Apologetics Forum: Ask questions about Christianity/Debate doctrinesBeware of this Different Gospel of ChristREAPER wrote:Aineo wrote:I have studied John's prologue in the context of the OT prophecies, which is one reason I now reject the Trinity. The Trinity is a doctrine that was not even developed until about the 2nd century A.D.
1). That is a typical straw man. You confuse the biblical data with particular doctrinal words that the church used to defined the biblical revelation of God.
Nice way to try to avoid the OT prophecies. It seems when intellectuals cannot address a point they pull out the old strawman avoidance tactic: Description of Straw Man
The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person's actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position. This sort of "reasoning" has the following pattern:
1. Person A has position X.
2. Person B presents position Y (which is a distorted version of X).
3. Person B attacks position Y.
4. Therefore X is false/incorrect/flawed.
This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because attacking a distorted version of a position simply does not constitute an attack on the position itself. One might as well expect an attack on a poor drawing of a person to hurt the person.
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/straw-man.html
If this is the best you can do I suggest you retire from this discussion. Aineo wrote:Therefore your suggestions presupposes that God is three distinct egos in the one God, which cannot be established in the OT.
2). It is usually alleged by unitarian groups that the Old Testament is entirely unconscious to the idea that God is multi-personal—the one Being fully existing in three distinct Persons. This, to be sure, is an allegation that is generated from the Oneness/unitarian theological starting point: monotheism = a unipersonal God. However, a quick cursory reading of the Old Testament only proves the converse.
I highlighted why your response simply begs the question of what the OT teaches. It takes more than a quick and cursory study of the OT to learn the truth of God’s nature.
Your appeal to the early church is ludicrous, since the early church after John’s death was extremely divided on many issues. So lets address the “Us” and “Our” in the few OT Scriptures you cited. This argument, however, is grievously flawed. In fact, a great number of Trinitarian Christian scholars have long abandoned the notion that Genesis 1:26 implies a plurality of persons in the godhead. Rather, Christian scholars overwhelmingly agree that the plural pronoun in this verse is a reference to God’s ministering angels who were created previously, and the Almighty spoke majestically in the plural, consulting His heavenly court. Let’s read the comments of a number of preeminent Trinitarian Bible scholars on this subject. For example, the evangelical Christian author Gordon J. Wenham, who is no foe of the Trinity and authored a widely respected two-volume commentary on the Book of Genesis, writes on this verse,
Christians have traditionally seen [Genesis 1:26] as adumbrating [foreshadowing] the Trinity. It is now universally admitted that this was not what the plural meant to the original author.1
If you had attended any one of my lectures you would know that the New International Version is hardly a Bible that can be construed as being friendly to Judaism. Yet, the NIV Study Bible also writes in its commentary on Genesis 1:26,
Us . . . Our . . . Our. God speaks as the Creator-king, announcing His crowning work to the members of His heavenly court. (see 3:22; 11:7; Isaiah 6:8; I Kings 22:19-23; Job 15:8; Jeremiah 23:18)2
Charles Caldwell Ryrie, a highly regarded dispensationalist professor of Biblical Studies at the Philadelphia College of Bible and author of the widely read Bible commentary, The Ryrie Study Bible, writes in his short and to-the-point annotation on Genesis 1:26,
Us . . . Our. Plurals of majesty.3
The Liberty Annotated Study Bible, a Bible commentary published by the Reverend Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, similarly remarks on this verse,
The plural pronoun “Us” is most likely a majestic plural from the standpoint of Hebrew grammar and syntax.4
The 10-volume commentary by Keil and Delitzsch is considered by many to be the most influential exposition on the “Old Testament” in evangelical circles. Yet in its commentary on Genesis 1:26, we find,
The plural “We” was regarded by the fathers and earlier theologians almost unanimously as indicative of the Trinity; modern commentators, on the contrary, regard it either as pluralis majestatis . . . No other explanation is left, therefore, than to regard it as pluralis majestatis . . . .5
The question that immediately comes to mind is: What would compel these evangelical scholars -- all of whom are Trinitarian -- to determinedly conclude that Genesis 1:26 does not suggest the Trinity, but rather a majestic address to the angelic hosts of heaven? Why would the comments of the above conservative Christian writers so perfectly harmonize with the Jewish teaching on this verse?
