Wednesday 30 March 2016

The BIBLICAL doctrine of the Trinity...

...as opposed to the traditional one which, I believe, involves extra-biblical concepts which render it incoherent:

The Father is the only true God (John 17:3); the Son is in the Father and the Father is in the Son (John 14:11); the Son and the Father are one (John 10:30); whoever has seen the Son has seen the Father (John 14:9); the Son is the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15); the Son is the exact representation of God's being (Hebrews 1:3); the fullness of Deity dwells bodily in the Son (Colossians 2:9); if you lie to the Holy Spirit you are lying to God (Acts 5:4); the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ (Romans 8:9).

Anything beyond these simple yet profound biblical statements about the unity of God and Christ in the Spirit (eg. notions of three distinct Persons each of whom constitutes the same one Being) is, in my opinion, pure speculation and should not be made into a requirement of orthodoxy.
No doubt many people would point to John 1:1 as an essential addition to the above list, which it most certainly is. I omitted it simply because of the ambiguity over how it should be translated. My preferred translation is 'what God was, the Word was' (New English Bible), as it takes into account the lack of a definite article (ho) before the word for God (theos) when applied to the Word (logos) - although I can't claim to have any real knowledge of Greek, biblical or otherwise.

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