No sir, and it's sad so many are letting themselves be taken to the spiritual cleaners.:devil:
There are verses in the New Testament which might appear to support the traditional doctrine of the trinity, but good research in the Scriptures and the history of the doctrine has brought me and many others to the conviction that "the case for the trinity rests on questionable treatment of the biblical documents" (stated by Anthony Buzzard & Charles Hunting in their interesting book, The Doctrine of the Trinity, Christianity's Self-Inflicted Wound).
The case for the trinity "ignores the massive evidence for unitary monotheism--the belief in one God as a single person, the Father of Jesus Christ--and relies heavily on inference from a few select verses." It isolates certain texts and forgets that their context is the whole of Scripture.
Doctrines must be built upon plain, straightforward texts. After much research by a number of Biblical experts, many of them now admit that the trinity doctrine cannot be documented in the Bible, and is truly a distortion of Bible teachings. It is my desire, and that of other non-trinitarians, that people will examine the evidence that counters the trinity doctrine with an open mind.
Church historians have recorded that believers in God as a single person were "at the beginning of the third century still the large majority." (Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition, Vol.23, p.963)
Present-day fundamental Christianity claims to believe in the inerrancy of Scripture and the authority of Christ, and yet they have never come to believe in a statement made by Christ himself that summed up his feeling & knowledge of his Father: "This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You sent." (John 17:3) Are they totally insensitive to the warning issued by Jesus when he said, "In vain they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commands of men"? (Matthew 15:9) Have they fallen under the spell of theological leaders, mainly from the 2nd to the 5th century, when they allowed their Greek philosophy backgrounds to corrupt the Hebrew thought which formed the basis of the young Christian church?
Neither the Old Testament nor the New Testament offer evidence for the doctrine of the trinity. A person can establish this fact by a careful, open-minded examination of the Biblical writings. There is no passage of Scripture that asserts that God is three, no authentic verse which claims that the one God is three persons, three spirits, three divine infinite minds, or three anything. Any claim that there are three who make up the Deity must be based on inference, rather than plain statements. The trinitarian concept relies on often tortured logic which lacks solid support in the earliest Christian writings.
:think:
I brought this up from page 10 because I don't think anyone has commented on it (except LA, who agreed if I remember correctly). Bright Raven had said, "Let's get straight who Jesus is before we go into that," or something to that effect, and I posted who Jesus was, but Bright Raven never commented on my first post. Just avoiding some uncomfortable points?
Anyway, there is my post, and I would appreciate any comments...esp. if they are thoughtful and aimed at really explaining why they disagree---pointing to specific parts of my citations, and not just calling me names and saying "you're wrong."
Now, to expand on that post. I think most of us here believe that God reveals Himself in the pages of the Bible. So wouldn't we take it on ourselves to
examine whatever evidence there is in the Scriptures that will help us to figure out who God is? Someone who is really seeking for the truth will
carefully sift through all the relevant texts, like the Beroeans (Acts 17:11).
They dared to see "if these things were so", that Paul was telling them.
I like what Thomas Jefferson said about the trinity doctrine: "The Trinity is
an unintelligible proposition of Platonic mysticisms that three are one and one is three; and yet one is NOT three and three are not one!" (See
The Religious Life of Thomas Jefferson, C.B. Sanford, 1987, p.88)
It can be seen, upon scrutiny, that such opinions are quite sensible. Nevertheless, religious leaders insist that you must believe in the trinity to be a Christian! Otherwise, they teach, you must be branded a "cultist." But how can we be expected to agree with
something that can neither be explained nor understood??? Answer this: Is it fair to ask Christians to accept the doctrine "on faith"?---A doctrine that is never mentioned by name and never discussed in the pages of the New Testament (or the O.T.)! Isn't it reasonable to expect
somewhere in Scripture
a precise, clear formulation of the strange proposition that God is "three-in-one"?
Church history shows that the idea of even two equal persons in the "Godhead"---the Father and the Son---didn't receive formal approval of the Church until
three hundred years after Jesus walked the earth, at the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D., and this through political agitation. Why did it take so long for the Church to formally present the doctrine of a "Godhead" of two persons, and later of three? And then only under heavy political pressure??? Following Nicea, hundreds if not thousands of Christians
died at the hands of other "Christians" because they believed, still, that God was a single Person!
The trinity doctrine
defies both logic and rational explanation, but that doesn't seem to dampen the trinitarian's resolve to protect AT ALL COSTS this complex theological formula. The anger & agitation caused by anyone questioning the trinity doctrine is actually puzzling....does this betray a lack of confidence in this so-called unquestionable "party-line" of all of the ministers in Christendom?
Indeed, the majority view does not make the doctrine true. All of Christendom was once required to reject Galileo & Copernicus and hold the opinion that the earth was the center of the solar system. Didn't the pope apologize for this in the 20th century? I wonder if he'll wind up apologizing for the spurious trinity doctrine.
:maxi: (The Church to Galileo, for centuries.) :think: