POINT 2: The person or being of the Father
My opponent acknowledges that his doctrine is inferred from various passages of Scripture, and not taught explicitly in Scripture. Since my understanding of God is taught explicitly in Scripture, I see no necessity to abandon it for my opponent’s personal inferences. If there was even a single passage in which the apostles taught people the Trinity, or a single passage in which it was said to be essential Christian doctrine, my opponent would have quoted when by now, but we both know such passages do not exist.
My opponent asks where it is written that doctrines must be declared explicitly in order to be valid. I have never said that inferred doctrines are necessarily invalid. Doctrines which are merely inferred cannot be considered essential and necessary teachings, because there is no evidence that they were taught at all (else we would not have to infer them).
Consider instead the Biblical evidence:
* Christ declared that it is eternal life to know the Father as the only true God (John 17:3), meaning that 1 John 5:20 (where the grammar is ambiguous), must refer to the Father and not Jesus (you cannot have two persons who are ‘the only true God’)
* The apostles repeatedly taught that God is one person, the Father (here)
* Acts 2: 3,000 are baptized with the knowledge that God is the Father, and that Jesus Christ is ‘a man clearly attested to you by God with powerful deeds, wonders, and miraculous signs that God performed among you through him’
* In the Divine throne room visions of Exodus 24, Ezekiel 1, Daniel 7, Acts 7, and Revelation 4-5, God is shown as one person, not three.
My opponent claimed that the Bible and the Early Fathers do not teach that the Father created alone. Readers, judge for yourselves (here and here), noting especially Christ’s attribution of creation to one person, who was not himself.
It was further claimed that the apostles ‘never taught that God was One Person, the Father'. The apostles did not simply teach that there is one God, they taught explicitly that there is one God, the Father:
1 Corinthians 8:6 yet for us there is one God, the Father…
Since the apostles taught that there is one God, who is the Father, and since my opponent has agreed the Father is one person ('The Father is A Person'), then the one God is one person, the Father. Note that Christ is distinguished from God, not included in ‘God’.
The word 'elohim' is not a 'plural noun’. It has an ending which in other nouns is plural), but in fact it can refer either to a singular or plural subject, just like 'fish' and 'sheep'. It's the subject/verb agreement which identifies whether it is singular or plural, as in English.
Other nouns of this class include the following (places where the usage is singular are in parentheses):
* zequnim: old age (Genesis 21:2, 7; 37:3; 44:20)
* ne`urim: youth (1 Samuel 17:33)
* 'adonim: lord (Isaiah 19:4)
In English, if I say 'The fish is blue', you know I'm talking about one fish, not because 'fish' is the singular form of 'fish', but because 'is' is the singular verb. If I say 'the sheep are outside', you know I am talking about more than one sheep, not because 'sheep' is the plural form of 'sheep', but because 'are' is the plural verb. The same applies to the Hebrew word 'elohim'. Whenever the verb is singular, the noun refers to only one person.
When 'elohim' takes the plural verb, it refers to more than one person, such as the gods of the heathen, men, or angels. But the singular verb is used when 'elohim' is used of God Himself. This reinforces repeatedly that God is one person.
In Genesis 1:26, God ('elohim'), said 'Let us make', addressing persons other than Himself (the angels in His presence to whom He speaks, as in 1 Kings 22:19-22, and Isaiah 6:1-8).
When the actual creation takes place in verse 27, the word 'elohim' is used with the singular form of the verb 'make', proving that the creation was carried out by only one person. If the creation had been carried out by more than one person, it would necessarily have been described with the plural form of the verb.
It is worth noting that the Jews (who may be relied upon to know Hebrew), always understood 'elohim' and the singular verb to refer to one person, and translated it with the singular word for God in their Greek translations of the Old Testament (THEOS). The Jews of course have for thousands of years worshipped God as one person, and He has never seen fit to reveal they should do otherwise.
My opponent claimed that I said ‘beings don’t speak but persons do’, when I said no such thing, I said personal pronouns count persons, not beings. It doesn’t matter if you have only one being, if that one being is more than one male person, then you cannot use the singular male pronoun ‘he’, you must use ‘they’. If you wish to refer to the entity without reference to the persons, you would have to say ‘it’.
Readers, I invite you to ask yourself what you understand by ‘he’. Do you understand one person, or more than one person? In Hebrew, Greek and English, ‘he’ means ‘one person’. My opponent has failed to show otherwise (and cannot).
An appeal was made to the Hebrew word ‘echad’, and it was erroneously claimed that the Trinity is a ‘compound unity’. In fact a compound unity is a union of separate entities, not a single entity, and since Trinitarians insist that God is not a union of separate entities, He cannot be described as a ‘compound unity’.
