The vast majority of Christians do not want to hear from Christian scholars believing they are all liberals: Why? Their research challenges their most basic and cherished beliefs, so...

rumitoid

Why? Their research challenges their most basic and cherished beliefs, so they must be false prophets. For example, they tracked down the highly questionable belief of the Trinity through the oldest documents available. No mention of it earlier. Then in a certain codex, a monk makes a comment in the margin wondering about the relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. In a following Codex, the previous monk's supposition is incorporated as fact. Viola! the Trinity is born. You may not like it, but there it is. The idea of a Trinity is a fairly new idea, and unsubstantiated by the Bible.

lindajoy Loc: right here with you....

rumitoid wrote:

Why? Their research challenges their most basic an... (show quote)

I would love to read what you read about this, rumi... Not being sarcastic just very curious about it...

Do you have it or can you direct me to
something?? Please and Thank You~
Edit~~is this what you refer to?

http://www.trinityt***h.org/was1john5_7addedtext.html

Trinity t***h
The only verse in the entire Bible that can be genuinely interpreted as saying the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are a 3 in1 being is 1 John 5:7.
1 John 5:7 KJV “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. 8 And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.”
This is the clear and decisive type of Scripture that you would expect to find in the Bible if the Godhead was literally a three in one god. However, it is slowly becoming universally recognized that this verse is a later insertion of the Church. So what does that tell us?
All recent versions of the Bible and most others do not include the underlined text which also includes verse 8 and with very good reason! Here it is from the NIV. 1 John 5:7 “For there are three that testify: 8 the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement.”
Some person or persons in centuries past were so zealous to find support for their belief in the trinity that they literally added it. There are numerous Scholars in fact that inform us that this passage has a spurious comment which has been added. The textual Scholar Bart Ehrman described this forgery as follows: “…this represents the most obvious instance of a theologically motivated corruption in the entire manuscript tradition of the New Testament.”
Thus the scholarly consensus is that this passage is a Latin corruption that found its way into a Greek manuscript at an early date while being absent from the THOUSANDS of other manuscripts. This addition is so famous and hence so well known that it has even been given its own name and is called the “Comma Johanneum.” Comma means a short clause.

Fodaoson Loc: South Texas

Matthew 28:18-20 New International Version (NIV)
18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

rumitoid

Fodaoson wrote:

Matthew 28:18-20 New International Version (NIV)
18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Consider this: The point is, Jesus was Jewish his entire life. Jesus did not teach trinitarianism and probably didn't know of or understand what that was. Yes, he said, "I and the father are one" (John 10:30) but he also asked why he was forsaken (Mark 15:34) and mentioned "I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I" (John 14:28) and other times.

lindajoy Loc: right here with you....

And perhaps these shed light too~~

https://www.biblestudytools.com/topical-verses/bible-verses-about-the-trinity/

From the beginning of creation in Genesis to the end of times in Revelation, God refers to Himself as "us" or "our" and thus describes the doctrine of the Trinity. The word trinity comes from "tri" meaning three and "unity" meaning one. God is three distinct individuals - God the Father, the Son Jesus, and the Holy Spirit - in one true God. The below Bible verses and Scriptures about the trinity will help you have a better understanding of who God is. It can be a difficult concept to grasp, yet we can believe God's word and know that while His ways are higher than ours, we can trust in Him!

For further research, read "God in Three Persons - The Trinity Explained"

Corinthians 13:14

14 May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

rumitoid

lindajoy wrote:

I would love to read what you read about this, rumi... Not being sarcastic just very curious about it...

Do you have it or can you direct me to
something?? Please and Thank You~
Edit~~is this what you refer to?

http://www.trinityt***h.org/was1john5_7addedtext.html

Trinity t***h
The only verse in the entire Bible that can be genuinely interpreted as saying the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are a 3 in1 being is 1 John 5:7.
1 John 5:7 KJV “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. 8 And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.”
This is the clear and decisive type of Scripture that you would expect to find in the Bible if the Godhead was literally a three in one god. However, it is slowly becoming universally recognized that this verse is a later insertion of the Church. So what does that tell us?
All recent versions of the Bible and most others do not include the underlined text which also includes verse 8 and with very good reason! Here it is from the NIV. 1 John 5:7 “For there are three that testify: 8 the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement.”
Some person or persons in centuries past were so zealous to find support for their belief in the trinity that they literally added it. There are numerous Scholars in fact that inform us that this passage has a spurious comment which has been added. The textual Scholar Bart Ehrman described this forgery as follows: “…this represents the most obvious instance of a theologically motivated corruption in the entire manuscript tradition of the New Testament.”
Thus the scholarly consensus is that this passage is a Latin corruption that found its way into a Greek manuscript at an early date while being absent from the THOUSANDS of other manuscripts. This addition is so famous and hence so well known that it has even been given its own name and is called the “Comma Johanneum.” Comma means a short clause.

