Bible Teachings or Traditions of Men?

I already answered the questions you are repeating.GOD THE SON IS CO ETERNAL WITH GOD THE FATHER AND WITH GOD THE HOLY SPIRIT. I already said that.Jesus the MAN died, Jesus the Son of God cannot die. I already said that.(Deleted unnecessary comment)The link I provided gives the scriptural reasoning I was talking about. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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FAITH:
Wow, what a liar you are.

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I already answered the questions you are repeating.

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GOD THE SON IS CO ETERNAL WITH GOD THE FATHER AND WITH GOD THE HOLY SPIRIT. I already said that.

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Jesus the MAN died, Jesus the Son of God cannot die. I already said that.

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I'm done with you Alter. You are lying about what I'm saying, or you are too stupid to understand it. The link I provided gives the scriptural reasoning I was talking about.

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ALTER2EGO -to- FAITH:
Wait a minute. I thought you previously said that Jesus the Son--the same one that was dead as a door knob until he was resurrected, and the same one that Thomas referred to as "My Lord and my God"--was "THE God." Isn't that what you said? Below, in all its glory, are your exact words regarding the very same Jesus who died.

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FAITH:
OK here's a bone for Alter (or anyone else) to pick on, one of my own favorite proofs of Jesus' Deity, Thomas' addressing Him as "my Lord and my God.'

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Here Purpledawn can play with the Greek word kurios translated "Lord" if she wants, and maybe even try to argue like the Jehovah's Witnesses do, that calling Jesus "my God" was acknowledging Him to be a lesser god but not THE God.

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Which a Trinitarian such as myself answers that that is idolatry, and no Jew, which Thomas was, would ever talk that way about a demon god, but only the true God.

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Therefore this passage demonstrates that Thomas recognized Jesus to be THE God, and is another of the proofs of His Deity.

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Jhn 20:25 The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.
Jhn 20:26 And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: [then] came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace [be] unto you.
Jhn 20:27 Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust [it] into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.
Jhn 20:28 And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.
Jhn 20:29 Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed [are] they that have not seen, and [yet] have believed.

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QUESTION #13 to FAITH: At the time Thomas referred to Jesus as "My Lord and my God," Jesus had just been resurrected from the dead. Didn't you say, in your above quoted post, that the same Jesus who had died was "THE God"? YES or NO?

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QUESTION #14 to FAITH: When did you decide that Jesus the Man was different from Jesus the Son of God and therefore, the Jesus who died is no longer "THE God"? Did you draw that conclusion after I pointed you to the context at John 20:1-3 and 9, which says Jesus died, while your beloved Trinity dogma contradicts the Bible and says the son is eternal?

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Feel free to present me with more of your favorite "trinity" verses anytime, and I will direct you to the context.

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Cheers!Edited by Alter2Ego, : No reason given.

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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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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. If the author made it very clear later who Jesus was and YHWH was not one of the options, then it is important to figure out what Thomas was saying?We can't really ignore it just because it appears to contradict our position. They have a mass of verses that would need to be whittled down to show that the 3 in 1 God Doctrine isn't Biblical.Unfortunately it takes looking at the Greek, which we don't like to do since we don't speak Greek, let alone ancient Greek. (At least I don't) That doesn't mean someone has done the work to this very old issue. The Greek actually says "the Lord of me and the God of me". There's my articles. Interlinear But I have already come to the conclusion that in the NT Lord and God were not used the same as in the OT. The article is, but the use of Lord for Jesus and God for YHWH seems consistent so far.I found this information on Granville Sharp's Rule of Greek Exegesis.

