Issues with Trinitarianism and its Christology — Part 2
Thomas Allen
15. Except for the heretical
subordinationists and modal trinitarians, one question that Trinitarians have never been able to answer satisfactorily, except perhaps to themselves, is how three distinct persons, each of whom is fully God, are not three Gods. That is, how can God consist of three distinct Gods without being three Gods? Most Trinitarians just assert that three Gods are one God with no real Scriptural proof. Others claim that it is all a mystery beyond human comprehension, although they offer no Scripture that explicitly states such mystery. How can the Godhead consist of three persons, each of whom is fully God, while not having three Gods? Furthermore, where do the Scriptures explicitly claim that God is three persons, three beings, three Gods, three modes, three attributes, or three somewhats, etc.?
16. The more honest Trinitarians admit the doctrine of the Trinity is nowhere expounded in the New Testament. It cannot be found in either the Old Testament or the New Testament. Neither Paul nor any of the other apostles taught it — and would not understand today’s orthodox Trinity Doctrine. The Trinity Doctrine rests upon the authority of the Church, i.e., the Pope: The Church declares that the Trinity Doctrine is true; therefore, it is true.
17. The Trinity Doctrine seems to have been developed — albeit, most likely, subconsciously — primarily to justify error. Christ instructed people to pray to and worship God the Father, whom Christ claimed was the only true God (John 17:3). He never instructed them to pray to or worship the Messiah; neither did Paul, Peter, nor other apostles. After the apostles died, people began praying to and worshiping Christ. Instead of correcting this error, the leaders and intellects of the Church began applying Greek philosophy to the teachings of Jesus and the apostles to justify worshiping Christ. The same can be said for other errors that became doctrines of the Catholic Church. Examples are praying to saints and Mary and declaring Mary to be the mother of God (she eventually supplanted Christ, who had become God, as the mediator between man and God). Instead of correcting errors, Church leaders and intellects sought to justify them.
18. Platonic philosophy and Gnosticism have defined and defended the Trinity Doctrine. They provide the terms, e.g., one substance, person, and trinity, used to define the Trinity.
19. Unlike various subordination doctrines, the orthodox Trinity Doctrine did not grow organically from the Scriptures. Moreover, many Scriptures that Trinitarians use to support their doctrine testify against it.
20. If the Trinitarians are correct, then the God of the Old Testament cannot be the God of the New Testament. In the Old Testament, God is described as a unipersonal God. Most Trinitarians now admit that the Old Testament describes a unipersonal God and not a triune God. However, according to the Trinitarians, the New Testament describes God as a triune God. That is, three Gods, persons, or whatevers are one God. Moreover, a triune God of three Gods, three persons, or three whatevers differs significantly from a unipersonal God of one God, one person, or one whatever. Now more Trinitarians, especially Catholics, are admitting that the Scriptures do not support the Trinity Doctrine as expressed in the Athanasian Creed or other similar creeds. It relies on revelation and Church tradition.
If the Trinitarians and Jewish rabbis are correct, then
Marcion was correct when he said that the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament are two different Gods. However, his explanation of the two different Gods was incorrect.
21. Honest Trinitarians acknowledge that they worship a triune God. Thus, they are not monotheists in the sense of the Old Testament worship of a unipersonal God, whom good Jews worship. If Christians claim that the God of the Old Testament is a triune God and the Jews claim that he is a unipersonal God, then either one is wrong or God suffers from dissociative identity disorder. (If Christians assert that the Jews are wrong, then they need to explain their antisemitism.)
22. Trinitarians claim that God became flesh so that he could experience suffering, ignorance, death, etc. like humans. Such a claim impinges on God’s omniscience. If God is omniscient, he knows how it is to suffer and die like humans. He knows how it is to be a dog or a flea without becoming one.
Furthermore, if most theologians, both orthodox and heterodox, are correct about God being impassible, how could he experience pain, etc. like a human? Yet, many Trinitarians claim that God had to become man so that he could suffer like man.
Moreover, how could God really die and still be eternal? If he were to die, he would cease being eternal. Or, is the pagan Greek idea of death, which most Christians believe, correct: Death is not a cessation of consciousness; it is a metamorphosis from one state of conscious being to another state of conscious being. And, the Hebrew idea of death is wrong: Death is the cessation of consciousness; this is the concept taught in the Old Testament. If death is a metamorphosis, then the Son changed state or condition. An attribute of God is that he is unchangeable. In any event, God the Son either ceased being eternal or changed state. Therefore, he ceases being equal to God the Father, who is eternal and unchangeable. Thus, the Trinity Doctrine collapses.
According to the Hebrews, the body and soul are one. When the body dies, the soul also dies. All consciousness ceases at death.
According to the pagan Greeks, the body and soul are two. When the body dies, the soul continues to exist in a conscious state.
23. The triune God is not a personal God, a real being with a personality, will, and desire. He, or perhaps more correctly, it, is an essence, substance, and entity — an abstraction.
24. If Jesus is God, why does he always pray to the Father and never to himself, who is also Deity, or to the Holy Spirit? Why does he ask the Father for what is in his own power as God the Son?
