Post by The Ambassador on Jul 20, 2019 11:33:25 GMT
Knowing God
From the Booklet: "Getting to Know the God of the Bible"
“And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” ~ John 17: 3
Introduction:
Can we get to know God? Is He so far off, so mysterious, that we could never understand Him? Or does God want to have a close, personal relationship with us? Does He reveal Himself clearly in the Bible? Our world is filled with myriad gods and ideas about God, most of which seem inconsistent or unintelligible.
One of the most common beliefs in Christianity today is the mystery of the Trinity—that there is one God who appears as three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Many have accepted this explanation of God as the defining doctrine of orthodoxy without studying its origin.
Chapter Four Part Two; “Understanding The Holy Spirit”
A short history of the Trinity
Historians know that the Trinity was never a perspective of the Jews or Christians of the first century. As one Trinitarian candidly acknowledges, “The Jews never regarded the spirit as a person; nor is there any solid evidence that any Old Testament writer held this view. … The Holy Spirit is usually presented in the Synoptics [the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke] and in Acts as a divine force or power” (Edmund Fortman, The Triune God, 1972, pp. 6, 15).
Numerous sources confirm that the Trinity was a concept devised by theologians rather than a teaching of the Bible. “The Old Testament clearly does not envisage God’s spirit as a person. … God’s spirit is simply God’s power. If it is sometimes represented as being distinct from God, it is because the breath of Yahweh acts exteriorly. … The majority of New Testament texts reveal God’s spirit as something, not someone; this is especially seen in the parallelism between the spirit and the power of God” (New Catholic Encyclopedia, 1967, Vol. 14, pp. 574-575).
Gregory of Nazianzus acknowledged in the fourth century: “Of our thoughtful men, some regard the Holy Spirit as an operation, some as a creature and some as God; while others are at a loss to decide, seeing that the Scripture determines nothing on the subject” (Oratio 38: De Spiritu Sancto). Easton’s Bible Dictionary states that the word Trinity is “not found in Scripture” (“Trinity”).
So we are faced with a decision. We have to choose between accepting what God tells us about Himself in His inspired Word—the Bible—and accepting a humanly devised explanation of the Holy Spirit. As we consider our choice of explanations, we need to remember that Jesus declared that God’s Word is truth (John 17:17). Doesn’t it make sense that Jesus knew what was true and that the Bible is a better source for truth regarding the Godhead than the ideas of men?
As for how the Trinity came to be an integral part of Christianity, the New Bible Dictionary notes: “The word Trinity is not found in the Bible, and though used by Tertullian in the last decade of the 2nd century, it did not find a place formally in the theology of the church till the 4th century” (1982, “Trinity”). Several hundred years after the Bible was completed, religious leaders began developing and teaching that God is a Trinity.
Echoing this history, the Oxford Companion to the Bible explains: “Because the Trinity is such an important part of later Christian doctrine, it is striking that the term does not appear in the New Testament. Likewise, the developed concept of three coequal partners in the Godhead found in later creedal formulations cannot be clearly detected within the confines of the canon” (Bruce Metzger and Michael Coogan, editors, 1993, p. 782).
So why did church leaders develop a new, nonbiblical explanation of the Godhead?
The effort to define who God was began due to a major controversy that had erupted among those professing to be followers of Christ. “In about 320 a fierce theological passion had seized the churches of Egypt, Syria and Asia Minor. …The controversy had been kindled by Arius. … He had issued a challenge which his bishop, Alexander, found impossible to ignore but even more difficult to rebut: how could Jesus Christ have been God in the same way as God the Father? Arius was not denying the divinity of Christ; … but he argued that it was blasphemous to think that he was divine by nature” (Karen Armstrong, A History of God, 1993, p. 107).
The Roman Church selected a man named Athanasius, who was Alexander’s assistant, to counter this faulty teaching that was spreading throughout the churches. Summarizing the argument, Karen Armstrong writes: “Either Christ, the Word, belonged to the divine realm (which was the domain of God alone) or he belonged to the fragile created order” (p. 108). Arius placed Him in the created order, but Athanasius placed Him in the divine realm.
