Bible Teachings or Traditions of Men?

You may of course argue for this view of it if you want, GDR, but in that case please be clear that you are arguing AGAINST the orthodox understanding of the Trinity. What you are describing here is known as the heresy of Modalism, the idea that God "manifests" in three aspects. That is not the orthodox understanding, which is that indeed they ARE three separate persons or personalities. That is the best we can do in English with the Biblical facts that describe them as working independently of each other while nevertheless each having the attributes of God.Let's try to keep the various ideas about the Trinity clear.

You asked what evidence one would expect to see. I indicated what that evidence would look like (it's present in modern Cheetahs).How is this failing to make a point? It's not an opinion. You asked a question, I gave you an answer that you could check for accuracy in less than a minute. This is of course, an opinion Edited by Larni, : No reason given.Edited by Larni, : No reason given.

That is your understanding of Christian orthodoxy. I presented what I suggest is orthodox and more than that it is the Biblical view as well.The trouble is Faith is that your view comes out of the tradition that wants absolute answers. When we look at the Biblical story or the human story in general we can see that God just doesn't work that way.

It is not only my understanding of Christian orthodoxy, it IS Christian orthodoxy as anyone who knows anything at all about Christian history ought to know. I'd have to check but I believe it's affirmed in most if not all of the Creeds, it's in the Westminster Confession, it's in the words to the 200-year-old hymn Holy Holy Holy, and so on and so forth. One God in Three Persons IS the historical orthodox Trinity. The scripture references I gave ought to more than suffice to prove that the orthodox doctrine of One God in Three Persons is as I say, thoroughly Biblical. And yours has been understood for some 1700 years to be heresy. Sorry, you are living in lala land if you think your view can be called "orthodox." The trouble with you GDR is that you don't mind telling other people why they believe what they believe, which is offensive and stupid as well. What rot to say that because one HAS FOUND absolute answers that must be because one WANTS them. No, there ARE absolute answers and I was NOT looking for them when I found them. I had made myself perfectly content with as much chaos and ambiguity as you could find congenial to your own made-up views before I became a believer. Who is this "we" to whom you refer? Certainly not the hundreds of millions of true Bible believing Christians down the centuries that you are judging by your own idiosyncratic one-man religion. I suspect the Lord is going to ask you when you come before Him just where you got the gall to prefer your own view to His careful teachings?

I thought it was your argument that that would be the case if they were "parts" of a whole. But if as I pointed out they are individuals, individual personalities, there is no requirement that they know exactly what each other knows. They are capable of independent action and, at least in this particular instance, the Father can have independent thought as well. ABE: Have to confess here that I'd gone off the rails with this argument. In a later post to Dr. A I provide some commentary quotes that show that this is regarded as a difficult and controversial verse because of course God in all three Persons WOULD have to know what the others know. So I was wrong about this.

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Among other possible explanations some understand this to mean that Jesus as man did not have the knowledge.Who said it had to "make sense?" As I said you aren't required to grasp or understand the Trinity, just acknowledge that it is founded on Biblical statements. That is also not what the Trinity is. As DEMONSTRATED by the scripture references (do read a few of them, do try to get SOME understanding of what it is based on), what SCRIPTURE reveals, whether it makes sense to us or not, is ONE GOD IN THREE PERSONS. It was FROM the scripture that the concept of the Trinity was formulated. Isn't that how it is with individual persons? Amazing how ignorant upstarts feel free to come along and redefine a concept that was hammered out from scripture by the best minds in Christian history and preserved in the Creeds and Confessions down the centuries. No, not parts, that's a heresy as affirmed by those best minds down the centuries, men who KNEW scripture, which most certainly can't be said of you. Why don't you take some time to learn just what the Trinity is, how it is derived from scripture and so on? I've given you enough information to do that so that you don't have to make up all this arrogant ignorant heretical sophomoric BS. Or if you don't want to bother to find out anything, then go crawl back under your rock and leave the thread to people who are willing to consider the facts. Based on the argument as I gave it, it is entirely consistent. Try following the logic instead of just chasing that one loose marble that keeps rattling around in your skull. Oh I'm sure you are very very good at that, you much prefer it to thinking and considering the facts as given. Another one-man wonder here, EvC seems to attract such self-appointed sages. I didn't know you were asking why. But why should anyone know why? God the Father keeps some knowledge to Himself, I see no reason why He shouldn't, and I see no reason why anyone should know why He does what He does if He hasn't revealed it to us. I don't know, I didn't check. It's consistent with his conclusions in any case.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : unclosed quotes, other little errorsEdited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I re-read what I wrote and I could have said it better. Yes I believe that God is in three persons. I have no problem with the creeds except for what the creeds leave out, which is Jesus' whole Kingdom message. (The creeds essentially jump right from Christ's birth to His death leaving out just about everything in between. This is probably due to the fact that the creeds were written to establish the controversial parts with the non-controversial left out.)Understanding the personages of God the Father and Jesus the Son is relatively easy. We see Jesus praying to the Father and we see the Holy Spirit working through Jesus. For example this verse from Luke 10.

