Featured Defending the trinity doctrine

Spot on Biblicist! Anytime we see the Spirit of ..., it is the Third Person of the Trinity acting on behalf of the Second Person of the Trinity, i.e. Spirit of Christ, Spirit of the Lord, Spirit of Truth, Spirit of Adoption, and so forth.

 

Not sure if anyone mentioned it previously but my favorite passage on the deity of Christ is John 8.

There is no denying Jesus' claim here or that it was clearly understood by those he spoke to.

 

One of my favorite proof texts for the absolute divinity of Christ is Matthew 1:21-23.

Every name given to someone in the Bible has to do with something either about their character or a promise or work. They shall call his name "Jesus" for he "shall save" his people from their sins. Of course "Jesus" is the combination of the words Yahweh and Savior. In verse 21 emphasizes the work - "he shall save his people from their sins". However, verse 23 emphasizes "Yahweh" or who he is - "HIS PEOPLE shall call him Immanuel, being interpreted THE GOD WITH US." (More literal translation).

The point is that "HIS PEOPLE" recognize Him as God, those who reject His absolute deity are not "His people."

 

In genesis, the LORD appeared to Abraham to talk to him, and he also told him that the god in heaven would be raining down judgement , so how could he be both persons?

Also, The Angel of the Lord that spoke to Isreal spoke and was said to be God himself appearing to them, but the bible states that NONE have ever seen the father, but that the Son was used to disclose God unto them...

And hebrews states to us the Jesus was called God by God, and that John stated that he was the Only God of God that appeared unto us, and that in him was all of the Godhead in a bodily form...

peter calls the Holy spirit God himself in Acts, and paul calls him the Spirit of Jesus himself...

And most of all, Jesus said that God was his father, and that they were rqual and yet not the same person...

Errors would be when some see God as operating in 3 different modes, or that Jesus was not God, or the jesus only cult!

 

What in Acts is his text?

Something to consider would be the conditions of existence. As being physical beings, we often look at everything from that perspective, forgetting that physicality is a creation associated with man...not God. In other words, this universe is similar to an aquarium we might develop if we wanted to keep fish. The fish are completely isolated and subject to that environment, cannot exit it and live, and are locked into that existence. It is beyond the ability of the fish to bring about redemption from that environment that they might exist outside of it.

We are like that. Unlike the fish we can escape our environment by donning space suits and entering the realm outside of our "aquarium," yet...that gets us no closer to entering into God's realm which is spiritual. We could build a spaceship and travel millions of years...yet get no closer to entering God's realm.

Having said that, now consider that God can traverse all realms. His, and ours, will be the primary focus. He can enter into ours while we cannot enter His, and when He does so, at times, we see Him take on physical being, such as He did in Genesis 18. Because of this, we can say "We have seen God." But, that is in our environment. Not His. Because we cannot pass into His realm, the statement "No man has seen God at any time" is equally true.

So the thing to consider is God's interaction with man. To interact with His eternal Being, we must first come into His presence, right? But man has interacted with Him in our environment, at which time He enters into our "aquarium," so to speak. He has done this on a number of occasions. People can understand God interacting with Abraham on the plains of Mamre, so it is odd that when He does so in the Person of Christ they reject this as being God.

Next we consider God's interaction with us on a more personal basis, which is spiritually. While God dwells in His eternal glory, is it incomprehensible that He could also be served lunch on the Plains of Mamre? And at the same time be ministering to the heart of Lot?

The point of this is to step outside of our aquarium mentality and to view the Trinity in light of the eternal. Scripture details both the separate Persons of the Trinity yet at the same time the unity by which we understand there is One God. God's interaction with us, while it may not resolve our finite understanding of the Trinity, should at least help us not to limit God to terms which are distinctly human and physical.


God bless.

 

So Evangelist, have you met with him yet? if you did, what happened?