Jesus is NOT a Trinitarian!

Here is another of Keith Dyer's wonderful blogs showing that:

Jesus is NOT a Trinitarian!

 

It still amazes me that for so many years it never really occurred to me
that God was not a trinity, or that Jesus was not God.

The fact is though, I had lots of help with that particular mindset. Now that I have discovered the truth that has been right in front of me all these years, I can see it everywhere. Jesus did not believe in the trinity!

While reading through the gospels recently, I came across a passage of Scripture that jumped out at me in this regard.
Mark 12:28-34 reads as follows:

28 And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, "Which commandment is the most important of all?"
29 Jesus answered, "The most important is,
'Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.
30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.'
31 The second is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."
32 And the scribe said to him, "You are right, Teacher.
You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him.
33 And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices."
34 And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." And after that no one dared to ask him any more questions.
--Mark 12:28-34 (ESV)

In verse 29, Jesus is quoting from Deuteronomy chapter six;
"Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one."
This is called the "shema" and to this day you will hear it recited in every Jewish synagogue, and hear it on the lips of every sincere Jew. It is now, and was in the days of Jesus, the creed of Israel. It is the thing which made the nation of Israel stand out from the other nations; the belief in ONE God. But more than just one God with regard to those whose practice was to worship multiple gods, the shema is a declaration
that God is a singular Being!
Notice in verse 32 that the scribe agreed with Jesus by saying
"You have truly said that he is one..."
But then he adds "...there is no other besides him."

The shema acknowledges, that Yahweh alone is the God of Israel AND that He is ONE; i.e. not multiple in any sense.
If this was the creed of Jesus, should it not be the creed of any and all who claim to follow Jesus?
Should not every Christian declare, along with Jesus, that God is ONE?

The practicality of seeing that Yahweh alone is God, and Jesus is not, is immense.
Belief in the trinity requires a philosophical outlook that is not supported in the plain language of the Bible. It requires us to love and trust a God we cannot possibly hope to understand or relate to in any way. It reduces our knowledge of God to a philosophical concept, and it's difficult to love and trust a philosophical concept!
On the other hand, Jesus teaches us that God is a singular being - a person - worthy of our love and trust.

Jesus, quoting Hebrew Scripture, affirmed that the greatest of the commandments is to "love God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength." When I believed in God as a trinity, I generally always associated God with Jesus and therefore unwittingly gave him the glory that was due to God alone. By following the example of Jesus and affirming that God is ONE, we can love and trust God in the way that Jesus taught us. At the same time, we can give Jesus all the praise due to his name without confusing him with God.

If the Bible is God's message to mankind, and I believe it is, then it honors Him when we take Him at His word.

Jesus never claimed to be God, but he did worship, pray to, and teach about a personal God; a God who he called

"the only True God" (John 17:3); a God with whom he was intimately acquainted.

It was also Jesus' prayer that as he and the Father were one (unity of purpose), that we would also be one (John 17:11). And, that as he was in the Father and the Father in him, that they would also be in us and we in them (John 17:21-23).

This is a call for the Church to awaken from the stupor of Greek philosophy and tradition.

Let God be God, and let Jesus be who he said he is...
the Messiah... the anointed one... God's chosen servant.

Jesus is not a trinitarian!

 

 

Three in One is a great lubricant ...

A truthseeker by the name of Keith Dyer has recently come to the knowledge of the truth that:

• there is solely ONE GOD, the Father
• and the Lord Jesus Christ is the ONE GOD's human Son

 In light of this, he has written some wonderful blogs promoting what the Scriptures truly say.
Here (and the following blog) are two samples for you to enjoy:
(edited by me for emphasis)

Three in One is a great lubricant ...

When did otherwise rational people start believing that three persons equals one God? When and how did otherwise reasonable people begin accepting the idea that one does not really mean one? Let's face it, what if I tried to give a dollar bill as payment for merchandise costing $3 and told the cashier that even though it looked like only $1, it was actually worth $3? What would happen? Well, perhaps if the cashier was in a good mood, he or she might chuckle in disbelief and wait for the other $2. The fact is, no thinking person accepts that kind of math when it comes to money, or anything else! Why then do otherwise normal people accept it when it comes to the subject of God?

For over 35 years, as a Christian and student of the Bible, I never seriously considered that the doctrine of the Trinity could be false. My parents believed it, their parents believed it, my Pastors believed it, my Bible teachers and professors believed it; why, even many non-Christians believe it, or at least accept it. Like the majority of Christians today, I accepted this doctrine without question as the truth about the nature of God. The basis of this acceptance on such a wide scale seems to be rooted in the notion that it's simply a mystery and that God's ways are “past finding out” (Job 9:10; Rom 11:33). We must accept it by faith since no one can expect to understand God in His totality! To question this divine revelation of "three Who's which equal one What", as suggested by the Bible Answer Man Hank Hanegraaff, simply because it makes no logical sense, is futile and faithless. But is that right? Is that how we should view the subject of the revealed nature of God? Is that actually what the Bible teaches? I don't think so!

