by JWdaughter 35 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Excellent points BTS. I was going to make my reference later on to the Scriptures you quote, but I said it is better to make my point one at a time..
I'm waiting ANSWERS regarding my comment on YHWH from Zechariah...is it hard to answer or perhaps I should quote, again from the Old Testament more scriptures that prove Trinity?
Excellent points BTS. I was going to make my reference later on to the Scriptures you quote, but I said it is better to make my point one at a time..
I'm waiting ANSWERS regarding my comment on YHWH from Zechariah...is it hard to answer or perhaps I should quote, again from the Old Testament more scriptures that prove Trinity?
P.S.: they didn't stone you to death because you thought you'd seen an angel.
They might believe you, think you were nuts, or talk with you, but they didn't
stone you to death. Jesus and Stephen could have avoided some life-threatening
troubles by saying they meant Jesus is an angel, but never make the point.
Reniaa,
You say:
"What you cannot change Jw daughter is the trinity doctrine as a teaching wasn't taught by the first century christians. It's clear from bible that they never knew of it as a teaching, not in one single scripture do they refer to a triune type God as trinitarians do, they never say 'God the son', Jesus always refers to Jehovah both before and after resurrection as 'My God' it's never reciprocated God only refers to Jesus as 'My son', Paul who writes 25 of the letters in the greek scriptures always keep God the father and Jesus as totally separate before and after resurrection , phrases like 'blessed be' used solely for the father is never used for Jesus and so on an so forth."
I beg to differ. Here is a passage from Hebrews 1:6-8 (NIV) which you love to quote from.
6And again, when God brings his firstborn into the world, he says,
"Let all God's angels worship him." [a] 7 In speaking of the angels he says,
"He makes his angels winds,
his servants flames of fire." [b] 8 But about the Son he says,
"Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever,
and righteousness will be the scepter of your kingdom.
Or how about titus 2:13 (NIV)
while we wait for the blessed hope--the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ,
Or how about an OT passage. Amos 4:11 (NWT)
“‘I caused an overthrow among YOU people, like God’s overthrow of Sod´om and Go·mor´rah. And YOU came to be like a log snatched out of [the] burning; but YOU did not come back to me,’ is the utterance of Jehovah.
Who is Jehovah referring to as God here in that he would compare his overthrow to God's overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah?
The Zechariah story shows the protocol common in Jewish literature with angels being identified early on in the story as the messangers who dialogue in 1st and 3rd person in speaking of and for God. The Dead Sea Scrolls show similar literary styles, see 11Q13 and the story of the divine exalted being who is granted the powers of God to perform all types of miracles and forgive sins.
As for the Creeds that Bishops developed after the Apostles passed on- all you have to do is look at their history to see God left that train at the station.
Arianism was a reaction to the heresy of Sabellianism/Modalism.
No, Arius was concerned more with the problem of the begetting of the Son as characterized by the developing orthodoxy (is the Son unbegotten? How and when was the Son begotten? Was the Son begotten of the same substance as the unbegotten Father?). It was rather Tertullian who developed some key trinitarian concepts as a response to the modalism of Praxeus (Sabellius was later), that the persons of the trinity are a "plurality without division" (numerum sine divisione) while being one through "unity of substance" (per substantiae unitatem), that the persons are separate by distinction but not by division (Adversus Praxean, 2, 9). He criticized modalism as implying the crucifixion of the Father and the flight of the Holy Spirit.
Rather the Arians accused trinitarians as maintaing a Sabellian heresy, on account of their claim that the three persons share the same substance. The Nicene fathers worked at defining their concept of the trinity with greater confusions to distinguish it from Sabellianism. Arius did have his Sabellian opponents, such as Marcellus of Ancyra, who participated in the Council of Nicaea. The fourth Oratio Contra Arianos (written c. AD 360) attacks both Arianism and the Sabellianism of Marcellus.
I recognized the heresy of sabelliansim to be the same 'trinity' as described by the WT for all these many decades. NOT the trinity.
That's roughly the case....The Society has at times construed a sort of strawman in its characterization of the orthodox trinity (such as implying that if Jesus were God he would be praying to himself in John 17). But it must also be admitted that many avowed trinitarians, such as some in this forum, have used modalist metaphors to describe the trinity (such as the familiar ice-water-vapor metaphor).
the trinity doctrine as a teaching wasn't taught by the first century christians.
Very true.
trinitarianism was born later so they could call Jesus God and worship him
That is untrue. Jesus was referred to as God long before trinitarianism per se was "born". The project of trinitarian thinking was rather aimed at developing a theology that makes sense of the many disparite christological and theological views in scripture and liturgy. Arianism later had similar aims as well, along with the many other theologies rejected by the church as "heresy". These groups took different interpretative paths in constructing systematic views of God; all are later constructions and do not represent what each writer may have had in mind.
didache is not making a statement of trinity he is just quoting the baptism sccripture.
That's right, although one must note that triadic formulae had a very prominent life in the early church (spanning between the NT, the apostolic fathers, the Odes of Solomon, and the early apologists). They varied widely in form and order and contained almost no "trinitarian" theological content, but it also shows that there was an early precedent for triadic thinking in the apostolic church. The triadic motif is not necessarily due to, say, later pagan influence.
all ignatious is doing is saying Jesus is God - I accept it was through people like him wanting to make Jesus God from whom the trinity was born
It is acceptable for you to say this because Ignatius is not in the NT. Conversely, it is not acceptable to say the same thing about the gospel of John. But in fact, the two are very, very similar in the way they call Jesus "God" (Ignatius, like John, mainly uses only anarthrous theos and possessive "my God", "our God" to refer to Jesus, while ho theos is exclusively the Father; also compare Ignatius, Ephesians 14:1 with both John 1:1 and 1 John 4:8). The Johannine and Ignatian literature were also written only a decade or so apart.
justin martyr is clearly saying Jesus has second place the context shows he considers this a lesser postion and not equal to God. so no trinity all are equal there.