quote:

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21 At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth,

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So yes, I see the Trinity as being 3 persons but at the same time there is only one God. Jesus was born flesh and blood. There was a specific date of His birth and a specific moment of the death of that part of His life. During that time, Jesus embodied Yahweh's return to His people and Jesus with the Holy Spirit revealed God to all. The difference lies in our understanding of how God reaches out to us through the scriptures. You believe the Scriptures to be inerrant and essentially dictated by God. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) I understand the Scriptures to be inspired in the sense that God working through the minds and imaginations of people inspired writers to record their histories and ideas, but not giving them word for word instructions. As a result we wind up with accounts that are both personally and culturally conditioned. As a result there are inconsistencies and misunderstandings of God within all that was written.IMHO the Bible is God-breathed in that God's word is breathed through the Scriptures, and that He informs us through the Scriptures. As Christians we worship Jesus and not the Bible. If we truly want to understand Jesus we have to understand Him in His Jewish context which requires reading the Gospels and then referring back to the OT to see what references Jesus was using. Then to understand the OT we have to read the words of Jesus in the Gospels to sort out what in the OT was of God. Firstly, you have your own view of what it means to be a Bible believing Christian. I consider myself a Bible believing Christian but I believe it differently than you do. As far as facing God when I die, I have no doubt that He is going to far more concerned with my heart than He is with my theology. I also would rather face Him with the idea that I took my understanding of Him from the one He sent with His Word, namely Jesus, as opposed to understanding Him from a group of early scribes. Frankly I don't think that I would be thrilled to face Him in the belief that He is capable of ordering genocide or public stoning, and furthermore I if I'm wrong I am not at all sure that I would care to spend eternity with Him.I don't just worship Him because He is God, I worship Him because He is all loving. If I am wrong then frankly that's fine by me because that is where my heart is.