AGAIN: The Jesus who died on the cross and the Jesus that Thomas called Lord and God is BOTH God and Man as I already explained to you. That is STANDARD Christian theology, and He is sometimes referred to as the God-Man. He has TWO NATURES.As Man he could die, at least by choosing to, since as sinless Man even then He could not die, AS I ALREADY EXPLAINED TO YOU, but as Man He DID die by taking the sins of His own upon Himself and dying for us, in our place. I'll say it again for the dull of mind. Jesus the Man is the SAME as Jesus the Son of God, He has TWO NATURES. Obviously God cannot die but Jesus the Man could, so although Jesus fully died on the Cross His God Nature would have continued whether He was ever resurrected or not. When the eternal Son of God took on human flesh at conception, He then acquired the two natures. This is based on the Bible. It's not something we should expect to understand. You have to learn to be comfortable with some inexplicable things in true Christian theology, some "mysteries" in other words. We can't know some of the deepest things about the nature of God Himself, we're just creatures. I knew that somewhere around the beginning of my Christian life since you ask, roughly 25 years ago. It has been demonstrated to you over and over here, at that link and in my own words that the Trinity is derived from the Bible itself. I argued it with respect to Thomas' declaring Jesus to be God, which you haven't answered and cannot answer because it definitively proves Jesus to be God who is clearly and indisputably man as well. You just go on and on in your robot-like way ignoring what has already been proven, pretending you are saying something meaningful.Again Jesus is BOTH God the Son, "very God of very God" as the Nicene creed says, AND fully human. ABE: googling various things on this subject I found that I've been overlooking the most obvious fact here. WE die in body TOO but not in soul or spirit. Our souls and spirits are immortal. So in this very common sense Jesus died in body too but His eternal God Nature lives on just as our soul and spirit do when we die. 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'm just curious how you anti-Trinitarians make sense of this verse then since clearly Thomas was speaking to the one human being, Jesus. Somehow you want to emphasize that the way the Greek is phrased is something that would be said to two persons, but the fact is that only one was being addressed. Obviously the translators understood what was being said and rendered it correctly despite the usual understanding of the usage, perhaps to express the unusual nature of Christ, while the anti-Trinitarians haven't a clue.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

A well-known form of anti-Trinitarianism is Unitarianism. By the mid-20th century, American Unitarianism had developed into more of a philosophical and social (as in social issues and activism) position than a theological one. Indeed, it has become the case that a Unitarian is more likely than not to be an atheist. Many Unitarians were leery of merging with the Universalists in 1961, since to them Universalism smacked of superstition, so just try to imagine how they felt a couple decades later when neo-Pagans also joined the fold. Among Unitarian-Universalists (AKA "UUs"), the general attitude and approach is to gain wisdom from many sources, to learn and appreciate the teachings of great religious teachers such as Jesus (indeed, reading through the New Testament a few times more than a decade after I had become an atheist and two decades before joining a UU church, I found an appreciation for the teachings of Jesus and a strong suspicion of Paul's teachings about the Christ), and a tendency to allow for the use of the term "God" to mean whatever the speaker wants it to mean (from a Unitarian hymn: "Some call it evolution, some call it God"). To UUs, the Bible is the culmination of the religious tradition and wisdom of a couple peoples, but there's nothing magic about it.And yet, it appears, there are also anti-Trinitarians who do, like Trinitarians, believe in the Bible as being magic.There are different kinds of anti-Trinitarians (just as there is more than one stripe of Trinitarian). My advice to you is to not confuse the different types of anti-Trinitarians.If you were to try to convince of something by throwing the Bible at me all the time, you could try that until your arms fell off but it would never make any difference, since my opinion of the Bible is different from yours.At the same time, if an anti-Trinitarian, whether Bible-believing or not, were to argue to you that the Bible supports a non-Trinitarian view, then of course referencing the Bible, including what the original says, would be very apt. As would your own arguments that the Bible does indeed support Trinitarianism.Not that I'm criticizing your approach -- indeed, if I had the time, I would have been sitting here with popcorn enjoying the show -- , but rather I'm pointing out that there's a lot more to anti-Trinitarians than you may think.On the flip side, I think that anti-Trinitarians here should pony up and be up-front about their position here. I think that Alter2Ego has been particularly dodgy about his position.