I would love to read what you read about this, rum... (show quote)

Yes, part of it.

rumitoid

lindajoy wrote:

And perhaps these shed light too~~ br br https://... (show quote)

If Trinity means one, why the "us" or "ours": both indicate more than one.

Fodaoson Loc: South Texas

But now I am going back to the Father who sent Me, and none of you asks Me where I am going. You are very sad from hearing all of this. But I tell you that I am going to do what is best for you. That is why I am going away. The Holy Spirit cannot come to help You until I leave. But after I am gone, I will send the Spirit to you. - John 16:5-7 CEV
John 14:26 NIV
But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.

"I will send the Spirit to you. " " whom the Father will send in my name" Man cannot understand the workings of God. Only with the guidance of the Holy spirit do we comprehend

Blade_Runner Loc: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

rumitoid wrote:

Why? Their research challenges their most basic an... (show quote)

Will you get off this anti-Christian tirade. No dev**ed Christian appreciates a blasphemous attempt to rewrite the Holy Bible.

The Unitarian idea that the Judeo-Christian God, Yahweh, is an abstract monad became a formal denomination in 1774, a bit late considering the volumes of Biblical scholarship over the preceeding 17 centuries.

The Bible is not easy to comprehend, and a proper evaluation of the biblical evidence for the doctrine of the Trinity depends on the faithful application of sound principles of biblical interpretation. There are numerous approaches to Biblical study and scholarship, and if any one of these is diligently applied, the Trinity (not mentioned in the Bible) will emerge. There are in fact a number of intense Bible study courses that confirm the concept of a Triune God.

It is foolish to think that an infinite Creative Intelligence capable of creating such a magnificent universe and introducing life in His image and life in all its wonderful forms, is not capable of multi-dimensional existence.

In point of fact, the doctrine of the Trinity is purely a revealed doctrine. That is to say, it embodies a t***h which has never been discovered, and is indiscoverable, by natural reason. With all his searching, man has not been able to find out for himself the deepest things of God. Accordingly, ethnic thought has never attained a Trinitarian conception of God, nor does any ethnic religion present in its representations of the Divine Being any analogy to the doctrine of the Trinity.

As the doctrine of the Trinity is indiscoverable by reason, so it is incapable of proof from reason. There are no analogies to it in Nature, not even in the spiritual nature of man, who is made in the image of God. In His trinitarian mode of being, God is unique; and, as there is nothing in the universe like Him in this respect, so there is nothing which can help us to comprehend Him.

Inconclusive as all such reasoning is, however, considered as rational demonstration of the reality of the Trinity, it is very far from possessing no value. It carries home to us in a very suggestive way the superiority of the Trinitarian conception of God to the conception of Him as an abstract monad, and thus brings important rational support to the doctrine of the Trinity, when once that doctrine has been given us by revelation. If it is not quite possible to say that we cannot conceive of God as eternal self-consciousness and eternal love, without conceiving Him as a Trinity, it does seem quite necessary to say that when we conceive Him as a Trinity, new fullness, richness, force are given to our conception of Him as a self-conscious, loving Being, and therefore we conceive Him more adequately than as a monad, and no one who has ever once conceived Him as a Trinity can ever again satisfy himself with a monadistic conception of God. Reason thus not only performs the important negative service to faith in the Trinity, of showing the self-consistency of the doctrine and its consistency with other known t***h, but brings this positive rational support to it of discovering in it the only adequate conception of God as self-conscious spirit and living love. Difficult, therefore, as the idea of the Trinity in itself is, it does not come to us as an added burden upon our intelligence; it brings us rather the solution of the deepest and most persistent difficulties in our conception of God as infinite moral Being, and illuminates, enriches and elevates all our thought of God. It has accordingly become a commonplace to say that Christian theism is the only stable theism. That is as much as to say that theism requires the enriching conception of the Trinity to give it a permanent hold upon the human mind - the mind finds it difficult to rest in the idea of an abstract unity for its God; and that the human heart cries out for the living God in whose Being there is that fullness of life for which the conception of the Trinity alone provides.