This is not a matter of saying it "better," this is a FAR cry from what you said about God NOT subsisting in three persons but in three "aspects" which you asserted with rather a lot of emphasis as if correcting what I'd been saying all along. The two are so utterly different I wonder how you can so easily say the one and yet think you are saying the other. In any case now you are agreeing with the orthodox position. I wonder how long that will last. Probably. The nature of Christ as God incarnate was always the controversial issue. How rapidly you came around from your previous heretical assertion! Not sure why you included this but no matter. First, let's be clear that I was objecting to your offensive notion that anyone believes as I do BECAUSE of some need for absolute answers or certainty. That's offensive and wrong.Second, this whole flap started with your heretical statement about God's subsisting in "aspects" rather than persons. If you have taken that back then I'm not sure there's anything else that needs to be discussed.Third, Of COURSE the scriptures are culturally and personally conditioned, they are written by individual personalities in their own style and in the idiom of their time. That is obvious and affirmed by believers in Bible inerrancy. What poppycock to use that obvious fact to suggest that they are therefore full of inconsistencies and misunderstandings and not the revelation of God. You just like your own thoughts better than God's, which is the case with most heretics. ALL of it was of God, and this is something that can be found in the very words of Jesus you think distinguish between some that was and some that was not. You are abysmally ignorant if you don't know the depths of cultural knowledge that good Bible exegetes bring to their exposition of the scriptures. I am in fact certain that you know very little about how the OT informs the NT and the NT defines how we are to read the OT. If you think ANY of it is not of God, as you suggest above is the case with the OT, that is not just believing "differently," that is simply NOT BEING a "Bible believer." You can call yourself an aardvark if you like, that doesn't mean you are one. A Bible believer BELIEVES THE BIBLE. What does that have to do with "my" own view of anything? it is what it is and you are NOT a Bible believer, which has a very clear HISTORICAL CONSENSUAL meaning. Sheesh. You may be very surprised to learn that it IS your heart that is seen in your theology, your corrupted heart's preference for your own opinion over God's for starters, your corrupted heart's rejection of the true faith handed down the centuries. "The heart is deceitful above all else, who can know it?" said Jeremiah. You are a fool to trust in your heart. You are going to have quite an unhappy awakening if you think you are going to get anywhere with THAT piece of delusion. Jesus Himself is the true Author of ALL the scriptures, both OT and NT, the written Word is all of a piece with the Logos Himself, His very own revelation to those who have ears to hear. He Himself inspired those scribes you are denigrating, and He taught that those who despise His sheep in fact despise Him, so don't be surprised if He doesn't take kindly to your dismissing the words of His own appointed scribes. I could quote the scriptures themselves extolling the scriptures (such as Psalm 19) but you'd probably just say you agree with all that and miss the point that the scriptures are perfect. Yes it's very fashionable these days to think oneself morally superior to the God of perfect justice, as many of the threads here attest. I tremble for you. Accusing God of sin is not a place I'd want to be. GDR, again you are depending on your deceitful heart (and you're pretty proud of yourself for that too, aren't you?). You are depending on your OWN narrow idea of what "loving" means and all the rest of it. God gave us the scriptures so that we could be disabused of our own errors. Humility means giving up what WE think for what HE has shown us, and since a great deal of it does not sit well with our fallen minds, which can be seen every day on this forum, you must give up what your fallen mind tells you if you want truly to enter in to HIS mind and learn HIS ways. He is NOT a genocidal maniac, He is a just and merciful loving and kind God who always does right in ALL the scriptures you dislike as well as those you like. His love reaches deeper than you can have any idea as long as you are depending on your own fallible mind. Humble yourself as your own favorite verse counsels, and submit to HIS mind rather than your own.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

However, your Blue Letter guy does teach that Jesus is omnipotent, and the verse Pressie cites does make it look like he isn't.

Perhaps you meant to say "omniscient?"OK, I went and looked it up and it turns out this is one of those passages that is hard to understand, but nobody takes it to challenge Jesus' Deity which is so thoroughly affirmed in so many other parts of scripture this one verse could hardly be taken to contradict it.Here is JF&B's commentary on Mark 13:32 at Blue Letter Bible: It should also perhaps be noted that Jesus as incarnate Christ, as man, is subordinate to the Father in role though He is still God and must have the attributes of God. He intentionally gave up the prerogatives of Deity to become man. Which doesn't mean He gave up Deity itself, which He couldn't do anyway, but He gave up the prerogatives attached to it, as expressed in Philippians 2: Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

