The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Poll: Are you a Trinitarian?

Actually I went to Dubuque IA a few months back and played a show with a guy who was a Unitarian. I kind of looked up the description of what a Unitarian was and … well, it wasn’t so bad. Any way the problem was the guy was a doof… told me in the middle of the show to turn my guitar volume down. I’m very conscience about that volume thing. I don’t like that… I really don’t like that. I wonder if it was his Unitarian ways :laughing: :laughing: :laughing:

As Dave said we will be waiting for your discussions. :wink:

Alexander, I too, deny Trinitarianism, yet I do hold that Jesus is God in the sense that He is as fully divine and the Father who begat Him before all ages. So where does that leave me in your eyes? “A brother in Christ” or someone who is outside the fold?

What do you believe, if you don’t believe in the Trinity? It’s really troublesome because I don’t see how an honest person can look at the pages and just flat out deny the Trinity. It’s one of those doctrines that is not mysterious or hard to understand. It’s plain, simple, and right there in scripture. It’s really concerning. I’m not saying you’re being blatantly dishonest though. Why do you deny the Trinity?

Edit - see below

Alexander, contrary to what you affirm, the Trinity is nowhere to be found in the Scriptures except in 1 John 5:7—and that verse is known to have been added in the ninth century.

Alexander I just deleted a post in which I directed you to an article in the Stanford Encylopedia on the Trinity. Realizing you may/may not have a philosophical background and a grasp of the vocabulary and such, I would suggest you listen To This for an easier way into what I and others hold.

That’s if you are interested in knowing why I and others take a position different from yours and the entire Trin school of thought. I’m not saying Trins are wrong, though my strong suspicion is that they are - I’m saying there is good reason to disagree, and more reason just to accept as brothers/sisters those who worship Christ according to the New Testament, not Creeds.

Good luck. I hope you listen to that podcast.

Hi Alexander. My view is this (and I realize it may well have been put this way already and I did not find it in my quick -non- perusing of all the posts :laughing: )

John 1: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 [a]He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. 4 In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. 5 The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not **comprehend it.

So if we take a different view about this, we can see that vs 2 says *He was in the beginning with God *which does show some separation.

Now let’s look at it like my own personal job. My boss wants to do something. He declares 'this … is what I want to do. Maintenance man, you are the one for the job, thus I am sending you. You will know everything I want accomplished, you have been here from the beginning, and you will have complete autonomy as my sole ambassador in this matter, and everything you say and proclaim will be as if it came from my own mouth.

I go to the meeting. I declare everything the boss has said and, as far as I am concerned, I am the boss. There is no appeal past me. I am the one they have to deal with.

(I still can’t believe no one has brought this scenario up and if so, so sorry)

Many of the people at the meeting consider me the boss. Though I am not technically the boss, everything I am and do and say is the soul of the boss. I even at some point may point out that I and the boss are one because of the assignment he sent me on, but I am still not the real boss. :laughing:

This is were it gets interesting: Some of the workers say “this guy is the real deal. The boss sent him to show us about this …” But some of the workers say, " This guy can not be the real delegate of the boss, because we know what the boss is really like and this dude is nothing like him" :astonished:

I hope you see the correlation here. There is separation. :smiley:**

Not only that - but it does not say ‘He’ was in the beginning with God.
It says the WORD was in the beginning with God, and was God. What is the Word? It was a common usage of the greek LOGOS, which means plan, intent, pattern - what has always been in the Father’s mind, the LOGOS - that plan intent pattern became flesh. Christ became at birth the full expression of God’s logos.

1 Like

So by your definition we have:

In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God
The Word became flesh

In the beginning was the plan
and the plan was with God
and the plan was God
and the plan was made flesh

:unamused:

Wow, that was insightful :unamused:
You need to get up to speed. Whether trins are right or wrong, they do not have the high ground. There is a case to be made - ah I’m tired of talking -

Here, I’ll make it easy. There are better articles but we have to start somewhere.
christianmonotheism.com/medi … hn%201.pdf

And a short one:
trinities.org/blog/incarnation-g … ohn-11-18/

Though I hold that Jesus WAS the Logos (the expression) of God, the point at which people get confused lies in the clause “the Logos was God.”
The word “God” in that clause does not refer to the Father. If it did, the article would precede it, as it does when it says that the Logos was with God (with THE God).

Not only is the article absent, but the order of the words—placing “God” before “was” indicates that the word “God” in the clause “The Logos was God” is a QUALITY of the Word. Another way of saying the same thing would be “The Logos was divine.” We find exactly the same Greek construction in the phrase “God is love” The word “love” is placed before “is” and has no article,indicating that “love” is a quality—the very essence of God.

Jesus Himself didn’t consider Himself to be part of a Trinity, for He addressed His Father in prayer as “the ONLY true God” as recorded in John 17:3.
He then adds “… and Jesus Christ whom you have sent,” indicating that He Himself was someone OTHER THAN “the only true God.”

ntgreek.org/answers/answer-frame-john1_1.htm

James are you trolling us, or just being ignorant? Talking that way to Paidion is uncalled-for and your accusations are soooooooo wide of the mark. He’s proved his wisdom for many years and earned the admiration - if not full agreement - of everyone here.
You should apologize.

