by minimus 43 Replies latest jw friends
Ever hear this one? Three guys walk into a bar: a conservative, a liberal and a middle of the roader.
The bar tender looks up and says, "What are you having, Mitt?"
"You have offered hints of Jesus' deity but nothing at all regarding a trinity."
It's amazing! Nobody reads or read Genesis Chapter 18. Nobody even acknowledges it exists.
Trinity never made sense to me and this idea is rejected by both Judaism and Islam, but as well by numerous churches like Unitarians. Even ancient Christian churches like Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox differ on the nature of the Trinity which was behind the split of 1054. The Trinity problem is a major division between Western European culture and christianity and churches of the East.
When and if I'm ever asked whether i think God is a Trinity, my answer will be: 'I personally don't give a rat's ass'. My view is that there may in fact be some sort of Ultimate Force that caused 'everything' to come into existence. But I don't think humans have the intelligence level at present to understand it. The churches certainly don't have the answers. Maybe in the future, when super-advanced intelligent machines have far out-stripped human intelligence, the answers might be found to what caused 'everything' to exist. But for now, I don't spend a second worrying about whether 'God' is a Trinity or not. I personally couldn't care less what the Bible has to say.
kepler- Have you ever sat down with a Rabbi and discussed the "we" in Genesis and how a Jew understands the passage.
After I had fully left the JW's I was searching amongst the various Christian sects for an acceptable religion to be part of. I realised that the Trinity was a good yardstick, if the Doctrine were false. I determined to understand the Doctrine so as to judge it to be false so as to be able to cast aside any religion that taught it.
I had difficulty in getting a good expalnation for a simple soul like me, until I found one written in the late 19th Century, by, of all people, a Christadelphian !
They do not support the Doctrine, and yet his clear exposition of what the doctrine really was persuaded me that it was no reason to reject Christian sects because they accepted it.
I have since been unable to trace this article on-line. But, after reading it, the doctrine was not in my mind one that conflicted with Scripture sufficiently to use it as JW's do "Oh they believe in the Trinity" and dismiss all that such sects have to say, much of which may be of value.
This will probably be heresy according to Cofty...but I think of it like a family.- Iriddle80
Yep that is also an example of the partialism heresy.
The Trinity seems OK to me but then I was never a JW. I used to be an SDA some of them don't believe the Trinity
Yes.
But it only started making sense after I left the organiztion and burned all Watchtower Society materials in my possession.
The Watchtowers were almost impossible to burn. I used 10 gallons of petrol on them before they started smoking and then another 15 gallons to finish them off.
No different than society saying that Jesus, Abbadon and Michael are the same. Just follow the trails of breadcrumbs that are in the bible. So we were told and to never question what the faithful slave has taught us. That if we questioned it, then we have to question our faith since these are some of the things we can't see but have to believe in. So, in other words it's a mystery just like christendom who believe in the trinity.
Same filthy candy but with a different candy wrapper!(as JW.Org/Watchtower & Bible Tract Society/ Bible Students would say)
Designs: Kepler,Have you ever set down with a Rabbi and discussed the "we" in Genesis and how a Jew understands the passage?
Designs,
No I have not, but I have in my library several Jewish commentaries, which I presume are by rabbis. At least one was a lead translator on a TaNaKh translation and the other was commenting on the Torah. Breitler and Friedman respectively. The latter commented on both chapter 1 and 18 of Genesis. He did not say what an individual Jew understands about the"we" but gave several interpretation. These included the editorial we, the notion that God was addressing his angels and, he also entertained the possibility that it was an example of polytheism or something that gave credence to the existence of pagan gods ( disputed in other books of the OT).
On chapter 18, he admitted that Abraham addressed three men as God. But he could not let that stand. He claimed that this was an example of "hypostasis" because a human could not countenance the face of God. He cites the later authority of Exodus.
So, for one reason or another hermeneutics leads not to "Trinity" because of a priori assumptions or pre-conditions for "reasoning from scripture".
When we get to Joshua, events described there will be used to support a Ptolemaic cosmos...