So strongly is it felt in wide circles that a Trinitarian conception is essential to a worthy idea of God, that there is abroad a deep-seated unwillingness to allow that God could ever have made Himself known otherwise than as a Trinity. From this point of view it is inconceivable that the Old Testament revelation should know nothing of the Trinity.

The simplicity and assurance with which the New Testament writers speak of God as a Trinity have, however, a further implication. If they betray no sense of novelty in so speaking of Him, this is undoubtedly in part because it was no longer a novelty so to speak of Him. It is clear, in other words, that, as we read the New Testament, we are not witnessing the birth of a new conception of God. What we meet with in its pages is a firmly established conception of God underlying and giving its tone to the whole fabric. It is not in a text here and there that the New Testament bears its testimony to the doctrine of the Trinity. The whole book is Trinitarian to the core; all its teaching is built on the assumption of the Trinity; and its allusions to the Trinity are frequent, cursory, easy and confident. It is with a view to the cursoriness of the allusions to it in the New Testament that it has been remarked that "the doctrine of the Trinity is not so much heard as overheard in the statements of Scripture." It would be more exact to say that it is not so much inculcated as presupposed. The doctrine of the Trinity does not appear in the New Testament in the making, but as already made. It takes its place in its pages, as Gunkel phrases it, with an air almost of complaint, already "in full completeness" (vollig fertig), leaving no trace of its growth. "There is nothing more wonderful in the history of human thought," says Sanday, with his eye on the appearance of the doctrine of the Trinity in the New Testament, "than the silent and imperceptible way in which this doctrine, to us so difficult, took its place without struggle - and without controversy - among accepted Christian t***hs." The explanation of this remarkable phenomenon is, however, simple. Our New Testament is not a record of the development of the doctrine or of its assimilation. It everywhere presupposes the doctrine as the fixed possession of the Christian community; and the process by which it became the possession of the Christian community lies behind the New Testament.

Christianity is unique among all religions, it is the only religion that brings God into a personal relationship with His children. Praise Jesus.

The bottom line is if Jesus was not the divine incarnation of Yahweh, then His sacrifice on the cross, His resurrection and ascension are meaningless.

Rose42

Blade_Runner wrote:

Will you get off this anti-Christian tirade. No dev**ed Christian appreciates a blasphemous attempt to rewrite the Holy Bible.

The Unitarian idea that the Judeo-Christian God, Yahweh, is an abstract monad became a formal denomination in 1774, a bit late considering the volumes of Biblical scholarship over the preceeding 17 centuries.

The Bible is not easy to comprehend, and a proper evaluation of the biblical evidence for the doctrine of the Trinity depends on the faithful application of sound principles of biblical interpretation. There are numerous approaches to Biblical study and scholarship, and if any one of these is diligently applied, the Trinity (not mentioned in the Bible) will emerge. There are in fact a number of intense Bible study courses that confirm the concept of a Triune God.

It is foolish to think that an infinite Creative Intelligence capable of creating such a magnificent universe and introducing life in His image and life in all its wonderful forms, is not capable of multi-dimensional existence.

In point of fact, the doctrine of the Trinity is purely a revealed doctrine. That is to say, it embodies a t***h which has never been discovered, and is indiscoverable, by natural reason. With all his searching, man has not been able to find out for himself the deepest things of God. Accordingly, ethnic thought has never attained a Trinitarian conception of God, nor does any ethnic religion present in its representations of the Divine Being any analogy to the doctrine of the Trinity.

As the doctrine of the Trinity is indiscoverable by reason, so it is incapable of proof from reason. There are no analogies to it in Nature, not even in the spiritual nature of man, who is made in the image of God. In His trinitarian mode of being, God is unique; and, as there is nothing in the universe like Him in this respect, so there is nothing which can help us to comprehend Him.

Inconclusive as all such reasoning is, however, considered as rational demonstration of the reality of the Trinity, it is very far from possessing no value. It carries home to us in a very suggestive way the superiority of the Trinitarian conception of God to the conception of Him as an abstract monad, and thus brings important rational support to the doctrine of the Trinity, when once that doctrine has been given us by revelation. If it is not quite possible to say that we cannot conceive of God as eternal self-consciousness and eternal love, without conceiving Him as a Trinity, it does seem quite necessary to say that when we conceive Him as a Trinity, new fullness, richness, force are given to our conception of Him as a self-conscious, loving Being, and therefore we conceive Him more adequately than as a monad, and no one who has ever once conceived Him as a Trinity can ever again satisfy himself with a monadistic conception of God. Reason thus not only performs the important negative service to faith in the Trinity, of showing the self-consistency of the doctrine and its consistency with other known t***h, but brings this positive rational support to it of discovering in it the only adequate conception of God as self-conscious spirit and living love. Difficult, therefore, as the idea of the Trinity in itself is, it does not come to us as an added burden upon our intelligence; it brings us rather the solution of the deepest and most persistent difficulties in our conception of God as infinite moral Being, and illuminates, enriches and elevates all our thought of God. It has accordingly become a commonplace to say that Christian theism is the only stable theism. That is as much as to say that theism requires the enriching conception of the Trinity to give it a permanent hold upon the human mind - the mind finds it difficult to rest in the idea of an abstract unity for its God; and that the human heart cries out for the living God in whose Being there is that fullness of life for which the conception of the Trinity alone provides.

