Help me! I'm beginning to abandon the Trinity.

[Bibleuser]

Also the bible says that Jehovah created everything alone, by himself, without help:

Isaiah 44:24 "This is what the LORD says-- your Redeemer, who formed you in the womb: I am the LORD, who has made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself,

Yet the bible also says the Jesus is the creator, who created everything:

John 1:3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

Col. 1:16-17 For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

So if God created everything himself, alone without help, and Jesus is also the creator who created everything, then the only conclusion is that Jesus is God.

Jo. 1:3 "Through" not BY!!

"Through - preposition
1.
in at one end, side, or surface and out at the other:
to pass through a tunnel; We drove through Denver without stopping. Sun came through the window. ..."-http://www.dictionary.com/browse/through

As an agent of God as all things were done "through" Him, Jesus, not BY him!!

That raises a problem with Col 1:16 does it not?
BU

[Bibleuser]

You're doing a bit of assuming here. It is obvious from the NT that the LXX was not exclusively in use in first-century Judaea.

That does not say it was not either now does it?
BU

[Sparko]

Jo. 1:3 "Through" not BY!!

"Through - preposition
1.
in at one end, side, or surface and out at the other:
to pass through a tunnel; We drove through Denver without stopping. Sun came through the window. ..."-http://www.dictionary.com/browse/through

As an agent of God as all things were done "through" Him, Jesus, not BY him!!

That raises a problem with Col 1:16 does it not?
BU

no it doesn't. The Trinity is three persons yet ONE GOD. The Father created everything through Jesus and the Holy Spirit. The three persons of the Trinity created everything as one God, Jehovah.

You also totally ignored the fact that Jehovah said he created everything by himself and no other. How do you reconcile THAT with him creating "through" a Jesus who is another lesser being?

But Col 1:16 does create a problem for YOU doesn't it? Since Col 1:16 does say everything was made by Christ. You have to deny Col 1:16. I don't.

And back to my earlier post which you ignored when speaking about Jesus being "a God" :

How many true Gods are there, BU? Just one. All other Gods are false Gods. Are you saying that Jesus is a false God?

"You are my witnesses," declares the LORD, "and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor will there be one after me" (Isaiah 43:10).


Isaiah 44:6 "This is what the LORD says-- Israel's King and Redeemer, the LORD Almighty: I am the first and I am the last; apart from me there is no God. 7 Who then is like me? Let him proclaim it. Let him declare and lay out before me what has happened since I established my ancient people, and what is yet to come-- yes, let him foretell what will come. 8 Do not tremble, do not be afraid. Did I not proclaim this and foretell it long ago? You are my witnesses. Is there any God besides me? No, there is no other Rock; I know not one."*

[Bibleuser]

no it doesn't. The Trinity is three persons yet ONE GOD. The Father created everything through Jesus and the Holy Spirit. The three persons of the Trinity created everything as one God, Jehovah.

You also totally ignored the fact that Jehovah said he created everything by himself and no other. How do you reconcile THAT with him creating "through" a Jesus who is another lesser being?

But Col 1:16 does create a problem for YOU doesn't it? Since Col 1:16 does say everything was made by Christ. You have to deny Col 1:16. I don't.

And back to my earlier post which you ignored when speaking about Jesus being "a God" :

How many true Gods are there, BU? Just one. All other Gods are false Gods. Are you saying that Jesus is a false God?

"You are my witnesses," declares the LORD, "and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor will there be one after me" (Isaiah 43:10).


Isaiah 44:6 "This is what the LORD says-- Israel's King and Redeemer, the LORD Almighty: I am the first and I am the last; apart from me there is no God. 7 Who then is like me? Let him proclaim it. Let him declare and lay out before me what has happened since I established my ancient people, and what is yet to come-- yes, let him foretell what will come. 8 Do not tremble, do not be afraid. Did I not proclaim this and foretell it long ago? You are my witnesses. Is there any God besides me? No, there is no other Rock; I know not one."*

How many Gods, well the Bible Paul us at:-

1 Corinthians 8:5, 6
For even though there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, just as there are many “gods” and many “lords,”
6 there is actually to us one God, the Father, from whom all things are and we for him; and there is one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things are and we through him.



