Quote:
Originally Posted by Evangelical
I believe a reasonable statement for a person who hears or reads John 10:30 and has no knowledge of the Trinity or bible commentaries is that "the Father and Jesus are one Person". This reasonableness is evident by the Jew's reaction to Christ's words.
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That might be a reasonable assumption for someone who has insufficient knowledge of the vast array of statements in scripture concerning the persons and nature of the Godhead to arrive at that conclusion.
But for someone who is well-versed in all of that, it is not reasonable to think that the oneness is so complete as to subsume the three into a single being denying what is clearly separate about them. Neither is it reasonable to conclude that they are simply Three that work in committee, or are the leaders of an array of gods that have their roles with the need to pray to each of them as something separate with the task of handling different issues. Like fertility, crops, rain, health, etc.
You provide a simplistic assumption as to what constitutes tritheism that would tend to make the fact of God speaking of his Son that is coming out of the water as the Spirit descends upon him into either evidence of three which would constitute tritheism, or parlor tricks by a singular for the appreciation of the masses. You are unable to get your mind around the concept of Three that should not be confused, that are one that should not be separated. As One, God is clearly understood as completely in harmony in all things. But that is not to the exclusion of the reality of the "us" that makes man in "our" image. In this one statement we dispel the notion that they really are just each other. If that were true, then there is no reality to Three. Just a smokescreen. If you need to reconcile it in human terms, you cannot get to Trinity. You can only get to either three totally independent gods, or one unified and undivided god.
But that is not the God revealed in the Bible. Our God is not defined in terms of persons, beings, or entities. He is One God that is "us" and "I." He is both. Not only one way or the other. To dismiss the reality of the Three is to dismiss most of the NT account. There is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. You pray to the Father. You ask the Father "in my name." (Not "ask the Father in his own name.")
It is a mystery that must be left as such. To insist that words have to mean only one possible thing, or to accept the added words of something other than what is in the scripture is to defy the mystery and force God into the image that you have for him.
As someone once said, "In the beginning, God made man in His image, and we have been returning the favor ever since."
The God that better fits one aspect of the scripture's revelation than the others is not the God that the Bible reveals. I am not trying to bring up that "another Christ" kind of complaint. Some throw those terms around to thump their chests at their superiority. It is enough that you already do that as you herald your "It's the oneness, stupid" kind of mantra and declare the others to be tritheists.
But when you argue that people are taking Lee's few remarks about God's "One" side out of context or ignoring what he says about the Three, I beg to differ. It is true that he would diligently declare that God is Three, citing the event at Jesus' baptism. And I don't think he was being false there. But it is evident that he didn't really have any use for the Three because he spent most of his serious teaching time declaring that they were just one. That they were simply each other. And misrepresenting verses like in John 4 when he declares that "God is Spirit."
I think he believed that God was Trinity, or Triune, but he lad little use for the Three. They were little more than aspects of One, not a true three. Show me where he really said that there were Three in a more meaningful way than as a quick rebuttal of the claims that he was modalist.
Besides, once we were to the point that there was the Father, Son, and Spirit to be considered (in other words, in the NT) The speaking of the Father, Son, and Spirit as separate from each other was predominant. Even the verses that have reference to their unity do not deny their separateness. Jesus never says "I am the Father." Neither does he say "I will be the Spirit" (or "I am the Spirit"). He speaks of the deep relationship between them, even the connection that is beyond what we understand as possible for two humans, without dismissing that he is the Son and the Father is the Father. We are not talking math here. we are not saying that 1 = 1. We are saying that A and B are more together than the "become one flesh" that occurs upon marriage of man and woman. Yet when A and B are that joined, they do not cease to be A and B (say "C" for example), but remain as A and B.