So strongly is it felt in wide circles that a Trinitarian conception is essential to a worthy idea of God, that there is abroad a deep-seated unwillingness to allow that God could ever have made Himself known otherwise than as a Trinity. From this point of view it is inconceivable that the Old Testament revelation should know nothing of the Trinity.

The simplicity and assurance with which the New Testament writers speak of God as a Trinity have, however, a further implication. If they betray no sense of novelty in so speaking of Him, this is undoubtedly in part because it was no longer a novelty so to speak of Him. It is clear, in other words, that, as we read the New Testament, we are not witnessing the birth of a new conception of God. What we meet with in its pages is a firmly established conception of God underlying and giving its tone to the whole fabric. It is not in a text here and there that the New Testament bears its testimony to the doctrine of the Trinity. The whole book is Trinitarian to the core; all its teaching is built on the assumption of the Trinity; and its allusions to the Trinity are frequent, cursory, easy and confident. It is with a view to the cursoriness of the allusions to it in the New Testament that it has been remarked that "the doctrine of the Trinity is not so much heard as overheard in the statements of Scripture." It would be more exact to say that it is not so much inculcated as presupposed. The doctrine of the Trinity does not appear in the New Testament in the making, but as already made. It takes its place in its pages, as Gunkel phrases it, with an air almost of complaint, already "in full completeness" (vollig fertig), leaving no trace of its growth. "There is nothing more wonderful in the history of human thought," says Sanday, with his eye on the appearance of the doctrine of the Trinity in the New Testament, "than the silent and imperceptible way in which this doctrine, to us so difficult, took its place without struggle - and without controversy - among accepted Christian t***hs." The explanation of this remarkable phenomenon is, however, simple. Our New Testament is not a record of the development of the doctrine or of its assimilation. It everywhere presupposes the doctrine as the fixed possession of the Christian community; and the process by which it became the possession of the Christian community lies behind the New Testament.

Christianity is unique among all religions, it is the only religion that brings God into a personal relationship with His children. Praise Jesus.

The bottom line is if Jesus was not the divine incarnation of Yahweh, then His sacrifice on the cross, His resurrection and ascension are meaningless.

Will you get off this anti-Christian tirade. No de... (show quote)

CounterRevolutionary

Fodaoson wrote:

Matthew 28:18-20 New International Version (NIV)
18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

The King James version is very similar:
Mathew 28, ye 19 "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."

The New International Version, which came out about 1960, is a travesty of all travesties, mangling the message of the entire Bible, by misinterpreting the 3rd Book of Moses, "Leviticus" (the Book of Laws) which explains the laws ending human s***ery, a text that our Declaration of Independence was based upon. Fully aware that our youth today never reads the Bible, the NIV pulled it off.

Man being made in God's image, we are all equal in God's eyes; under God's Natural Law, man may rule over animals, but man may not rule over man, only God may rule over man.

Take a look at this old book:
History, Archaeology and Christian Humanism by William Foxwell Albright, McGraw-Hill Book Company1960
https://www.amazon.com/History-Archaeology-Christian-Humanism-Albright/dp/B000CLIL6W/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=History%2C+Archaeology+and+Christian+Humanism&qid=1580093025&s=books&sr=1-1

Albright's book pretty well explains the c*******t hijacking of religion, be it Christian, Muslim, Judaism, by rewriting their text with misinterpretations, thus eliminating a moral code of ethics and human freedom.

Canuckus Deploracus Loc: North of the wall

Fodaoson wrote:

Matthew 28:18-20 New International Version (NIV)
18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

How many times is baptism mentioned in the NT?

How many times is this formula used for baptism?

Odd?

Canuckus Deploracus Loc: North of the wall

Blade_Runner wrote:

Will you get off this anti-Christian tirade. No dev**ed Christian appreciates a blasphemous attempt to rewrite the Holy Bible.

