Sometimes I wonder about the Trinitarian view.

Originally posted by AllGloryIsGods
I wonder if when we all stand before God will he say "You really wasted your time debating this nonsense?".

I am a firm believer that Yeshua and Yahweh are two separate entities. One cannot be his own son. The Bible clearly separates them by name. So my belief will never change and this thread is not to try and change others opinions. I just had this thought today and sometimes I wonder what God thinks about this. Whether its completely silly to debate it. Or would worshiping Yeshua be considered worshiping a false idol?

Jesus never rebuked anyone in scripture for worshipping Him. This same Jesus rebuked the devil telling him that man is to worship God and only God. So that means He is either God or a wicked man who didn't discourage idolatry directed at Himself.

reply to post by NOTurTypical

. . . He is either God or a wicked man who didn't discourage idolatry directed at Himself.

Which just takes us back to the original question, is the Trinity a valid construct.
I understand your opinion is that Jesus and the Father are the same person, coming I guess from the Pentecostal side of your double sided cult religious background (the other side being Dispensationalism).
That would be a variant of Sabellian Modalism, where this "god" being can morph from one to the other, be it Father, Son or Holy Ghost.
My opinion is that the quote you are referring to is a scenario where the devil is in the guise of an angel trying to help Jesus through his trial in the wilderness, and is misquoting the Old Testament in order to cause Jesus to fail, so Jesus is countering the devil my correctly quoting scripture. Jesus was not giving a lecture to disciples on the nature of God.
So your argument carries very little weight as evidence in support of your heretical doctrine.

Originally posted by AllGloryIsGods
I wonder if when we all stand before God will he say "You really wasted your time debating this nonsense?".

I am a firm believer that Yeshua and Yahweh are two separate entities. One cannot be his own son. The Bible clearly separates them by name. So my belief will never change and this thread is not to try and change others opinions. I just had this thought today and sometimes I wonder what God thinks about this. Whether its completely silly to debate it. Or would worshiping Yeshua be considered worshiping a false idol?

I'll give you a hint...we are all human but equal in our humanity.
Theos - God - would be the same.
The Bible NEVER says God is ONE person. It says they are all in agreement and all have the same authority, it NEVER says they are one person specifically.

reply to post by kingofmd

an excerpt from the Athanasian creed

Let me direct the members of this forum to the third section of the book by Elaine Pagels,
Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation
where she devotes a large portion of it to this person, Athanasius, who was a really awful person who was very ambitious for power and who destroyed anyone in his way. He devoted himself to attacking anyone who disagreed, and attached himself to imperial power to gain military support for his struggles against all Christian religious authorities who stood in his path for ultimate supremacy.
The point being, when you see the word "Athenasian", realize that this is the belief of one man who intimidated the world to accept his personal view.

Originally posted by jmdewey60
reply to post by kingofmd

 

an excerpt from the Athanasian creed

Let me direct the members of this forum to the third section of the book by Elaine Pagels,
Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation
where she devotes a large portion of it to this person, Athanasius

You're citing Elaine "Jesus was a Gnostic" Pagels as a reputable source of acrimonious information about an orthodox Christian? Well, colour me impressed, I never thought she'd do that.

reply to post by palg1

Without the perfect divinity of Christ expressed in this manner the ‘raison d’être’ of Christianity vaporises along with the hope that Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross could give us our freedom.

I understand that this was an argument made against docetism, but let's say for the sake of argument that docetism poses no current threat to Christianity, so we can disregard that aspect for now, what then would be the reason for this "perfect divinity"?
And, how do you think that Jesus did set us free, exactly? What was the mechanism used by Jesus of bringing about our freedom?
It looks like you are actually arguing against an orthodox Trinity, and for Modalism.

reply to post by adjensen

You're citing Elaine "Jesus was a Gnostic" Pagels as a reputable source of acrimonious information about an orthodox Christian? Well, colour me impressed, I never thought she'd do that.

Elaine Pagels is the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University. The point being, she would not have been doing this alone but had collaboration from academia from all over and contributors in the way of researchers and fact checkers.
It's pretty straightforward history but from someone not under obligation to orthodoxy, where she is willing to tell an embarrassing truth for people like the Catholic Church.

Originally posted by jmdewey60
reply to post by adjensen

 

You're citing Elaine "Jesus was a Gnostic" Pagels as a reputable source of acrimonious information about an orthodox Christian? Well, colour me impressed, I never thought she'd do that.

Elaine Pagels is the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University. The point being, she would not have been doing this alone but had collaboration from academia from all over and contributors in the way of researchers and fact checkers.

Who cares if she's a professor at Princeton? She's well known as a liberal historical revisionist whose views of both Gnosticism and orthodox Christianity are grounded more in opinion than they are in fact.

What next? Going to cite the professors of the Jesus Seminar to refute the resurrection? Harvard's Dr. Karen King to claim that Jesus was married?

reply to post by jmdewey60


She wouldn't happen to be a follower of the Arian heresy, would she? Athanasius taught with much zeal that Arianism, which was the reigning "orthodoxy" of the day, was in fact a heresy. His opponents in the end were outed as heretics, keep in mind they were the ones in power, so the entire narative your author stated belongs in the fiction section.

reply to post by adjensen

Who cares if she's a professor at Princeton?

