competing for supremacy in our thinking, as in esoteric Trinitarian formulas like, God is one being but three persons, which opens the door for guys like Thomas Jefferson to call it "Funny math." No! The one speaks to the unity of the three. God is but one being and not three separate beings, precisely because the three persons are inseparably united. Said another way, out of the complexity of the three is a union which conveys oneness ~ very much in the same way as when Moses wrote, "Behold, they (a plurality) are one people (united)." They, the Trinity, are one God.