Bible Teachings or Traditions of Men?

I see I didn't quote you exactly but I got the concept from this statement in your Message 141: As for your experience of "Christian" services I really don't know what to make of your description. These days there are, however, lots of "Christian" services that others of us refer to "dog and pony shows" that have nothing whatever to do with true worship or preaching, and it sounds like what you attended was a version of that, though I don't recognize your descriptive terms. Something charismatic it sounds like but you said it was Lutheran? In fact these days you may have to look very hard to find a genuinely Christian church.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Which therefore proves that your manderings have nothing to do with any "magic Unitarians" (a term purely of your own device having nothing whatsoever to do with actual Unitarians) and therefore are completely meaningless.

Excuse me, but while I didn't get your meaning as you intended it, I don't think I was that far off its implication, which is that some Unitarians -- such as yourself -- reject anything that smacks of supernaturalism in favor of philosophical discussion, while others merely reject the doctrine of the Trinity, meaning of course specifically the Deity of Christ, but do believe in the rest of the Bible, which according to you is believing in "magic".Perhaps you meant something else?

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Again, "divinity" refers ONLY to the Creator God, not to all the angels, demons and whatever other CREATED invisible beings there might be, which are "gods" only in a sort of ironic sense, as God clearly says THERE ARE NO OTHER GODS. That doesn't mean there aren't billions of spirit beings, many of which have made themselves out to be gods to various people groups over the millennia, demanding worship and bribes and the works.

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And that is your opinion with no support. I provided support from the Bible text and meanings of the Greek to support my opinion that the Bible doesn't completely support the idea that there are absolutely no other divine beings. Meaning of the word "God"

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There is nothing in the Bible that is fiction. When you say such things I realize I'm up against someone who can say anything at all and believe anything at all, and what's the point of wearing myself out debating such a bottomless pit?

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I wasn't referring to the Bible as fiction, I was referring to your comments as fiction. You provided no support, Biblical or otherwise, for your opinion.

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The Father is one of the Persons, again you are confounding the Persons with the Godhead. The Persons are independent of one another. Jesus is not God the Father, Jesus is not God the Holy Spirit, He is God the Son, the Second Person of the Trinity, God the Holy Spirit is not God the Father etc., while ALL THREE are Jehovah.

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Saying it, doesn't make it so. That all three are YHWH is what needs to be shown and is what is being debated. Pre-Nicene Writings