The answer to this question is simple. If you search the Bible you will find that when the Almighty speaks of “us” or “our,” He is addressing His ministering angels. In fact, only two chapters later, God continues to use the pronoun “us” as He speaks with His angels. At the end of the third chapter of Genesis the Almighty relates to His angels that Adam and his wife have eaten from the Tree of Knowledge and must therefore be prevented from eating from the Tree of Life as well; for if man would gain access to the Tree of Life he will “become like one of us.” The Creator then instructs his angels known as Cherubim to stand at the gate of the Garden of Eden waving a flaming sword so that mankind is prevented from entering the Garden and eating from the Tree of Life. Let’s examine Genesis 3:22-24.
Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever” -- therefore the Lord God sent him out of the Garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. So He drove out the man; and He placed cherubim at the east of the Garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.
This use of the majestic plural in Genesis 3:22-24 is what is intended by the NIV Study Bible’s annotation on Genesis 1:26 (above). At the end of its comment on this verse, the NIV Study Bible provides a number of Bible sources from the Jewish scriptures to support its position that “God speaks as the Creator-king, announcing His crowning work to the members of His heavenly court.” The verses cited are: Genesis 3:22, 11:7, Isaiah 6:8, I Kings 22:19-23, Job 15:8, and Jeremiah 23:18. These verses convey to the attentive Bible reader that the heavenly abode of the Creator is filled with the ministering angels who attend the Almighty and to whom He repeatedly refers when using the plural pronoun “Us.”6
http://www.outreachjudaism.org/genesis1-26.html
Also since you posted that Justin Martyr was a heretic I find you appealing to him a bit odd.
Now based on the above I don’t see a need to address the rest of what you posted to support your assertion that the OT shows God is triune, since your explanation is based on what by your own admission is a quick and cursory reading of the OT with this exception. The Angel of the Lord is just that an angel. I will again point you to the Hebrew Law of Agency. 3). That was not a response to what I wrote earlier just a denial.
Aineo wrote:I am fully aware of the fact that Scriptures tells us that God, the Father, the Holy Spirit, and the Son all possess personal attributes and why should that be proof of the Trinity? After all the Son is a human being and the Holy Spirit is another title for God, the Father. The fact the Holy Spirit and the Father are referred to as "He" simply reflects that God is portrayed in Scriptures as a Father to the Jews as well as our Father.
This is another case of you begging the question since you have not refuted what I posted, you simply refuse to accept personal attributes to not a Trinity make. 4). Again you confuse categories here and did not respond as to why personal pronouns are used to refer to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Again, the use of personal pronouns for the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit do not equate to the Trinity since the Father and the Holy Spirit are one. 5). I only wanted to point out to that kai is used in several different semantic senses. There are 9,153 instances kai in the NT (cf. William D. Mounce, Basics of Biblical Greek Grammar [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1993], 422). Of the total NT occurrences of kai, 4,829 times it is translated (in virtually every translation) as the simple connective "and," with only 97 times as the ascensive "even" (cf. John R. Kohlenberger, III, Edward W. Goodrick, James A. Swanson, The Greek-English Concordance to the New Testament [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997], 401).
In fact kai is used to clearly and personally distinguish the Father and the Son in all of Paul salutations (Granville Sharp rule #5) note the following:
The specific benchmark of the Pauline corpus was his salutations. He included them faithfully in the opening of every one of his letters. He worshipped God the Father and Jesus Christ from (apo) whom grace and peace flowed. As we have already seen, Paul comprehended the terms theos ("God") and kurios ("Lord") as equal designations of deity. Furthermore, a plain reading of the salutations, without a prior theological bias, clearly distinguishes God the Father from the Lord Jesus Christ.
You are actually supporting my position. Paul makes a distinction between the Father and the Son and never tells us they are one God. In fact as I have pointed out in 1 Corinthians 8, Paul tells us there is but one God, the Father. Also kurios and theos are designations of deity, but kurios is also a designation of authority and is used for kings, slave owners, and etc.
Oneness as it equates to Modalism is a cult and is not what I advocate, which is part of your problem Unitarianism is not Modalism. The Jews are Unitarians but they are not Modalists. Your assertion that I believe that “kai” can and should be translated “even” tells me you have not bothered to read my posts and you have assumed that I support Modalism.
As to the balance of your ill-thought out and hasty reply I am not going to waste my time with it since you are not reading what I post, which is what I have found on many message boards. You would rather accept a doctrine that was first proposed by Origen in the 3rd century and fully defined in the 4th century, a doctrine you cannot fully establish without ignoring the vast amount of Biblical evidence that Jesus was born a man, died a man, was resurrected as a man, and is as Paul wrote “the man, Jesus Christ”, who is the only mediator between God and man. You would rather label Peter and Paul as obfuscating the truth than accept the literal meaning of what they wrote. This is what Origen did, he denied that anyone can understand God’s word by taking God’s word as literal truth.
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