Readers, so far you have seen me argue affirmatively for the doctrine of the Trinity from a scriptural standpoint. Any reference I have made to creeds for the most part has been to acknowledge that the debate has gotten off topic and needed to be brought back to the God-Breathed scriptures. Now let me say that I fully affirm every statement that these creeds make, but I don’t need them to prove the doctrine of the Trinity. The Bible is certainly sufficient for this task
Since this post is a summary and not actually part of the arguments, I want to take the time to finally comment on the creeds. I think that Searchingone1033 in arguing against them is not only missing the point of this debate, but the point of the creeds themselves. The creeds in question were drafted as statements of faith in response to heresy. They were defensive declarations that reaffirmed the already accepted doctrines of the Church. Had the teachings of Arius and later the Pneumatomachians (a.k.a. Macedonians) been the normative views of God then there would have been no controversy. More precise definitions would not have been necessary but once again as Robert Letham said, “This was necessary because heretics misused the Bible to support their erroneous ideas.”
Philip Schaff noted in the introduction to his History of the Christian Church,
“Every important dogma now professed by the Christian church is the result of a severe conflict with error. The doctrine of the holy Trinity, for instance, was believed from the beginning, but it required, in addition to the preparatory labors of the ante-Nicene age, fifty years of controversy, in which the strongest intellects were absorbed, until it was brought to the clear expression of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed. The Christological conflict was equally long and intense, until it was brought to a settlement by the council of Chalcedon.” [1]
And truthfully speaking, we don’t need to rely on Letham or Schaff to know these things—the fact is that the earliest Christians embedded Trinitarian “creeds” into scripture in the form of salutations and benedictions (2Cor. 13:14; 1Pet. 1:2), as well as doxologies or compact doctrinal statements asserting the deity of Jesus (Rom. 9:5; Phil. 2:6-11) and to argue that this isn’t the case is to ignore the very Word of God. We need to remember that the New Testament was not bound together in one book the way we have it now, and had it been, a good number of the people to whom it would have been given were illiterate; therefore Christians would sing hymns or recite short phrases which were passed along orally from the apostles to the churches.
Now having gotten that off of my chest, I’d like to point out that as it stands I haven’t been able to present all of the relevant data that I would have liked to because of the word limits, and believe me, there is much more that I could present—but what has been presented so far has not been refuted. Sure, we have seen my opponent say things like, “this isn’t what that really means” and then offer alternatives that aren’t consistent with the evidence he excludes.
Likewise, you have seen me ignore some of his points of argument, not because they were too strong to be dealt with—on the contrary—I ignored them because they were either off topic or unsubstantial. Truth be told, I have wasted much of my word limit addressing arguments that I would have just as soon ignored, and correcting caricatures of my actual arguments that I never should have had to in the first place—but such is the nature of debate and this is an ugly fact that I was aware of entering into this dialogue.
It has been made clear from my posts and more importantly scripture that there are Three Persons who possess all of the essential attributes of Deity—The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit. All Three Persons are Eternal, All-Powerful, All-Knowing, and Ever-Present. We’ve seen attempts to say this isn’t so, but scripture disagrees. We’ve seen the humanity of the Son in his incarnated state focused upon while his deity is purposely ignored so as to make it appear that the Bible presents a finite Son, a created being separate from the Father. But once the scriptures are viewed as one homogenous whole, we see that this is anything but true.
I was accused of stringing together random verses of scripture to form doctrines that didn’t exist within the pages of the Bible, when the fact is that I have examined the Bible from beginning to end and systematically arrived at the doctrine of the Trinity. I feel it necessary to explain my methodology here.
First of all I’m a theist. The reason I’m a theist is expressed in Romans 1:19-20 which basically states that God’s eternal power and divinity are clearly seen in His creation. So as a theist I obviously believe in a God, but there are a number of things out there vying for my devotion, adoration, and worship so I was faced with the decision of which God is the right God. I have come to believe in the God of Judeo-Christianity, Yahweh because of His Word.
