A Challenge to
Students of the Bible
The following quotations from leading
authorities on the Bible should cause us to “examine all things carefully.”
Popular majority opinion is not necessarily correct. Many professional scholars
oppose it. May we respectfully request
of our readers that they pay careful attention to the issues raised below.
“Gut reactions” and “knee-jerk responses” should be avoided!
“It may be said at once that there
is no trace of a doctrine of a Trinity in the Gospel of John.”
“The notion of the Holy Spirit as a
third divine personality is one of the most disastrous importations into the
Holy Scriptures.”
“There is no trace of the idea of
‘three divine persons in one’ in the New Testament…No Apostle would have dreamt
of thinking that there are three divine persons…The mystery of the Trinity
proclaimed by the Church did not spring from biblical doctrine.”
“The Trinitarians edited their
notorious Trinitarian text into the first Epistle of John [1 John 5:7, see the
KJV and compare it with all modern versions].”
“Arguments for the Trinitarian dogma
do not exist in the Bible as they were later preserved in Orthodoxy.”
“Paul would have had no knowledge of
a dogmatic Trinity, since that came into the world only centuries after his
death.”
“The Jew Jesus knew of a Trinity in
a dogmatic sense just as little as the Jew Paul.”
“The image of God in the primitive
Church was unitary [= God is one Person, not three].”
“During the bloody intra-Christian
religious wars of the fourth and fifth centuries, thousands upon thousands of
Christians slaughtered other Christians for the sake of the Trinity.”
“Many Christians are genuinely
concerned and many Jews justifiably frustrated trying to find in the Trinity
the pure faith in One God.”
(Muslims often reject the Christian faith outright because of the strange
doctrine that God is three in One.)
“The doctrine which follows from the
identification of Jesus with a pre-existent divine being is ultimately
incompatible with the unity of God.”
“Most Christians probably escape
from the dry abstractions of Augustinian orthodoxy by reinterpreting it
tritheistically. In the last resort [this] implies the existence of three
divine centers of consciousness — in other words, three Gods.”
“The Church has not usually in
practice (whatever it may have claimed to be doing in theory) based its doctrine
about Christ exclusively on the witness of the New Testament. Doctrine about
Christ has never in practice been derived simply by way of logical inference
from the statements of Scripture.”
“[If] the eternal Son assumes a
timeless human nature, or makes it timeless by making it his own, it is a human
nature which has nothing essential to do with geographical circumstance; it
corresponds to nothing in the actual concrete world; Jesus Christ has not after
all ‘come in the flesh.’”
“The clear evidence of the Gospel of
John [is that] Jesus refuses the claim to be God…Jesus vigorously denied the
blasphemy of being God or His substitute.”
“Paul nowhere definitely equates
Jesus with God.”
“Jesus never calls Himself God, but
ever claims to be the Son of God.”
“Jesus is not God but God’s
representative, and, as such, so completely and totally acts on His behalf that
he stands in God’s stead before the world…The Gospel of John clearly states
that God and Jesus are not to be understood as identical persons, as in 14:28,
‘the Father is greater than I.’”
“The Gospel of John, like other
early Christian witnesses, thinks of Jesus as legal agent, and apostle of God,
who was physically and personally a human being (“low Christology”), but
legally he was equal to God (“high Christology”). Jesus held a status that was
legally equal to God (John 10:33), but, on the other hand, the Father (as the
principal) was greater (John 14:28) than the Son, who was the agent.”
“It would be ridiculous to imagine
that Jesus is God, tout simple. The
New Testament writers do not claim this for him; they know he is very much one
of us.”
(This author writes as a Trinitarian, but still recognizes that the statement
“Jesus is God” without further qualification is misleading.)
“Should we then say that Jesus was
confessed as God from earliest days in Hellenistic Christianity? That would be
to claim too much. (1) The emergence of a confession of Jesus in terms of
divinity was largely facilitated by the extensive use of Psalm 110:1 from very
early on (most clearly in Mark 12:36; Acts 2:34ff.; I Cor. 15:25; Heb. 1:13):
“the Lord says to my lord: ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your
footstool.’” Its importance lies in the double use of ‘lord.’ The one is
clearly Yahweh, but who is the other? Clearly not Yahweh, but an exalted being
whom the psalmist calls ‘lord.’ (2) Paul calls Jesus ‘lord,’ but he seems to
have marked reservations about calling Jesus ‘God.’ Romans 9:5 is the only real
candidate within Paul’s letters (but even there the text is unclear). Similarly
he refrains from praying to Jesus. He prays to God through Christ…At the same
time Paul affirms Jesus is ‘Lord’ he also affirms ‘God is One,’ ‘There is only
one God’ (Deut. 6:4). Hence also Rom. 3:30, Gal. 3:20, 1 Tim. 2:5 (cp. James
2:19)…The point for us to note is that Paul can hail Jesus as Lord not in order
to identify him with God, but rather, if anything, to distinguish him from the
One God (cp. particularly I Cor. 15:24-28).”
The information quoted above gives the substance of
statements made by leading theologians. The inquiring reader will want to know
how it is that the dogma of the Trinity has been declared to be the hallmark of
true Christianity, while recognized biblical scholars deny that any such dogma
is found in the writings of leading, biblical Christians. Why not allow
yourself to be challenged by these extraordinary facts?
Millions of churchgoers accept without question what they
are taught about God. It is perilous, however, to follow majority opinion
blindly, especially when distinguished experts declare them to be untrue. The
only safe path is to examine the Bible for yourself.
Does the Bible ever speak of a Godhead consisting of three
Persons? Traditional Christianity has been based on the dogma of the Trinity
for some 1600 years. Much evidence is available to show that the Trinitarian
dogma was forced on believers and that it has no biblical basis — that it
actually negates the heart of the Bible’s teaching that there is One God who is
One Person, the Father (1 Cor. 8:6; John 17:3; 5:44; 1 Tim. 2:5; Eph. 4:4-6).
Some say that since Jesus is “worshipped” he must be God.
This argument is entirely fallacious. The word “worship” in the Old Testament
and New Testament is used in different senses. (1) To denote religious service
to the One God. (2) To denote homage paid to superior personages including,
supremely, the Messiah. In I Chronicles 29:20 David the King is “worshipped”
along with God (see KJV). In Revelation 3:9 the Christians are going to be
“worshipped” (see again the KJV). The same word is used here as is used also
for the worship of the One God, the Father. Jesus is worshipped in the Bible as
the Messiah, not as the One God.
The identity of God and Jesus are critically important
issues for all students of Christianity. Effective worship must be based on
Truth (John 4:24). Nothing is more essential than a biblical understanding of
the One God and His relationship to His Son, the Messiah Jesus.
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