One thing the WT got right was the Trinity being false.

by miseryloveselders 96 Replies latest jw friends

  • maksym
    maksym

    I personally believe that the second most dangerous doctrine of the jehovah's witnesses is the unitarian doctrine of God. The first most dangerous teaching is annihilation upon death.

    The problem of not entirely understanding or even attempting to develop faith in the Trinity is that YOU GOT NO WHERE ELSE TO GO!

    Nearly 99,9 percent of all Christians believe in this doctrine. Only the fringe crazy cult groups see it differently. You leave them and you are subject to becoming atheist or agnostic because your worldview has just been flipped upside down. Its a radical mind numbing departure from all of your thinking and dogma.

    Anyone which is still a theist, and does not believe in the Trinity is STILL A JEHOVAHS WITNESS!

    The society takes minds and hearts captive not bodies! Why do you think they made it this way? When you leave the programmed you so you would not have anywhere else to go.

    Go find a church in your local area that believes the same. Good luck with that.

    Maksym

  • GOrwell
    GOrwell

    Mormon's do believe in a really wonky version of the Trinity. if I recall correctly, each member of the Godhead is a distinct being (a God), but only united in purpose, and not substance.

  • maksym
    maksym

    The Wathtower Bible and Tract Society has absulutely nothing right. They are wrong on Biblical doctrine nearly 100 percent.Complete and utter darkness. They are the most far removed from true Christianitity. It's no wonder that people leaving have a hard time adjusting. The light is too bright. They become blinded because they've been in a dark room too long. Their pride or anger take over.

    Let's be real. These guys started this religion only about 130 years ago. It's literally stupid to believe them. It's like talking to a baby about the Bible.

    Lord have mercy

    Maksym

  • ProdigalSon
    ProdigalSon

    I don't think quantum mechanics are terribly hard to grasp.... Einstein said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge."

    So I imagine that we live on channel 3. We're turning the up the dial to channel 4. In between, there's a lot of chaos and static, a lot of turmoil in the world. "The roaring of the sea and its agitation."

    In the meantime, there are all these channels up above 4 but we can only move up a grade at a time, just like grade school.

    In "consciousness", anything is possible. The realm of thought is limitless.

    Up above that is the realm of emotion....

    With each realm or "octave" that we move up, there are half as many laws.

    There is only One Law at the Top, and that is the Law of Love, which is the Law of One.

    Other than that, the most important thing is to KNOW your place in the hierarchy, that you are each as invested in the Divine as anyone else, and that we must learn to love and respect one another. It's the only way for the human race and the planet to survive.

  • Lozhasleft
    Lozhasleft

    MLE you are a naughty boy...go and sit on the step. Lol...

    Loz x

  • tec
    tec

    lol @ Loz :)

  • jonathan dough
    jonathan dough

    Misery, you are bating us, don't understand the Trinity and don't know what "person" means.

    “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)

    Third, as mentioned above, the hypostatic “Person” refers to a form in which the divine essence exists, not a created human, but three personal self-distinctions (The New Bible Dictionary [Grand Rapids, Michigan, W. M. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1962], 1300) (New Bible Dictionary).

    In most formularies the doctrine is stated by saying that God is one in His essential being, but that in this being there are three Persons, yet so as not to form separate and distinct individuals. They are three modes or forms in which the divine essence exists. ‘Person’ is, however, an imperfect expression of the truth in as much as the term denotes to us a separate rational and moral individual. But in the being of God there are not three individuals, but only three personal self-distinctions within the one divine essence. (New Bible Dictionary, 1299, 1300)

    Fourth, while each Person is self-conscious, He never acts independently.

    [P]ersonality in man implies independence of will, actions, and feelings, leading to behavior peculiar to the person. This cannot be thought of in connection with the Trinity; each Person is self-conscious and self-directing, yet never acting independently or in opposition. (ibid.)

    Fifth, The Jehovah’s Witnesses argue,“ Thousands of times throughout the Bible, God is spoken of as one person. When he speaks, it is as one undivided individual…. Why would all the God-inspired Bible writers speak of God as one person if he were actually three persons? … What purpose would that serve except to mislead people?” (Should You Believe, Chapter 6).

