Featured 2 Corinthians 3 and The Deity of The Holy Spirit

Congregationalist believe in the Trinity, Universalist don’t. The little blurb was no doubt made up by kjvonlyist who were mad because Thayer worked on the ASV. Slander is what it is.

 

One believer who is a scholar researched this matter and could not find sound evidence to support that claim.
Here are the results of this person's research:

"Of interest in this regard (from my research) is that a Unitarian encyclopedia does not mention Thayer among their number; also, one finds in The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (Grand Rapids: Baker reprint, 1950), 11:314, the entry "Thayer, Joseph Henry. Congregationalist...."

As to the Congregational issue, I also have discovered the following comments in the article, C. J. H. Ropes, "John Henry Thayer: The Man and His Work," Biblical World 19 (1902)
[additional note: Ropes himself (1866-1933) "was born in Salem, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard College in 1889 and Andover Theological Seminary in 1893. In 1901, he was ordained a minister in the Congregational Church" -- which means he should have been swift to identify Thayer as a Unitarian were such indeed the case]:

p. 249 -- "While as a young man he usually attended Dr. Gannett's church (Unitarian) with his father, yet his own views followed those of his mother, and led him into the Congregational church."
p. 250(?) -- "...was pastor of the Crombie Street Congregational Church in Salem, Massachusetts for five years"

As for his doctrinal views, especially in relation to the deity of Christ, the same article speaks of him as:
p. 264-5 -- "one who in wide erudition and advanced scholarship 'knew it all,' and yet held fast to every vital point of the old faith."

Also, regarding the deity of Christ, the following comments seem to be the clincher:
p. 260 -- "He [Thayer] writes to a pastor desirous of reading up on the deity of Christ: 'But in preparing to present from the pulpit any doctrine of the truth of which I was thoroughly convinced (like the present doctrine) I have usually found myself most helped by reading the ablest books on the other side. By doing this, one not only best discovers what the actual difficulties of an unbeliever are, but has suggested to him (often) the best methods of meeting them.' " (italics Thayer's).

p. 265 -- [quoting from another of Thayer's letters:] "The really strong argument in support of Christ's pre-existence has always seemed to me to be the concurrent, yet ... independent, representations of the biblical writers, not even excepting the synoptists .... The personage they portray forbids his classification with ordinary men, and leaves so unique and exalted a conception of his relation to the Father that the explicit declarations of the fourth gospel awaken no surprise in the ordinary reader."

Given all of these parameters, it seems that -- contrary to Martin/Klann or the Baker lexicon "publisher's preface" or the various KJVO/TRO propaganda against Thayer and his lexicon -- Thayer in fact was a Congregationalist and also held to the deity of Christ."

 

Next topic please...

 

He did not seem to hold to Jesus as being God, not Bible as inspired!

 

Very informative, so guess Thayer not nearly as bad a source as some have made him out to be!

 

Duh...

 

Yes, Thayers has flaws, but to those who desire to through the baby out with the bath water, one must wonder why they do not want John Q Public to rely on the on-line available resource, and instead depend on their the selective citations from unavailable on line sources.

 

Thayers: θεότης, -ητος, ἡ, (deitas, Tertullian, Augustine [de 104 Dei 7, 1]), deity i. e. the state of being God, Godhead: Colossians 2:9.

 

Sooner or later Christians that employ the cancel culture will betray a me first mentality

 

One false charge after another is the stock and trade of bullies. They make false claims then seek to silence truth.

 

(Being unbracketed, this statement is evidently Grimm’s own, not Thayer’s).

 

You did see the word "evidently" right. here is the full quote

p. 287, column b “Whether Christ is called God must be determined from John 1:1; 20:28; I John 5:20; Romans 9:5; Titus 2:13; Hebrews 1:8ff; etc.; the matter is still in dispute among theologians.”

(Being unbracketed, this statement is evidently Grimm’s own, not Thayer’s). To the claim that “the matter is still in dispute among theologians,” Doctrinal Error in Thayer's Lexicon | SHARPER IRON