The Unitarian idea that the Judeo-Christian God, Yahweh, is an abstract monad became a formal denomination in 1774, a bit late considering the volumes of Biblical scholarship over the preceeding 17 centuries.

The Bible is not easy to comprehend, and a proper evaluation of the biblical evidence for the doctrine of the Trinity depends on the faithful application of sound principles of biblical interpretation. There are numerous approaches to Biblical study and scholarship, and if any one of these is diligently applied, the Trinity (not mentioned in the Bible) will emerge. There are in fact a number of intense Bible study courses that confirm the concept of a Triune God.

It is foolish to think that an infinite Creative Intelligence capable of creating such a magnificent universe and introducing life in His image and life in all its wonderful forms, is not capable of multi-dimensional existence.

In point of fact, the doctrine of the Trinity is purely a revealed doctrine. That is to say, it embodies a t***h which has never been discovered, and is indiscoverable, by natural reason. With all his searching, man has not been able to find out for himself the deepest things of God. Accordingly, ethnic thought has never attained a Trinitarian conception of God, nor does any ethnic religion present in its representations of the Divine Being any analogy to the doctrine of the Trinity.

As the doctrine of the Trinity is indiscoverable by reason, so it is incapable of proof from reason. There are no analogies to it in Nature, not even in the spiritual nature of man, who is made in the image of God. In His trinitarian mode of being, God is unique; and, as there is nothing in the universe like Him in this respect, so there is nothing which can help us to comprehend Him.

Inconclusive as all such reasoning is, however, considered as rational demonstration of the reality of the Trinity, it is very far from possessing no value. It carries home to us in a very suggestive way the superiority of the Trinitarian conception of God to the conception of Him as an abstract monad, and thus brings important rational support to the doctrine of the Trinity, when once that doctrine has been given us by revelation. If it is not quite possible to say that we cannot conceive of God as eternal self-consciousness and eternal love, without conceiving Him as a Trinity, it does seem quite necessary to say that when we conceive Him as a Trinity, new fullness, richness, force are given to our conception of Him as a self-conscious, loving Being, and therefore we conceive Him more adequately than as a monad, and no one who has ever once conceived Him as a Trinity can ever again satisfy himself with a monadistic conception of God. Reason thus not only performs the important negative service to faith in the Trinity, of showing the self-consistency of the doctrine and its consistency with other known t***h, but brings this positive rational support to it of discovering in it the only adequate conception of God as self-conscious spirit and living love. Difficult, therefore, as the idea of the Trinity in itself is, it does not come to us as an added burden upon our intelligence; it brings us rather the solution of the deepest and most persistent difficulties in our conception of God as infinite moral Being, and illuminates, enriches and elevates all our thought of God. It has accordingly become a commonplace to say that Christian theism is the only stable theism. That is as much as to say that theism requires the enriching conception of the Trinity to give it a permanent hold upon the human mind - the mind finds it difficult to rest in the idea of an abstract unity for its God; and that the human heart cries out for the living God in whose Being there is that fullness of life for which the conception of the Trinity alone provides.

So strongly is it felt in wide circles that a Trinitarian conception is essential to a worthy idea of God, that there is abroad a deep-seated unwillingness to allow that God could ever have made Himself known otherwise than as a Trinity. From this point of view it is inconceivable that the Old Testament revelation should know nothing of the Trinity.

The simplicity and assurance with which the New Testament writers speak of God as a Trinity have, however, a further implication. If they betray no sense of novelty in so speaking of Him, this is undoubtedly in part because it was no longer a novelty so to speak of Him. It is clear, in other words, that, as we read the New Testament, we are not witnessing the birth of a new conception of God. What we meet with in its pages is a firmly established conception of God underlying and giving its tone to the whole fabric. It is not in a text here and there that the New Testament bears its testimony to the doctrine of the Trinity. The whole book is Trinitarian to the core; all its teaching is built on the assumption of the Trinity; and its allusions to the Trinity are frequent, cursory, easy and confident. It is with a view to the cursoriness of the allusions to it in the New Testament that it has been remarked that "the doctrine of the Trinity is not so much heard as overheard in the statements of Scripture." It would be more exact to say that it is not so much inculcated as presupposed. The doctrine of the Trinity does not appear in the New Testament in the making, but as already made. It takes its place in its pages, as Gunkel phrases it, with an air almost of complaint, already "in full completeness" (vollig fertig), leaving no trace of its growth. "There is nothing more wonderful in the history of human thought," says Sanday, with his eye on the appearance of the doctrine of the Trinity in the New Testament, "than the silent and imperceptible way in which this doctrine, to us so difficult, took its place without struggle - and without controversy - among accepted Christian t***hs." The explanation of this remarkable phenomenon is, however, simple. Our New Testament is not a record of the development of the doctrine or of its assimilation. It everywhere presupposes the doctrine as the fixed possession of the Christian community; and the process by which it became the possession of the Christian community lies behind the New Testament.