    This line of argument illustrates their confusion. The triune God is not split into three. He is one undivided individual as just mentioned. His diversity manifests itself in operations and characteristics:

    When we say that God is a unity we mean that though God is in Himself a threefold centre of life, His life is not split into three. He is one in essence, in personality, and in will. When we say that God is a Trinity in unity we mean that there is unity in diversity, and that diversity manifests itself in Persons, in characteristics, and in operations. (New Bible Dictionary, 1299, 1300)

    We do not confess three Gods, but one God in three persons, the “consubstantial Trinity,” (Catholic Catechism, 75). “[T]he Godhead of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one, their glory equal, their majesty coeternal.” Athanasian Creed; DS 75; ND16)” (Catholic Catechism, 79).

    Sixth, there is subordination of relation and order among the three Persons, but not in nature:

    Moreover, the subsistence and operations of the three Persons are marked by a certain order involving a certain subordination in relation, though not in nature. The Father as the fount of deity is First: He is said to originate. The Son, eternally begotten of the Father, is Second: he is said to reveal. The Spirit, eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son, is Third: He is said to execute.

    While this does not suggest priority in time or in dignity, since all three Persons are divine and eternal, it does suggest an order of precedence in operation and revelation. Thus we can say that creation is from the Father, through the Son, by the Holy Spirit. (New Bible Dictionary, 1299, 1300)

    Seventh, the three Persons are permanent features of God’s three distinct manners of His activity:

    Trinitarian theology is par excellence the theology of relationship. Its fundamental principle is that God, who is self-communication and self-giving love for us, is from all eternity love perfectly given and received. The traditional formula “God is three persons in one nature” compactly expresses that there are permanent features of God’s eternal being (the three persons) that are the ontological precondition for the three distinct manners of God’s tripersonal activity in the world (as Father, Son and Spirit). (Encyclopedia of Religion, 55)

    Eighth, each Person has the divine nature, but each has it differently:

    Whatever is other, distinct, plural, personal, and proper in the Godhead is exclusively a matter of relationship. Father, Son and Spirit do not differ as God, but in the way each is God with respect to the others. Each has and is the divine nature, but each has it differently: the Father from Himself, the Son from the Father, the Spirit from both the Father and the Son. God, then, is one in substance, three in Person, and what is significant about this distinction, what makes it non-contradictory, is that what is personal in the Godhead is not something absolute, but something purely relative, (Council of Florence, 1442). (Catholic Encyclopedia, 303)

    Ninth, the doctrine also holds that the divine Persons exist in their relationships to one another:

    The three divine Persons exist in their particular, unique natures as Father, Son and Spirit in their relationships to one another, and are determined through these relationships. It is in these relationships that they are Persons. Being a person in this respect means existing-in-relationship. (Trinity and the Kingdom, 172)

    [T]he three divine Persons possess the same individual, indivisible and one divine nature, but they possess it in varying ways. The Father possesses it of himself; the Son and the Spirit have it from the Father (ibid., 172). The Trinitarian Persons subsist in the common divine nature; they exist in their relations to one another. (ibid., 173)

    “A divine Person is a non-interchangeable existence of the divine nature.” By the word ‘existence’ - existential - [he] meant: existence, in the light of another” (ibid., 173).

    http://144000.110mb.com/trinity/index.html#3

  • shepherd
    shepherd

    “A divine Person is a non-interchangeable existence of the divine nature.”

    @Jonathan you presented your argument really well, and what you wrote had some interesting pseudologic.

    But, in the end it really does not matter if a fantasy god character is one, or is part of a trinity of fantasies.

  • JRK
    JRK

    Whatever, whack whack whack. I don't care. I am an apathasist.

    JK

  • inbetween
    inbetween

    Since I dared to look beyond WTS explanations, I learned a lot about trinity, even understand to some degree, why it became such a popular doctrine.

    However, there are still some strong objections to it, I cannot explain away:

    1) the scripture in 1. Corinthians 11:3

    1 Corinthians 11:3 (New International Version, ©2011)

    But I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, [a] and the head of Christ is God.

    Headship as being higher in rank, how does this harmonize with a trinity, when all are said to be equal ?

    2) free will

    If the trinity are 3 persons in one god-head, fine, but what if one person exercises free will, lets say Jesus gave in to temptation of the Devil, and necomes apostate to the father, what will happen to the trinity ?

    3) death of Jesus

    How was the trinity affected by Jesus death ?

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