At first glance, I suppose one would
be inclined to say, This is either a boring subject or too complicated to interest me. However, when one
considers the prayer of Jesus and the Spirit's command to obey Jesus desire in the matter, the subject becomes
very important. Jesus acknowledged the oneness of the Godhead but He also prayed that His followers would imitate that
oneness. How can we obey that prayer and command if we don't understand it?
The
problem that Christians have is how can we be “monotheistic” and
yet define the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Historically,
an attempt to do this has caused harsh divisions and produced labeled
heretics. One main problem is that the Bible mentions neither
monotheism nor trinity while referring to God as one.
A
typical verse for the ONE GOD in creeds and
teachings is
“Hear,
O Israel
:
The
LORD our God
is
one
LORD
”
(Deuteronomy
6:4).
The
numbers
represent Strong’s
Dictionary
assigned numbers for the Hebrew words.“Hear,
O IsraelH3478:
The
LORDH3068
our
GodH430
is
oneH259
LORDH3068”
THE DIVINITY OF JESUS.
One
teacher
that
publicly proclaimed,
“Do not confuse
Jesus with God,” confessed
that “Jesus
was worshipped alongside God in the earliest known Christianity”
(Hurtado confesses, 2003, 2005).i
Historically
Jesus has been accepted as divine; i.e., He is God. But what about there being only "one" god? And how has "the church" dealt with this anomaly? How should I personally resolve this? In this chapter we will look at the history of man's uninspired resolutions.
THE
FIRST KNOWN CREED separate from the inspired
New
Testament: The
Apostles’ Creed.
While
the
Apostles’ Creed
was not
written by the twelve disciples and
consequently would not be inspired,
it is ancient, dating back to the first
of the second
century soon
after the apostle John’s death.
It
begins, “I believe in God the Father,” and
continues
with “and in the Lord Jesus Christ,” and culminates with “I
believe in the Holy Spirit.”
ii
Apparently,
it was important for the early believers to believe in the three.
During the
late second and third century
authors had used terms not just
to
refer to the one God, but rather to refer to the plurality of the one
God, together with his Son (or
Word) and his Spirit. They therefore
profess
a “trinity”, triad or threesome, but not
necessarily
a
triune or tripersonal God.
iii
TERTULLIAN
(155/160 —died after 220) considered this scheme of two creators and a divine Jesus to be
inconsistent with monotheism (Tertullian
Praxeas,
ch. 3). Against the common believers concerned with monotheism,
Tertullian argues that although the above process results in two more
who can be called “God”, it does not introduce two more gods -
not
gods in the sense that Yahweh is a god.
Nor
are the persons equally divine; e.g.,
Tertullian
holds that the Son is “ignorant of the last day and hour, which is
known to the Father only” (Tertullian,
Praxeas,
ch. 27; Matthew 24:36). However,
Tertullian
is now hailed by trinitarians for his use of the term “Trinity.”
ORIGEN
AND subordinationist
doctrine
(third
century).
( c. 185 – c. 253) The
God and Father, who holds the universe together, is superior to every
being that exists, for he imparts to each one from his own existence
that which each one is; the Son, being
less than
the Father, is superior
to rational creatures
alone (for he is second to the Father); the Holy Spirit is
still less,
and dwells within the saints alone. So that in this way the power of
the Father is greater than that of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
and that of the Son is more than that of the Holy Spirit… (Origen,
First,
33–4 [I.3]) Origen (ca. 186–255),
ARIUS (c. 250—died 336).
Arius
taught, in accordance with an earlier subordinationist theological
tradition, that the Son of God was a creature, made
by God from nothing a finite time ago. He
taught some
time around 318 AD.
THE NICENE CREED. Following Emperor Constantine legitimatizing Christianity, the
Council of Nicaea (AD 325) included some three hundred “bishops,”
many of whom bore the scars of persecution, and was convened
primarily to resolve the debate over Arianism, the false teaching
that Christ was a creature, an angel who was the highest created
being, but not God.
NICENE
(325AD plus) AND ATHANASIAN CREEDS (fourth or fifth century). Both
creeds insist on the unity of essence between the persons of the
Trinity. But the Nicene creed begins with the person of the Father
and explains the Son’s divinity in relation to him.
AUGUSTINE (396 to 430 AD).
His mammoth On
the Trinity
(Latin: De
Trinitate)
has been endlessly mined by later theologians. In it, Augustine is
concerned to defend Pro-Nicene trinitarianism against lingering
“Arianism” and other heresies,
confessing that this “is also my faith inasmuch as it is the
Catholic faith” (70 [I.2.7]) Augustine
suggests that the standard creedal term “person” (Greek:
hypostasis
or prosopon;
Latin: persona)
is adopted simply so that something may be said in answer to the
question “What is God three of?” (224–30 [VII.3], 241
[VIII.1.1], 398 [XV.1.5]) The
term “person”, he thinks, signifies a genus, but it is one for
which we can provide no species. In contrast, “divine essence”
names neither a genus nor a species
The
“ATHANASIAN” Creed (fourth or fifth century). This creed teaches that whoever
wants to be saved should above all cling to the catholic faith.
Whoever does not guard it whole and inviolable will doubtless perish
eternally. Now this is the catholic faith: We worship one God in
trinity and the Trinity in unity, neither confusing the persons nor
dividing the divine being. For the Father is one person, the Son is
another, and the Spirit is still another. But the deity of the
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one, equal in glory, coeternal in
majesty.
CONCLUSION. The
obvious conclusion is that teachers may
stretch or condense the
trinity creeds to suit
oneself. But it is apparently anathema for
one to teach or believe what the Old Testament taught: a plural for
God. If you know the Hebrew
language then you know that
God is referenced as plural and it
would be obvious to you, but
if you only speak English, it is a hidden fact
to
you.
At the same time the
plural appellation would not necessarily mean that you believed in
multiple gods. You might only think that “Gods” was the name or stood for the
true and living Creator just like the ancient Hebrews must have. However, we must remember at the same time that the
ancient Hebrews did use the same plural word for their neighbors' false gods and idols as we shall see.
Confusing? Stay with us.
Let’s get into the mystery of the "Creator/s" in Genesis with Part 1 (link at the top and below). Hopefully, we might clarify the issues and the truth according to the inspired texts instead of man's speculations.
GAYLON WEST ---- edited by Janie Ward and Mary L. West
ii
https://realfaith.com/what-christians-believe/history-doctrine-trinity/
iii
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/trinity/trinity-history.html
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