The book has been known for a year or so.
Let me know if you come across any attacks against the history that she presents, from people willing to jump up to defend Athanasius' name.

reply to post by kingofmd

She wouldn't happen to be a follower of the Arian heresy, would she?

I doubt it.
Take a look at the book. You can get the Kindle version from Amazon pretty cheap, and you could probably read that whole section in an hour. Read it, and report what part of it that you think is wrong.

Athanasius taught with much zeal that Arianism, which was the reigning "orthodoxy" of the day, was in fact a heresy. His opponents in the end were outed as heretics, keep in mind they were the ones in power, so the entire narrative your author stated belongs in the fiction section.

Arius was right, and Athanasius was wrong.
Athanasius said it was heresy because it disagreed with his opinion.
I would suggest that you are the one buying into fiction.
There was no "in power" in the church before Athanasius. He pretty much invented that.
Arius was not in power but was only a teacher of theology, and before Athanasius came around, he was the most respected defender of the Trinity in Christendom.

reply to post by jmdewey60

Originally posted by windword

Originally posted by jmdewey60
reply to post by windword

 

Do you dismiss the claims of the Essenes . . .

The Essenes do not make any claims that I am aware of.
You may be thinking of the Zadokites.
The Essenes are basically an invention of Josephus, and were supposedly also known as the Therapeutae.
As far as we know, they did not have any writings that have survived.
There were some people connected with the community of Qumran, who supposedly were the source of the Dead Sea Scrolls, but the scholars that I read don't make the leap of faith that some do, to say they were the same people.

Originally posted by jmdewey60
reply to post by windword

 

The Essenes were more than an invention of Josephus!

You are using fantasy to back up your claim.
You see what you want to see and quote people with the same desire.
There are no Essene writings that anyone (who has a reputation to start with) would stake their reputations on.
Can you quote an actual highly placed professor (in the appropriate relevant field) of a major university who agrees with this sort of daydreaming?

First, you claim that the Essenes were an "invention" of Josephus. So I showed you that other contemporaries, Pliny and Philo, also confirm the existence of the Essene community, and their custom of ritual bathing.

I cited an article from Bar Magazine, a Biblical Archaeology review, and from The Jewish Virtual Library, but you claim that I am only presenting bias information to back up my "FANTASY", that the Essenes were the community responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls.

When the Dead Sea Scroll Exhibit came to San Diego, where I live, I attended the exhibit and the seminar. The exhibit showed the "Scriptorium" area in their model of Qumran, based of the archaeological evidence. and more than suggested that the residents were Essenes.

So, who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?:
Most scholars believe the scrolls were created by the Essene sect, a group of Jews who broke away from mainstream Judaism to live a communal life in the desert. When the Romans invaded their community around 68 CE, the Essenes hid the manuscripts in nearby caves. However, some scholars believe the Essenes were not the only authors of the scrolls; they assume that some of the manuscripts were written in Jerusalem and later deposited in the caves at Qumran when the Romans threatened Jerusalem.
sandiego.about.com...

I don't know who your scholars are, but, even though there is a dispute in the community, the consensus still remains that the Essenes were responsible for the DDS.

Dead Sea Scrolls Written by Ritual Bathers?

In 1953, a French archaeologist and Catholic priest named Roland de Vaux led an international team to study the mostly Hebrew scrolls, which a Bedouin shepherd had discovered in 1947.

De Vaux concluded that the scrolls' authors had lived in Qumran, because the 11 scroll caves are close to the site.

Ancient Jewish historians had noted the presence of Essenes in the Dead Sea region, and de Vaux argued Qumran was one of their communities after his team uncovered numerous remains of pools that he believed to be Jewish ritual baths.

His theory appeared to be supported by the Dead Sea Scrolls themselves, some of which contained guidelines for communal living that matched ancient descriptions of Essene customs.

"The scrolls describe communal dining and ritual bathing instructions consistent with Qumran's archaeology," explained Cargill, of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

[snip]

"I don't buy it," said NYU's Schiffman, who added that the idea of the scrolls being written by multiple Jewish groups from Jerusalem has been around since the 1950s. "The Jerusalem theory has been rejected by virtually everyone in the field," he said. "The notion that someone brought a bunch of scrolls together from some other location and deposited them in a cave is very, very unlikely," Schiffman added. "The reason is that most of the [the scrolls] fit a coherent theme and hang together. "If the scrolls were brought from some other place, presumably by some other groups of Jews, you would expect to find items that fit the ideologies of groups that are in disagreement with [the Essenes]. And it's not there," said Schiffman, who dismisses interpretations that link some Dead Sea Scroll writings to groups such as the Zealots.
news.nationalgeographic.com...

