Posts by Anony Mous

  • joey jojo
    28

    Pre-Nicene christians and the trinity

    by joey jojo in
    1. watchtower
    2. beliefs

    this is just a quick summary that might be useful regarding the threads about the trinity currently on the board.. in 325 ce, the nicene council was called by constantine to settle schisms within the christian church.

    the argument about the nature of jesus in relation to god was one of the big problems that needed resolution.

    at first, constantine told the 2 main players, alexander and arius to sort it out between themselves, as he, constantine didnt see it as overly important.

    1. Earnest
    2. aqwsed12345
    3. Longlivetherenegades
  • Anony Mous
    Anony Mous

    @Sea Breeze: this is about the historical record, not the theology. And your argument rejects the existence of the soul separate from the body, the fact Jesus said he was “going to” hell for 3 days etc. It is a WTBTS question that only arises if you reject a spirit Jesus (whether that is triune is irrelevant to that argument). WTBTS rejects Jesus and makes him an angel that formed a body and if he had no soul and there is no hell, then you are kind of stuck after he dies.

    @Earnesst and @aqqswad: I said Arianism was spread after his death and morphed into anti-trinitarianism under Justin the Apostate (wonder why he’s called that?), but that was long after the Nicene Christianity was established and Arian himself had died, 6th and 7th century Arianism is completely different and does reject the trinity, the divinity of Christ etc.

    The claim was that Arian himself rejected the trinity and that this was discussed under the First Council of Nicaea, the Nicene Christians knew that Arian’s teaching would lead to the outright rejection of the trinity and deity of Christ, replacing it with a pagan Roman polytheism and that is what they wrote about the ideas of Arian, but this was not the point of discussion at the Council, the point of the Council was whether the trinitarian God was a singular deity made of the same substance or whether there was an eternal God was of similar substance to the trinitarian God, which Arian held the first existed separate and then created (finite) the other parts to become the trinitarian God. It sounds weird to us, but trying to merge pagan ideas such as polytheism into Christianity was common at that time to attract other groups and people.

  • joey jojo
    28

    Pre-Nicene christians and the trinity

    by joey jojo in
    1. watchtower
    2. beliefs

    this is just a quick summary that might be useful regarding the threads about the trinity currently on the board.. in 325 ce, the nicene council was called by constantine to settle schisms within the christian church.

    the argument about the nature of jesus in relation to god was one of the big problems that needed resolution.

    at first, constantine told the 2 main players, alexander and arius to sort it out between themselves, as he, constantine didnt see it as overly important.

    1. Earnest
    2. aqwsed12345
    3. Longlivetherenegades
  • Anony Mous
    Anony Mous

    Where do you find that the teaching was wide spread and accepted? According to the historical records, it was only accepted in the Alexandrian diocese and was spreading in African provinces as well, Arian was said to teach sailors the teaching as sea shanties in a hope of spreading it. When it came to the ears of the other Bishops, they universally condemned it although Arian claimed to have many believers, of the 300+ people at the First Council of Nicaea, only 22 initially were supporters of Arian, although it is clear some only supported him for personal connection and political reasons, after months of debate he had only 3 supporters, the rest signed off on the Nicene interpretation of Christianity.

    Moreover, what Arian claimed was not the modern teaching from WTBTS that Jesus is Michael, just one of the many angels, subservient to both God and a delegated co-ruler with the “anointed ones”, he still saw Jesus as divine, connected to the God-figure which he believed to be infinite whereas Jesus was still a (part of) God, but a finite one.

    In a sense Arius did not reject the trinity, his writings seem to point that he tried to combine the scripture that support the trinity and scripture where Jesus at face value seems to reject it, by saying the trinity was created by a greater (aspect of) God and then that that character became the Father that created (begotten) Jesus but Jesus does not know this (the entire idea is rather fractious and esoteric, between partial writings that survived).

    The complete rejection and claim that the Father was not part of and greater than the Son came after Arius death, Arianism had survived in some churches and was taken up and driven in the empire by Justin the Apostate that wanted to bring back the controversy to break up the Christian Church and bring Roman paganism back to the Empire, clear to see, Justin did not succeed and the Nicene viewpoint prevailed.

  • Longlivetherenegades
    51

    The unending and fruitless argument on Trinity

    by Longlivetherenegades in
    1. watchtower
    2. beliefs

    those who say they are christians or follow christianity needs .

    1. father .

    2. jesus .

    1. Sea Breeze
    2. DesirousOfChange
    3. Longlivetherenegades
  • Anony Mous
    Anony Mous

    @rattigan: Jesus said he was going to hell, how could he go somewhere if he was completely dead, if he didn’t have a soul to descend. How can the Bible speak of things that aren’t literal. Did Jesus raise Lazarus by himself, or did he require the Spirit and God to do so, and if Jesus can direct the Holy Spirit (as alluded to throughout the NT), what makes him different than being God.

    Explain: Jesus declares himself the Lord of the Sabbath - Matthew 12:1–8, Mark 2:23–28 and Luke 6:1–5. How can he be the one that instituted the Sabbath (the one that set the law) when the OT claims that to be God. Or the other places where Jesus is supreme to or replacing the OT Law. He was convicted by the court for claiming to be God.

    The term Son of God has specific meaning both in Judaism and Christianity, you should look a bit deeper than the superficial objection from WOL, it carries no weight since approx. 2nd century AD.

