I love it when people say the bible clearly says something it doesn't say at all. The original Greek term is theos, which CAN mean "God", but it CAN also mean "human representative of God", like the Judges who were also called theos.
The context determines the meaning. It is not debatable. John 1 presents Jesus as God and states explicitly that He created all things. Who besides God created everything?
The bible clearly says the logos existed with the Father in the beginning.
It also clearly states that the "Logos was God".
Please look up the definition of logos in a bible dictionary and notice definition #2 which is "something in one's mind". Like a plan, for example. A blueprint for a house would be a logos in koine Greek.
I know what the word Logos means. So did John and nearly every person in existence during the first century. It means effectively the same thing we mean when we discuss reason or logic or rational discourse. Again, it is the context that actually determines the intended meaning. In the case of the book of John, the idea being expressed is that God is Logic (in the same sense the God is Love or Justice) and that Logic became flesh and went by the name 'Jesus' and who was baptised by John the Baptist and later died for our sins and rose from the dead and sits now as a man at the right hand of the Father.
No, it never has the Holy Spirit as a separate person from the Father. They are the same person, personifications notwithstanding.
Saying it doesn't make it so.
And for thousands of years the Jews who spoke the language never once thought of God as more than one and if anyone had tried they would have quoted the Shema: "Hear Oh Israel, the Lord thy God is one."
I also, never thing of God as more than one.
It wasn't until after the church was dominated by Jews that a Gentile dominated church started coming up for novel reasons for the plural pronoun other than what the Jews had believed all along: God was speaking to the angels who would be co-workers in the task of forming man into God's image.
The doctrine of the Trinity is based on a lot more than one verse and, once again, the context makes what you claim the Jews believed impossible. I presume that you're referring to the first verse of the bible which refers to God with a plural noun and singular verb. Interesting grammatical error to make in the very first sentence of the most important book ever written. God is not speaking to the angels in the verse nor could He have been because the angels were created the same as everything else...
Exodus 20:11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.
But I'm curious, you've probably heard this before. I used to teach this incessantly during the 3-4 years I was active on TOL. I know you and I have had conversations about this Clete. Yet today you still say "the bible clearly says..." Does anyone on TOL actually learn anything from anyone else?
No. Generally speaking they do not. And if you were no more substantive during our previous conversations than you were in this post then it's no wonder you were ineffective in your attempts to convince me. You see, I don't just make naked claims. I have the actual text - the clear, simple, uncomplicated reading of the plain text of scripture. I don't have to pull out obscure, unconfirmed, unconfirmable, references to what some Jew used to believe centuries ago. All I have to do is quote easy to read and understand passages of the bible to know that God is Logic, that Jesus was God incarnate, that prominent Jews such as Moses believed that there is some sort of plurality within the Godhead, that the angels were created during the six days of creation and that therefore what you say doesn't hold water.
Resting in Him,
Clete