What I mean is this… out of all the alternative “gods” there are to worship and believe in, this is the one I have chosen because out of all the scriptures or holy writings (e.g. Qur’an, Vedas, Book of Mormon, Science & Health with Key to the Scriptures, etc.) that have allegedly come from all of these other gods, the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek scriptures of Judeo-Christianity are the only ones that stand up to the claim of divine authorship via the accuracy and fulfillment of predictive prophecy, internal consistency, etc…
So now I am forced to approach the scriptures with the supposition that because of their divine authorship they cannot lie and by consequence cannot contradict themselves, because God who is their source cannot lie (Heb. 6:18). Can an infinitely perfect God testify to having been seen and not having been seen at the same time and in the same sense? Of course not! This would violate the law of non-contradiction and God cannot contradict Himself therefore His Word cannot contradict itself.
So while the Bible tells me in more than one place that no man has ever seen God or can see God and live (Ex. 33:20; John 1:18; 6:46; 1John 4:12) it also tells me that God has indeed been seen by human eyes and these men have survived (Gen. 32:30; Ex. 24:11; Jud. 13:22). Thus I’m left to reconcile an apparent contradiction in scripture that was inspired by a God who cannot contradict Himself. The only way this is possible is with a Trinitarian theology.
A polytheistic theology is clearly out of the question because the scriptures from cover to cover unabashedly pronounce that there is one and only one God in all of existence (Deut. 4:35, 6:4; Is. 43:10-11, 44:6, 8, 45:5-6, 14, 21-22, 46:9; Mal. 2:10; Mk. 12:32; Rom. 3:30; 1Cor. 8:6; Eph. 4:6; 1Tim. 2:5; Jam. 2:19). A Unitarian theology allows the contradiction to stand and offers no sufficient explanation. A Trinitarian theology brings harmony to the text because it allows for multiple Persons to share One Nature of Deity. Hence, all Three Persons are equally God without violating monotheism, yet one or even two of the Persons can claim to have never been seen, while another can have been seen, and both statements are true.
This is one small example out of many—another being the use of plural pronouns in Genesis 1:26 (cf. Gen. 3:22; 11:7; Is. 6:8). Now as I briefly commented on in my closing rebuttals to Points #1 and #2 the Trinitarian has no problem explaining such an apparent aberration of language, yet the Unitarian view forces the text to say that God consulted the angels in creation and as we have seen, irrelevant texts that do not use plural pronouns were cited in support of this idea (i.e. 1Kgs. 22:19-22; Job 1:6-12; 2:1-6). The Trinitarian view rightly notes that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were all active in creation, which agrees perfectly with Genesis 1:26-27, not to mention the passages of scripture where the Hebrew text speaks of “Creators” (Eccl. 12:1) and “Makers” (Ps. 149:2; Is. 54:5) in reference to the One God Yahweh.
It is this same method of that I consistently use to interpret every word of scripture. Scripture cannot be “theopneustos” (God-Breathed, 2Tim. 3:16) and contain contradictions. It just doesn’t work that way. Therefore you have seen me argue in favor of the Trinity based upon this supposition that the Bible is true and God cannot lie. If the Bible tells me that there is only One Being in existence that possesses the essential attributes of deity (Isaiah 43:10), and then turns around and shows me that there are Three Persons who possess these attributes and also share One Name (Matt. 28:19), then I am forced to arrive at a Trinitarian conclusion. These are some of the facts that I mentioned in my opening post and continued in Point #1 of this debate.
When the topic turned to the Father in Point #2 you saw me present a scripturally sound and logically irrefutable proof for the eternality of the Son based upon the eternality and immutability of the Father. In fact the case was so strong that in the subsequent rebuttal, it was asked that it be held until Point #3!
To review the argument, The Father is God (Mal. 2:10) --> The Father is Eternal (Ps. 90:2) --> The Father is Immutable (Mal. 3:6). If these statements are true then logic demands that the Father has always been the Father. Likewise they demand that the Father must have always had a child otherwise the title “Father” is meaningless. Even in the symbolic sense of the title this still demands that something or someone existed alongside the Father from all eternity. Since the Son created all that exists and without Him was not anything made that was made (John 1:3; Col. 1:16-17) then it follows that the Son has been the one who was with the Father from all eternity. He pre-existed everything else that would be able to even be considered a child of God.