I've looked for a neat way to show how within the Biblical frame of reference the term "divine" only refers to the uncreated God, Jehovah. I know it's true but I can't find a solid reference. "Doctor of Divinity" refers to those educated in the Biblical theology of the one true God. The term is NEVER used in any other way from a Biblical point of view, so you AREN'T getting it from the Bible, you are imposing it on the Bible from external sources. You showed that the Bible refers to "gods," you did not show anything from the Biblical context that defines them as divine.================================================
ABE next day: You actually said the famous "Shema" -- which is still recited by Orthodox and Conservative Jews, "Hear O Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord (Or "one God" as I've heard it intoned by a rabbi, even thundered straight at me as a teenager attending a friend's Bat Mitzvah) -- you actually said you don't think the Hebrew construction denies that there are other "divinities" or something like that? That takes some chutzpah I would think. The entire religious Jewish community would of course strenuously disagree.
================================================And now this sounds like a mere semantic dodge. Call them all "divine" then according to your dictionary definition. The crucial question then is, are the other gods you insist on calling divine created beings or uncreated?And the second question is, How do you then understand the Biblical presentation of God's saying "There are no other gods," "I am God and there is no other?"And third, what's your point? Why are you so insistent on there being other "gods?" What other gods are you particularly interested in and why? Are you claiming that Jesus was a "god" as the JWs do? Do you think other gods deserve worship? And if you do, how do you avoid the charge of idolatry as Jehovah God says "I will have no other gods before Me" and "I will not give my glory to another," which certainly must refer to other gods. And so far it's been shown by what has been presented. Such as Thomas' testimony. If no Jew would ever refer to a person as Lord and God unless he believed he really was God, and would never worship a mere "god," and since Jesus did not reject his calling Him God, that part of the Trinity ought to be considered to be established. Jesus IS Jehovah. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Two references in Jeremiah -- Jer 23:6 and Jer 33:16 -- both clearly messianic passages, referring to the promised Messiah as The Branch and a King who shall be called THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS, the word "Lord" in the Hebrew being the word for Jehovah. I'm only going to quote the first one here: Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Well, he didn't, the Unitarian website is merely using his (sixth) rule for their purposes. I think I've demonstrated that in parallel cases the rule fails.Sharp himself was interested in the application of his first rule, which says that if you have two nouns joined with καὶ, and the first noun takes the article, and the second doesn't, then they do refer to the same person. He applied that to, for example, Titus 2:13: "προσδεχόμενοι τὴν μακαρίαν ἐλπίδα καὶ ἐπιφάνειαν τῆς δόξης τοῦ μεγάλου θεοῦ καὶ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ" --- "Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ". If Sharp's first rule is correct, then since "great God" ("μεγάλου θεοῦ") takes the article, ("τοῦ") whereas "our" Savior ("σωτῆρος ἡμῶν") doesn't, they must be the same person. I don't find this quite convincing, because it seems to me that although in Greek the the possessive pronoun is often used together with the article, the possessive pronoun itself might confer enough definiteness on the noun that it doesn't need the article. So although "the great God and our Saviour" might be one person, it might be two. I'd have to look into other texts of similar construction.But then in 2 Peter 1:1 we have: "Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours:" which is, in the original Greek: "Σίμων Πέτρος δοῦλος καὶ ἀπόστολος Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ τοῖς ἰσότιμον ἡμῖν λαχοῦσιν πίστιν ἐν δικαιοσύνῃ τοῦ θεοῦ ἡμῶν καὶ σωτῆρος Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ". "Our God", "θεοῦ ἡμῶν", takes the article, "τοῦ", but "Savior", "σωτῆρος" doesn't.I find this one convincing. If two people were meant, then "Savior" would surely have to be qualified separately by something, either the definite article or the word for "our".Whether Sharp's rules work in general, I'm not so sure, he has been criticized, and he was only an amateur Greek grammarian, his main interest being the abolition of the slave trade. And I have (as you've seen) found exceptions to his sixth rule as I have seen it stated (though perhaps he himself qualified it in ways of which I am unaware). However, clearly Unitarians are playing with fire if they start invoking his rules.

I love puzzles, but Greek is giving me a headache! This is just me working through this. I looked at the pros and cons on Sharp's rules and looked at sites on Greek grammar. Sharp's rules deal with nouns used as personal description of another noun. The other rules are variations of Rule 1.Now Sharp considered John 20:28 to be an exception to the rules. My guess is it wasn't considered a description of a previous noun in the sentence.I think the Trinity Delusion argument is that it is a description going back to the word "him", which is Jesus. After what I've read, I think they are stretching it. I still feel Thomas probably considered Jesus a deity in his own right as some of the early Church Father's did and didn't consider him to be YHWH. Pre-Nicene WritingsThe grouping in Psalms 35:23 isn't a description. Even the English translation of the Septuagint doesn't render it as a description. David is calling to YHWH. The English translation of the Hebrew is different. There are variations. Even from the Hebrew, my God and my Lord are not describing another noun in the sentence. Psalm 84:3 is the same issue as in 35. Here is the English translation of the Greek. They are all references to YHWH, but aren't describing a previous noun in the sentence.Here is the English rendering of the Hebrew. That's what I came up with this morning and now I'm going to eat lunch. No Greek food.

Yes, I did mean something else.While it can be said that all Unitarians are non-Trinitarian (and some even anti-Trinitarian), it cannot be said that all anti-Trinitarians are Unitarians.And it's a pretty safe bet that an anti-Trinitarian who bases his position on the Bible is not a Unitarian.Making broad statements about anti-Trinitarians as you have been doing is just plain wrong, both factually and otherwise. Rather you need to identify the small segment of the anti-Trinitarian population that applies.