The Hebrew word ‘echad’ functions as the English word ‘one’ does, and when placed in front of a noun such as ‘one lord’ (Deuteronomy 6:4), means one single noun, not a ‘compound unity’ (and a ‘lord’ is certainly not a ‘compound unity’). Academic Trinitarian apologists such as Gregory Boyd understand this (here).
It is of course meaningless to claim (as my opponent does), that God has always been the literal father of Christ, since in order to be a literal father a person must cause a son to come into existence when previously they did not exist (whereas my opponent wishes to claim that Christ has always existed).
The Bible says there was a time when God's fatherhood of Christ was still future, demonstrating that it was not eternal:
2 Samuel 7:14 I will become his father and he will become my son.
Scripture also tells us the time that God became the father of Christ:
Hebrews 1:5 For to which of the angels did God ever say, “You are my son! Today I have fathered you”? And in another place he says, “I will be his father and he will be my son.”
Scripture thus tells us explicitly that there was a time when God was not the father of Christ, and Scripture tells us explicitly that there was a time when God became the father of Christ.
Recognising that none of the earliest creeds declare the son and Holy Spirit to have been active in creation, my opponent responds:
* '...the creeds don’t say anything about the Son and Holy Spirit not being active in creation.'This is a logical fallacy, an attempt to assert an argument in the basis of the absence of evidence.
In contrast, I have argued positively, from the data which is actually in the creeds. I have argued that the Christians who wrote those creeds believed in one God, the Father Almighty, and that the Father created all things. I have provided direct quotes from the creeds saying exactly this.
My opponent has claimed that these Christians believed in one God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but is unable to find a single statement to this effect in any of these creeds, and has been reduced to claiming without evidence that they believed it.
I argue legitimately that the Christians who wrote those creeds believed in one God, the Father Almighty, and that the Father created all things, because that is what they actually wrote. This is positive evidence for my argument from the creeds, but there is none for my opponent’s.
My opponent complains about my raising the earliest creeds (to which he is unable to give unqualified consent), but I only raise them in response to his repeated claims that the Trinity was taught as essential doctrine from the 1st century onwards. If such claims were true, we would find the Trinity explicitly declared as such in these creeds (as it was in much later creeds), but we do not find it so much as referred to, not even once.
I have, of course, made a positive argument from Scripture, as a reading of both my posts and my web pages will show (over fifty passages of Scripture have been quoted).
My opponent acknowledges that his doctrine is inferred from various passages of Scripture, and not taught explicitly in Scripture. Since my understanding of God is taught explicitly in Scripture, I see no necessity to abandon it for my opponent’s personal inferences. If there was even a single passage in which the apostles taught people the Trinity, or a single passage in which it was said to be essential Christian doctrine, my opponent would have quoted when by now, but we both know such passages do not exist.
My opponent asks where it is written that doctrines must be declared explicitly in order to be valid. I have never said that inferred doctrines are necessarily invalid. Doctrines which are merely inferred cannot be considered essential and necessary teachings, because there is no evidence that they were taught at all (else we would not have to infer them).
Consider instead the Biblical evidence:
* Christ declared that it is eternal life to know the Father as the only true God (John 17:3), meaning that 1 John 5:20 (where the grammar is ambiguous), must refer to the Father and not Jesus (you cannot have two persons who are ‘the only true God’)
* The apostles repeatedly taught that God is one person, the Father (here)
* Acts 2: 3,000 are baptized with the knowledge that God is the Father, and that Jesus Christ is ‘a man clearly attested to you by God with powerful deeds, wonders, and miraculous signs that God performed among you through him’
* In the Divine throne room visions of Exodus 24, Ezekiel 1, Daniel 7, Acts 7, and Revelation 4-5, God is shown as one person, not three.
My opponent claimed that the Bible and the Early Fathers do not teach that the Father created alone. Readers, judge for yourselves (here and here), noting especially Christ’s attribution of creation to one person, who was not himself.
It was further claimed that the apostles ‘never taught that God was One Person, the Father'. The apostles did not simply teach that there is one God, they taught explicitly that there is one God, the Father:
1 Corinthians 8:6 yet for us there is one God, the Father…
Since the apostles taught that there is one God, who is the Father, and since my opponent has agreed the Father is one person ('The Father is A Person'), then the one God is one person, the Father. Note that Christ is distinguished from God, not included in ‘God’.
The word 'elohim' is not a 'plural noun’. It has an ending which in other nouns is plural), but in fact it can refer either to a singular or plural subject, just like 'fish' and 'sheep'. It's the subject/verb agreement which identifies whether it is singular or plural, as in English.
