Lee's Trinity

[Evangelical]

Originally Posted by Drake

OBW) "You need a verse to establish that what you are saying is true. You are asking me to disprove what has not been tentatively established as true."

I thought Evangelical gave a good explanation about the Lord's humanity and the Lord's divinity in regards to His dying on the cross. I am surprised you and others did not see it as the right balance and opportunity to find some ground. Perhaps tritheism is indeed a hidden tendency with many here.

But you asked for a verse. Very well, there are many. Here is one:

John 14:10 Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.


This verse is clear that the Father and the Son indwelt one another when this was stated. That the words that Jesus spoke were not His own but the Father's and it was the Father doing the works. If the Father and Son indwelt one another and the Father did the works, what change occurred on the cross? Of course the Son died on the cross but where is the verse that indicates the essential bond was broken in the Godhead?

Drake

And this one:

John 8:29 He has not left me alone, because I always do those things that please him." - because the cross pleased the Father, the Father never left Jesus alone on that cross.

and this:

2 Corinthians 5:19
For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people's sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation.


John 16:32
“You [disciples] will leave me all alone. Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me.”


Many Christians have the wrong concept that Jesus was alone on that cross, the Father was in Heaven and the Spirit was floating around somewhere. The biggest proponents of this lie are the "historical Jesus" proponents - that Jesus was merely a great historical human figure, and not God in human flesh. But actually the bible says that God the Father dwelt in him and was with Him even to the highest and most glorious act of obedience in pleasing the Father's will - death on the cross. The Spirit was also indwelling Christ for the Spirit had to raise Jesus from the dead, 3 days later:

Romans 8:11 And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.

The whole Godhead, the Triune God indwelt Jesus's body on the cross and even while Jesus was in that tomb. The Father was with Him, never leaving Him alone nor forsaking Him, because Christ had accomplished the most obedient and pleasing act possible. The Spirit was with Him, dwelling in Christ's mortal body, ready to raise Christ from the dead 3 days later.

This is all in the Bible, plain for all to see, that a concept of three separate persons of the Trinity in different places and time during the crucifixion is wrong.

I found this article gives a good explanation about the involvement of all three Person's of the Trinity in Christ's resurrection:

https://carm.org/jesus-raise-himself

So, would it have been possible that Jesus, through His divine nature, even while His human body lay dead, could have displayed His power through resurrection? Absolutely. Jesus, speaking of His body said “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” (John 2:19) Certainly, it was “God” who raised His body (Rom. 10:9, 1 Pet. 1:21), and Jesus is God. But Scripture also teaches that the Father raised Him (Gal. 1:1; Eph. 1:17,20). Even the Holy Spirit is said to have raised Him (Romans 8:11). So, the act of raising Jesus from the dead was not the operation merely of one person within the Trinity, but was a cooperative act done by the power of the divine substance. The fact that the Bible teaches that God raised Jesus from the dead, and that Jesus raised Himself is yet another testament to Christ’s divinity.

It is correct to say that Jesus raised Himself from the dead,and that the Spirit raised Him, and also that the Father raised Him. All these three statements are true and are not to the exclusion of the other. It was cooperative.

If the resurrection was a cooperative act, could the crucifixion not also be a cooperative act?-
The Father killed Christ - the Father sent His Son to die, it was a purposeful act
The Son killed Himself - he offered up his own life willingly, always knowing he would die on the cross
The Spirit killed Christ - by the Spirit taking the breath of life from Him. The Spirit of God could have miraculously sustained Christ on the cross for as long as He wanted.

There is also the involvement of the betrayer, the Jews, the Romans, etc.

[UntoHim]

Originally Posted by Evangelical

The Father was with Him, never leaving Him alone nor forsaking Him, because Christ had accomplished the most obedient and pleasing act possible. The Spirit was with Him, dwelling in Christ's mortal body, ready to raise Christ from the dead 3 days later.

This is all in the Bible, plain for all to see,...

This verse is plain for all to see as well...
And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is, My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? (Matthew 27:46 Recovery Version)

My friend, I must tell you, that your lack of knowledge of some of the basics of the teachings and history related to us in the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament is quite revealing. It is apparent that you study and value the words of a man above and beyond the Word of God. In your rush to confirm/affirm Witness Lee's teaching that "the whole Triune God died on the cross" you couldn't even remember one of the seminal passages in the Gospels.