Word Usage is interesting in the Bible as:-

"DAIMONS" (DEMONS) TO THE GREEKS WHERE GODS

A. "In the Iliad, the gods assembled on Mount Olympus can be called daimons, and Aphrodite leads the way ahead of Helen as daimon. A hero may rush headlong 'like a daimon' and still be called god-like, isotheos. ... Daimon does not designate a specific class of divine beings, but a peculiar mode of activity."-'Greek Religion' by Walter Burkert p.180

B. "Hesiod allotted a precise place even for the common daimones: the men of the Golden Age, when their race died out, were transformed by the will of Zeus into daimones, guardians over mortals, good beings who dispense riches. Nevertheless, they remain invisible, known only by their acts."-'Greek Religion' by Walter Burkert p.180

C. “Later Hellenistic grave inscriptions it became almost a matter of course to describe the dead person as a daimon."-'Greek Religion' by Walter Burkert p.181

D. “daimon as a term for Gods and Divine powers. Various senses may be noted in this field: a. “god,” b. “lesser deity,” c. “unknown superhuman factor,” d. “what overtakes us,” e.g., death, or good or evil fortune. e. “protective deity,” and in Stoicism f. “the divinely related element in us,” e.g. nous or conscience. Stars can also be called daimones.”-Theological Dictionary of the New Testament,’ 1 Volume, by Geoffrey W. Bromiley p.138

Also see ‘Vine’s Expository Dictionary of Biblical Words’ under “Demon”.

Further example of the above is found in the Bible at Acts 25:19, where Jehovah and Jesus are called Demons as a common term to refer to any divine being; brackets added by me.:-

N.W.T. “They simply had certain disputes with him concerning their own worship of the deity* (Jehovah) and concerning a certain Jesus who was dead but who Paul kept asserting was alive.

*N.W.T. ftn. “Worship of the deity.” Lit.,“dread of demons.” Gr., dei·si·dai·mo·ni'as; Lat., su·per·sti·ti·o'ne; ...”

The ‘Literal Translation of the Holy Bible’ from e-Sword reads at Acts 25:19:-

“but they had certain questions about their own demon worship, and about a certain Jesus dying, whom Paul claimed to live.”


God to the Greeks.

To put it in simple terms it would be good to quote a comment made by G. M. A. Grube from his work 'Plato's Thought' (Methuen, 1935), page 150; taken from the book 'The Greek Philosophers' by W. K. C. Guthrie page 10-11:

"By saying that love, or victory, is god, or, to be more accurate, a god, was meant first and foremost that it is more than human, not subject to death, everlasting . . . Any power, any force we see at work in the world, which is not born with us and will continue after we are gone could thus be called a god, and most of them were."


We see in John and Paul's day that to the Greeks and Romans Demons could be good or bad spirits, gods & goddesses and very common to the peoples in general under many guises. So to those first century Athenians, this Jesus, Paul spoke of, a son of the God of the Jews and the God of the Jews, Jehovah himself, were just other demons or deities etc. to them, it is similar in the account at Acts 25:19. This should help us to understand the meaning of John 1:1 in the light of the thinking of the first century people, as the Scriptures were penned to and for them innately, using terms in a way that they could relate to so they would be able to understand the type of worship that the Almighty God will expect from humans. For the Apostle John to call “the Word” (Jesus) “a god” (theos) was quite the common way of referring to the supernatural powers or divine beings in his day, as it was with Paul. So we need to have an understanding of the prospective of the people and some idea of the language of the religious beliefs of the people of that time so we may better grasp what the scriptures mean for us today. The translating of the phrase in John 1:1c by the twentieth-century Bible by scholar James Moffatt captures the flavour of the above well, although it is not completely a literal rendering, it reads thus “the Logos was divine.”


The Apostle John penned his Gospel account to help his contemporise see the truth about the “true God” Jehovah and His son “Jesus Christ” (John 17:3) as he wrote at:-

John 1:9-10
“The true light that gives light to every sort of man was about to come into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world came into existence through him, but the world did not know him.”

John 1:14
“So the Word became flesh and resided among us, and we had a view of his glory, a glory such as belongs to an only-begotten son from a father; and he was full of undeserved kindness and truth.”

So to refer to Almighty God as a Demon was not wrong to the people of that day as it was a supernatural power of some sort!!
Do this make God a Demon, NO, so to call Jesus "God" does not make him Almighty God or part of the Farther, it shows he is a very powerful divine being like his "Farther" and has the same personality of His Farther but not the same person, but son OF The Farther.

So I have no probs with Jesus being "a God" or "God" just not an Almighty or The Greatest one!

