ONE! NO EQUAL!

by wannabe 62 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  jonathan dough

  "First, JWs do not understand that a "Person" is not a material human being like you or I. Persons of the Trinity are spirit. Secondly, they do not understand that God is "three" in one sense, and "one" in a completey different sense. And third, the Jehovah’s Witnesses are unwilling or unable to acknowledge or grasp the concept of the hypostatic union, the union that is the God-man Jesus, who is fully God the Son and fully man, a divine Person who assumed a human nature. Intertwined with this concept is the often ignored principle that the created humanity of Jesus is not God. Accordingly, Jesus, the man in the God-man equation, could pray to His Father and acknowledge His Father’s superiority without committing any doctrinal contradictions. The Jehovah’s Witnesses, on the other hand, teach that the incarnate Jesus was nothing more or less than a man." http://144000.110mb.com/trinity/index.html#1

  Furthermore, “Person” should be regarded as a contemporary misnomer, an imperfect expression because it connotes a separate rational and moral individual. It is a word erroneously derived from the Latin persona and misapplied in the English modern era, as the Jehovah's Witnesses have done.

  Persona: A Latin word regularly used to refer to the three ‘persons’ of the Trinity and to the one ‘person’ of Christ. It therefore fulfills the role in Latin theology performed by hypostasis in Greek. The natural translation into ‘person’ in English is misleading. Persona originally meant a ‘mask’ and then a ‘role.’ It is used to indicate an individual in his or her external presentation, and does not convey the idea of self-consciousness or the internal psychological content suggested by the English word ‘person’ with its close link to the word ‘personality.’ (Oxford, 1210)
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  jonathan dough

  speaking of faith ...

  ... it is an act of faith to believe that this absolutely, undisputable, fundamental doctrine of true Christianity took theologians some four centuries to develop in full and the secular power of the Roman empire to affirm.

  Not exactly true. It might have taken that long to finalize, but it had been around since the OT. And besides, I believe the Society is STILL developing and changing its many theories that come and go like the wind. Bit of a double standard there.

  http://144000.110mb.com/trinity/index-4.html#19

  The Trinity in the Bible: Elemental Trinitarianism is evident throughout the Bible

  While the Jehovah's Witnesses are correct in stating that the word “Trinity” is not found in the Bible, neither is the word “monotheism” so its absence has no bearing on whether the underlying basis for Trinitarianism exists in the Bible. Careful objective study of the Bible reveals strong scriptural support for recognizing by logical necessity the existence of a triune God - not three Gods, but one God Almighty existing in three hypostasis (Persons) who share the one divine essence. Jesus Christ was sent in part to reveal and explain this threefold nature of God.

  Early theologians who strove for a deeper understanding of the doctrine, as well as those of the Middle Ages and modernists, whether Catholic, Protestant or independent, recognize in Scripture an elemental Trinitarianism (Catholic Encyclopedia, 295).

  It is clear on one side that the dogma of the Trinity in the stricter sense of the word was a late arrival, a product of centuries’ reflection and debate, it is just as clear on the opposite side that confession of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - and hence an elemental Trinitarianism - went back to the period of Christian origins. Contemporary studies on the ancient Christian creeds have done much to bring this out.” (ibid., 300)

  J.N.D. Kelly attests that “[s]trictly triadic formulas and the triadic frame of mind so clearly mark at least later NT compositions, that the exegete and the historian must recognize a quasi-independent Trinitarianism coexisting with the purer and simpler forms of NT Christology” (ibid., 300). Among the earliest Christians there was “… consistent worship of God in a Trinitarian pattern and the practice of baptism into the threefold name of God” (Encyclopedia of Religion, 54).

  18) The Trinity in the Old Testament

  While some downplay references to the Trinity in the Old Testament, many Bible scholars find implicit evidence and foreshadowing of God’s triune nature even if the early Israelites failed to pick up on it. The fact that such evidence is limited is immaterial because the triune God was subsequently and intentionally revealed to man by and through Christ, and better understood in the centuries that followed. This progressive revelation was the Almighty’s prerogative, and reasonable in light of the polytheistic pagan nations surrounding Israel at that time. It was necessary to contrast Israel’s polytheistic, many-god worshipping neighbors with a monotheistic God rather than a triune-natured God which could be confused with tritheism, the worship of three Gods. It was Jehovah’s intent to distinguish Himself from false pagan idols.