The pre-existence of the Son was also demonstrated in Point #3 by showing the use of the imperfect tense of John 17:5 in terms of the Son possessing glory with the Father from before the foundation of the world. Likewise this was shown from my closing rebuttal to Point #1 by mentioning the imperfect tense and its use in John 1:1.
Searchingone1033’s closing rebuttal to Point #2 offered a response to the effect that the Father’s fatherhood was yet future and he based this upon 2Samuel 7:14 and Hebrews 1:5 which is a quote of Psalm 2:7 and 2Sam. 7:14 while neither text negates John’s statements; neither do they negate the pre-incarnate Christ existing as God’s supernal Wisdom in Proverbs 8. The crux of the issue is this—even if Searchingone1033’s argument were sufficient to refute my position, it still offers no explanation for the how the Father can be eternal, immutable, and the Father without a Son. In other words, refuting my position (which obviously has not happened) does not prove Searchingone1033’s.
I’d love to offer a rebuttal to his points but this is not the format for doing so.
From where I’m standing there are some very fundamental issues that haven’t been addressed, and they are:
1. The abovementioned concerning the Father having a Son from all eternity.
Since this post is a summary and not actually part of the arguments, I want to take the time to finally comment on the creeds. I think that Searchingone1033 in arguing against them is not only missing the point of this debate, but the point of the creeds themselves. The creeds in question were drafted as statements of faith in response to heresy. They were defensive declarations that reaffirmed the already accepted doctrines of the Church. Had the teachings of Arius and later the Pneumatomachians (a.k.a. Macedonians) been the normative views of God then there would have been no controversy. More precise definitions would not have been necessary but once again as Robert Letham said, “This was necessary because heretics misused the Bible to support their erroneous ideas.”
Philip Schaff noted in the introduction to his History of the Christian Church,
“Every important dogma now professed by the Christian church is the result of a severe conflict with error. The doctrine of the holy Trinity, for instance, was believed from the beginning, but it required, in addition to the preparatory labors of the ante-Nicene age, fifty years of controversy, in which the strongest intellects were absorbed, until it was brought to the clear expression of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed. The Christological conflict was equally long and intense, until it was brought to a settlement by the council of Chalcedon.” [1]
And truthfully speaking, we don’t need to rely on Letham or Schaff to know these things—the fact is that the earliest Christians embedded Trinitarian “creeds” into scripture in the form of salutations and benedictions (2Cor. 13:14; 1Pet. 1:2), as well as doxologies or compact doctrinal statements asserting the deity of Jesus (Rom. 9:5; Phil. 2:6-11) and to argue that this isn’t the case is to ignore the very Word of God. We need to remember that the New Testament was not bound together in one book the way we have it now, and had it been, a good number of the people to whom it would have been given were illiterate; therefore Christians would sing hymns or recite short phrases which were passed along orally from the apostles to the churches.
Now having gotten that off of my chest, I’d like to point out that as it stands I haven’t been able to present all of the relevant data that I would have liked to because of the word limits, and believe me, there is much more that I could present—but what has been presented so far has not been refuted. Sure, we have seen my opponent say things like, “this isn’t what that really means” and then offer alternatives that aren’t consistent with the evidence he excludes.
Likewise, you have seen me ignore some of his points of argument, not because they were too strong to be dealt with—on the contrary—I ignored them because they were either off topic or unsubstantial. Truth be told, I have wasted much of my word limit addressing arguments that I would have just as soon ignored, and correcting caricatures of my actual arguments that I never should have had to in the first place—but such is the nature of debate and this is an ugly fact that I was aware of entering into this dialogue.
It has been made clear from my posts and more importantly scripture that there are Three Persons who possess all of the essential attributes of Deity—The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit. All Three Persons are Eternal, All-Powerful, All-Knowing, and Ever-Present. We’ve seen attempts to say this isn’t so, but scripture disagrees. We’ve seen the humanity of the Son in his incarnated state focused upon while his deity is purposely ignored so as to make it appear that the Bible presents a finite Son, a created being separate from the Father. But once the scriptures are viewed as one homogenous whole, we see that this is anything but true.
I was accused of stringing together random verses of scripture to form doctrines that didn’t exist within the pages of the Bible, when the fact is that I have examined the Bible from beginning to end and systematically arrived at the doctrine of the Trinity. I feel it necessary to explain my methodology here.
