Tuesday, January 31, 2012

A Thought and Passing on another link

So, Sunday I got a phone call in a meeting from a fellow who started firing off rapid fire questions about the Greek Text and why I defend/the the Trinity when the Greek doesn't say anything about prosopon... which is really a hard conversation to jump into when you've had to step out of the meeting you are running to answer it, and the fellow doesn't seem to care that you don't have a bible (English or Greek) in front of you.

Two thoughts.

First - there was a big deal made in the rapid fire about the term prosopon, the term Trinity - it's not in the bible. Well... duh. It's a theological term that was developed to be short hand concerning what the Scriptures teach. And of course you aren't going to see it in the Greek... because it was a Latin term developed in the West which the Greek speaking East adopted (Tri-une... see that une... that's Latin) -- so trying to find a later coined term in an early document is silly. It's like saying, "You can't call 500-800 the Dark Ages... no author from that time calls it the Dark Ages!" It's a term... that's all.

But the bigger thing was about the actual doctrine of the Trinity, not the word "Trinity" or "person" itself. And Thomas Lemke has a wonderful link about this very topic (Mr. Lemke seems to have as his own hobby discussing things with Unitarians of all shades). In this post he quotes another blogger - Nick Norelli - speaking about how when folks bring there presuppositions to the discussion, there will be errors. This is what Mr. Norelli says concerning Arians (which would apply to most modern day Jehovah's Witnesses, who are basically rehashed Arians):

Rather than saying that Father, Son, and Spirit were God, they said, “No, this can’t be right because God is a Monad and the Monad is indivisible,” so they relegated the Son and Spirit to subordinate creatures and said that the Father was the Monad. Again, they already knew what could or could not be true so they made Scripture conform to their system rather than making their system conform to Scripture.

This is why I heard thinks that... well, yes, "LORD" is how Jehovah is referred to in the NT, but "Jesus is Lord" can't be a reference to that... and that you can't have Jesus really being God... but rather it's just a Hebraic affectation that lets one standing with God's authority take the title...

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word with with God, and the Word was God. Right there - that's what underlines the Trinity. There is One God (was God). Yet, we can speak of internal distinctions of a vast and mysterious nature within God (with God) -- using human language we've coined the phrase "1 God, Three Persons" to try to get this across.

Oh, and is Jesus God and Lord? Well, what does Thomas (the Apostle, not Lemke) say in the Upper Room? "My Lord and My God." And Jesus commends him - He doesn't lash out at Him for being a polytheistic heretic.

Sometimes I think we should confess the Athanasian Creed a bit more often.

3 comments:

Thomas Lemke said...

Adam,

As long as we're recommending videos, I would strongly urge you to watch and consider this one.

Adam Pastor said...

Thanks for that

I both have a copy and have watched the video;
and as the first youtube comment of video No. 1 rightly said ...
"This is probably the most one-sided debate I think I've ever seen! The moderator was definitely kissing up to the Trinitarians and if that wasn't bad enough, the Trinitarians wouldn't let anyone get a word in edgewise..."

Nuff said!
Nevertheless, if one does indeed listen to the debate closely,
the Biblical unitarians (when allowed to do so) refuted the trinitarians' points adequately.

Anyways, like I said, I have indeed watched the debate.
So would you now please watch

The Human Jesus

and let me know your thoughts!
Yours In Messiah
Adam Pastor
The Human Jesus

Rev. Eric J Brown said...

Wow... step away from your blog for a week.

Jesus shows Thomas His hands and His side. Thomas says of Jesus, "My Lord and my God."

True Man and True God... I will submit to what the Scriptures declare our Lord to be.