Part of my “paradigm shift” concerns this Trinitarian concept of God.
Until recently (roughly August '08) I believed in God the Father God the Son and God the Spirit, the three persons of the Trinity. I sang the songs passionately, extolling the three in one and listened to the sermons referencing the three in one without bending an eyebrow. I was well aware that it made no sense, but I was content to be confused along with everyone else. When confronted with the irrationality of it, I consoled myself with the usual analogies of water, ice and steam, or depth width and height, or past, present and future, and of course the standard tripartite nature of man, body, soul and spirit. But one day those ideas just didn't work for me any longer. In my search for truth, I began reading some literature on the subject that so impacted me, that I began to see Scripture with new eyes. As I followed the Bible references with an open mind, I began to turn around in my thinking. I can't say exactly what specific argument or premise brought about this sudden change, (some might say I simply allowed myself to be deceived) but I think rather, I was just hungry enough to receive it.

Please understand that, I am a "believer"! I do not deny Jesus as a genuine historical personality, nor do I question His virgin birth, his sinless life, his Sonship, or even his divinity, i.e. that he is like God; but I now see that I have gone beyond what the Bible teaches about him, or even what he says about himself. Rather than simply taking him at his word that, he is the Son of God, tradition has made him what he never claimed to be and by doing so the theological waters have been muddied. Even in the gospel of John which is used extensively as proof that Jesus is God, closes by declaring,

“but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

-- John 20:31 (ESV)

For the first time in my adult life, I have been willing to take seriously the arguments of those who refute the Trinity. And now as I study the subject on my own, the evidence just keeps “piling up” in favor of my newly adopted understanding that,
God the Father alone is God, Jesus is His son, the only begotten, and the holy spirit, rather than a person, is the active, personal, power of God at work in the world and especially the lives of believers.

I will submit my arguments from Scripture for this view in future posts, but if you are reading this and you believe in the Trinity, I must concede that 1700 years of Church history are on your side! The Trinitarian view of God has been called "orthodoxy" since the council of Nicea in 325 AD, and Trinitarian scholars would no doubt argue that the council only put down on paper what was already the accepted view by the majority of the Church. However, it's not that simple. The history is complex. Other groups argued against the Trinitarian view for centuries after, with some later Councils overturning the Council of Nicea. But regardless of the current majority view, I believe sound reasoning and, more importantly, sound Scriptural evidence, will show that a Biblical Unitarian interpretation of Scripture is more faithful to the text of the Bible, more logically coherent to the Bibles message, and allows for a more exalted view of Jesus, the human Christ!

I'll be writing more on this later, but in closing I would like to quote from a Trinitarian source in order to make a point. In the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia under the topic “Trinity” we read as follows:

“The term “Trinity” is not a Biblical term, and we are not using Biblical language when we define what is expressed by it ...
A doctrine so defined can be spoken of as a Biblical doctrine only on the principle that the sense of Scripture is Scripture. And the definition of a Biblical doctrine in such un-Biblical language can be justified only on the principle that it is better to preserve the truth of Scripture than the words of Scripture...

As the doctrine of the Trinity is indiscoverable by reason, so it is incapable of proof from reason. There are no analogies to it in Nature, not even in the spiritual nature of man, who is made in the image of God. In His trinitarian mode of being, God is unique; and, as there is nothing in the universe like Him in this respect, so there is nothing which can help us to comprehend Him...” [emphasis mine]

 

What is interesting to me is that the ISBE specifically states not only that “trinity” is an unbiblical term, but that the doctrine cannot be proven from reason. But then, oddly enough, the article goes on at great length in an attempt to prove the doctrine from reason! Huh? Also, if "the sense of Scripture is Scripture", as the article puts it, I guess it can mean whatever I want it to mean; that is, whatever my sense of it is becomes Scripture! Can that be right? And, by the way, how can one “preserve the truth of Scripture” without preserving the “words of Scripture”? Isn't that just double talk? But this is typical when it comes to defining the doctrine of the Trinity.

It seems to me that the doctrine of the Trinity is not a revealed doctrine at all, but in fact, an inferred doctrine, and there is a big difference! If the doctrine of the Trinity is so important, and if God, indeed, intended to reveal Himself as a “triune” being, certainly He would have made it much more plain, and it would be stated clearly in BOTH Testaments and we would not be left to “infer” anything!

Three in one is a great lubricant,
but not such a great doctrine!