First of all I’m a theist. The reason I’m a theist is expressed in Romans 1:19-20 which basically states that God’s eternal power and divinity are clearly seen in His creation. So as a theist I obviously believe in a God, but there are a number of things out there vying for my devotion, adoration, and worship so I was faced with the decision of which God is the right God. I have come to believe in the God of Judeo-Christianity, Yahweh because of His Word.
What I mean is this… out of all the alternative “gods” there are to worship and believe in, this is the one I have chosen because out of all the scriptures or holy writings (e.g. Qur’an, Vedas, Book of Mormon, Science & Health with Key to the Scriptures, etc.) that have allegedly come from all of these other gods, the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek scriptures of Judeo-Christianity are the only ones that stand up to the claim of divine authorship via the accuracy and fulfillment of predictive prophecy, internal consistency, etc…
So now I am forced to approach the scriptures with the supposition that because of their divine authorship they cannot lie and by consequence cannot contradict themselves, because God who is their source cannot lie (Heb. 6:18). Can an infinitely perfect God testify to having been seen and not having been seen at the same time and in the same sense? Of course not! This would violate the law of non-contradiction and God cannot contradict Himself therefore His Word cannot contradict itself.
So while the Bible tells me in more than one place that no man has ever seen God or can see God and live (Ex. 33:20; John 1:18; 6:46; 1John 4:12) it also tells me that God has indeed been seen by human eyes and these men have survived (Gen. 32:30; Ex. 24:11; Jud. 13:22). Thus I’m left to reconcile an apparent contradiction in scripture that was inspired by a God who cannot contradict Himself. The only way this is possible is with a Trinitarian theology.
A polytheistic theology is clearly out of the question because the scriptures from cover to cover unabashedly pronounce that there is one and only one God in all of existence (Deut. 4:35, 6:4; Is. 43:10-11, 44:6, 8, 45:5-6, 14, 21-22, 46:9; Mal. 2:10; Mk. 12:32; Rom. 3:30; 1Cor. 8:6; Eph. 4:6; 1Tim. 2:5; Jam. 2:19). A Unitarian theology allows the contradiction to stand and offers no sufficient explanation. A Trinitarian theology brings harmony to the text because it allows for multiple Persons to share One Nature of Deity. Hence, all Three Persons are equally God without violating monotheism, yet one or even two of the Persons can claim to have never been seen, while another can have been seen, and both statements are true.
This is one small example out of many—another being the use of plural pronouns in Genesis 1:26 (cf. Gen. 3:22; 11:7; Is. 6:8). Now as I briefly commented on in my closing rebuttals to Points #1 and #2 the Trinitarian has no problem explaining such an apparent aberration of language, yet the Unitarian view forces the text to say that God consulted the angels in creation and as we have seen, irrelevant texts that do not use plural pronouns were cited in support of this idea (i.e. 1Kgs. 22:19-22; Job 1:6-12; 2:1-6). The Trinitarian view rightly notes that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were all active in creation, which agrees perfectly with Genesis 1:26-27, not to mention the passages of scripture where the Hebrew text speaks of “Creators” (Eccl. 12:1) and “Makers” (Ps. 149:2; Is. 54:5) in reference to the One God Yahweh.
It is this same method of that I consistently use to interpret every word of scripture. Scripture cannot be “theopneustos” (God-Breathed, 2Tim. 3:16) and contain contradictions. It just doesn’t work that way. Therefore you have seen me argue in favor of the Trinity based upon this supposition that the Bible is true and God cannot lie. If the Bible tells me that there is only One Being in existence that possesses the essential attributes of deity (Isaiah 43:10), and then turns around and shows me that there are Three Persons who possess these attributes and also share One Name (Matt. 28:19), then I am forced to arrive at a Trinitarian conclusion. These are some of the facts that I mentioned in my opening post and continued in Point #1 of this debate.
When the topic turned to the Father in Point #2 you saw me present a scripturally sound and logically irrefutable proof for the eternality of the Son based upon the eternality and immutability of the Father. In fact the case was so strong that in the subsequent rebuttal, it was asked that it be held until Point #3!