Christianity is unique among all religions, it is the only religion that brings God into a personal relationship with His children. Praise Jesus.

The bottom line is if Jesus was not the divine incarnation of Yahweh, then His sacrifice on the cross, His resurrection and ascension are meaningless.

Will you get off this anti-Christian tirade. No de... (show quote)

You still haven't explained that last statement...

Do you ever intend to?

Or do you just like the sound? d of it?

lindajoy Loc: right here with you....

Blade_Runner wrote:

Will you get off this anti-Christian tirade. No dev**ed Christian appreciates a blasphemous attempt to rewrite the Holy Bible.

The Unitarian idea that the Judeo-Christian God, Yahweh, is an abstract monad became a formal denomination in 1774, a bit late considering the volumes of Biblical scholarship over the preceeding 17 centuries.

The Bible is not easy to comprehend, and a proper evaluation of the biblical evidence for the doctrine of the Trinity depends on the faithful application of sound principles of biblical interpretation. There are numerous approaches to Biblical study and scholarship, and if any one of these is diligently applied, the Trinity (not mentioned in the Bible) will emerge. There are in fact a number of intense Bible study courses that confirm the concept of a Triune God.

It is foolish to think that an infinite Creative Intelligence capable of creating such a magnificent universe and introducing life in His image and life in all its wonderful forms, is not capable of multi-dimensional existence.

In point of fact, the doctrine of the Trinity is purely a revealed doctrine. That is to say, it embodies a t***h which has never been discovered, and is indiscoverable, by natural reason. With all his searching, man has not been able to find out for himself the deepest things of God. Accordingly, ethnic thought has never attained a Trinitarian conception of God, nor does any ethnic religion present in its representations of the Divine Being any analogy to the doctrine of the Trinity.

As the doctrine of the Trinity is indiscoverable by reason, so it is incapable of proof from reason. There are no analogies to it in Nature, not even in the spiritual nature of man, who is made in the image of God. In His trinitarian mode of being, God is unique; and, as there is nothing in the universe like Him in this respect, so there is nothing which can help us to comprehend Him.

Inconclusive as all such reasoning is, however, considered as rational demonstration of the reality of the Trinity, it is very far from possessing no value. It carries home to us in a very suggestive way the superiority of the Trinitarian conception of God to the conception of Him as an abstract monad, and thus brings important rational support to the doctrine of the Trinity, when once that doctrine has been given us by revelation. If it is not quite possible to say that we cannot conceive of God as eternal self-consciousness and eternal love, without conceiving Him as a Trinity, it does seem quite necessary to say that when we conceive Him as a Trinity, new fullness, richness, force are given to our conception of Him as a self-conscious, loving Being, and therefore we conceive Him more adequately than as a monad, and no one who has ever once conceived Him as a Trinity can ever again satisfy himself with a monadistic conception of God. Reason thus not only performs the important negative service to faith in the Trinity, of showing the self-consistency of the doctrine and its consistency with other known t***h, but brings this positive rational support to it of discovering in it the only adequate conception of God as self-conscious spirit and living love. Difficult, therefore, as the idea of the Trinity in itself is, it does not come to us as an added burden upon our intelligence; it brings us rather the solution of the deepest and most persistent difficulties in our conception of God as infinite moral Being, and illuminates, enriches and elevates all our thought of God. It has accordingly become a commonplace to say that Christian theism is the only stable theism. That is as much as to say that theism requires the enriching conception of the Trinity to give it a permanent hold upon the human mind - the mind finds it difficult to rest in the idea of an abstract unity for its God; and that the human heart cries out for the living God in whose Being there is that fullness of life for which the conception of the Trinity alone provides.

So strongly is it felt in wide circles that a Trinitarian conception is essential to a worthy idea of God, that there is abroad a deep-seated unwillingness to allow that God could ever have made Himself known otherwise than as a Trinity. From this point of view it is inconceivable that the Old Testament revelation should know nothing of the Trinity.

