Posted by CB on 8/12/2001, 7:00 pm

Some comments... Posted by Steve B. on 6/21/2001, 1:51 pm , in reply to "Re: The dual nature" Cliff, You write Matt 1:18 birth was in this way.....the greek word for "birth" here means origin or beginning. It seems to state that Christ began here. Certainly his human existence began at that point. But what about John 8:58 ("Jesus said unto them, 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.' ")? Or John 6:62 ("What then if ye should behold the Son of man ascending to where he was before?")? These scriptures are among several that show Jesus existed before his birth as a man. You also write As far as His nature being a redefined "man", that is what I oppose in Trinitarian thinking all along...and the Mormons do it also...redefining a word in a way that the Bible makes no mention of. Man means man. But to say trinitarians "redefine" a word implies that you (or Oneness believers in general) know the one correct definition of that word, and that that word cannot be used in more than one sense. This is manifestly untrue. In the same way, you say "man means man." This is a tautology that serves only to obscure an inability to deal with language and meaning. One word usually has multiple senses and it is the task of the responsible hearer to discern in which sense a word is being used. This is the facility of which this crude hermeneutic robs a person. For example, Genesis 32:24 reads “And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day.” Does “man” mean “man” in this verse? You also write Leave Trinitarian non-Biblical words out of the discussion and you cannot explain the Trinity. This is of course one of Don's favorite lines, heard often around the Chapel. But it's completely false. I realized recently that it's actually not hard at all to describe the Trinity using only Biblical words, it just takes slightly more space because the non-Biblical words that are used ("pre-existence," for example) are simply a short way of summarizing the common thread of several passages. You ask If you only use the words that God has written...how can you describe God's nature? One says that he is revealed by his logos, Jesus Christ, that was with God in the beginning, and was God. When the time had come, the logos became flesh and visited his own people as their only savior, as God had promised. One can also say that Jesus is God, the Holy Spirit is God, and the Father is God, and that there is yet one God. Every word in those sentences is in the Bible. This is not to say that I believe a person is wrong to use non-Biblical words in his doctrine. Accurately reflecting the meaning of the scriptures is more important than merely parroting its words without understanding, or worse, with a distorted understanding. A common tactic of false teachers is to give non-Biblical meanings to Biblical words. And just so, in post-apostolic times false teachings arose that had not existed during the lifetime of the apostles. The church of those days found it necessary to precisely specify the sense in which the Biblical words were meant, gathering the sense of all Biblical passages on a subject into a word or two that specifically countered the false meaning. I don't see anything wrong with that process. You also write Arrrgh. The Trinity drives me nuts, but so do all left over Catholic doctrines. I am not surprised by the knee-jerk rejection of trinitarianism as a "left-over Catholic doctrine." Until recently, that was my own attitude. The Chapel exploited anti-Catholicism pretty heavily. But that is something I have had to come to regard as neither spiritually healthy nor historically accurate. It is not spiritually healthy because this reaction allows one to substitute blind religous prejudice for reasoned study of the scriptures. And it is not historically accurate because all of the elements of trinitarian belief exist in the New Testament and were explicitly written about in the early church well before the emergence of Roman Catholicism. Additionally, even if it were true that trinitarian doctrine was formulated exclusively by teachers in the Roman Catholic church, that does not logically prove it wrong. You also write (in your next posting) Also, I don't believe the fully God, fully man statement, because the Bible doesn't say that. The shading is a bit different. It calls Christ a man. Period... Sorry, but that's a blatant falsehood. The Bible calls Jesus many, many things besides man, and some of them are names and titles that are reserved for God alone in the Old Testament. And also of course, John places Thomas' confession of Jesus as “my Lord and my God” at the climax of his gospel, a confession which is commended by Jesus. Sincerely, Steve ---------- Man, O Man!! Posted by Dave Kenady on 6/21/2001, 4:55 pm , in reply to "Some comments..." "Certainly his human existence began at that point. But what about John 8:58 ("Jesus said unto them, 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.' ")? Or John 6:62 ("What then if ye should behold the Son of man ascending to where he was before?")? These scriptures are among several that show Jesus existed before his birth as a man." "... This is a tautology that serves only to obscure an inability to deal with language and meaning. One word usually has multiple senses and it is the task of the responsible hearer to discern in which sense a word is being used. This is the facility of which this crude hermeneutic robs a person." But, of course, your conclusion here with your superior hermaneutic is that Jesus was a man before He was born. I thought your primary concern with people on the board was the tendency to deny the Deity of Christ and see Him only as a man. Now you are saying He was a man before He was born? You say, "One word usually has multiple senses and it is the task of the responsible hearer to discern in which sense a word is being used," and I would agree with you. But there must be some compelling reason to seek a sense other than the obvious. Sometimes a simple context is enough. The sentence "We are one," is easy to interpret in a sense that shows a unity of a plurality because all the elements are provided -- plurality (We), unity of that plurality(one). But consider a verse like Deut 6:4. Is there a case that is so compelling that this should be seen as a unity of the Trinity, rather than to simply say that God is numerically One? "using only Biblical words, it just takes slightly more space because the non-Biblical words that are used ("pre-existence," for example) are simply a short way of summarizing the common thread of several passages." This I would be interested in seeing Steve. You should pursue this because it would be one thing that former Chapelites would be sure to read because my experience has been that the Chapel position exposes something here. When we could go out and show the two natures of Jesus Christ and understand verses that showed His limitations as a view of his very real humanity, and then show how Trinitarian theology is contradictory to the Bible AND not based on concepts from the Bible, it was a very strong position. And to never get a response to the request for Trinitarians to define the Trinity using only biblical language only reinforces that the doctrine is off track. If Jesus is co-equal with the Father and the HS, why was He subject to the Father? I'll spare you all the questions. You know the drill. But Trinitarians blowing off my questions only showed me they didn't really care about the truth. ---------- And on top of that..... Posted by Dave Kenady on 6/21/2001, 5:04 pm , in reply to "Man, O Man!!" continuing from the previous question..... "But Trinitarians blowing off my questions only showed me they didn't really care about the truth." And on top of that, simply because they were in the vast, vast majority, would start talking about my position as a dangerous cultic position when they just got finished NOT answering my questions ---- used to infuriate me because in my view, they didn't have a right to do that. Like Phil once said, "Who needs a truthful witness when it's shrouded in such a high degree of respect?"