Imagican said:
There is ONLY ONE God. And there is ONLY One "Begotten" Son of God; Jesus Christ.
Those two statements are completely in line with the doctrine of the Trinity.
Imagican said:
But what you and MOST others seems to unable to 'grasp' is that 'in the beginning' can ONLY be concerning a 'text' written by and TO 'mankind', this reference is most definitely pertaining to 'in the beginning of THAT which pertains to US, (mankind). For we have little information availible concerning a 'time BEFORE' US. Yet we KNOW that there WAS this 'time' for we DO have a 'little' information concerning a 'battle in heaven' and such.
This is not quite correct.
Look at Gen. 1:1 - "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth". This is the point at which
all of Creation came into being,
only God existed prior to "the beginning".
Please,
please follow closely and take your time going through the rest of this post.
Imagican said:
While I WILL not state that Christ HAS NOT always 'been', I will certainly state that we have NOT been given 'clear enough' information to discern the truth of this one way or the other. But MOST scripture indicates that GOD was FIRST and THEN there was Christ. How this 'works' EXACTLY is NOT something that we have been offered in its entirety.
Only in the 'minds' of men are these answers able to be offered in 'belief'. For there is NOTHING contained within The Word that offers an EXACT statement that Christ has ALWAYS 'been'. Only that He existed 'in the beginning'.
But
we have been given very clear information, and more than once.
Now compare Gen. 1:1 with John 1:1-2 "1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God." John is echoing the words of Moses--at that point which was the beginning, the beginning of Creation,
the Word was already in existence.
The Greek makes it crystal clear what John is saying. The tense used in verses 1 and 2 is the imperfect; this is
extremely important. This means that John 1:1-2 actually read: "In the beginning
already was the Word, and the Word
already was with God, and the Word
already was God. He
already was in the beginning with God". The point is that of a continuous action in the past, that is, eternity past: the Word was in existence prior to all of Creation.
This is further supported by verse 3: "
All things were made through him, and
without him was not any thing made that was made". Not only does the English make this clear, as the underlined portions show, but the Greek tense used in this verse is aorist. What that means is that verse 2 actually reads: "All things
came into being through him...". This is used in verse 14 as well: "And the Word
became flesh and dwelt among us...". What the aorist tense introduces is
a point in time--a point in time when everything that was created was created, and a point in time when the Word became flesh.
So your only way around verse 3 is to say that "all things" doesn't really mean "all things", and that "without him was not any thing made that was made" doesn't really mean what it states either. The
only logical conclusion from verse 3 is that Jesus was not made. The English translation of verse 3 does you in without even having to go into the Greek of verse 1.
John is contrasting the eternalness of Christ and his role in Creation with the point in which everything came into existence in time and when the Word became flesh, entering into time. And this is in the prologue of John, this sets up the rest of the book and much meaning hinges on the points he is making.
This is further supported by Col. 1:16-17:
Col 1:16 For
by him all things were created,
in heaven and on earth,
visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities--
all things were created through him and for him.
Col 1:17 And
he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
This is
perfectly in agreement with John 1:1-3 as stated above.
Everything was created through Jesus and he is
before everything. Unless Scripture doesn't actually mean "everything" when it says "everything" or "all things" when it says "all things", then this passage too clearly states that Jesus existed prior to anything that has been created. Again, the only logical conclusion is that he is not created.
As you can see, to say that Jesus has not existed for eternity, to say that he is a created being, one has to completely change the grammar of both Greek and English. This is not some man-made doctrine, this is precisely what the Bible is saying. A bit of the depth is lost in the translation from Greek to English but the English is still clear enough.