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Sunday, 14 May 2023
Trinitarians vs. the Trinity.
After many decades of discussing/debating the trinity doctrine with supposedly qualified expositors,I can't help but notice that I am yet to hear a defense of any particular concept of the trinity that worked on its own terms i.e that wasn't a non sequitur.
Indeed as I keep trying to explain to my interlocutors the trinity doctrine's main counter is the defense mounted by its adherents.
Trinitarians are able get away with the logical fallacies inherent in the most popular defenses of their doctrine due to lazy thinking both on their own part and those who they are able to persuade. First let's take a popular/mainstream concept of the trinity :Trinity, in Christian doctrine, the unity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as three persons in one Godhead.: So an attempted defense of this notion should ,using premises held in common,reason consistently to the conclusion that the most high God is in fact a council of three eternal persons. Not that any of the non-triune persons in the council is the most high God or is considered God in some unspecified/unspecifiable way or is divine, trinitarians must demonstrate from scripture that the most high God consists of three co eternal persons. They however invariably end up making claims that are either tritheistic or modalistic in their defenses of their dogma.
By way of a few examples:
John ch.1:1NIV"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Note that the text plainly states that the logos was with the God and not with the father thus there is no logical way to get to a Trinitarian conclusion from this premise Bi-Theism is possible with a stretch , but trinitarianism is not even in the frame.
Romans ch.9:5"Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised! " Some Trinitarian translators have rather shortsightedly promoted the above rendering of the text thus handing Modalists ammunition ,for which they are likely quite grateful. Of course if Jesus is the most high God then obviously the most high God is not triune,because by common consent Jesus Christ is not triune so either a monarchy of the so called second person of the trinity over his Father or some kind of Sabellianism is in play, but certainly no trinitarianism.
John ch.14:9"Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? " By common consent neither Jesus nor his Father is triune, for trinitarians this would disqualify either from consideration as the most high God who/which(?) is triune, so there really is no logical way to make this verse even appear to support a triune deity whether seeing the Father(who is not the triune God) is to be taken literally ,as that would be an invoking of modalism ,or Jesus is claiming equality with his Father ,who is not the triune God, for that would mean that Jesus is a distinct God like his Father who is a distinct God see John ch.1:1 So once again it's Bi-Theism or sabellianism certainly not trinitarianism.
John ch.5:18NIV"For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling (The)God his own Father, making himself equal with (the)God."
Thus the Jewish religious leaders accused of making himself EQUAL to The mutually agreed upon lone God not of claiming to be the one God. So the only way that our Lord could concur with this accusation is to abandon monotheism and claim the existence of a second and equal deity i.e himself.
So while my main issue is the fact that the interpretive logic underpinning the premises and conclusions of Trinitarian arguments cannot be consistently applied in exegesis as even trinitarians are forced to admit when confronted ,the fact that even given the premises there is no logical way to any necessarily Trinitarian conclusion doubles the problem for trinitarians in my humble opinion.