The Trinity was a philosophical concept developed to defeat the argument of Arius. What we have to recognize is that it had no basis in Scripture. The Trinity was simply the humanly devised construct that the Roman church used to counter the heretical teaching that Christ was a created being and thus on a lesser plane than God the Father. Trinitarians claim that a few passages in the Bible do indicate that God is a trinity; we will carefully examine these scriptures a little later to see whether this contention is legitimate.
The Arian controversy raged for a number of years. In response, the proposed doctrine of the Trinity “gradually developed over several centuries and through many controversies. … The Council of Nicaea in 325 stated the crucial formula for that doctrine in its confession that the Son is ‘of the same substance [homoousis] as the Father’ even though it said very little about the Holy Spirit. Over the next half-century, Athanasius defended and refined the Nicene formula, and, by the end of the 4th century … the doctrine of the Trinity took substantially the form it has maintained ever since” (Encyclopedia Britannica, “Trinity”).
Earlier religious leaders accepted the biblical teaching that the Father and Son formed the Godhead. In the second century, bishop Irenaeus stated: “there is none other called God by the Scriptures except the Father of all, and the Son, and those who possess the adoption” (Against Heresies, Book 4, preface; compare Book 3, chapter 6).
In time biblical teaching would be discarded in favor of a model identifying the Holy Spirit as a third member of the Godhead. The historical record shows that the doctrine of the Trinity wasn’t completed until centuries after the Bible had been written and Christ’s original apostles had died. Unfortunately, this false concept of God has done much to suppress the biblical teaching of the Godhead.
For additional information on the development of the Trinity, see the online article “The Trinity: What Is It?”
Commonly misunderstood scriptures
Advocates of today’s more common explanations of God claim to take their beliefs from the Bible and cite a number of scriptures to supposedly prove their explanations. But as we are going to see, these so-called proofs really aren’t proofs at all.
What about Matthew 28:19?
Prior to returning to heaven, Jesus charged His disciples: “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Some have assumed that this passage proves that the Holy Spirit is a person.
The word in (from the phrase “baptizing them in the name”) is the Greek word eis. It is defined as “into, to, towards, for, and among” (Thayer’s Greek English Lexicon of the New Testament). Entering God’s family via baptism involves entering into or moving into an association with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
This verse is not addressing the nature of God or whether the Holy Spirit is a person. Acts 2:38 shows that we receive the Holy Spirit when we repent of our sins and are baptized. e process includes a minister laying his hands upon the person who is baptized (Acts 19:6) and then the person receiving the Holy Spirit from God (Acts 8:14-17).
McClintock and Strong in Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature note that Matthew 28:19 “proves only that there are the three subjects named … but it does not prove, by itself, that all the three belong necessarily to the divine nature, and possess equal divine honor. … is text, taken by itself, would not prove decisively either the personality of the three subjects mentioned, or their equality or divinity” (1987, Vol. X, p. 552).
There are several scriptures similar to Matthew 28:19 that are commonly cited in an attempt to prove the Trinity, but when these scriptures are examined carefully, it becomes clear that they are simply referencing the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and are not proving anything about the nature of God.
Examples include Matthew 3:16-17; Galatians 4:6; Romans 15:30; Ephesians 2:18; 1 Peter 1:2; 3:18. Again, simply referring to three things does not mean all three things are exactly the same and equal or that these three things are a trinity. For additional information on this passage, see the online article “Does Matthew 28:19 Prove the Trinity?”
What about 1 John 5:7-8?
The King James Version of the Bible renders these verses: “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the 49 water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.” Strangely, the words in italics are not included in the generally accepted New Testament manuscripts.
Many Bible commentaries, including the New Bible Commentary, state that the inserted words in the King James and New King James Versions of the Bible are spurious. The New Revised Standard Version correctly renders these verses: “There are three that testify, the Spirit and the water and the blood, and these three agree.” Here John personifies these three elements as providing testimony that Jesus was the Son of God. (For additional explanation of personification, see the section at the end of this chapter, “Why do some scriptures personify the Holy Spirit?”)
Dr. Neil Lightfoot says that the textual evidence is against 1 John 5:7 as translated by the King James and New King James Versions of the Bible. “Of all the Greek manuscripts, only two contain it [the addition]. These two manuscripts are of very late dates, one from the fourteenth or fifteenth century and the other from the sixteenth century. Two other manuscripts have this verse written in the margin. All four manuscripts show that this verse was apparently translated from a late form of the Latin Vulgate” (How We Got the Bible, 2003, pp. 100-101).