25. If God the Father is the God of God the Son (Jesus declares that his Father is his God in John 20:17), then who is the God of God the Father? For God the Son, who has a God, to maintain his equality with God the Father, God the Father must also have a God. Likewise, God the Holy Spirit must also have a God. Who is the God of God the Holy Spirit? Moreover, if Jesus is God, how can he have a God?
26. According to the Trinity Doctrine, the Son is eternal and is also begotten. He who is begotten cannot be eternal because he has a beginning — when he is begotten. An eternal being has no beginning or ending. Thus, the Trinity Doctrine contradicts itself with an oxymoron: the Son being begotten and eternal.
Moreover, God is self-existing. He who is begotten, the Son, is not and cannot be self-existing. Furthermore, how can an unbegotten being, the Father, be the same kind of being as a begotten being, the Son?
27. Unless the separationists are correct, why did Jesus cry out while he was dying on the cross? After all, according to many Trinitarians, Jesus’ God nature did not abandon his human nature while he was dying on the cross. As God the Son indwelt him, why did he need to cry out to God? God was already a part of him.
28. To prevent God from dying on the cross, Trinitarians must have Jesus’ divine nature abandoning Jesus’ human nature by or at the time Jesus dies. The
Valentinians solve the problem of God dying by having Christ, who is the divine nature, separating from Jesus, who is the human nature, just before the crucifixion. To avoid having God die, Trinitarians must adopt a Valentinian-like doctrine. However, to avoid the heresy of Valentinianism, Trinitarians seem to have the human nature of Jesus leaving the divine nature of Jesus at death. Whereas Valentinians have the divine leaving the human, Trinitarians have the human leaving the divine.
29. Trinitarians subvert the title of the “Son of God” into “God the Son,” a title that the Scriptures never give Jesus. The two phrases mean different things. “X the son” has an entirely different meaning than “the son of X.” Isaac the son means Isaac as the son of Abraham; he is not Abraham. The son of Isaac means Jacob; he is not Isaac; nor is he Abraham. Likewise, “God the Son” has a different meaning than “the Son of God” and refers to a different person, being, entity, or whatever.
30. When Jesus speaks, is he speaking in his divine nature as God or is he speaking in his human nature as man? Most assume that when he says something that sounds godly to them (e.g., “I and the Father are one” – John 10:30), he speaks as God. However, if he says something that sounds humanly to them (e.g., “the Father is greater than I” – John 14:28), he speaks as man. How do they know with absolute certainty which is speaking? Moreover, being ignorant of a triune God and the incarnation of God, which thus made Jesus have two natures and two wills, his audience would have always understood him speaking as a man. (Clergy often preach “context relevance” and the “way the audience at that time who received the remarks would have understood them.” Jesus’ audience at that time would have always understood him to be speaking as a man. If he intended otherwise, he was deceiving, i.e., lying to, his audience.)
Where does the Bible expressly state that Jesus has two natures and two wills? Where does the Bible even strongly imply such?
31. The doctrine of Jesus possessing two natures raises several questions. Did the two natures exist before the Incarnation? If they did, how did or could the Father and Son still be of one substance? If they did not, when and how was Jesus’ human nature combined with his divine nature? What prevented the divine nature from dominating? How can Jesus’ humanity be like the rest of humanity if he lacked the ability to sin like the rest of humanity? What Scriptures support the answers to these questions?
Jesus was tempted like all other men (Hebrews 4:15). If he were God or had a divine nature, he could not have been tempted like other men. Being tempted like other men implies the ability to sin. Under the
Christology of the Trinity Doctrine, Jesus could not sin. An attribute of God is his inability to sin. If Jesus consisted of two natures, divine and human, then his divine nature would have coerced the human will not to sin.
32. An angel strengthened Christ in the garden of Gethsemane. However, if he possessed divinity in conjunction with humanity, why would he have needed such assistance? Such assistance would have been wholly unnecessary.
33. When Christ speaks of himself, he uses the pronoun “I.” He is speaking of his whole person and not of only part of his person. According to Trinitarian Christology, Christ is one person who consists of a divine nature and a human nature. So, when he says, “My Father is greater than I” (John 14:28 ), he is speaking of himself as the whole person consisting of both divine and human natures. Therefore, by this assertion, he declares himself, both of his natures, inferior to God the Father.
34. If Thomas calling Jesus God (John 20:28) identifies Jesus as one of the Persons of God, then God making Moses God (Exodus 7:1) should make Moses a Person of God. If not, why not? After all, God speaks much more authoritatively than Thomas.
35. An important part of the Christology of Trinitarianism is the doctrine of the Incarnation. Not until 451 was this doctrine formerly defined when the Council of Chalcedon promulgated it. The reason that 350 years were needed to develop it was that nowhere does the Scriptures described such a doctrine — although the first chapter of John may weakly hinted at it. Moreover, the doctrine of the Incarnation resembles pagan mythology more than biblical truth. That is, the notion that God Himself descended from Heaven, took the form of a man, and dwelt among humans strongly resembles pagan mythology.
Copyright © 2019 by Thomas Coley Allen.
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