Yes I AM aware of the different kinds of anti-Trinitarians, and I think Granville Sharp, who is the authority PD quoted about Greek usage, was a Unitarian.However, your argument that the Bible is meaningless to some doesn't deal with the issues here, since the claim is that the Trinity IS derived from the Bible and has been amply shown to be derived from the Bible. That's a factual matter that has nothing to do with what you think of the Bible.Different interpretations of the Bible don't change that historical fact, in fact in this thread I think they only show the wooden silliness of the way they exegete the Bible to support their point.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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FAITH:
AGAIN: The Jesus who died on the cross and the Jesus that Thomas called Lord and God is BOTH God and Man as I already explained to you. That is STANDARD Christian theology, and He is sometimes referred to as the God-Man. He has TWO NATURES.
As Man he could die, at least by choosing to, since as sinless Man even then He could not die, AS I ALREADY EXPLAINED TO YOU, but as Man He DID die by taking the sins of His own upon Himself and dying for us, in our place.

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I'll say it again for the dull of mind. Jesus the Man is the SAME as Jesus the Son of God, He has TWO NATURES. Obviously God cannot die but Jesus the Man could, so although Jesus fully died on the Cross His God Nature would have continued whether He was ever resurrected or not. When the eternal Son of God took on human flesh at conception, He then acquired the two natures. This is based on the Bible. It's not something we should expect to understand. You have to learn to be comfortable with some inexplicable things in true Christian theology, some "mysteries" in other words. We can't know some of the deepest things about the nature of God Himself, we're just creatures.

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It has been demonstrated to you over and over here, at that link and in my own words that the Trinity is derived from the Bible itself. I argued it with respect to Thomas' declaring Jesus to be God, which you haven't answered and cannot answer because it definitively proves Jesus to be God who is clearly and indisputably man as well. You just go on and on in your robot-like way ignoring what has already been proven, pretending you are saying something meaningful.
Again Jesus is BOTH God the Son, "very God of very God" as the Nicene creed says, AND fully human.

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ALTER2EGO -to- FAITH:
After all that tripe that you posted above about Jesus being able to die, while simultaneously being eternalbecause the Nicene Creed, a man-made document not inspired of God says soI am convinced you are not interested on reasoning on the scriptures.

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Not only do you routinely evade my direct questions, you have resorted to name-calling aka attacking my character. You referred to me as a"joker," as a "liar," as "stupid," as "dull of mind," and "robot-like," in addition to other childish remarks. Such is the extent of your love affair with the pagan trinity that you are now giving a fine demonstration of not having the fruitage of the spirit.

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"{22} On the other hand, the fruitage of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faith, {23} mildness, self-control. Against such things there is no law." (Galatians 5:22-23)

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Below are several examples of you dishing dirt at me.

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FAITH:
You're quite the joker. It is you who believe the traditions of men, I follow the Bible from which the Trinity is derived, and since the Trinity IS derived from the Bible so is the concept of the Son of God as Second Person of the Trinity.

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FAITH:
Wow, what a liar you are.
I'm done with you Alter. You are lying about what I'm saying, or you are too stupid to understand it. The link I provided gives the scriptural reasoning I was talking about.

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FAITH:
I'll say it again for the dull of mind. Jesus the Man is the SAME as Jesus the Son of God, He has TWO NATURES.

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FAITH:
You just go on and on in your robot-like way ignoring what has already been proven, pretending you are saying something meaningful..

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ALTER2EGO -to- FAITH:
Don't bother clicking on my avatar again as I will not respond. Whether or not I want anything further to do with you for the remainder of my time at this website is anyone's guess. At other websites where people sling mud like you have been doing, I put them on permanent "Ignore." It seems this website does not have an "Ignore" button, because I could not locate one so that I could save myself the trouble of having to scroll past--without reading--anymore of the tripe you post.

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I now officially leave you to your beliefs.Edited by Alter2Ego, : No reason given.

Just a side point. Long before I became a Christian I had friends who went to a Unitarian church where they discussed all those philosophical questions and it had a reputation for being intellectual and progressive and enlightened and all that. All I can say is that I was bored out of my mind by it. Perhaps I was looking for God all along and didn't know it, that has occurred to me, because all the stuff offered of a modern and enlightened sort bored me to tears. But it would NEVER have occurred to me to go to a real church either, I was that indoctrinated against traditional religion. I WAS an atheist. But when I did finally come to believe in God -- a bolt from the blue, totally unexpected, oh the joy, thank You Lord. So I don't understand how anyone can spend a Sunday morning listening to all that Unitarian or UU pompous ponderings of the inconsequential.Yes there are what you call "magical" Unitarians, who do believe in God but deny the Trinity. John Adams and his wife were that sort of Unitarians.