This cannot be, for the reasons I've given. It is utterly impossible that any Jew would ever worship a "deity" other than Jehovah God Himself, and you are utterly wrong about the early Church Fathers.You've referred to that site for the Pre-Nicene Writings before, which has an anti-Trinitarian take on those writings, but there is nothing that I can see in them (I've read seven or eight of them to this point) that is contrary to Trinitarian thinking. I can see how anti-Trinitarians might use certain constructions to that purpose, but since I'm not a scholar of these things I simply have to trust the orthodox theologians who have never taken any of those writings in any sense other than Trinitarian that I know of. The councils that dealt with such issues never identified any of the early fathers as anything but Trinitarian and certainly they would have if there had been such a trend among them. They attacked only Arius and his followers. The constructions used by the fathers, that anti-Trinitarians probably wrest to their own purposes, such as perhaps the word "begotten" and anything that suggests a hierarchy of authority among Father, Son and Holy Spirit, are never taken that way by the orthodox who always affirm the identity of "substance" among the three despite their differing roles. All three are God by sharing the attributes of God.And I still consider the argument definitive that absolutely NO Christian, no Church Father, and no Jew either, would EVER allow that there could be any "deity" or any "god" deserving of worship other than Jehovah God Himself. The idea is unthinkable in the light of the scripture's emphatic teaching about the Oneness of God and the jealousy of God, and that He says of Himself "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me," and "I am God and there is no other," and "I will not give my glory to another" and so on. Jesus CANNOT be "another" which would mean being of some other order or "substance" than Jehovah, and speak as He did in John 17, asking God the Father to glorify Him with the glory He had before the world began, because God WILL not glorify "another," as only the uncreated God Himself is worthy of glory. There simply CANNOT be any Biblical argument for Jesus being a lesser "god" deserving of worship.And the Trinitarian understanding is preserved in most of the Creeds and Confessions.======================================================== Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I believe John and Abigail Adams, who were Unitarians, did just that.If I'm mischaracterizing some Unitarians all I can say is I'm not focused on the varieties of that camp, my concern is ONLY with the Biblical basis for the Trinity and whatever arguments against it happen to come up, which as far as I can see doesn't require me to know a lot about the various sources.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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ALTER2EGO:
Not only that, Thomas was an imperfect, sinful human being. So even if, for the sake of argument, one would accept that Thomas thought Jesus was also Jehovah, what does that prove? Jesus' true relationship to Jehovah was provided three verses later, in the very same chapter 20 of John that you used earlier. So at this point, you are banking on Thomas who was so lacking in faith, that he would not believe the other disciples who told him Jesus had been resurrected. The result was that Jesus had to show himself to Thomas, as indicated by the verses you quoted earlier.

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PURPLEDAWN:
A bit lacking. Thomas is an imperfect human being? That can be said about the author of the books, the church fathers, and all humans, which includes us in this thread. Not reasonable counter. According to Goodspeed, the book of John was probably written as a gospel for the Greeks.

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ALTER2EGO -to- PURPLEDAWN:
If your position is that anything anyone said in the Bible was correct, simply because it's in the Bible, then you will have to apply that to all of the acts of rebellion and false statements made by various ones in the Bible, including the lies the Jewish religious leaders used against Jesus, that resulted in Jesus' execution.Not only that, you are ignoring the fact that the context to John 20:28 where Thomas said "My Lord and my God" does not indicate Jesus was also Jehovah. Part of the context is seen at John 20:1-3, and 9, which clearly states Jesus died. Jesus' death is a contradiction of the trinity dogma, which says the following: Christendom's trinity, written in Article I of The Catholic Faith, is defined as follows:
"There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions; of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; the maker and preserver of all things both visible and indivisible. And in unity of this Godhead there be THREE PERSONS, of ONE substance, power, and ETERNITY; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost."
http://www.sevenwholedays.org/2011/03/10/article-i/
http://mb-soft.com/believe/txc/thirtyni.htmAn eternal person cannot die. Jesus Christ ceased to exist when he died. At the moment of his death, his claim to eternity disappeared forever.The nonsensical argument by Faith that Jesus the Man died but "Jesus the God" cannot die is pure fallacy. Jesus the Man and Jesus the god are not two different entities. They are one and the same individual. When Jehovah transferred the life force of the pre-human Jesus into the womb of Mary, Jesus the god no longer existed. Therefore, when Jesus the Man died, so did "Jesus the God" because they were not separated from one another at the time that Jesus the Man died--unless a Trinitarian could successfully argue that Jesus the God continued to exist when Jesus the Man died. In that case, the Trinitarians would end up with a 4-prong god instead of a 3-prong god.Edited by Alter2Ego, : No reason given.