It isn’t that different. We have God the Father who created all that is that and who art in Heaven. We have Jesus who was born into time as a flesh and blood human being who embodied God’s return giving us the unvarnished truth about the Father, and there is the Holy Spirit who is the connection between God’s heavenly dimension and our Earthly one. Three aspects of God in the three persons of God. It grew out of the reformation when the Church kept the Bible away from the hands of the people, allowing themselves the final word on what it said. The concept that you believe in grew out of that. I hadn’t realized it was a flap. I thought it was a discussion. They are not just culturally conditioned by style but by content both in the accounts of events and in the nature of God. Jesus says love your enemies whereas as Joshua says slaughter them. As you have pointed out in another thread you feel it is wasting time to read the thoughts of those who disagree with you. I have shelves of books which I’ve read with a variety of views including yours. I don’t read just to affirm what I already believe and as a matter of fact I make a point of reading views which differ from my own and am open to having my views corrected, which has happened many times. I believe the Bible in that I believe that what the writers wrote they intended it to be believed in one sense or another. It is your view that when it says that God has said that they are to stone to death the some poor smuck for picking up firewood on the Sabbath that God actually said that and then you look around for justification. When Jesus says that we are to pray to be forgiven as we forgive you must believe that He excluded the one He called Father from that. When Jesus contradicts portions of the OT I believe Jesus, whereas you go with the Bible. As I have said before, it is Christianity not Biblianity. Your view of Jesus makes Jesus all God and not man at all. It is essentially the heretical docetic view of Jesus although I know you would dispute that. I’m wondering why you think Jesus would bother to pray, to the Father, to not have to go through with what He knew would happen to Him in Jerusalem. If He had full comprehension of what the eventual outcome would be then why Gethsemane? Yes He was the embodiment of God the Father but He was still a flesh and blood human being and went to the cross as an tremendous act of Faith. I hardly think of myself as morally superior to God and I’m certainly not trying to be fashionable. (Just ask my wife about that. ) It is you who are accusing God of sin. It is you who agree that He advocates genocide and public stoning. If you are right and God does advocate those things then why would you want to worship Him? I know this isn’t true of you but through human history people have attributed those ideas to God as it justified their own lust for power. We see examples of that in the OT. God has shown us in the OT how easy it is for people to go off track. Faith, it is your mind that has told you that you are to understand the Bible in the way that you do. Why is my concept of loving any more narrow than yours? I’ll go back to the idea of public stoning. The OT tells us that prostitutes are to be stoned. (Jesus of course showed how prostitutes are to be loved and forgiven but we’ll ignore that.) Your so-called loving God is going to take someone who has no other way of keeping life going except to sell her body, maybe because she had been severely abused in the first place, and have the people that He loves take her out and stone her with all the good townsfolk looking on. First off, where is the love for this poor abused woman and secondly what does this do to the hearts of the people He loves. All it can possibly do is harden the hearts of those who are called to reflect His love into the world.It has nothing to do with my humility. (Actually it’s one of my attributes I’m most proud of. ) I am looking for truth. I have no doubt that much of what I believe is wrong, but as I said before I worship a God of love, not a God who advocates genocide and public stoning. He gave us Jesus. I think we should listen to Him.God speaks to us through the Bible, IMHO you seem to be more concerned with justifying your beliefs than you are in hearing what He actually has to tell you.

Indeed. Yup.