The simplicity and assurance with which the New Testament writers speak of God as a Trinity have, however, a further implication. If they betray no sense of novelty in so speaking of Him, this is undoubtedly in part because it was no longer a novelty so to speak of Him. It is clear, in other words, that, as we read the New Testament, we are not witnessing the birth of a new conception of God. What we meet with in its pages is a firmly established conception of God underlying and giving its tone to the whole fabric. It is not in a text here and there that the New Testament bears its testimony to the doctrine of the Trinity. The whole book is Trinitarian to the core; all its teaching is built on the assumption of the Trinity; and its allusions to the Trinity are frequent, cursory, easy and confident. It is with a view to the cursoriness of the allusions to it in the New Testament that it has been remarked that "the doctrine of the Trinity is not so much heard as overheard in the statements of Scripture." It would be more exact to say that it is not so much inculcated as presupposed. The doctrine of the Trinity does not appear in the New Testament in the making, but as already made. It takes its place in its pages, as Gunkel phrases it, with an air almost of complaint, already "in full completeness" (vollig fertig), leaving no trace of its growth. "There is nothing more wonderful in the history of human thought," says Sanday, with his eye on the appearance of the doctrine of the Trinity in the New Testament, "than the silent and imperceptible way in which this doctrine, to us so difficult, took its place without struggle - and without controversy - among accepted Christian t***hs." The explanation of this remarkable phenomenon is, however, simple. Our New Testament is not a record of the development of the doctrine or of its assimilation. It everywhere presupposes the doctrine as the fixed possession of the Christian community; and the process by which it became the possession of the Christian community lies behind the New Testament.

Christianity is unique among all religions, it is the only religion that brings God into a personal relationship with His children. Praise Jesus.

The bottom line is if Jesus was not the divine incarnation of Yahweh, then His sacrifice on the cross, His resurrection and ascension are meaningless.

Will you get off this anti-Christian tirade. No de... (show quote)

My gosh, Blade~~ May I spend a few days in your brain ??? You certainly show a divine understanding that mesmerized me~~

When I got to this my mind went into overdrive and my spirit and soul just soared.;

“The Bible is not easy to comprehend, and a proper evaluation of the biblical evidence for the doctrine of the Trinity depends on the faithful application of sound principles of biblical interpretation. There are numerous approaches to Biblical study and scholarship, and if any one of these is diligently applied, the Trinity (not mentioned in the Bible) will emerge. There are in fact a number of intense Bible study courses that confirm the concept of a Triune God.

It is foolish to think that an infinite Creative Intelligence capable of creating such a magnificent universe and introducing life in His image and life in all its wonderful forms, is not capable of multi-dimensional existence.

In point of fact, the doctrine of the Trinity is purely a revealed doctrine. That is to say, it embodies a t***h which has never been discovered, and is indiscoverable, by natural reason. With all his searching, man has not been able to find out for himself the deepest things of God. Accordingly, ethnic thought has never attained a Trinitarian conception of God, nor does any ethnic religion present in its representations of the Divine Being any analogy to the doctrine of the Trinity.”

I need to take some time absorbing all you brought forth before being able to reply, but I can tell you it is simply a beautiful, heartfelt reminder you just gave here..

Your closing paragraph a very clear revelation.!! Just wow~~~Thank You~~~ Bless you always...

CounterRevolutionary

Blade_Runner wrote:

Will you get off this anti-Christian tirade. No dev**ed Christian appreciates a blasphemous attempt to rewrite the Holy Bible.

The Unitarian idea that the Judeo-Christian God, Yahweh, is an abstract monad became a formal denomination in 1774, a bit late considering the volumes of Biblical scholarship over the preceeding 17 centuries.

The Bible is not easy to comprehend, and a proper evaluation of the biblical evidence for the doctrine of the Trinity depends on the faithful application of sound principles of biblical interpretation. There are numerous approaches to Biblical study and scholarship, and if any one of these is diligently applied, the Trinity (not mentioned in the Bible) will emerge. There are in fact a number of intense Bible study courses that confirm the concept of a Triune God.

It is foolish to think that an infinite Creative Intelligence capable of creating such a magnificent universe and introducing life in His image and life in all its wonderful forms, is not capable of multi-dimensional existence.

In point of fact, the doctrine of the Trinity is purely a revealed doctrine. That is to say, it embodies a t***h which has never been discovered, and is indiscoverable, by natural reason. With all his searching, man has not been able to find out for himself the deepest things of God. Accordingly, ethnic thought has never attained a Trinitarian conception of God, nor does any ethnic religion present in its representations of the Divine Being any analogy to the doctrine of the Trinity.