Please, I beg you, turn back to the Word of God, and to "the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation" (Rom 1:16) Forget about the creeds if you must. Forget about anything anybody posts on this forum if you must. Lay aside, at least for a season, the person and work of Witness Lee. The Word of God is eagerly waiting for your heart and mind to washed in the water of it's truth and grace.
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[Drake]

Originally Posted by UntoHim

This verse is plain for all to see as well...
And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is, My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? (Matthew 27:46 Recovery Version)

My friend, I must tell you, that your lack of knowledge of some of the basics of the teachings and history related to us in the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament is quite revealing. It is apparent that you study and value the words of a man above and beyond the Word of God. In your rush to confirm/affirm Witness Lee's teaching that "the whole Triune God died on the cross" you couldn't even remember one of the seminal passages in the Gospels.

Please, I beg you, turn back to the Word of God, and to "the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation" (Rom 1:16) Forget about the creeds if you must. Forget about anything anybody posts on this forum if you must. Lay aside, at least for a season, the person and work of Witness Lee. The Word of God is eagerly waiting for your heart and mind to washed in the water of it's truth and grace.
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UntoHim,

This verse does not provide any clarification to this debate. No matter what view is held, with this verse both sides of the debate would have some splainin to do.

You believe that this shows separation in the Godhead to the extent that only the Son died on the cross. Yet, why would the Son say that on the cross if the Father and Son were already separated? Your separation argument would also apply to incarnation and human living. It is just as obvious by the statements our Lord made about the mutual indwelling between the Father and the Son that there is no separation from the Father during His earthly ministry.

If you believe like I do that the essential Trinity , what God is in His essence, cannot be changed from eternity past to eternity future then the Son's cry on the cross has everything to do with His pefect humanity becoming complete sin. This what the Father forsook.

Drake

[Drake]

InChristAlone) "I wonder who gave you the guarantee of your personal salvation. How do you know the Lord's judgement on you?"

InChristAlone,

The guarantee of our eternal salvation is based on the redemption of Christ Who already paid the price on the cross. When we believe into Him we are joined to Him in His death .The payment being made in full by Christ is our assurance of salvation. As pertains to our eternal state, our eternal salvation our faith in His redemptive work settled the problem of sin and separation from God once and for all.. As we were joined to Him in death so also in His resurrection . God' accepts us because He accepts Christ. Therefore, God gave us the guarantee of our personal salvation based on His work and our faith in it, not on our works.

There is a salvation related to our daily living and entrance into the kingdom as a reward to the believers who are faithful in this life. Several verses you cited such as Philippians are related to this working out of our daily salvation. Not all believers will recieve the reward of the kingdom. Nevertheless, this does not negate our eternal salvation. Conflating the two will lead to confusion about salvation in the Bible..

Drake

[InChristAlone]

Originally Posted by Drake

The guarantee of our eternal salvation is based on the redemption of Christ Who already paid the price on the cross. When we believe into Him we are joined to Him in His death .The payment being made in full by Christ is our assurance of salvation. As pertains to our eternal state, our eternal salvation our faith in His redemptive work settled the problem of sin and separation from God once and for all.. As we were joined to Him in death so also in His resurrection . God' accepts us because He accepts Christ. Therefore, God gave us the guarantee of our personal salvation based on His work and our faith in it, not on our works.

Drake, It is a very time-consuming topic. Protestant and Lee's understanding of sin has been inherited from Roman Catholicism. Orthodox Church has a different view on sin. What you describe is similar to the process in a courtroom where the criminal is forgiven but still stays the same criminal by His nature. Orthodox Church doesn't hold to the juridical view. For Orthodox Christians, sin is illness and salvation is union with God when the "criminal's" sick nature is being purified and healed by the Great Physician, Jesus Christ.

Please check out these two articles:

1 Orthodox incarnational theology, which is at the core of the original Gospel, teaches that God Himself, the second Person of the Trinity, became incarnate, not in order to pay a debt to the devil or to God the Father, nor to be a substitutionary offering to appease a just God, but in order to rescue us from our fallen condition and transform us, enabling us to become godlike. The way God chose to deliver us from our condition—our illness, fallenness, mortality, corruption, and sin—was by taking upon Himself our human nature and participating with us in the limitations that creaturehood encompasses. Forgiving our sins is part and parcel of a much larger whole, as forgiveness in itself is not enough to ensure healing, purification, illumination, wholeness, and transfiguration. Actual organic participation in the life of the Incarnate God is required, in addition to being forgiven.