What? I'm sorry, I can't make sense out of what you say here. I'm sure you know the Reformation didn't keep the Bible away from the people, right? You DO know that it was the Roman Church that did that, right? And that the Reformation recovered the importance of the scripture, both as the authoritative foundation of Christian belief, which had been lost through the centuries of Roman domination, and as the possession of everyone, not just priests, and that for centuries the Roman church had been persecuting and killing those who translated it into the people's languages.The "concept that I believe in" means what, something to do with this supposed need for certainty or whatever you are saying? And it grew out of what?Out of the recovery of the Bible perhaps? Well, if you mean that I attribute my beliefs very much to the work of the Reformation and the recovery of the Bible, certainly that's true, but what it has to do with some supposed "need for certainty" have no idea. The Reformation is regarded as the recovery of the true faith itself, from the corruptions and pagan superstitions of Rome, not something new but a recovery and a refinement of the truth. Absolute poppycock. This is a perfect example of the fallen mind distorting scripture. Start here: It was GOD who guided Joshua which is obvious from merely reading the book, Joshua himself determined none of it except where they may have acted in error as God's people often did, and God's objective was judgment against sin, for which Joshua and his army were the instrument.Joshua was the head of a NATION at war with enemies defined by God. Jesus on the other hand is speaking to INDIVIDUALS, He doesn't address nations AT ALL EVER, He's always talking to His own personal followers, to individuals who believe in Him. We are PERSONALLY to love our PERSONAL enemies, but that has absolutely nothing to do with how NATIONS are to deal with enemies, especially now when there is no national people of God, but all nations are fundamentally pagan. Jesus did leave room for the need for a sword which certainly contradicts any stupid ideas about not defending oneself against enemies under some circumstances.A lot of the differences between Jesus' teaching and the ways God guided the Israelites have to do with the fact that much of the OT is symbolic or intended as types or shadows of a reality yet to come, mostly the advent of the Messiah Himself but also involving spiritual warfare against Satan's kingdoms and the like. Nevertheless, in context all God's doings with the Israelites were righteous.THERE IS NO CONTRADICTION, there is merely the usual mishandling of scripture by somebody who has dismissed all the orthodox writings down the centuries. Jesus IS the Bible for pete's sake, the Bible is our source of knowledge of what Jesus said. You have some other source? What kind of word games are you playing here? Believing the Bible means believing Jesus as He speaks in the Bible. Good grief. Gosh, not just straightforwardly BELIEVED, but "believed in one sense or another?" I have NO idea what that could possibly mean. If the Bible is God's word, as I know it is, then if I don't understand something in it I have to see if I can understand what God meant at that point or put it aside for later when I can't. I certainly don't just decide my inability to understand is the basis for throwing out a part of scripture, as you do, making yourself God's judge.So I take such a passage as about stoning for picking up sticks on the Sabbath as a revelation of how important the law against working on the Sabbath is, and that can lead me to understand how Jesus is our Sabbath now. You of course miss any such meanings, you just act on your own kneejerk reactions and make yourself God's judge. That poor schmuck KNEW THE LAW AND VIOLATED IT with knowledge, but you think him innocent? Get a clue GDR. God said don't eat the fruit of this tree, but they ate it and you want to say they're innocent? Scripture is given to LEARN FROM. But you like to teach God instead and anyone who believes God, you're so much smarter than He and us. What? You dare to treat God as on a level with human beings? Am I getting this right? What is the matter with you? Oh balderdash. If I'm addressing topics that pertain to His being God, that doesn't mean I deny His humanity. Jesus WAS human and that DOES explain Gethsemane. Again you are confused or playing games. BECAUSE YOURS COMES OUT OF YOUR OWN FALLEN MIND AND EXPERIENCE AGAINST THE BIBLE AND MINE COMES FROM THE BIBLE WHICH IS THE ONLY FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIAN FAITH. THEY ARE ALSO TOLD TO GO AND SIN NO MORE, THAT'S WHAT YOU FORGET.Second thought: Where does it say prostitutes are to be stoned? What exactly are you talking about? Prostitutes or adulterers? I don't know of a case where stoning was prescribed for prostitutes, even in the Old Testament, perhaps I've forgotten something, apparently a big something if so, but I know it was prescribed for adulterers and Jesus released the adulteress on the basis of the sins of her judges, not her own supposed innocence.IF GOD PRESCRIBED STONING, meaning the death penalty as done in that day, it was to keep the sinner from infecting the rest of the people with the sin and that IS a loving thing to do. The Israelites were surrounded by idolatrous nations who practiced all kinds of sexual sins in the service of the "worship" of their "gods," and various forms of temple prostitution survived into recent times, such as in India and in Jesus' day in Corinth and no doubt all over the world. Also the sacrifice of infants. Much of God's laws against involvement with such practices was to keep His people from demonic contamination. That included the food laws which proscribed eating the foods the heathen nations sacrificed to their demon gods. After Jesus came and defeated Satan and his hordes at the cross, His power protects us from what the Law had to do before. Or something like that. What on EARTH are you talking about? Christians are known for love to prostitutes and others who have ended up in degraded lives, rescuing them and so on. What sort of crazy stuff are you pushing anyway?You've invented your own religion, you don't seem to understand anything in the scripture, I can hardly figure out what you think you think except that you allow yourself to judge God as so many do these days. Don't be cute. You ACT morally superior to God, I didn't say you THINK OF YOURSELF as morally superior. Of course you don't. Stop playing games. I'm not the one accusing God of "genocide," you are. I understand God as righteously judging nations by what you call "genocide." His judgments are righteous justice. Public stoning is the death penalty for offenses deemed to be deserving of death. Justice. You are the one who calls it wrong, making yourself God's judge, making yourself morally superior to God, I on the other hand regard God's acts as always right and just and try to understand what He is teaching through them, whereas you judge Him as wrong instead.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

So, your God is a committee existing of three different Persons. It consists of a Head honcho and two lesser Members. The convener knows more than the two lesser Gods and keeps secrets from them.The lesser members don't seem to be Almighty as they don't know everything.Is this Biblical?

of course not, but then I don't expect any of the weird stuff you say to be biblical.

This still doesn’t explain why the Holy Ghost doesn’t know, but only the Father. Can’t read anywhere that The Holy Ghost intentionally gave up ‘prerogatives of Diety’ to become man.I’ll repeat the verse: Mark 13:32 NIV 2011: By the way, it would be easy for any Almighty God to become fully man while also maintaining the 'prerogatives of Diety'. Any Almighty God is supposed to be able to do anything and know everything. Edited by Pressie, : Changed last sentence