From a Greek scholar in response to Paidion:

That’s incorrect. In the Greek it reads “and God was the word” this organization of the wording is for emphasis. It implies that everything God is, the word is. The word contains the definite article because it is the subject. While he’s right that it carries with it the nature of essence, that is because it’s separating the person if the Word (i.e. Christ) from the person of God. If both contained the definite article we would be left with sabellianism.

Essentially what John is saying is that Jesus possesses all the attributes of the Father, but the lack of the definite article demonstrates that he is not the Father.

NM. I don’t want to get into a heated debate on this issue. I apologize for my tone so I deleted the comment. When it comes to stuff like this I’m passionate and sometimes way too passionate so I go off the rails. I keep forgetting that effective apologetics has to be done with humility and love. Something I need to tattoo on my arm or hand.

Lay off Paidion, James. There’s no call for that. I’m not qualified to say which of you is the better Greek scholar although I suspect it’s Paidion, who’s been studying Biblical Greek for probably longer than you’ve been alive. He and I differ greatly in our theology. I think he’s wrong and he thinks I’m wrong, but on the whole we manage to be respectful to one another and even agree on things once in a while. I’ve learned a lot from him.

As for heresy, here’s the definition:

I’m an heretic by that definition and so is Paidion and so, I assume, are you since you’re arguing for the Trinity rather than arguing against universalism. It’s perfectly fine for you to disagree with Paidion. That said, I’m a Trinitarian and while I do understand why I believe that, I seldom get into discussions with the non-Trins on that topic. First, they also know why they believe as they do and I respect that they’ve studied the matter in-depth (probably more-so than I have) and that they believe what they believe for what are to them very convincing reasons. Second, while I realize that in this case I am right and they are mistaken :wink: I respect their right to believe as they think best–and I respect the role of the Holy Spirit to lead all of us into all truth. I am not the Holy Spirit. I leave that sort of thing to more capable “hands” than mine. I suggest you do the same–especially if you find it difficult to show sufficient respect to those who disagree on this subject.

You mention your unfinished formal studies in the ancient languages which leads me to suppose you are fairly young and in college or seminary. Paidion is one of our elders here, and the subject of well-deserved respect from all of us–again, whether we agree with him or not. It’s fine to discuss and disagree with anyone here, including on the topic of biblical Greek. Just please try to do so with kindness and deference .

Blessings, Cindy

First Cindy I already apologized and deleted my comment. And second this is what Paidion said about how long he’s been studying Greek “I have studied Greek formally for 2 years and 2 months” but I digress it doesn’t matter since I already said I’m sorry and will do a more humble and loving way of apologetics.

Yes, I saw that after I posted my note–sorry to repeat what Dave had already well-said.

From another:

There’s always Dan Wallace’s blurb in the BBG,

We know that “the Word” is the subject because it has the definite article, and we translate it accordingly: “and the Word was God.” Two questions, both of theological import, should come to mind: (1) why was θεός thrown forward? and (2) why does it lack the article?

"In brief, its emphatic position stresses its essence or quality: “What God was, the Word was” is how one translation brings out this force. Its lack of a definite article keeps us from identifying the person of the Word (Jesus Christ) with the person of “God” (the Father). That is to say, the word order tells us that Jesus Christ has all the divine attributes that the Father has; lack of the article tells us that Jesus Christ is not the Father. John’s wording here is beautifully compact! It is, in fact, one of the most elegantly terse theological statements one could ever find. As Martin Luther said, the lack of an article is against Sabellianism; the word order is against Arianism

This verse is dealt with in more detail by Wallace, GGBB, pages 266–269."

Mounce, William D. Basics of Biblical Greek: Grammar. Ed. Verlyn D. Verbrugge. Third Edition. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009. Print.

Actually, James, the position of the author that you quoted above is similar if not identical to that of my own. In explaining my understanding, I too, have quoted that succinct statement of Martin Luther’s.

Here are two other Scriptural statements that employ the same inverted word order.
God is love [ I John 4:16] “‘o θεος ‘αγαπη ‘εστιν” (God love is). Love is the kind of thing God is, the kind of “stuff” of which He consists ---- His essence.

Your word is reality. [John 17:17]. “‘o λογος ‘ο σος ‘αληθεια ‘εστιν” (The word of you reality is) Reality is the kind of thing God’s word is. It’s the stuff of which His word consists — the essence of His word.

I lifted the above statements from an article I wrote some years ago. I immediately followed them by:

Thus: The Expression was Deity [John 1:1] “θεος ‘ην ‘ο λογος” (Deity was the Expression). Deity is the kind of thing that the Expression of God was. It is the stuff of which He consists ---- His very essence.

Martin Luther concurred with this understanding. Whatever else he might have been, Luther was a good Greek scholar. He put it quite succinctly, saying that the lack of an article is against Sabellianism and the word order is against Arianism.