The original biblical Gospel often speaks of salvation as an organic experience that is preeminently non-juridical.

The original Gospel emphasizes that Jesus takes upon Himself our humanity in order to purify, heal, illumine, and transfigure it. We are saved from something (namely, death, sin, and the devil) in order to be saved for something else (union and communion with God). Union and communion with God is a journey of ever-deepening love that begins in this life, and—because God is infinite—continues forever...

2

Instead of viewing the atonement as Christ paying the price for sin in order to satisfy a wrathful God, Recapitulation teaches that Christ became human to heal mankind by perfectly uniting the human nature to the Divine Nature in His person. Through the Incarnation, Christ took on human nature, becoming the Second Adam, and entered into every stage of humanity, from infancy to adulthood, uniting it to God. He then suffered death to enter Hades and destroy it. After three days, He resurrected and completed His task by destroying death.

By entering each of these stages and remaining perfectly obedient to the Father, Christ recapitulated every aspect of human nature. He said “Yes” where Adam said “No” and healed what Adam’s actions had damaged. This enables all of those who are willing to say yes to God to be perfectly united with the Holy Trinity through Christ’s person....

Originally Posted by Drake

There is a salvation related to our daily living and entrance into the kingdom as a reward to the believers who are faithful in this life.

Drake, why do you do such a difference? I can hardly call the first thing salvation. It is not salvation at all. At least according to my poor understanding. I wonder who and when came up with the theory of two types of salvation?

God bless.

[Drake]

InChristAlone)"I wonder who and when came up with the theory of two types of salvation? "

The Bible. Because there are two judgements there is a need for two salvations.

Drake

[UntoHim]

Originally Posted by Drake

You believe that this shows separation in the Godhead to the extent that only the Son died on the cross.

Where did I use this term "separation in the Godhead". I said no such thing. I implied no such thing. I believe no such thing. The reason I believe no such thing is that the Bible teaches no such thing. When the Lord Jesus cried out to the Father "My God, My God why have you forsaken me" I don't think he was just dreaming about this, do you? Do you think he was just reciting the opening verse of Psalm 22 because it seemed appropriate at the time? I believe that only the Son died on the cross because that's what the actual words say. If you want to add to the Word of God with the fanciful teachings of a man who says "forget about what the bible says...I know better...THE ENTIRE TRIUNE GOD DIED ON THE CROSS!" then you do so at your own peril.

If you believe like I do that the essential Trinity , what God is in His essence, cannot be changed from eternity past to eternity future then the Son's cry on the cross has everything to do with His pefect humanity becoming complete sin. This what the Father forsook.

So the Father didn't actually forsake him? So he was dreaming? "This" is what the Father forsook? "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin" (2 Cor 5:21) It wasn't a "this" or an "it" that got forsaken by God, it was a "HE", and the HE was the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. The Father forsook (the was the point of the Father's giving - "for God so loved the world that HE GAVE his only begotten Son") and the Son did the sacrifice. There is no need to introduce the essential or economical Trinity or any other extra-biblical terms...the actual words related to us in the bible should be good enough.
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[OBW]

Originally Posted by Evangelical

John 8:29 He has not left me alone, because I always do those things that please him." - because the cross pleased the Father, the Father never left Jesus alone on that cross.

Spoken concerning his 3.5 year mission of speaking to the people of Israel. Does not say "will not leave me alone."

Originally Posted by Evangelical

2 Corinthians 5:19. For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people's sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation.

Even this verse is past tense. It does not prove or disprove that there ever was or was not a period or time when something might have been different. Neither does it declare that the unity of the Godhead has overcome and confused the three of the trinity.

Originally Posted by Evangelical

John 16:32. “You [disciples] will leave me all alone. Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me.”

Once again, "I am not alone," not "I will never be alone." Present tense. Not a claim of always true or will always be true. You ignore that Jesus spoke rather clearly and without question that the Father had forsaken him on the cross, therefore you have a rather clear indication that this state of being "not alone" was not at all times true.

Originally Posted by Evangelical

Romans 8:11 And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.

This verse says nothing about being one or being in Christ at any time, least of all at the crucifixion.

