Posts by Anony Mous

28

Pre-Nicene christians and the trinity

by joey jojo in

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.

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.

51

The unending and fruitless argument on Trinity

by Longlivetherenegades in

those who say they are christians or follow christianity needs .

1. father .

2. jesus .

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.

171

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

by slimboyfat in

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.

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?

51

The unending and fruitless argument on Trinity

by Longlivetherenegades in

those who say they are christians or follow christianity needs .

1. father .

2. jesus .

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’.

51

The unending and fruitless argument on Trinity

by Longlivetherenegades in

those who say they are christians or follow christianity needs .

1. father .

2. jesus .

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.

51

The unending and fruitless argument on Trinity

by Longlivetherenegades in

those who say they are christians or follow christianity needs .

1. father .

2. jesus .

Anony Mous

@MeanMrMustard and @joeyjojo: I personally don’t care what YOU believe, I’m merely talking about the definition of “Christian”. As I said, there are other faiths, it’s like the definition of master electrician, just because I know how to fix my electric doesn’t make me a (licensed) electrician, you can’t say a master electrician is anyone who believes himself to be an electrician, there is in most jurisdiction a legal definition of master, you can’t call yourself an electrician unless you qualify by some third parties’ definitions. There are other things, almost everything in this world, you can tell people you are a girl when you are in fact a man, you can’t change the definitions of man and woman however.

Historically speaking, Christians are by definition those who believe in the deity of Christ. As you know from other posts, I have my own critical view of faith and Christianity, that doesn’t take away the fact that the core tenets of Christians and Jews and Muslims are not interchangeable, just like the definition of man and woman is not interchangeable.

That being said, MeanMrMustard, you said if you believe in your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, yes, you are a Christian for the original meanings of the title Lord in the Bible, the divine title Adonai or kurios, which is used whenever the OT refers to God or the NT refers to Jesus. Adonai meaning being “Lord of lords” aka God. Now, you can try to argue against that Adonai does refer to God, rejecting all of Jewish and Christian and Muslim traditions (at least when it comes to the Old Testament), and start a religion around it, but outside of your small group, you will find it hard to convince others that your beliefs are ‘just like them’, just like it is hard to get a doctor to treat you as girl when you are in fact a man.

Now don’t confuse this with the facts of trinitarianism, which is not provable, you’d have to have scientific proof for God etc etc, but that is a different conversation. Likewise the influence of other religions on both Judaism and Christianity is a fact, I believe all faiths are a distillation of natural rules and ideas and stories of what came before, therefore rejecting that JWs and Mormons do is dangerous because it ignores the reasons for the establishment of that belief. Just like accepting a man can be a woman is destabilizing to society (man in women’s sports, man in women’s bathrooms etc), there is a deeper core truth to the trinity that you can’t just reject from modern society without removing the underpinnings of the renaissance and by that modern science etc. which is why it was independently discovered in many religions as others here point out, it is a pattern that keeps appearing in India, in China, in Africa, which means there is a core there that we in Christianity express as “father-figure” (tradition, wisdom, stable future and past), a “son-figure” (youthful progression, something that conquers death, compassionate, caretaker) and then a “spirit-figure” (the inside voice, truth, music, water, desire) and then humans/faith is all of this in one, and they have to be in balance or together or whatever you want to call it, but they can’t be separated from each other else you lose your humanity, tradition without progress is bad, you become stuck, youthful vigor without checks and balances, just look at people between 18-25 and what they believe, vote and fight for and then if you just had the spirit, only the transcendent, only pursuit of pleasure and desires, you basically become an empty vessel, a hedonist, like many philosophers in the 18th and 19th century.

51

The unending and fruitless argument on Trinity

by Longlivetherenegades in

those who say they are christians or follow christianity needs .

1. father .

2. jesus .

Anony Mous

@MeanMrMustard. The non-trinitarian nature of God is ONLY by Miller, Smith and their modern day followers. Which other Christian denomination holds that God is not triune with the Son? People here claim the false preachings of the WTBTS as if this is common belief amongst protestants or a big debate, when it is not. One guy in the second century started preaching it and he was declared a heretic by all other Christians across the Roman Empire, every other idea like it has been declared heretical.

I’m not saying whether your belief is valid or not, it is just not accepted as a Christian doctrine, if you believe in everything in the Bible but not the divinity of Jesus, you are basically a Jew or a Muslim, nothing wrong with that, but it is not accurate to say that Reformation Judaism, Mormonism, Islam or Millerism (including SDA and JW) is Christian. Many atheists believe a man like Jesus or named Jesus existed at the time and was a preacher, I would say probably 90% of them do believe that as being a fact, that does not make them Christians.