But in this particular case I think the context itself determines that the reference is to one person only, since nobody is expecting the "glorious appearing" of anyone but Jesus Christ Himself. Titus 2:13 and 2 Peter 1:1 are of course both good texts for demonstrating the Deity of Christ and therefore contributing to the validation of the Trinity, and your being convinced by the Greek that one person is meant in 2 Peter 1:1 is very useful for my argument if that scripture comes up here, since PD is likely to raise the same objection about the Greek that you have answered. So thanks.I hope you will continue to study Greek. Who knows, eventually you may be able to write an Introduction to Koine Greek to add to your other achievements. Interesting observation. Hope such Unitarians are paying attention. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : to add part from 2 Peter 1:1 down.

Nonsense. Pure sophistic silliness, and of course utterly contrary to orthodox Biblical understanding down the centuries.See the orange section at the bottom of Message 139 where I finally recognize a crucial point about this:Just as human beings' bodies die but our souls/spirits go on living and are immortal, the same is all the more true of Jesus, whose soul/spirit is not merely human but of the nature of God Himself, eternal, existing before, during and after His incarnation as a man. We will live forever in one state or another, though our lives began at our birth into this world, while He is eternal and only His human incarnation began at birth into this world. The death of His body cannot affect His eternal soul/spirit.Since He could not remain dead (Acts 2:23-24)* but rose to life, having received a renewed/changed body (Luke 24:36-39)* so will those who trust on Him be raised in renewed/changed bodies at the Last Day. (I Cor 15:49-53)*But at death, no, the spirit/soul is separated from the body until that Day.In other words, mere human beings are composed of two natures in the same way Jesus is, a physical and a spiritual, and nobody suggests that means we are made up of two separate entities. [Actually it is three natures, body soul and spirit but I was simplifying to distinguish between the physical and the invisible parts of us. Here's the scripture reference: 1 Thessalonians 5:23*]=======================================================
*Acts 2:23-24 Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain: Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that he should be holden of it.*Luke 24:36-39 And as they thus spake, Jesus himself stood in the midst of them, and saith unto them, Peace [be] unto you. But they were terrified and affrighted, and supposed that they had seen a spirit. And he said unto them, Why are ye troubled? and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.*1Cor 15:49-53 And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal [must] put on immortality.*1Thessalonians 5:23 And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and [I pray God] your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
======================================================= Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : attempt to clarify last three paragraphsEdited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : to add scripture referencesEdited by Faith, : No reason given.

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If your position is that anything anyone said in the Bible was correct, simply because it's in the Bible, then you will have to apply that to all of the acts of rebellion and false statements made by various ones in the Bible, including the lies the Jewish religious leaders used against Jesus, that resulted in Jesus' execution.

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In the OP (Message 1) you asked: Scriptures from the Bible that supposedly support the Doctrine of the Trinity (No, the word Trinity is not in the Bible.) were provided. Some of us proceeded to argue that these scriptures did not support the 3 in 1 God idea.Proclaiming that Thomas is imperfect, so what he says doesn't count, or that nothing in the Bible is correct is unsupported and out of line for someone who claims to have the deepest respect for God's inspired Word. The fruit doesn't seem to match the tree.

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Not only that, you are ignoring the fact that the context to John 20:28 where Thomas said "My Lord and my God" does not indicate Jesus was also Jehovah.

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Actually you haven't been paying attention. The article I linked to was not in support of the Trinitarian position and my position has been that Jesus is not YHWH.

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An eternal person cannot die. Jesus Christ ceased to exist when he died. At the moment of his death, his claim to eternity disappeared forever.

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The nonsensical argument by Faith that Jesus the Man died but "Jesus the God" cannot die is pure fallacy. Jesus the Man and Jesus the god are not two different entities. They are one and the same individual. When Jehovah transferred the life force of the pre-human Jesus into the womb of Mary, Jesus the god no longer existed. Therefore, when Jesus the Man died, so did "Jesus the God" because they were not separated from one another at the time that Jesus the Man died--unless a Trinitarian could successfully argue that Jesus the God continued to exist when Jesus the Man died. In that case, the Trinitarians would end up with a 4-prong god instead of a 3-prong god.

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You haven't provided Biblical support for this opinion.I think the general idea is more along these lines: When YHWH transferred the life force of the pre-human Jesus into the womb of Mary, Jesus lost his divine powers and become fully human. YHWH gave him the power to do certain things when necessary. So after Jesus the man died, he was given life again by YHWH and his divine powers were restored. Then we have YHWH and his son Jesus. (I can write stories too.)