Many people suggest that Jesus’ cry of “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me” was the point where the Father could not be with his son because he had become the offering for sin for the world and God can’t be near that. Though the reasoning sounds nice, it is not the case. As this video shows beautifully, Jesus was quoting the first line of Psalm 22, a Psalm which speaks a great deal about the events of Jesus’ last hours. When one follows the text however, we shift from a man who is distraught and weary to one whose hope and faith are in the LORD. Click here to read Psalm 22. That is exactly what was on the mind of the Messiah on the cross - not the current situation he was in - but the end of the story.
Sometimes questions by their very nature can contain assumptions. For example, if someone asked, “Have you stopped beating your dog yet?” how would one answer this question? Either way the question is answered, the assumption is that the person is guilty of the action. This form of questioning can be tricky when the assumption of the questioner is not easily detectable. For example, consider this excerpt from the famous British Christian author, C. S. Lewis:
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).
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:
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.
Since there has been so much “Trinity” debate here on the kingdomready blog, I thought this week I would cover something on subject. Even more reason since during the debates between us Unitarians and our Trinitarian visitors, we also had a “Oneness” believer join in and several people didn’t really catch his positional stance at first. The following might help with that somewhat.
Historical Christianity has had four main belief views on who is God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Some might say include other views such as the Latter Day Saints and Herbert Armstrong’s Church of God folk that believe in a “God family”. But when it boils right down to it, the following four are the longer term predominant viewpoints. And they are: Trinitarian, Oneness, Arian, and Unitarian. What does each profess? Well here is each one’s primary view of God, Jesus, & the Holy Spirit.
I recently listened to an interesting radio show called Unbelievable in which two Jews, a Rabbi and a Messianic Christian discussed their understanding of Jesus. Since I believe Jesus is the Messiah, yet he is not God, I found myself often rooting for both sides! The one who represented Judaism was Rabbi Shmuley Boteach and the Christian was Michael Brown. Both men are high profile leaders in their respective movements and made great points. The host, Justin Brierley did a fine job of bringing out both sides of the argument. If you would like to know to what Jews are saying about Jesus listen to this show online or download it.
I was recently having a conversation with a good friend of mine. And he mentioned that he was having trouble understanding the true meaning behind Jesus’ phrase in Matt 5.17: “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.” I have to agree it is very hard to get just right. We have to do justice to Jesus’ full relationship with his Jewish religion in his time. And we have to understand the saying as the first Church did - which allowed Paul to not walk in line with every aspect while still remaining “in the fold” to the other Jewish-Christians that did continue to walk in line with the law of Moses. For starters, I have to say that in his Jewish Commentary on the New Testament, David Stern gets the first few bells rung right on tune:
Click here to listen to Looking for the Historical Jesus: In Between Evangelical and Liberal Scholarship presented by Sean Finnegan, Apr 29th 2008, Atlanta Georgia. Commentary by John Obelenus
Sean tells us a story of a girl he met in Borders. He was unable to give her a good introductory book to the Christian faith. He knew the kinds of books on the shelves: the evangelical ‘Jesus-is-God’ type, and the liberal ‘there are no miracles-Jesus is a failed prophet’ type. We need to find a middle road between these two, as they both offer good points and bad points.
He starts with the good news about evangelical scholarship:
The existence of God (Peter Kreeft, Alvin Plantinga)
On November 3rd, 2007 at Park Church in Blountstown, FL, Elder Drew Ayers and Sir Anthony Buzzard debated on the Trinity. It has been up on Google video for a little while now but the words don’t match the lips (don’t you hate that?) However, I was able to make an mp3 for those of you who may want to take a listen. The entire debate runs about 132 minutes. They are both gentleman and many good points were brought up.
Sometimes questions by their very nature can contain assumptions. For example, if someone asked, “Have you stopped beating your dog yet?” how would one answer this question? Either way the question is answered, the assumption is that the person is guilty of the action. This form of questioning can be tricky when the assumption of the questioner is not easily detectable. For example, consider this excerpt from the famous British Christian author, C. S. Lewis:
I recently listened to an interesting radio show called