51

The unending and fruitless argument on Trinity

by Longlivetherenegades in

those who say they are christians or follow christianity needs .

1. father .

2. jesus .

Anony Mous

@MeanMrMustard: because what you state is the view of Jesus according to Mormons (or Islam). So Christianity is a form of Judaism where the Messiah has returned (if you want to take a true historic viewpoint).

You cannot agree to reject the divinity of Christ as elaborated in the Nicene Creed and still be a Christian, it’s kind of the definition of being a Christian, every denomination has held this since the establishment of Christianity. The trinity is just the mechanics of how God came to Earth and died for our sins in a human body, because nobody can ‘see’ God in completeness and live, therefore there must be a part of God that came down (the Son) and a connecting force (the Holy Spirit). It’s more of an explanation, but you cannot say they are separate, that would be considered heresy. You can call your belief something else, but the majority of Christians would agree you are not a Christian if you reject that.

Judaism had similar expectations according to Rabbi Johanan bar Nappaha and Rabbi Abba Bar Kahana (3rd century AD) the Jews were still expecting God-in-the-flesh. The Chabad believes Rabbi Mendel Schneerson to be similarly the Messiah, a God-on-earth. I think more modern Judaism may reject that notion, but that may be to distinguish it from the idea of Jesus.

Note that even the Quran teaches that Jesus was the Messiah and will return during their interpretation of Armageddon, however like Mormons and Millerites do not teach that he is (a) God.

51

The unending and fruitless argument on Trinity

by Longlivetherenegades in

those who say they are christians or follow christianity needs .

1. father .

2. jesus .

Anony Mous

@longlive: they are not 3 separate/itemized terms, that’s the difference between Christians and non-Christians.

There are only 2 main religious groups that reject trinitarianism and they are both followers of 19th century false prophets William Miller (which eventually became Bible Students, WTBTS and Adventists) and Joseph Smith (various sorts of Mormonism). They actually influenced each other and were in a bit of a tussle for prophecy and followers as they were both from the same region (Upstate New York), both seem to have copied some things from the other.

Mormons are thus close cousins to the JW belief system, and Mormonism is generally rejected as a Christian faith.

Joseph Smith had similar beliefs as that of William Miller, including the expectation that Christ’s return would happen soon, the rejection of the trinity and rejection of tradition, the Catholic Church and various Christian texts.
Joseph rejected Miller’s predictions for 1843 and 1844, stating instead that Christ could not come any sooner than 1890 or 1891 as it would take place in the lifetime of some of those living in the 1830s or 1840s.

7

GB's latest prophecy is already wrong!!!

by nowwhat? in

at the annual meeting they said god will put it into the nations hearts to give their power to the united nations.

now that trump and the republicans have won, the united states will never give up their sovereignty to the u.n. !

trump has total disdain for the un, who and wef!

Anony Mous

@slimboyfat: the Nordstream 2 pipeline was stopped by Trump and Senator Cruz, Biden removed the restriction on Russia and Germany finishing it on day 3 of his administration, Russia invaded 12 months later with the glut of cash they had gotten off Germany’s Energiewende (they converted everything to wind and solar, reduced or eliminated reliance on French nuclear power and then went and begged Russia for oil so they wouldn’t freeze in winter).

The things you learned about the Marshall plan was apparent propaganda. Neither story is completely true, it doesn’t make sense that business would be better being taxed to pay for the rebuilding of Europe only to then get a trickle of that tax money back in international business. The Marshall plan allowed Europe and Japan to put in massive trade restrictions actually, 100% tariffs while the US was bound not to have tarrifs in return, that led to the Japanese car and electronics boom in the US starting in the 60s, the Europeans focused elsewhere while depending on the US for protection. They had all the leverage to export and closed their import markets to US trade.

The primary goal of the plan was to stand against future issues, when your country is in rubble, it is easy to get someone like Hitler back in power or someone like Stalin to just roll over the ruins, that was clearly stated along the way by many of those involved, they didn’t want the US to keep getting involved in future European issues and it worked to some extent, too well as socialists took advantage of the generosity to fund their utopian agendas. And you can clearly see that after the war, the US elected a series of weak presidents afraid to enforce the power they had, leading to Korean and Vietnam wars, domestically resulting in the hippie movement and Black Panthers and the Weather Underground.