John 14:28
You heard that I said to you, ‘I am going away and I am coming back to you.’ If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I am.

If this is what Jesus himself says who are we to dispute it?

God is a relative term, is it not?
BU

[Sparko]

How many Gods, well the Bible Paul us at:-

1 Corinthians 8:5, 6
For even though there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, just as there are many “gods” and many “lords,”
6 there is actually to us one God, the Father, from whom all things are and we for him; and there is one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things are and we through him.

Actually according to Jehovah there is only one God as I pointed out to you.
Isaiah 44:6 "This is what the LORD says-- Israel's King and Redeemer, the LORD Almighty: I am the first and I am the last; apart from me there is no God.

Any other gods are FALSE gods. So if Jesus is a god and he is not Jehovah, that means he is a false god according to your own beliefs.

God is a relative term, is it not?

Not when speaking of the ONE True God. All others are false.

[Darfius]

True,"holy one OF God" no problem with that, but not 'God the holy one.'
BU

I don't think you understand what "One" means.

[Bibleuser]

This discussion can go in many different directions. But let me point out one insuperable (logical) problem, as I see it, surrounding the God-man nature of Christ. He is said to be both fully God and fully man. When Jesus died on the cross, (1) did the God-man Jesus die? (2) Did the God Jesus die? (3) Did the man Jesus die?

Different Trinitarians answer these questions differently. I'd like to hear what you answer is.

1
God-man is a pagan concept -Demigod- so that cannot fit The Bible theology!
"The Demigods of Greco-Roman Mythology
The Greeks believed that their gods - particularly Zeus, the king of the gods - would periodically mate with humans and produce offspring by them. These offspring would be a sort-of hybrid: part-god and part-human, with some the qualities of each of their parents' races. Some examples of these "demigods", as they are called, are Heracles (Hercules) and Perseus, two legendary Greek heroes whose "divine" sides allegedly enabled them to achieve greater feats than mere mortals."-http://home.earthlink.net/~mysticalrose/pagan2.html

2
God cannot die:-
Habakkuk 1:12
Are you not from everlasting, O Jehovah? O my God, my Holy One, you do not die.. . .

3
The only one left then mus be riight.
'The man Jesus died.'
Acts 2:22
“Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus the Naz·a·reneʹ was a man publicly shown to you by God through powerful works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, just as you yourselves know.
Romans 5:15
But the gift is not like the trespass. For if by one man’s trespass many died, how much more did the undeserved kindness of God and his free gift by the undeserved kindness of the one man, Jesus Christ, abound to many!
1 Timothy 2:5, 6
For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, a man, Christ Jesus, 6 who gave himself a . . .

According to The Bible.

"It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."-Sir A.C. Doyle


BU

[Bibleuser]

I don't think you understand what "One" means.

I know waht "holy one of" means.
BU

[Bibleuser]

Not when speaking of the ONE True God. All others are false.

True; context always shows this up!
BU

[Bill the Cat]

1
God-man is a pagan concept

No it isn't.

-Demigod- so that cannot fit The Bible theology!

Good thing Jesus is not a Demi-God.

"The Demigods of Greco-Roman Mythology
The Greeks believed that their gods - particularly Zeus, the king of the gods - would periodically mate with humans and produce offspring by them.

Which is not how Jesus was conceived. There was no taking on human form, no seduction, and no intercourse.

These offspring would be a sort-of hybrid: part-god and part-human,

And Jesus is ALL God and ALL human. He alone has a dual nature. Not parts of each.

with some the qualities of each of their parents' races. Some examples of these "demigods", as they are called, are Heracles (Hercules) and Perseus, two legendary Greek heroes whose "divine" sides allegedly enabled them to achieve greater feats than mere mortals."-http://home.earthlink.net/~mysticalrose/pagan2.html

Demigodhood was ruled out by the Chalcedonian assertion that Jesus Christ is true God and true man. Jesus is not a mythological hybrid being, someone along the lines of Hercules, Achilles, Arjuna, or Percy Jackson. Your problem, like many before you is you think Godhood and creaturehood exist in a competitive relationship: if God were to unite himself to a creature, then the creature must be displaced, just as if I were to push myself into an already over-crowded room, someone would have to leave. Hence authentic incarnation (God truly becoming a human being and yet remaining God) is quite impossible. He’s one or the other. At the root of the problem, says McCabe, is a “deficient doctrine of God, and this must be partly due to the authors’ omission of a thousand years of hard Christian thinking on the topic.