As the doctrine of the Trinity is indiscoverable by reason, so it is incapable of proof from reason. There are no analogies to it in Nature, not even in the spiritual nature of man, who is made in the image of God. In His trinitarian mode of being, God is unique; and, as there is nothing in the universe like Him in this respect, so there is nothing which can help us to comprehend Him.

Inconclusive as all such reasoning is, however, considered as rational demonstration of the reality of the Trinity, it is very far from possessing no value. It carries home to us in a very suggestive way the superiority of the Trinitarian conception of God to the conception of Him as an abstract monad, and thus brings important rational support to the doctrine of the Trinity, when once that doctrine has been given us by revelation. If it is not quite possible to say that we cannot conceive of God as eternal self-consciousness and eternal love, without conceiving Him as a Trinity, it does seem quite necessary to say that when we conceive Him as a Trinity, new fullness, richness, force are given to our conception of Him as a self-conscious, loving Being, and therefore we conceive Him more adequately than as a monad, and no one who has ever once conceived Him as a Trinity can ever again satisfy himself with a monadistic conception of God. Reason thus not only performs the important negative service to faith in the Trinity, of showing the self-consistency of the doctrine and its consistency with other known t***h, but brings this positive rational support to it of discovering in it the only adequate conception of God as self-conscious spirit and living love. Difficult, therefore, as the idea of the Trinity in itself is, it does not come to us as an added burden upon our intelligence; it brings us rather the solution of the deepest and most persistent difficulties in our conception of God as infinite moral Being, and illuminates, enriches and elevates all our thought of God. It has accordingly become a commonplace to say that Christian theism is the only stable theism. That is as much as to say that theism requires the enriching conception of the Trinity to give it a permanent hold upon the human mind - the mind finds it difficult to rest in the idea of an abstract unity for its God; and that the human heart cries out for the living God in whose Being there is that fullness of life for which the conception of the Trinity alone provides.

So strongly is it felt in wide circles that a Trinitarian conception is essential to a worthy idea of God, that there is abroad a deep-seated unwillingness to allow that God could ever have made Himself known otherwise than as a Trinity. From this point of view it is inconceivable that the Old Testament revelation should know nothing of the Trinity.

The simplicity and assurance with which the New Testament writers speak of God as a Trinity have, however, a further implication. If they betray no sense of novelty in so speaking of Him, this is undoubtedly in part because it was no longer a novelty so to speak of Him. It is clear, in other words, that, as we read the New Testament, we are not witnessing the birth of a new conception of God. What we meet with in its pages is a firmly established conception of God underlying and giving its tone to the whole fabric. It is not in a text here and there that the New Testament bears its testimony to the doctrine of the Trinity. The whole book is Trinitarian to the core; all its teaching is built on the assumption of the Trinity; and its allusions to the Trinity are frequent, cursory, easy and confident. It is with a view to the cursoriness of the allusions to it in the New Testament that it has been remarked that "the doctrine of the Trinity is not so much heard as overheard in the statements of Scripture." It would be more exact to say that it is not so much inculcated as presupposed. The doctrine of the Trinity does not appear in the New Testament in the making, but as already made. It takes its place in its pages, as Gunkel phrases it, with an air almost of complaint, already "in full completeness" (vollig fertig), leaving no trace of its growth. "There is nothing more wonderful in the history of human thought," says Sanday, with his eye on the appearance of the doctrine of the Trinity in the New Testament, "than the silent and imperceptible way in which this doctrine, to us so difficult, took its place without struggle - and without controversy - among accepted Christian t***hs." The explanation of this remarkable phenomenon is, however, simple. Our New Testament is not a record of the development of the doctrine or of its assimilation. It everywhere presupposes the doctrine as the fixed possession of the Christian community; and the process by which it became the possession of the Christian community lies behind the New Testament.

Christianity is unique among all religions, it is the only religion that brings God into a personal relationship with His children. Praise Jesus.

The bottom line is if Jesus was not the divine incarnation of Yahweh, then His sacrifice on the cross, His resurrection and ascension are meaningless.

Will you get off this anti-Christian tirade. No de... (show quote)

This is an interesting article, especially this statement:

"As the doctrine of the Trinity is indiscoverable by reason, so it is incapable of proof from reason. There are no analogies to it in Nature, not even in the spiritual nature of man, who is made in the image of God. In His trinitarian mode of being, God is unique; and, as there is nothing in the universe like Him in this respect, so there is nothing which can help us to comprehend Him."

Science is catching up with the Christian religion, with proven theories in physics where matter and energy are interchangeable, string theory and parallel universes are calculable, love is immortal and life is eternal.

The concept of eternal life should curb human behavior on earth, one would reason?