  Though the doctrine is not developed in the Old Testament, it is implicit in the divine self-disclosure from the very beginning, …in a very rudimentary form. This is found not only in isolated passages but interwoven in the entire organism of the Old Testament Revelation. (New Bible Dictionary, 1298)

  The mystery of the Holy Trinity was not revealed to the Chosen People of the OT. On account of the polytheistic religions of Israel’s pagan neighbors it was necessary for the teachers of Israel to stress the oneness of God. In many places of the OT, however, expressions are used in which some of the Fathers of the Church saw references or foreshadowing of the Trinity. The personified use of such terms as the Word of God [Ps 32(33.6] and the Spirit of God (Is 63.14) is merely by way of poetic license, though it shows that the minds of God’s people were being prepared for the concepts that would be involved in the forthcoming revelation of the doctrine of the Trinity. (Catholic Encyclopedia, 306)

  Early theologians saw semblances of the triune activities of God - wisdom, word and spirit - embryonic members of the Trinity, and disclosure of the Trinity in the appearance of the three men to Abraham (Genesis 18) (Oxford, 1207).

  The earliest foreshadowing is contained in the narrative of the creation, where Elohim is seen to create by means of Word and Spirit (Gn. i. 3). Here we are for the first time introduced to the Word put forth as a personal creative power, and to the Spirit as the bringer of life and order to the creation. There is revealed thus early a threefold centre of activity. God as Creator thought out the universe, expressed His thought in a Word, and made His Spirit its animating principle, thus indicating that the universe was not to have a separate existence apart from God or opposed to Him.

  It is thought that Gn. I. 26 (‘And God said, Let us make man in our image and after our likeness’) implies that a revelation of the Triune God had been given to man when first created, in as much as he was to be given the divine fellowship, but that the consciousness was afterwards lost with the loss of his original righteousness. (New Bible Dictionary, 1298)
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  BurnTheShips

  Not exactly true. It might have taken that long to finalize

  What Jonathan Dough said. The idea had been around from the start, however, it wasn't until the fourth century that a hard definition was made by a large council that included all of the episkopoi in the known world, and that was only because the differences of opinion were tearing the church apart, sometimes even violently. You had the Arians on one side, and the Athanasians on the other, "going to the matresses".

  If you look at Christian history, especially before the Reformation and the schism between the East and West, you'll find that nearly every time the christian church called a universal council that defined a teaching and made acceptance of it a requirement it was because differences of opinion between different groups threatened unity. For the most part, defined doctrines have been reactionary. The same thing happened with the nature of Christ. Was he God? Yes. Was he a man? Yes. These were things that were handed down by the Apostles, so yes. So how do you reconcile those two things without denying his either his divinity or his humanity? Several individuals had their own take, and there were groups that followed each individual take. That one took an ecumenical council to sit and discuss and define as well.

  In the days of the original Apostles, there was a controversy over things like circumcision and dietary practices. It was threatening unity and the different factions would sometimes not even want to worship together. Peter himself made mistakes, and got an earful from the "Apostle to the Gentiles", Paul. The problem stemmed from the fact that there were now many Gentiles coming into the church that had never observed Judaism.

  There had historically been a good deal of prejudice between the two groups and now, being called in by Christ, were they somehow going to worship him together? Did the new Gentile believers have to observe the Law? Big problem! One group said "yea", and the other "nay"! There was a general council of episkopoi that assembled in Jerusalem, which at the time included the Apostles, and episkopoi from farther parts of the Roman world that attended, like Paul for example.

  They came together, discussed it, and issued a ruling at Acts 15.

  They picked James the Just to make the proclamation, because he was the uber-Jew in the group, he worshipped at the Temple every day, and had calloused knees because he knelt before God in worship so much, he was extremely observant, and was almost universally admired among the Jews for his piety, whether Christian or not. There is a reason why he became known as James "the Just" to distinguish him from the other Jameses in the NT. Of course, in the late 60's they threw him off the temple walls and, still alive, beat him to death. That's how he met his martyrdom. Some Jews even thought the Roman attack a couple of years later was due to divine retribution for the terrible injustice visited on this good man.

  But I digress. They picked James the super-jew in Acts 15 to make the proclamation for a reason. That would give the decision some extra heft in the minds of the Jewish Christians. The council split the difference and said:

  "Ok you Gentile brothers, just do these things listed here so you don't offend our Jewish brethren's deeply ingrained sensibilities, and that's it. Do this, and good health to you. And you Jewish brothers, don't judge them on the basis of the Law. Now can we all please just get along?"

  That's basically what happened with what became the orthodox definition of the Trinity. A difference of opinion became a problem, so a council of all the episkopoi was called to address it.

  BTS