Other nouns of this class include the following (places where the usage is singular are in parentheses):
* zequnim: old age (Genesis 21:2, 7; 37:3; 44:20)
* ne`urim: youth (1 Samuel 17:33)
* 'adonim: lord (Isaiah 19:4)
In English, if I say 'The fish is blue', you know I'm talking about one fish, not because 'fish' is the singular form of 'fish', but because 'is' is the singular verb. If I say 'the sheep are outside', you know I am talking about more than one sheep, not because 'sheep' is the plural form of 'sheep', but because 'are' is the plural verb. The same applies to the Hebrew word 'elohim'. Whenever the verb is singular, the noun refers to only one person.
When 'elohim' takes the plural verb, it refers to more than one person, such as the gods of the heathen, men, or angels. But the singular verb is used when 'elohim' is used of God Himself. This reinforces repeatedly that God is one person.
In Genesis 1:26, God ('elohim'), said 'Let us make', addressing persons other than Himself (the angels in His presence to whom He speaks, as in 1 Kings 22:19-22, and Isaiah 6:1-8).
When the actual creation takes place in verse 27, the word 'elohim' is used with the singular form of the verb 'make', proving that the creation was carried out by only one person. If the creation had been carried out by more than one person, it would necessarily have been described with the plural form of the verb.
It is worth noting that the Jews (who may be relied upon to know Hebrew), always understood 'elohim' and the singular verb to refer to one person, and translated it with the singular word for God in their Greek translations of the Old Testament (THEOS). The Jews of course have for thousands of years worshipped God as one person, and He has never seen fit to reveal they should do otherwise.
My opponent claimed that I said ‘beings don’t speak but persons do’, when I said no such thing, I said personal pronouns count persons, not beings. It doesn’t matter if you have only one being, if that one being is more than one male person, then you cannot use the singular male pronoun ‘he’, you must use ‘they’. If you wish to refer to the entity without reference to the persons, you would have to say ‘it’.
Readers, I invite you to ask yourself what you understand by ‘he’. Do you understand one person, or more than one person? In Hebrew, Greek and English, ‘he’ means ‘one person’. My opponent has failed to show otherwise (and cannot).
An appeal was made to the Hebrew word ‘echad’, and it was erroneously claimed that the Trinity is a ‘compound unity’. In fact a compound unity is a union of separate entities, not a single entity, and since Trinitarians insist that God is not a union of separate entities, He cannot be described as a ‘compound unity’.
The Hebrew word ‘echad’ functions as the English word ‘one’ does, and when placed in front of a noun such as ‘one lord’ (Deuteronomy 6:4), means one single noun, not a ‘compound unity’ (and a ‘lord’ is certainly not a ‘compound unity’). Academic Trinitarian apologists such as Gregory Boyd understand this (here).
It is of course meaningless to claim (as my opponent does), that God has always been the literal father of Christ, since in order to be a literal father a person must cause a son to come into existence when previously they did not exist (whereas my opponent wishes to claim that Christ has always existed).
The Bible says there was a time when God's fatherhood of Christ was still future, demonstrating that it was not eternal:
2 Samuel 7:14 I will become his father and he will become my son.
Scripture also tells us the time that God became the father of Christ:
Hebrews 1:5 For to which of the angels did God ever say, “You are my son! Today I have fathered you”? And in another place he says, “I will be his father and he will be my son.”
Scripture thus tells us explicitly that there was a time when God was not the father of Christ, and Scripture tells us explicitly that there was a time when God became the father of Christ.
Recognising that none of the earliest creeds declare the son and Holy Spirit to have been active in creation, my opponent responds:
* '...the creeds don’t say anything about the Son and Holy Spirit not being active in creation.'This is a logical fallacy, an attempt to assert an argument in the basis of the absence of evidence.
In contrast, I have argued positively, from the data which is actually in the creeds. I have argued that the Christians who wrote those creeds believed in one God, the Father Almighty, and that the Father created all things. I have provided direct quotes from the creeds saying exactly this.
My opponent has claimed that these Christians believed in one God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but is unable to find a single statement to this effect in any of these creeds, and has been reduced to claiming without evidence that they believed it.
I argue legitimately that the Christians who wrote those creeds believed in one God, the Father Almighty, and that the Father created all things, because that is what they actually wrote. This is positive evidence for my argument from the creeds, but there is none for my opponent’s.
My opponent complains about my raising the earliest creeds (to which he is unable to give unqualified consent), but I only raise them in response to his repeated claims that the Trinity was taught as essential doctrine from the 1st century onwards. If such claims were true, we would find the Trinity explicitly declared as such in these creeds (as it was in much later creeds), but we do not find it so much as referred to, not even once.
I have, of course, made a positive argument from Scripture, as a reading of both my posts and my web pages will show (over fifty passages of Scripture have been quoted).
