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?
The inspiration for this post comes from this article, which I suggest you all read. The basic idea is that God is by definition a God who is not silent. The article supports this contention with the Psalm: “Our God comes, he does not keep silence”. This idea can also be widely supported by the whole Old Testament as compared to the other gods of the nations around them. The priests of the other gods had no revealed law, barely any prophecy either. They would cut open animals and lay out their entrails to receive a sign from their gods. They would cast lots and roll dice. They looked for anything, large or small, to receive a sign as to why there was a famine, or their nations were being conquered, or a drought, or their wives barren. YHWH rather, speaks openly, giving a law and laying our revelation to his prophets.
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?
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
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.
Presented by Brant Bosserman and Sean Finnegan at the One God Conference, Seattle WA June 1st 2008, commentary by Sean Finnegan. Click here to listen the entire 2 hour debate or click on one of the parts below.
The debate was over whether God is a single individual (the Father of Jesus) or if he is a Trinity (three persons in one essence). The debate followed this format:
Introduction by Ken Westby and Tom Bosserman [10 min] listen or download
Sean’s Opening Statement [20 min] listen or download
Brant’s Opening Statement [20 min] listen or download
Sean’s Rebuttal [15 min] listen or download
Brant’s Rebuttal [15 min] listen or download
Sean Cross-Examine Brant [10 min] listen or download
Brant Cross-Examine Sean [10 min] listen or download
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.