  • slimboyfat
    171

    Alteration of Revelation 3:14 in the 4th century to support the emerging Trinity doctrine

    by slimboyfat in
    1. watchtower
    2. beliefs

    in an earlier thread another poster asserted that there is no evidence that revelation 3:14 played a part in the 4th controversy that led to the trinity doctrine.

    this was claimed as evidence that the description of jesus as “the beginning of the creation of god” in the verse was not understood to mean that jesus was god’s first creation.

    the scholarly greek–english lexicon of the new testament & other early christian literature 3e (2001) by bauer, arndt, gingrich, and danker, in its latest edition states that “first creation” is indeed the probable meaning of the greek phrase.

    1. aqwsed12345
    2. aqwsed12345
    3. Blotty
  • Anony Mous
    Anony Mous

    @Duran: please don’t quote WOL, or NWT they intentionally misrepresent and mistranslate:

    And so it is written, The first man Adam became a living soul; the last Adam became a quickening spirit.

    WTBTS mistranslates soul to person. The word WTBTS translates to Life-giving is actually a word related to resurrecting (changing from dead to alive), same word in Greek for the second and third reference which then explicitly follow translated from Greek “in the spirit” or “in relation to Christ’s (current) position”

    If you want to believe the scriptures you cited, you must also believe in the soul, and the resurrection of all in the spirit form (aka a heavenly destination after death). Do you?

  • Longlivetherenegades
    51

    The unending and fruitless argument on Trinity

    by Longlivetherenegades in
    1. watchtower
    2. beliefs

    those who say they are christians or follow christianity needs .

    1. father .

    2. jesus .

    1. Sea Breeze
    2. DesirousOfChange
    3. Longlivetherenegades
  • Anony Mous
    Anony Mous

    @renegade: you started the question, various people have given different analyses, I’ve given you a historical analysis why Christians believe in the trinity and which non-Christians reject it. It is a great filter to see those who still believe in WTBTS doctrine rather than Christian doctrine. This is not about proving a spiritual point or what anyone should believe, but a critical analysis of the Bible and religious history clearly shows the trinity being the heterodox and those who separate from that considered heretical to Christians.

    You cannot prove there is no trinity unless you mis-translate the Bible. The above poorly conceived arguments from WTBTS are irrelevant to 99.99% of this world “how could he raise himself from the dead” - because his soul/spirit/deity-ness was not missing or dead. The flesh was ‘dead’, sure, it was figuratively eaten by his disciples in the story, and again, not arguing whether this was a real thing that happened as a matter of fact, but in the scripture, Jesus said himself that he was going to descend into hell for 3 days, now, if he was dead, how would he go somewhere, why would he make a point to clarify he was going to hell, nowhere does Jesus say he was going to ‘rest’ or ‘sleep’ or ‘be unaware’. If you want to say hell is just the grave (good luck proving that) now also reject the religious and symbolism for the soul and hell and redemption, you keep threading that apart, you get to dismantle the entire structure of Christianity and that is exactly what WTBTS tries to do, deconstruct everything so they are holding the power, it is what cults do.

    I don’t personally believe in a literal hell, literal soul, or literalism in general, but what WTBTS does is deconstruct the entire Christian culture and with it Western society. I am interested in the analysis of the symbolism and the effects that has had on culture, laws and history and therefore, I am an ‘atheist in defense of the trinity’.

  • Longlivetherenegades
    51

    The unending and fruitless argument on Trinity

    by Longlivetherenegades in
    1. watchtower
    2. beliefs

    those who say they are christians or follow christianity needs .

    1. father .

    2. jesus .

    1. Sea Breeze
    2. DesirousOfChange
    3. Longlivetherenegades
  • Anony Mous
    Anony Mous

    In Hindu, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva are a trinity

    In Islam, God, Jesus and Mary are 3 Gods in one, they reject the Christian version of the trinity explicitly (being 1 God), but substitute the above triad and exalt it in the fifth chapter of the Quran, verses 116-118.

    Sikh Trinity is the idea that the three points of a celestial triangle are Sat Guru, The Word, and The Name. Understanding the Trinity is said to be necessary for overcoming mortality and the cycle of life and death.

    As far as Judaism, the ideas for Christianity come from it, yes they obviously reject the Jesus trinity, but they accept the references where God in the OT is a plurality and still await the divine Messiah (eg Rebbe Schneerson) Rejections of references in the OT are rather modern, and not universal, generally in reference to the Chabad-Luvovitch movement that obviously hold to it.

    Buddhists have the trikaya, Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya and Nirmanakaya.

    I also reject your notion that the Catholic Church alone is what delayed science as if it were all powerful, the renaissance came about through Christian thought and primarily funded by the Church. Catholics didn’t have that much power when the Roman Empire collapsed and throughout the Dark Ages, most historians agree that the collapse of civilization in the Roman Empire is what brought about the spread of Christianity, but you don’t just stamp a new civilization out the ground, there are lots of aspects, many political, that went into that and the Church in many ways preserved knowledge from being destroyed by people that weren’t all that interested in it. Still people saw value in monasteries, early on they terraformed huge swathes of Europe, Nothern France, most of Belgium and the Netherlands were all under the sea, later on they were the only places people had preserved how to read and write. Muslims had a great influence on mathematics before going back to the Stone Age.