Albert Barnes in his Notes on the Bible concurs that the addition is spurious and states that this passage “is never quoted by the Greek fathers in their controversies on the doctrine of the Trinity—a passage which would be so much in point, and which could not have failed to be quoted if it were genuine.”
As for what this passage means, John was offering proof that Jesus was the Son of God (1 John 5:1, 5). The “water” was likely a reference to Christ’s baptism and the Spirit coming upon Him (Matthew 3:13-17).
As for the reference to “blood,” we realize that Christ’s shed blood pays the penalty for our sins (Matthew 26:28). And John’s mentioning the “Spirit” reminds His readers of the power of God that Jesus came to announce and which is in those who are baptized (Acts 2:38).
We should also note that if we were to conclude that this passage proves that the Holy Spirit is a person, to be consistent, we would have to conclude that the water and blood are also persons. This, of course, is inaccurate. The passage in 1 John 5:7-8 does not prove that the Holy Spirit is a person.
Next Sabbath Part Three
Bible Reading
Judith Chapter 16
1 Break into song for my God, to the tambourine, sing in honor of the Lord, to the cymbal, let psalm and canticle mingle for him, extol his name, invoke it!
2 For the Lord is a God who breaks battle-lines; he has pitched his camp in the middle of his people to deliver me from the hands of my oppressors.
3 Assyria came down from the mountains of the north, came with tens of thousands of his army. Their multitude blocked the ravines, their horses covered the hills.
4 He threatened to burn up my country, destroy my young men with the sword, dash my sucklings to the ground, make prey of my little ones, carry off my maidens;
5 but the Lord Almighty has thwarted them by a woman's hand.
6 For their hero did not fall at the young men's hands, it was not the sons of Titans struck him down, no proud giants made that attack, but Judith, the daughter of Merari, who disarmed him with the beauty of her face.
7 She laid aside her widow's dress to raise up those who were oppressed in Israel; she anointed her face with perfume,
8 bound her hair under a turban, put on a linen gown to seduce him.
9 Her sandal ravished his eye, her beauty took his soul prisoner and the scimitar cut through his neck!
10 The Persians trembled at her boldness, the Medes were daunted by her daring.
11 These were struck with fear when my lowly ones raised the war cry, these were seized with terror when my weak ones shouted, and when they raised their voices these gave ground.
12 The children of mere girls ran them through, pierced them like the offspring of deserters. They perished in the battle of my Lord!
13 I shall sing a new song to my God. Lord, you are great, you are glorious, wonderfully strong, unconquerable.
14 May your whole creation serve you! For you spoke and things came into being, you sent your breath and they were put together, and no one can resist your voice.
15 Should mountains be tossed from their foundations to mingle with the waves, should rocks melt like wax before your face, to those who fear you, you would still be merciful.
16 A little thing indeed is a sweetly smelling sacrifice, still less the fat burned for you in burnt offering; but whoever fears the Lord is great forever.
17 Woe to the nations who rise against my race! The Lord Almighty will punish them on judgment day. He will send fire and worms in their flesh and they will weep with pain forevermore.
18 When they reached Jerusalem they fell on their faces before God and, once the people had been purified, they presented their burnt offerings, voluntary offerings, and gifts.
19 All Holofernes' property given her by the people, and the canopy she herself had stripped from his bed, Judith vowed to God as a dedicated offering.
20 For three months the people gave themselves up to rejoicings in front of the Temple in Jerusalem, where Judith stayed with them.
21 When this was over, everyone returned home. Judith went back to Bethulia and lived on her property; as long as she lived, she enjoyed a great reputation throughout the country.
22 She had many suitors, but all her days, from the time her husband Manasseh died and was gathered to his people, she never gave herself to another man.
23 Her fame spread more and more, the older she grew in her husband's house; she lived to the age of one hundred and five. She emancipated her maid, then died in Bethulia and was buried in the cave where Manasseh her husband lay.
24 The House of Israel mourned her for seven days. Before her death, she had distributed her property among her own relations and those of her husband Manasseh.
25 Never again during the lifetime of Judith, nor indeed for a long time after her death, did anyone trouble the Israelites
Next Sabbath, we begin the reading of Tobias or Tobit.
Next Sabbath, we begin the reading of Tobias, or Tobit.