I resent being called disingenuous because I have had multiple experiences where I have learned that the muslims that I have spoken to turned to islam because their Christian family members could not explain to them the concept of trinity, especially when Christ never says he is the Father. This is my experience as I watch more and more people getting wrapped up around me because they say Christians don’t even know their own bibles. If that is not your experience then so be it. The Trinity is not too difficult to understand. For me and others it just doesn’t make sense and I wish St. Basil and his cohorts never came up with the idea.
I’m sorry I did not mean to make you feel resentful. Just from my perspective it’s difficult to understand that the one thing the people you’ve had experiences with couldn’t find believable about Christianity is that God consists of 3 persons but is one entity, but all the stuff about God coming to earth as man, dying for our sins on the cross and coming back from the dead made sense to them?
They didn’t just invent the idea of the Trinity, it was revealed to them by the Holy Spirit through their study of scripture, which there is much evidence for:
Matthew 28:19
2 Corinthians 13:14
1 Peter 1:1-2
Romans 14:17-18; 15:16
1 Corinthians 2:2-16; 12:4-6
2 Corinthians 1:21-22
Galatians 4:6
Ephesians 2:18-22; 3:14-19
Ephesians 4:4-6
Colossians 1:6-8
1Thessalonians 1:3-5;
2 Thessalonians 2:13-14
Titus 3:4-6
I also get that Yahushua is God. He was begotten of God so he couldn’t have any nature other than that of God. I have never said any different. But I will not deny the fact that Christ himself said he can only do what His father tells him to and that He not is greater than the One who sent him to earth to complete his work. Christ said it was His Father who gave him the power over life and death. Christ when referring to His Father, calls him “my Godâ€â€¦â€¦Christ’s words not mine.
If the above verse means (for some) Christ, who is God, is equal to His Father then it seems that they have a very strange relationship of equality. Because I do not ask my equals for permission to talk, nor do they determine what I say or where I go….and I definitely would not take commands from them…or turn my authority back over to them. Perhaps equality means something different from what I knew.
What you’re describing is the order of their relationship, which does not have anything to do with whether they are equals or not.
Do you work at a job? Do you have a boss? Are you not, as humans, equal despite you having different roles? Are you not afforded the same rights as every other citizen in the U.S., despite your standing in society?
It’s also no different then how a husband and wife are described, they’re equal but with different roles in a marriage relationship. The man is supposed to be the spiritual head of the family, does this mean that the husband has a spiritual dominance in a way of inequality over his wife? Not at all, they are still spiritually equal, but for spiritual blessings to come down through the family it has to be initiated by the man. It’s the same with God the Father and God the Son, it’s the order of their relationship, not the equality.
Additionally, the New Covenant does not make unless Jesus is fully God because only God had the ability to be our representative Covenant head.
I’m just not sure how you reconcile certain passages such as 1 Cor. 2: 6-16, where it says specifically the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God, a being that is God yet exists separately from God the Father.
In your opinion, since you don’t believe in the Trinity, who are Jesus and the Holy Spirit then? Are you saying Jesus and the Father are two different gods? Is the Holy Spirit not God the Father and Jesus’s Spirit?
L -
I am saying
6 yet to us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we unto him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him. 1 Corinthians 8:6 (American Standard Version)
3 And this is life eternal, that they should know thee [the Father] the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ. John 17:3 (American Standard Version)
Jesus clearly designated himself as someone OTHER than "the only true God".
What else can I say - this is the teaching of the Word of God - I am bound to it.
Then who is Jesus? And how can someone other than God live a perfect life and be our Covenant head? And then of what/who is this verse speaking?
1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was with God in the beginning.
3Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4In him was life, and that life was the light of men. 5The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood[a] it.
6There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. 7He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. 8He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. 9The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.
10He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13children born not of natural descent,[c] nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.
14The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only,[d] who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
With all due respect, a man and a woman in a marriage relationship are two distinct entities - two distinct essences. Traditional trinitarianism teachs that God is a single essence - although not exactly a a single entity (it gets kind of weird at this point teaching both an essential montheism but personal tritheism...). So this analogy does not work (though I like all the ideas).
Best,
Anth
The example was to show how two persons can be equals even though there is an order of authority, that’s the example Paul gives. And God is a single essence, with a single purpose, carried out by three distinct persons with different roles.
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