Actually I should apologize for losing my temper to that extent, sorry about that, consider it done. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

But this rule doesn't actually work. For example the translators of the Septuagint rendered Psalms 35:23 ("Stir up thyself, and awake to my judgment, even unto my cause, my God and my Lord.") as: Now since Greek makes a distinction between second person singular and plural we know that the translators of the Septuagint thought that the psalmist was addressing only one person; and yet they have the psalmist address this person as "ὁ θεός μου καὶ ὁ κύριός μου" --- "my God and my Lord".Or again, Psalms 84 (according to our numbering, the Septuagint has it as 83 and I don't know why) says: "Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even thine altars, O Lord of hosts, my King, and my God."The Septuagint renders it as: Again we know the person being addressed is singular in number, because it says "θυσιαστήριά σου" ("thine altars"); if more than one person was being addressed it would be "θυσιαστήριά σας". And yet this single person is addressed as "ὁ Βασιλεύς μου καὶ ὁ Θεός μου" --- "my king and my God".Now these two cases are perfectly parallel to the case to which author of the "Trinity Delusion" website wishes to apply his "rule": they are written in koine Greek, two honorific nouns are joined by the copula καὶ, one of the nouns is θεός, both nouns take the article ὁ, both nouns are qualified by the possessive pronoun μου. And in both the cases I have adduced it is certain that only one person is being spoken of, and it is also the person who is being spoken to.

Au contraire. Granville Sharp learned Greek specifically in order to debate Unitarians. You could have looked him up, you know.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Ya know, you're right, and I saw that when I DID look him up but for some reason I couldn't believe that's what it was saying because I couldn't figure out why he'd made that argument about the Greek referring to two persons in the Thomas example if he was a Trinitarian. I still can't make sense of it. So I decided I must be misreading it -- I was in a rush, as usual, unfortunately -- and that he must have been defending Unitarianism after all. So anyway, how DOES that insistence on its reference to two persons make any Trinitarian sense, or in fact any sense at all, of the Thomas incident?ABE: Looks like you may have answered it in the post above that I hadn't yet read when I wrote this.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

My sons' exposure was to Unitarian-Universalist services. My brother-in-law was a fundamentalist and I had known his wife several years before as a (as described by others) "Jesus Freak chick" -- later, a very close mutual "friend" described her as a friend only so long as she thought she could convert you to fundamentalist Christianity, something that I have observed of several other "True Christians". When they decided they wanted to get their daughter into a Lutheran school, they of course compromised their own fundamentalist beliefs. But nonetheless, la familia supported them (es el poder de la familia!) so we attended the service. It was all the typical Christian Amida Buddhism* bit, "Yeh! Yeh! Shish! Kum! Bah! Jesus! Jesus! Rah! Rah! Rah!" Following a few years exposure to Unitarian-Universalist services, my son looked at me like "What the frikkin' frak is going on here?!?!?" UU services contain substance, whereas Christian services are mostly just empty cheer-leading. My sons could see substance in UU services, but were always befuddled by Christian shenannigans. What the frak are you talking about? I do not recall having made any use of any such term.

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* FOOTNOTE:
Amida Buddhism.The basic idea of Buddhism is to gain Enlightenment. Many do not succeed, but a few do. In some cases, those few become Bodhisattva, those who had gained Enlightenment and thus escaped the Wheel of Life, but who then chose to remain behind to help others on their own path to gaining Enlightenment.From what I had been taught, those seeking the help of a Bodhisattva would blindly call upon him instead of actually trying to gain Enlightenment, all of which I viewed as so typically Christian.As I was taught, in Amida Buddhism, you continually chanted "Namu Amida Buddsu" ("I call in the name of the Amida Buddha"; I learned it as mainly being Japanese) and the more you chant that the more likely you are to be released from the Great Wheel of Life. The very thought of it, being so disgustingly Christian, was always disgusting to me.

Impressive! I'll take your word for it.