To review the argument, The Father is God (Mal. 2:10) --> The Father is Eternal (Ps. 90:2) --> The Father is Immutable (Mal. 3:6). If these statements are true then logic demands that the Father has always been the Father. Likewise they demand that the Father must have always had a child otherwise the title “Father” is meaningless. Even in the symbolic sense of the title this still demands that something or someone existed alongside the Father from all eternity. Since the Son created all that exists and without Him was not anything made that was made (John 1:3; Col. 1:16-17) then it follows that the Son has been the one who was with the Father from all eternity. He pre-existed everything else that would be able to even be considered a child of God.
The pre-existence of the Son was also demonstrated in Point #3 by showing the use of the imperfect tense of John 17:5 in terms of the Son possessing glory with the Father from before the foundation of the world. Likewise this was shown from my closing rebuttal to Point #1 by mentioning the imperfect tense and its use in John 1:1.
Searchingone1033’s closing rebuttal to Point #2 offered a response to the effect that the Father’s fatherhood was yet future and he based this upon 2Samuel 7:14 and Hebrews 1:5 which is a quote of Psalm 2:7 and 2Sam. 7:14 while neither text negates John’s statements; neither do they negate the pre-incarnate Christ existing as God’s supernal Wisdom in Proverbs 8. The crux of the issue is this—even if Searchingone1033’s argument were sufficient to refute my position, it still offers no explanation for the how the Father can be eternal, immutable, and the Father without a Son. In other words, refuting my position (which obviously has not happened) does not prove Searchingone1033’s.
I’d love to offer a rebuttal to his points but this is not the format for doing so.
From where I’m standing there are some very fundamental issues that haven’t been addressed, and they are:
1. The abovementioned concerning the Father having a Son from all eternity.
2. The use of plural pronouns for a God that Searchingone1033 believes to be one person.
3. The criteria by which Searchingone1033 asserts that the Father is a person.
4. The criteria by which Searchingone1033 denies that more than one person can share one essential nature.
On a more peripheral issue, I’d like to know what Hebrew, Greek, or even English language references would support his grammatical claims that personal pronouns such as “he” can’t refer to one being and why this one being cannot exist in three inseparable persons.
And then there is the issue of the logical fallacies such as the loaded questions he asked in his last response concerning the arguments the apostles used to prove the Trinity or why they didn’t use the quotes I use to prove the Trinity. The questions assume that the apostles had to argue with people concerning the Trinity or that they had to convince people of the Trinity—this is an unproven assumption. Also, the apostles did use the quotes I use—the only thing is that they weren’t quoting—they were the original speakers… I’m the one quoting!
Already mentioned were the consistent red herrings concerning the creeds and now more recently the ‘soul sleep’ question that was asked. I’d love to get into the state of Jesus soul and spirit after the death of his body but that is not the topic of debate. But we can be confident that the body is the only thing that dies on anyone. Natures certainly don’t die.
In closing I’d just like to reiterate that the Tri-unity of God has been set forth and supported with scripture.
The first point of debate was whether or not the Trinity was a sound Biblical doctrine. It has been shown to be exactly that via my arguments concerning the attributes of deity inherent in the Three Persons (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) as well as the divine functions in Creation, Salvation, and Indwelling. The titles “God” and “Lord” were the icing on the cake.
The second point was the Person or Being of the Father. I set forth an affirmative position on the Father’s personality as well as his eternal fatherhood via his eternally immutable nature. This went un-refuted even with the two references quoted against it.
The third point was the Person of the Son. I showed from Jesus’ own claims and His audiences understanding of them that He was God. I also briefly showed the “I AM” parallels between Yahweh and Jesus in Isaiah and John. This was topped off with Yahweh’s titles as applied to Jesus and Old Testament passages speaking of Yahweh applied to Jesus. Overwhelming evidence was shown that the Son was indeed worshipped by his followers and secular history corroborated this fact, and it was written off as a mere “bowing down” before Jesus. Hardly compelling enough to convince one that Jesus was not worshipped. And finally, I answered all the relevant questions that my opponent demanded I answer (saying, “Questions I WANT Answered” is a demand).
The fourth point of debate on the Holy Spirit will prove to be interesting. Until then I leave you with one of the Trinitarian benedictions of the apostle Paul, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen” (2Cor. 13:14).
