Posted on 08/30/2015 10:04:00 AM PDT by CHRISTIAN DIARIST
It does not require acceptance of the Nicaean Creed.
Are their others beside Pentecostals who don’t accept the trinity?
Unitarian
The Holy Spirit is of God Himself, Holy, The Power - poured out like oil or water, descending as a dove or resting atop those imbued with it’s power an appearing like divided tongues of flame.
I do not hold to the doctrine that teaches it is a separate entity or person.
If so, the New Testament letters always greets the congregations and the recipient in the Name of God the Father and Jesus Christ - never a mention of a separate person in the Holy Spirit.
I think the English translations from the Greek to give The Power a gender assignment also has contributed to the Nicaean doctrine being accepted as holy writ.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS, the Mormons) believe that they are three distinct personages, acting in accord towards a common goal.
Consider the story of Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist, as Jesus emerges from the waters, a Dove depends from Heaven and a voice calls out "Behold, this is my Son, in whom I am well pleased". The Dove representing the Holy Ghost, the voice being that of God. It wasn't just Jesus saying "Yay Me".
Thanks
I know better than to jump in here. But that Nicean conference has one element that has always bothered me, Constantine.
The emperor of Rome calls church leaders somewhere to settle differences.
Rome and America have more parallels than most people want to admit. Imagine any president calling together all the prominent Christian leaders and making them hammer out a consensus.
And imagine this preside can have you executed at will.
Do you think Greek is a language with genders?
My apologies, I meant “without genders?”
NO
>> Are their others beside Pentecostals who don’t accept the trinity? <<
Jehovah’s Witnesses?
Christian Scientists?
Certain Quakers?
Swedenborgians?
Are you suggesting they caught the last train for the coast?
Would it make you feel any better to know that the council’s decision went against Constantine’s favored position? Constantine favored Arianism, a school of thought that regarded Jesus as merely the greatest of God’s creations and not divine.
The problem with this piece is it fails to deal with all the contradictions and difficulties that come from a non-Trinitarian views of God. The councils (plural, Nicea wasn’t the only one to handle these questions) looked at all the variations of understanding the human and divine nature of Jesus and the relationship of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and finally settled on the orthodox Trinitarian, homeostatic understanding of God and Jesus that all but those on the fringes of Christianity hold today.
Could the Doctrine of the Trinity Be Wrong?
Gen 19:24 Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven;
The old testament does not have trinity doctrine but it used God form singular article plural noun Elohim. As this text identifies God on Earth and God in heaven in instance the God head being called Yaweh. John 1 does explain the mystery of the God head in a way mortal men can understand.
There’s no argument there. He quotes Jesus acknowledging that He is a separate person from the Father, but that’s the entire point of the Trinity. How then is the Trinity debunked? That Jesus is God is fully established in scripture, so if Jesus is God and also a separate person, then what option is there other than the Trinity?
http://christianthinktank.com/cw4hx.html#iam
I suppose you could argue that the Holy Spirit is a manifestation of Christ or the Father and maybe argue your way down to two distinct persons, and some may argue that Jesus wasn’t a distinct person until God “split” Himself at the incarnation but the Bible doesn’t speak to that. All we know is that now, post-incarnation there are at least two and probably three persons in God.
The Trinity is pretty clearly strewn throughout the Bible.
Of course it's incorrect, look around, there's no such thing as a Father and a Son without a Mother. Every particle in the universe is positive or negative male or female.
Just read... a little enhancement is in order.
Genesis 1, 26 And ELoHIM said, Let us make ADaM in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27 And ELoHIM created ADaM in his own image, in the image of ELoHIM created he him; male and female created he them.
And ELoHIM said, Let us make ADaM in our image... in the image of ELoHIM created he him; male and female created he them.
Ergo, ELoHIM is male and female.
Note: The soul of ADaM was created in chapter one, the physical form of ADaM was formed in chapter 2.
God has all characteristics both male and female yes, but you error if you think that means that there is a separate female entity within God. That’s reading far more into the text than is really there.
Note: Chapter 1 and 2 of Genesis don’t record chronologically sequential events, they describe the same event first in overview and then the important part (Adam’s creation) specifically. It’s a common Hebrew literary device.
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