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.
On May 24th and 25th of 2008, Michael Bugg and Matthew Janzen debated the question Is Yeshua the One God of Israel?. The debate occurred over two nights. The first night was at Michael Bugg’s church (he is a messianic Jew who holds to a modified version of the Trinity). The second night of the debate was held at Matthew Janzen’s church (he is the biblical unitarian).
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).
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
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?
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The Biblical Unitarian Society at the University of Southampton, UK, has hosted a debate on the Trinity. The debate occurred on June 16th, 2008. Representing the trinitarian side were two Anglicans, Prof. Keith Fox and Chris Halls both from Highfield Church. The two biblical unitarians that participated in the debate were Ray Faircloth of Restoration Fellowship and Thomas Gaston, a Christadelphian. The debate lasted nearly three hours and is available now online in both audio and video formats.
Program Timetable
Introduction by Michael Ng [5 min]
Opening Statement by trinitarian Chris Halls [20 min]
Opening Statement by unitarian Thomas Gaston [20 min]
Opening Statement by trinitarian Prof. Keith Fox [20 min]
Opening Statement by unitarian Ray Faircloth [20 min]
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.
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.
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