See more at https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2014/0...st-a-demi-god/

2
God cannot die:-
Habakkuk 1:12
Are you not from everlasting, O Jehovah? O my God, my Holy One, you do not die.. . .

3
The only one left then mus be riight.
'The man Jesus died.'
Acts 2:22
“Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus the Naz·a·reneʹ was a man publicly shown to you by God through powerful works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, just as you yourselves know.
Romans 5:15
But the gift is not like the trespass. For if by one man’s trespass many died, how much more did the undeserved kindness of God and his free gift by the undeserved kindness of the one man, Jesus Christ, abound to many!
1 Timothy 2:5, 6
For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, a man, Christ Jesus, 6 who gave himself a . . .

According to The Bible.

"It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."-Sir A.C. Doyle


BU

Death is a biological function where something that is alive ceases to be alive.* But God is not biological.* God is different than us.* In theology, we say that he is "Wholly Other.”* That is, he is completely different than what we are.* We die, but God does not. Jesus has two natures: God and man.* In theology, we call this the hypostatic union.* It is the teaching that in the one person of Christ are two distinct natures, the divine and human.* It was the human nature that died on the cross, not the divine nature.* But because Jesus is both divine and human, it is sometimes said, although not with the greatest accuracy, that God died on the cross.
So, God cannot die; but in the person of Christ, who is a man with the divine nature, we see a biological death, not the death of the divine being who is God.

https://carm.org/can-god-die

[Sparko]

True; context always shows this up!
BU

so then Jesus who John 1 says is "a god" must either be the SAME God as the Father but a different person, or he is a FALSE God according to Jehovah who said there are no other gods besides him. There is no other choice. Which is it?

[Bibleuser]

so then Jesus who John 1 says is "a god" must either be the SAME God as the Father but a different person, or he is a FALSE God according to Jehovah who said there are no other gods besides him. There is no other choice. Which is it?

One of many.
He is called The Word and
Jo 1:18 tell us which one.
BU

[Bibleuser]

No it isn't.



Good thing Jesus is not a Demi-God.




Which is not how Jesus was conceived. There was no taking on human form, no seduction, and no intercourse.



And Jesus is ALL God and ALL human. He alone has a dual nature. Not parts of each.



Demigodhood was ruled out by the Chalcedonian assertion that Jesus Christ is true God and true man. Jesus is not a mythological hybrid being, someone along the lines of Hercules, Achilles, Arjuna, or Percy Jackson. Your problem, like many before you is you think Godhood and creaturehood exist in a competitive relationship: if God were to unite himself to a creature, then the creature must be displaced, just as if I were to push myself into an already over-crowded room, someone would have to leave. Hence authentic incarnation (God truly becoming a human being and yet remaining God) is quite impossible. He’s one or the other. At the root of the problem, says McCabe, is a “deficient doctrine of God, and this must be partly due to the authors’ omission of a thousand years of hard Christian thinking on the topic.

See more at https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2014/0...st-a-demi-god/




Death is a biological function where something that is alive ceases to be alive.* But God is not biological.* God is different than us.* In theology, we say that he is "Wholly Other.”* That is, he is completely different than what we are.* We die, but God does not. Jesus has two natures: God and man.* In theology, we call this the hypostatic union.* It is the teaching that in the one person of Christ are two distinct natures, the divine and human.* It was the human nature that died on the cross, not the divine nature.* But because Jesus is both divine and human, it is sometimes said, although not with the greatest accuracy, that God died on the cross.
So, God cannot die; but in the person of Christ, who is a man with the divine nature, we see a biological death, not the death of the divine being who is God.

https://carm.org/can-god-die

Man-God = Demigod
No other way!
BU

[Darfius]

There can only be one "the Holy One". That's how "one" works. But let me do you a favor and explain to you why you're going to hell unless you accept the Son, that is, admit that He is God. The only way to be saved is to believe on, that is, do the will of, the Son. If you do not admit that He is God and therefore worthy of absolute obedience, there will come a point where you will refuse to do His will. That point is hell. Don't go to hell. Accept the Son.

[37818]

Man-God = Demigod
No other way!
BU

You do not understand. Jesus was both a man and the Son of God (John 5:18), one person, two natures, not mixed. He was not a demigod. Unless you as a Jehovah's Witness believe your Jesus Christ, a god, is a demigod.