Posts by 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.

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.

@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.

@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?

@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’.

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.

@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.

@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.

@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.