The Jewish Israeli scholar Sukenik, who acquired the scrolls from the Bedouin, was the first to suggest the identification of Essenes with the Dead Sea Sect. Archaeologist and general Yigael Yadin (Sukenikís son), and Christian scholars like AndrÈ Dupont-Sommer, Father Roland Devaux, Millar Burrows, and Frank Cross have been strong supporters of this theory. They compared the contents of the Rule of the Community with the descriptions of Philo, Pliny and Josephus and recognized there a dovetailing with the ancient sources. These manuals describe not only the Qumran communityís concern with strict observance of ritual laws in the context of communal living but also their spiritual and eschatological concerns, especially their interest in the instruction, found in Isaiah 40:3, to "prepare in the wilderness the way of . . . make straight in the desert a path for our God." (Manual of Discipline plate 8, line 14, American Schools of Oriental Research, 1951, ed. Burrows). Although the word Essene appears nowhere in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the parallels between the life set down in the manual and that of the ancient authors seems strong enough to support the theory that the sect were Essenes.
www.bibleandjewishstudies.net...

Originally posted by jmdewey60
reply to post by adjensen

 

Who cares if she's a professor at Princeton?

The book has been known for a year or so.
Let me know if you come across any attacks against the history that she presents, from people willing to jump up to defend Athanasius' name.

Here ya go:

This readable and tendentious book repeats a formula that has become a winner in an era of spiritual self-empowerment: highlight parts of the canonical New Testament or early church orthodoxy that are most likely to ruffle modern progressive feathers and contrast those with selections from Gnostic writings that are most likely to resonate with contemporary preferences. In this context early church leaders and canonical scriptures come across as patriarchal, authoritarian and vindictive in contrast to the alleged inclusivity, generosity and feminism of Gnosticism. (Source)

You're promoting liberal theology and historical revisionism.

reply to post by windword

I don't know who your scholars are, but, even though there is a dispute in the community, the consensus still remains that the Essenes were responsible for the DDS.

Is this like the so-called consensus of "scientists" who support global warming, where most of them are not actually climatologists but are in totally unrelated fields?
Your argument is ridiculous, where the only common thread is that they took baths.

reply to post by adjensen

Here ya go:

The Mennonites object?
Wow!
It refers to a review available to students only for the school which hosts the web site.
It does not mention the history I was talking about but starts out talking about events in the first century.

You're promoting liberal theology and historical revisionism.

So?
You may be happy being ignorant but that is not what this forum promotes.

For centuries the Trinity was burned into the church going and abiding masses. To question it was heresy, it could mean exile or death. But with the mass production of bibles and people being educated to read; that old debate that was fierce in the 4th century has arisen again. Every so often this topic on ATS comes up, I myself have made it and discussed it many times.

But remember the 4th century religious leaders and clergy that decided this were very divided on this topic, and they were not the Apostles, and a then pagan Emperor also had an influence on the outcome. Research it.

The question I ask ATS members is are you going to let a bunch of men from the 4th century decide this for you ?

Are you going to let the modern church which inherited this dogma decide this for you ?

Or will you read the bible and research the history of the Trinity origins and decide for yourself ?

Interestingly somebody posted religious groups that don't believe in the Trinity, they forgot to put God's once chosen people Jews/Judaism.
If you accept that the Jews were once God's chosen people, when they worshiped they worshiped One Almighty God. Yes Jesus was in heaven then too. And God's Holy Spirit was active and working as well.

Something to think about.

reply to post by jmdewey60


What has global warming to do with the Dead Sea Scrolls? Way to deflect and derail.

The sources that I cited align more than just the bathing ritual of the Essenes. I included a portion, reinforcing the bathing ritual because the of bathing pools discovered at Qumran.

You are the one choosing to be obtuse and ignore the evidence given in the links, clinging to your bias fantasy that the Essenes have nothing to do with the Dead Sea Scrolls, who's discover places a different light on early Christianity and threatens the supposed genesis of Christianity as presented by the Catholic Church, regardless of who author and/or collected these writings.

Originally posted by jmdewey60

You're promoting liberal theology and historical revisionism.

So?
You may be happy being ignorant but that is not what this forum promotes.

Seriously? You're suggesting that adopting historical revisionism to fit an agenda is "denying ignorance"? That's embracing ignorance!

Pagels is a known hack with a deeply ingrained agenda, and there is no indication that this book represents anything different. You might want to accept it as the gospel truth, but you do so in complete ignorance because you haven't bothered to check the credibility of a source that you agree with.

reply to post by Blue_Jay33

If you accept that the Jews were once God's chosen people, when they worshiped they worshiped One Almighty God. Yes Jesus was in heaven then too. And God's Holy Spirit was active and working as well.

"Almighty God" is a translation from the Greek in the Septuagint, where in the Hebrew, it would say El Shaddai, who was one of the Shaddayyin, who was a race of demon gods who lived on certain strategic mountains and were the sovereigns over all they surveyed from the top of their mountain, with Yahweh's being Mount Hermon.

reply to post by windword

. . . who's discovery places a different light on early Christianity and threatens the supposed genesis of Christianity as presented by the Catholic Church, regardless of who author and/or collected these writings.

Seems like you have an iron in the fire yourself.
I was a big fan of the Essenes thirty years ago back when that theory was popular.
I know better now.