Originally Posted by Evangelical

The whole Godhead, the Triune God indwelt Jesus's body on the cross and even while Jesus was in that tomb. The Father was with Him, never leaving Him alone nor forsaking Him, because Christ had accomplished the most obedient and pleasing act possible. The Spirit was with Him, dwelling in Christ's mortal body, ready to raise Christ from the dead 3 days later.

Pure conjecture based upon the mishandling of the scripture, and by example the four you quoted above.

So, would it have been possible that Jesus, through His divine nature, even while His human body lay dead, could have displayed His power through resurrection? Absolutely. Jesus, speaking of His body said “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” (John 2:19) Certainly, it was “God” who raised His body (Rom. 10:9, 1 Pet. 1:21), and Jesus is God. But Scripture also teaches that the Father raised Him (Gal. 1:1; Eph. 1:17,20). Even the Holy Spirit is said to have raised Him (Romans 8:11). So, the act of raising Jesus from the dead was not the operation merely of one person within the Trinity, but was a cooperative act done by the power of the divine substance. The fact that the Bible teaches that God raised Jesus from the dead, and that Jesus raised Himself is yet another testament to Christ’s divinity.

Yet this does not force that God, as in the fullness of the Godhead, was on the cross and died there. That is a presumption not supported by any of the scripture or even this article.

And when the article says "Jesus is God," that is not the same as saying God is Jesus. You cannot declare that Jesus, who was on the cross, was God, and by making that declaration, now drag the other two back onto the cross with Christ because they are all God.

Originally Posted by Evangelical

If the resurrection was a cooperative act, could the crucifixion not also be a cooperative act?

I will confess that it "could" be true. But there is nothing that makes it so, therefore I cannot (and you should not) insist that it simply is so. "Could" is a long way from "is."

And given so much of the totality of the accounts (including those that you have quoted) I cannot find a reason to think that it is more likely that it is true, rather that it is more likely that it is not. If the Father forsook Christ, and if he turned his face away (according to the scripture), then to argue that the Father was actually there on the cross being forsaken by himself is a fallacy of being true and not being true. An illogic. It is far less likely that it is true than that it is false. I realize that statistics and probabilities are not the basis for truth. But they should temper our insistence when we find that what we believe is too thoroughly contraindicated to be even close to a certainty.

And you are holding to it as a certainty.

[Evangelical]

Originally Posted by OBW

Spoken concerning his 3.5 year mission of speaking to the people of Israel. Does not say "will not leave me alone."

Even this verse is past tense. It does not prove or disprove that there ever was or was not a period or time when something might have been different. Neither does it declare that the unity of the Godhead has overcome and confused the three of the trinity.

Once again, "I am not alone," not "I will never be alone." Present tense. Not a claim of always true or will always be true. You ignore that Jesus spoke rather clearly and without question that the Father had forsaken him on the cross, therefore you have a rather clear indication that this state of being "not alone" was not at all times true.

This verse says nothing about being one or being in Christ at any time, least of all at the crucifixion.

I can easily show you are wrong by pointing to the whole of verse 29:

John 8:29 The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him."

The Father was always with Christ, never leaving Him alone, because Christ always did what pleased him.

If the Father ever left Christ alone, it would mean that Christ did something displeasing to God.

Because we know that Christ always pleased the Father (even the act of going to the cross was pleasing to the Father), we can know that the Father never left Him. The Father was on the cross with Him, and even in the tomb.

It is like Psalm 139 says:

Psalm 139:7 Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?

Psalm 138:8 ......... If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.

Why would the Father forsake His Son during His most pleasing act?

The Father forsook Christ's humanity in the sense of removing his manifest presence and comfort. However Christ was still very much "God in the flesh".

As Matthew Poole's commentary says, - "it must be understood with respect to God’s consolatory manifestations".

[Ohio]

Originally Posted by Evangelical

I can easily show you are wrong by pointing to the whole of verse 29:

John 8:29 The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him."

The Father was always with Christ, never leaving Him alone, because Christ always did what pleased him.

If the Father ever left Christ alone, it would mean that Christ did something displeasing to God.

This is nonsense.

Even though God forsook Him on the cross, our Lord Jesus "always did what pleases Him."

[Evangelical]

Originally Posted by Ohio

This is nonsense.

Even though God forsook Him on the cross, our Lord Jesus "always did what pleases Him."

Then Gill and Clarke's commentaries must be wrong then.

[Ohio]

Originally Posted by Evangelical

Then Gill and Clarke's commentaries must be wrong then.

"Let God be true and every man a liar."