Don't forget that he also considered Jesus God because he was begotten of the same substance as God (he didn't use this term, but it is what he meant) like one fire kindling another, thus "he is called God, he is God, and shall always be God" (Dialogue 58, 61). He also considered Jesus to be the LORD God of the OT who appeared to Moses in the burning bush (1 Apology 62-63). And not all trinitarian theologies have a notion of co-equality; the economical trinity of the second century constured three persons sharing the same substance but differing in rank. Justin Martyr was very close to an economical trinity, as he described the Son as having the second place and the Holy Spirit the third (1 Apology 13, 60).
Theophilus yes hes a trinitatarian but a later one.
Actually the first to clearly refer to a trinity.
Iraneous quite clearly keeping God and Jesus separate, this is not trinity.
The quote of course does does not tell the whole story. Irenaeus distinguished between the Father and the Son, but he was clear that both were God:
"The Father is Lord, and the Son is Lord, and the Father is God and the Son is God; for he who is born from God is God. And thus God is shown to be one according to the essence of his being and power; but at the same time, as the administrator of the economy of our redemption, he is both Father and Son. Since the Father of all is invisible and inaccessible to creatures, it is through the Son that those who are to approach God must have access to the Father" (Proof of the Apostolic Preaching, 47).
Similarly he wrote that "the immeasurable Father is measured in the Son, for the Son is the measure of the Father since he contains the Father" (Adversus Haereses 4.4.2), such that "he displayed God in visible form to men" (4.20.6). "God became man, and it was the Lord himself who saved us" (3.21.1), "How can they be saved unless he was God who wrought their salvation on earth? And how shall man pass to God unless God passed into man?" (4.33.4).
tertulian later but clearly a person who find God the father superior to jesus and distinct.
Tertullian was a trinitarian and he was explicit that the three persons of the trinity are united by substance, distinct without division of substance. He regarded the Son and the Holy Spirit as processions or projections of the Father, distinct from each other and secondary to the Father, but all the same united together as one God.
These quotes are actually good for people to see how trinity evolved and how clearly it is a concept of men and not God
The same could be said of almost any theology that presses the many different writings of the NT into a single doctrine. It is also incorrect to place the burden of influence of Greek philosophy solely on the trinitarians when Arianism itself drew on Middle Platonism and Aristotelianism.
Old Hippie, you are right. Sorry! The word WT was substituted for trinity there, I think (such an easy mistake to make:))
Reniaa,
You are deflecting. What I said was that the way that the WT defines trinity was considered a heresy by the early church. Arius, in fact, developed his theory as an 'antidote' (?) to Sabellianism/Modalism. It was a over-reaction to the original heresy of Sabellianism.
The trinity in the way "I" was taught it BY the WT/JWs-back in the stone age of the WT (1970's) was NOT in fact the trinity. That's what I am saying. I imagine that someone else has already started working on sharing some information with you-so I will read on. What the WT teaches as "the trinity" is in fact a heresy to the Church at that time and at this time.
Reniaa,
Another thing. The concept of the trinity which you claim was never said outright in the NT and was never described overtly is as true as the fact of there being an earthly and heavenly class of Christians-of there being only one group (nebulous and undefinable) that is worthy to partake and others who are only worthy to pass it on without touching it. There is no concept of two classes of Christians, or two kinds of salvation. No where is it said that only SOME christians were the body, NO where is there any description of field service (missionary service yes, and some are called to that!). There is no sense that people went to classes to learn how to place magazines. There are a lot of things in the early church that the WT just plain doesn't do: Like worship God. Ever SEEN people giving God worship? It is a sight to behold, but you never will at your local KH.
IN any case, there is a lot in the JWs/WT that has no source in the bible.
Reniaa,
The council convened by Theodosius merely CONFIRMED what had already been STATED as understood doctrine from 50 years previous at the Nicene council. Were any of the 7 councils contradictory? Nope. One thing you don't understand-they were not to 'make up' doctrine, but the clarify what the entire church understood, and to put it in writing lest there be a LACK OF UNITY!There was one church united in its teachings, and a bunch of variant churches with different versions of the Arian, nestorian and other heresies going around(for the record, Arianism itself had several different 'versions')
In one instance, in the interests of protecting the eastern orthodox church (I think from the ottomans), many of its bishops were willing to go along with the bit about giving the bishop of Rome, the "pope" the authority over the church that it desired-for self preservation. ONE bishop opposed it, and so did the people of the east-because they knew that it was not right. And the church as a whole never did pass over in that way and the schism remains. Nothing that was done in the church and agreed to by the entire church was ever undone by the Orthodox. It remains the same church as it was in 1000ad (the time frame of the schism). That there has been corruption and heresy within the church has happened is inarguable. It was in fact foretold, wasn't it? But nothing has been done in the church that wasn't agreed to and understood to be true by the church as a whole. I think that is interesting.
In any case, Theodosius may have called the council(all were called by the political rulers), but he didn't make the doctrine up. He was the one that insisted an already established doctrine be re-confirmed. He made Nicene Christianity the official state church, but he is not the one that defined the church, he merely legalized it. The JWs have recently been made an 'official' religion in a couple of nations -does that mean the said nations define what it is? No, of course not.
FYI, Thodosius was excommunicated for his actions, his public repentence for about a year is notable in history.
