Quote:
Originally Posted by awareness
Silly duck-duck, I don't have to pray-read John 16 to see that Jesus speaks of the father, son, and helper.
But maybe if I pray-read it long enough I'll see the Trinitarian Creeds in there.
I'm just wondering why Jesus failed to spell out those creeds right then and there, so we wouldn't have to wait hundreds of years to finally get it.
Pray-read? You're a funny brother Untohim. That's a method of seeing things in scripture that aren't there. And it wasn't even mentioned in the creeds ... that also saw things that aren't there.
And the words Bible (book) and canon are extra-Biblical ... like trinity.
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And when Paul wrote his letters, they too were "extra-biblical", until they were accepted as biblical.
At that time there was no such thing as "solo scriptura". There was scripture, there was oral tradition, there was life experiences. So they sought to redefine God's nature according to their experience of Christ and the Spirit. It was never borne from a "sola scriptura" reading of the Old Testament, which clearly says "God is One".
The ante-Nicene Fathers provide support for the Trinity so it is correct and is also biblical.
However they do not go into such detail that would provide support or denial of the finer aspects such as the relationship between the three persons. It is these finer aspects which are extra-biblical, the ones that say Jesus is not the Father and Jesus is not the Son. Such doctrines were formulated much later when the Church sought to refine the doctrine against new heresies. It was important for them to clearly delineate between the three persons for the sake of the particular heresies which arose.
However the bible alone never explains in great detail whether Jesus is the Father or not, and in fact a plain literal reading of Isaiah and other verses we would conclude that Jesus is the Father and Jesus became the Spirit. That's what the bible plainly says, in English and in Greek or Hebrew. There is nothing in the original text to say "Jesus is like a father", and "Jesus became only like the Spirit but not actually the Spirit". If Jesus is not the Father then Immanuel, "God with us" cannot be true. Jesus would be called "like God with us".
I think it is kind of sad to see Christians scratching their head, confused about who the Spirit is, when the bible clearly says the Spirit is Jesus. So they pray and talk to someone they call Jesus, but the Spirit is treated as another different person.
I think that reading Scripture alone, we might even conclude that there are four or five persons of the Trinity, as a fourth possible person, the Word, is seen in John chapter 1. Those who don't know that the Word is Christ, could wrongly say that the Word is the fourth person.
In any case, I don't see much biblical support for the idea that God will judge anyone for incorrectly defining his true nature. I feel the most honest interpretation is one which declares that it is an unknowable mystery however our experience tells us that as far as we know, God is a Trinity. And in 2000 years time will God reveal himself again and we have to think of another person? I don't think so, but that is what happened between the Old and the New Testaments when God who was One became , or was revealed, rather, to us as both One and Three.