Many a trinitarian holds to the belief that Jesus pops up here and there back in the Old/Original Testament proving that he is God. They believe that such a view is tenable based on the fact that in certain events described in the OT, the text describes God appearing to someone and conversing with them or doing something else in person. Yet NONE of these instances does the text ever say that the being described as God is Jesus or is “God the Son”, or any “person” of a tri-personal Godhead.
Discussion of Thomas’ words in John 20:28 has been a hot discussion topic of late here on kingdomready. So I thought it was fitting AND timely when I ran across an excellent article on the same subject by Ivan Maddox of West End Bible Fellowship in Atlanta Georgia. Ivan’s full article is rather long, so I thought I would post a couple of interesting latter segments of it and provide a link to the full piece (Did Thomas Claim that Jesus is God?) for those who wish to read the entire paper (which I would heartily recommend).
The God of Thomas?
Another fellow Bible-believing Unitarian wrote an interesting article entitled “Two Gods?”. In it he (Juan Baixeras) makes the point that the Bible expressly shows that there is only ONE God and then that Jesus HAS A GOD. Therefore it is not hard to see the logical conclusion that if Jesus is God, then there has to be TWO Gods. Of course the inverse is the real truth in that since Jesus has a God, then he is NOT that God and is just who the Bible tells us he is - the Messiah, “God’s anointed” human representative.
Here’s Juan’s article in its entirety with all formatting:
TWO GODS?
By Juan Baixeras
In many of the discussions and interactions we have with contemporary Christians I am always struck by one particular fact. Many Christians have their faith in a historical vacuum. Their ideas and beliefs about the Sriptures more closely fit philosophy than historical Biblical studies. And this comes up very often, as we have seen with the Trinitarian arguments.
At the moment I’m reading two books that are cementing these ideas so much more for me: Galilee by Horsely, and The Sceptre and the Star by Collins. The former is all about the historical reconstruction of Galilee before, during, and after the time of Jesus. The latter is about the idea of Messiah in apocryphal literature and the Dead Sea Scrolls. It is amazing to be reading these two at the same time, and being able to compare the major differences from the north in Galilee, to the south by the Dead Sea/Jerusalem area.
With all the trinity discussion that has been going on here at kingdomready.org, I thought I’d take time out to write an article on few of the issues I find with the trinity. Now I have a host of them – some of which have been brought up in the comment debates going on here in the blogs and some others probably to follow. But I wanted to address a couple of particular issues in detail that really bug me about the trinity belief. So let’s get started.
The Trinity contradicts the Biblical record
of how God reveals himself and his Messiah
By Ron Shockley
1. God seen or not seen – in human form or not?
The doctrine of the Trinity is a model for understanding who God is. Over the past couple of weeks we have had quite a bit of conversation about whether or not this model is intelligible or biblical. Unfortunately, often times I have found myself struggling to keep up with the conversation because I get busy and then when I come back, twenty more comments have been made. So, I apologize for not being able to answer each question that has come my way. Still, I believe that I have interacted enough with the trinitarian position and in particular with the way in which it is being argued here to become quite concerned.
In all the exchanges we’ve had in the debate and as a result of the debate, I’m seeing several charges being leveled against us that are (1) incomplete, (2) false, and/or (3) don’t follow logically from our points. These are all strawmen. I’m just going to list them here:
- That we mix creator and creation based on singular pronouns
- That singular pronouns can be used of multiple persons
- That we deny progressive revelation, or it nullifies our points
- No Unitarian statement appears in Scripture
- Misrepresentation concerning the New Creation of Colossians 1
Walter Brueggemann was a Professor of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia. A graduate of Elmhurst College, Professor Brueggemann went on to study at the Eden Theological Seminary, receiving his Doctorate of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary and his Ph.D. from St. Louis University. He has devoted his life to a passionate exploration of Old Testament theology. An unequaled passion for his subject has resulted in the publication of more than 58 books and hundreds of articles. My introduction to Dr. Brueggemann was through a course I took on Old Testament Poetry, for which my teacher, Dr. Joe Martin (who studied under Brueggemann), used The Message of the Psalms.
Frequently the word Elohim (the Hebrew word for God) is used to assert that God is plural. Naturally, this occurs because the word Elohim is plural in form. In Hebrew the “-im” ending indicates a plural like the “-s” ending in English. However, language is a tricky thing. Sometimes one will come across a word that ends in an “s” but is not plural (like “news”). The same occurs in Hebrew. Even so, rather than make the case myself (since my understanding of Hebrew is very limited), I have found a number of excellent Bible dictionary entries that make the point very well. Please note that most of these entries were written by people who believe in the Trinity, but even so, they do not use the plural form of the word Elohim to make their case.
Click here to listen to Discerning the Difference Between Two Opposed Theologies presented by Anthony Buzzard, Apr 30th 2008, Atlanta Georgia. Commentary by John Obelenus
Anthony opens by explaining to us that distorted versions of the faith, held up by theological and spiritual leaders in high places, fight against the revealed biblical truth. He spotlights Swindoll and Zuck’s Understanding Christian Theology as a perfect example of this distorted version of the faith from the evangelical camp.
Often times the evangelical camp find and dictate a pre-existent Jesus in the Old Testament as the Angel of the Lord, despite their admission that there is no precise verse to declare a pre-existent Jesus. Futhermore they massively misunderstand the phrase “Son of God” by importing a post-Christian creedal understanding onto the person of Jesus in the gospels. This is where they begin their incarnation doctrines about Jesus that are so repellent to the biblical text and first century Judaism.